Paul came to the same conclusion that Logan did. “We don’t talk about the Fastball Special.”
“Fine,” I huffed, “but it worked, didn’t it?” I looked over the rail into the dark loading bay and tried to get my breath back. Tossing him up high enough to grab the rail and pull himself onto the roof had been the easy part. I surprised both of us with my new strength and Paul had only just managed to suppress a shout as he had been launched into the air. The hard part was finding out I can’t climb a rope with only one hand. After I’d been fumbling with the rope for an inordinate amount of time, Paul had gotten tired of waiting, climbed down the emergency escape ladder and pushed it down to ground level as quietly as possible. That said, even with a ladder, getting to roof level had been a trial. I had to brace my back against the ladder cage and hook my left arm around the rung so I could reach up with my right to pull myself up. It was exactly no fun at all with the wound on my back stinging every time. Oh how I wish for video game healing. If only I could crouch behind a waist high wall for a few seconds and all the pain goes away.
Rather than squash my backpack between myself and the cage I’d elected to clip it to my belt with the chest strap, making it swing awkwardly and bang into the back of my knees and nearly making me fall one time. All in all, it was the least stealthy wall ascension I could have achieved. On a scale of Juggernaut to Batman, I was at best a Scott Summers. Fortunately no-one came to investigate.
When I could finally breathe without wheezing we made our way over to the open door the drone had spotted. I armed myself with a screwdriver from the toolkit keeping the door open, Paul opted for a ball-peen hammer. I asked him if he was worthy of lifting it, but the joke was lost on him. Paul wasn’t a comic book fan.
At the bottom of the staircase that the door had opened into was a dimly lit corridor. Only the government mandated emergency lights provided illumination, pointing the way to the exits. We weren't looking for an exit so we went the other way. The corridor was littered with trash and partly blocked by trolleys, but it was all old and dusty which gave us confidence that the idiots infesting this place had no interest in it as a thoroughfare. We still did our best to step lightly and avoid standing on anything crunchy.
“So, Ace, what ARE we doing here?” Paul asked in a stage whisper. Moving quietly in an urban environment was not in his skill set so he defaulted to what movies had shown him.
“You don’t need to whisper,” I replied. “In fact that draws more attention in a situation like this. Just talk normally. As to what we’re doing, first we’re going to find an electronics shop. Doesn’t matter which, JB, Hardley Normal, whatever. I’m going to score a couple new phones.”
Paul pulled up short. “Looting? At a time like this?”
“No, comms. We’re going to find a way to slip the phones to the ladies, gather intel. Capish?” I made the Italian mobster hand gesture. “We’re not going to run in guns blazing, mostly because we don’t have any.”
“Oh, makes sense. JB’s down that way then.” He pointed to the right side of an upcoming branch in the hall.
“How could you possibly know that?” I asked, brows furrowing.
“The sign on the wall.”
“Oh. Well spotted.”
Taking the indicated right we came to a locked door. There was an electronic card reader beside the door and a cypher lock on the door. We had neither. There was, however, a reinforced glass portal in the door to prevent people opening the door into someone outside it. I peered through the window and could see a thoroughly ransacked backroom with boxes and equipment strewn from wall to wall. Half the lights had been smashed as well, the remains of the fluro tubes glinting on the floor like diamond dust.
I fiddled with the cypher lock for a moment, trying the obvious combinations. 1234 was a bust, as was 9876. 1111 wouldn't work with this style of lock. “You have any ideas?” I asked Paul.
“Just one,” he replied. “It worked on the electronic lock we ran into in Baghdad in 2003.”
I gestured for him to give it a try.
He leaned down next to the lock body and inspected it for a moment. He traced a line between the card reader and the door jamb. He took one more look at me, leaned back and kicked the crap out of the door. His foot went clean through the wood just to the right of the door handle, which popped clean off as he withdrew.
I stared in amazement. “Are you shitting me? That’s what you guys did over there?”
“Actually, we used a dummy round in an M79, but the principle is the same.” He pulled the door open and ushered me in like an English butler.
We tiptoed into the darkened store, the broken glass crunching under our feet. My ears were straining for the sounds of an incoming assault squad but none came. I could feel my stomach churning in anticipation. I’d never gone calmly into a fight, every tournament had been a balance between the need for detachment and the application of violence. He who loses his temper loses the fight, I thought. is all well and good, but these guys aren’t fighting for points on a board.
To be fair, the guys I’d fought hadn’t been engaged in a tickle fight either. They were out to hurt you, as quickly and as efficiently as possible. My heart was hammering in my ears again, like it had when I faced the mini-dragon. I looked at Paul, his eyes like saucers, and I knew I had to take the lead here. I was the one with System experience.
“Mate, we’re good,” I assured him. “We made a bit of noise back there, but no-one’s coming. Listen.” I held up a hand to indicate the silence.
Paul leaned on a shelf, getting his breathing under control. The stock from the shelf was strewn across the floor. The lesser TV models had been smashed, the vacuums had had their tubes torn off as makeshift swords or lances, the DVD players and the better stereos were missing entirely.
In a corner, possibly abandoned, a Dragon branded electric scooter sat charging. The power light flashed on and off in a slow blink, indicating it was fully powered and ready to go. I nodded to it. “Paul, you think you can ride that thing?”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
“I was riding scooters while you were still a twinkle in your daddy’s eye,” Paul muttered. “Of course I can.”
“Good. Grab it, we’re going to need a getaway vehicle.”
While Paul figured out the plug on the scooter, I moved to the front of the store. Like the back room, there was glass everywhere. It seemed that the lizard folk who had called dibs on the shopping centre had smashed the storefront of every shop that even mildly offended them. What JB had done to draw their ire I had no idea, maybe refused one of their number a refund? Sold them a dud coffee maker?
I picked through the mess until I had acquired a pair of functional Pixel phones. There weren’t any iPhones laying about, which showed that even in an apocalypse, people went for brand over functionality. I also stuffed a bunch of drones in my bag, both the flying type and the kind that drove along the floor. I didn’t bother with the chargers or remote controls, I already had enough chargers and they’d all connect to my tablet so the remote control was superfluous.
A loud stomping from outside the store made me freeze in place. I glanced across to where Paul should have been but he’d clearly heard it too and ducked out of sight so I threw myself behind a display before the owner of the footfalls came into view.
A loud slapping echoed up the hall and I peeked around the corner. A long nosed reptilian humanoid was catching up with the rest of the group that appeared to be patrolling the centre. They seemed inordinately pleased with themselves.
“Guys, guys, guys! Look! I’m wearing crocs!” They shouted. “Gettit?”
The rest of the patrol shook their heads and kept walking. I smiled, admiring the commitment to the bit, but wasn’t going to give away our position by clapping.
When they had all moved on I hissed to Paul. “Oi, you ready to go?”
Paul popped out from behind a stack of boxes. “Born ready,” he wielded a plastic replica Master Sword. “By the power of Greyskull!”
He’s a little confused, but he’s got the spirit, I thought. I gave him a double thumbs up.
We made our way down the hall towards the brightest lit area. I figured that if Paul was getting his idea of what the post-apocalypse should look like from American zombie movies, then these wanna-be Yanks would be even more likely to follow movie tropes than think for themselves. I fully expected whoever was running this show to have hauled the Santa throne out of storage and covered it in Halloween skull string lights and I was not far disappointed. We ducked into a nearby T2 shop, taking cover behind a pile of Earl Grey boxes.
“So, what’s your plan?” Paul poked his head around the stack and checking for patrols.
“It works like this,” I said, slipping off my backpack. I pulled out a cute robot dog and set it on the floor. “Rufus here is going to scout for us. He can transmit sound and video to us and when I do this,” I connected it to my tablet, “it will say what you type into this box.”
A stylized robotic voice repeated what I’d just said and typed into the text input. I thanked the genius who’d designed Swype, typing one handed was a curse. I set Rufus on the ground and piloted it out into the walkway. The FPV perspective made the mall seem even bigger than it really was and the ground rushed past under the tiny wheels in his paws.
As easy as I suppose I’m making it seem, the mall wasn’t exactly deserted. There were small groups of lizard people loitering about in little cliques. Some ignored Rufus entirely, some sniggered and threw whatever came to hand. One or two flipped it the bird.
All in all I’d picked the right bot for the job though, since nobody took it seriously. Rufus arrived in the open area where the throne stood, unoccupied. I spun Rufus in a circle, trying to figure out where the guy in charge was, or where he might be stashing captives, when a scream cut through the air.
Our heads snapped around, it had come from entirely the opposite direction, from Myers. Of course, I realised, it’s got everything! Beds, clothes, whitegoods, the lot. Everything to make a fortress a home.
I cut the connection with Rufus, he’d never get back in time, held up a hand to Paul, who looked like he was about to run out and do something stupid, and pulled another drone from my bag. This one was a fixed-wing, foam-contructed job from China with a name to match. It vaguely resembled an X-Wing fighter, but was just distinct enough to avoid copyright law.
“New plan,” I said, taping an Nokia 8210 to the bottom. “We’re not going in blind, I’m going to send this first, but we’re going too. You good with that?”
Paul nodded, his face pale. “How are you so calm?”
I threw the drone and made sure it was flying down the centre of the aisle and not going to hit anything on the way. We stepped out of hiding, but since we were headed away from the makeshift throne room we didn’t encounter any patrols right away. “I’m calm because I’m 99% sure that wasn’t either of our wives. I’m not callous, we’re going to help, but I’m not rushing in and getting killed for some random. We’re doing this smart.”
I pulled him back into an alcove and checked the tablet screen. The drone had almost reached the far end of the hall already and I could see that two of the three roller doors at the front of Myer were pulled down. The last one was guarded by a pair of lizard people in leather jackets, jeans and boots. One was armed with a broom handle with a cleaver tied to the end, the other with an honest to Bob crossbow. As the drone flew closer the crossbow wielder took a shot and missed, the bolt sinking into the roof. The improvised glaive sheared off a wingtip as it passed, however, and sent the drone spinning into the interior of the store. I thumbed the power button on the tablet and dropped it into my backpack.
“We gotta go, now while he’s reloading!” I took off running as fast as I could, not looking back for Paul and just hoping he’d keep up.
My new strength made running easier, but even at his advanced age Paul was fitter than I was. I was just starting to find my breath labouring when he overtook me, feet slapping on the marble floor.
The two guards stared in shock at the sheer audacity of our charge, two obvious humans daring to invade their sanctum. The crossbow guy had just managed to get the string in place when Paul clotheslined him, slamming his head into the metal runner behind him where the shutter ended. Mr Choppy Stick didn’t fare any better, when he tried to use his weapon like a spear. If it had had a sharp tip it might have worked but I took the blunt top edge straight to the chest, trusted my motorcycle jacket to save my skin, and drove my foot into his sternum.
Most Tae Kwan Do styles use a Korean term, like Up Chugi or similar. The style I learned just used english terms and called it a “front kick”, because you kick in front of you. And kick I did, the guy dropped his weapon as the breath whooshed out of his body. He folded in half and slid across the ground to fetch up against the shelves by the register. I picked up the stick, shoved cleaver off with my foot and gave the length of wood an experimental whirl. I didn’t like the heft, it didn’t suit me and I couldn’t really control it with one hand so I put my foot in the middle and snapped it in half. I fetched my own weapon out of my bag and flipped it over end for end as I walked up to my fallen opponent. His eyes widened as I approached holding a screwdriver the length of my forearm, but I flipped it again and it was Lights Out Doreen.
I looked over at Paul, who had the crossbowman in a sleeper hold. He gave me a slight nod, approving of my non-lethal approach. I nodded back. The world might have changed, but that was no excuse for abandoning our humanity.
Another scream ripped through the shopping centre. Even if our opponents have.
Paul dropped the unconscious body to the ground, appropriated the crossbow and slotted a bolt into it and looked through the sights. “Time to finish this?”