Mall Walkers Contest |
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Exchanged Goods
by Keary Birch
The dull lighting makes the people look pale and washed out, as they wander aimlessly around the mall isles. Their blank bored eyes hardly even seem to blink as they pick up tins, examine them and them place them gently back in their slots on the shelves. They don't talk, they don't even murmur to themselves. They shuffle along, almost in time to the muzak that plays over tinny undersized speakers set into the walls. One girl sits grey and lifeless at the checkout her lank greasy hair falling occassionally over her eyes. Her eye makeup is slightly smeared, and the chomp, chomp of her jaws, as she munches on her, by now tastless, bubble gum, makes a rhythmic sound like a distant runner through mud.
A quiet, whirring noise is heard from one end of the store and the shoppers slow, stop and turn to look disinterestedly towards the brushed stainless steel doors of the elevator. The light showing the floor number flickers up towards the top and stops. The world freezes like a breath being held.
There is a cheery ting!
The doors slide open. Thunder erupts as a shotgun is fired through the open doors and a shopper falls noiselessly with half of their chest missing. A rebel yell echoes out of the stainless steel box that is the lift and three people leap out, guns blazing. They are dressed in an assortment of mismatched army fatigues and black rock and roll tee-shirts, with cartoon images emblazoned on them. The girl has a bandanna holding back her hair, one man has a baseball cap, turned backwards on his head, the other a cowboy hat set at a jaunty angle. There is rage and fear in their eyes.
The shoppers give out a low moan and stumble towards them.
One middle aged man with a paunch reaches towards the girl, but she sees the movement out of the corner of her eye and turns, places the end of her sawnoff against his chin and pulls the trigger. Blood sprays in a mist over the pile of baked bean tins, and the head rolls down the isle to end up facing a row of deoderant.
Two twin teenage girls, dive forwards, their fingers clawing towards the face of the cowboy, but are thrown backwards in an explosion of bone and tendons as the two men stand their ground and fire as one. The cowboy turns towards the baseball capped man, smiles and nods his thanks. He is hit from behind by an old woman, who has emerged from the ladies washroom behind him. He goes down and is instantly swamped by four children with blank eyes and slavering mouths.
The baseball capped man screams and using his shotgun as a club tries to drive off the attackers from his comrade. He is grasped from the ground, by the shopper with half its body missing, and is dragged down to the floor. His reaching hand grabs hold of a rail of designer shirts which topples on top of the writhing melee.
The girl in the bandanna, having seen her colleagues demise, backs into the lift firing ,almost blindly, into the approaching zombies. She reaches out and hits the down button. The doors close once more with the same clinical ting, and she slumps. There is a noise behind her and she tenses, turning.........
On the shop floor the shoppers stop, and sensing no more life turn back to their slow shuffling. Their ranks swelled by two newcomers. One with a baseball cap, the other with a cowboy hat set at a jaunty angle
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