Chapter 22

Three and half days later.

Time: Tuesday, January 15, 2019 8:29 AM

Mark glanced at the time in a passing clock store just as he heard the sound of their last bags of locks hit the ground about forty meters behind him. He gave a small sigh as he considered that they had less than a kilometer left to go. It was three hours before sunrise and they were right on time. They had all taken an elevator to Blazo’s Art Gallery from their home lounge well before 6 AM, and Mark had commented to Jada that if they met no one, they’d probably reach their target destination well before 9 AM, the 62.6 kilometer mark of Black Mall.

They were finally getting back to their mission of Black Mall lockdown after a three-day delay. Late Friday night, Jada had discovered that the sensors of the Matrix Security systems could be linked together in a long chain if they were in visual sight of each other. The outside arcs of the spiral Malls provided the perfect setup to test the capability.

All the store entrances in the Malls were a uniform four-meter by four-meter square, with slots for the sensors on both sides of the doorway at heights of one, two, and three meters. The sensor slots were about 1 cm from the outside face of the corridor, and were protected by the transparent door which when closed would lie flush with the wall.

Driven by the desire to maximize their surveillance coverage, they abandoned their old setup for video stereo and began placing pairs of sensors at the three-meter position along the doors of the outside arc, working with a small portable ladder to space the sensors as far apart as possible along the spiral while still keeping them in visual contact with each other. The sensors were thus able to relay distant observations in a long chain of multiplexed input.

Early Saturday they did their morning security sweep by checking all the monitors at the elevator locations. They found nothing recorded and then began installing their first sensor chain from the Dress Barn of Red Mall. The central system unit had a maximum capacity of 64 channels, allowing for one pair just outside the store and 31 pairs for remote locations up or down the spiral. They choose to work in the direction towards Hex Hall, and by late morning installed their last pair six kilometers distant and just 700 spiral meters from Hex Hall.

After lunch they worked a second system unit in the other direction. Because of the lengthening arc of the spiral, they managed to more than double their distance, placing their last pair of sensors at the 19,260-meter mark of the spiral.

On Sunday they tackled the job of setting up two more monitoring chains from the sky-bridge location of Red Mall. When they were finished, they had monitoring positions from 18,732 meters to 62,560 meters, overlapping with their monitoring range from the Dress Barn. A final chain from the Red Mall terminal store would allow them to monitor everything in Red Mall except the tight spiraling tip at the beginning of the spiral, but during their Sunday night conference they all agreed that that was a very low priority.

So on Monday morning they returned to Black Mall and installed sensors on the part of the spiral they had already locked down, from just past the fifty-kilometer mark all the way back to mark 18.7. The hairs on the back of Mark’s neck were standing up the whole time, but the day proceeded without incident.

And now it was Tuesday morning. They had picked up their bikes and two side cars after a very early breakfast and then jumped back to the Black Mall sky bridge and loaded the side cars with 750 locks, half their remaining Black Mall supply. With all eight members of the group working the project, it was easy to maintain an eight kilometer an hour lockdown pace, and installing the last fifteen pair of sensors was only taking about an extra half hour of time.

Mark insisted riding point, about twenty seconds ahead of along with Jada and Emily in the side cars, and Fatima and Aggie riding just behind them as door closers. Another twenty seconds further back Madison, Hannah, and Ashley were picking the dropped bags of locks off the floor and completing the lockdown. Madison had a third side-car carrying a small ladder to help with the sensor installations.

Mark was flabbergasted they had come this far without being challenged. According to their knowledge of the Parties, at least thirty-six and perhaps forty people went to Party #5, and the home location of Black Mall was still the brightest building on the infrared images yesterday. True, there was a chance Black Mall belonged to Party #3, but regardless, Black Mall was the only section besides their own that had managed to maintain a presence at the home Party location. Was it possible they never found the entrance to their Mall? Everyone in Mark’s group was assuming it would be as easily findable as it was for them at Parties #1 and #4, but they had no proof of that.

As 8:35 AM came, Mark was just a couple of stores from their stopping point when he heard unfamiliar voices call out from the store just ahead on his left on the inside arc. The name Rabbies Dram Scotch Whisky was proudly displayed above the archway in bold letters.

The group’s agreement was that if Mark spotted other people, he would pull up and wait for everyone to catch up, but the voices he had heard were unsettling. The first voice sounded like an angry bark, a voice of a man totally out of patience. And what followed seemed to be a crying whimper in reply. Disturbed by such an emotional exchange and with the doorway to the liquor store just a few meters ahead, Mark coasted the remaining distance without thinking and braked outside the door.

Mark stared into the liquor store with shocked amazement. Before him stood a young woman carrying a caseload of whisky, and she was wearing almost nothing, a skimpy halter and a pair of soiled panties. Mark’s first thought was that she must be freezing being so undressed in the cool Mall.

And then his eyes began to take in more details. There were bruises and welts covering her body, from her face to the tops of bare feet. And her feet were in chains. It looked as if there were three pairs of linked handcuffs stretched out between her ankles, giving her barely enough room to walk and certainly not enough separation to run. And there was dried blood around her ankles and heels. The tight handcuffs had rubbed the skin over her ankles raw. Mark eyes darted from the woman’s feet up to her astonished face.

“Run,” the woman mouthed silently with her lips.

“You fucking bitch!” a voice roared from just inside the archway. A young man emerged from behind the store façade, carrying a pistol and raising it to whip the cringing girl. “Fucking whore! Did I give you permission to...” His peripheral vision caught a glimpse of Mark and he turned to see. Their eyes locked.

“Motherfucker!” the man screamed in his mind.

“What?!” Mark thought back. The raw intensity of the man’s emotions was overwhelming. An initial wave of shame, so deeply ashamed at what he had become, followed by an avalanche of fear and hatred that allowed the man to bury his shame. With deep intuition, Mark knew what was about to happen. His own body started to move in response, almost without his volition.

“I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch!” the man thought as he began to swing his pistol slowly up towards Mark.

“There is no need!” Mark’s mind cried out in protest, his left hand sweeping across his legs towards a spike in a holster under his right arm. “There’s no need!” he shouted in his mind. So slow! It felt as if his body were moving against ultra-thick molasses.

“Die, motherfucker!” The man seemed to realize that Mark did not have a firearm, and was taking the time to crotch into a firing position before pulling the trigger. Mark thought he could read the man’s mind. “One shot, right between the eyes! Uno will be so proud! Fuck whore tonight, pick of the pussies! Don’t waste the bullets! Do it in one squeeze!”

“My God, man!” Mark screamed back in silence, the spike clearing the holster, Mark’s lower body already spinning in series, transferring a great burst of angular momentum up from his legs and into his pelvis. The foulness of the man’s expected reward was revolting. “Stanley, have you no decency?!” The lack of speed in his body was profound, but it seemed the more Mark focused, the slower the universe seemed to run. Mark put all his concentration into his form, abandoning the futile effort to hasten his throw.

“How do you know my name?! Eat lead, dirt bag!”

“Are you a child?! This machismo is so ridiculous!”

“Motherfucker! How dare you call me a child!?!”

The fear and hatred were in complete control, the initial shame completely buried. All of the power of Mark’s body flowed into his throw, hips whipping torso, torso whipping shoulders, shoulders whipping arm. And through in all, the combat mantra of Mark’s sensei was beating in his mind. “Eyes! Always watch eyes!” Mark’s eyes were glued to the man, locking eyes, locking minds. It was physically painful to couple to such vileness. Mark had a fleeting thought he was about to vomit, and then a small part of his brain realized he was going to hiccup.

Mark’s target was the gun. His eyes were locked with the man’s, but his peripheral vision was guiding his throw. The man had almost completed dropping into his firing stance, squatting with the pistol held out in front of him with straight arms. Mark realized he could fire at any time.

The spike left his hand. Mark wasn’t sure it was the best throw of his life. The situation was so strange, it was pulling him from the mental zone he needed for his best accuracy. But he was satisfied with his form. If he was about to die, at least he had the satisfaction of throwing his most powerful spike ever. A small corner of his mind wondered if the effort would be a fitting memorial to his former teacher.

The man dropped lower into his squat than Mark had expected. The spike sailed cleanly over the top of the gun by two centimeters, traveling as a flash of gleaming black metal above the outstretched arm until it caught the man just to the right of his windpipe. The entire spike slipped into the man’s neck as easily as if his neck were made of air.

“Die, you punk scum!” the man’s mind screamed as his brain gave the final command to pull to trigger. The barrel was perfectly aligned to place a bullet at the top of Mark’s nose. But the mental command could not reach the muscles in his hand. The tip of the spike had penetrated almost the full diameter of the man’s neck and had chiseled the major nerve complex near the very top of his vertebra. The man was paralyzed from the neck down, and his body began to fall backwards from the combination of the momentum of the blow and his total lack of balance.

“You shithead! You’ve killed me!”

“I didn’t mean to kill you!”

“You fucking dirt bag!”

“I was aiming for your gun!”

“I hate you!!!”

“I’m sorry! But what did you expect?!”

“Motherfucking idiot!”

The eye contact might have lasted an instant longer, but Mark’s body gave a vigorous hiccup, and the spasm broke the eye contact.

The world dropped out of accelerated time. The mortally wounded man was falling backwards into a display case of choice malt whisky. The gun was loose in his hand, and the barely clad woman by his side dove for it. There was a bright red dot of a laser light coming from out of sight on the left, and a multitude of shouts were erupting from several locations inside the store.

The chained woman retrieved the gun. The laser dot was fixed high on her breastbone just above her halter and she weaved to the right as she brought up the gun. She fired without sighting and the laser dot moved off target. There was a second report of gunfire, and the whisky bottles by the woman’s side exploded in a spray of glass and amber liquid.

The woman fired again, and then another two quick shots. Mark was standing astride his bike in a state of absolute shock, for a few seconds not even thinking about diving for cover. His eyes darted to another man in the back of the store. Mark’s eyes snapped to the man’s hand, another handgun. He had already sighted the woman with his firearm.

There was nothing Mark could do. The man fired and woman’s head jerked sideways towards Mark, spraying the floor between them with blood from a small hole at her temple. More screams erupted from the store.

There was another woman in the store standing behind the man with the gun. She looked oriental and was bare above the waist except for a pink bra. She had the huge bottle of liquor in her chained hands. It was enormous, the largest bottle Mark had ever seen, the size of a cricket bat. She swung it high in a full overhead arc and then whipped it down as hard as she could, the muscles in her arms bulging from the effort.

Mark expected the bottle to explode on impact with the man’s head, but the thick glass maintained its integrity. It was the skull that deformed and then fractured from the impact. And then the glass bottle exploded into a thousand shards, spraying the jagged glass and alcohol into the horrible indentation the bottle had created in the skull. Mark winced and hoped that death would be mercifully swift.

The battle was over, ending as quickly as it had begun. Several more women became visible from behind the aisles of the stores. Mark saw three, then four women, all oriental he thought, all barefoot and dressed in nothing more than bras and panties. One woman saw the slain woman close to Mark and screamed “Carol!” and ran to the body, jerking her bound legs in short hops as fast as she could. Meanwhile Jada and Emily pulled up with the side cars on either side of Mark.

Mark felt like a lost child, totally confused and wondering madly what he should be doing. It seemed as if his support team had arrived a half hour late, even though a part of his mind knew only a few seconds had passed since he had biked up to the store. For several more seconds there was an eerie silence as everyone struggled to comprehend the carnage before them. The only sound was the sob of the woman kneeling next to her slain friend. And then all pandemonium broke loose.

Fifteen minutes later.

Time: Tuesday, January 15, 2019 8:51 AM

The most amazing part of the battle’s aftermath was that so much was done in so short a time, but everyone was acting with grim efficiency. After exchanging a burst of information with the new people, half of Mark’s group returned to closing and locking the last of the doors on their schedule. Mark was too amazed with their determination to interfere.

From their brief discussion, the four new women knew Mark’s Group came from Party #1, everyone except for Aggie who was from Party #4. The new people were all of Japanese ancestry, Akiko, Kiyoko, and Ann were born in the USA and Toshi was from the southern Japanese island of Shikoku. Their initial exchange of information had been peppered with trivia. Everyone felt too disoriented to think clearly.

They were the group of four women who had arrived late to the Party, riding the elevator only a half an hour before Mark’s group. It was the women’s great misfortune to pick Party #5, 2525. But for now they were juggling a host of critical issues. More detailed explanations and stories would have to wait.

Critical issue number 1: There was a roadblock set up another 2.5 kilometers down the spiral by the Beta Sigma Rho fraternity. The Japanese women didn’t seem too worried. They said it was manned by only one compadre and two muchachos, and that at this time of day there would be no one else on this side of the mall for several hours. A quick question revealed that “this side of the mall” referred to Black Mall’s home complex five kilometers beyond the road block. It took the women several minutes to calm down and explain that only the compadres had guns.

And now their group had three of these guns. It seemed the slain Carol had been an excellent shot. Her first shot had gone wide, but her next three had formed a tight pattern near the breastbone of a man who was out of sight of Mark while Carol had been firing. It was his shot that had exploded the whisky bottles by Carol’s side.

Mark had some expertise with handguns, but it was his sister who was the accurate markswoman with a pistol. Madison enjoyed practicing with their father at a firing range back in Vermont, and she recognized the pistols as Bersa .380 caliber with 15-shot magazines. The Japanese women searched the male corpses without compunction until they had found the extra clip that each was carrying.

Critical issue number 2: Like Carol, all four surviving women were bound hand and feet with linked chains of handcuffs. It allowed them just enough movement to be slow pack animals for transporting the liquor, but running was impossible. There were also ugly purple chaff marks on all their ankles and wrists where the cuffs were cutting into their skin.

The women were in poor shape. They all looked tired and abused and were shivering in the cool air of the mall, and worst of all Akiko’s left ankle looked infected. Hannah and Ashley ran into a nearby linen store and brought out some blankets the women could wrap themselves in. The simple act of kindness brought tears of gratitude.

Critical issue #3: Was their presence detected by the men at the roadblock? It was difficult to judge. The sharp reports of the guns had sounded very loud, but they had all been fired inside the liquor store and not directly in the corridor. Also, the corridors of the Malls had proven to be surprisingly poor conductors of sound. The walls and floor felt hard and smooth but they still seemed to diffuse sound and drown it into the white noise of the ventilation.

Mark put the probability at perhaps one-third that a faint echo of the gunfire had been detected. What would the local compadre in charge of the roadblock do? If he sent someone back for reinforcements, then it would probably be another hour before anybody would show up. Party #5 was mercifully without wheels. They were using simple sleds to drag merchandise from the mall to home. Mark’s group with the bikes had a tremendous competitive advantage.

Madison was lying prone against the wall of the outside arc, just beyond the door of the store diagonally after Rabbies Dram. Mark peered inside for a second as he walked to his sister. It was a specialty store in kitchen cutlery, and at the 62,560-meter mark, it would be the last store they would have a lock for. It would also contain their last pair of sensors connecting to the Black Mall sky bridge stores.