Chapter
Twenty-Two
After two days of their assigned duties, everyone in Ryan's group was bored with the riches offered by Freedom Mall. Even with their newly enhanced positions as sec men, there was nothing free in the way of entertainment. Sleeping, eating, relaxingit all came with a price, and the price wasn't cheap. Still, there were distractions. "Haven't been down this part of the mall before," Mildred said to her two companions. "What's the map say?"
J.B. took out a folded pocket guide to Freedom and consulted the layout. "Multiplex."
"You mean movies?" Mildred asked. "Yeah. Reckon so."
"A theater! Splendid! Perhaps we can hope for a classic from days gone by? A brightly colored musical with the likes of Kelly or Astaire? A moody film noir with Bogart or Cagney, or even that femme fatale Barbara Stanwick, leading poor, baffled Fred MacMurray to his own lust-caused doom?"
J.B. turned to Doc with a look of mock surprise. "Didn't know you gave a damn for movies, Doc. Thought you hated them."
Doc shook his head vigorously. "Incorrect! False! Not true! What I hate, John Barrymore, is television. Puerile dribble to sell boxes of soap! But this, this is a movie palace, and for once I shall view a motion picture at the scale the makers intended instead of viewing them via a vid player on snow-enhanced tape."
"I doubt that, Doc," Mildred said as they approached the front of the theater. There were slots out front for movie posters and announcements, but all hung empty or blank. A single tube-shaped box office could be spotted on a slight incline, and behind the office was the door into the concession stand and lobby. Very efficient and very bland.
"This is one of those concrete-bunker affairs. Small screen, small seats, small portions at the concession stand. The only thing big about a mall cinema is the prices."
"Small screen?" Doc said, his expression one of disbelief. "Why on earth would a theater proprietor want to vex his patrons with a small screen?"
"Economics," Mildred replied. "Smaller the setup, the more screens you can cram into a space. Smaller seats means more warm bodies. Why run one show when you can run six, then sell six times the amount of overpriced concessions at the same time?"
"Disgraceful," Doc said. "I'd always been under the impression there was something romantic about the movies in their natural habitat."
"There is," Mildred mused. "There's nothing like seeing a movie on a big screen."
"I wouldn't know," Doc sniffed.
"Me, neither," J.B. added. "Seen some in villes on old 16 mm projectors. Hard to see and hear."
"Next show's at nine o'clock. What time is it?" Mildred asked.
J.B. checked his wrist chron. "About ten minutes to. We got the time and the extra mall creds to see a picture, if you want. We don't go on sec patrol until we meet up with Ryan and the others at midnight."
"I wonder if they have popcorn?" Mildred asked.
"From my understanding, it wouldn't be a proper motion-picture palace if it didn't," Doc said as they approached the glassed-in area marked Box Office.
"What movie is playing?" Mildred asked the man sitting behind the glass through a small metal grid. He was dressed in a crushed-velvet vest and matching bow tie. An employee tag identifying him as Boston hung from the breast pocket of his vest.
"You'll love it, lady," Boston replied. "Ripping good horror show. Zombies come back from the dead to feast on the human flesh of the living. Great gore with some hilarious comedy. Slapstick, is what I've heard it called. Sells out every time we screen it."
Doc's hopes of a musical comedy were swiftly being dashed upon the unyielding rocks of commerce.
"Most disturbing. When was this film made?" the old man asked.
The ticket salesman paused for a moment and closed his eyes, as if accessing a bank of data files stored on the hard drive of his brain.
" Dawn of the Dead . 1979 predark calendar. A Laurel production. A United Film Distribution release. Full color. Running time of 126 minutes uncut, or significantly shorter in the cable edit, and who the fuck wants to see the censored version anyway, so it doesn't count."
"A full two hours plus," J.B. said approvingly as a man who loved a bargain. "Not bad."
The ticket seller continued to speak, unaware or uncaring of J.B.'s approval. "Written, directed and edited by the great George A. Romero, who also gave us Stephen King's Creepshow, Martin, Day of the Dead and many other fine horror pictures. Cinematography by Michael Gornick. Music by the Goblins with Dario Argento. Sequel to the classic Night of the Living Dead , which is pretty good, but it's in black and white, and the only version I've seen was fuzzy as hell, so the blood and guts look all fake."
"For Christ's sake," Mildred said to her two companions, "I can see this kind of crap on an all-too-regular basis in Deathlands. Why would I want to go to a movie and pay good money to experience it?"
"Nothing else better to do," J.B. replied.
"Aren't you showing anything else?" she asked Boston.
The man shook his head. "Lady, at this moment we only have four movies in complete enough condition to screen Dawn of the Dead, Mannequin 2 on the Move, Spy Hard and Escape from New York . This theater rotates them on a monthly basis. Every once in a while, I'll pull out chunks of other flicks I've spliced together from stray film cans just so we can offer something different, but most of our customers want a complete show, and I can't blame them. Plenty enough vids with a beginning, middle and end to keep their interest at home. We have to try and make coming to a movie theater a special experience."
"Ironic, isn't it, Doc?" Mildred said.
"What?"
"Back in the fifties, television nearly ran movie theaters out of business. Producers had to come up with all kinds of gimmicks and sensationalism to keep attendance levels high. Wide screens. Quad sound. Fake insurance policies sold at the door in case you or a loved one dropped dead of fright while watching the film."
"Sounds like a sideshow to me," Doc said.
"Show business is show business," Mildred replied. "Until the advent of home video in the late seventies, the movie industry had become a mere ghost of what it once had been. Once home vid players come into vogue, there was money all around. Financially a profit could be made not only on tickets sold, but also on vid rights, cable, network-television rights and so on."
"I think I understand. Here we are, one-hundred-plus years later, and most physical films capable of being viewed on the big screen have been destroyed"
"But videotapes of the movies survive. Exactly," Mildred finished.
"So, we going or not?" J.B. asked.
Mildred looked at the fellow manning the ticket booth. "This place sell popcorn?" she asked.
WHILE MILDRED, DOC and J.B. were preparing to enjoy a movie, Ryan, Jak and Krysty were on duty in the small sec headquarters in the back of the mall. The monitor board in the sec room burst into vibrant color, with an incessant warning alarm.
"What the fuck is that?" Ryan asked, instantly alert as he leaped to his feet.
"Motion sensors," a techie in a blue jumpsuit replied. "We've got intruders up on the roof."
"Show me."
When he tapped into the same vid system Ryan had seen earlier in Morgan's administrative office, two screens lit up, and what they revealed was smoke and flame.
"Roofs on fire," Ryan said. "Think the stickies are using another catapult?"
"Don't see how. There has been nothing on the group level outside within the sec circle."
"Muties must be behind this somehow," Ryan murmured, standing behind the techie and gazing at the scene.
"Probably so. Both ends of the mall roof are showing movement," the techie said. "How they got on the roof is anybody's guess. We've only got cameras for this side. I don't know if the other section has been lit up or not."
"What's with the alarm?" Rollins said as he clomped into the room.
"We've got company," Ryan replied tightly, gesturing toward the screens. "Look for yourself."
"Shit. Fire. I hate fires," the sec man said.
"Has to be stickies."
Rollins nodded in agreement. "Let's take a look. You get the two of yours, and I'll alert two of mine. We'll go up and recce on this side. I'll alert a team on the other side of Freedom to check their end, as well."
"Got it."
Rollins's men were already waiting when he and Ryan exited the monitor room. The four men raced down the access hallway, picking up Krysty and Jak on the way. Like Ryan, both of his friends already had their hardware in hand, with Krysty holding her .38-caliber Smith amp; Wesson and Jak his huge .357 Colt Python with the six-inch barrel.
"What's with the parade, lover?" Krysty asked.
"Visitors. Set off the motion sensors on the roof. If we're lucky, it's just a flying squirrel or a bunch of birds or something," Ryan told her.
"In the middle of the night?" Rollins said. "I doubt it's birds. Squirrels, either, unless you've ever seen one that weighs a hundred pounds."
Ryan laughed. "Brother, I've seen things in Deathlands that make a hundred-pound squirrel look like a stuffed cuddly toy."
Rollins cocked his blaster. "Don't matter to me none. A hundred pounds or a thousand, a few rounds to the head will take care of the son of a bitch. I just don't want to be the one stuck with the shovel having to bury his big fuzzy ass."
The narrow workmen's stairwell to the roof was dimly lit with red bulbs, giving the group the sensation of walking up through the intestines of a volcano. There were no sounds here. The alarms that had been tripped on the rooftop were silent this close to the scene.
When they came out of the elevated trapdoor entrance onto the rooftop, the group of six split into two parties. Ryan kept Krysty and Jak. Rollins took his own pair of trained men. This decision was made wordlessly and without conscious thought. Each man wanted his own crew backing him up. Ryan could respect that.
Rollins swung open the door and carefully leaned his head out, letting his eyes adjust to the scene.
As far as the eye could see from the protection of the small freestanding doorway of the roof level stairs access, fires were burning in patches.
"Smell it?" Ryan asked.
"Some fuel." Jak replied.
"Flammable liquids. They've sprayed the roof and lit it up somehow," Rollins said. "How in the hell did they do that?"
"Must have a really long hose."
"Well, the fires I can see. Let's try finding them. Maxwell, you got the hardware?" Rollins asked.
"Yes, sir," one of the two sec men who had accompanied Rollins replied.
Ryan looked at the device the younger man was holding. "It's an image intensifier," Maxwell explained.
"Thought we could use it to see what was on the ground," Rollins said.
"I'm getting some ground movement," Maxwell replied. "They look too damn far away to have done this, though."
Those were the last words the young sec man ever said before a loud shot rang out above the soft crackling of the flames. The oversize image intensifier he was holding to his eyes disintegrated into a cloud of plastic shards, and his face immediately followed, the upper half of his head breaking open from the slug that killed him.
"From above!" Jak cried, raising the big Colt and firing into the darkness overhead.
"How?" Krysty asked, and then she saw what Jak was aiming at. A stickie was indeed overhead, hanging from the tubing of a makeshift glider like an evil, diseased bat. She could see the mutie's pale face as the craft swooped around, diving again for another pass. More of the flammable liquid was dropped, sprayed from an oversize plastic-bag apparatus to cause a new burst of flame to shoot into the air.
A side effect of this action was to bring the glider and the mutie into fully lit focus.
A series of shots rang out, and the stickie went limp in the harness of the flying machine. Without the creature's guidance, the glider began to swoop and spiral, finally landing in the midst of an already burning patch of roof in a more explosive show of vigorous flame.
"Never thought I'd see a stickie smart enough to try that," Krysty remarked. Her words reminded Ryan of the comment Morgan had made about the stickies seeming to act smarter in their more recent forays against Freedom.
"Not that much to gliding, as I understand it," Rollins said. "And the crafts are certainly portable enough. They break downnothing but plastic, canvas and some metal tubing. Fold them up and put them in a bag after you're done."
Jak wasn't so admiring of the tactics. "Dead. Stupe."
"Mebbe not," Ryan said. "Whoever sent that mutie up there hovering around knew his card would get slotted quick enough. Those gliders have some maneuverability, but they're not very fast. The mutie was able to get some good fires going while up there, but that could've been handled in a number of different ways."
"You saying we were supposed to see that stickie?"
"Diversion," Jak said.
"Need to get around the fires, closer to the edge of the roof. If I was planning on attacking from the top, I'd try and come up where the visibility was poorest. Like way over there behind those old air con units," Ryan said.
"So?"
"So hold on while I check it out."
Ryan moved quickly, running as quietly as possible along the back of the front line of the rooftop's massive array of ancient and rusted air-conditioning circulation pods, using their bulk to hide and protect his progress. The stickies near the edge of the rooftop were waving flaming torches and yelling and whooping, and already more of the small fires were starting to burn.
They also had weapons. The stickies were now armed with high-powered blasters, such as the one that had chilled Maxwell. Ryan heard the occasional crack of blaster, and once or twice stray rounds had whined past and ricocheted off the thick metal units protecting him, causing them to boom hollowly and flaking the thick rusty covering. The stickies weren't aiming at him. They didn't even know Ryan was there. They were wasting rounds, showing off and enjoying the fires.
Ryan knew his friends would also have heard the shots. His SIG-Sauer was cocked in his right hand, and he ran in a crouch, stopping only to peer between individual units to make certain he wasn't seen.
He crawled on top of the last unit, keeping himself as flat as a sheet of paper as he wiggled across silently, inch by inch.
"Hey, you. You're trespassing," Ryan called out, pausing a second to line and sight before shooting the stickie through the top of the head. The baffle-silenced slug drove through the mutie's lopsided cranium, pureeing the rotten brain inside and causing a twin jet of blood to spurt like a backwash out of the stickie's nose. Ryan's shot had landed neatly dead center, and the bullet kept crashing down like a runaway freight elevator, leaving behind a wet trail of destruction inside the mutie's thrashing body.
The stickie's corpse collapsed onto the roof, into a burning pyre. The smell of burning flesh was instantly recognizable in the night air.
Ryan, however, wasn't waiting around to admire his handiwork. He was already rolling, firing his blaster as he moved. The element of surprise was still with him. When the first stickie died, all eyes fell upon its death throes, but no one thought to look up.
Gripping his right wrist with his left hand, Ryan braced himself against the kick of the powerful pistol as it spit death again and again. His aim no longer needed to be as precise as the first kill, so he took chest shots, the safest option against his now moving targets.
A chest shot was never as elegant, clean or final as a head shot, but it had the advantage of not mattering much whether you were a couple of inches high or low or to either side. If your aim was high, you still took out the throat or heart or one of the lungs. Shoot a maneven a stickiein the rib cage and watch him fall down gasping for air.
Go low, and you had an old-fashioned, hurt-like-hell gut shot, which was more than likely going to end up being a killing hit when delivered with a 9 mm round from a P-226 blaster. As J.B. had said more than once, "You hit when you miss with a chest shot. Nothing fancy about a shooting like that, but it gets the job done."
Ryan's backup was close behind him, closer still when the first shot exploded in the burning night.
The big sec man slowed as he approached the scene. "Christ, Cawdor, you chilled them all," he said.
"Don't fall all over yourself thanking me, Rollins."
"I've never seen anything like it," the younger man in the mall sec colors said. "Five stickies downed by a single man."
"Friend of mine once told me a running man with a sharp knife can slit a thousand throats in a single night," Ryan said. "As long as he's quiet about it."
The lead sec man waved over his single living follower. "Use the tank extinguisher. It should have a full charge. Put those fires out as fast as you can."
"Yes, sir!"
"Still wish you would have left one alive for questioning," Rollins griped. "Dead muties can't talk."
"Since when have you ever known a stickie to volunteer any information? Even if they knew anything, half the time the stupe" Ryan's voice trailed off, the sight of Krysty's face tight with pain taking his earlier thought away.
"I'm okay, lover," she said softly, catching his eye peering intently at her. "But we got major trouble."
"What?"
"Bad. Very bad. I've got a mental picture of the roof of this mall, and it's bright red, all red."
"What the fuck is she talking about?" the sec leader said angrily. Ryan could see confusion and fear in the big man's face. He'd gone about his life expecting stickies to perform and act a certain way. Now that the patterns had changed, he was losing his grip. Ryan wasn't surprised. Most men would have done likewise when confronted with the abnormal, and there was nothing normal about the ways these stickies were behaving.
"Told you before, Rollins, she's a seer," Ryan said. "Senses danger. Bad things to come."
"As red as blood, as red as fire," Krysty whispered, every hair on her head moving gently back and forth like wheat in a strong breeze.
"Shut her up, Cawdor," Rollins ordered, his eyes wide.
"Why? She scaring you? Good."
Rollins shook his head. "We don't have time for crazy mutie talk."
"We'd better make time," Ryan insisted. "Shit's about to hit the fan."
The small radio on Rollins's gun belt squawked, the shrill tone adding to the mounting tension between the two men.
"Go ahead, answer," Ryan said. "I don't think either one of us is going to like what we hear."
Rollins snatched the black-and-silver portable comm radio off his belt and thumbed the Send button. "What?" he half yelled into the tiny voice grid.
"This is Jameson, sir. From the west wing," an excited voice said.
"I've got problems of my own, Jameson. Make it quick."
"The stickies, sir. They're over here. The bastards are coming in from all sides. We shot down one in a hang glider, but not before he dropped a shitload of rope ladders and some kind of flaming napalm. We're boxed in, and more of them are crawling up the sides. What are we going to do?"