Zombies & Cupcakes by Sia V (beginner reading books for adults txt) 📕

'Tursendale Diamand Factoury Outlet Megasale' poster on the door in front of me told me I was in a public place.

"Where the fuck. Are. My. Pants?"

I looked around the tiny toilet stall, now realising that my head was killing me. No luck. No pants.

"I'm wearing my underwear at least. Thats a relief."

 

I put my head in my hands, trying my best to back-track.

Where was I?

How the heck did I get here?

 

Try as I might, nothing was coming to me.

 

I stood up off the loo, and noticed for the first time that I also wasn't wearing any shoes. The tiled floors were cold and somewhat sticky.

"Ugh, I don't even wanna know."

Caring too much about my semi-nakedness, I braved the idea of public humiliation and unlatched the door, peeking out into the rest of the room. Half a dozen dark grey toilet stalls, including the one I occupied. All of them empty and lonesome. A long length of grey marble with three equally spaced basins, sat under a long, rectangular, unfortunately high-definition mirror. Not a single other soul in sight. The room is also void of my pants.

"Well don't you look charming." I mused stepping out of the stall tugging the hem of my shirt down.

A golden brown long-haired bomshell stood in front of me. She looked like she was fresh out of highschool - maybe 18 maybe 19. Tusseled curls hung airily down her face and upper torso. She rocked a simple white tank and wore a blue and white checkered button up overshirt like a cape; it hung down to her thighs. A dark red, almost brown flaky substance covered her forehead, and the rest of her face was red and blotchy, as if recently crying. She also wasn't wearing any pants.

My face stared back at me from the glossy mirror.

"Nice outfit." I murmured to know one in particular. "I was aware that females were wearing their thongs around in public these days and classing them 'shorts,' but this is just ridiculous." I choose to ignore the dried blood on my face. Something clearly happened, but I'm not entirely sure I want to know just yet.

I hated to admit it but the girls bathroom was never this quiet. Ever.

My spidey-senses were tingling.

I buttoned up my overshirt so now it looked more like a dress. Normally I was actively opposed to wearing dresses, but then I was much less kean on the idea of walking around in public in my undies - a notion many girls these days could learn a lesson from.

A small framed building layout was screwed to the wall next to the door.

"Mirkurk Shopping Mall..." The big block letters announced. "Level 3."

The biggest shopping centre in the state. About 20 minutes away from home. Via train anyway. I remember Jayde saying something recently about us needing to get something from here.

My brains splitting too much for me to even consider trying to remember what that was though.
I pulled open the bathroom door as quiet and carefully as possible. Still fully aware of my semi-nakedness.

The silence echoed.

Stepping out of the bathroom I peered down the long marble walkway that had shops lined either side. Then back the other way towards a set of escalators leading up. They were off.

No one.

What was really curious about this though was that the large thick glass directly in front of me showed the mamoth sized carpark was filled to the brim with cars.

"Must be some performance or something on one of the other levels..." I said, brushing it off and making my way down the walkway. I knew that was ridiculous. It was always noisy here, whether it be some monotonous old chap squeaking out over the P.A, or just the simple buzz of human socialisation.

It didn't take long for my senses to go into overdrive.

I passed 12 shops easily, and they were all open for business, but also completely empty. Neither customers nor staff could be found. In some shops, items had been strewn from shelves, smashed on the floor or littered randomly throughout the store. The walkway however retained its clean marbled exterior.

The walkway was nearing a bend now, and I noticed something as I started to follow it around. The nearest shop on my left wasnt in the same state as the other I'd passed. It was worse.

A chemist, I think. Racks of magazines spilled out into the walkway, bottles of water and pill capsules lined the counter and floor, the lights had all been smashed.

Up until now I had been working under the assumption that there had been a fire drill or something, or maybe a police arrest that required evacuation of everyone on the premises. But what did that have to with a chemist? A crazed drug raid maybe?

Deciding it was in my best interest to stay away, and noticing that bandages and anything that could possible help with my head was long gone, I continued down the walkway. By now I could see the large stairs lading down to the second floor, and from what I could tell, the second floor was much like the third - empty and quiet.

Something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention, jutting out from between some rather large potted plants and a feature wall that ended just before the stairs started.

"I spy with my little eye...pants!"

More importantly, they were MY pants: I'd know that belt buckle anywhere! It was a handmade silver emblem design inthe shape of a dragon. Its one eye shone the brilliant red of the ruby it was adorned with. An 18th birthday present from my late grandfather.

I bounded over to them and pulled them from between the plants. What was left of them anyway. The entire right leg of my camo cargo's was completely missing, sliced off by the looks of it. The left, while still intact now sported a large hole extending from the upper thigh to just below the knee. The zip and button completely gone and the seems down the front were torn open.

"...shit."

The pants werent an option, but I wasnt going to leave that belt here, regardless of whether my life depended on it or not.

I opened my mouth to call out, to anyone that might still be here; with the exception of the chemist, its as if people in other shops literally just stopped what they were doing and left, and sensing a clear sign of emergency, I shut it again.

I noticed the broken glass when I was about halfway down the stairs. Store windows had been smashed from the inside, the remains if which now lined the walkway in glittering streams. An enourmous white pot plant was that once housed a rectangular hedge and stood in the middle of the shops, was now in pieces about 15 metres from where it used to be. The plant itself was nowhere to be seen.

Dodging as much glass as I could, I continued onward in search of life. Benches that were also once in thbetween the shops where now completely destroyed. Some even lay, in jagged pieces, out of shop windows.

The further I went, the more it looked like a disaster zone.

"The hell...? I sleep through some sort of hurricane of something?"

The windows showed a different section of the carpark now - closer to the entrance of the shopping grounds. "Looks like warzone extends outside this time..."

Unlike what I'd seen on the third floor, this was catastrophic. In the drive in where only 2 cars could possibly get through at once, a large 8 car car-crash had taken place. Those people must've all wanted to leave at once. Not to mention really, really quickly.

Doors hung open some cars where even still on and running. But not a single person was in any of them. Windshields were cracked, windows smashed, doors even pulled from their hinges that now jutted out of the windows of other cars. 2 cars were ablaze at the far edge of the parking area, and another car, a police vehicle no less, was completely upside down. Glass, debris and shopping products littered every and all open spaces. Then there was the blood.

I wasn't a complete idiot. Unless every shopper had been carrying red paint when they left, or tried to leave, then I really don't see that being anyhting other than blood. Splatters of it were everywhere, and on almost every car. Some were a dark red, others had turned a light brown colour, much like the flakes that were still peeling off my face.

I couldn't help but gasp in amazement. Or maybe it was because it was rather disturbing.

"I don't like where this is going." I informed myself. Without looking anymore I turned away and contiued, albeit faster than before, on my way out.

The first floor is double the height of the ones above it. The stairs were so steeply built that one wouldn't be able to see much of the first floor until actually standing on it. The faster I went the closer the stairs appeared, and the closer the stairs appeared, the more ragged the shops started to look. A jewelry store made entirely of glass, had practically exploded all over the ground.

I found myself looking from each shop left to right and back again, so fast I was shaking my head as if to say 'no.' No, indeed.

Doors to shops: gone.

Automatic glass doors: smashed.

Roller shutters: Either hanging by a thin strand of wire or completely detached from the shops they once protected on the other side of the walkway.

Even walls were becoming more beaten up, as if some heavyweight strong man had thrown a fit.

I felt myself starting to panic a little.

When I reached the stairs and practically threw myself down them. How bad was the first floor? Was it maybe some natural disaster? Terrorism?

Huffing and puffing, I landed hard on the first floor, reminding myself that I still hadn't found my shoes, and figured that I had much more worrying things to think about.

In terms of people, the first floor was the same as the previous two. Desolate. In terms of damage, it was like something you'd only ever see in 'Fallout.'

The stairs had once opened up to a large almost football sized clearing, shops in an a full circle around the stairs save for the grandios entrance doors at the far end of the mall, seperated only by various stalls and travelling shops.

Now there was just chaos. Entire stores were alight, others completely emptied of products. Overturned tables, entire shop windows missing, glass, metal shards, light fittings and beams that once lined the roof now decorated the floor. The glass chandeliers that once mad ethe ceiling look like stars had fallen, shattered and taken their place among the rest of the debris.

Dirt and blood were splattered everywhere. On glass panels, cracked windows, the floor, stalls, throughout some shops.

Protruding from the entrance/exit, and leaving no chance of leaving was a once shiny black helicopter now engulfed in flames that lept about 30 metres high.

Propellers bent and mishapen, blood on the inside - now shattered - glass, and the driver nowhere in site.

As much as I didn't want to admit it, the roaring of the flames was much better than the deafening silence I'd had put up with until now. This was chaos. Plain and simple.