Allison lead the way, her attention shifting between the occasional scuff mark and checking around corners before we moved into the next aisle of America-themed detritus. I looked back behind us to see how far we were from the last bread-crumb of collectable train I'd dropped, and opted to place another one on our path, marking our latest progress with a train car paying homage to the Apache Wars, which I learned only ended in 1924? I resolved to look that up when I got home.
Something overhead caught my attention. I hadn't realized it before due to the dark, but most of the seasonal department was covered in an alternating red, white, and blue canvas, not dissimilar to those used by the circus. The red warning lights overhead had changed the color scheme to be red, more red, and black. It was when I was looking up at the canvas, that I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye.
"Allison, down!" I yelled, running forward and knocking her behind a display as a burst of gunfire cut through the canvas and rained down on the floor.
"Oh damn." Said Wells over the PA system, "Well seen, Peterson, very clever."
I sat up behind the display as Allison sat back up.
"Do you see him?" She said,
"He's using the cameras." I said, before shouting "Why is everyone getting my name wrong?"
"What?" Well's said, the sound of papers shuffling over his open mic.
"It's Patterson, with an A and a double T, not Peterson."
"Huh," Wells said, "Well, it says here in your personnel file that your name is Peterson, here, let me fix that."
There was a sound of typing.
"There, now your name is 'dead-man'! Dick Dead-man."
I sighed.
"Keep him talking." Allison said, holding up a finger and pointing further down the hall, "I don't think the camera can see that way."
"You want to split up?" I said.
"He can only look at one camera at a time." She said,
"But how will we know we're making it closer to the center?" I pleaded.
"Simple." Allison said "Whoever he's shooting at is probably closest to him, so if you're not getting shot at, start moving closer to the center."
That thought filled me with dread,, but I couldn't deny the logic, at least, not in the moment.
"Oh come on..." I said loudly toward the PA as a form of agreement, "Are we really doing the whole Richard-Dick joke?"
Allison bolted down the hall, drawing fire. I took the chance to run head long towards the camera, it slowly swiveled down towards me, but I managed to make it under the camera before it could get me in its sights.
"Ohh, splitting up, how will I ever manage to deal with this new threat? Oh right, I'm surrounded by tv screens."
I suddenly remembered the large array of television screens that surrounded the control room. I mentally slapped my forehead, but it did at least confirm where he was.
I looked up at the camera, it was too high up to reach, but it'd stopped moving at least. A burst of gunfire echoed out from the other side of the department. In a bolt, I realized he could only likely aim and fire one camera at a time. I ran, bolting out from under the camera and grabbing onto a shelf to spin me around the corner.
In general, seasonal was a series of concentric circles, and while there was little rhyme or reason to a path that would get you out of Seasonal, getting to the center seemed to be the purpose of the design.
I ran down another aisle, heartened by the fact that the curvature of the aisles were becoming more and more pronounced as I ran.
Suddenly, the sound of gunfire stopped in the distance. It took two seconds for me to realize the significance of that fact. Unfortunately, it only took one second for the camera at the end of the hall to take aim. I dropped to the floor at the sight of the first flash and took a grazing shot to the upper shoulder. I hit the ground and rolled, just as the second shot struck the floor in front of me, splashed across the ground, and sent lead and plaster shrapnel tearing across my face and chest. I screamed, rolled, and covered my face, eyes closed as I tried to figure out how bad the hit was.
I was expecting another shot, and winced as the next gunshot ripped through the department, but as the echo faded, I realized I wasn't being shot at anymore.
I looked up and saw a display of american flag printed toilet paper, and crawled forward, pushing the rolls to either side, and crawling between the shelves to take cover.
"Allison." Wells said over the PA, "Offer still stands for that job posting."
A burst of gunfire punctuated the thought.
"What are you even fighting for? The right and freedom to go back to supervising self checkout? What are you going to do when these cameras replace you?"
I opened up one of the packages of toilet paper and started tearing off sheets and covering my forehead and face, wiping the blood out of my eyes.
"Face it, Allison, working is so 1999. There's no money in work anymore, that's not where we are as a society."
Shots rang out, somewhere in the distance, I could hear someone slam against a display, sending cans noisily tumbling down the aisle.
"You want to make it in this world, put on a tie, get that ridiculous dye out of your hair, and go sit at a desk, keep your head down, avoid supporting any of the unmarketable social causes, and get paid stupid amounts of dosh for staying in line. That's why you people never get anywhere in today's society, you refuse to stay in line."
Something wooden fell to the ground with a clatter somewhere in the distance.
"Darwinism isn't about survival of the fittest, dear Allison." Wells said "You were fit, you were smart, but you know what lets people survive?"
I shoved enough toilet paper onto the hole in my shoulder and had gotten the bleeding on my face under control, but it was still hard to see out of my left eye.
"It's their ability to adapt." Wells sneered, "And you just never managed to adapt.
A hail of gunfire rained down somewhere in the distance, blast after blast sounded until a series of electric clicks filled the space until the room fell silent. I held my breath and waited. Nothing made a sound.
I wiped a tear from my eye, or maybe it was more blood or a different type of eye fluid I resolved not to think about.
I lay there, slowly trying to crawl down the shelf. In the distance, I could hear the occasional whirring of motors as the cameras scanned the area.
"Where are you? Dick?" Wells taunted. After a minute or so, I'd made it to the end of the aisle, and shifted a stack of America themed tampons where the applicators were advertised to be shaped and printed to look like Titan II missiles. Peering out and looking up, I could see the very top of the tent, and if I was close to the center of the tent, I had to be close to the control room.
I took a deep breath. Thinking about the first few turns we'd make leaving the control room.
I could charge out of here, alternate sides of the aisle to avoid the hail of gunfire, maybe try and pick something up to use as cover.
I took a deep breath and pushed everything to the side, listening to the camera above me panning in my direction.
Three.
The camera's field of view passed by me.
Two.
I planted my feet on the back of the shelf and prepared to kick off and slide into the aisle.
One.
I slid out of the gap, and suddenly there was a bright flash. That's it, I thought, I'd mistimed the camera's and had actually slid right out into the path of a camera and had been shot.
I opened my eyes, they strained against the light, the bright colors of the canvas were starting to give me the migraine, and the contrast of the red and blue was starting to make my uncovered eye ache from my face to the back of my skull.
Wait...
Blue?
"What the shit?" Wells said over the live mic "Who did that?"
A rush of realization. My eye’s blinked, all colors in my vision swam from the over exposure of red, but it wasn’t present anymore. I could see blues, greens, and other previously unseen colors. The red emergency lights were gone, the store's normal white lights blazed overhead. Riot Control mode had been deactivated.
I ran, the distant crackling of fireworks and the rolling up of shutters and the accompanying cheering egged me on. Everything hurt, everything burned, but I was so close. I rounded another rounded aisle, and I could see the soft glow of the control room. I sprinted towards the door, none of the cameras moved, and I could hear Wells frantically taping on his tablet. I turned, as I crossed the threshold of the control room, slamming bodily into the side of the disguised door. Wells bolted, his hand reflexively reaching for a coupon book.
"Oh shit!" He said, pulling the tablet to his chest.
I lunged.
He threw the tablet onto the table and tried to leap from his chair, but I tackled him back into the chair, knocking it back as we rolled onto the ground.
Much to my dismay, I wound up on the flat of my back, and in the next moment, Wells was on top of me, punching at the parts of my face that weren't wrapped in blood soaked old glory. I covered my face with one hand, and reached into my pocket with the other.
Wells was straddling me in a way that covered the pocket with my multitool, well, his multitool. I could feel something stabbing at my back.
Well's decided to stop wailing on my arms as I defended my face, and opted to knock me in the side of the head hard enough to make my vision spin and my hearing pop. With that, Wells felt he'd done enough to justify getting off me.
"I can't fault your dedication." Well's said as he turned and grabbed his tablet. He tapped a few buttons, and the lights flipped back to red, in the distance, there were a number of frightened yelps as the shutters slammed shut.
"Why don't you get it?" Wells said "It's not even that you've already lost, it's that no matter what you do, the best thing you can hope for is to slightly extend the duration of your pathetic life. You were never going to escape this place, there is no advancement for you, you will never own a house, never earn that million, never retire. You will just bounce from dying industry to dying industry, maybe produce a few more wage slaves for the system, and then die, passing on nothing, you are nothing!"
I coughed up blood, and tried to sit up.
"But you don’t have to worry about that." He said. He picked up the tablet, and I looked up as a camera swivelled and aimed right at me. I stared down the soot stained, threaded barrel just below the camera aperture, smoke still coiling out of the top of the barrel.
“Walton’s World is no longer in need of your services.”
He tapped the screen.
And that's when Allison hit him upside the head with her cane.
Wells screamed and staggered forward, in that time, the signal from his tablet soared through the observation posts dedicated internet uplink, out of the store via the rooftop dish, up into space where it bounced between satellites at the speed of light, then down to a a different dish on the roof, through the stores own dedicated security uplink, into the camera, which triggered the servo, which fired the bullet, which streaked through the air, catching Wells in the back of the head as he stumbled forward from the strike.
No comments:
Post a Comment