After his encounter with the crabs, Donnie grabbed his broom again and started paddling. Figuring he’d come far enough, despite the dangers he kept rowing for the mall. He pushed the raft as hard as he dared but worried that by causing too big of a disturbance he might attract more crabs, or even something bigger, so he was careful and he kept the table leg he’d dislodged wedged between his thighs. He knelt in the blue blood, ruining his already soaked pants.
“Guess I’d be pissed off too,” Donnie said aloud. “Stupid, giant wave rolls through my home, picks me up and dumps me miles away in the middle of a strange city. Stupid things probably thought it was my fault, like I’m the first living thing they’d seen so they decide to blame me.”
Spotting another body in the water killed Donnie’s attempts to humour himself. He shut up and kept paddling past it. Donnie had never seen anything specifically like the crabs with their stingers but he was no expert in sea creatures, and didn’t even watch many nature documentaries. The thought they’d been displaced, were now confused, territorial and angry, was the only thing that made sense. Part of Donnie didn’t want to admit it but the whole situation had left common sense behind a long time ago. The devastating wave that no one saw coming and now refused to drain away, the constant rain, and now these weirdly aggressive, alien animals. As if to rub it in, the rain started to get stronger again. Within seconds, it went from relatively light to hammering down. The water surface all around Donnie, filling the street, became alive and opaque with thousands upon thousands of little craters created by falling raindrops. It fell across Donnie’s back and shoulders like a thick blanket, slowing him down. He was glad he was wearing the hood but the rain quickly soaked through his pants and got under the rain slicker.
“This. Is. Ridiculous!” Donnie seethed.
Donnie’s shoulders ached from rowing. He’d been pleased and surprised that the makeshift raft floated as well as it did but it was hard to propel. The fat shapes of the water jugs created a lot of resistance moving forward. Blowing water off his upper lip, Donnie regretted not just waiting the whole thing out in his office. Days might have passed without rescue but once the flood drained away he could have walked out of the city, and anything seemed like a better option than struggling through this downpour. Remembering Alessa, however, at home, alone, undoubtedly scared, Donnie pushed aside his regrets. He increased his efforts to reach the mall.
Waterfalls poured off the facades of the surrounding buildings. When Donnie reached the mall, the entryway was, of course, underwater. He had considered this and figured, at worst, he could row his way around the building to where he knew there was a parking structure behind the mall. It would take a while to reach though and he’d rather find a point of access from the street. At the front, the main entrance only looked like a narrow set of shops and even under normal circumstances anyone seeing it from the street could be forgiven for thinking it was only home to half a dozen stores. Office towers to either side of the entrance hid the vast bulk of the building. It was only once people passed through the entry hall that it broadened into a large, multi-level mall, home to dozens of small stores and several large ones as well as a cinema and food court.
Luckily, although the entryway was underwater, a massive tree had been uprooted and thrown against the front of the mall. Branches punched through some of the large windows on the second floor. Said second floor was just above the waterline. The tree must have come from a nearby park and hadn’t travelled all that far. It rested at an angle against the front of the mall. Most of its leaves had been stripped away but a tangle of naked branches, big and small, pushed through the frames where the windows had been.
“Okay, I can do this,” Donnie said. “I can do this.”
The heavy rain seemed to stir up the currents. They whirled around the front of the mall. Donnie fought them with his pathetic paddle, steering around the trunk of the tree and then being slammed against it by the current. The table was held between the lower branches of the tree and the building.
“Okay, okay.”
The climb looked more difficult close up than he’d anticipated. Above Donnie’s head, the top of the tree stretched through the windows creating a thatch of thick branches and broken glass. He would have to climb it and squeeze through the branches while avoiding the shards. Tentatively, Donnie leaned against the trunk and wrapped one hand around a branch. Slowly and experimentally, like a sloth, he straightened and hugged the tree. The raft swung underneath him as if hitting rough seas. His legs shook as he tried to keep his balance. Donnie left the broom but kept a hold of his table leg club. He was afraid of getting stuck in the tree and attacked by those things, the crabs, without a weapon. Gradually he climbed into the sloping tree and left the raft behind.
Rain lashed Donnie and the branches surrounding him. The bark was rough and wet on the skin of his bare feet and hands. He made his way around the trunk, stepping on the branches, and climbed higher. The raft was kicked away and started to float off. Looking back, Donnie figured he only had one option. Go forward. The raft was out of reach in seconds. The broom he’d been using to paddle fell overboard and drifted away as well.
“Goddamnit,” Donnie huffed.
How long since he’d climbed a tree? In a way, this was easier than climbing trees when he was a kid, this one was at an angle and he had thick branches underfoot, but it sure didn’t feel easy. He’d fallen out of a tree when he was ten or eleven and broke his arm. He’d probably fallen out of many more trees before that without breaking anything but that year he’d spent the whole summer in a cast. Donnie didn’t remember climbing any more trees after that. Floodwater churned below him with rain. Donnie couldn’t fall this time or he might not be able to get back up. Climbing higher, he had to start pushing through the thatch of crisscrossed, broken branches. He tried to beat back some of the limbs with his makeshift club, like an explorer with a machete, but had limited success.
The heel of his free hand was skinned. As Donnie got higher, there were fewer secure footholds but more obstacles in the way. Still, he could see the broken window ahead of him. He tossed his club ahead of him, though a gap in the branches. It disappeared in the dark and landed somewhere inside. His rain slicker tangled in the tree and he was prodded from all directions. Donnie braced himself. The branches bent under his feet. Shoving forward, he shielded his face and shouldered his way past. Sticks scratched the backs of his hands and one got through, slashing his face. Donnie half-stepped, half-collapsed through the window and into the store.
The carpet was soaked and covered in glass. Tumbling forward, Donnie tried to high-step between the shards. He managed to make it through the dangerous mess without cutting his bare feet. The store was an electronics store, and dark. Donnie stumbled chest-first into a rack of CDs. Half a dozen plastic squares clattered to the ground. Panting, Donnie stepped back again, holding his chest, and sat down hard.
After taking a few minutes to recover, Donnie inhaled and exhaled deliberately as deeply as he could. It was a calming gesture but he almost felt like he was checking himself for leaks. His rain slicker was torn and the clothing underneath soaking wet. Luckily, he hadn’t been cut by the broken glass and only had shallow scratches and a few grazes from the climb.
“Hello? Hello?” Donnie shouted.
Donnie found his table leg and held it out in front of him. As he moved away from the windows the store got dark. It was filled with racks and shelves of electronics, homewares, DVDs, and CDs. Although the layout was probably perfectly orderly, in the dark it felt like a maze and Donnie kept bumping into shelves or having to negotiate his way around taller racks. He used the club like a blind man with a cane, prodding it out in front of him. He spilled another bunch of DVDs off a rack onto the floor, accidentally kicking them further. Eventually, he saw the grey light of the store’s entrance and the hallway outside. He stumbled past the registers and out of the store.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
The ceiling in the main corridor was dominated by pyramid-shaped skylights being hammered by rain, the source of the grey light that filled the area. All of the stores surrounding Donnie were dark. Most were closed and shuttered but some, like the electronics store, had been left open and abandoned. At the time of the tsunami, most of the stores would have already been closed but not all.
Donnie moved to the balcony railing where the second floor overlooked the bottom level. As he had figured, the lower level was flooded. The water was about two-thirds of the way up on all the stores below, about level with the tops of the mall’s outer exits. Not far away, a couple of escalators disappeared into the water’s surface. Trash filled the floodwaters but it looked like cleaner debris than what was outside, clothing, plastic signage and random bits and pieces, not like the garbage floating in the streets, and no bodies that Donnie could see. He turned away from the railing and kept exploring.
“Hello?” Donnie shouted.
Listening, Donnie could hear sounds that suggested other people were in the building. Under the noise of the rain he could hear music and what might have been conversation. He moved toward the source in the middle of the building.
“Hello? Hey!” another voice said.
Two more people, a man and a woman, moved down the corridor toward Donnie. Both carried flashlights that they pointed at the ground. Given the cool and damp of the building, both were dressed in thick and comfortable clothing. They looked younger than Donnie, in their early twenties.
“Where did you come from?” the woman asked.
Donnie gestured vaguely. “Back there, from the outside.”
“Outside? You don’t look like you’re on a rescue mission, were you just floating around out there?”
“Something like that,” Donnie said. “I mean, I was in another building and I used a table as a raft, and I paddled here.”
“You floated here, are you crazy?” The woman laughed. “Wasn’t that dangerous?”
“Yeah, yeah, more dangerous than I thought it was going to be, to be honest. Sorry, I’m Donnie Rothchild, you are?”
While he spoke, Donnie shimmied out of the yellow raincoat he was wearing. Now that he was inside it seemed uncomfortable and restrictive, not to mention it was cut in several places and his clothing was wet under it anyway. He folded it over the top of the nearby railing, still carrying his satchel. Slicking back his hair, he looked at his new companions. The woman was stocky with long, straight, dark hair, looking vaguely bemused at Donnie and maybe at the whole situation. The guy, who hadn’t spoken a word yet, was lean with short, brown hair, and had an unfriendly look.
“I’m Jody,” the woman replied. “Jody Burns.”
“Elliot,” the young man said.
“There are other people here too?” Donnie asked.
“Of course, you don’t think just the two of us have the whole place to ourselves, do you?” Jody said.
The three of them started walking, Jody taking the lead, in the direction that Donnie had heard music and conversation. They passed the two escalators dropping into the water below. A slight current ebbed against the metal steps at the water level. Donnie stared down at the dark water, full of floating debris, suspiciously. The mall was only made of two levels, the flooded lower level and the second level that they were on, both long rather than wide, with a parking structure behind it.
“Most people probably went home or weren’t coming out because of the storm. The mall was quiet but some stores were still open, and there were still a bunch of people in the mall,” Jody said. “We were at the movies when the power went out, watching the latest Kill Switch, and someone ran in to tell us about the tsunami.”
“Have you seen anything weird coming out of the water? Like any animals or anything?” Donnie asked.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“Animals? What?” Elliot said.
“When I was paddling over here, I got attacked, sort of, by a bunch of these weird crab-scorpion things. I don’t know what they were but they were weird. They attacked me and they wouldn’t stop. They kept trying to sting me until I killed one and injured another, I think, and then they finally stopped and went away.”
“What? That’s totally crazy! Like, I’m not going swimming down there,” Jody said. “The grocery store is on the bottom level with way more food and water, and some people want to organise us to go and get it but not with whatever those things are in the water!”
“That sounds like bullshit,” Elliot said.
“Yeah, well, it happened,” Donnie said. “I’m not sure what those stingers could do but you should watch out if they get inside.”
The three of them approached the mall’s food court, right next to the cinema. About three dozen people were gathered around the booths and tables. Skylights lit the area but battery operated lanterns and lamps were scattered throughout the tables as well. Most of the restaurants ringing the seating area were obviously closed, without power. A couple of the stores had stayed open, however, and people could serve themselves. Next to the food court, the entrance to the cinema was pitch black, open but looking like a massive pool of darkness.
“Do you want something to eat?” Jody asked. “There’s sandwiches, and the other place has its gas grilles going even though there’s no power.”
“Uh, sure, I guess I should eat something before I go back out there, thanks,” Donnie said.
Sitting on one of the tables was a guy playing an acoustic guitar, the source of the music Donnie had heard. A group of people circled around him. Another bunch of people crowded by a nearby radio, listening for news. A few people noticed Donnie and the condition he was in and took interest but most didn’t notice.
“Go? You’re going back out there?” Jody asked.
“Well, the reason I came here on the raft was I’ve got to get home to Alessa, my wife,” Donnie said. “I knew there was a camping store here, and maybe the department store would have canoes or boats, something I could use.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Like, you’re right, they had boats there but a bunch of people already took those.”
“What? Seriously?”
“This morning, when the water still hadn’t gone down,” Jody said. “We had the food court open and last night most of us slept in the cinema. The radio was saying rescue could be days away, and we couldn’t figure out why the tide wasn’t going out. Maybe because of the rain, it was just flooded, so who knows how long the flood could last? A bunch of people didn’t want to wait, so they got together all the canoes and inflatable boats, and set out from the parking building. They all wanted to get to their families or whatever and figured they’d be safer going together.”
Donnie swore under his breath. He should have anticipated that. Of course he wouldn’t be the only person willing to risk setting out in the storm to get home. If he had gotten there sooner, maybe he could have gone with them.
“Are you sure they took everything?” Donnie asked.
“I’m not sure, I mean, I wasn’t part of it but I think they cleaned out the camping store and went through the department store pretty thoroughly, and they were loaded with people. You should get something to eat and maybe change your clothes. You know, it’s not looting if it’s an emergency, taking clothes and stuff.”
“Thanks, I appreciate your help. I’ll go see what I can find.”
“No problems, dude, good luck,” Jody said. “Hey, wait! Take one of these.”
A bunch of flashlights sat on a nearby table, apparently free for anyone to use. Jody grabbed one and handed it to Donnie. He thanked her and left her and Elliot at the food court as he walked off into the mall again. Passing the open cinema, the lobby looked cavernous with no lights on and he couldn’t see as far as the ticket counter or snack bar. It must have been creepy spending the night in there, he thought. The mall should have had a backup generator but maybe it had been damaged or cut off by the flood. Other stores, to either side of the mall’s main corridor, were shut down and dark. Only a few had their entries open, shutters unable to close without power. Donnie could see fine, eyes adjusted to the weak light, but toyed with the flashlight Jody had given him.
The camping store was right next to the big department store. He checked the camping store first, having to switch the flashlight on as he entered. Away from the skylights it was too dark to see. To his right as he entered was a series of glass counters and the registers. Ahead of him were racks of outdoor clothing and then shelves filled with random camping and outdoor equipment, some of the implements mysterious and arcane in the dark. This was obviously where the mall inhabitants had gotten a lot of the flashlights and camping lanterns they were using. Several shelves were cleared and a few things had spilled onto the floor.
Donnie swept the beam of his flashlight over the registers and surrounding countertops. Several pieces of paper with messages scrawled on them were weighed down by bits and pieces on the counter, IOUs or something similar, explanations as to why the canoes and whatever else had been taken. Given the nature of the disaster, he hadn’t been thinking twice about taking whatever he needed. Now he wondered if he should leave a note too. He’d figured insurance would cover whatever he took, once the flood was gone, but felt a little guilty seeing that others had been more considerate. Inside one of the counters were shelves of compasses and hunting knives. It looked like somebody had already forced the counter open from the back.
Barefoot, clothing wet and cold, Donnie stayed on task. He moved toward the back of the store where the bigger items were kept. The camping store was not as large as the electronic place where he had first entered the mall but it was pretty extensive. Almost a dozen tents, demonstration models ranging from kid’s pop-up tents to large, multi-room family units, were set up in the back of the store. In the dark, they created an eerie maze. Cots that apparently no one had thought of using and other camping furniture dotted the area throughout the tents.
“Shit.”
Donnie found the section of wall where the store had obviously kept its watercraft. It wasn’t a big selection. A bunch of empty hooks which must have held canoes and kayaks greeted the beam of his flashlight. Off to one side were several oars and paddles resting against the wall, leftover. Donnie turned his light on some nearby shelves. They were empty and as he got closer to study them he could see price tags that indicated some inflatable boats had been kept there. Nothing was left for him to use now, not even a child-sized boat.
“Well, this sucks,” Donnie said.
With annoyance, Donnie thought of how he’d risked his neck getting as far as the mall, only a block away from his building. Those weird crabs, and the currents. Just the fact that, if he’d gone overboard, he might have never gotten back to the raft and he’d have drowned like all the bodies he’d seen out there. Now, it could all be for nothing, he might just have to wait the storm out anyway. He hadn’t completely given up hope though with the department store still to check.
It wasn’t overly cold in the dark store, but in his clammy clothes Donnie started to shiver. As Jody had suggested, he should change. He cast his flashlight over the racks of clothing as he walked toward the front of the store. It seemed to be mostly jackets and coats, or fishing waders, not a complete change of clothes. A shelf full of boots and gumboots was advertised as waterproof. He should come back and claim some of it if he was going back outside, he thought, but he’d get a change of his clothes in the department store first.
Before he left, Donnie stopped and turned on the counters and registers again. The IOU notes were stiff in the breezeless room. His light gleamed and refracted off the glass countertops. He thought about the crabs. What if they got inside, or something even worse appeared? Paranoid, he didn’t want to be left fighting with something totally makeshift again, like the table leg.
Several knives had clearly already been removed from the broken cabinet. For whatever reason, Donnie’s heart started pounding as he circled behind it. Maybe it felt too much like stealing. Maybe it was just thinking back to his fight against the crab creatures, the thought of facing them again, that got his heart pumping. If he was serious about it, he needed a knife that would get through their hard shells. He picked the knife with the longest and most solid-looking blade, with a serrated back and keen, gleaming edge. It had a hard, sharp tip that looked like it could pierce one of those crab’s shells and then the blade was long enough to impale such an animal on. Its hilt and sheath were black. Donnie slid the knife into its sheath and tucked the sheath through his belt.
Leaving the camping store, Donnie headed for the big department store right next to it. Like the cinema, the entrance was dark and cavernous without power in the building. There were no lights inside at all. Ranks of registers stood unoccupied with the shutters wide open. Donnie’s flashlight played across the entrance and the racks of clothing immediately inside. There was no sign of any people either, although he could hear music and people back in the food court. The residue of the mild panic attack was still in his system, however, and the department store felt kind of threatening.
“Hello?” Donnie shouted.
Donnie didn’t want to surprise anyone, or have them surprise him. No one answered so he kept moving into the body of the store. Signs hung from the ceiling, ‘Men’s Clothing’, ‘Women’s Clothing’, ‘Homewares’, ‘Toys’, and more. Finding his way through the dark, Donnie picked up a large, fluffy towel in homewares and threw it over his shoulder as he continued toward the men’s clothing section.
Slipping behind some of the racks of clothing, Donnie unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it on the floor with a damp splat. He peeled off his undershirt as well. Goosebumps broke out across his exposed torso. Donnie felt an uncomfortable thrill at stripping off in what would normally be a public space. His flashlight and the knife sat on top of a nearby shelf. Drying off, Donnie scrubbed himself with the towel. He then wrapped the towel around his waist and pulled off his pants and underwear as well. The thrill faded into awkwardness, feeling nothing but exposed and vulnerable. Quickly, Donnie dried off his legs and everything else before anyone would have a chance to find him.
Towel tied off around his waist, Donnie found fresh underwear and socks, tearing them out of their packets and pulling them on. He looted a pair of thick jeans next. Strolling the shelves, he found an undershirt, polo, and thin, grey hoodie, figuring it would be smartest to dress in layers. He padded over to the shoe section and took a cheap pair of sneakers in his size. Donnie felt more human once he was changed and in shoes again, warm and dry and covered up. Running the towel through his hair, Donnie finished drying off and then hung the towel off the end of another rack of clothing.
A noise from nearby caught Donnie’s attention. Something thumped, hard and aggressively as if falling over. Donnie paused, listening, and it happened again, thumping and rattling. Returning to where he’d left his borrowed flashlight and the knife, he retrieved both. Wanting to free his hands, Donnie tucked the knife and its sheath into the waistband of his jeans. He threaded through the racks of women’s clothing, larger than the men’s section. A sign reading ‘Dressing Rooms’ hung over another entryway. The noise was coming from inside, clattering as if something was trapped in there. It was accompanied by a wet sort of sound and Donnie was on alert. He imagined something that might have gotten inside after all, like the crab but bigger. Something with tentacles whipping and thudding against the narrow walls.
Donnie thought about yelling out again but something stole his voice. His heart pumped hard with nerves again, hands shaking. He kept the beam of his flashlight low. Whatever he was tracking was thudding almost rhythmically now, and Donnie saw one of the dressing room curtains billowing. Donnie gripped the handle of his knife, jutting from his waistband, and slid it loose. Continuing forward against his better instincts, he held the knife in his right hand and flashlight, pointed low, in the other.
Using his knife, Donnie reached out to the shaking dressing room curtain. Something animal was in there, he was sure of it. He figured he could dazzle it with the flashlight, giving him a chance to get away and run, and warn the others. Only if he absolutely needed to defend himself would he attack it with the knife.
Donnie whipped the curtain sideways. In the same movement, he threw the beam of the flashlight up and flooded the dressing room. Two smooth, white buttocks moving in rhythm were the first thing Donnie saw. They were buried in the crux of two shapely legs, which had their ankles locked around the owner of said buttocks’ lower back. Someone jerked and let out a short scream. Donnie stumbled back and caught glimpses of a man’s back, breasts, rumpled clothes, and a woman’s face in an ‘O’ of surprise.
“What the fuck?” a man’s voice said.
“Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Donnie said.
“A knife, he’s got a knife!” the woman screamed.
The woman started thrashing and squealing in a panic. The man pulled away, staggering sideways, and crashed into one of the dressing room’s walls. The couple had been having sex on the bench, cushioned by their clothes, but they must have been bouncing off the wall before settling into it when Donnie heard them. Donnie kept stumbling backward, retreating until he was completely clear of the dressing rooms.
“I’m sorry!” Donnie shouted. “I wasn’t trying to attack you, I thought-, I thought-, it doesn’t matter, sorry!”
Donnie stopped outside the entrance to the dressing rooms, holding the knife in one hand and the flashlight in the other. Waiting awkwardly, he wasn’t sure if he should stay there and make his apology clear or run for it. Realising he was still holding the knife like an attacker, Donnie hurriedly slipped it back into its sheath and covered it with the hoodie.
After a few moments, the guy reappeared in the entryway, buckling himself back into a pair of jeans. Seeing Donnie, he spread his hands in a gesture of peace. The man was tall and had a lean, well-muscled torso with ropey arms. He could have probably beaten the crap out of Donnie if he wanted, Donnie thought. He swept the longish hair back from his face and grinned in embarrassment.
“Hey, I’m sorry, man,” the guy said.
“No, no, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-, I didn’t mean to interrupt or anything,” Donnie said. “I thought there-, this is stupid, but I thought there was an animal in there.”
“An animal?” The guy laughed. “No, I get it, it’s creepy in here.”
“No, it’s just that I was outside and-, it doesn’t matter.”
“Man, crazy, I’m sorry but we couldn’t resist. I guess the thing about having risky public sex is it’s, you know, risky. I’d better get back.”
The shirtless guy backed off, into the darkness of the dressing rooms. Embarrassed, Donnie backed away as well. He used his flashlight to negotiate his way back through the department store. By the time he got to the registers, Donnie couldn’t help laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. The thought that the couple couldn’t resist taking advantage of this massive disaster for the thrill of some less risky than usual dressing room sex was ludicrous and probably said a lot about human nature.