"Be right there," I said back and finished tying up the stubborn laces.
I came back out of the darkness to join the others and help pack up supplies and fill up water bottles with lukewarm, dirty water. I crouched down Minho as he shoved a rag inside a bottle to clean out the layer of grossness. He let out a groan as he pulled the rag out, and I groaned along with him when I saw it was covered in barf. Bloody barf.
"Gross," he chuckled and threw the rag at the pile of more junk on the other side of the room. "What do you think this place is?" he asked, turning to me as he filled the bottle up from a tank behind him. I looked around us, and thought for a moment, pretending to contemplate on the structural design.
"If my calculations are correct, which they usually are," I said, smiling. "I say, it's a mall."
The boy looked around and nodded in agreement, then shoved the bottle into an already bursting and bulky bag.
"I think it's a community center or something," he said looking up as Frypan grunted hard. He was trying to put five water bottles in one bag.
I laughed at Frypan. "Same difference."
"Nah," he laughed and gave me a bag to fill. I started shoving extra pairs of every article of clothing I could and soon realized the bag was smaller than it seemed. I topped it off with a water bottle, and my lucky dagger. When I finally decided to sit down, instead of hunching beside Minho, I found a tin of mints under the pile of sleeping bags, and the mints were probably the only thing in this 'mall' that didn't smell or look like rot. I shared some with Minho then hid them away in the secret pocket of my jacket for safe keeping.
In the middle of our vibrant conversation we were interrupted by Thomas.
"Hey, Minho, Maya," he said, kicking Minho's side with a smirk. "Let's go explore. I need someone to watch my back."
"More like you'll watch mine," Minho laughed and grabbed the boys hand and yanked himself off the dusty sleeping bags. Minho patted my shoulder and held out his hand. I looked at it for a second, but snapped into action and grabbed it, and snatched my bag, running out, but not before giving Newt a heads up.
I walked off with the boys into the eerie, trashy, dark and dusty halls and stairways of the mall. The beams of light from our flashlights flickered around the room, making shadows that made my heart jump. I tripped a couple times, since I was occupied with not getting any jump scares.
We explored the endless hallways until we reached a large expanse of makeshift tents, junk, and furniture. Everything smelled like mold and was covered with at least one layer of dust. I opened my mouth to say something to break the unbearable silence that filled the insanely creepy area, but Minho beat me to it.
"What are we looking for exactly?" he asked. His question was one of those questions that make you feel silly that you didn't notice it yourself, and I was feeling silly.
"Uh, I don't know, signs of life? People, survivors. Anyone who could help us, I guess," Thomas said, and I saw his shape stumble out of the corner of my eye and I flicked my flashlight over to him, then to the ground to see what he had stumbled on. Instead of a rock or a pile of clothes, like what I tripped on, there was a thick row of many colored cords, that seemed to, when I tried to trace it, run all the way through the mall. I saw far up ahead on its trail, many of the cords branch out, snake up the walls, and either end in the darkness or end attached to an appliance. I looked at the boys, but let my suspicions go when I realized they weren't paying attention to it.
Minho was ahead of us, and I saw him jump back again, and when I shined my light on him, and his eyes were as wide as plates."Does he count?" he said and pointed at a lump on a sofa. I thought it was a pile of clothes, but when me and Thomas stood beside Minho, our lights revealed something more terrifying than a pile of disgusting, dirty laundry. A man was sitting on the sofa. A dead man. His body was layered with coat after coat after coat, which I assumed was to hide the mangled and deformities of his body, but was doing a poor job of it. I could still see the gore through the cloth, and through the plastic bag that was tied tightly around the man's face. The face was brown skinned, but not because of nationality, but because of the huge scars, broken flesh that looked like it had been boiled, and skin that seemed to be rotted to the bone. The mouth was wide open, like the jaw was ready to fall off, and the tongue was gone, just a small stub rested at the back of its mouth. His eyes were more wide open than mine, and they were glazed over, with dust and blood was crusted at the corners.
"Holy cow," I muttered, covering my mouth and silently gagged. The smell was almost as horrible as the appearance of the man. I couldn't even determine the gender, the plastic bag and rot prevented it.
"Hey, guys, look," Minho tapped my shoulder and I followed his eyes to the ground at the cords I had noticed, and that he was just noticing now. But, I found something new I didn't notice earlier. A cord was leading up to a small lamp that was sitting on a rusty side table next to the sofa and the lump of moldy human. The switch was set to on.
Minho reached out and flicked the switch a couple times, I assumed only for the fun of it, since I would've done it to, to relieve the tension. "They had power," Minho smiled, and I rolled my eyes.
"Yeah, I connected those dots quite a while ago," I scoffed, judgmentally.
Thomas elbowed me and chuckled. "Why are you so judgmental?"
"Because you guys are so easy to judge!" I laughed, as silently as I could and raised my hands in the air exasperatedly. Minho and Thomas shook their heads and I smiled at the smiles on their faces. I could tell they hadn't smiled in a long time. Neither had I.
Minho kept his flashlight and his eyes on the trail of cords, while me and Thomas kept looking out as we traveled along, following the cords, so we would hopefully find a generator or something. And we did, in the creepiest part of the mall.
Deep in the underground parking, we slowed to a stop as Thomas got distracted by a chain fence. The place was still dark, but from his flashlight I could see dolls and stuffed animals, intertwined in the fences wires, each one bearing a torched smile, that almost made me feel relieved that they weren't living, since most of them seemed to be in a lethal position, or their fabric was cut, torn, or crusted and stained with a deep, dark splotch, which I could only assume was blood. So much blood. My attention strayed from the desperate dolls, to the space that the fence blocked us off from, and I peered in. From the small light I could see more piles of blankets and sleeping bags, and in the middle was a small mass of what seemed to be the colors of red, white and a mess and tangle of blonde hair. A human was sleeping in the mass. I looked at Thomas and raised an eyebrow, and he raised one back. This human could either be alive, dead, or alive but infected. We stayed silent, dread filling my gut, and peering in on the maybe-alive human, until Minho broke our concentration.
"Hey!" he cried out and we began to shush him as he bent down in front of a box which many switches. A generator. A generator we did not want on, because if this human was infected, it would wake up, maybe. "This looks promising," Minho muttered and switched it on, despite our quiet protests. A loud whirring began, as Minhos smile grew. Lights blinked on one by one, spreading through the mall. Minho laughed and looked at us, and his happy expression was replaced as the color drained from his face and his smile fell. "Watch out!" he yelled and grabbed our arms, pulling us away from the fence just as it shook with the impact of the alive, and very much infected human, or very much infected young girl.
She screeched loudly, her head switching violently from side to side, so quickly that I was afraid her neck would snap. Her eyes were black holes of blood, and so was her wide open mouth. It was like a more active version of the moldy man we saw on the couch.
"Her eyes!" Minho yelled, his eyes wide.
I was frozen in place with the boys, staring wide eyed at the ghastly creature, but we snapped back into action as the screeching grew louder. We had awoken more creatures than just the girl. Loud clangs began to echo along with the inhuman screams and growls, and a crowd of stumbling figures crashed through the junk behind us, and I felt my feet take off, and my hands grab my new friends, and we ran, faster than we'd ever ran before, our guts filled with terror.
We ran into a dead end, frantically searching for a way out, and Minho yelled us over to a door, which we busted open, and held it closed, as the tidal wave of disease crashed into the door, clawing at the windows. Thomas and I held the door closed as Minho dragged a giant cabinet over to us, and I knew what he was doing.
"Out of the way!" he shouted, and we backed off just as Minho shoved the cabinet over, and it landed in front of the door with a loud clang, keeping the monsters away temporarily, but as we zoomed away, I heard the door burst open behind us.
We tried to dodge the mounds of rubble and junk, swerving through the tents. "We need to find the rest!" I screamed, with the little breath I had for talking. The rest of the group might already be eaten by the monsters, but we had to find them anyway. We exchanged nods, and powered on, very much aware of the growing crowd of mangled humans behind us, crashing along like a tidal wave of disease. We tried our best to retrace our steps, and we thankfully crashed into the group. I almost passed them as we ran, but I grabbed Newts wrist and jerked him violently, and they all started running when I screamed, "Let's go!"
All together we raced through the mall, even though we had no idea where to go, and it seemed the screaming was getting louder.
The screams hurt my ears. Blood pulsed in my ears. My feet seemed to bleed in my shoes. I look back. Terror, horror, fear, fright, dread and panic was all I felt, nothing more.
We raced up an escalator, and the pressure of running up stairs slowed us down immensely. We gasped for breath, except for one short kid who was holding up the rear, began to shriek behind me. I whipped around, just to see his hands slip from his grasp on the side of the elevator, in a space where the glass paneling was gone. I looked over the side quickly, and saw three shapes, Jack, and perhaps two deadly creatures, tackling each other as they fell to the bottom, the bottom of where the light didn't reach.
I barely even knew Jack. I can cry about it later.
We ran, single file through a ramp, that was over a pit of sunken debris. Suddenly, behind me, I heard Newt cry out, and I whipped around to see a Crank lunging its body at him, as they both landed on the concrete with a thunk. Newt groaned as the Cranks opened its mouth, trying to get at him,
I kept running, so did the others, but we had to do it in single file, and the corridor was long and squishy. But, despite how long it was, we reached another door, which was significantly heavier than the door. But before it could do real damage I kicked its side with all the force I could muster and the Crank rolled off the boy and smashed into the glass sideboard and tumbled off, screeching louder than the growing crowd behind us.
"Let's go!" I yelled and yanked Newt to his feet, who was almost trembling, his face full of disgust and shock.
"Yeah, thanks," he muttered and we bolted off to join the others who had stopped running momentarily to let us catch up.
I spotted two huge metal doors in the midst of the makeshift tents, hopefully leading to a place we could hide. I ushered my friends on and reached the door, and we yanked open the doors, and they swung open easily, and we filed inside, but not fast enough. We raced through a long skinny hallway, which was soon being flooded with scrambling and terrifying creatures. I almost want to say, demons.
"Open it up!" Winston yelled. Our entire team tried to pull the doors open as Winston reached into his jacket and pulled out a fully loaded pistol, and began firing. Bodies went down, one by one, but it didn't make a penny a difference as the rotting devils came closer and closer. That's when our terror-dulled minds realized the door was locked.
"What now?!" The only other girl screamed anxiously, and I rolled my eyes at her foolishness. I snatched Winston's gun, fired it at the small glass windows, which shattered, passed the gun back to him, reached out the window, and found the handle. With a satisfying click, it opened, and I pulled my arm back in and pushed the doors open, which didn't seem to want to stay open, which did not favor Winston.
We were all out, but Winston was still firing, desperately trying to make a difference, and didn't realize that we had the door open. We screamed at him to come, but his reaction time was too slow. He turned around, saw that we were out, began to move his feet to join us, but before he could take a step, two fleshy and bloody hands grabbed his feet. Winston's arms reached out to us as his body fell to the ground and was pulled deeper into the monsters. But Thomas reached in, took hold of Winston's hands, and began to pull him away. The poor kid began to scream the harder Tom pulled, and I realized why. In order to keep a firm grip on him, the monsters were digging their fingers into his skin. Winston's stomach was torn up, the gore leaking onto his clothing as Thomas pulled him out. I shut the doors behind them, locked it the best I could, and raced after my friends, who were already on the move on as we finally found a large exit where an entire wall had crumbled. We jumped from pile of debris to pile of dust, until the sound of screeching jolted our hearts, and we all hid, cuddled up together under a slab of broken concrete, Winston whimpering in the midst of it. I thought the night would never end, as one by one we each fell asleep, but the distant screeching kept me awake.