I awoke with the morning sun peering through my bedroom window. Outside I could see the morning dew evaporating off the grass as the sun crested the hill. If the sun was beneath the hill, it was still before six, and I had some time before I needed to start on the day's chores. I rolled out of bed anyway and headed downstairs towards the kitchen. Dad wouldn't be up until after Mom brought him his coffee, which meant I'd be able to see Mom before the day really started in earnest.
With the fresh knowledge that a cult of deranged gun nuts where hunting us for sport, we opted to change our strategy of keeping the eastern wall to our flank, and opted instead to cut across the center of the store, leaving behind the narrow, towering canyons of stationary and the dense meadows of sporting goods, to try out luck on the vast prairie of apparel.
"Duck!" I yelled, tackling Maggie to the ground as Allison doubled over, her cane knocked out from underneath her. She swore and rolled next to the cart as another arrow struck the seat and bounced off the steel frame.
"Why are they shooting at us!" I yelled as a hail of miscellaneous missile merchandise fell from high.
"You could have phrased that differently," I said as I took the last step off the stairs leading from the tower and found myself back on the showroom floor.
"Patterson, I have no delusion about our chances of survival, even if we succeed in restoring power, we'll likely be standing right underneath this creature when power comes back on." Allison said as she made her way onto the last step, one hand on her cane, the other gripping the handrail while Paul's keys, keys to virtually every lock in the building save the ones that could take the store out of Riot Mode, jingled in her hand.
A voice crackled on my hip.
"And that's why I accepted my role of disarming the giant gas bomb before Allison could drag me to my death." Hissed the voice of Arthur over the walkie talkie.
I walked through the electronics department, brushing white powder off my shoulders, while in the distance the howl of the she-beast and the occasional terrified and horrifically brief shriek of an associate would echo through the store, empty, save for some eighty people working the night shift. Paul had told me to meet him and the north-western tower when I was done by the door, and I had been raised that, if something goes wrong, and someone could blame you, it's best that people hear it from you first.
"You know, eventually you get used to the noise when you stand under it long enough."
I looked through the iron fence that separated the incoming door from the outgoing door. Sam, the man checking receipts, had been chummy from the moment I'd arrived. He was nice enough, though I hadn't seen his face with our backs turned towards our respective doors, but it was nice to have another voice to drown out the repetitive drone of the overhead speaker.
"Thank you for shopping at Walton's World, please place all personal belongings on the conveyor to be scanned, this includes backpacks, purses, and children under three."
I adjusted my name tag, straightened my vest, and tucked away what was left of my self-respect as I tapped the big, red "Clock-In" button on my cellphone screen.
"Excellent, mister..." A bored-looking man paused, not looking up as he waited for the information to pass from my phone to the nearest cell tower, into space, through a satellite, down to a server facility, back to the store, and through the Wi-Fi which seemed to be running off two tin cans and spite.
"Patterson." The bored man said as the mundane miracle of telecommunications finished its work, "You're now successfully clocked in, now please surrender any cellphones, weapons, or illicit substances, all prohibited materials will be returned to you at the end of your shift.
I awoke with the morning sun peering through my bedroom window. Outside I could see the morning dew evaporating off the grass as the sun c...
