by Quil Carter
Then he let out a snarl, saliva bursting from his mouth, and threw Dylan’s head at us.
I ducked just in time and it went flying past us and crashed into a kiosk. The raver snarled again and picked up a plant pot, and as he raised it over his head, the three of us turned to the left and ran down a wing that appeared to have been barred off by sandbags.
The three of us climbed over the shredded bags of sand, but when we hopped onto the other side and continued to run deeper into the mall, I immediately had regrets.
This one… this one was different than the rest. Unlike the Walmart and the wing of the mall we’d run down, this one did have signs of ravers. And the smell, there was the faint but prominent stench of rotting meat, and the further down we ran, the more I could smell it.
Then something occurred to me. As we ran, our heavy breathing filling the air, I realized that was the only noise. There were no more heavy footsteps.
I looked behind me and saw that the raver had stopped. He was watching us, his chest heaving up and down, but was making no move to follow.
My gaze turned back to what was in front of us and saw the Toys ‘R’ Us.
And near the front of that toy store, I saw sacks of what appeared to be rotting meat layered against the entrance, like the sandbags we’d just climbed over; their fetid aroma what I’d been smelling so potently. Around those sacks, were bones, old and fresh, stacked like kindling awaiting a flame that would never come. These putrid bags and bones, I realized, were blocking off the toy store from the rest of the mall. As if they’d made… that store… their den.
I suddenly stopped.
And since I’d fallen several paces behind, I could see Nero with his hand shielding his face and the weak beam of Cristo’s flashlight bouncing around as his boots desperately pounded the ground. A beam of light that was easily swallowed up before they could see the carnage right in front of them. Cristo from the dim light, and Nero because of that very light.
“Stop!” I cried. “He’s herding us!” The two of them skidded to a stop and Nero whirled around. He squinted his eyes and snatched the flashlight from Cristo, but before he could open his mouth to see what I was talking about, his eyes must’ve caught sight of the sacks and stacked bones.
“Oh… fucknuts…” Nero whispered. We all spun around, and at the same time we spotted an old exit sign. But as I darted to it, I realized the door that led outside was locked, it was barred shut.
A scream suddenly ripped through the air, coming from the Toys ‘R’ Us. I looked, the flashlight now turned off and being held in Nero’s hand, and saw what was inside of that toy store.
Ravers.
They were everywhere. But they were rising up from the debris-covered ground like zombies coming from their graves. It looked like they’d been asleep – and we’d fucking woken them all up.
A sea of scarred and disfigured faces looked at us, their skin gleaming in my night vision and their scars flexing and shifting like shining galaxies. There were dozens of them, several even huge like they were descendants of the beast, and the only thing blocking them from us were the flesh and bone walls that came to their shoulders, and the collective will of three terrified Skyfallers.
“Bathrooms…” Nero stammered, his voice thin. He took my hand and I took Cristo’s. I didn’t know where he was leading us but any place was better than where we were standing.
And it was, but not by much. We ran down a narrow hallway, our echoing boots drowned in the sea of screaming that was assaulting our ears and what remained of our nerves. I looked behind me once, only to see the ravers start to crawl over the flesh wall, their eyes flashing and their mouths open wide.
Nero turned and saw them too. He swore and raised the gun. He fell behind several paces and started shooting the ravers that were crawling over the wall. One, two, three, they fell as the shots sung through the air, one after the other.
Then something exploded. I didn’t know what; I didn’t know how. But one of the bullets hit something combustible, and the force of the explosion scattered the ravers.
However, it also blew a hole through the meat wall.
Perhaps they wouldn’t be able to see where we hid? I turned away, the bright orange and yellows eating the blues of my night vision, and continued towards the bathrooms.
But before we could reach the door, there was a loud yet low snap that reverberated up my legs, and suddenly the ground disappeared from under my feet.
We fell through the floor, and for a brief moment, I was flying through the air. Then I landed on the hard ground and everything went dark.
The first signs I got of being conscious was feeling a shooting pain through my arm and my head. And when I tried to move, my stomach and chest added to that pain. I wanted to stay still and my mind was telling me to sleep, that I’d been through a lot and I deserved it, but another voice, a louder one, was screaming at me to open my eyes. Open my eyes, I’m not safe. We’re all not safe.
Slowly the dark world leaked through my opening eyelids, and the smell of musty basement reached my nostrils. I squinted and shapes began to form, a shiny blue and white, trimmed with dark silver.
Pipes… metal containers… an old broom with cobwebs and dust clinging to their thin bristles, concrete walls with white water stains.
“Elish…” I heard Nero croak. “Elish?”
I rolled over and saw Nero lying beside me. There was blood on his face, mixed in with dust, and his eyes were scrunched in pain. I watched as he looked down and moaned, and when I did as well, I saw his leg twisted at a horrible angle, and chunks of the floor that had failed to carry our weight lying on his writhing body.
I looked up and my eyes widened when I saw auroras on the walls and ceilings of the corridor we’d been running down. The night vision gave us no colours but whites, blues, and silvery greys, but from the way they danced along the walls made me realize I was watching the reflections of the flames above us.
Then Cristo groaned. I tore my eyes from the ceiling, the voice in my head telling us we had to get away from the hole above us, in case the ravers looked down and spotted our bodies, and saw Cristo slowly rising to the sitting position, dark blood also coming from his face and streaked down his arms like he was wearing a striped shirt.
Cristo looked over at me and Nero but his eyes swept past us immediately to take in the room. Yes, the flashlight was gone, his world was permanent darkness, that and the eerie perfume that all old building’s had, a smell that told you you shouldn’t be anywhere near it.
“We’re… we’re right here,” I whispered to Cristo. He looked towards the sound of my voice and weakly nodded. He was smart enough not to speak, we had to stay quiet, but we also had to get away from that hole.
I tried to get up but a pain ripped through my stomach, strong enough to make a whine fall unbidden from my lips. I clasped a hand over my mouth and bit my lip to get through the pain, and forced my body to rise.
Nero sat up with Cristo’s help, all of this making more noise than I was comfortable with, but as my ears adjusted to the sounds of the world around us, I heard the ravers and they seemed far.
I also heard the sounds of snapping and crackling, and just as I leaned against what I believed to be a boiler, or some sort of large metal machine, a thud that shook the ceiling above us sounded.
That was the beast raver. I froze and listened, and exchanged fearful looks with Nero. My mind brought up the corridor we’d run down, and I tried to tell myself it would be too small for him to fit through, the ceilings too low, but the doubts in those beliefs acted like lubricant to my legs, and I motioned Nero to follow me as I found a place, anywhere but here, for us to hide.
This was definitely some sort of maintenance room, or a boiler room or something. There were machines everywhere and metal and pipes, but at least it looked like nothing else was down here. That meant we’d be safe… they’d never find us.
But as I found a corner at the far end of the room, my heart f
ell.
No one would ever find us.
I collapsed into the corner, and Cristo helped Nero sit beside me. Cristo took one more glance around, then he himself sat on the other end of me, our bodies squished tight.
No one spoke. We were too scared and too exhausted. The three of us, using each other as body heat, huddled together, and listened to the ravers screaming above us, the sounds of the fire, and the occasional shake as the beast raver walked around.
In that time, the adrenaline that had been keeping me from feeling the extent of the injuries I’d acquired, left my body. My head was throbbing, it felt like a hatchet was being taken to it, and my stomach was aching and hurt like it had been twisted up tight like a washcloth. My arm was also painful, but after seeing the glistening black hole in Nero’s arm from the raver bite, I ignored it out of respect for his injuries.
Nero and Cristo didn’t look good. Their eyes were half-open, glassy, and staring off into nothing. Both of them had blood dripping and drying on their bodies, soaked into their shirts and staining them dark colours, and when I looked down I saw that I did too. There was also a heavy scent of blood in the air, but that and the musty smell were nothing compared to the intense aroma of fear and hopelessness.
We’re going to die down here. Aren’t we?
Even though this fearful thought had been echoing in my head since we’d seen our first raver, it was only in the maddening silence that surrounded the three of us did I feel the impact of the words.
I felt an undiluted hatred for myself in regards to how I acted before I’d seen that first raver. Hatred for that stupid boy who had such a perfect life beforehand, who’d been worrying about which adult he should me mad at. A boy that had no barometer for danger, so he’d had no idea of the real life peril he was in.
What an easy, simple life that boy had had. I envied him just as much as I hated him, because I knew that I would never be the same, no matter how long or short my future.
I made a promise to myself… that I would never be that naïve and blind again. I was going to become aware of my surroundings as soon as I was outside of my home, and never would I concern myself with such trivial things.
That is what I would learn from this experience…
… if I survived this.
There was a loud snap above us, and I felt dust and dirt fall on me. Moments later, a thunk that shook the floor, followed by another.
All three of our hearts jumped, and one after the other they began to rev like cars lined up on a speedway.
The beast raver was coming down the corridor.
About twenty feet away was the hole we’d fallen through and the faint but still vivid shimmering of the fire’s reflection.
Nero to my right, held his breath as we both watched that hole, our bodies trembling and the air barely reaching our lungs before the next exhale. We both jumped when we saw dirt fall from the gaping area, about three feet by two, and I felt myself slip my hand into his.
We clenched our hands and watched helplessly as the beast raver stopped in front of the hole in the floor that our weight had created.
Then, like a spider slowly putting down his legs, the beast raver’s long arm lowered and a hand clenched the side of the hole, near a broken support beam. I locked a hand over my mouth and swallowed the whimpers that kept springing to my lips, and felt Nero’s hand tighten in mine.
A second ghostly pale arm was then extended and it grabbed the other half of the broken support beam, then I witnessed a head lower through the hole.
Two glowing white eyes looked directly at us, and as the head descended further, I saw his lipless, sneering mouth with strings of drool dripping down onto the very floor we were on.
Don’t speak, Cristo. He couldn’t see the raver; he wouldn’t know to stay quiet.
Don’t move. Don’t speak.
My heart was pounding; it was slamming against the inside of my chest like it was trying to escape this terrifying situation. All I could hear was that roaring, that blood rushing though my ears at top speed, and the more I stared at the raver, seemingly looking directly back at me, the more my primal instincts commanded for me to jump up and run.
I felt like I was going to go insane with fear. This was a nightmare I couldn’t get out of, no matter how tightly I closed my eyes. This was real, I’d seen Dylan get eaten, and in mere moments I could be the one this beast pulls in half.
Several years ago, I learned how to make myself wake up from nightmares. A brief moment of self-awareness triggered a ritual I’d go through to break the hold the dream had on my mind, and free myself of the gut-wrenching terror that my nightmares brought.
I would close my eyes tight, and I would mentally force myself out. Sometimes having to close your eyes during the scary things around you was nightmare fuel enough as it was. But I’d do it, and most of the time I’d wake up in my bed, the sounds of my brothers’ snorings now comfort instead of bothersome.
And as this dizzying fear permeated my skin and sunk through it like brine, poisoning my mind into further panic, I thought for a moment that if I closed my eyes… perhaps I’d wake up in my bed.
Because this was too terrifying to be real.
The raver huffed in a breath through his nose, and blew it out in a way that suggested frustration. He braced his arms and stuck his head down further, and tilted his head from side to side as if trying to make the bulbous nubs he had for ears, work better than they were.
Another raver stuck his head through and hissed. The beast grunted back and blew another breath out of his nose. He raised his head, but to our horror, the raver swung down from the beam and landed lightly onto the ground.
I dug my nails into my face, my hand still desperately clasping my mouth, and bit the flesh underneath my index finger to keep myself quiet. I stared in horror, Nero and my hands crushing one another in our iron grips, and watched the raver look around.
Don’t speak, Cristo. Don’t speak.
Then above him, the beast let out a grunt. The raver, a skinny dark-skinned male missing a chunk of his jaw, looked up, and spoke back.
A long arm reached down, and the raver clasped it and was lifted out of the hole. They moved around the area for several more seconds, then Nero and I blew a collective breath of relief as the dust began to fall further away from the hole, back to the main part of the mall.
It was a long time before anyone felt themselves brave enough to move. At first, Nero shifted, and when I looked at him he nodded his head to the right. I looked too and saw a large expanse of machinery, all with curls of paint lifting up off of the metal like ribbons, and metal beams and pipes.
I got up, biting my lip to make sure no whimpers of pain broke the seal, and when Cristo rose, he found Nero and helped him stand on what we both knew was a broken leg.
Slowly we walked down the narrow pathway, past the machinery and boxes full of loose wires and switches attached or hanging off of the walls, and deeper into this lower level maintenance room.
There were other doors, but we were too scared to try any of them, we just kept on walking, though I wondered if we even knew what we were looking for. A place to lie down? An exit? The car was on the other side of the mall, and I wasn’t sure if these underground catacombs stretched out that far. The thought of going outside at this moment was terrifying, if the vast differences between the two halves of the mall were any indication, the outside of this area would be infested with ravers. It looked like they weren’t allowed to access the half of the mall we originally were exploring by the beast raver, and perhaps the beast had even gone as far as to wall them in with the sandbags, like pets.
Was that even possible? I knew Perish was releasing some of his mutant animals into the greywastes, but was he also experimenting on humans?
The answer that he was came quickly when I was reminded of my own origins.
We finally found rest in what looked to have been a janitor’s closet, or something of that respect. Whatever it was, the d
oor locked and that was good enough for us.
The three of us collapsed onto the floor into a pile, and once again we fell into silence. This silence was different though, it was accented by nothing. The ravers were now a safe distance away from us and the shimmering flames as well. But the good things that came from this solitary place were also the very things that would inhibit our survival. We were deep inside the lower levels of a very large mall, far from harm, but also an impossibly far way away from any rescue.
No one knew where we were. By this time, King Silas would’ve woken up from his bullet wound, and he’d be tearing apart Skyfall, and possibly the fringes of the greywastes, looking for us.
But he wouldn’t find us, and if he eventually did… he’d weep over nothing but bones.
My stomach twisted from my own inner words, and an unexpected assault of despair hit me. I found myself having to close my eyes from the overwhelming feeling of hopelessness, but no tears stung them.
“We’re going to die down here,” I whispered.
There was silence, before Nero whispered beside me:
“I know.”
CHAPTER 7
There was no time inside of that room. No way to tell if it was day or night, and no way to find out. The only way we would possibly know how much time had passed was the growling from our stomachs and when fatigue hit us.
We slept a lot, but we were all too scared to talk to each other. So my only company were the thoughts inside of my head, and the steady beating of three heartbeats, ones that seemed to take turns spiking and revving, showing their anxieties whenever one of us remembered just how close we were to death.
My deep thoughts in this room were night and day compared to my thoughts when I’d initially entered this mall. There was no confliction over who I should be mad at, or reflections of self-discovery. Every part of my mind was focused on survival, and that meant taxing my ears and all other advanced senses my siblings and I had been born with, to make sure there were no ravers skulking around this lower level looking for us.