Geoff North - How the World Ends

And then he’d turned quickly and spotted them.

In that brief moment, Amanda had seen two things. Number one: she saw the guns being pointed directly at them. Number two: The plastic identification badge clipped to his damp chest had been covered over with a wide piece of masking tape. The name ROY was scrawled there in big, red felt-marker letters.

Pop. Pop.

Michael had pulled her back down as an explosion of wood chips and socks rained over their backs. They scurried on their hands and knees into racks of men’s trousers and work pants, and didn’t stop moving until they were in the women’s’ department.

Roy’s attention had been diverted. He was busy shooting other people.

Why aren’t they screaming anymore? Why are they dying so quietly?

“What?”

“When he was shooting them… why didn’t they scream?” She asked in a whisper. They had spoken softly in the backroom office up until then. Now with the candle out, and sitting in darkness, they whispered softly to one another. It’s what people did in pitch blackness.

“I dunno. Maybe they were too busy just trying to get away.”

“I guess not everyone died quietly. I can still hear the babies crying. Roy didn’t shoot the babies. He just let them cry until they stopped all on their own.”

Michael swatted at his sister’s knee. “What did Dad always tell you? You dwell on stuff too much. You have to stop thinking about it… about what we saw and heard. Besides, it was only one baby crying, and we don’t know if it died. Maybe it just went to sleep or something.”

“It didn’t fall asleep, dummy. It starved to death, and there was more than just the one where we were. I heard others crying… down in the other end of the mall, maybe in the food court.”

“Quit dwelling, Amanda… it’s why you’re having those nightmares.”

“I can see them now, in the dark like this… Please, Michael, will you go to the coffee store and see if they got any candles?”

He chewed on the knuckles of his hand. Perhaps there would be something better than candles. Maybe he could find a flashlight or two. Maybe they would be shot dead. “I don’t know… he doesn’t know we’re here.”

“ Please .”

“Alright, but we go together or we don’t go at all.” Her silence was answer enough for him. They stood up and crept forward into the dark. Michael’s leg struck the desk, causing it to shift noisily a few inches on the floor. Amanda’s fingers tightened around his hand. Quiet! They found the deadbolt latch beneath the door handle. Michael pushed the door up into the frame with all of his strength so the metal bolt wouldn’t scrape, and turned it slowly. He pulled the door in a crack, and dull yellow light from the single emergency bulb somewhere overhead flooded in. They moved from the private office into the toy store’s storage room. Amanda hung back, half through the doorway. Michael saw that his sister was still clutching her lion. “Leave that thing sitting in the door so it doesn’t lock behind us.”

“But I need him.”

“You’re almost eleven, you don’t need toys anymore.”

She placed the lion gently into the frame and let the door rest up against it. Michael pulled her after him, past the grey metal shelving filled with boxes. The enormous pink doll house was still sitting up against the swinging door leading into the main part of the store. Amanda was now using the box it had been packaged in as a house of her own. Leaving the plastic structure in front of the door had been her idea; if Roy had entered the storeroom, they would’ve heard it scraping along the floor. They picked it up and moved it away from the door.

Canon in D ended. They waited a few seconds until it started all over again, and then crept into the back of the store. They moved slowly and held their breath all the way to the front. Michael poked his head out and looked both ways along the wide corridor. There was light coming in over a hundred feet away from the broken windows in the sportswear store. Michael squinted against the distant brightness, and thought he saw someone moving outside—a woman? He blinked, and the movement was gone. She wasn’t there… Nobody’s out there. The bookstore directly across from them was dark and shadow-filled. Surely they could find some kind of light in there; one of those clip-on LEDs for night reading. Maybe later , he decided. I’ll explore the bookstore once Amanda’s safely back in that office with all of her chocolates . He looked down the right side of the plaza way again—the way they had to go. It wasn’t as well lit, lined with dozens of empty, dark stores. Michael paused. “I’ll go back and get the butter knife… just in case.”

“What’re you going to do with a butter knife? He’s got guns—lots of them.”

“Okay, no knife. But we have to move fast. No more holding hands. We get to that store and take what we need. I’ll look for candles and flashlights, you grab the chocolate. See if you can find something to drink, too. I’m sick of drinking from the back of the toilet.”

She nodded quickly. “I’m ready.”

He mouthed the word go and they sprinted forward on the toes of their shoes. They skirted around the bench and potted plant sitting in the middle of the corridor, and headed deeper into the mall, their small bodies casting monstrously long shadows ahead.

Amanda bumped into her brother’s back at the corridor’s spacious intersection. They could see the entrance to the Bay store down to their left. There were dead people in there, she thought, lying in a pool of blood. Helen Fulger was one of them. Michael looked back at his sister and motioned her to follow. She had the collar of her stained tee-shirt pulled up over her mouth and nose to block out the stench. They pressed their backs up to the glass window of an electronics store and slid their way along. The coffee store was beside it, they were almost there.

The static warble of violins playing through the speakers stopped. He knew they were there. Roy had found them. Michael tried moving back the way they’d come, but Amanda pushed him forward. “Fast! Fast! Fast! Grab stuff and run!” She was still whispering, but it sounded like the loudest of screams in the sudden silence.

Everything after that was a slow-motion blur in Michael’s eyes. He was snatching boxes of truffles from displays, and shoving individually wrapped mints into his pockets. Candles and flashlights. Find candles and flashlights! He found the candles sitting on the two small tables where customers once sat to enjoy specialty coffee. Michael ended up behind the cash register a few seconds later, pulling out the drawers set into the employee cabinets below. Tape. Wrapping paper. Loose change. Pens and pencil nubs. More tape. No flashlights.

The candles would have to do. He looked up over the counter and saw the front of Amanda’s tee-shirt now filled with an impossible amount of chocolates. The red cloth had stretched out so far, Michael could see the gold and silver glitter of wrap through the threads. It looked like Santa’s toy sack strapped to her belly.

She met his stunned gaze for a moment, and then bolted. Michael stopped at the drink cooler on his way out; he shoved two bottles of water under the arm not already crammed with truffles, and exited the coffee store after his sister.

They made it back from the toy store without being shot. Michael lit one of the candles and set it on the desk in front of the dead computer. “That was stupid. That was the stupidest, dumbest thing we’ve ever done.”

Amanda was chewing one of her stolen chocolates. “We made it, that’s all that matters. And now we got stuff to eat, too.” She offered him one of the truffles he’d taken.