Take the All-Mart!

CHAPTER 9: A WALK IN THE DARK





“Why, yes, I do think we have been walking in circles, Sister Smart Ass,” Roxanne said. Her voice was quickly lost to the echoless, pitch-black depths of the All-Mart.

A click beside her and Bernice’s face was illuminated, blue eyes squinting past the flame spouting from her panther lighter’s mouth into the inky dark. “I was just wondering, is all.”

“At least we haven’t run into any zombies.”

“Yay?” Bernice sneered and lit another joint. She lowered the lighter, peered into her purse. “Oh, just great — I’m running out of things to smoke.”

“Me too,” Yolanda said from back of the pack somewhere. “And I’m pretty sure being stoned is the only thing keeping me from freaking out.”

“I’m cold,” said Lindsay-Joe, standing between Ophelia and Xanadu, their arms tightly around each other.

“I broke a heel,” Denise chimed in.

“On the bright side, these fishnets have never looked better,” Carolyn said, twisting her left leg out in front of her to show off the fresh tears in her stockings.

Georgina, all of sixteen, started whimpering.

“Please, girls,” Mother Superior said, gesturing for the coven to huddle closer around her and Bernice’s lighter flame. “Calm yourselves.”

“How?” Bernice clicked off her lighter before her thumb burnt.

Yolanda flicked her own lighter to life. “Yeah, we’re running out of weed.”

Mother Superior reached out for the whimpering Georgina, pulled her close to snug her up against her hip and stroke her hair. “We’re all alive, no broken bones, and we have each other. We will find a way out.”

“Did anybody think to bring a compass?” Roxanne asked.

“An excellent idea, Sister Roxanne. Well, anyone?” Mother Superior scanned the faces of her coven. She got back shrugs and shaking heads.

“I’ve got these,” Lindsay-Joe said with a giggle, holding her purse up to the lighter flame and showing off the collection of dildos, vibrators and lubes inside. “Will they help?”

Mother Superior shook her head. “Not under these circumstances, I’m afraid. But they’ll certainly come in handy once we’re out and can celebrate.” She bit her lower lip in thought, then, “All right, no compass... how about a flashlight? Anyone?”

“We’ve been wandering around in here for at least a couple hours,” Roxanne noted. “Don’t you think if any of us had a flashlight, we would have taken it out by now?”

Mother Superior glared at her. “Food, then?”

“Oh, I could use a sandwich,” Yolanda said, letting her lighter go out. Xanadu was ready, lighting hers.

Mother Superior nodded. “I think all of us could.”

“We left all the stuff we brought for brunch on the bus,” Georgina said.

“Nobody brought any snacks?” Mother Superior asked.

“Why’s everybody looking at me?” Bernice asked. “No... no I did not bring snacks. I’m on a diet.”

“Maybe,” Lindsay-Joe said, “the All-Mart will let us go if we do a blood sacrifice.”

“That requires a virgin,” Mother Superior reminded her.

“Bernie’s never done it with a guy!” Yolanda blurted.

“Yolanda, you bitch!”

“What? I’m panicking here.” Yolanda’s head dropped in shame. “You know I’m not good in the dark.”

Bernice put her arm around Yolanda’s shoulder consolingly. “I know, honey.”

Mother Superior took the lighter from Xanadu and held the flame below her face. “We’re hardly desperate enough for a blood sacrifice, girls. But... we probably should complete the appeasement ceremony.”

“Yeah, no.” Roxanne crossed her arms and jutted her hips to one side defiantly. “I think I’m about done praying to the All-Mart, thank you very much.”

“We don’t question the actions of the new god, Sister Roxanne.” Mother Superior fingered the double-helix phallus medallion between her bare breasts. “I’m sure it has its reasons for subsuming us. And whatever the reasons, it still deserves our prayers and it will get them. Now, if you’ll all give me a few minutes while I meditate and prepare, then we’ll start the ceremony over from the beginning. — Xanadu, Ophelia, will you assist, please?”

The two sisters stepped forward. Xanadu took her lighter back, Ophelia took Georgina, still clinging and whimpering.

“Great plan,” Roxanne said, but deep enough under her breath the Mother Superior couldn’t possibly hear. Except she did, glancing back to sneer at her before she shut her eyes and sank into her deep-breathing routine.

Bernice tugged at Roxanne’s mini, led her away from Mother Superior. “When in doubt, pray your ass off, right?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not your fault,” Bernice said, sitting on the cold concrete floor and pulling a bundle of barley-fiber paper — a wasteland sanitary napkin — from her purse. She laid it on the concrete in front of her and lit it.

“Who’s thinking it’s my fault?” Roxanne crouched before the feeble fire. “You thinking it’s my fault?”

“Well... you were late.”

“Not that late.” Roxanne crossed her legs underneath her. “Anyway, the All-Mart doesn’t care.”

“That’d be a wonderful theory if it hadn’t just swallowed us up, Rox.”

“Total coincidence. Hopefully. — Seriously, you didn’t even bring a hoagie or anything? You always bring a nosh.”

“I got hungry on the ride out. How about you?”

“I might have some gum or something in my purse.”

“Well, get checking, girl.” Bernice leaned back on her arms. “And if you’ve got a brilliant plan to get us out of here in there, too, that’d be super.”

“You don’t trust prayer will save the day?” Roxanne asked, opening her satchel and rooting around in it. Her hand found something hard. “Okay, here’s something...”

“Is it a sandwich?” Bernice asked, then frowned as Roxanne took the RATpack antenna out. “That’s not a sandwich. It’s not even edible.”

“No, but it is an antenna.”

“Yeah, so?”

“It was acting all fritzy before, but maybe I can modify it to act like a compass and lead us out of here.”

“You can do that?”

“If it’s not completely broken, yeah.” Roxanne put the antenna on her knee while she started rooting around in her satchel. “And if the signal can get through the All-Mart’s wall. And if he’s still wearing the other one — they only work when they’re plugged into meat.”

“‘He as in Mr. Hunter McRealMan?” Bernice sat up to watch as Roxanne found her tool box and took it out.

“Trig.” Roxanne opened the tool box and grabbed a small needle-nosed probe. She poked at the exposed RATpack circuitry around the jack. “Or Trip. Something like that.”

Bernice threw another napkin on the fire. “Wow, must have been real special.”

“We had other priorities.”

“So, this Trig guy, huge penis?” Bernice asked, running her finger luridly along the length of her cigarette holder.

Roxanne looked up from the antenna. “Little obsessed, aren’t we?”

“So, Trig is tiny, then?”

“Trip. Pretty sure it was Trip. And what he had, he knew how to use.” Roxanne gave the circuitry a final poke, blew on the jack, and snicked it into the plug behind her ear. “There we go.”

“Is it working?”

Roxanne frowned as she put the tool box back in her satchel. “It’s powered up... but I’m not getting anything. Is it blinking?”

“You know how it was going all red before?”

“Yeah.”

“It ain’t doing that.” Bernice tapped ashes into the burning, smoking pile of napkins. “It’s back to yellow. Slow and steady.”

“That’s standby. So either it’s working but can’t get a signal, or it’s still fritzing, or I broke it for good this time.” Roxanne shrugged. “Well, it was worth a shot.”

Bernice looked up. “Looks like Mother Superior’s ready.”

Roxanne got to her feet. “Total waste of time and effort.”

“Hey, like you said, worth a shot, right?” Bernice asked, taking Roxanne’s offered hand and pulling herself up. She stomped the fire out with the soul of a stiletto.

Mother Superior cleared her throat. “Gather into a line, girls.”

The sisters did as instructed, standing shoulder to shoulder and all facing the same arbitrary direction Mother Superior was. They raised their arms to the All-Mart’s ceiling as Mother Superior raised her medallion.

“Oh great anomaly of the Wasteland,” Mother Superior began, “again we greet you!”

Her voice was swallowed up by the void stretching out in all directions.

“We hope — “

A noise behind them — a rhythmic hiss of clicking electrical discharges — interrupted her. Almost as one, the coven turned around towards the approaching sound.

“We have really got to stop praying to the damn thing,” Roxanne whispered to Bernice.

“Hey,” Bernice said around the cigarette holder, pointing its tip at Roxanne’s ear. “The antenna, it’s blinking red again.”

“Seriously?” Roxanne’s eyebrows crunched together as she reached for the antenna. “I don’t feel anything... wait a sec. Maybe I do. It’s kinda a tickle, like my leg’s asleep, but the leg is way over there.” She glanced over Bernice’s shoulder. “I think somebody’s on the line.”

“How far away?”

Roxanne closed her eyes. “Not so far. Like, a couple miles. Inside the All-Mart, for sure.”

“Somebody else with a RATpack antenna is in here?”

“These are paired. It’ll only establish contact with the one other unit...” Roxanne’s voice trailed off as the implications hit her and she broke into a grin. “Well, I’ll be an incredibly hot niece of a monkey.”

“He came in after you?” Bernice asked, exasperated. “I don’t f*ckin’ believe this. I can’t get a guy to give me the time of day, and you get them coming to rescue you after one roll in the hay.”

Roxanne shrugged. “I think he had a friend. A lawyer, even.”

“Look!” Georgina said, pointing out into the dark — which wasn’t so dark anymore. “Lights!”

And they were coming their way.

Roxanne and Bernice turned and stared as row after row of ceiling arc lights began snapping to life with clanking electrical discharges. They came on in a wave that quickly passed over their heads, illuminating the vast, empty interior of the All-Mart, pock-marked only by thirty-foot high support beams at regular intervals.

“Whoa...” Bernice said.

“Yeah,” Roxanne replied, her voice a reverent whisper.

Mother Superior beamed at the coven. “See, girls? The new god returns our welcome. Now maybe we can convince it to let us out.” She turned her face back towards the ceiling, squinting into the harsh, bare white lights. “We hope you are pleased with the gifts we have provided, and that they have fed your mighty hunger, and now, satiated, you are prepared to forgive whatever transgression we have inadvertently and, I assure you, unintentionally —”

A hiss stopped her this time. A white noise hiss in the distance — from the same direction the lights had swept on. The hiss soon became a rumble, and as the coven watched, dozens upon dozens of columns of smoke erupted from the floor on the horizon and began creeping their way.

“What is that?” Bernice asked.

Roxanne’s eyebrow went up. “I think they’re... shelves?”

The lines of smoke grew nearer and nearer, leaving tall rows of rack shelving in their wake. As they grew closer, it became clear that the individual columns of smoke were clouds of nanochines, extruding the shelving from the store’s floor in a buzzing, single-minded swarm.

Mother Superior lowered her arms and gestured for the coven to huddle around her. “Girls... tighten up, please.”

The girls pressed in towards Mother Superior just as two columns of nanomachine swarms reached them, building shelves on either side of them.

“Okay.” Roxanne watched one of the clouds building a shelf as it passed by. “This is both totally weirding me out but also maybe the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re very strange, Rox.”

The nanomachine columns were soon past, and the girls were left staring at ten foot tall racks stretching back to the horizon, broken by regular gaps every hundred feet. The huddle loosened, the girls relieved. Curious, Roxanne took a step toward a rack and touched one of the empty shelves. It was warm. And getting warmer.

She withdrew her hand just as the shelf began to bubble.

Bernice peered over her shoulder. “What’s it doing now?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s food!” Ophelia yelled. “It’s making food!”

Roxanne and Bernice looked, and sure enough, a little further back down the shelf, All-Mart branded boxes of donuts and iced croissants were emerging from the bubbling shelf tops as if rising from underneath water. Further back, the shelves were already fully stocked with stacks of more boxes, bubbled up by nanochines from the shelves themselves.

“We were hungry, and the new god provided.” Mother Superior bowed her head and raised her medallion to her lips, kissed it. “The new god is merciful,” she said in a hushed, awe-filled voice.

Bernice reached for the nearest box of donuts as soon as it was done forming. Roxanne slapped the top of her hand.

“Oww!” Bernice exclaimed, reeling her hand back in. “What the f*ck, Rox?”

“We’re on a diet, remember?”

“But it’s donuts...”

“We’ll find something more hip-friendly.” Roxanne frowned dubiously at the boxes, the donuts shiny and pristine under cellophane, almost as if they were made of wax. “Besides... something about nanomachine-produced food just doesn’t sound right to me.”

“Fine,” Bernice pouted, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Well, I’m not on any diet.” Xanadu slipped between Roxanne and Bernice to grab the box. “Pardon me.” She flipped the box lid back, grabbed a donut — one with sprinkles — and started chowing down, the other girls watching to gauge her reaction, hunger in their eyes.

“How are they?” Bernice asked.

Xanadu swallowed the last bit, then shrugged. “A little stale —”

Xanadu’s eyes suddenly went wide with panic. She dropped the box of donuts, her hands grabbing her stomach as she doubled over. Before anyone could step forward to help her, she had collapsed to the floor, writhing in pain.

“What’s going on?” Mother Superior asked. “Is she choking?”

Roxanne crouched down in front of Xanadu. She had stopped writhing and was now curled up in a fetal position, her face buried in her hands. “Xan... are you okay?”

“I... don’t... “ Xanadu’s hands parted and she looked up at Roxanne. A web-work of pulsing blue lines was spreading under her translucent skin from her lips and eyelids. Her eyes were blood-filled, swarming with tiny black dots. “I... don’t... think... so...”

“The food!” Roxanne stood and rushed over to Georgina, slapping a croissant out of her hand just as the sixteen year old was about to bite into it.

Georgina glared at her. “What was that about?”

Roxanne said nothing in reply, only stepped aside and pointed down at an oddly grinning Xanadu, every inch of her skin now turning gray and fully covered in a fine web-work of pulsing blue.

Georgina screamed.

Roxanne looked at Mother Superior. “We can’t eat this food. It’s how they turn you into zombies.”

Mother Superior nodded. “You hear that everyone? No food!” She crouched in front of Xanadu, reached out to stroke her hair, only to withdraw the hand as Xanadu hissed at her, a blood-black tongue darting out to lick blue lips.

“Umm... guys?” Bernice tapped Roxanne on the shoulder. “Not to pile it on, but we’ve got other problems.” She thumbed down the aisle.

Roxanne twisted around to look. “Oh sweet mother of Jebus.”

There, down the aisle a few hundred feet, was a frenzied mass of people making their halting, spastic way up the aisle. Dozens of them. Mostly adult men and women but a few snarling, screeching children. Their clothes were shreds, their skin translucent gray and mottled with pulsing blue webbing. They were pushing carts, biting and clawing at each other as they filled the carts by grabbing boxes at random from the shelves.

“What are they?” Bernice asked.

Her voice carried down the aisle. One of the things looked up, locking eyes with Bernice.

Roxanne was already reaching for Bernice’s hand when the thing shrieked, prompting the others to stop their mindless shelf rifling and rush forward, clawed hands outstretched and mouths slavering.

“Run!” Roxanne yelled, grabbing Bernice’s hand and yanking her up the aisle. Stilettos clicking, they ran for the nearest gap, Roxanne tugging Bernie through it.

And right into the chest of a hulking, seven foot tall... thing. Maybe it was human once, but not anymore, not with that hard dark blue carapace skin and saucer-wide eyes glowing dull yellow. A security badge was set directly in the wrinkled flesh of its chest.

“Welcome to All-Mart,” it said, its voice a deep growl. It reached a gnarled, almost crab-like hand around Roxanne’s head to pluck the RATpack antenna out of her neck. “May I see your receipt?”