Chapter 2: Clusterfuck

Two siblings... alone in a shopping mall... what as cliche, huh?

 It stood at the edge of the hall, swaying back and forth as if it was in a trance of some kind. Its silhouette backlit by the open doorway, radiated with sunlight peering through the indoor mall’s vaulted-glass ceilings.

 

The Twins waited in anticipation, each crouched behind a stack of boxes at the other end of the corridor. They occasionally peaked out and watched the dead thing with extreme caution. It stared back at them as if it sensed their presence; peered back into the blackened corridor with dead eyes, hungering, once again for the taste of human flesh.

 

“What did you call this again?” Andrew whispered across the narrow hall to his sister.

 

“Huh?” Anne replied, daring to take her eyes off of the enemy for a second.

 

“I said, what do you call this? This situation again?”

 

“Oh.” Anne shook her head. “A clusterfuck.”

 

“Clusterfuck.” Andrew smiled. “Got it.”

 

She started to smile back, when she heard the distant sound of shuffling feet. She drew her gaze back to the dead thing ahead of them and found that it had started to stumble in their direction.

 

“Gun check.” She whispered.

 

Andrew responded from memory. “Four clips for the 9mm Taurus', and 16 rounds for the Mossberg.”

 

“UZI?”

 

He shook his head. “I tossed it yesterday.” 

 

The shuffling grew closer.

 

Anne jerked her OTs-38 Silent Revolver hard to the right and the side-action ammo-cylinder popped open. She shook it and let the emptly bullet casing fall to the floor. Out of her pocket, she pulled a 5-round SP-4 ammunition clip and slid it into the gun's ammo cylinder.

 

“I got two clips for this f****n' thing after this. That’s it.” She raised the gunmetal black hand piece with the extended silencer. “This ain’t gonna get us too far.”

 

“We ain’t got much choice. We can go through the mall and deal with a hundred meat puppets. Or we can go back outside and deal with a hundred thousand.

 

The shuffling grew closer… faster…

 

Anne sighed. “Clusterfuck..”

 

She quickly stood and took aim on the dead thing that was now about ten yards away. The corpse moaned, and reached out to grab her just as Anne exhaled and gently squeezed the trigger. The small caliber bullet cleanly cut through the bridge of its nose, causing it’s head to snap back and it’s body to fall to the floor.

 

She crouched back behind the boxes. “I guess we don’t have much of a choice.”

 

Andrew pulled out the mall map he lifted from the display case at the entrance.

 

"The Security Office is on the 3rd floor right above us. If we're lucky, they let the rent-a-cops carry guns. There might be stuff we can take.”

 

“You still think there’s anything useful left up in there?”

 

“F**k it. I know we really don’t have anything to lose.”

 

Andrew’s eyes grew glassy. He took a deep breath. 

 

“What if one of those Walkie-Talkies are in here?”

 

Anne strugged her shoulders. “Then we're fucked.”

 

They heard more shuffling at the end of the hall.

 

"Clusterfuck.." they both whispered in unison.

 

Anne was the first to swing around and up from her cover. She immediately saw that there were two corpses shuffling down the hall toward them. She steadied her aim on the closest zombie, waiting for it to get within 5 yards for a kill shot. As she began to squeeze the trigger, two shot popped from behind her. The first shot ricocheted off of the wall and rocketed out into the mall, shattering the large window of the Mrs. Fields Cookie Shop. The second bullet caught the closest zombie in the neck, causing its head to fall back backwards and dangle from its neck by a thick piece of skin. 

 

It kept coming, arms stretched and no head in sight. Yet, it still moaned and seemed to be on course for Anne. From behind, Andy passed his sister and kicked the corpse so hard, it stumbled backward and crashed into the second zombie. The boy immediate moved in ontop of both corpses and fired a shot into each zombie's head.

 

"What the f**k, dude?!" Anne called out.

 

"What?" he replied. "It was gonna bite you!"

 

"I could'a handled that myself! Besides, the idea was to do his quickly and quietly! You just let every meat puppet in hear know where their next meal is!"

 

"S**t." the boy looked frazzled. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."

 

Anne grabbed him by the shirt collar and pulled him closer. "Get your head out of your a*s, bro! We gotta get the f**k out of here!"

 

They once again raised their guns in unison and quickly made their way down through the darkened corridor, and toward the blindly lit doorway.

 

The siblings exited the hallway and stepped into the giant circular food court of the 6 story mall. The shock hit them like a brick wall. They both expected there to be a large amount of zombies populating the building. But actually seeing the slow, lumbering corpses stumbling around effortlessly on EVERY floor of the mall sent a shock of panic running through them. 

 

They were everywhere. Spread out evenly, as if they were window shopping.

 

That is, until the first one spotted the brother and sister in the food court.

 

It was a child, maybe 4 or 5 years of age wearing a pair of loose cargo shorts and a floral patterned tank top. When it spotted the siblings scanning the area in shock, its eyes widened and its arms reached out for them from across the room. It made a moan which sounded more like the snarl of an angry Chihuahua.

 

But it must have been some sort of communication, because every zombie in the immediate area turned in their direction. And the response flowed through the mall like a tsunami. The incredible chorus of moans echoes throughout that mall on every level. 

 

Anne knew they were fucked.

 

"Oh s**t oh s**t oh s**t oh s**t..." Andrew was mumbling.

 

Anne had to think quick. "What store has the biggest window?"

 

"Uh... The Victoria Secret and the Suncoast Video."

 

"Which one if closest?"

 

"Vickie's on the third floor..." he pointed with his gun upward at the pink and red neon sign with Adriana Lima's busty poster staring back down at them. "Right there."

 

The Victoria's Secret was six stores down from the escalator situated in the center of the mall.

 

"Okay." Anne sighed. "I think I have a plan..."