Authors' Note.

WARNING:

Contents of this narrative are shaky at best. Shake well before opening. Batteries not included, but this story will keep you going and going and going...

 

Avoid prolonged exposure to this story, as hair tearing, hiding under ones' bed and wetting one's self, are imminent - not necessarily in that order. The bottom of this page directs you to the Index. Use only as directed.

This narrative may not be suitable for young children, or older children with the frame of minds of 2-year olds.

 

SIDE-EFFECTS OF READING THIS STORY MAY INCLUDE:

- Complete and utter confusion.

- Outrage at the lack of censorship.

- Spontaneous bursts of laughter (also giggling fits).

- More confusion.

- Impatience.

- Bed-wetting.

If symptoms persist consult your Physician. And your Doctor. And your Psychiatrist. And your mommy.

Do not read this narrative while under the influence of any liquid substance or vapor. Do not operate heavy machinery or vehicles for at least 6 hours after you have finished. No animals - alive or dead were harmed in the making of this narrative (plush toys excluded).

 

This story may contain traces of peanuts, corn, and soy. If you persist, you cannot sue as we have warned you.

 

Any resemblance this story and/or disclaimer may have with any other is purely coincidental. We assure you. This narrative is meant for entertainment purposes only.

All decisions and attitudes displayed in the narrative do not represent any part of the authors' frame of mind, and as such should not be taken to offense. I should know. I am part of it.

Should you need and legal consultation post-reading of this material, it is recommended that you consult your Psychiatrist (again) as I do not represent any legal advisory agent and therefore do not have any jurisdiction on that matter.

 

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Prologue Entree'.

I knew she was a zombie the second I saw her.

 

A baby.

 

A zombie.

 

A zombie baby.

 

It looked as though it wasn't even old enough to walk when it died. Yet there it was, baby-stepping its way towards me.

 

It was old enough, I noticed, to already have teeth. 

 

Dressed in a light pink tank top and tutu looking skirt, that someone of the famous or privileged background might normally reserve for their pet chihuahuas, one would almost believe it wasn't actually dead. It's once baby soft peach pink skin now looked as rough as sandpaper and a blueish tinge. Her large round eyes shone a liquid silver, sporting two small thin, black irises in each eye. A large chunk of flesh had been torn, presumably bitten, from her lower abdomen and upper left leg. What remained trailed along behind it in a lumpy red mush. My stomach lurched again; I had to make it through this.

 

Now there's nothing more heart-wrenching than seeing a zombified barely infantile child, I assure you. But one can be sure that where there is a fairly recent zombified child, mumma zombie was close behind.

 

And surely enough, a loud crash later and in popped mommy. Her broken leg caught on a rack of sunglasses and toppled over in front of her. Onto which, she then fell with a gut-churning squelch.

 

With her grand entrance out of the way, and baby zombies hastening approach it was enough to send any normal person into a fit of hysterical screams - contemplating whether to jump out of the corner they were now trapped in and jump over the zombie baby risking nibbles on one's ankles, or find a weapon, get over one's moral judgement, smack the bubba zombie into next year and make a mad break for it.

 

But I didn't have time for this. There were more important things to worry about.

 

'The hell am I doing, waiting for the rest of the Brady brunch to come jumping out of nowhere?! I need to find some damn pants!' I hissed at myself.

 

But if there's one thing I knew about my life; it's that there was no luck in it.

 

Seeing the loud crash as a sign of prey, more zombies were closing in fast. I couldn't see them yet, but their moans and shuffles were clear sign enough.

 

I knew this was a bad idea. But I was more prepared to be mauled to death wearing pants than I was to die without them. I'm sorry, but if my fate is to become an animated flesh-eating corpse, there was no way I was going to be one of those half naked, just-let-it-all-hang-out kinda zombies. No thank you.

 

And if, instead, I'm to be mauled to the point of complete unanimated death then there was no way I was going to let the SWAT recon team, or next group of survivors or whatever, stumble across my corpse and instantly know that in death I'd 'let everything go,' if you know what I'm saying. If this is an isolated incident, I dont want my funeral to have to be closed casket.

 

I stepped out of the freezer fridge I'd quickly taken refuge in, and over the body of the of the zombie that had made me resort to go in there in the first place. I made sure to be wary of the broken glass  still hanging in the door frame and scattered all over the body in front of it. This balding monstrosity of a zombie had decided to pound on the glass door, with his fists and his face, until either his head or the door broke. Incidentally it was both, he'd  eventually smashed the glass and a thick shard of glass lodged itself in his temporal lobe effectively killing him. Again.

 

"Alee-oop!"

 

I hoped over the decaying corpse and tip-toed my way towards the counter. Of course, it wasn't only selfish reasons that I'd chosen this store to infiltrate in lue of trousers. Meaghan and Brita needed medical supplies and I, being the valiant soul I am, decided to get it on my own. I knew this store had had a secret stash here for years. Younger employees would always stumble across it and take half of it, mixing it together forming lethal combos.

 

Kids and bloody drugs.

 

I could still hear the moaning from, well, somewhere, and realized I ought not waste any more time. Like the proverbial speeding bullet I dashed, hunched, over fallen magazine racks, and clothing racks, making sure to carefully step over and food that had tumbled off the shelves. I really had no intention of ending up in one of those cliche 'step-on-a-twig' (or in this case a chip) 'make-a-loud-noise-and-have-a-whole-horde-of-undead-bearing-down-on-you-in-an-instant' moments.

 

I reached the counter and slid down it, listening carefully for any signs of movement.

 

"and a-one, and a-two and a..."

 

In a flash I stood up just enough to see over the counter, trying to identify and fresh lovelies for me. Nada. Without wasting any time I swung myself over the counter in the middle of the store and bunkered down the second my feet touched the floor again. 

 

I listened again, and I listened hard.

 

If I'd been spotted, they hadn't made a commotion about it yet, it was still in the clear. The counter was more like a circular cubicle with a large centerpiece about 3x higher than the counters themselves. At the bottom of the centerpiece, however, cheaply disguised as a lighting control panel was a safe, of which, I knew the combination.

 

What? I used to work here.

 

For the money. Not the drugs.

 

Still crouching, I carefully lifted the panel from the centerpiece. As expected the safe hadn't gotten up and ran away along with the rest of the shopping center. But it was already open. The dial was smashed and screws jumped like survivors of a plane crash into a rescue boat, onto the floor. I thanked my lucky stars that the old owner had the floors switched from tile to linoleum.

 

I swung the safe open, and the first thing I noticed was the complete emptiness. It was hard to miss really. But that wasn't too concerning. It was only a decoy anyway; the medical supplies and 9/10ths of all the earnings was placed in a secret gap underneath the safe floor. I reached both my hands in ad eased up the safe floor panel.

 

Someone had been here too.

 

No money what-so-ever and barely enough antibiotics to last a month. Figures. The first thing everyone does when the world goes to shit is loot.

 

At the last second, I noticed the blood splatter on the side of the centerpiece, directed away from me, then rather all too suddenly it appeared.

 

Now over the last few hours I'd seen all kinds of corpses. Burnt, amputated, in multiple pieces, mush (from being pushed over the railing on the third floor, landing on the first), old and saggy, young and bloody. But this was just it - my final straw.

 

The entire left side of his face was indented in, as if it had been slapped upside the head with a friendly sledgehammer, which in all honesty wouldn't have been so bad, had not the inside of his head been dangling out his eye sockets and nostrils. His eye and large gushes of gray matter oozed across is facial features with every slither he made. Both his legs were gone, his femur still visible in one. His other eye, still inside his head, had clouded over with a sickly yellow pusstuos liquid and dripped down his decaying cheek in thin goopy strands.

 

The man reached a clawed hand in my direction, a desperate flail for meat, and in doing so knocked his jaw, which only a few seconds ago had been inset in his own face, which then dropped to the ground with a crack.

 

"Well shit. There goes my lunch." Then with the final grumble from my insides, I vomited, rather loud and violently on the unfortunate zombies' face.

Course 1: Secret Recipe with Secret Sauce.

In order to explain how my unfortunate self came to be in a situation such as this, I'll need to go back. Not too far, because to be honest, I know about as much as you do.

Now, I don't know about you, but I personally have never woken up in a public toilet stall with my pants missing.
In fact, I can honestly say I've never been in a situation like this before.

Well until now that is.

The long thin bulb on the ceiling flickered as if to greet me from my slumber. I rolled my stiff shoulders back and sat up. I was sitting on the toilet. The red and white 'Tursendale Diamand Factoury Outlet Megasale' poster on the door in front of me told me I was in a public place.

"Where the fuck. Are. My. Pants?"

I looked around the tiny toilet stall, now realising that my head was killing me. No luck. No pants.

"I'm wearing my underwear at least. Thats a relief."

 

I put my head in my hands, trying my best to back-track.

Where was I?

How the heck did I get here?

 

Try as I might, nothing was coming to me.

 

I stood up off the loo, and noticed for the first time that I also wasn't wearing any shoes. The tiled floors were cold and somewhat sticky.

"Ugh, I don't even wanna know."

Caring too much about my semi-nakedness, I braved the idea of public humiliation and unlatched the door, peeking out into the rest of the room. Half a dozen dark grey toilet stalls, including the one I occupied. All of them empty and lonesome. A long length of grey marble with three equally spaced basins, sat under a long, rectangular, unfortunately high-definition mirror. Not a single other soul in sight. The room is also void of my pants.

"Well don't you look charming." I mused stepping out of the stall tugging the hem of my shirt down.

A golden brown long-haired bomshell stood in front of me. She looked like she was fresh out of highschool - maybe 18 maybe 19. Tusseled curls hung airily down her face and upper torso. She rocked a simple white tank and wore a blue and white checkered button up overshirt like a cape; it hung down to her thighs. A dark red, almost brown flaky substance covered her forehead, and the rest of her face was red and blotchy, as if recently crying. She also wasn't wearing any pants.

My face stared back at me from the glossy mirror.

"Nice outfit." I murmured to know one in particular. "I was aware that females were wearing their thongs around in public these days and classing them 'shorts,' but this is just ridiculous." I choose to ignore the dried blood on my face. Something clearly happened, but I'm not entirely sure I want to know just yet.

I hated to admit it but the girls bathroom was never this quiet. Ever.

My spidey-senses were tingling.

I buttoned up my overshirt so now it looked more like a dress. Normally I was actively opposed to wearing dresses, but then I was much less kean on the idea of walking around in public in my undies - a notion many girls these days could learn a lesson from.

A small framed building layout was screwed to the wall next to the door.

"Mirkurk Shopping Mall..." The big block letters announced. "Level 3."

The biggest shopping centre in the state. About 20 minutes away from home. Via train anyway. I remember Jayde saying something recently about us needing to get something from here.

My brains splitting too much for me to even consider trying to remember what that was though.
I pulled open the bathroom door as quiet and carefully as possible. Still fully aware of my semi-nakedness.

The silence echoed.

Stepping out of the bathroom I peered down the long marble walkway that had shops lined either side. Then back the other way towards a set of escalators leading up. They were off.

No one.

What was really curious about this though was that the large thick glass directly in front of me showed the mamoth sized carpark was filled to the brim with cars.

"Must be some performance or something on one of the other levels..." I said, brushing it off and making my way down the walkway. I knew that was ridiculous. It was always noisy here, whether it be some monotonous old chap squeaking out over the P.A, or just the simple buzz of human socialisation.

It didn't take long for my senses to go into overdrive.

I passed 12 shops easily, and they were all open for business, but also completely empty. Neither customers nor staff could be found. In some shops, items had been strewn from shelves, smashed on the floor or littered randomly throughout the store. The walkway however retained its clean marbled exterior.

The walkway was nearing a bend now, and I noticed something as I started to follow it around. The nearest shop on my left wasnt in the same state as the other I'd passed. It was worse.

A chemist, I think. Racks of magazines spilled out into the walkway, bottles of water and pill capsules lined the counter and floor, the lights had all been smashed.

Up until now I had been working under the assumption that there had been a fire drill or something, or maybe a police arrest that required evacuation of everyone on the premises. But what did that have to with a chemist? A crazed drug raid maybe?

Deciding it was in my best interest to stay away, and noticing that bandages and anything that could possible help with my head was long gone, I continued down the walkway. By now I could see the large stairs lading down to the second floor, and from what I could tell, the second floor was much like the third - empty and quiet.

Something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention, jutting out from between some rather large potted plants and a feature wall that ended just before the stairs started.

"I spy with my little eye...pants!"

More importantly, they were MY pants: I'd know that belt buckle anywhere! It was a handmade silver emblem design inthe shape of a dragon. Its one eye shone the brilliant red of the ruby it was adorned with. An 18th birthday present from my late grandfather.

I bounded over to them and pulled them from between the plants. What was left of them anyway. The entire right leg of my camo cargo's was completely missing, sliced off by the looks of it. The left, while still intact now sported a large hole extending from the upper thigh to just below the knee. The zip and button completely gone and the seems down the front were torn open.

"...shit."

The pants werent an option, but I wasnt going to leave that belt here, regardless of whether my life depended on it or not.

I opened my mouth to call out, to anyone that might still be here; with the exception of the chemist, its as if people in other shops literally just stopped what they were doing and left, and sensing a clear sign of emergency, I shut it again.

I noticed the broken glass when I was about halfway down the stairs. Store windows had been smashed from the inside, the remains if which now lined the walkway in glittering streams. An enourmous white pot plant was that once housed a rectangular hedge and stood in the middle of the shops, was now in pieces about 15 metres from where it used to be. The plant itself was nowhere to be seen.

Dodging as much glass as I could, I continued onward in search of life. Benches that were also once in thbetween the shops where now completely destroyed. Some even lay, in jagged pieces, out of shop windows.

The further I went, the more it looked like a disaster zone.

"The hell...? I sleep through some sort of hurricane of something?"

The windows showed a different section of the carpark now - closer to the entrance of the shopping grounds. "Looks like warzone extends outside this time..."

Unlike what I'd seen on the third floor, this was catastrophic. In the drive in where only 2 cars could possibly get through at once, a large 8 car car-crash had taken place. Those people must've all wanted to leave at once. Not to mention really, really quickly.

Doors hung open some cars where even still on and running. But not a single person was in any of them. Windshields were cracked, windows smashed, doors even pulled from their hinges that now jutted out of the windows of other cars. 2 cars were ablaze at the far edge of the parking area, and another car, a police vehicle no less, was completely upside down. Glass, debris and shopping products littered every and all open spaces. Then there was the blood.

I wasn't a complete idiot. Unless every shopper had been carrying red paint when they left, or tried to leave, then I really don't see that being anyhting other than blood. Splatters of it were everywhere, and on almost every car. Some were a dark red, others had turned a light brown colour, much like the flakes that were still peeling off my face.

I couldn't help but gasp in amazement. Or maybe it was because it was rather disturbing.

"I don't like where this is going." I informed myself. Without looking anymore I turned away and contiued, albeit faster than before, on my way out.

The first floor is double the height of the ones above it. The stairs were so steeply built that one wouldn't be able to see much of the first floor until actually standing on it. The faster I went the closer the stairs appeared, and the closer the stairs appeared, the more ragged the shops started to look. A jewelry store made entirely of glass, had practically exploded all over the ground.

I found myself looking from each shop left to right and back again, so fast I was shaking my head as if to say 'no.' No, indeed.

Doors to shops: gone.

Automatic glass doors: smashed.

Roller shutters: Either hanging by a thin strand of wire or completely detached from the shops they once protected on the other side of the walkway.

Even walls were becoming more beaten up, as if some heavyweight strong man had thrown a fit.

I felt myself starting to panic a little.

When I reached the stairs and practically threw myself down them. How bad was the first floor? Was it maybe some natural disaster? Terrorism?

Huffing and puffing, I landed hard on the first floor, reminding myself that I still hadn't found my shoes, and figured that I had much more worrying things to think about.

In terms of people, the first floor was the same as the previous two. Desolate. In terms of damage, it was like something you'd only ever see in 'Fallout.'

The stairs had once opened up to a large almost football sized clearing, shops in an a full circle around the stairs save for the grandios entrance doors at the far end of the mall, seperated only by various stalls and travelling shops.

Now there was just chaos. Entire stores were alight, others completely emptied of products. Overturned tables, entire shop windows missing, glass, metal shards, light fittings and beams that once lined the roof now decorated the floor. The glass chandeliers that once mad ethe ceiling look like stars had fallen, shattered and taken their place among the rest of the debris.

Dirt and blood were splattered everywhere. On glass panels, cracked windows, the floor, stalls, throughout some shops.

Protruding from the entrance/exit, and leaving no chance of leaving was a once shiny black helicopter now engulfed in flames that lept about 30 metres high.

Propellers bent and mishapen, blood on the inside - now shattered - glass, and the driver nowhere in site.

As much as I didn't want to admit it, the roaring of the flames was much better than the deafening silence I'd had put up with until now. This was chaos. Plain and simple.

Impressum

Texte: SiaGrrl
Bildmaterialien: N/A
Lektorat: SiaGrrl
Übersetzung: Annonymous
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 26.10.2016

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Widmung:
To Jessica, for constantly putting up with my state of un-deadness. And for Jacob, for developing the ability to wake up next to it.