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Chapter 66 Mall
🕑 Added 2023-10-01 15:11:04 +0000 UTCHey all. Thanks for another month of support :). As promised, this week will get quite a few Infrasound chapters.
Chapter 66 Mall
Kate and Logan cut away Overakar scales for the good part of an hour. She kind of wanted to get some bones back too but the creature was so massive, the legs didn’t really make much sense and cutting all that flesh away would take a lot of time, let alone the size and weight they’d have to carry all the way back.
“You don’t look sure about it,” Logan said as he put on his pack.
“Yeah. I’m not. I’m sure that Allison could come up with something interesting,” Kate said.
“We have the scales for now, and this one isn’t running away,” Logan said. “Now that I said that. They do carry the corpses down, but maybe this one’s too heavy.”
“Fly trap,” Kate murmured.
“Depends on how fast they manage to move it. And if they’re smart enough to cut or rip it apart first, that thing doesn’t fit around the corridor corners. Might not even fit into the corridors themselves,” he said, looking back the way they came. “Not much we can do about it.”
“Yeah, I know. Still annoys me,” Kate said. “You wanted to explore the city?”
Logan shook his head. “Not explore, I just want to have a look, see how the streets look, if some stores and buildings nearby are intact. Don’t think it’s smart to go far, not today. Are you up for that?”
“Yeah. Should we leave the bags here? Or take them with us?”
“I think with the corridors somewhat cleared, at least for the time being, it would be smart to take the same way back that we came from. Let’s leave the two we filled here. How many more do you have?”
“Just one in the large backpack, and the backpack itself,” Kate said, checking all her gear before she put the pack on. She grunted and walked towards the broken section of the wall, a way out of the dungeon and straight to the inner city of Falstadt. Or what remained of it.
Snow was still falling outside, gently, almost like the world had not ended at all. She heard Logan set down the bags when she heard Jon’s voice in her mind.
“This is your 3 pm message. No major news from our side. I hope you’re safe out there. Jon out.”
“Probably shouldn’t mention the leg,” Logan said.
“Is that sarcasm? Again?” Kate asked, looking out and down through the crumbled wall. “Thought the cooldown on that was a little longer.”
He grunted in response, Kate trying to figure out how they could climb down to the street, and more importantly, how they could get back up. “My jump should be fine,” she murmured but Logan had already gotten a climbing rope and started to fasten it to a steel rod jutting out of the broken wall.
Kate touched the steel, listening to their surroundings. It was calm, besides the noise they themselves were making. “Do you think the steel is part of the dungeon? Or did the dungeon take over a building?”
“No idea,” Logan said. “I’m just glad there are buildings that seem unaffected.”
Kate agreed. She did wonder how far the corridors led, how deep the dungeon was. Was it below the whole city? Just a few blocks? Were there more dungeons like it near the city or below it? Were there survivors still, holding out despite the monsters and the bombs?
And what were the glowing red veins about?
She sighed and grabbed onto the rope once Logan was done, then she listened and lowered herself down onto the city street.
The snow here was far less deep than up on the slopes but the blizzard hadn’t spared Falstadt either. Kate kept her weapons ready, waiting for Logan to descend. They were located at the dead end of a street, a hundred or so meters away from another street bordering this one. Kate clicked her tongue, checking out the surroundings with her Echo Awareness. She didn’t find anything she hadn’t yet seen with her eyes. “There should be a shopping mall down the bordering street and to the right.”
“Sounds good. I’d like to get a view from the roof if the building is still standing,” Logan said.
Kate gave him a slight nod and started down the street. She noted the hollowed out cars and the darkened section on the apartment building to their left. Going to that roof would be risky, she thought and reached the corner to the bordering street. To the left, she saw the long street leading towards a square, the fountain at its center snowed in, the statue of a rider that had once adorned it was gone. It was quiet and she saw no movement other than the snow.
I don’t like it, she thought and moved her head around the corner to see the right.
A similar picture. Snowed in, quiet, and still, as if everyone was on vacation and a snow storm had hit the city, at the same time as a blackout. She focused, then started down the street and along the broken doors and shattered store fronts. There was different damage, she noted. Black soot but not as much as she’d expected from what she’d seen from Grenndorf. She supposed it made sense, the city had been on fire, not entirely engulfed by it after all. Then she saw shattered windows, furniture and even walls cracked and pushed back, as if hit by a blast. The bombs, likely, or a creature with magic that she hadn’t seen yet. And then there was blood. Blood, bits of flesh, torn clothing, a shoe, a scarf, but no bodies, none that she saw.
They came up on a small cafe with tables and chairs set out, a layer of snow on top now. The glass front of the restaurant was intact, though a single broad crack went along near its entire length. It was dark inside and Kate saw a few broken plates and cutlery on the wooden floor. She paused when she saw a set of tables still set. There were cups with coffee still inside. On one plate, she saw a croissant, as if the patrons had only just left for a smoke or perhaps to the toilets.
It felt like such a strange and foreign sight amidst all the destruction and chaos. Focusing forward again, she led Logan to the shopping mall she had only visited once. She hated malls.
The large glass front was broken in entirely, the vast inside space dotted with different stores and layers lying dark, giving Kate pause. Normally such a bustling place of consumption, now dark and empty, streaks of blood, discarded food items, bags, and accessories. It felt wrong. Unsettling.
“Must’ve been utter chaos here in the city,” Logan murmured as he joined her, the two proceeding inside.
“Yeah,” Kate said. It was quiet now, but she could imagine the screams, the confusion. Panic spreading through a crowd was not an easy thing to stop, and it was just as dangerous as any of the things her team went out to deal with, maybe even more so. Add in a few dozen or even hundreds of monsters, and you’ve got yourself a nightmare.
“Okay to go on?” Logan asked.
She glanced over at him, realizing that she had stopped walking. “Yeah. Just…” she didn’t continue, shaking her head instead. She gulped. Yes, she didn’t like malls bustling with loud people. But all of this? It just felt wrong. It took a while to settle but she realized why. Monsters appearing everywhere, military planes bombing the Maar valley, people dead in the streets, rising as undead. All of it was absurd. Absurd and new but monsters could be fought and they had the military on their side, right? It was all strange and new, but an inner city mall, entirely empty on an afternoon? That wasn’t just strange.
The world had changed.
Kate had been busy surviving with all of that change, surviving and fighting. To do what? Get to Falstadt? Find her team? Find out what had caused this? How to reverse it? How to make things right?
She was too busy to notice. To really understand, what it meant.
She heard her axe drop to the ground. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
The world had changed.
She had seen military planes in movies. She had seen corpses, on the news, on the job. But a dark and empty mall? “It’s not normal,” she said.
Logan walked over and touched her arm.
“Are we really that fucked?” Kate asked.
Has the world ended?
She didn’t say the words but she felt them. And they felt overwhelming.
“Maybe we are,” Logan said. He looked up, seemingly lost in thought, then he glanced back at her, a strange sparkle in his eyes. “So what?”
“So what?” Kate asked. “There are no people here. There is no Falstadt anymore. No Austria. No UN. No people.”
“We’re here,” he said. “You and me, are here. And you didn’t answer my question.”
“So what?” Kate asked.
“Yeah. So what?”
She shook her head. She knew what he meant of course. But seeing this place, seeing a few streets in the city. She could no longer repress the dread that had slowly built since all of this had started.
And it was crushing. Like the last ounce of fight she’d had was squeezed out of her. A part of her wished there was a monster here somewhere, something to fight, to kill. But it was just quiet. Quiet, dark, and empty.
“I think we should head back soon,” Logan said. “I do want to check if we can reach the roof, and we should fill the last bag and your pack with useful things before we leave as well. You don’t hear any monsters, do you?”
Kate sighed, then shook her head.
“Good. Any stores you can think of that would be useful?” he asked.
“Trying to distract me?”
“Exactly,” he said. “You’re not present. We’re in enemy territory. Not being present will get you killed, and that will get us both killed, so snap out of it. You can’t save the world, but you can fill those bags with useful stuff.”
“One step at a time,” she murmured and checked her headlamp.
“Yeah. I know someone who always says that,” Logan said.
“Shut it,” Kate said. She was thankful that he did, turning on her light before she made for the first store. It felt good to have a goal but what did they even need? The first store looked wrecked, books, movies, and games strewn about. It didn’t smell particularly bad. A bit stale maybe. “Did Bert have a blu-ray player?”
“Just dvd,” Logan said.
“They don’t sell those anymore,” Kate said. “Guess they’re not selling blu-rays anymore either.” She stood there for a moment, thinking on their next step. “Cel wanted orange juice, right?”
“She did.”
Kate felt a smile tugging at her lips. “Let’s get that girl some orange juice.”
They soon found the grocery section in the mall, much of it wrecked, all kinds of things strewn about. Kate expected there to be nothing usable left, looted or destroyed. When they reached the juice aisle, she expected a monster to ambush them, something new and unknown, dangerous in ways they wouldn’t have considered.
But nothing came to attack them, and there was an entire shelf sitting right there, with boxes upon boxes of different juices. Some were ripped open, others on the floor, sure, but there were plenty left. More than a single girl could drink in weeks, maybe even months.
None of them were expired. Of course they weren’t, it hadn’t even been a month since Kate had seen her first goblin.
Kate grabbed four liters and put them into her pack, then grabbed another four. She barely noticed the weight.
“Quest done,” Logan said.
“We do have to bring them back alive,” Kate said.
“Might want to get a bottle of wine or two as well, for the adults?” he suggested.
“Yeah,” Kate said. “And cheese… probably gone bad.”
“Crackers then? And olive tins. You like olives?” he asked.
“That does sound pretty good, let’s see what else we find,” she said. The axe in her hand felt a little lighter, the darkness of the mall not quite as overbearing. If she could make one little girl happy with some orange juice, then so what if the world had ended?
Comments
Jason Hardman
TYFTC! I'm kind of debating in my head whether an English language version of Austria would use the term "mall". I know in British English it's not really used, other than as an American import word. Not that the equivalent "shopping center" is all that exciting. Still easy enough to understand as a translation of whatever term they might use in Austria.
Steven C
> “Is that sarcasm? Again?” Kate asked, looking out and down through the crumbled wall. “Thought the cooldown on that was a little longer.” 🤣
