Ascension

didn't know how they 'got better' or shrugged off injuries the way they did. She knew they had to eat the living to get smarter and figured they might need to do that to heal too. 'Well this one is out of luck as far as getting to me is concerned.'

The shoes felt wonderful, next stop would be clothing that actually fit and who knew where she would end up? If she were lucky there might be a shower, or at least a dip in a local pond to clean up. Mentally she added 'towel' to the list of things she wanted to acquire.

'And not one of those cheap forty-thread pieces of sandpaper, now I can get the good stuff.' In her mind she was seeing a soft, oversized towel that she could wrap up in. The picture was tarnished a little when she added herself stepping out of a lake, but clean was clean. Katie kept to the front edge of the stores as she made her way to the woman's clothing store, she didn't see any movement anywhere and the place was a lot less damaged than she would have thought, given the amount of bodies that lay behind her down the other wing. Frowning, she paused and looked at a cell phone kiosk, the glass had all been shattered in the display cases and the register was pock marked with bullet holes as well. Shaking her head she carefully trod by it to her destination.

The clothing store boasted a wide entrance, typical of most stores in a mall, but was darker than the shoe store. The front of the store fell under a large overhang that probably accommodated a wider pedestrian walkway above. Moving into the store Katie went for the underwear first. She thought that there was nothing so bad as riding two hours in a pair of dirty men's jogging shorts to make someone want to have fresh panties, especially when she had been commando at the time. Katie snatched the first pair of one hundred percent cotton underwear off the rack that she saw and slipped the men's short off over her shoes.

Softly she laughed out loud, 'Here I am standing half naked in a dark store at the mall, even in a million years I would not have guessed this would ever happen to me.' Katie pulled the underwear on and moved to grab some jogging shorts more appropriate to her gender. Continuing her shopping she made sure to grab three of everything, it all went into the canvas bag she was carrying. The store was completely empty of zombies and other than the wrappings and packaging she had left on the floor it was as clean as it would have been when if it had been open for business.

'I expected more trouble, this is too easy and easy makes me nervous.' The clothing store did have flashlights in a small travel section, they were small and inefficient looking to Katie, but she took two of them anyway. She was expecting to replace them at the Farm and Fleet, which sounded like the kind of place with good flashlights and maybe, if she were lucky, rifles.

Once her bag was loaded up she turned back for the entrance and cautiously checked the area outside the store. It was dead quiet. This was a little nerve wracking. The disabled zombie should still have been making noise, unless it had passed on. Moving along the store fronts again Katie back tracked towards the entrance. When she reached the shoe store she looked over at the zombie on the floor. It was not moving. Katie took a step towards it, and glanced upwards to see how the others were doing against the vegetation above. The fat tattooed man wasn't moving because someone had bashed its head in. Without thinking Katie jumped to her left, swinging her bag upwards as she did so.

Something metal crashed into her arm, luckily it was cushioned by her bag of clothing, but the force of the blow still knocked her sideways and dumped her sprawling on the ground. The shotgun, held in her other hand, ended up underneath her, but she didn't let go of it. Katie bunched her legs under her and rolled forward in a diagonal somersault. Her foot connected, inadvertently, as she rolled and she heard someone quietly say, 'fuck', followed by a metallic clattering sound. Pulling the shotgun up as she completed her roll Katie found herself facing a young man who looked to be in his middle to late teens. Behind him two startled looking girls were hastily trying to move around the guy to aim their guns at her.

'Hold it!' Katie yelled, not firing. The young man raised his hands to about shoulder height.

'Please.' he said, 'Please don't shoot me.'

The girls kept moving, and stopped when they had their rifles pointed at her.

'Nobody is going to shoot anybody. Just take a breath here and talk this out.'

'Put your gun down!' yelled the blond girl to the right side of the boy.

'Now, just calm down. I don't want to shoot another living person and I am sure you don't either, we all have to work together to get out of this and we have enough trouble already.'

'Just put your gun down!' the blond was trembling and shaking, barely able to keep her gun pointed at Katie.

Katie looked at her and said, 'Okay, I am going to lower my gun, but do not shoot me. Just relax.' Slowly Katie lowered the barrel of the shotgun until it was pointing at the young man's lower leg. The blond calmed down a little, but still had the jitters.

'Put it on the ground and back up.' the darker haired girl said. Her gun, Katie noted, was not shaking.

Hesitant, Katie answered, 'I've been through a lot today and I am not sure if I can get another gun and I need it to protect myself from the zombies.'

'I don't want to shoot you, but I will. You look like a zombie and I don't trust you. So put the gun down or I am going to put a bullet right through your head.'

'I look like a zombie?' Katie thought, 'Oh shit, I'm still covered in dirt from the building. In this light I gotta look bad.' Out loud she said, 'Okay, I am not a zombie. I am just dirty, I got dirty because the building I was in collapsed and I haven't had a chance to get cleaned up yet. I had to get more clothes and shoes, so I came here after my car ran out of gas. Do not shoot me. I won't be happy about it.'

'I won't if you drop your gun.' the dark haired girl said.

Sighing, Katie slowly bent over and put her gun on the ground, then raised her hands above her head. The man let out a muffled sob of relief and kicked Katie's gun away from her, then went and retrieved a long odd shaped piece of metal, Katie saw that it was a crowbar.

'Now what?' Katie asked. The two girls were still pointing guns at her.

'Jess?' asked the blond.

'Shoot her. Just in case.'

'No!' yelled the young man, 'You can't. We check her, if she is alive then she is okay.'

'And how are you going to prove I am alive? You gonna listen to my heart? Cut me to see if I bleed?'

The three stepped back to confer in front of the building, leaving Katie to look longingly at her shotgun, which the man had only kicked about three feet away.

'Aw leave her!' came another voice from the upper level of the mall. 'If she were a super zombie she'da ate your brains by now. A poor meal it would be too. I told you, Bobby, to hide from anyone except the slow zombies.'

'Dad?'

'All clear up here, is she the only one you found down there?'

'Yeah, well and that twitchy one on the floor.'

'Okay you kids sit tight, we will be down in a minute.'

Katie saw two men walking towards her from the far end of the mall, picking their way through the piles of the dead as they came. A moment later the two were standing in front of her, looking her up and down.

'She looks alright, dirty, like she said, but okay other than that.'

Flushing Katie didn't know how to respond, flashes of the rape scene from 'The Road Warrior' were running through her head. The man must have sensed her unease, he did the unexpected, he threw back his head and laughed.

The three teenagers and the man next to him stared at him with worried looks on their faces. Katie could have used this distraction to escape, but she too was spell bound by the man's laughter.

He stepped forward and Katie flinched backwards. 'No.' he said gently, with a trace of laughter still in his voice, 'You don't have anything to worry about lady. My name is Robert.' He held out his hand to her, turned as she shook it and pointed to the man beside him, 'And this is my partner Kent.' He paused and added, 'My 'life partner', Kent.'

Understanding dawned on Katie and she laughed too, a short, bitter laugh, but it broke the spell and finally the dark haired girl stopped pointing the rifle at her.