The Mall Read online

  “No, Cora. Let’s make this as simple as we can,” she’d answered, watching as her suave ten-year-old son exited the restroom and checked his zipper in the lobby.

  As Owen started up the corridor in front of them, Lara ran her fingers through his hair playfully, “Hey, Casanova, try XYZ’ing yourself inside the lavatory next time.”

  Keeping his thoughts to himself, Owen had increased his pace and let the door swing shut behind him as he entered the auditorium again.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Cora wanted to know.

  “He’s just struggling with his independence,” Lara heard herself saying. My baby boy’s kicking at the walls of his protective egg shell, she thought.

  Once they were settled into their seats and the Universal logo came up on the screen, Lara fell into an impossibly, almost immediate REM sleep. In the dream, that elderly couple, George and Tess, were wandering around the house where she had grown up.

  They were having an argument, though Tess seemed to be doing the lion’s share of the yelling. Seemingly oblivious to her outpouring of emotion, George sat down at the kitchen table where a newspaper lay open, only the pages of the paper were all white, devoid of ink print.

  Slowly, he began to turn his chair away from Tess, until his back faced her. As he stared out the window, Lara could just make out the solemn expression on his face in the reflection of the glass. His eyes were haunted, like bottomless pools filled with dark water, seemingly focused on some object too far away to reach yet too precious to avert his eyes from.

  In the moment just before her awakening, Lara realized that the reflection belonged not to George, but to her father.

  Cora shook Lara awake three quarters of the way through the second run of the movie with a look composed of one part shame, one part guilt.

  “Wha--?” Lara babbled, then like a soldier in the trenches already half awake, Lara leapt up in her seat. “What’s the matter?” She glanced over and realized that Owen was missing. “Where’s Owen?”

  “He said he was going to the bathroom,” the little girl said in a high-pitched voice, bordering on hysterical. “I told him that I would wake you up if he left and he didn’t go, but then I fell asleep too, and when I woke up, he was gone.”

  Lara rose and started up the aisle toward the exit, the auditorium still empty except for her and Cora. “How long have you been asleep?”

  “I guess just after Marty got hit by the car,” Cora yelled after her, trotting to keep up with Lara’s much larger strides. “Then he woke up in bed and I got sleepy too. I’m sorry, Mommy!”

  They rushed out into the corridor awash with green carpeting and green paint. Good Lord, it looks like the Emerald City after a weekend of hard drinking, Lara thought distractedly, glancing first one way then the other.

  Not the least bit of motion anywhere.

  That fear crept back into her bones.

  All alone here. All alone.

  She forced the feeling back and turned to Cora. “What was that movie he said he wanted to see?”

  “Explorers!” she snapped, hopping and pointing up the corridor toward the end of the T-shaped hallway.

  “Ma’am, may I be of assistance?” one of the theater Bots asked as they dashed past an open auditorium door.

  “Cora, wait!” Lara turned back to the Bot. “Yes, I’ve lost my son.”

  “Lost child!” the Bot chirped sharply, its eyes pulsing bright red. Then in the distance, Lara could hear the identical cry repeated at least twice more from the direction of the lobby. “Please give the full name and description of the male child in as much detail as possible so that we might search our database.”

  “Owen Myers. Ten years old. Brown curly hair. Green eyes. He was wearing a t-shirt and jeans.” Which t-shirt had he been wearing this morning, she asked herself? Damn, how could she not remember what her own son had been wearing when he got dressed this morning? “Cora, what kind of shirt was your brother wearing?”

  Cora started blankly at her mother, then snapped, “OP.”

  That’s right! It was a Caribbean blue Ocean Pacific t-shirt, the one with the silhouetted surfer on the back.

  “Ma’am?”

  “I’m sorry,” Lara asked, turning back to the Bot. “What did you say?”

  “Which auditorium were you in?”

  “Thirteen. Lucky number thirteen,” she tittered with nervous energy, then regaining her composure she started up the corridor again, “but we think he might be in another theater. C’mon, Cora.”

  Cora stopped at the door to theater number seventeen and waited with wide-eyes for her mother. Lara pulled the door open and dashed inside.

  She staggered down the sharp incline into the darkened auditorium, letting her eyes slowly adjust. The seats appeared to be empty. No, there was someone. One person.

  Lara rushed up the aisle, a low growl starting in her throat, her mind formulating what form of punishment she would bring down on him after this unpardonable offense, when the single dark silhouette of a person split into two teenagers, horny, breathless teenagers, staring with wide, startled eyes.

  The blue and purple haired girl shrieked and threw herself into the next seat, while the boy with the Flock-of-Seagulls-special thrust his hands out before him in a defensive posture. Lara couldn’t help but think that he had been through this scenario before.

  Looking past them and registering that no one else was in the auditorium, Lara turned away in frustration and started back up the aisle without an apology, Cora trotting to catch up. When she thrust the door open, she nearly collided with a Bot.

  “Ma’am, we may have identified your lost child,” the Bot announced in a disinterested monotone. “This child is still within the confines of the Mall.”

  “Thank God,” Lara barked. “Where?”

  “One of the central protocol Bots have located a child matching his description. He can be located at..,” the Bot began, his eyes flaring once more before winking completely out.

  The lights around them first dimmed then extinguished, casting Lara and Cora in complete darkness. In the walls and in the floor, the vibration caused by projection equipment ceased, along with an unidentifiable hum of air-conditioning that had so thoroughly penetrated the building that only the lack of it was conspicuous.

  Beside her, Lara could hear her daughter’s sudden intake of breath.

  “It’s okay, hon,” Lara tried to comfort. “Just a power outage. Give it a few moments and the emergency lights should kick on.” Lara reached down, found her daughter’s warm little hand clutching her pants leg, and held it tightly.

  Suddenly, Cora screamed in pain and released her hand.

  “What is it?”

  “My eyes,” she whined. “It burns.”

  Lara reached out and found Cora’s shoulders, then her head. She felt cool to the touch. No fever. “Like before?”

  “Yes. Just louder.”

  “Louder? What do you mean, Cora? What do you hear?”

  “All of them. They’re all a-scared of the dark. All the grown-ups are acting like kids.”

  What was she talking about? Was she hearing things? Cora had always had an active imagination. She had been much easier to entertain than Owen at her age. All she needed was a doll, a room and time and she’d create some amazingly intricate scenario out of nothing. But what was this new fantasy about? Should she take it seriously?

  Cora shivered and clutched her mother tightly. “Mommy, I want to go home.”

  I do too, Sweetie, Lara thought, holding her protectively in her arms.

  “Just what makes that little old ant,” Lara began to sing, “think he can move that rubber tree plant? Everyone knows an ant—“

  “C-Can’t,” Cora joined her, “move a rubber tree plant.”

  “Cause he’s got…”

  The emergency lights flickered on in the lobby, fifty yards or so down the corridor. “Ah, there we go, Coraline. See, nothing to fear!”

  The door beside them
burst open and the two teenagers collided with a frozen theater Bot standing just behind them. Cora screamed as the boy clawed at the face of the motionless Bot as if fighting for his very life. The teen girl had already fled up the aisle ahead of him and the teen boy leapt off the chest of the fallen Bot and followed her, screaming her name in a high pitched voice: “Leslieee! Don’t leave meee!”

  Lara glanced at Cora, who had started to shiver uncontrollably. “Hey now, what’s all this about?”

  “Mommy, I’m scared,” Cora murmured through quivering lips, staring down at the frozen metal man at their feet. “What happened to the Bot?”

  Lara tugged her arm forward away from the fallen body and started toward the light in the lobby. “Well, y’know, they run on electricity too and when the power went out, they went out too, I’ll bet.”

  “But don’t they run on batteries?”

  In the lobby, the bright arc light poured from a single ceiling fixture just behind the chandelier. Long stark shadows cut through the lobby and tiny colored spots reflected by the crystal teardrops flittered across the walls.

  Other customers staggered forth from their darkened corridors like dreamers awakened too early from their sleep. They peered at each other and the two frozen theater Bots in confusion.

  Cora cast a look back into the darkness of the green hallway they’d just left and asked, “Do you think the Bots are gonna be okay?”

  “As soon as the lights come back on, I’m sure they’ll be as good as new.”

  A surly faced old man looked around at Lara with a look of incredulity and gave a bitter laugh through rotted teeth as he started for the exit.

  2

  When the power went out, cries of dismay and frustrated curses went up throughout the Di-Lithium mine arcade. All those world records lost to the ether.

  There was barely ten people left inside by then and Owen had been watching a particularly riveting game of Dragon’s Lair. The player, a twenty-year old college student from Rice, who had advised Owen during a third level animated exposition scene to “never, ever listen to anyone over thirty, little dude,” had advanced so far he had almost gotten to the final level.

  Around that time Owen sensed motion out of the corner of his eye and looked up. A Mall Bot with the distinctive yellow stripes of the east sector had just entered in a rush. He was scanning from left to right as he stepped deeper into the arcade, stopping suddenly when he spotted Owen.

  The ten-year-old stiffened as its sensors locked on him and glowed bright blue.

  Feeling a burst of rage, he knew somehow that his mother was staring out at him through the eyes of that machine. She found me, Owen thought in frustrated anger.

  That was when the Di-Lithium Mine went as black as the inspiration for its name.

  “No!” the player bellowed, his screen winking out. “No way in hell!”

  Owen backed a few steps away in the darkness and felt his heels strike something solid. He slowly panned from right to left and tried to glimpse some evidence of light, but there was nothing. If people started trying to reach the exit in the dark all at once, this might be bad.

  “Lights,” someone started to chant and before long everyone had picked it up and began to repeat in like a mantra. “Lights-Lights-Lights.”

  “Shut your nerd holes,” a rugged adult voice yelled above the din. “There’s nothing I can do until the emergency lights kick on!”

  “I’m suing this place for the ten dollars in credits I just invested in this game,” someone shrieked in frustration. “And two million for my pain and suffering!”

  Since Owen had arrived, he’d spent the intervening time watching others play and periodically finding quarters on the floor dropped in a white hot moment of panic before the timer ran out on them and they were forced to start completely over from level one. (Though most of the newer machines now took only cards, some of the classic games still took hard currency.)

  He’d played Stargate and Joust and had even found a free credit on Frogger. Once he’d even taken over an on-going game of Gauntlet that a couple of skateboard kids had left behind, but he hadn’t lasted very long on the advanced level they had left him.

  Owen had intended to be back at the theater before the movie let out. What time had it been the last time he checked his watch, he wondered. He was never going to hear the end of it. Not that it mattered. Lately, she came down on him for breathing.

  He hoped she was panicking now. It would serve her right after the way she treated him.

  “Hey, kid,” the college student’s voice floated to him out of the darkness.

  “Yeah?”

  Owen felt a hand reach out and tentatively touch him, grab a handful of his shirt, then step past him to the wall. He heard him loudly patting the wall with the flat of his hand. “Got it,” the other murmured. “The exit’s got to be this direction. C’mon.”

  “Hold on and follow me,” he told Owen. “We’re getting out of here.”

  After several awkward minutes of bumping and excusing themselves around game consoles and video game zombies, Owen and his guide eventually made it out of the Mine. As they spilled out into the yellow sector hallway along with a few others, they saw the silent dimly lit artificial city stretched out before them.

  The first thing Owen noticed was the hush that had settled over everything. The almost constant ambient chatter produced by the scrolling electronic banners strategically posted for maximum exposure across the Mall had ceased, their screens black. The audaciously lit signs over each store had gone dark and muted. He could actually hear the echo of human voices calling out in the distance. One female in particular called out over and over for a “Graham,” with the plaintive urgency of a mother cat.

  The overall effect--like stumbling into the empty street of a normally busy section of a big city—was wholly unnatural. An unconscious shudder rolled through Owen.

  A single yellow sector Bot led a small group west past the arcade. He watched as the party split into two as they diverted around another Bot lying on its face in the center of the corridor. Looking in the opposite direction, Owen could see another Bot in the distance, a single arm raised in mid-gesture like a monument to a forgotten historical figure. Its eyes were as blank as the banner screen above him.

  “But this is not where I’m parked,” one member of the group of customers barked at the Bot leading him.

  “For your own safety, please proceed to the nearest exit, sir.”

  “The chattel leading the sheep,” the man grunted and separated from the group.

  Owen sidled up closer to the college student. “What do you think happened?”

  The college student looked up from the dead cellular phone in his hand, glanced one way, then the other and chortled. “Wouldn’t surprise me if we were at war with the Ruskies,” he replied with a glance back at Owen. “They’re behind all of America’s problems, y’know.”

  “I thought they were our friends now.”

  “What, just because President Connally says they are?” the other snorted. “Don’t believe anything you hear from them. They’re paid to keep secrets from us.” He started off to the right. “I’m parked over on this end, so… Good luck!”

  “Wait!” Owen exclaimed rushing to catch up then falling into stride with him. “My name’s Owen.” He thrust out his hand and the other stared down at it with amusement.

  “Say, little guy, what’s your situation? I mean what are you doing out here by yourself after midnight?”

  Owen looked him straight in the eye. “I’m homeless.”

  The other studied him. “How does a kid your age end up being homeless?”

  “My father’s dead and my mother don’t care about me. What’s your name?”

  “Victor,” he said, pausing at a pay phone terminal where an overly made-up woman in her forties clutched her purse tightly to her chest and tried to dial out. “Phones working?” he asked her in a casual tone of voice.

  Her wide eyes flitte
red to him anxiously, tugged her purse closer, then looked away. She hung up the phone then skittered up the corridor. Victor shrugged and checked the phone himself. With a shake of the head, he let the receiver dangle from its cord. “This is so bizarre!”

  Another group of customers marched past down the opposite side of the corridor led by a red sector Bot and a uniformed security guard. The guard spotted Victor and stopped. “You there! Head for the front exit!”

  Victor gave a bright smile and a wave, murmuring out of the side of his mouth. “Rented pork.”

  Owen backed toward the shadows as the guard started over.

  “Did you not hear me, son?” the tall beard man asked.

  “My car’s parked in lot C2.”

  “We’ve been directed to evacuate everyone from the building.”

  “I am evacuating, sir,” Victor sniffed contemptuously at the other. “Why does it matter which way I leave?”

  “Because of safety issues.”

  “What safety issues?”

  “The kind that could get you good and dead! That kind of issue,” the guard said, pointing at the tail end of the large group and glaring at Victor with hard eyes. “I would appreciate it if you could just follow the rest of the group.”

  Victor took a deep breath and started toward the group. When the guard started to turn away, Victor glanced back at Owen. Turning back one last time, the guard spotted Owen just as he bolted in the opposite direction.

  “Hey!” the guard bellowed.

  “Go, little dude,” Victor screamed at the top of his lungs. “Fight the power!”

  Owen raced back down the corridor in the direction of the shuttle he’d taken from blue sector. He considered the possibility that he might have made a mistake traveling so far from the theater.

  Briefly, he thought about the second group of customers that he’d seen. The Bot that had led them had been from red sector. What was a red sector Bot doing leading evacuees into the yellow sector when there were plenty of closer exits on that side? Perhaps there really was a “safety issue” as the guard had said.

  Whatever the problem, he couldn’t evacuate yet, could he? Not without his mom and Cora.