Extinction Point: The End

and hope that the paramedics would look after her when they arrived. If they arrived, he corrected himself before turning and moving reluctantly in the direction he hoped he would find the exit out of this insanity.

* * *

There were half-a-dozen dead bodies strewn across the mall walkways, their trampled forms lay smashed and crushed, broken limbs jutting at odd angles.

All was still.

Broken glass from shattered storefronts lay scattered all over, crunching under Jim’s shoes as he picked his way through the desolation.

More bodies lay in a disheveled heap around the top of the escalator’s gunmetal-gray stairway, and a second, broken and blood-spattered mass had formed at the bottom.

They looked like carelessly cast-aside dolls, discarded by some hateful child. He paid particular attention to avoid looking directly at the unfortunate souls as he stepped over their motionless pale bodies to ride the escalator down to the lower level. He leaped cautiously over the bodies piled at the bottom of the escalator like so many dry autumn leaves.

On the ground floor, near the escalator, he found a large illuminated visitors map of the mall. A fat red arrow labeled ‘You Are Here’ indicated Jim’s location, and he traced the route from it to the nearest exit with his index finger before turning and heading in the direction the map indicated.

* * *

The sky, a perfect cerulean blue, stretched off into the distance as Jim Baston pushed open the glass exit doors of the mall and stepped out into the fresh air. He stood for a few moments, bent at the waist his hands braced against his knees, sucking in a lungful of warm air. The heat of the day was astonishing after the air- conditioned environment of the mall, it radiated up from the concrete sidewalk in waves, and within seconds of leaving the building, beads of sweat began to pop on his forehead.

A scattering of lifeless birds lay dotted over the road that separated the sidewalk from the mall car park. Glancing up at the huge structure he had just exited Jim thought he could make out bloody splotches where the birds had collided with the polarized glass fascia of the building.

This is all wrong, he thought, raising himself to an upright position and shading his eyes with his hand from the intense glare of the sun. The sky was too blue, the air far too warm.

Wherever ‘here’ is, it sure as hell isn’t New Orleans. Not even Louisiana by the looks of it.

Blocking the road off to his right, three cars had smashed headlong into each other. Steam or smoke rose from two of the ruined vehicles and Jim could just make out the body of a driver still slumped against the wheel of one of the cars, barely visible through the hissing fog that rose from his vehicles broken engine.

Every atom of his body screamed at him to leave, run away; get the Hell out of here! But he couldn’t leave the driver to die. At the very least, he had to check that he or she wasn’t just unconscious.

This is madness. Sheer madness, he thought as he began walking cautiously over to the crashed vehicles.

Two of the cars were empty, their occupants having fled the scene. The third, an unrecognizable compact, was sandwiched between the other vehicles and had sustained the most serious damage. The driver, an elderly woman with blue rinsed hair, was slumped against the wheel of her car. Her jaw hung limply open, a thick clot of congealed blood filled her mouth. Jim assumed that her severed tongue probably lay somewhere at her feet. A spider web of blood-splattered fractures radiated out from the spot where her head connected with the car’s windshield. Jim was sure she was dead but he stretched a cautious hand through the open window and checked for a pulse against her throat.

Nothing. She was gone.

Jim stepped back from the destroyed vehicle and its dead driver. His left foot trod on something metallic and he almost lost his footing as the object slid out from beneath him. He blurted an expletive as he barely managed to regain his balance then looked down at what had caused him to slip. It was the crushed car’s license plate, battered and dirty, torn from its fastening on the rear of the car but the white background and blue California state name was still visible. Kneeling down he picked up the piece of twisted metal examining it as though he held some ancient scroll or religious relic, as though it held the key to his very existence. In a way it did, he realized. Here he was wondering where he was when the answer was all around him, fastened to the hundreds of abandoned cars that sat patiently waiting for their owners to return.

Still holding the warped piece of metal in his hand, he walked across to the nearest row of parked cars. Moving from one car to the next, he checked the license plate of each in turn. By the time he reached the end of the first row of parked vehicles he knew where he was. There were a smattering of out of state license plates — Nevada and Washington, one from Idaho — but the majority had the same blue on white plates as the one he held in his hand.

California.

And judging from the blue expanse that stretched out above him, it could only be California. The sun was past its zenith and easing towards the western horizon across the cloudless canvass of the sky, but in the distance, beyond the rows of abandoned cars in the foreground, an evil black plume of smoke spiked high into the upper atmosphere, as hard and expressionless as gunmetal. At its base, Jim thought he could make out the orange flicker of flames leaping high into the air. A faint smell of burning rubber reached his nostrils.

It looked like a big fire. Jim expected to hear the sound of emergency vehicles screaming along the roads towards the inferno. There should be helicopters and camera drones buzzing around the scene of the distant disaster like worker bees buzzing around the bountiful honeypot of disaster. Nothing in the air. Nothing on the ground.

A memory began to tug at his mind. A sense of deja vu that descended like a mist, confusing him even further. Everything looked so familiar; no that was wrong, everything was familiar.

He knew this place. He was sure of it.

Taking a step out onto the black top he craned his neck to read the name of the mall fixed over its recessed entrance: FALLBROOK MALL, in giant white letters.

The name rang a bell somewhere in his memory. He repeated the name of the shopping center over in his head a couple of times.

Fallbrook Mall, Fallbrook Mall.

“Got it,” he said, with a snap of his fingers. It was the name of the mall he used to shop at when he still lived in California; when they had still lived out in the San Fernando Valley. There was a great little Italian restaurant that he and Simone would eat at and a Cineplex that they used to take… Lark.

His eyes dropped to ground level again and he began to walk towards the low brick wall bordering the building, hedging in a perimeter of sad looking flowers, wilted and dry under the sweltering sun.

From the corner of his eye, he caught movement, his head turned quickly to focus at what had drawn his attention. Someone was watching him.

On the other side of the doors, standing in the foyer of the mall, a man stared intently at Jim. Dressed in khaki pants, a white open collared shirt and a black leather jacket, the stranger looked to be in his thirties, brown hair swept back over his forehead, eyes locked solidly with his own.

Jim took a step back in surprise. The figure took a step back too. Astonishment crossed both their faces. Jim raised his left hand; the stranger mimicked his gesture. “Christ,” Jim whispered as he stepped forward and placed his hand flat against the doors of the mall, reaching out he touched the face of himself echoed in its mirrored surface. The face of Jim Baston when he was thirty-eight years old.

Eight

I must have fallen asleep at the wheel.