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gjnhjfdhns: Part FORTY-FOUR: Race

This is stupid. /You're stupid. You're just going to watch as they get pummeled? Afraid of something on a camera that isn't even real?/

I looked at the chairs in front of the monitors. One of them was a cheap, metal chair, while the other was a slightly more expensive office chair. I unscrewed the seat from the office chair and dropped the legs by the door. Then, gritting my teeth and taking a breath, I picked up the metal chair, got to the doorway, and heaved it over the heads of the others. It landed with groans of pain and the thuds of the people it had taken down. I then grabbed the chair legs and hit whatever I could reach.

"Oh, Hazel, you're okay then?" Marina asked, stabbing a monster with the tennis racket.

"I just want the f-ck out!" I whacked someone in the face, the wheels on the end of my 'weapon' making marks in the stranger's forehead. "Out, out, OUT!"

Someone had followed my lead and thrown the seat of the fancy office chair into the crowd of monsters, following that up with a flying, old ghettoblaster. With renewed vigor, we ruthlessly fought our way through the crowd. We broke into an empty corridor not moments later, and made a mad dash for the stairs. Anything encountered on the stairs was shoved down without heed. Eventually, we stopped for a much needed rest in /Zellers/.

"Holy merciful crap," I breathed, collapsing into a lawn chair. "Sweet Jesus..."

"We can't stay here for long. There're more." Kevin closed his eyes, grimacing for a thought we knew nothing about. "A lot more."

"But I'm so tired! Isn't there a place we can hide?" Marina groaned, collapsing into a foldable chair.

"If you want them to kill you, yea."

"Tell us about /them/, Kevin." I chimed in, a sudden curiousity taking over my vocal chords.

"Why?" He looked suspicious, and sounded as though I had asked to hear about something wretchedly disgusting.

"I'm interested."

"... They're insane. F-cking psychopaths. There're only three of them, but they've got a whole factory working for them. Two of them, though, are idiots. They'd jump off the Empire State Building if the third guy told them to. They worship him like a God."

"Are they-" I was interrupted by a shrill scream. Marina had fallen backward off of her chair and was staring, horrified, at something in the direction of the clothes department.

At first glance, it looked like a person walking down the aisle, but the lurching gait and flopping head proved otherwise. What was coming our way was an animated mannequin, except the clothes it was modelling appeared to be made of crudely sewn pieces of flesh. Its head swung sickeningly with each twitch of a step, looking like the neck was just a tube attaching the head to the body. The cloth skin of the mannequin was stained a gross kind of rust. As it came closer, I could hear it emitting some sort of noise- it sounded like it was screaming out but was being muffled.

As we stood, frozen and terrified, more appeared behind it, some with arms or legs in the wrong place, missing fake limbs, but all holding the same horrifying look.

"Hey!" Kevin yelled, snapping us out of our trances. "RUN!"

Almost as one, we turned and ran for the exit. More and more of those mannequins were coming, some swinging out at us but grabbing only air. Their footsteps sounded like a march gone astray; their muffled voices were blending together, screams that were familiar but not. I could feel the many presences. It felt like thousands of eyes were watching me- /blind eyes, eyes nontheless?/- like someone was covering my ears, allowing me to hear only their cries- /why is that so familiar?/- like we were surrounded by corpses- /the stench embodies a brutal death, blood and rot and tears and/- like my mouth was made of sandpaper-

And then we burst through the doors and the sweet, fresh air flooded my senses and everything was back to normal. The doors shut, and through the glass I saw an empty mall, closed for the night.

I turned to everyone else, only to find that they were gone, replaced by three police cars, and the man from the plane.

"Congratulations. You're still alive." He smiled, as though he was presenting me with a large sum of cash for a prize. "And now you're under arrest."

"WHAT?!" I was about to step forward in protest, but I froze, hearing a quiet but sure clicking sound behind me. I found handcuffs on my wrists and Kevin with the key. "Ah- I- Sh-t!" I stuttered, fury flooding through me.

It lingered, even when the darkness came.