It was all I could to stay sane, surrounded by darkness, filled with pain. Repeating in my head over and over, “you’re going to make it”. The horrors to this point would fill any sort of quota that my life would require, sure I had seen fake corpses in movies or real ones in documentaries, but not like this.
Our broken and battered party was getting more tired by the second, especially those of us with any form of hazardous wounds. Jed couldn’t walk still, my arm continued to have a searing pain where the hole was located, Neil’s arm started to go numb, and Ashely, the lady whose leg was impaled, had pain just as bad as mine. Meghan, the lady who had little wounds to her name, was helping Ashely keep a quicker pace.
As well as our bodies having been pushed through a grinder, our minds were also wrecked. Wracked with guilt over our losses, alongside being pushed to the brink of insanity over the death we had witnessed in such a short time. None of us were used to this, Jed maybe saw some gore in his time spent to become a doctor, but this was too much.
Jed did agree with me that the homeware store could lead us up above, and if it didn’t, we may need to make sacrifices. The next stairwell to the surface he knew of was a good 20-minute walk, maybe more with the collapses. A closer one would have been possible, but the hallways were either buried under rubble or behind flooded sections that half of us couldn’t get through.
We eventually did find a map that showed off the underground mall, but a fat lot of good it did us when checking the nearby paths we could have taken were inaccessible to all but Meghan. If I could punch the walls in frustration, I would, but with only one good arm, and that was pushing it, I didn’t want to risk any more injuries.
Jed’s wheels started to squeak after the hell they had been put through in such a short time, adding to the annoyance I already found myself trying to ignore. Cascading rocks from rubble piles, the rumble here and there. It was a soundscape that grated on what nerves I still had.
It was getting close to possibly two hours since my impalement, each passing minute caused me more agony and exhaustion. Confiding in Jed who had become my quick physician, his estimates of me staying conscious didn’t bode well for our progress. It was a miracle I was still standing without proper treatment, let alone the blood loss leading to some severe side effects.
Drinking water, taking meds, and eating protein gave me precious minutes that I couldn’t do without. If any of us were to fall, we would not be able to take them any further. Half of us had half our arms, another without his legs. Meghan could drag someone, but it’d be so slow that it would risk another falling.
Playing the endings in my head, thinking of each path I could take, or just making sure everyone else was still able to walk, I filled my mind with repeatable actions to take my attention away.
Time passed quickly as I whittled away the walk in my head, almost hitting a wall as we reached the cross-junction of hallways. Smashed down upper walkways, leaking pipes of both water and gas, complete disarray across the floor. It was certainly a sight to see and smell, but we made it, the large homeware store was in front of us.
“That’ll be it. Fuck, hope it’s clear inside”, Jed spoke.
“Fucking hope so, I can’t feel my arm”, Neil responded.
Meghan and Ashely responded by readjusting themselves for further movement, Meghan had slowly been giving more and more aid to Ashely since losing their earlier friend. I could tell we were all at the end of our ropes, Jed’s hand had turned red from turning his wheels almost constantly, so I offered to push him through the store.
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As we entered the store, a new surprise was awaiting us in the form of a dinging noise. The electricity was working?
Looking side to side, we could see that the lights on the doors were fading in and out, alongside some local screens showing static. Looking back, it seemed some of the other electronics in the centre had come to life. Lit up arrows, signs of neon, and the whirring of arcade machines in the distance breathed energy back into the dead underground.
“Think they fixed the generators or power lines?” Meghan put forth.
Digging my phone out of my pocket I was eager to see if I could call out to any emergency services, though as bad luck would have it, my phone was dead.
The others did the same as they saw my sad gaze. Neil’s was snapped in two, Jed’s was frozen and fucked beyond repair, Meghan and Ashely had their phones on their lunch table and lost them in the collapse. Well, there goes that idea.
“Fuck sake, I’d try the phones on display if they actually worked”, I spoke, looking over the nearby aisles.
“Our best bet is to use what we got, with power the escalators may work, I don’t trust the elevators”, Jed added.
Oh god, the idea of being trapped in an elevator whilst also being trapped in an underground shopping centre was terrifying, I agreed wholeheartedly to stay far from any death traps like that.
The beginning portion of the homeware store seemed to be mostly electronics like phones, tablets and televisions. The whirring of static filled the floor with the sounds of a horror movie, though there was a certain lack of blood or dust to accompany it. A somewhat dazzling display of colours was on show as displays worked their advertising magic to get you to buy their merchandise.
I thanked whatever decided the homeware store was to be left untouched by the disaster. Though untouched was relative, there was still some damage here or there from plenty of items having fallen over. There weren’t any other buildings deciding to rent space with their walls and ceiling collapsing into the store.
Pushing Jed along I could see the others regain pep to their steps, hopping faster and dragging their feet at a pace that would be great for dusting the floors. It wasn’t long till we got to the escalators within the middle of the store, a grand display of crisscrossing diagonal stairs that ascended upwards into the higher floors. Sadly, our hope of a quick ascent was dashed as we heard no sound.
Moving to the upwards escalator we looked down at it with disappointment, it was as dead as we were going to be if we couldn’t get up quick enough. The nearby boards noted it would be a good 4 levels to climb to get to the surface, not a lot normally, but only three of us had good legs under us. We were all tired and at the end of any adrenaline left in our systems.
Kneeling down to the side of the escalator, I almost collapsed. I need to start this fucking thing. Fumbling around with the torch in my mouth I am able to thumb thin lines made in a rectangular shape. The control box.
“Jed… Hand me the scissors”, I ask weakly.
“You alright, Zeke?”
“C'mon, I need to get into the… the controls.”
Taking the scissors from Jed’s outstretched arm I start to stab at the sides of the panel, and in its keyhole. C'mon! Fucking open!
Each strike leaves me weaker and weaker, my hand growing limp as I try in vain to get the latch open. I hear the distant steps of Neil going off in a different direction, did I miss something he said?
“Hey, where is Neil going?”
“He said he’s going to look for a staff room”, Ashely responds.
“A key… a key would do better work than this fucking thing”, I respond, my words slurring slightly.
As I continue to do my best at opening the latch I can feel myself slipping into a deep sleep. My body grows numb, the pain subsides, and my arm flails against the metal protecting the controls of the escalator. I would have been thankful if only the pain went away, but with it, so did my consciousness.
The last thing I could hear was a ringing in my ears combined with the sound of my friends calling out my name, the words warping as if they were in a tumble dryer a mile away from me. As my back hits the floor beneath me, I could find solace in the fact that I was already in a seated position, though a hard surface was never a good thing to land on.
I just… need to sleep… just for a bit.
“Zeke! Zeke!”