Playlist for the Apocalypse

Chapter 6: House of the Rising Sun

"What are we doing?" He choked out once he'd swallowed.

"Shopping," Evelyn said suppressing a smile beneath her mask. Evelyn scrouged through the shelves of the pharmacy, adding anything of possible use to the small pile of supplies on Jonathan's lap. "I'm almost done here actually. To be honest, there's not much selection,"

"I wonder why?" Jonathan quipped, "Oh yeah, restocking a Walmart shelf might be a low priority right now."

Evelyn sighed. "We are going to need bandages though. I can't find any except those,"

Jonathan glanced down and picked up the small box of Hello Kitty themed Band-Aids in his lap. "Yeah, somehow I don't think this is going to cut it." There was a lilt in his voice and Evelyn looked down to realize he was smirking.

"Careful," she warned, "the soulless."

"We're fine," Jonathan promised, "we're in my neck of the woods," He glanced down at his wristwatch. "Most of them are probably in the taxi line by now."

"Where?" Evelyn asked, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

"Hang on, I'll show you. Can you... um... drive me out of here?"

Jonathan directed her out of the store and towards the glass balcony that overlooked the mall's center atrium, "didn't you wonder why you're standing in one of the largest malls in BC and you've barely seen any of the soulless?"

Evelyn leaned over the railing to get a better look and gasped. Standing in the atrium were about fifty people... no fifty corpses standing in a long zigzagging line of stanchions that stretched around the atrium leading nowhere. At the front of the line stood a security guard who unzipped the retractable belt every few minutes to let a member of the crowd through.

Evelyn watched a soulless shopper wander off the escalator and join the slow-moving line. "What is this? Crowd control?"

"I got the idea from when I used to work at the cruise ship terminal during my summers in high school. No matter what you did to try to direct passengers to the exit door, all anyone ever wanted to do was get in the taxi line even if they didn't need a taxi. They just saw a line and got in it, no questions asked. It's like people are just hard wired to stand in a queue, even if they don't know what it's for." Jonathan looked up at her, his eyes gleaming, "then I found Leonard, he used to work at the Nike store, damn that place always had long lines. The guy's employee of the year, maybe employee of the century. He's here at 9am every day and works a 12-hour shift."

"So, you just set all this up and got him down here," Evelyn's eyes widened.

"Yep," Jonathan said, Evelyn swore there was a hint of pride in his voice, "honestly, they just needed something to do. They won't attack if they have something to do. They'll spend hours in line and sometimes even circle back a few times. The first one was hard to convince but the rest just followed, kind of like herding sheep maybe. Once it became part of their routine, they just followed the same loop. If the records in the staff room are to be believed, I think old Leonard here has been working this stanchion for like 40 or 50 years. I've learned that the more ingrained a habit is, the harder it is for them to break out of it."

Evelyn watched Leonard zip the retractable belt back into place and return to his position as a gatekeeper to nowhere as his line of zombified shoppers waited patiently for their turn to be let through. There was a tight feeling in her chest as she watched the pointless gestures and limp attempt at purpose. It looked sad. It looked lonely. Even though they had almost been killed by these monsters, she sort of felt bad for them.

"What if Leonard stops?"

"It's happened a few times," Jonathan admitted, "sometimes he goes to the food court for a while, but so far, he always comes back. He's a reliable one."