With one of them masked, the three cautiously walked into the mall, turned on their flashlights, and began to wander into the dark abyss known formerly as the…
“Food court,” Zoe observed. “Check it out. This was the last time I ate Subway.”
The three looked over the gutted Subway, the gutted KFC and the gutted obligatory Chinese food place. None of the stores had anything left except dusty counters and disheveled equipment that was too heavy to carry out quickly.
“Do you think this stuff still works?” Tyler asked.
“What, do you want to see if you can make me a sandwich?” Zoe joked with one eyebrow down.
Tyler shone his flashlight in his friend’s face in response. “No, I’m just saying, this stuff has gotta be worth a fortune.”
“It would be impossible for someone like us to sell,” Nami pointed out. “Plus, where would we even sell it?”
“Kijiji?” Tyler offered.
“I didn’t come to explore this mall so we could lug off seven-hundred-pound deep fryers and sell them on Kijiji,” Zoe butted in annoyedly. “We don’t even know if they still work. If you want to play packrat, bring a bag or something.”
“What’s this look like?” Tyler demanded, turning around and showing off his backpack.
“Ooh, nice,” Zoe dryly commented. “How many deep fryers do you think could fit in that bad boy?”
While the other two were arguing, Nami was having her own little problem. It was odd – last year she could go for hours without having a mask on, it really was no bother to her, and yet… in this mall, every passing second she kept the mask on, it felt like she was getting less and less air. Stranger still, when she lowered the mask, she felt normal again, so it wasn’t like the air was just thinner in the mall somehow or something. Mulling over what Zoe said earlier, Nami decided to discard her normally cautious nature and join her friends with a naked face.
Neither of the other two noticed as the group pressed on, exploring store after store.
“This gives me Five Nights at Freddy’s vibes,” Tyler murmured as he looked over a clothing store’s inner walls.
“Yeah, try not to think about how all of our flashlights have limited batteries,” Zoe laughed.
“I brought a spare!” Nami cut in helpfully.
“Namiiii,” Zoe sang angrily, “Don’t tell Tyler that! I wanted to see him get all scared like at the Carlevale house.”
“I was not scared at the Carlevale house!”
The other two began to laugh. “You yelped like a baby, Tyler,” Nami laughed.
“This is treason,” Tyler complained.
“Even if you were our leader, no it’s not,” Zoe laughed.
Tyler would have said something in response but a loud echoing clang from down the mall cut him off. Instinctively the trio looked at each other, then all ran to the counter of the store they were currently in, ducking down behind it and giggling with fright.
“Holy shit,” Zoe chuckled.
“Wait, quiet,” Tyler ordered. The three listened for a little while longer but no sound came. “Do you think that was a natural sound, or someone else?”
“If it’s someone else, that means they either are already in here, or that clang was them arriving,” Nami thought to herself.
“Which means if they used our entrance, they’re between it and us,” Zoe finished the thought. “We can’t just run for it.”
“But if they’re already here, they could be anywhere!” Tyler countered.
“That echo sounds like it was from pretty far away,” said Nami.
“Yeah, but if it’s that echoey but that loud, it had to be big,” Tyler pointed out. “We’re not talking like a mouse or something. Either this place is more unstable than we thought, or there’s someone else in here.”
“Wow, both options suck. Thanks, Tyler,” Zoe sarcastically grumbled.
“You suck,” Tyler shot back.
Normally, the trio were never quite this humorous when a situation like this unfolded. This type of situation only happened once before, when a security guard was looking over the field they were wandering on. The three hid and shivered with fright. Oddly, this time there was no shivering. In fact, the trio kind of found it… exciting, in a weird way.
“I actually kinda like this,” Zoe said out loud to no one in particular. “Is this what being an adrenaline junkie is like?”
“A-ha! Junkie! And you came down on me for saying hobo bum,” Tyler replied.
“If it has the word ‘adrenaline’ in front of it, it clearly means something else, idiot,” she told him. “You were actually describing a homeless person.”
“Speaking of, I don’t hear any footsteps. Or any other noises,” Tyler replied, choosing to ignore her comment. “Whatever it was, it’s not wandering around. It either was not man-made or the man… lives here.”
“You did say if you were homeless you’d live here,” Nami replied.
“Hell, if their house is an abandoned mall then as far as I’m concerned, they live on public property,” Tyler continued, standing up.
“Yeah, this is still private property, and you’re still an idiot,” Zoe countered, standing up with him.
“Should we get out of here?” Nami asked. “We should at least make a plan.” She stood up with them.
“Okay, yeah,” Tyler agreed. “Okay, shine your flashlights backwards. On us. That way the trail of light isn’t visible, but we can still see. I’ll go first, in case the worst happens. I took three years of kung fu so I can do self-defence basics.”
“Backwards, on us?” Zoe repeated.
“Yeah, got a problem with that?”
“Aside from it being the dumbest shit I ever heard, no problem at all,” Zoe raised her voice at him. “If we point it backwards, and there’s a guy at the end of a long hallway, we’re literally pointing a light at ourselves. We’ll be able to see him but he can’t see us. But if we point it forwards, if we’re thinking about self-defence, we’ll be able to see him and more importantly, blind him.”
“But if he’s in a store or at an angle or something, he’ll be able to see where we are by following the light…” Tyler weakly protested.
“There are three of us and one of him,” Nami added thoughtfully.
“Unless there’s, like, a commune of ‘em,” Tyler replied.
“Homeless of the world unite?” Zoe joked.
The three snickered and decided to venture off into the darkness after a few seconds of non-movement. “So are we going back or going forward?” Nami asked.
“I actually kinda want to go forward, if I’m being honest,” Tyler admitted. “Think about it. No footsteps. Big clang. Maybe something cool happened and there’s no one else here and we get to be the first to see it.”
“You are the dumbest person I have ever met,” Zoe told him. “I’m in.”
Nami didn’t reply. She felt her breathing getting deeper. Maybe it was the fear, or just her trying to make sure fear wouldn’t set in. Plus, she couldn’t smell anything other than must and age in the air, which was a good sign, though every once in a while, she thought she could pick up a whiff of something else. She didn’t know how to describe it.
The trio continued into the dark, never knowing what they’d come across. All they knew was that they were walking in the general direction of where the sound was coming from.
“Keep an eye out for anything that looks like it crashed,” Tyler piped up in a loud whisper.
“Looks like it crashed?” Zoe asked him.