by White, Ben
With a long, weary groan, Imogen pulled herself up off the bench, her hand tight around the guide rail. She stepped over the headless, broken zombie at her feet, and she started limping back the way she had come, stopping only to retrieve her broken mop from the floor—it hadn't quite broken in half, only the last quarter had snapped off. Imogen used it to help support her weight as she continued her slow escape, outpacing the crippled zombie behind her more than thrice over even with her injured leg.
Soon it was left behind.
With nothing immediately threatening her Imogen stopped, her breathing laboured and reedy. At her feet was the cover of a comic, ripped and creased, one among many, depicting a stick-thin girl with ludicrous breasts hurling a sword at a winged beast. Behind her lightning flashed, and along the bottom of the cover blazed the legend: 'MAXINE BLADE WILL SLAUGHTER THIRTY-SEVEN HARPITES IN THIS ISSUE - GUARANTEED!!!!'.
With an irritated grunt and a flash of pain Imogen kicked the cover away and kept moving. It wasn't long before she reached the hallway leading to the outlook—to her relief there were no signs of the glass shard zombie or the crawling girl. Imogen didn't stop to ponder where they might have gone, she just kept limping on. Soon after that she reached the stairs leading down, the same ones she'd come up what felt like days ago.
The stairs were wide and relatively clear, just a few dozen burst comics cluttering the steps. Imogen made her way down with some effort, gripping tight to the rail at the side, jaw tight as she concentrated on getting down without falling. By the time she reached the bottom she was panting for breath and her face was shiny with sweat, and she had to spend a minute simply recovering. Further comics covered the floor, along with shards of glass—there was a broken window nearby, long and thin and high in the wall, and some of the light covers had shattered. That's why it's so dim, Imogen thought, the wind broke most of the lights. Fine for now, but eventually the sun's going to set ...
Putting this unwelcome thought out of her head, Imogen started forward again—she was sure she'd come this way while looking for a place to smoke, which was good for two reasons. The first was that it meant she was on her way back to where she'd left Zack. The second was that she remembered seeing a bathroom somewhere along this corridor.
Several minutes of careful progress later, Imogen spotted the toilet entrance—two doors, blue for boys and red for girls. The corridor was dim here, with no windows and only one working light. The only good point was that there were less comics littering the floor, the threat of slipping greatly reduced. Even so it took Imogen more than a minute to get to the toilet, and she reached gratefully for the handle—
Which turned on its own.
With a gasp Imogen jerked her hand back, stepping away—forgetting her injured foot. She stumbled as pain shot through her, falling hard against the floor with a loud, involuntary 'oof!', and she scrambled back, pushing against carpet and comic pages with her good foot as the door opened.
What emerged was an abomination. It towered over Imogen, dark and angular, its shape terrifyingly unfamiliar. Its legs were thick and covered in square black scales, its arms bulged with block-like nodules. Its head, if it could be called that, towered high and dark, and from its rippling extrusions dangled luminescent yellow moons and bright green stars—
Imogen blinked, and the abomination resolved itself into the shape of a girl wearing a costume that was, for whatever reason, shaped like a castle. Her face was half-hidden by a kind of mask, just the top half visible, her big brown eyes both frightened and hopeful.
"You're not ... you're not one of them, right? Answer me if you aren't!"
Imogen stared, then found her voice: "I'm not."
With some effort the girl put her hand on her chest, breathing out in a ragged expulsion of relief. "Thank goodness. Oh, thank goodness, you're the first—let me help you up."
The girl's gloved hand was rough and warm, and Imogen held it tight as she regained her footing.
"Your leg—are you okay? I'm Hana, by the way. I ... are you okay?"
Imogen was looking past Hana, into the toilets.
"They're clear?" she asked. "There's nothing in there?"
Hana shook her head. "I've been hiding in there, but I got hungry ... I didn't even know you were out here—"
"Could you stand guard?"
"Of ... of course."
Imogen felt slightly uncomfortable using the toilet while someone was outside, and Hana's chattering didn't help at all—now that the girl had gotten over her initial fear she wouldn't shut up.
"—find the others, we all got split up when the winds came through, I think it was worse higher up and better further down and we were deep 'inside' the building so maybe that helped, I tried to go down but there are so many more of them on the lower levels, I couldn't even get down the stairs so I just ran here, that was after ... that was after ... at first we didn't even think it was winds, we all thought it was an earthquake but it was just chaos, it was just awful, it was just ... just ... and the others, we got split up and then I was with a group and we were running, just trying to get out, and then the corridor ... and the glass ... the glass, it all ... they all ..."
Imogen tugged her stockings up, idly wondering just how many times she'd have to listen to variants of this story—assuming, of course, that there were other survivors. She picked up her broken mop handle, pushed open the toilet door, and hobbled over to the sinks to wash her hands. Hana had gone quiet. When Imogen glanced over at her, she saw that the girl was crying into her gloved hands.
Oh great, Imogen thought. She's a weeper.
"Did you see a boy, scrawny, stupid-looking, almost twelve but he looks more like he's eight, black pajamas, red mask?"
Hana sniffed, then looked up and shook her head. To Imogen's surprise, she smiled weakly.
"I haven't, I'm sorry." Hana coughed lightly into her hand. "Is he your brother?"
Imogen nodded, then leant down to drink some water from the tap.
"I was almost losing it. You knew that I needed to focus on something other than what happened. That's why you asked about your brother then, to force me to focus. You're really strong, aren't you?"
Imogen frowned as she drank. No, she thought, I just wanted to shut you up.
Hana was staring at her now, trembling hands clasped together in front of herself. Her face—what could be seen of it over the mask—was pale.
"We can go together," she said, desperate hope in her voice. "Right? If we're together we'll be stronger. We can get out of here."
"I have to find my brother."
"We can look for him together, I don't mind helping, I'd love to help."
Imogen pretended to continue drinking as she studied Hana's reflection in the mirror above the sink. She's sweating, she thought. Her face is shiny with it. Her hair's stuck to her forehead. That trembling in her hands, too, and there's something about her eyes ...
Her sleeve. At the back. Her costume's torn. It looks tough but it's just paper-mache.
"Thanks for guarding me," Imogen said, as she straightened. She picked up her mop handle and started towards the door. "But I don't think we should stay together."
"What? No, we have to! There's so many of them, if we're apart—"
"My brother's on the lower levels. You said it yourself, there are more zombies down there—"
"Don't call them that!"
Imogen looked back at Hana, her hand on the door.
"Why not?"
"Because ... because they're people!"
Imogen pushed the door open and looked out. It seemed clear.
"Don't leave me!"
"You've been bitten."
"No! I haven't, I haven't, it was just ... just a scratch ... no, please!" Hana stepped towards Imogen, who pushed the door further open and limped out into the corridor. "You have to help me, you HAVE to! There's one of them, he's hunting me, I'm sure he is, I keep seeing him—"
Hana interrupted herself by coughing hoarsely. She
tried to recover but there was nothing she could do except cough harder and harder as Imogen limped away from the bathroom. She'd gotten a dozen metres before the door came open and Hana staggered out, coughing and sobbing as she reached out her trembling hand—
"PLEASE! Please help me, I don't—"
Another coughing fit seized her and she doubled over, clutching at her stomach. Imogen's blank expression didn't change, nor did her pace. She continued to walk away, left hand against the wall to support herself, right hand gripping the broken mop handle tight, Hana's pitiful sobbing and coughing left behind as she struggled onwards.
Even just a scratch, Imogen was thinking. Just a scratch, and you're dead. Worse than dead. Infected. She couldn't suppress a shudder at the thought of turning into one of those things. Worse than death. Much worse. I'd rather—
Imogen stopped.
There was a corner ahead, lit by two dim lights set high on the wall. Lying on the floor below was an arm, barely recognisable as such, broken and bloodied. Bright bone was visible through dark blood.
Eight slow, shuffling steps took Imogen to the corner.
There were more than a dozen of them. Maybe fourteen, maybe fifteen, maybe more, maybe less. It was hard to count.
They were all very clearly dead.
The nearest had two horribly broken arms and was missing a leg, and the way his head hung loose was disturbingly wrong. Imogen forced herself to look up, to look away; further down the corridor there was the blue of the sky.
It was easy to picture what had happened here. The group fleeing through the corridor, heading towards the light, and then the window had blown in and showered them with glass. That's not what had killed most of them, though. It was being blown back here, all the way down the corridor, knocked against walls and floor and ceiling—even without her glasses Imogen could see the wide red smears.
For several seconds she stared at the bodies.
Then she started forward again. The closest corpse was just a few metres in, lying against the wall, and Imogen limped carefully to the middle of the corridor to avoid it.
The rest were more difficult. Most of them lay heaped across the width of the hallway, limbs tangled with limbs, pressed together in death.
Imogen picked her way forward—going to the walls wasn't an option, there were too many of them piled against them, even walking down the middle one shuffling step after another was difficult, but there was a path, of sorts, where the bodies lay thinnest. Step here, Imogen thought, and then here, and then she planted the end of her mop handle firmly and hopped over a leg, and then she planted it again and hopped over an arm, expecting at any moment for the corpses to start moving—and as she hopped forward she realised that the air wasn't just thick with the rusty smell of blood, there was also that sickening sour-sweet smell, faint but present, they're turning, Imogen thought, trying to move faster, they're definitely turning—
"Soon they'll change."
Imogen looked up sharply—she'd been so focused on not losing her balance that she hadn't noticed the boy standing down the corridor.
"I thought that some might have already, that they might be intelligent enough to set a trap, of sorts. But perhaps not."
Imogen was almost clear of the bodies now. The boy watched her as she hopped over the last of them.
"Well done," he said, dryly—except now Imogen saw that it wasn't a boy, it was a girl. She had short, silky brown hair that fell over her face, almost hiding the deep, diagonal scar across her nose, stretching right to left. Her eyes were dark and narrow and slightly slanted, and her face was both angular and smooth. The open jacket she wore was black with a fluffy woollen collar, ending above her waist. Beneath was a plain white top tucked into her sturdy black trousers, which were secured with crossed brown belts. For no apparent reason, three smaller black belts were buckled around her right leg. Her boots were big and tough-looking, and in her hand was some kind of bladed weapon, bulky and thick, the grip more like a pistol's than a sword's. Around her neck was a silver medallion.
"Oh, there. They're starting."
Imogen looked back to see one of the corpses was stirring—a twitching in its fingers and a convulsive, repetitive jerking of its arm.
"Your foot is injured. Were you bitten?"
Imogen shook her head as she looked back at the girl, who now had a faintly amused expression on her face.
"Hm. Well then."
Without anything further the girl put her weapon across her shoulder, turned, and walked away, her stride long and masculine, leaving Imogen to stare after her—then follow, although she had no hope of catching up. That wasn't her intention in any case; away, Imogen thought. Not to. Just away.
The girl disappeared into a distant side corridor.
From behind there came a low purring.
Imogen limped on, her mouth tight.
The purring grew louder.
Imogen forced herself not to look back, instead concentrated on moving forward. I don't remember a window, she thought, to distract herself from what was happening behind her. If I'd seen a window I would have walked towards it. So I must have come here by one of these side corridors.
Imogen's teeth involuntarily clenched and her hand tightened around the mop handle as a long, thrumming howl sounded from behind her. Probably it was this one, she thought, heading towards the nearest side corridor. I recognise this grey stripe going along the wall, this weird yellow-cream colour is definitely familiar to me, I'm sure I've seen this comic before—wait, these weren't here when I came up. It was the wind that scattered them.
For some reason this thought brought with it a dull weariness, and Imogen let herself slump against the wall. He's probably dead, she thought. Smashed against something. He doesn't weigh anything, the wind would've just picked him up and ...
Time passed.
From behind, from within the wider corridor: purrrrr.
Imogen blinked.
Away.
This part of the complex was clear; clear of scattered comics, clear of zombies. There was shattered glass around. There was soil spread over the thick carpets.
Eventually there was an outer hallway, open to the sky, both wall and ceiling made from wide glass panels—or they had been, at least.
The crunching of glass underfoot went unnoticed.
The air was still.
No wind blew, none at all.
Imogen barely glanced out, and soon found herself in another internal corridor, this one with doors leading off it, most of them either missing or hanging off broken hinges. She shuffled along the very centre of the corridor, tensing up every time she passed an open door, glancing in as she passed but seeing nothing but wrecked furniture.
Like a dream, came the pleasantly numb thought, as Imogen limped through more empty corridors. Like a dream where you're looking for something but you never find it. Just walking and walking without ever—
For a moment Imogen stopped and squinted, then she continued limping forward. The corridor she was in opened onto a wide concourse, low and long. It had once had windows at both ends. No longer. Clothes and luggage and boxes and packaging lay heaped and scattered in the kind of mess you wanted to just turn your back on and ignore forever. The actual shops were further up—and further down, with corridors leading off the concourse in the middle, but Imogen had already spotted her target. There's always one, she thought, as she picked her way over a pile of torn dresses and ragged skirts. From this far away the sign was just a blur to Imogen, but the familiar green and gold colouring marked it as a +Health+ franchise store.
The inside was worse than the outside. The shop's shelves had fallen and in some cases shattered, partially blocking the entrance. The floor was covered, literally covered with pills of every colour and size, spilled from burst plastic containers and smashed plastic boxes. Crawling over them was unpleasant, but there was no other way through the shop; the fallen shelves had created a tight, low maze that led, after a few minutes of grunting,
muttering effort, to the counter. Behind the counter was a door—or a doorway at least, the door itself was lying flat on the floor in the small room beyond. Imogen crawled through, considered standing now that she was able, then blew out a short, weary breath. What's the point, she thought, as she crawled over to a jumbled pile of boxes. Before entering the +Health+ store Imogen had rummaged through the scattered clothes, trying to find a bag, finally chancing upon a green cloth thing with a broken clasp and a rip in its side. The strap had come loose, too, so she'd roughly tied the end to the rip and called it 'adequate'.
Several of the boxes contained exactly what Imogen had been looking for; plastic-wrapped energy bars. Imogen stuffed her bag with MicroFibre Protein Logs and CarrotPLUS! Bars and Organic ApriNut Slabs and more besides. With sustenance taken care of, Imogen turned her attention to the soaking-wet pile of boxes against the far wall—even more precious than food, she thought, what's that saying? 'Three weeks without food, three days without water'? Most of the bottles had split open, but eventually Imogen found four with their seals intact, and all but one of these went into the bag on top of the bars. After that Imogen spent an industrious few minutes jawing her way through an EnergON cube, washed it down with the contents of the remaining water bottle, and then crawled back through the store.
Straight into the edge of a sword.
"Stop there. STOP there."
Imogen looked up at the owner of the ridiculously huge sword she'd just bumped her head against. He was tall and slim with improbably spiky yellow hair and bright green eyes, wearing a collection of broad black leather pads buckled over a black shirt and trousers. His right arm was bare, and he wore black gloves. Beside him was a girl, short and pouty with brown hair down past her waist, wearing a bulging white top that left her midriff bare, and black leather short-shorts with, for some reason, suspenders. Her hands were protected by bulky red fingerless gloves. She was holding a broken length of wood.