Another one of those strange cries echoed through the mall again, this time louder. The models were coming. The lights flickered again, this time going out for a couple of seconds before they came back on.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Lucky and I followed Zimmer, because I knew I couldn’t save him.
“I hope they get you next!” Lucky screamed after me. “I hope they get all of you next!”
I went out into the storm. The rain was coming down even harder now, which I hadn’t believed possible. The lights around the pit were just a dim glow I could barely make out. I couldn’t see the cargo van at all, until the headlights suddenly came on in the darkness. Zimmer was trying to escape. He was going to leave me like we had left Lucky and the others.
I struggled through the mud to get to him before he could drive away. I slipped and fell, got to my feet and then slipped and fell again. The rain battered me and made a sound like something hissing all around.
Zimmer wasn’t having any more luck. I was close enough to see the cargo van rocking back and forth, its wheels spinning in the mud. It wasn’t going anywhere. Which meant we weren’t going anywhere.
I stopped in front of the van and stood there lit up by the headlights. Zimmer stared out through the windshield at me and took his foot off the gas. The van sat there, idling, while we stared at each other.
“I have an idea!” I shouted at Zimmer. His expression didn’t change, so I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me or not.
I looked over my shoulder at the mall and saw the lights flicker and die once more. This time they didn’t come on again. But the lights around the pit stayed on. I knew they would draw the models as they looked for us. I was counting on it, in fact.
I went around to the passenger side of the van and tried the door. It was locked. Zimmer and I looked at each other some more through the window, and then he unlocked the door. I opened it but didn’t get in.
“Give me one of your cameras,” I said.
“But you’re not a photographer.” His eyes strayed to the floor between the seats and I saw the camera bag lying there. I grabbed it and started to pull it toward me. He reached down and pulled it back. For a few seconds we yanked it one way and then the other in a tug-of-war.
“You don’t know what those cameras are worth,” he said.
“Whatever it is, our lives are worth more,” I said. “Now give me the bag or I’ll kill the entire shoot and you’ll never get your fee.”
He finally let go and I pulled the bag to me and opened it. I took out one of the cameras inside and slung it around my neck as I went over to the pit. I worked my way around its edges until I found a couple of tool boxes and canvas bags on the ground. One of the bags held safety vests, the other a rolled-up tarp. I unrolled the tarp and dropped one end into the pit. I put the tool box on the other end to anchor it. I looked back in the direction of the mall but I still couldn’t see anything. All this might have been quicker with Zimmer to help me, but I knew he wasn’t going to get out of the van as long as the models were running free.
I went around to the ladder as fast as I could and climbed down into the pit. I splashed through puddles over to the loose end of the tarp and lifted it over the bones, pulling it back toward the ladder. I climbed out of the pit again with the tarp in my hand and pulled the ladder back up after me. I laid it over the end of the tarp so it was anchored on this side now, too. The tarp stretched across the pit like a walkway. Or a runway.
I ran back around to the opposite side, slipping in the mud and nearly falling into the pit. But I recovered my footing and put the camera on top of the tool box. I programmed it to take a photo with flash every two seconds. I returned to the van as the camera flashed behind me.
“You are destroying a good camera for what?” Zimmer asked, staring out into the storm as I climbed back inside the van and shut the door after me. I still didn’t lock it. I knew the door wouldn’t keep the models out if they saw us there. And if my plan worked, I was going to have to move fast.
“Just wait,” I said.
We didn’t have to wait long. We sat inside the van in silence for maybe two minutes, watching the empty landscape outside light up every few seconds from the camera’s flash. It was like some sort of Giger scene.
Then there was another flash and the models were there, a few feet in front of the van. They moved in a pack and thankfully they were turned away from us and toward the camera. Their naked bodies were slick with blood despite the rain, and there were chunks gouged out of each of them, on their necks, legs and torsos. I didn’t know if they’d done it to themselves or if one of the other men had managed to do some damage before the models had killed them. Because it was obvious the others were all dead. The models had things braided in their hair that I almost didn’t recognize: fingers, pieces of bloody bone, scraps of flesh.
I wanted to turn my face away so I didn’t have to look upon them, but I managed to keep watching, to make sure my trap worked.
The models moved to the edge of the pit, staring at the camera on the other side. If they went around the edge of the pit, we were lost. But I was gambling they’d be as drawn to the runway I had created as they had been to the camera. I was hoping the constant flashes of the camera would blind them enough that they wouldn’t look too closely at the runway and see it for what it really was.
My bet paid off, as the models suddenly threw themselves onto the runway at the camera. They were so quick they made it halfway across before the tarp collapsed beneath their weight, and they fell screaming into the pit.
“What have you done?” Zimmer whispered. I didn’t reply because I was already out of the van and heading over to the pit as quick as I could without falling down again. The end of the tarp that I had weighed down with the ladder had come free and fallen into the pit. But the other end was still stuck under the tool box. The models could pull themselves up out of the pit if they noticed.
I looked over the edge and saw them down there amid the bones. They reached up for me with hands that looked more like claws now and screamed their rage. The camera kept flashing.
They seemed to realize what I was doing at the last second. They lunged for the tarp as I reached the tool box. I kicked it into their faces, and they pulled the tarp down themselves. Now there was no way out.
That didn’t stop them from trying. Portland and Titania clawed at the side of the pit directly beneath me, trying to dig their hands in enough to get firm holds so they could climb up. Instead they just tore out handfuls of mud, and more of the pit’s walls showered down upon them. Winter tried to pull herself up one of those tall bones, maybe to throw herself off it in an attempt to reach me once she was high enough, but it snapped under her weight and she fell down to the earth. The camera that I’d put on top of the tool box lay at their feet now but continued to flash away. I saw one of the ties from the photo shoot lying nearby, the one of the bloody women tearing apart a body. I knew I’d never be able to wear a tie again if I got out of there alive.
I went over to the excavator that was parked nearby. Thankfully, the keys were still in the ignition. I started it up and then I stared at the controls for several seconds. I’d once driven a front-end loader around an obstacle course in Vegas, and the gearshift and other levers and buttons looked to be more or less in the same places. I raised the arm up and down and made scooping motions in the air for a couple of minutes, until I was comfortable with operating the excavator. Then I drove it back to the edge of the pit. I was relieved to see the models still inside, snarling and clawing at the air.
I looked around until I saw a mound of mud nearby that was higher than the surrounding earth. I figured that was the dirt that had filled the pit in the first place. I dropped the scoop into the mound and lifted up a great mass of mud. I swung the scoop around, over the pit, and dropped the wet earth down onto the models.
It knocked them to the ground and half-buried them amid the bones. They screamed at me some more as they struggled to free
themselves, but I was already swinging around for more dirt by the time they got back to their feet. I wasn’t sure if burying them alive would kill the models or not. But I figured it would at least stop them from killing us.
After I dropped the second load of earth on them and knocked them down again, Zimmer suddenly appeared out of the rain. He climbed up on the side of the excavator and banged on the window of the cab.
“Keep the scoop over the pit for a minute,” he yelled over the sounds of the excavator’s engine. “This is going to be the photo shoot of the year. Maybe even the decade.” Then he climbed up onto the arm of the excavator, straddling it, and pulled himself along its length, to the scoop that now hung empty over the pit.
The models saw him up there and leapt into the air and climbed the bones, trying to reach him. But Zimmer was too far away. He placed his feet on the scoop for support and leaned back against the excavator arm to steady himself. Then he pulled a camera out from inside his jacket, where he had been protecting it, and brought it to his eye. That was what had got him out of the van. He wanted the shot.
I was tempted to keep scooping the dirt down onto the models, to let Zimmer fall down into the pit and to hell with him. But I wasn’t that far gone yet.
The models beat me to it, anyway.
Winter suddenly pointed at Zimmer, and I saw the gun in her hand. Morrison’s gun. I don’t know where she’d been hiding it, but she was aiming it at Zimmer now.
He saw it, too. He turned and screamed something I couldn’t hear. I started to bring the scoop back, but too late.
Winter fired the gun and Zimmer jerked and slumped down on the scoop. For a moment, I thought he was going to fall in, but he managed to hang on. He even brought the camera back to his face for another shot.
And Titania leapt up from one of the highest bones, holding the tie with the Amazon pattern in her hands. She snapped it up and caught the long lens of Zimmer’s camera with it. She pulled herself up the tie in an instant.
Maybe Zimmer could have saved himself if he had dropped the camera. But he hesitated. I saw it on his face: he was thinking about the photos he’d taken. If he dropped the camera into the pit, they would be lost. But if he didn’t drop it, he would be lost.
He finally let go of the camera, but it was too late. Titania was high enough now that she was able to catch onto his leg as she fell back down with the camera. She bit into his thigh through his pants, and Zimmer screamed and looked back at me.
There was nothing I could do. If I swung him back toward the edges of the pit, I would be bringing Titania closer to freedom. All I could do was move the scoop up and down, trying to shake them loose.
Then the other two models leapt off their own bones and caught onto Titania’s legs. They clawed their way up her, until they reached Zimmer. And then I looked away as the screaming really started.
I didn’t bother trying to run because I knew there was nowhere to run. I couldn’t get away from the models. I sat there in the cab of the excavator and closed my eyes and waited for them to come for me.
“God!” Zimmer cried out. “God!”
The screaming stopped after a time and then there was silence except for the sounds of the rain hitting the excavator’s roof. This went on for a minute or so before I opened my eyes again.
The models were pressed up against the windows of the cab, watching me. Titania was on the windshield, Winter on the left window and Portland on the right. They each wore different pieces of Zimmer’s clothing. Titania wore his shredded shirt, and Winter his jacket. Portland wore his belt tied around her neck. They smiled at me and I could see the blood and shreds of meat and clothing in their teeth. I waited for them to open the door and pull me out or maybe swarm in and tear me apart. But instead they just gave me a look that I recognized, even though it took me a few seconds. It was the same look they’d given the camera when we had been shooting earlier, like they were seeing right through me to everyone else in the world.
“Maybe one day we’ll come for you,” Titania said, parroting my words.
Then they all dropped to the ground as one and ran through the night, back into the mall.
I waited for them to come back but they didn’t. Eventually the rain washed away the last of the smears of blood they had left on the windows, and I got out of the excavator. The lights of the mall came on again as soon as I set foot on the ground. I sat down at the edge of the pit and stared at what was left of Zimmer decorating the bones until the rain stopped and the sun lit up the sky like it was going to set the world on fire.
That was where the day shift security guards found me when they arrived to relieve Morrison and Jesus, and followed the blood trail outside. They called the police, who called the SWAT team and ambulances and firefighters when they arrived and saw the bodies. They put handcuffs on me and shoved me into the back seat of the cruiser they pulled around to the edge of the parking lot, and I didn’t struggle.
“You need to bury the mall,” I told them. “It’s the only way to be sure.”
But they didn’t understand, not even after they watched the mall’s security videos and saw what the models did. They brought me into an office in the mall, still handcuffed, and I tried not to scream at the stores and all their mannequins. The models could be anywhere. They sat me down at a table with a laptop on it and played the videos for me. I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see what they did to Jesus and Morrison and Lucky. But one of the SWAT guys held my eyes open when the video showed the models running back into the mall again after they’d killed Zimmer but spared me. They left a trail of bloody footprints behind them on the floor. They looked up at the camera and smiled. They ran through the fountain and out of the frame. The video cut to the next camera, but the models didn’t appear.
“Where are they?” the man holding my eyes open asked. A half-dozen other cops stood in a circle, looking back and forth between the laptop, the door and me. They kept their guns in their hands the whole time.
“I don’t even know what they are,” I said. “So how can I know where they are?”
They took me in to the police station after that, where they searched me and found my drugs. I told them they should probably get rid of the pills because I didn’t know what role they had played in all this, but the booking officer just put them in an evidence bag. They took me into an interrogation room and questioned me some more. I told them everything, although I admitted the drugs may have altered my perception of things. They asked me where I had found the models and why I had hired them, but I didn’t really have an answer they liked.
“It’s just business,” I said.
They had to let me go after a time, even though I asked to stay in their jail cell. They said as far as they could tell, I hadn’t actually done anything wrong. I wasn’t sure about that, but I was too tired to argue with them.
I went home and tried to sleep but my insomnia was back. I lay there in the bed and saw the models in the pit whenever I closed my eyes. I heard the cries of the other men, the cries that sounded like they were welcoming whatever it was the models did to them. I wondered what they had been thinking about when they died. What they had been experiencing. After a few hours of that, I got up and scanned the news feeds on my tablet.
I read the stories about the Mall Massacre, as it was already being called. I stared at the still photos of the models that had been blown up from the security video. The Furies, everyone was calling them. They looked into the camera and smiled their bloody smiles. That look gave me a chill again.
That was days ago. I still haven’t slept. I don’t know what’s real anymore, what actually happened and what I just dreamed up afterward.
The models are still out there. They are still on the hunt. We all know this because of the other killings. The two protesters outside the abortion clinic the night after the Mall Massacre. Dragged into a van much like mine and carried away by the models, their remains found in a Dumpster several blocks away. The window dresser who w
as pulled out of a Holt Renfrew window the next morning and torn apart by the models, who were dressed as homeless people. They ran into an alley afterward and disappeared again. But they’re still out there. I know we’ll see them again.
In the meantime, I drive through the night. I don’t think I’ll ever do another photo shoot again. But I can’t stop looking for the models.
Last night, I drove back out to the mall. The whole thing was behind police tape, and I couldn’t even get into the parking lot. I pulled the Tesla over onto the shoulder of the road and looked at the lights around the pit in the distance, at the ghostlike figures climbing in and out. Investigators in hazmat suits. Maybe they’ll find some clue to the models and maybe they won’t. Whatever they find, it’s too late for me.
I closed my eyes as I sat there, wondering why the models hadn’t killed me. I heard Zimmer’s last words again. “God! God!” I thought again about the story Titania had told me about the fish that swam toward the light, even though they knew it was going to be the end of them. I thought maybe she had been trying to tell me something even back then, but I didn’t know what.
I wish I knew how to find the light in all this darkness.
We are a Rupture
THAT CANNOT BE CONTAINED
At first it was just oil that leaked from the ruptured pipe at the bottom of the ocean, so we didn’t work that hard to stop it. We had all lived through oil leaks before, after all. We tried to plug it with waste, with boatloads of debris scooped out of one of the great floating garbage patches in the ocean. We thought maybe we could recycle the problem away. But the pressure just forced the garbage back out, an underwater geyser of everything we’d discarded and forgotten. So we settled for skimming the oil off the ocean surface. We shipped it to the same refineries we would have anyway, and pumped it into our cars, only now with a few more dead turtles and pelicans in the mix.
Has The World Ended Yet? Page 13