Pteranodon Mall

by Ian Woodhead

  Janine stopped beside a plain white door. She tapped the security combination lock on the side. “I have a friend who works in the department store. Thankfully, this is one of the days when she doesn’t work.” The woman tapped in a six-digit code, turned the metal handle to the side, and then pulled open the door. “Come on, we’ll be safe in here. I’m not really supposed to know the code, but I don’t really think that matters anymore.”

  Jefferson waited until everybody else was inside before he let the door close. It wasn’t much different from his shop’s staff area, just better equipped. For a start, they had their own vending machine and a canteen. Gloria would have loved it in here. Bloody hell! He hadn’t given that woman a moment’s thought until now. “David, any idea what happened to Gloria?”

  His friend shook his head. David helped himself to a bowl of biscuits left on one of the tables. “Not a clue. To be honest, I was kinda surprised that she wasn’t still behind her till when we nicked that set of tools earlier.” He pushed one of the biscuits in his mouth. “Knowing her, she probably hasn’t even noticed the bleeding dinosaurs.”

  A bit of a cruel assessment of their co-worker, but he had a point. Nothing ever phased Gloria. It seemed like an age since they had all sat around that table, listening to David bang on about him taking down that shoplifter. In truth, it had been Gloria who had collared him first and pushed the guy towards the exit. David’s only contribution had been to panic when Gloria told him to keep an eye on the guy while she went on her break.

  Janine gave him a kiss before she left them in the canteen while she scouted out the route. She pointed to the sword when he asked her if she wanted him to go with her. Jefferson watched her leave before he too snatched a biscuit. He wanted to laugh when he saw the clock mounted on the wall above the microwave. According to that, their shop would be closing in about five minutes. He looked at the biscuit before dropping in back in the dish. Like there was anything remotely funny about their situation. He kept saying to himself that everything was going to be all right once they left the mall, if they left the mall, that is. Yet, according to that clock, he’d been in here for over four hours, witnessing all this senseless death, running from animals that should be fucking extinct, and now they were hiding from huge rhino-sized bastard lizards!

  He turned around and placed his forehead against the cold wall. To top it all, to make this situation even worse than it already was, Jefferson firmly believed that there wasn’t going to be any help from beyond the mall. He slowly spun around and watched the others. David was still eating those bloody biscuits. Sandy had sat down next to David and was running her fingers up and down the bandage, while Alan sat on a wooden chair in the far corner of the room. He looked to be sleeping.

  After four hours, this place should be overrun with police and ambulances. He then remembered the pissing dinosaurs. And David’s star bollocks marines. No, scrap the coppers. The army should be in here by now. They weren’t, so something else must have happened somewhere else. It was bloody obvious. All this must be happening in the other large buildings across the city, or even across the country. They could be in the middle of a full-scale invasion.

  Jefferson closed his eyes and silently counted to ten. It shouldn’t come as any surprise to find himself going through the stages of shock about now, and why not? According to Janine, only the department store’s employees could come in here, meaning this place was safe. He didn’t even think the rhino soldiers would bother trying to get through that door either. An ideal place for him to have his little breakdown.

  There was some kind of commotion going on in the background. As he could only hear Sandy’s voice, he put it down to David acting up again. What else could it be? After all, they were all safe now. Jefferson slid down to the floor and put his hands over his ears to block out the noise. His legs had started to shake. It wouldn’t be long for the rest of his body to follow suit. Jefferson wished Gloria was here right now. She’d tell him a couple of silly jokes, make him drink some warm tea, and generally take the mickey out of David.

  Gloria wasn’t here, though. His Janine was around somewhere. His Janine. Those words sounded like they were made for each other. Perhaps something good had come out of this clusterfuck after all.

  Even through the improvised ear protection, her voice still penetrated his brain. What happened to keeping quiet until Janine came back? It then dawned on him that it was Janine’s voice he could hear.

  He snapped open his eyes. Both women stood in front of David. He was still stuffing those biscuits down his throat. Their formless words made no sense, but their gestures were all too familiar. Both women were terrified. Sandy pointed to the corner while Janine looked over towards where Janine said they’d be able to escape to.

  Her eyes then found his, and Jefferson’s fly on the wall situation abruptly vanished when she ran over to him and pulled him onto his feet.

  “We have a problem,” she said, dragging Jefferson over to the door. Both David and Sandy were over by Alan now. She was shaking Alan’s knee while his other friend stood at a safe distance wringing his hands. None of them seemed all that bothered about Janine’s anguished state.

  She opened the door and pulled him through.

  “What’s wrong with Alan?”

  “I’m not so sure,” she replied. “Sandy said he hadn’t been great ever since their escape.” She then spun around and grabbed his shoulders. “Jefferson, we really are in big trouble here.”

  The woman moved to the side.

  “Take a look. Just don’t let them see you.”

  He peered through the small square window cut into the door. Jefferson whirled around, so wishing what Janine had just told him wasn’t true. He walked over to the wall and gazed at a poster displaying three smiling women, each one wearing a Martin’s Department Store uniform, each one proudly holding a customer service medal.

  Those poor bits of people he’d just glimpsed on the other side of that door wore the same uniforms. Their killers were still in there, picking off bits of meat from exposed bone. Jefferson wanted to close his eyes but daren’t, as that image of all those teeth, claws, and bright feathers feasting on those people had been burnt into his retina.

  “I didn’t want to see that,” he gasped, feeling his guts performing a slow roll.

  Jefferson’s head then smacked into the wall when Janine slapped her hand hard across his cheek. Before he could even catch his breath, the woman followed her sudden bout of unprovoked violence by wrapping her arms around his waist and kissing him deeply.

  “I love you, Jefferson,” she said, after she’d pulled away. “And that is something that I never thought I’d say again.” Janine sighed. “I shouldn’t have left you in there alone. You thought you were safe in there, that the monsters wouldn’t be able to get you. Your adrenalin level began to normalise.”

  “I’m sorry, but I really have no idea what you are talking about,” he said, rubbing his cheek. Jefferson placed both his hands on her neck. “I won’t complain if you kiss me again, though.”

  “When all this is over, honey, we’ll do much more than just kiss. Right now, I need you to be alert, to have that fear of impending death right there.” Janine tapped his forehead. “You were going into shock. You’d found your safe place and were about to crawl into it.”

  “What are we going to do about getting out of here?” Jefferson knew he had three bolts left and figured the single sword they had left might take out another two. Would that be enough to make them panic and run off? He thought of the little dinos back in the eatery. There were loads of those things but the ones in there were three times the size.

  “We have three choices. We stay in here and wait for the dinosaurs to leave. We try to fight them, or we wait for those huge armoured living trucks to leave.” She stroked the back of his hands. “Your shaking has stopped. That’s good. Are you ready for round two?”

  “I guess. How did you know? And why didn’t the others…?”

/>   “Why didn’t the others notice?” she finished off. “We’re the civilians of modern Western consumerism, that’s why. We are not supposed to be thrust into situations of not knowing whether our next moment will be our last one.” She smiled and kissed him again. “That speech came straight from the bible of my late husband. He loved that particular statement. He had plenty more just like it. I tell you, Trevor would have adored being in here with all this lot. Well, he would as long as he had his trusty assault rifle with unlimited ammunition.” She took his hand. “Come on, we’d better go join the others. I don’t want them to think that we have run out and left them here.”

  He nodded, realising that she’d just said that she loved him. Apart from just finding out she was once married and she had a couple of kids, he knew next to nothing about her. As they approached the door, he imagined him and Janine sitting in one of the restaurants in the mall after all this was over. Holding hands and grinning at each other, not having to speak, just thankful they were still alive. Jefferson hoped Alan wouldn’t be too pissed if he asked David to be his best man at their wedding.

  “Is it safe?”

  Jefferson shook his head. “We don’t stand a chance of getting out that way, David. The next room is clogged with meat-eaters.”

  “What kind are they?”

  His hackles went straight up, but after a couple of seconds, it became clear that David’s question had just been instinctive. His mind was elsewhere. It scared Jefferson a lot to see David actually looking anxious. He saw why.

  Alan had not moved from his spot. He looked so close to death. Jefferson ran over to the lad and skidded to a halt when he saw how much he had deteriorated in only a couple of minutes. What the hell was this? The poor lad’s flesh looked like it was getting ready to melt off his bones. He gazed into Sandy’s tear-streaked face. She gently held Alan’s hand.

  “I remember one of them lifting up my arm,” whispered Alan. He ran his tongue over his lips, before bursting into a fit of coughing. “God, that hurts.” He lifted his head. “I fucked up, Jeff. Sorry for spoiling your day.”

  “What is it? What’s wrong with him?”

  Jefferson pulled David back over to the table. “I don’t know, man.”

  “Jeff. Will you tell Chris that I love him?”

  “Bollocks, mate. You can tell him that yourself.”

  “I think they did something to both of us,” said Sandy. “Oh God, yeah, I remember now!” her breath came out in shuddering jerks. “They held this silver tube over my stomach. I screamed as this dirty green light came out of the end. I thought they were going to burn me, but it felt cold. So cold.” Sandy looked over at David and Jefferson. “Guys, it might be a better idea if you leave us here. If we’re infected, there’s no telling what we have.”

  Jefferson shook his head. “No way. Not a chance. I’m not leaving the pair of you.” Janine crouched beside Alan.

  “There’s a doctor’s surgery a short walk from the shopping centre. As soon as we’re clear, I’ll run across and bring someone over. We just need you to hang on for a bit longer.” She nodded over at the other door. “Jefferson, why don’t you see if those living trucks have gone?”

  “I’ll do it,” cried David, running over to the door.

  “Jefferson, grab him!” cried Sandy. “He’s going to run out on us.”

  He raced after his mate, knowing that Sandy wasn’t wrong. He heard that tone as well. The bloody fool was going to get himself and the rest of them killed. Jefferson pushed through the door and saw him streaking along the wall, heading for the far end of the store. He wasn’t the only one who’d noticed him either. Every single one of the fearsome grotesque soldiers had spotted David, and they moved in the intercept. Jefferson gasped when he saw their speed.

  David was fast, but he certainly wasn’t as fast as those armour-plated monsters. He must have seen that he wouldn’t stand a chance of dodging past them and had spun around, now running straight for Jefferson. Oh fuck, David was leading those bastards straight for him! He turned and ran back to the door, knowing that they had no choice now but to chance those carnivorous dinosaurs.

  Jefferson stopped dead when the door opened before he could reach it and the others all stepped out into the store. Both girls were carrying Alan between them. “What are you doing?” he shrieked. “Those things are right behind us!”

  “Grab that idiot!” said Janine. “Come on, do it, there’s not much time left.”

  He saw those huge things thundering towards them, their strange-looking guns already trained on their heads. David tried to run past Jefferson. He kicked out his feet, knocking the lad onto the floor. Sandy reached down and wrapped her fingers around his ankle.

  “Your turn,” Jefferson. “Take my hand.”

  The soldiers slowed and stopped. They formed a semi-circle around the humans; their weapons still trained on Jefferson’s body. His fingers managed to find the hand of the woman he loved, while he forced himself from curling up in hysterical laughter. Like any of those things needed a weapon to obliterate any of his group! They were larger than black bears, with teeth to make a crocodile weep. Thick iridescent-studded armour covered most of their feathered bodies, leaving only their heads and ankles showing. Jefferson had seen what remained of that plant-eating dinosaur, and from the amount of blood staining their huge paws, he knew that they must have literally torn it apart.

  Jefferson tightened his grip on Janine’s hand. He closed his eyes and waited for these monsters to do the same to him and his friends.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mo and Mrs. Killmore had dragged him down the first flight of stairs. Desmond’s first attempt to escape had been thwarted by Mo by slamming his knee between Desmond’s legs when he tried to sink his teeth into the woman’s arm.

  Between the tears, sobbing, and the throbbing pain in his balls, he watched how the others not holding this poor janitor cleared a path through a pack of scavenging dinosaurs at the bottom of the stairwell by spraying them with a combination of air freshener, furniture polish, and deodorant. The little brown dinosaurs stayed in the shadows, hissing and growling while the group tentatively stepped over the pieces of chewed-up plant-eating dinosaur. Desmond thought it now smelled like a summer meadow crossed with a teen’s bedroom before they go out on the pull.

  Those dinosaurs waited until they were a good few paces away from their prize before they emerged from under the stairs. It wasn’t fair. Why hadn’t they attacked them? He counted eleven of them. That was enough to take out both Mo and the horrible lesbian. Desmond wasn’t all that bothered about the others. He’d be able to sort out those losers. What were they going to do, spray him to death?

  The pair of them had taken an arm each and were dragging his body along the concourse. Neither Mo nor Mrs. Killmore had said a word since they had caught him. They hadn’t even explained why the sudden change of plan, why they were on the ground floor instead of the level above. Desmond looked up at the balconies about twenty feet up and decided not to pursue that line of questioning any further, in case they did change their mind.

  Once the worst of the pain had turned into a dull throbbing, Desmond had tried everything to get them to let him go. Everything from how they were turning themselves into a target to continuous screaming, with the hope of attracting those soldiers. He’d only stopped doing that when Mo savagely twisted his arm behind him back. Desmond had screamed then but for a different reason. The only tactic that he hadn’t tried was to threaten them with Desmond’s new pal. Something told him though, that if this poor janitor did go down that road, they’d likely stop dragging him to wherever and just kick him to death right here and now, next to this kiddie ride. He did not want to die laying next to a bright pink plastic bus. This level now looked like an abattoir. Desmond dreaded to think of how many people must have died down here. This was worse than the level above them. His two captors dragged Desmond past dozens of mutilated bodies, both dinosaur and human. He wasn’t the only one to
be affected by all this devastation either.

  One of the others in the group, a dark-haired man who was carrying his can of air freshener like it was a rocket launcher, skidded to a halt in front on a couple of dead kids. He muttered something about all this being such a senseless waste of lives, while he wiped the tears away from his eyes.

  The corpses were slumped in front of the shoe shop, their heads lying on their chests. He knew why this sentimental idiot was blubbering like a big baby. Judging from the tightly clasped hands, these two were lovers. Desmond imagined that the lad would have been putting up with the annoying cow going into every stupid girly shop and sighing over all the brightly coloured crap just so he’d be able to get a jump later on. It sounded harsh, but it was true. Desmond had seen the behaviour dozens of times while cleaning up the shopping centre. The predators had eaten their way up their legs, stopping once they reached their thighs. He guessed the dinosaurs which did this had spied another meal. It was a shitty way to die, but at least they died together.

  All the others were now bowing their heads. Two of his captors were even saying a prayer. He knew for a fact that none of them would be saying a prayer over his body. Not that they were going to get a chance of doing the deed. He’d think of something to stop them.

  Desmond turned his head and coughed. They all looked up and glared at him. That was fine, let them glare, he’d fix all their wagons. Right now though, he needed to be calm and clever. He stared back at the middle-aged man, trying to look sincere. “You can stop this! You can stop any more senseless waste from happening. Just tell them to let me go.”

  “Bollocks! This is all your fault in the first place,” he snarled. “These poor people died because you cosied up to the enemy.” He marched over to Desmond and lowered his face until he was just a hair’s breath away from the man’s nose. “You’re a collaborator, a fifth columnist. Hell, you’re not even that. All you are is some dirty scumbag who’d do anything to save his own worthless hide, even if it means watching the rest of his species die.”