and her mouth hung open in the most unattractive and unnerving fashion. The man’s head slumped forward, so that his chin rested on his chest. Gary couldn’t quite make out the positions of the children in the dim light, but there seemed to be a jumble of little arms and legs as if they had been roughhousing and had suddenly fallen asleep.
“Don’t be an idiot, Sanchez,” he said out loud. “Go tell a security guard and let them deal with it.”
He had almost convinced himself to go, until a spasm rocked the woman’s body, and then another, as if she was having a seizure. Springing to the passenger door, Gary found it unlocked and yanked it open. Pressing two fingers to her neck to check her pulse, he was horrified when her bloodshot eyes suddenly popped open and stared at him with the most intense look—a look of hunger.
The woman lunged for Gary, but as this new zombie was not quite used to her recent ZIP-controlled nervous system, she clumsily tumbled forward, face first. There was a sickening cracking sound as her cheekbone was crushed by the impact with the pavement, but it didn’t stop her from immediately clambering to her feet and stumbling forward toward Gary.
The commotion stirred the other occupants of the minivan, and the man and children started squirming and wriggling toward the open door. Crawling and clawing over one another, and tumbling into a heap onto the pavement, they were soon following the woman in pursuit of fresh meat.
Gary could have run back to his SUV and gotten the hell out of there, but he felt an obligation to warn the hundreds of people walking to and from their cars, and the countless others pulling into the parking lots with every passing minute.
“Run! Run for your lives, they’re infected!” he shouted to a family from Bergen County, New Jersey, who had just gotten out of their Lexus.
The family had read an article saying that the Apocalypse Sale promised to have lots of surprises, and the very believable actor with the surgical mask was a nice touch.
“Look, they hired people to be zombies,” the ten-year-old son said, as he pulled out his cell phone and ran toward the zombie family staggering their way, “but their makeup is pretty lame.”
Gary yelled for the boy to stop, but it was too late. The boy ran right up to the five hungry, undead monsters, turned his back to them, and made a mock look of horror as he snapped a selfie. The second photo captured the moment when the woman bent down and sunk her teeth into the soft flesh of his neck. Had the camera not dropped from his hand, other photos would have shown the man tearing at the boy’s face with his nicotine-stained teeth, and the three children chomping down on the boys fingers and wrists.
His parents and sister initially watched in amusement, thinking this was all some sort of staged entertainment. But as the blood really looked genuine and their son’s shrieks didn’t sound like he was pretending, they all froze for a moment in the terror of realization that they were watching their son being murdered—eaten alive.
The parents then rushed headlong to try to save their boy, while his little sister screamed and ran in a blind panic right into the grille of an oncoming car. Her tiny body cartwheeled silently through the air as if in slow motion, but then hit the ground with a thud and the nauseating sounds of many snapping bones. At least her parents were spared the horror of that scene, as they were currently being fatally wounded trying to save their son.
Gary was still determined to do something to save other people. He ran right past the slaughter, slipping twice on blood and gore, and jumped into his SUV. Driving like a madman and sideswiping several cars, he spun his vehicle sideways across the entrance to the underground parking lot. Jumping out, he waved his arms and shouted at people to turn back, that there were infected inside.
The occupants of several cars honked their horns and shouted angrily at Gary. One particularly irritated woman who had driven all the way from Walden, New York, got out of her car and rushed towards Gary in a complete fury. However, when she saw the blood and bits of flesh on Gary’s shoes, and heard the screams of the dying family echoing through the parking structure, she ran back to her car, slammed it into reverse and backed right into another vehicle. Then she pulled forward into the vehicle directly in front of her, and then backed into a third car in her hysteria to escape.
Janine and her friends were looking at nail polish when they heard a crashing sound from the adjacent store. It sounded as though someone knocked over a display case.
“Someone is going to lose his job,” Ella said, as her attention quickly refocused to the important matter at hand—Sunset Splendor or Crimson Passion. Both colors of nail polish were bolder than she usually wore, but she would soon be a college freshman and was ready to embrace all sorts of changes.
“Just get them both, or you’ll regret it,” Reggie said, having little interest in nail polish, or any type of makeup or jewelry for that matter. She was the athlete of the group—in fact, she was going to college on a lacrosse scholarship—and her idea of beauty was that healthy glow from wind sprints.
“Reggie is right,” Janine chimed in. “We will never hear the end of your complaining if you get the red and then think you should have gotten the pink.”
“Excuse me,” Ella said with mock indignation, “but the choices are Sunset Splendor and Crimson”—
BANG!
Her words were cut short by another crashing sound from the adjacent store. This one rattled all of the bottles of nail polish, as well as the jewelry that hung against the wall. A second or two later, there was a blood-curdling scream and people within earshot started running in all directions.
Janine and her friends clutched at one another, unsure of what to do. They were going to run for the nearest exit, but the frantic cries for help from a child gave them the courage to move to the edge of the other store and peer inside. Items and display stands were scattered across the floor, and in the middle of the mess, a big, burly man was kneeling next to a prone woman who appeared to be unconscious. At first, the girls thought the man was trying to help, but as they inched forward to get a better view, they saw that he had the woman’s right leg in his hands, and was chewing on a piece of flesh he had just torn out of her thigh.
The woman’s four-year-old son stood just a few feet away, screaming for help. Initially paralyzed with fear, the sight of his mother’s blood made something snap inside of him, and he flung himself on the man’s back and pounded on his huge head with his tiny fists. The zombie—who had been making a delivery to the store when he collapsed and switched—grabbed the little boy like he was a rag doll, bit off two of the boy’s fingers from his left hand, and then tossed him ten feet through the air and into a wall. The boy fell motionless to the floor. The injuries of the impact were serious, but not fatal. However, at the base of the stumps of his two amputated fingers, zombie infection parasite eggs were already entering his bloodstream, and that would, in several weeks, kill him.
As scared as they were, the three girls had to do something. Janine ran for the little boy, while Ella and Reggie grabbed the woman by the ankles and tried to drag her out of the store. It was like trying to take dinner out from under the nose of an angry bear, and the zombie caught Ella by her wrist, while still having a hand on the woman’s leg, and started to pull all three of them further back into the store.
Reggie let go of the woman’s leg, but only so she could start kicking the man in the face and arms. Her years of playing soccer helped her land some vicious kicks, but although blood was now streaming from the man’s broken nose, he appeared unfazed by the repeated blows.
As Reggie and Ella struggled with the man, Janine carried the boy out of the store and yelled for a doctor and for someone to call 911. Most people in the vicinity of the store had scattered, but an elderly employee, who worked at a clothing store a few doors down, yelled to Janine to bring the boy into his store and he would phone for help. She rushed the bleeding and unconscious child into the clothing store and gently lowered him onto a display of colorful T-shirts, and then used one of the shirts to carefully
wrap around the boy’s hand to try to stop the bleeding. The employee said he would lock the doors and they would all be safe until help arrived, but Janine told him she had to get back to her friends.
Not even having time to think, Janine raced back and stopped short in stunned horror. The delivery man had a partner who had become infected on the same day that he had seven weeks ago, and had similarly collapsed within minutes of his partner, but took a few minutes longer to switch. When he arose in the storeroom and staggered into the store, he found his partner chewing on one woman while hanging onto a second, and getting kicked by a third woman. The only thing this new zombie saw was fresh meat.
In the few minutes it had taken Janine to bring the boy to the other store and come back, the combined attack of the two delivery men had brought Reggie and Ella to the floor. Blood was spurting in ever-weakening arcs from Reggie’s neck, and she lay still except for the slightest involuntary shudder that coursed through her oxygen-starved body. Ella was only recognizable by her bright pink jeans, which were now splattered with crimson. Out of the tangle of limbs and torsos, she stuck out her mangled face, and with torn lips and her last breath, she screamed at Janine to run for her life.
Janine started to move forward, to at least try to help her friends, but as one of the delivery men clawed at Ella’s eyes and pulled her back down, Janine turned and started to run blindly, alternately shrieking and mumbling incoherently. As others heard her screams and saw her blood-smeared face, hands, and clothing, they, too, ran.
Peggy and David couldn’t agree on a restaurant, so they decided to see a movie first. It was one of those light romantic comedies with just enough sentimentality for her, and just enough partial nudity and sex for him. And as old as they were, and for as many years as they were together, they still held hands throughout the movie as they had done since their very first date. Retirement wasn’t going to be the yachts and exotic resorts of which they had always dreamed, but at least they had each other, and all the time in the world.
The screaming and panic inside the Palisades Center was unknown to the moviegoers at that moment. Even if the sounds of terror and violence had reached into the theaters, everyone would probably have assumed it was simply the soundtrack of a horror movie in the adjacent theater. It wasn’t until a waitress at one of the restaurants texted her friend at the theater concession stand, that she had heard from a guy who worked at Target, that there was a fight somewhere. People had apparently been hurt, and the restaurant was going to lock their doors until it could all be sorted out. The waitress urged her friend to inform management and consider going into lockdown as well.
As the theater manager called security trying to get more information, something happened in the theater showing the romantic comedy. Two thirty-something sisters, who had decided they needed a “Girls Day Out,” were sitting directly in front of Peggy and David. They had been quite chatty during the previews and even into the first minute or two of the movie, and Peggy thought she would have to shush them. But they finally did stop talking, and then they even stopped eating their popcorn and drinking their sodas. About 45 minutes into the movie, it appeared to Peggy as if they had actually fallen asleep!
How could any woman fall asleep in the middle of such a romantic film, with such a handsome leading man, Peggy thought?
About half an hour later, as the girl-meets-boy, girl-loses-boy, girl-meets-boy-again plot was coming to its inevitable one-knee proposal ending, one of the sisters jerked suddenly, as if startled out of a nightmare. Her sister then displayed the same jerking motion, and then they both started squirming in their seats in the most distracting manner. Unpleasant grunting and growling sounds were soon emanating from them and growing louder. This time, Peggy did shush them, but they paid no attention.
“If you two don’t quiet down and quit squirming I’ll call the manager,” Peggy said in a loud whisper, but still the two sisters writhed and moaned in the most ungodly fashion.
Irritated that her rare date out with her husband was being ruined, Peggy placed her hands on the women’s shoulders and leaned her head between them to give them a final warning.
“Will you please stop—”
Peggy’s words turned to sharp cries of pain as one sister sunk her teeth into the back of her neck, while the other managed to latch onto her eyebrow and eyelid. David couldn’t believe what he was seeing—were his eyes playing tricks on him in the dim light? But his wife’s cries of pain were real enough, and he sprang to his feet and tried to yank Peggy out of their grasp, but their teeth only sank in deeper.
“Help! Security! Somebody help us!” David shouted, now raining blows down on the heads and backs of the two sisters, to no effect.
Most people, not comprehending the nature of the attack, but seeing that some sort of a fight was in progress, stampeded for the exits. A few men came to help, but were momentarily frozen in disbelief, as it looked like two young women were biting an older woman in the head and face, and they couldn’t comprehend why this was happening.
Finally, the older woman’s agonizing shrieks of pain and terror made them jump to her defense, but tugging on the arms and legs of the rather heavy-set sisters got them nowhere fast. Two of the men then grabbed the sisters by their throats and began squeezing with increasing force, which should have made anyone cease and desist, especially as David continued to beat them about the head and shoulders.
One of the men finally succeeded in pulling one of the sisters to the floor, but she took half of Peggy’s upper left eyelid with her and eagerly slurped it down. Peggy fainted from the pain and shock and hung limply over the back of the seat as the other sister dug deeper into her neck until her canine teeth pierced an artery.
In the darkness and confusion of the fight in the cramped aisle between the rows of seats, the man with his hands around the throat of the seated sister didn’t see the one on the floor bringing her mouth to the back of his leg, right below the bottom of his shorts. She bit down hard into the soft flesh behind his knee and he howled and kicked, releasing his grip from the other sister’s throat.
At this point, the movie went dark and the house lights came on as two security guards rushed in, fully expecting a brawl between rival gangs, based on the near hysterical descriptions from fleeing patrons. Instead, they found a bloodied and unconscious older woman and four grown men beating on two large women. When it looked as though the guards were going to attack the men, David quickly blurted out that the women had attacked his wife and were killing her. He didn’t know that she was already dead, having quickly bled out from the punctured artery.
To add to the chaos, one of the managers ran into the theater shouting that the mall was swarming with infected and everyone should run for his life. The man who had been bitten in the back of the leg—now realizing he was doomed—viciously stomped on the zombie woman on the floor in bitter fury. His fourth stomp landed squarely on her face as her head rested on the hard floor, crushing her eye sockets and forehead, and driving sharp shards of bone into her brain. She shuddered a moment or two and then lay still.
Still enraged, he then locked his brawny arms around the seated sister’s neck and crushed and twisted until something snapped. The zombie didn’t die right away, but her jaw did go slack so that David could finally pull Peggy away.
“I’ve got her,” David shouted. “I’ve got her, thank you all! Now save yourselves.”
While everyone ran, David lifted his wife’s limp body and carried her out of the theater. Once out in the light, he could see the awful severity of her wounds—the exposed eyeball staring straight up, and the ugly gashes in her neck.
At least her neck has stopped bleeding, David thought, still not comprehending that the love of his life was gone.
Blind to the situation and oblivious to the pain of his muscles straining to carry his wife’s body, David staggered through the Palisades Center as people ran screaming all around him, many of whom were wounded and bloody.
“I?
??ll get you to the car, Sweetheart,” he whispered to her corpse. “Then we’ll be at Nyack Hospital in no time at all… No time at all. They’ll take good care of you, Sweetheart, and you’ll be as good as new.”
He dropped her while waiting for the elevator, and when the door opened he was so exhausted he had to pull her body inside and then sat on the floor next to her. When the doors opened again in the parking garage, he didn’t have the strength to lift her again, so ever so slowly he pushed and pulled her toward their car.
Janine didn’t even know how she made her way into the underground parking area. She had no recollection of where her car was parked, but knew that it was outside somewhere in the sunlight. Ahead of her was a man dragging a woman, and as Janine approached, he stopped and begged her to help.
“Please, please my wife,” he paused to take a few gasping breaths, “I must get her to the hospital. She’s been hurt. Please help us!”
The two of them were covered in blood, and one of the woman’s eyeballs appeared to be protruding from its socket, or so it looked as her eyelid had been torn away. But Janine took pity on the desperate man.
“What can I do?” she asked calmly, so calmly it even surprised her. Perhaps it was just shock, or perhaps with the horrors and loss she had already experienced, this was not high on the trauma scale.
“Please, take her feet and help me get her to the car.”
Janine grasped at the woman’s ankles and together they were able to lift her up. But they had not gone far before they heard a man shouting and saw him gesticulating wildly. He was wearing a surgical mask and gloves, and was running back and forth next to an SUV parked sideways in the entrance.
“No, stop! Don’t go back there!” Gary shouted, frantically waving for them to come to him, and not to go toward the ongoing carnage to his right. “They are infected! Run this way!”
“But my wife, she’s really hurt bad,” David yelled. “I must—“
“NO!” Janine shouted, stopping short, almost causing David to drop the body.
Even at this distance, Janine could see the blood-spattered white support columns, and the figures moving awkwardly and hunching down over what looked to be bodies.
“This way, hurry!” Gary yelled.
David was too confused and upset to understand, but Janine took charge and started leading them toward Gary. The movement and yelling attracted the attention of a solitary figure close by—a maintenance worker who had collapsed down one of the aisles several hours