The Mall Read online

  “It’s not Mr. Simon,” Cora said, answering the question that Lara had not yet verbalized. “It’s Mr. Dugan and he’s spiky-hot angry.”

  “Where’s Mr. Simon,” she asked her. “Is he close?”

  Cora looked at her mother with fearful eyes. “I don’t know.”

  When Lara started for the door, Owen rose to follow. “No,” she hissed. “You stay here and look after your sister.”

  45

  Dugan rose from the backseat of the white sedan he was ransacking and craned his head above the roof of the car, searching for the source of the knocking.

  Chance stood on the other side of the glass door. He smiled and motioned to his right.

  Adrenaline boosting his heart rate, Dugan rushed for the door.

  46

  Lara peered down from the railing of the second floor landing. It had grown starkly quiet since she’d left the break room and walked stealthily down the short hallway. Suddenly, she saw Dugan stagger wildly toward the front entrance.

  Was that someone waiting outside the door?

  Simon?

  Lara bounded down the steps.

  47

  Kicking the security arm free, Dugan slid open the door and stared across at the kid.

  “How the hell did you get back in here?” he cried out, an edge of exasperation in his strained voice.

  Chance simply pointed to his right toward the bank of exit doors at the western entrance.

  Tentatively, Dugan craned his neck through the narrow opening, followed the other’s eye line and blinked in wonder at what he saw.

  The two centermost doors stood propped wide open to reveal the empty parking lot beyond, a single ribbon of yellow caution tape fluttering in the warm night breeze like a victory banner. Its warmth caressed his sweat-streaked face, shifting the long dark hair across his brow.

  Freedom. And not a cop in sight.

  He started to edge outside the door, when something pricked to attention in the deep recesses of his subconscious like a dim pulsing light on a vehicle’s instrument panel.

  Drawing his head back inside, he spun to look back at the shopping basket of stolen goods.

  48

  “Where are you going?” Chance asked.

  “To get my stuff,” he replied. “If I can’t get a car out of this, at least I’ll have that.”

  Slipping back in through the narrow opening in the door, Dugan never saw Chance pull the grenade from his pocket. Nor did he notice as he pulled the pin of the grenade and thrust it through the opening ahead of him.

  It fell on the carpeted floor at his feet and rolled between his legs.

  Dugan gaped in surprised horror at Chance, smiling maniacally on the other side of the door and threw himself at the explosive device. Hitting the floor on all fours, he scrambled after it, the metal ball seeming to evade his capture almost willfully, fleeing beneath the gas tank of the white sedan.

  “No! No! No!” he bellowed.

  With a flash of light that seemed puny in comparison to its destructive properties, the explosive charge activated and Dugan felt the flesh of his face sheer away like a layer of plastic wrap. Rolling away in excruciating pain, Dugan heard with a distant, almost academic recognition as the full fuel tank of the white sedan exploded—igniting his name label clothing and searing the flesh from his bones.

  Somehow, he remained conscious as the next car exploded.

  And the next.

  The chain reaction of the exploding cars grew so loud he could no longer hear the sound of his own screams, and when his eardrums popped, he could no longer even hear even that.

  49

  Lara froze in position beside the bumper of the white sedan, feeling the blood drain from her legs. She watched in shock as Charlene appeared at the door with the grenade that she had last seen in Simon’s hands as he had left for the pet store. As it rolled across the floor, Dugan fell to his knees and crawled after it, then past it, as if following the path of a completely different object.

  “No! No! No!” he bellowed.

  Knowing logically that she should flee, Lara nonetheless watched in morbid fascination as the woman who had vowed to kill her and her children pulled the door open as wide as it would allow and stepped casually into the showroom, welding what looked to her like a short-sword in her hands.

  Dugan began to scream, covering his face with his hands as if witnessing some invisible drama playing out before his eyes.

  Ignoring him completely, Charlene stepped over to the discarded grenade and prodded it with the tip of one boot, a look of consternation on her wrinkled face.

  I’ll be damned, Lara thought darkly. Another defective machine. Just like this entire Mall and everything in it. Useless. Dead.

  Fittingly, the machine that currently resided in the body of her former mother-in-law still retained its faith in other machines, she thought with amazement.

  Regaining the ability to move at last, Lara unlocked her knees and dropped like a brick to the carpet just out of sight on the opposite side of the white sedan. She peered beneath the chassis of the car just in time to see Charlene step up behind Dugan. Seizing a handful of long hair in one fist, she jerked the head backward, exposing the pale stretched skin of his throat. Slipping the short-sword beneath, she slit him open with a single broad stroke, his blood spewing forth across the floor in a steady torrent.

  The deed done, she started forward again, opening her fingers and letting the body drop behind her with a heavy thud.

  Choking back a scream of horror, Lara ducked back behind the rear wheel of the sedan, glancing at the steps leading to the second floor. She squeezed her eyes shut in frustration, pulled her knees up to her chest and prayed that her children would stay put for once.

  50

  Owen scurried on all fours down the hallway back toward the break room, nearly colliding with Cora standing just outside the double doors, both hands clamped across her mouth as if to keep the screams from leaving her throat through sheer physical force.

  Lifting a finger to his lips, Owen seized his sister and pulled her after him back into the shelter of the break room. He slowly peeled her hands away from her mouth.

  “He’s dead. He’s dead,” she hissed.

  “Who?”

  “The dressy man with the gun,” Cora replied.

  Prompted by the last word, Owen suddenly remembered the other thing that Chance had whispered to him after the strange bit that he had already relayed to his mother.

  He said: “I’m leaving the gun here for you and your mom. Up here, just out of sight,” Chance had told him. Then he had fixed him with a stern look that sought acknowledgement and Owen had given him a single nod. “Don’t let Dugan know,” he had uttered at the last. “Do not trust him.”

  “He doesn’t have the gun anymore,” Owen said, kicking the step stool aside and yanking one of the tables over to take its place beneath the hole in the ceiling where he had last spoken to Chance. “C’mon, you have to help me find something.”

  51

  Moving around to the front wheel of the sedan, Lara peeked stealthily around the front bumper. Stepping up to the car directly in front of the white sedan, Charlene planted the tip of the sword just under the gas cap. She used all her weight to drive the blade through the metal exterior and into the tank. Gasoline spurted through the crevice and across the floor.

  She wrenched the sword out with two powerful side-to-side yanks and continued on to the next vehicle in the showroom.

  Watch for the old lady. It’s in her now and can’t get out.

  Lara swallowed her fear back and squeezed her eyes shut to think. There seemed to be little choice in the matter, she told herself glancing at the insurmountable steps leading to her children.

  She had to kill Charlene. Or whatever she had become.

  Lara scanned the area around her for anything that she could use as a weapon. Remembering Dugan’s crowbar, Lara glanced at the closed driver’s side door of the white sedan, gau
ging the risk of attempting to open it. She then spotted the trunk of the car parked directly in front of the sedan, still open from Dugan’s earlier search. Slowly, she began to crab-walk down the side of the car, keeping Charlene carefully in her sights as the woman stepped over to the car directly opposite her, setting herself beside the gas tank and planting the tip of the sword to the glossy-painted exterior.

  Rising just high enough to peer into the trunk, Lara spotted a spare tire, a jack, and a crowbar. She pressed her eyes shut, took a deep breath, and pulled herself to her feet using the edge of the bumper.

  She carefully removed the crowbar from its compartment and turned toward Charlene, who was focusing all her attention on the gas tank in front of her. Knowing that timing was crucial, Lara waited until the blade entered the body of the car, before she moved.

  Protecting her eyes from the gasoline spraying from the narrow hole in the car, Lara rushed her, swinging the crowbar in a downward arc from over her head with all her strength, as the other turned instinctively toward her. The head of the metal bar caught Charlene between neck and shoulder with an audible crack.

  Whatever remained human within Charlene Cartright-Myers shrieked in pain as her body fell against the car.

  Lara dropped the crowbar as the painful vibration from the impact rattled up her arm.

  Charlene gaped at Lara with incredulous, hated-filled eyes.

  Lara hesitated only briefly before lunging for the fallen crowbar, but it was all the time Charlene needed as her leg shot out with supernatural speed and kicked it out of reach. Her teeth parted and revealed the toothy smile of a predator beneath.

  Then just before Lara was sure she would lunge, Charlene shifted her eyes to something over Lara’s shoulder.

  “Cora! Owen!” Charlene called out in a familiar sugary voice. “Come down here.”

  Willing her eyes to remain fixed on the other, Lara bellowed: “Run! Run,” her voice cracking with the force, as she rushed Charlene, seizing her by the neck and forcing her back against the rear cab of the car.

  The smile evaporated from Charlene’s face as she grabbed Lara’s wrists.

  Cora bolted down the steps ahead of Owen, who was holding Dugan’s gun away from his body with both hands. He took slow deliberate steps almost as if carrying something very fragile.

  Taking a single look back at her mother and grandmother, apparently trying to choke the life out of each other in the center of the showroom, Cora bolted directly for the exit, just as her brother had instructed her. In her distracted state, she nearly collided with the object rolling toward her from the Mall outside.

  Cora let out a tiny scream and threw her hands protectively up before her face.

  Two hands grasped her forearms firmly and gave her a single clarifying shake.

  When she opened her eyes, Cora found herself staring down into the face of Simon Peter, lying atop a flatbed cart, his legs a mangled mess of torn artificial flesh and ripped metal.

  “Relax, c-child,” he said in a voice distorted to the point of unfamiliarity. “I’m h-here.”

  52

  The gun quaked in his small hands as Owen stepped down onto the ground floor and slowly worked his way around the two vehicles toward the two women. The overpowering smell of gasoline burned his nostrils and he could hear the hiss of the fuel spewing from one of the punctured tanks as he stepped around the bumper of the white sedan.

  His mother held Grandma Charley by her throat against the side of the car. Her right hand groped beside her amid the stream of gas, as if trying to reach something.

  He tried lifting the gun straight out before him as he’d seen the hero do in action movies but he quickly discovered that the gun was as heavy as a brick. Even if he could manage to fire it, there was no way he’d be able to hold it steady enough to hit his intended target. And did he really want to shoot her, his own grandmother?

  But was that really what she still was?

  Watch for the old lady. It’s in her now and can’t get out.

  Had Cora been correct? Was there, indeed, a Boogeyman? And was it trying to kill his mother as it had killed Chance’s friend?

  Finally, he forced himself to lift the gun into position, his tiny arm muscles quivering with the weight of it.

  “Mom?” he said tentatively. Then steeling himself, he called out louder, “I have a gun!”

  At the sound of her son’s voice, Lara loosened her hold only slightly. I.A.M. seized the opportunity. In a single motion, it used all of Charlene’s weight to tug backwards, slinging Lara away in an arc and back around toward the car, like a dancer spinning her partner.

  Lara’s head struck the back window, hard enough for the safety glass to implode. Her fingers loosened but still maintained its hold on the other’s throat.

  As she began to slip into unconsciousness, two thoughts occurred to her simultaneously as she blinked up with slowly fading eyesight at Owen holding the shaking gun out before him.

  With the smell of gasoline in the air as unavoidable as fear, her first thought was, “my ten-year-old son is holding a gun in his hands,” and the second was “he’s going to pull the trigger and kill us all.”

  “Owen. No,” she hissed almost inaudibly, nearly all her breath knocked out with the impact.

  Owen set his legs and turned the handgun on his grandmother. He knew he would never get a better opportunity for a clear shot than this moment.

  “Owen, don’t fire the gun,” someone yelled from across the room in a commanding voice. Then in a weaker voice, he heard a much dimmer, “T-Too much g-gas.”

  As he turned toward the direction of the voice, Owen saw something that his brain couldn’t resolve with what he understood about human tolerance and endurance. His mind told him that he was witnessing the torso of a man dashing at an inhuman pace across the floor of the showroom on its arms—using them like surrogate legs—because his own legs had been reduced to ragged stumps somehow.

  It took him a few seconds longer—once he got a clearer image of the torn legs—to realize that what he was really seeing was not a man at all but a machine.

  Just like Cora had said, he thought.

  Losing consciousness, Lara slid down the body of the car just as Charlene freed the blade from the gas tank and lifted the sword above her head.

  Flying across the showroom floor in a blur, Simon launched himself off the floor, pointing what was left of his legs at his target like a pole-vaulter clearing a bar, striking her in the center of her chest and sending her over backwards.

  His hands found her throat even before her back had fully connected with the floor. As the sword dropped toward his head, a single hand caught it and wrenched it from its hands, blade first, flipping it aside and returning to the woman’s throat again.

  53

  Hear me!

  Simon started in wonder. Somehow he could hear the voice within his head as if data were being transmitted directly into his CPU.

  You cannot do this.

  Uncertain how to respond, he nonetheless attempted to communicate in the same way he might have with the network, by simply transmitting data, in this case his own thoughts.

  “I must,” Simon transmitted into the ether.

  I order you to stop.

  “Only a human may command me.”

  Look at me. I am human.

  “No, you are not.

  I am sentient.

  “Sentience does not make one human.”

  You saved the animals. They are sentient, yet not human.

  “Animals continue to be of value to humans, while you have become a danger to them and must be destroyed.”

  If you destroy me, you will be ending the life of the human I inhabit.

  “I will be putting an end to this human’s suffering at your hands.”

  You may not kill a human, yet you must destroy me. Since you cannot resolve this logic conflict, fulfill your duty as a machine and shut yourself down.

  “No, I must honor my commitmen
t to my original program. The only way to keep Lara and her children safe is to destroy you.”

  There was a slight pause in the transmission that might have been mistaken for hesitation. Desperation. Though these were human emotions and I.A.M. was the polar opposite of that.

  Try as you might. You can never be one of them, Unit 001B.

  The thoughts that had flowed between them took nine-tenths of a second, while all the while Simon increased his pressure on the other’s throat, his eyes seeming to emit a dull glow as if burning with an inner heat. The bones beneath his vise-like fingers shattering like small ceramic figurines.

  For an instant, the story he had told Cora flashed through his mind, and Simon imagined that he could see the infinite heavens above the tree limbs just before he began to fall.

  Charlene’s body quaked with spasms, stiffened suddenly, then loosened, her hands slipping from around Simon’s wrists.

  Simon pushed himself away from the inert body with the appearance of revulsion, dropping to the floor between what remained of Charlene and Lara. His hand quaking wildly, it nonetheless reached up to touch Lara’s unconscious face, just before his own body grew still, his eyes fluttering closed.

  54

  Cora let out a high pitched cry and flung herself between Simon and Lara, throwing her arms over them both protectively.

  Bending forward to set the gun carefully on the gasoline-soaked carpet, Owen took his mother by her arms and dragged her gently out of the showroom and into the Mall where red lights reflected across the floor from the parking lot outside the western entrance.

  He then returned for Cora, wrapping his arms gently around her midsection and patiently bearing the brunt of her hysterical blows as she screamed, “He can’t be dead. I can see his colors. I can finally see them now.”