Chapter 11: Social Experiment

Humans are social creatures, they need exposure to their own kind. Communicating with others or simply seeing their faces stimulates the brain in ways that other simple activities can’t. Deprivation of social contact can cause psychosis, aggression, and suicidal behaviors, prompting things like solitary confinement in prisons to be a hot button issue in the early 21st century. However, for the citizens of Portland trapped in the mall, they were currently experiencing the opposite effect. There was no such thing as privacy, no alone time, no quiet. Wherever one looked, miserable faces looked back, everyone’s ears filled with the voices of others, no matter how much they wished for sleep.

Even in prison, there was blissful silence at times. The guards enforced it with threats of brutality, but at night, a prisoner could close their eyes and relish the quiet. If they had private cells, they even enjoyed a modicum of privacy. There was nothing like that here. Private space was fought over, something as simple as a door held onto like a life raft after a shipwreck. The storerooms in food court kitchens, the changing booths in the old clothing stores, sometimes just a corner of a room where some furniture blocked the others’ view. Any place that might offer someone a reprieve of eyes on them was fought for. People either slept with their back to the wall for safety, or their face to the wall so that they wouldn’t have to see other people.

The bathrooms didn’t even make the list, because they were always occupied. Whether they were public bathrooms with a row of urinals or single units in the backs of stores, there were always lines with banging fists and impatient voices. The toilets worked, most of them, at least, but toilet paper and hand soap were in short supply. There were no showers in the mall, no way for the people to clean themselves other than just a damp rag.

The noise was constant. Thousands of people jammed into one building, the conversations never stopped. A lot of them involved shouting or crying. The search for loved ones was still ongoing, and everyone was chasing scraps of information on survival or escape. ‘Maybe the next person I talk to knows a hidden place. Maybe they know of some air vent or unblocked window.’ That was the hope.

The preachers were going nonstop. In times of hardship, it was common for people to turn to faith, hoping to be saved. There were no bibles, but those trying to build their church upon a nonexistent rock made do with memories and improvisation, often just holding up a piece of cardboard with a cross scrawled on it.

“Believe in God and you will be spared!”

“Armageddon has arrived and Dominion is the Beast!”

“Sin and impurity have brought about this apocalypse! Repent for your depravity and prove you deserve God’s love!”

Each prophet had their own crowd, the fearful and the sobbing masses desperate for any kind of escape. They hung their heads in prayer, trying to drown themselves in religious fervor. If they felt God’s love, they wouldn’t feel pain. If they felt God’s love, they wouldn’t feel pain. If they felt God’s love, they wouldn’t feel pain. It was almost like they were hypnotizing themselves to sleep through the horror.

The loudest sound was the wailing of children. They didn’t understand what was going on, why they were trapped and hungry. For parents with infants, there was the problem of diapers. Spare clothing was cannibalized, but there was no way to dispose of the used ones, other than just tossing them aside. For a lot of people, just doing their business in a corner was better than waiting two hours to use a bathroom.

Unwashed bodies and mountains of human waste, the stench filling the mall became worse by the day.

At the moment, Josh found himself sitting against a wall in the old Apple store, eating out of a box of dry cereal. There were others in the store, simply because there was nowhere else for them to go. They eyed him enviously, which was why he had a shard of glass in hand as a makeshift knife and a length of wood with a nail sticking out of it. Since arriving here, he had lost a lot of weight, a combination of the stress and lack of food. Perhaps time could be considered a factor, but he didn’t know how long he had been in there. There was no sense of time. All the watches and phones had been taken when everyone was captured, and not a single beam of sunlight could enter the building. Day, night, who knows? There were only the security lights, almost insultingly dim. Dominion had declared that he was building a proper prison for them, but he didn’t say how long it would take. They could be trapped for months.

He looked up as Mike approached. This store had become the meeting place for the news employees. He offered Mike a handful of cereal and it was gratefully accepted. He sat down next to him with a sigh.

“Two more are dead.”

“How?” Josh asked with dull curiosity but no real concern. Countless people had died already, either from disease or violence.

“I think they were diabetic or something. I managed to grab one of their wallets.”

Wallets were a prized commodity, not for cash or credit cards, but because they could be used as small pillows when one slept on their back. Every once in a while, one might even contain a small multitool that could prove useful.

“Did you hear about Peggy?” Josh then asked.

“No, what?”

“She was raped last night. Chris found her in the security office. He said it looked it like several men had gone at her at once.” “Last night”, of course, was just a figure of speech. It vaguely referred to the time in which most people fell asleep, following their circadian rhythms. However, the longer this went on, the more that standard blurred.

“Jesus,” Mike cursed. “You don’t think ... he was one of them, do you?”

“He sure seemed torn up about it, so I hope not. She hasn’t woken up, she might have a concussion or something. They really did a number on her.”

Rape was a daily occurrence, despite the presence of so many witnesses. Groups of men would often take turns on a woman. While one worked, the others would stand guard and make sure that no good Samaritans tried to intervene. It didn’t matter where this happened. The worst part was that it wasn’t always other prisoners who did it.

Josh and Mike both looked up, seeing a guard walk by the store. There were about a dozen of them, constantly roaming the corridors. They were dressed in all black with gas masks and assault rifles, and countless people had already died trying to grab them. It was unknown exactly why they patrolled, as they never broke up fights or disciplined anyone, at least, anyone who deserved it. Often times, they would buttstroke someone with their rifle for giving them a dirty look or coming too close. Were they keeping an eye out for anyone trying to escape? It wasn’t like they were looking that hard.

They didn’t talk, other than to give orders, and no matter how much the people begged or cried for mercy or freedom, they’d only dispense cruelty. Countless women had already been raped, often with a gun pressed to the back of their head and an audience of prisoners, wanting to put a stop to it but not wanting to join the legion of fools would had already been ripped full of holes.

They were Dominion’s new guards from Augusta. They were all former prisoners, but were offered the chance to earn back some of their freedom in exchange for their dedication. Avoiding a return to enslavement was a strong enough incentive for them to work hard, but what made them so cruel was how they were rewarded. Being guards, as long as they didn’t kill anyone, they could be as malicious as they wanted. Rape was a hobby for them, and it didn’t matter who it was.

The guard stopped to listen to his radio. “Feeding time!” he then shouted.

All the guards throughout the mall repeated this announcement, and every single person in the building jumped to their feet and ran towards the back of the mall. The loading bay was where all the food came in, scavenged by the spawn working in the city. Originally, the entrance to the loading bay was cordoned off, like all the other exits and entrances to the mall, but it was now accessible to the prisoners, at least during feeding time. The bay doors were the least reinforced exit, just regular steel shutters, but they were guarded at all times, with shifts changing with the arrival of food. The bay doors were opened and several trucks backed up to unload their cargo.

The prisoners rushed into the loading bay, but stopped at a line of tape on the floor. Anyone who crossed that line would be fired on, it was a lesson that had been made painfully clear in the beginning. For many, this wasn’t just a chance to get food, it was a chance to breathe some fresh air. The mall was hot, stuffy, and smelled horrible, so to feel that winter breeze was enough to bring some to tears. However, while there was fresh air, there was no light. Some kind of warehouse had been built against the back of the mall, like an airlock. Trucks would drive through, and when the bay doors were open, no sunlight would reach the prisoners. The schedule was also random, with gaps as small as four hours and as large as eighteen. The absence of routine made it impossible to tell days apart. All this effort, just to deprive them of a sense of time.

Six trucks, all with pallets of salvaged food, water, and even some toilet paper, arrived. The guards unloaded them with forklifts and pushed them past the tape line. Then, the prisoners went at them like piranhas stripping a dead cow. The rules were that distribution was up to the prisoners, and there was just enough to keep everyone alive, but the problem was the vast difference between alive and well-fed. The calories and nutritional value of the food were meticulously counted, but no one was willing to pass on the chance of a full stomach.

In the beginning, attempts had been made to keep things orderly, everyone getting their fair share with the children prioritized. However, dissatisfaction quickly bred anger and indifference to others. Fighting started, people stealing each other’s portions and clambering to get the biggest haul when the food arrived. ‘If everyone isn’t going to be civil, why should I?’ That fueled the violence and left a lot of people dead.

Josh managed a score, a pizza box with what felt like half of a pizza still inside. It could have been covered in mold and rat shit, but as long as it cured the agonizing hollowness of his stomach, he’d eat anything. He tucked it under his shirt and tried to get away. Anyone leaving the scene had food, that was the rule. Men and woman alike swarmed him, their grubby hands searching for whatever prize he carried. He swung his makeshift nail bat, forcing the people back. He ran through the crowds, fighting everyone off, until he at last reached open space.

He ducked into an old Pottery Barn and secluded himself in the corner. He opened the box with his mouth watering and gazed at his meal in delight. The pizza was at least a week old, the smell gave it away, but he scarfed it down without even tasting it.

“What do you have there?”

He looked up to the entrance of the store. A lanky man stood there, shirtless, his pale body covered in symbols written in blood. There was a crazed smile on his face and a lead pipe in his hand. Josh got to his feet with his nail bat raised.

“You’d better back the fuck off!”

Two more men appeared, their appearance like the first. One had a length of chain, the other ... a human femur! There was still flesh clinging to it!

“No one’s here to help you,” the first said. He then charged, releasing a bloodthirsty scream.

Josh managed to dodge downward swing of the pipe and counter with a strike to the head. The nail sticking out of his piece of wood punctured the man’s cheek and the blow sent him tumbling to the floor. The other two attacked, the man with the chain blocking a swing from Josh, while the man with the femur ducked to the side and hit him in the gut. Josh buckled from the blow, giving the second man a chance to get behind him and wrap the chain around his neck. Being choked from behind, Josh gasped for air as the third man started beating his stomach over and over again. Every strike made him feel like his stomach had been ripped open and he was going to throw up.

The first man, bleeding from his puncture wound, go back to his feet. “We’re going to eat well tonight, boys.”

He raised his pipe, an intended lethal blow, then shouted in agony and turned around. He had been stabbed in the neck with a shiv, but it only hit muscle, missing anything important. Behind him was Peggy, her expression a mix of shock at what she had done and wrathful desire to do it again. Before all this, she had been a beautiful blonde field reporter, but her filthy clothes and head wrapped in makeshift bandages made her difficult to recognize.

“You bitch!” the man howled.

Josh used this opportunity to elbow the man with the chain in the ribs and slip free. He retrieved his nail bat and began beating him with it, stabbing him over and over again with the nail. He then turned and hit the first man in the back of the head as he reached towards Peggy. Two men down, but the third didn’t miss the opportunity to strike Josh in the side of the face with the femur and knocked him to the ground. The man grabbed the pizza and he and his friends scurried off.

Josh slowly got up, feeling like the side of his head was on fire.

“Are you ok?” Peggy asked.

“I’ll live. How are you?”

Peggy looked away and clutched herself. “I’ll live.”

“I ... heard about what happened. I’m so sorry. Were they the ones who...”

“Raped me? I thought they were at first, but looking at them, I’m pretty sure it was a different group of basement freaks.”

The mall basement, it had become a bastion of horrors since everyone arrived. At first, people flocked to it because they thought it would offer them privacy, but soon, it was what the people were doing that scared others off and gave them that privacy. Fear, desperation, anger, ignorance, when mixed together, they formed a drug that affected people differently. Some broke, their mental foundations crumbling like sandcastles and they gave in to their despair, just waiting to die. Others found their survival instinct, discovered how easy it was to fight even if they had never done it before, how easy it was to be pushed into killing someone. There were those who tried to find an escape, if not freedom of the body, then freedom of the soul. They clung to hope no matter how desperate or foolish it was.

Then there were those who embodied the nightmare around them, like a chameleon blending into its environment. Their former selves poured out of them like overturned bottles and were replaced with a concoction of madness and horror. The people in the basement were the last kind. They chose to hide away in the deepest, darkest pit, to bathe themselves in insanity and become as evil as whatever was oppressing them. After all, how could they be oppressed if they enjoyed it?

Rape, cannibalism, human sacrifice, the rumors spread about the people who dwelled in the dark. Those who entered the basement either didn’t come back or emerged as one of “them”. The three men, they were “scouts”. They went up to the surface to spy on everyone else and to gather food for the others in the dark. The symbols on their skin were likely from some kind of cult.

Josh sat down on a nearby table, one of the few remaining pieces of furniture from the old mall. He rubbed the side of his head to try and ease the throbbing, then stopped. His fingers and scalp were filthy, coated in a thick paste of sweat, dirt, and dried skin. Just touching anything with his hands reminded him how dirty they were, how long they had been dirty. He couldn’t stand touching himself.

“How did it come to this? I thought we have moved on from those chaotic years, I thought we were finally on an upswing and regaining what we’d lost to the undead. But this ... I didn’t know that horror like this was even possible.”

He thought of Nayara. No matter how much he searched, he never found her. Was she put in some other building? Was she dead? Had she managed to escape? He liked to think she got away, that she was safe and free from all of this.

Nayara screamed and sobbed in pain, but it was nothing Ishtar hadn’t heard before. Rather, it excited her. She had her pet project on the floor, her head and upper back against the carpet, but her ass pointing up in the air, like she was caught in mid-summersault. Her wrists and ankles were chained to the floor, so she couldn’t get away no matter how much she wanted to.

“Please! No more! You’re going to rip me open!”

“That’s the point,” said Ishtar.

She snipped a lock of her crimson hair, just a short segment, and the strands fused together and solidified into a needle, about the length and thickness of a pencil. There was already a whole bushel of these needles inserted into Nayara’s exposed anus, like a coffee cup full of pens on a cubicle desk. At first, all the pain had been the points stinging her inner flesh, but as more and more were added, it was the expanding of their combined thickness that was making Nayara whimper. Ishtar took the new needle and inserted it directly into the center of the bushel, further stretching her anus. How much more could she take before the ring broke like a cold rubber band?

In between insertions, Nayara took her time in kissing and licking Nayara’s plump ebony ass, put on display before her. She despised these humans for taking her Master’s attention, but she had come to understand the sweetness of their flesh, the joy of experiencing their softness, of playing with them like toys. Not a moment went by that Ishtar didn’t crave her Master’s cock, but until such time, licking out Nayara’s snatch was enough to satisfy her.

The next needle was inserted, pushing her ass to her absolute limits. One more and she’d tear. “Don’t fear the pain, crave it. Imagine it’s the Master doing this to you. Bask in his attention, the honor of your body entertaining him. Pleasure, pain, you must thank him for giving you the gift of sensation.”

Ishtar then reached down and started touching herself. Torturing Nayara made her so wet, her screams sent shivers down her spine. She then removed her fingers, glistening with her womanly honey, and swirled them around Nayara’s mouth. Her pupil’s dilated, the drug taking effect immediately.

“Now tell me, do you want me to stop?”

“No, please,” Nayara panted with a drunk expression. “Please wreck my ass, Mistress. I want to feel it!”

“That’s my girl.”

Ishtar formed a new needle and inserted it, causing Nayara’s screams to echo throughout the house.

While this was going on, Mary and the twins continued to clean the mansion. Actually, this was their third time doing it. As soon as they were finished, Ishtar made them do it all over again. They weren’t just sex slaves; the harpy bitch was turning them into maids. At least they weren’t going through the same torment as Nayara.

Dominion had told Ishtar to train them to be better slaves, but only Nayara was to be “broken in”. It was almost nonstop, Nayara either moaning in euphoria or screaming in agony. They didn’t dare try to imagine the horrors that Ishtar was using to break her will, but they could hear her. Throughout the tortures, Ishtar preached endlessly of the glory of serving Dominion, spoke of his greatness and how his cruelty was like God’s blessing. It was clearly some kind of brainwashing.

Like Dominion, Ishtar had the ability to heal the wounds of others, so no matter how much damage she inflicted, she could always restore Nayara’s health and start all over, a true definition of Hell. They never even saw her, she never left the bedroom. Ishtar brought all her meals and kept her isolated, just another way to mold and twist her mind. Then, when she was finally allowed to sleep, Ishtar would come out and resume dominating Mary and the twins. Two weeks this had been going on, with the only silver lining being Dominion’s absence.

When he returned, what would Nayara be like?

Thousands of people were jammed into the mall, yet their stories of suffering, their days in this Hell, differed very little from each other. The “day” started with waking up, though in this place, sleep was shallow and fitful. There was nothing but the floor to sleep on, and clothing, like everything else, was fought over to use as bedding. With the stifling heat of all these people, their combined breath, many slept without any insulation, relying on the floor to help keep them cool.

It could be noise, hunger, the need to pee, or the announcement of feeding time, anything could wake them up. For parents, their priority upon waking up was tending to their children, making sure nothing had happened to them in their sleep. Then, any meager possessions, clothes, tools, maybe even saved food, had to be counted. Desperation bred pickpockets and thieves. Then the rest of the day would be spent either huddled in one spot or moving to avoid trouble. During feeding time, one of the parents, usually the father, would be in charge of getting food.

For those without children, their time was spent prowling, searching for useful tools or materials, maybe food, possibly information, or staying glued to one spot, simply waiting out the nightmare. There wasn’t really any entertainment, outside of games like charades, but people were rarely in the mood to play, same with talking. Boredom, misery, hunger, paranoia, they were draining.

Some people would try to drown out their sorrows with sex, of all things, and not always in the form of rape. Willing men and women, they’d go at it like animals while doing their best to ignore the stink and taste of each other’s unwashed bodies, all for some endorphins. It was like drinking bathtub liquor, in which the benefits hardly outweighed the difficulties.

Fights were breaking out constantly, either over resources or short tempers. The guards did nothing to stop them. In one of these fights, Josh was the winner, or at least, he managed to escape without dying. He was rather proud of himself, he felt like he was getting better at this. He was the gladiatorial champion, the mall was his colosseum and his nail bat was his sword. It was actually becoming a bad habit of his. The adrenaline, the endorphins, the dopamine, his body was so starved that he was getting into fights just to find his high.

He ducked into the old Hot Topic. No one typically went in there, it was where the parents would dump their babies’ diapers. He sat against the wall, out of sight, and checked out his prize. It was a flask, stolen off a corpse. The guy had died early on, never got a chance to drink from it, and some scavengers pulled it off his corpse. The question was to drink it now or save it for later.

The sound of wheezing made him jump. He looked deeper into the store, in the darkest shadows. His eyes adjusted, letting him see the man lying against the far wall. He had a paper bag in his hand and he was breathing deeply from it.

“What the Hell are you doing?” Josh asked.

“Getting high. What else? I’ve ground up and snorted pretty much every material I can find, yet none of it works. I remembered hearing about kids huffing fermented shit and piss to get high, and I got to say, it works.” Josh grimaced in disgust. “You want some?” the man asked.

“No thanks, I’ll pass.”

“Are you sure?” the man got to his feet and staggered over. “It’s really good! It’ll help you forget all your troubles.”

Josh looked him up and down. He was wearing military uniform, at least, most of one. “You’re a soldier?”

The man laughed and shushed Josh. “Don’t tell the Sergeant!” Now up close, Josh gagged from the stench of the man’s breath. Nobody in this place was brushing their teeth, Josh included, but at least he wasn’t huffing shit fumes. Josh then noticed the man’s eyes on the flask. “Dude, I’ll do anything for whatever is in there. I’ll suck your dick for a drop.”

“Not for sale,” Josh said as he turned around to leave.

“I’ll tell you a really cool story about this place!”

“Not interested.”

The man then said something that made Josh stop in his tracks.

Josh, Mike, Peggy, Chris, and Keegan stood around Myers, the soldier, sitting on the floor. They stared at him like angry teachers around a misbehaving student.

“Tell them what you told me, tell us everything you know, and the flask is yours,” said Josh.

Myers laughed, still high from his homemade drug. “You drive a hard bargain. Give me the flask and some clean urine and the car’s all yours.”

“This guy is completely out of it, why are we wasting our time?” Keegan muttered.

“Come on, Myers, tell us that cool story about this place. Remember, the warlord?”

“Oh, oh yeah. I remember when we arrived here to fight that Dominion guy, you know, the mean guy with all the monsters? Jesus, those things are scary. I see them chasing me in my dreams and I end up pissing mys—”

“Back to the story!”

“Oh, sure. So, I remember the Colonel telling us a story. It was ... like twenty, thirty years ago that the army was closing in on this place. Bloodstain, that’s what the dude called himself. He ran all of New England, based out of this mall, it was his fortress. The army knew that once he was gone, these states could finally rebuild. This dude, he made our guys fight for every fucking inch, but eventually, we managed to push him and his forces back to this mall and surrounded it. There was no way he was getting out.

Back then, they just wanted to shell it all to Hell and be done with it, but there were a lot of hostages. So, they waited him out, played loud music, sniped at his guys who popped their heads out, used tears gas, all that stuff. And finally, the warlord’s men waved a white flag. All of the hostages were released and the bad guys came out and surrendered.”

“And?” Mike asked.

“Except for Bloodstain. He and his top commanders never came out. The army searched this place from top to bottom but couldn’t find them, and they weren’t hiding amongst the prisoners. It was like they just disappeared.”

“They escaped,” Peggy gasped.

“This whole place was surrounded, but they had a way out,” said Josh.

“You’re thinking a secret tunnel or something?” asked Mike.

“Yep.”

“Oh, a secret tunnel ... Yeah, that makes sense. But it would have to be pretty big to fit their elephants through!” said Myers before giggling himself into a useless lump.

After tossing him the flask, the news crew left him to laugh it off and huddled together. “You really think there’s a secret tunnel here?” Chris asked.

“I certainly hope so. It would be weirder if he didn’t have an escape route. Hell, he probably doubled the size of the basement just to withstand a mortar attack.”

“Wait, the basement?! No, no way! That’s a death trap!” said Mike.

“Besides,” Peggy sighed, “if there was a tunnel down there, wouldn’t it have been found by now? Work crews, Dominion, or even the freaks down there right now?”

“Only if they knew to look for one. Look, if there is even a chance of a tunnel, then isn’t that a risk worth taking?”

“Josh, you’re talking about a story told you by a guy literally high on shit!” Mike exclaimed. “Even if there is a tunnel, you’d never make it! Those freaks in the basement would rip you apart! Then there is the risk of being found out. For all you know, it could be a trap. Listen, I want to get out here just as bad as you do, but this is just crazy. We’re better off looking for another way, or even just waiting to be released.”

Josh didn’t say anything, he was too tired to argue. They were right, it was a bad idea.

Days passed, the humdrum as miserable as ever. Fighting, rape, crying, death, the mall seemed to get worse each passing minute, and everyone was losing hope. What no one realized was that they were being watched. When not busy overseeing the transformation of the city of Portland into a new concentration camp, Dominion spent all his time watching the people in the mall, as well as two other buildings where prisoners were being held. While he did have some spiritual sight, he lacked Blight’s omnipotence. He could see everything in the mall from a macro view and focus his attention on the smaller details, but he just couldn’t see it all at once. Regardless, it was better than television. He usually stayed up on the roof, but sometimes he’d change his appearance and walk amongst the prisoners as one of them. He liked to mess with them occasionally, turning off the water and power for a day or so, just to watch them panic at losing their last few comforts.

Wait a second, something was happening inside. He focused on the loading bay. A guard had entered, leading four tied up women. The others looked at him in confusion. “What are you doing?” one of them asked.

“I got orders from Dominion, he wants these four to himself.” The guards looked at each other in uncertainty. Was this a test? If he was really under orders, then if they got in the way, it would be back to the slave pens. If he was lying, and they let four potential breeders escape, their heads would end up on pikes. “Listen, if you make him wait, he’ll rain Hell down on all of us!” the guard shouted.