Dead World | Novel | Dead Zero Read online

  The last one, Thom was perfectly willing to believe. Hemisphere’s poster boy and CEO, Archibald Burgess, was supposedly in his upper seventies but looked fifty, and a muscular and vibrant half-century at that. The press found him obnoxious, but Thom saw him as refreshing. He’d seen a lot of obnoxious doctors with Carly’s group. Men and women who couldn’t admit to being fallible, so sure they were right that the literature was overflowing with patients who died of a doctor’s arrogance more than any disease.

  Doctors were afraid of being sued, walking a line between “too conservative” and “not conservative enough.” But Burgess wasn’t a doctor. He was a businessman, with an engineer’s brain. A man after Thom’s own heart.

  “Come on,” Thom said.

  When they made it to the marquee entrance, they found more familiar vans. Bakersfield PD, and even a SWAT unit with its rear doors open, its members approaching the building.

  Thom waved Brendan in a far circle, looking at the GPS app the entire time, until they were past the cops and to a smaller, secondary entrance nearly another third of the way around the building. The only upside was that this entrance was right past the food court. It was the closest to Carly’s dot that they were going to get.

  At the door, Thom turned again to Brendan. “Stay out here.”

  “Alone?”

  “Hide over there.” He pointed. “Brendan? Listen to me. This is really important. Don’t think you’re not helping by being here. If they come out, you need to make sure you tell them to stay put. If you’re not here, they could run out and we’ll just end up in a circle.”

  “But we can see that Mom’s phone …” He pointed to the app.

  “Grandpa doesn’t have a phone and neither does Rosie. We can’t be sure they’re together. Your grandfather gets confused sometimes, and Rosie’s kind of in the clouds all the time. If she’s alone and she comes out here and nobody’s around to get her …”

  “Okay,” Brendan said. “I understand.”

  “I’ll be fast.”

  He moved out. Brendan called to him.

  Thom turned back around. “What?”

  “My phone. You’ve got my phone.”

  Feeling seconds tick away, he looked at the phone. Thom never configured his own tracker app. He’d always used Carly’s, and truth be told he’d never been great at tech — embarrassing for an engineer. But then again he was a civil engineer and not an electronic engineer or computer scientist, so he was, more often than not, free to be every bit the philistine he naturally was.

  He pulled out his own phone and threw it to Brendan, pausing mid-arc to realize the boy would probably drop and break the thing. But he caught it just fine.

  Thom said, “Set up the app and watch us, okay?”

  He looked around for a weapon, still wanting to believe this was a fire. But the more disturbing possibilities were starting to look a lot more possible. Police might come for a fire, but SWAT never would. He should really be armed if he was foolish enough to reenter the mall. But how?

  A pile of fencing supplies sat not far off — remnants of recent construction. Thom grabbed a short length of aluminum pipe, tested its heft and swing, then re-pocketed Brendan’s phone to free both hands.

  Then he nodded at his son and entered the mall.

  Nine

  What If?

  It was too still inside.

  The mall, when empty, had a low echo that existed almost below the level of human detection. Its emptiness and recent desertion had left their own ghosts, giving the place the creepy feel of a liminal space.

  He could hear drips coming from the food court. Perhaps someone’s beverage had overturned on the table and was now leaking to the floor. Now and then he heard shuffling. Human feet, probably, but in this cavernous space the proportional sound was more like roaches under the baseboards, or mice hiding in the walls.

  He tilted his head, listening for more screams. He’d heard them coming from all over, Thom had decided while outside. He just hadn’t tuned in; he hadn’t had the context to believe it. But now back inside, he knew those yells were missing. Three sets from different places.

  The fact that none remained seemed to mean one of two things. Either there was nothing left to fear here (something the abundant police presence outside appeared to contradict) or those who’d been screaming were no longer able to make any noise.

  After all, it hadn’t been the teeth-gnashing woman earlier who’d sounded like a roomful of crashing instruments. The cacophony had belonged to her companions. The man who’d gushed blood from his neck had been belting out a series of deafening bellows, right up until the second before his feet finally stopped moving.

  Could be the same reason for all the silence now?

  Thom saw activity and ducked, realizing it was a team of cops in riot masks. They had their guns drawn and were moving like a SEAL team. Four of them, heading toward the same hallway where Thom and Brendan had lived through a nightmare.

  Thom, destined for the Macy’s, stayed low to let them pass.

  He crept forward again once he thought they were gone. Thom believed he was alone, but here and there he began to see eyes in corners, underneath tables and benches and in-store displays.

  They were people — shoppers — hiding to wait out whatever-this-was. A few widened eyes looked at him like a savoir, but whenever Thom caught their attention he made the universal gesture to lay low and be cool — a slow, horizontal patting-down of the air.

  Near a suite of lobby massage chairs, Thom ducked again.

  This time the people sneaking through the space weren’t cops, or in SWAT gear. A man and a woman, both in black suit coats with skinny black ties. They were armed, holding strange, bell-ended weapons that reminded Thom of a Civil War-era blunderbuss. The things were somewhere between shotgun and pistol-length. Closer to MAC-10 size but all chrome and boxy casing.

  Something moved inside the nearby sporting goods store.

  The woman turned and aimed her weapon at the disturbance. The air filled with a sound like a come-here whistle, and at its end a garment rack leapt up from the ground, then crumpled upon landing as if squeezed by a giant hand.

  She pulled up immediately, seeing a trio of teenage girls who’d been hiding near the rack rush to take cover somewhere more substantial. The woman lowered her weapon, and the besuited gentleman leaned in to say something to her. The pair moved on, leaving Thom with a heavily furrowed brow.

  Once inside Macy’s, Thom found himself at the limit of his clues. The GPS dot was now covering his entire immediate area. He was well within its margin of error — now more like in the margin of error of the margin of error. It wasn’t a map to his wife’s phone. It had simply pointed him in the right direction.

  “Carly!” Thom hissed to the empty store.

  His tried texting. No response.

  The phone issued a strange sound.

  Swearing and scrambling, he moved to mute the thing, sure he’d just been given away to …

  Well, to what? Only now did Thom stop to think that he had no idea what he was fleeing, or any clue as to what he thought might grab him. He’d seen that woman go nuts, of course, but that was an isolated whacko. What had cleared the entire mall, seemingly from three directions at once?

  Bizarre as it seemed, this entire experience had the feel of a siege. If the mall was a military target, the situation almost made sense. The enemy creates an ambush from all sides.

  But the mall was still just a mall and not a target at all.

  And what of the crazy woman? How did she factor into this?

  Thom looked at his phone. It seemed Brendan had gotten the app working outside and was now sending him a message directly through it rather than through text. No wonder he hadn’t recognized the notification sound.

  Thom read the message. Come out if you find Mom and Grandpa. I saw Rosie.

  What did it mean to see Rosie? Did he mean he’d found Rosie? That he had Rosie?

  Thom didn
’t want to try and figure out the new messaging system, so he switched to text and replied, I haven’t found them yet.

  His phone rang again — a different chirp this time, because apparently he hadn’t muted it after all. The context of the ring was strange, but Thom understood why when he looked at the screen.

  He’d texted Brendan, but he had Brendan’s phone. The sound that came back was his own text returning home. The notification was the same as the custom ring Brendan had set for his parents. An obnoxious animal sound that Thom absolutely hated. A narwhal breaching for air, or something.

  “Brendan?” came a voice.

  “Carly?”

  “Thom?”

  Carly stood from behind a checkout counter.

  Then she came to him, grasped him briefly, and said, “I’ve been texting you.”

  “Brendan has my phone.”

  She looked at the phone in Thom’s hand, in its bright blue case. “So I see. Is he safe?”

  “He’s outside.” Thom looked at the screen to confirm, and saw that Dad (really Brendan, with Thom’s phone) had shown up outside the mall instead of back at home where his dot had been since everyone else had configured their apps.

  “What happened here?” Thom asked.

  “I think there’s a wild animal loose.”

  “What?”

  “I know. But I heard all this growling and … Oh, shit.” Carly’s voice threatened to break before she reeled it in. “Thom, I went past this guy and he was … God.”

  Thom told her about his and Brendan’s adventures in the hall near the bathroom.

  “You think this was a person? A person did this?”

  “I only know what I saw.” Something was wrong. He squinted. “Where’s Rick?”

  “They ran off.”

  “Ran off!”

  “Don’t give me shit right now, Thom; I can’t take it!”

  He waved her down. “Fine. Okay. Where did you see him last?”

  “Don’t yell. Down by the yogurt place. They both slipped away.”

  “They—!” But he’d tacitly promised not to yell, so he breathed slowly instead. “Okay. Both of them?”

  “They both got away. I assume they’re together.”

  Thom raised Brendan’s phone and sent a text outside: Is Grandpa with Rosie?

  No.

  She’s alone?

  Yes.

  Are you sure?

  When are you coming out?

  Carly was waiting.

  Thom didn’t answer, then forgot outright to respond, looking at Carly instead. “I think there’s an exit back there.”

  “We’re on the top level.”

  He nodded. “It’s okay. I came in at the top level. The ground is higher on this side. Do you think we should look around for Rick first, or …”

  “He’d be with Rosie,” Carly told him.

  “Brendan said he wasn’t.”

  “He must have been at first, at least. I doubt he’s here.”

  Thom nodded decisively. Rick, even when slightly senile, was more than capable of taking care of himself. Their son was the bigger issue, as was the frail old woman in their care. They were both outside.

  “Okay. We’ll go out. If we can’t find Rick, we’ll … Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” He raised the fence post, then looked around. The area was still and quiet.

  “That way.” He pointed.

  Carly hesitated.

  “What?”

  “That’s where I saw the body.”

  Thom looked. “That way?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s the way out,” he told her.

  “I know.”

  “It’s just a body. Don’t look. Do you remember where it is?”

  She nodded.

  “Exactly where?”

  Another nod.

  Thom made his voice far more sure and strong than he felt. “Okay. So here’s what we do. You know where it is, so just don’t look there. Move your eyes anywhere else. Focus on the exit door. In fact … See it? Behind where it says Children’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Keep your eyes there, and not where you saw … the thing. I’ll watch your steps for you. Don’t worry, okay? I got this.”

  The words I got this, coming from Thom, sounded all wrong. It was too bold a thing to say — too take-charge for the Thoms of the world. Still, somehow, it fit neatly in this moment. Carly must have wanted to believe that her husband was strong. Thom, for his part, kept trying to forget that he wasn’t. The message came off as necessary rather than cheesy.

  Carly took his unencumbered arm. Thom would need it back if he had to start swinging, but for now the store was still and the way seemed more or less clear. There might be someone hiding in between with ill intent, but he didn’t think so. The woman Thom had seen earlier hadn’t been subtle or quiet. If she or someone like her was in the room, he felt fairly confident he’d know in plenty of time.

  They passed one rack after another. Despite his self-assurances, Thom startled at every shadow, sure something was going to spring out like a bag snatcher on Halloween. The sensation didn’t even make sense. The mall was deserted; it just felt all wrong because malls were only supposed to be empty when they were closed with all the gates rolled down.

  Having a department store open, with all the lights on, and the abandoned belongings of departed shoppers dropped haphazardly on the floor … it was odd enough to jar the loose screws inside his head.

  Worse, it was dawning on Thom that he didn’t actually know what he was supposed to be afraid of. This dizzy feeling had started with the insane woman going nuts and turning cannibal on her friend, but wasn’t she peripheral to what was happening now, with everyone running, with the SWAT and police?

  They wouldn’t have called all those people for one woman, no matter how out of control she might have been. So what else was happening here? He’d heard screams from this direction and thought they were part of the same scrap, suggesting that whatever happened here at least sounded like what Thom had seen.

  But … What?

  Was there another like the crazy woman? Were there two of them?

  Or, judging by the action he’d seen, maybe even three?

  Ridiculous. Crazy people didn’t coordinate. Robbers and terrorists did, same for crazies planning to stage a mass shooting. But try as he might, it was near impossible for Thom to imagine that woman gathering two of her friends and all of them agreeing on a single plan for unmitigated insanity.

  I’ll bite off fingers by the food court. Chuck, you bite off fingers at the Macy’s. Meet at the getaway car. Got it? Good.

  Thom didn’t have to know. What he had to do was get the hell out of here. It’d been easy enough the first time. But now he had Carly, and the exit was thirty feet away, with Brendan and Rosie outside. His father could be anywhere, but that was Rick. He would either be fine on his own or somehow manage to die gloriously.

  Icing on the cake if they managed to find him.

  “Almost done,” Thom whispered under his breath.

  Then it became a mantra. He said it to calm his nerves, trying hard to believe it was true.

  “What?” Carly asked.

  “I was saying we’re almost there.”

  Her fingernails bit into his flesh as she gasped. “The body.”

  Oh, Thom thought, that. He saw the direction of her gaze from the corner of his eye and made an executive decision not to join her. She wasn’t supposed to be looking down; Thom was supposed to be doing that for her. But he hadn’t been looking. Thom been daydreaming — or whatever this was.

  Now Carly had seen the thing she didn’t want to see and that was too bad, but at least it meant he could stop looking out for it. Judging by her trembling hands, he’d already decided it would be grotesque beyond words. No need to look, if she already had.

  “It’s okay,” he said, feigning calm. “It’s only a body.”

  “Thom.”

  He lo
oked, not wanting to.

  Then he understood why her voice had gone so strange.

  She wasn’t unnerved by the body she’d seen; Carly’s unseating came from a horrifying bloodstain on a rack of fall dresses that would have looked hideous even without the patterns of plasma.

  He looked, not wanting the punchline.

  “Where did it go?” Carly asked.

  “I’m sure you’re just remembering wrong.”

  “I’m not remembering wrong.” But she sounded upset, almost hysterical. She looked around to be sure, then began to point as she talked. “I was over there. I thought I saw them come this way, and when I was standing there, I looked that way and saw that big poster. That one. It reminded me of Rosie, too.”

  Thom followed her finger, his eyes settling near the activewear where a large brand advert showed a whole cluster of active seniors, a few with white hair just like Rosie’s.

  “But then I looked over here because I thought someone was fighting. I … yes, look! I saw this SALE sign and thought maybe a couple of girls were fighting over the last bargain something. That was there. They knocked over a bunch of racks, see?”

  Thom saw. He saw the bloodstain again, too. It was so large, he couldn’t picture anyone who’d created it ever shopping again.

  “It was here, Thom. I’m sure of it. This crazy man just … he just sort of leapt on this woman all at once! A bunch of people tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t let go. And then …” Her voice faltered; this was the part she’d been keeping down, trying not to relive until she was safely away. “He … Thom, he just started biting her! Like a dog! He clamped down, and no matter how many times this one man hit him with … See that stripped rack over there? He hit the guy over and over, and after enough hits the biting guy … his scalp just kind of peeled away. He …” She stopped herself before Thom could.

  Carly looked like she might be sick.

  “It’s okay,” he said uselessly.

  “But then the guy, the biting guy, he just pulled back and there was this … this chunk of HER between his teeth. It came away all …” Again she stopped. Thom understood this part and nodded. He’d seen almost exactly the same thing, but in a different part of the mall, and with a different culprit.