Chapter 6

Time: Saturday, December 22, 2018 1:49 PM

Mark glanced at the time on his phone and frowned. Two and a half hours till sunset at most, and his earlier optimism for reaching the cars before dark was starting to seem ridiculous. But who could have foreseen a mall this crazy? “Certainly not me, that’s for sure.” Mark thought glumly. “Am I the best person to be leading this group? Fatima reminded me a while ago, not to make assumptions about this place. And did I listen to her?” He looked idly at a few more stores as they passed. “At least no one is blaming me for the spot we’re in. That’s something I guess.”

By counting stores and store lengths, the group was now estimating they had just passed the three kilometer mark down the length of the corridor. The reason it wasn’t more started a kilometer back, at an Eastern Mountain Sports store they had stopped for supplies. It was a great place and they were now all outfitted with rugged backpacks, hiking boots, and first-rate precision binoculars. Coming out of Eastern Mountain, Fatima asked if the group could talk about what they were doing.

It seemed impossible to Fatima that the mall would run for two kilometers from the Dress Barn without another way in or out. Mark suggested Emily’s earlier idea that they take the time to explore both levels of the stores they were passing and search for other exits. They had a brief and intense debate whether to have two search teams and speed up the search. But being on isolated second-floor levels of different stores seemed to Mark to be too much like splitting up, even if they tried to keep in touch by phone. Could they even hear a scream over such a distance? Maybe not. So they searched over a dozen stores as a single group of seven.

The problem was that almost all the stores had back storage space, often on both levels. Testing for hidden doorways took several minutes per store, even with the entire group testing the walls. Before giving up, they had probably spent an extra hour in search mode and had found zilch as far as an exit was concerned. Mark felt awful, wishing they had that hour back.

Jada was walking directly in front of Mark when she pulled up straight and suddenly stood shock still. “Shit!” she exclaimed.

Mark was deep in thought about their situation and almost walked straight into Jada’s backpack, stopping just in time. “Huh?”

Jada didn’t reply for a moment. She took her binoculars and stared down the tunnel, and then turned around and stared the other way. “How could I be so stupid?!” she exclaimed with a growl. “Shit!”

Mark was standing by her side. “Jada, what?”

“This corridor, the arc isn’t constant. It’s lengthening out.”

“What?!” It took Mark several seconds to realize what she was talking about. “My gosh, a spiral?”

Jada nodded her head vigorously. “Yes! We’re walking down a spiral.”

Mark frowned and then realized the implication. “Hell! Then we’ve picked the wrong direction!”

Emily by this time had her own binoculars out and was confirming Jada’s observation. “She’s right, Mark. The circumference of this arc is huge, maybe nineteen kilometers now. Wait a minute! There is no true circumference, not in a spiral. SHIT!” she cried, repeating Jada’s sentiment. She turned to Mark with a guilty face. “I let you down. I should have spotted this hours ago.”

Mark dismissed her apology with a wave of his hand. “We have to turn around.”

Emily nodded at once. “Yes, I agree.”

“Huh?” asked Fatima. “Won’t we lose a lot of time if we backtrack? What difference does it make, whether we travel up or down a spiral?” The three high-school seniors also looked confused.

Emily answered. “Where’s the end of an outward spiral? Maybe it goes on forever.” She gave a nervous laugh. “But walking inward along the spiral, it has to end at a center point. That’s where we should be.”

Hannah meanwhile was leaning against the wall and surveying the corridor down-spiral with her binoculars, searching for an exit and giving the stores they would never pass a quick examination. She startled everybody by giving a yip of joy. “No, no everybody! We have to keep going this way!”

Fatima was by her side. “You see an exit?”

“No! But use your binoculars. Take a look on the outside arc, near the limit of what you can see. It’s a bike shop!”

Time: Saturday, December 22, 2018 2:28 PM

They spent a full half hour at Trek Bicycle Superstore and Mark thought it was an excellent use of their time. They had found a fantastic selection of bikes, mountain bikes, tandem bikes, urban street bikes, racing bikes. Upstairs there were even two bikes complete with attachable side cars that could be used to haul freight or another person.

They all picked a bike they felt comfortable with. Jada also surprised Mark by putting several Kryptonite locks into her backpack. Why would she want to bike with all that extra weight? He decided he would have to ask her sometime.

Emily surprised Mark too, by choosing an ultra high-tech bike meant for professional racers. As he walked out of the store with his own bike, he saw her leaning against the outside arc of the spiral and making careful observations with her binoculars. She was also busy making notes in her sketchbook.

“I want to make some measurements as we go back,” she informed Mark as he approached.

He nodded. “Yah, Okay. How often?”

“How does every kilometer sound?”

“Sure...” Mark and Emily looked at each other directly in the eyes for a moment. “Emily, you’re not expecting to leave here today, are you?”

“Castle Commonwealth? Hah! Come on, Mark, what do you think? This mall is right out of The Twilight Zone. We need to collect some data on what this spiral is like.”

“What kind of data?”

“One simple measurement, the visible length of the inside arc, measured as close to the outside arc as I can get leaning against it with my binoculars. At the bike shop here, I’m getting a reading of 191 meters.”

Mark sighed and nodded. “How long do you need to make your measurement?”

“Maybe a minute or less. I count the stores and their lengths. I’ll try to be as fast as I can.”

“Hey, it’s okay. These bikes have really opened up our options. We can afford the time.”

Emily grinned. “Maybe we won’t have to lose any time. I’m a demon biker. I’ll speed ahead and stop for my measurements. The rest of you can bike more slowly. We can leapfrog our positions. I’ll keep up, don’t worry.” The rest of the team was now out of the store, everyone wearing helmets. Mark pondered Emily’s suggestion and they discussed her idea with Jada. A minute later the main group turned around and began to bike back up the spiral at a decent pace, Mark thought about 25 kph. He grinned as he noticed they had mindlessly switched to the opposite side of the red centerline. Old habits die hard. But it would also give him and Emily a nice passing lane on the left.

A moment later Mark and Emily started out racing together and testing Emily’s leap-frog idea. Emily really was a speed demon, hitting sixty kph on her one-kilometer sprint. It was faster than Mark was capable of, and Emily would be out in front of him by fifty meters or so before she started to slow down. She was very adept at making quick stops and immediately beginning her measurement of the mall’s curvature. The rest of the team would ride by and shout hellos as they passed. Emily managed to get her observations done in quick time, leaning against the outside edge of the corridor arc with her binoculars and carefully counting the store lengths along the visible inside edge.

The group learned to balance their leap-frogs and were never more than a few hundred meters away from each other. Mark thought they were pushing the limit of staying together but the two groups were always more or less within sight of each other and he decided it was okay. On their third stop, their familiar AT&T store was just two stores ahead of them. Emily muttered as she made her measurement, “Yep, 160 meters now. The change in the arc is so obvious. How could I have missed this?”

“Emily, it’s not your fault. Who the hell builds a mall in spirals?”

“The builders of Castle Commonwealth,” she said under her breath, “that’s who. I remember a spiral motif in the floor yesterday when Jada and I came here, on the other side of the elevator.”

“Yeah, I remember, by the hexagonal food court.”

“Exactly. That just looked normal. This though...” Emily sighed in wonder. “Wow, Mark. This is incredible.”

The rest of the team started to cycle past them single file with Jada in the lead. “We meet at the Dress Barn, right?” she called out as she flew by.

“Right!” Mark shouted after her. Emily was just finishing her measurement. Mark asked her, “How close do you think you’re making your measurements at one-kilometer increments?”

“Me? I’m spot on, within a fraction of a meter. I’m counting the store lengths as I pass them, all the ten-meter additions. It’s not that hard. So far it’s been thirty stores on each side for each kilometer. I think it might be a fixed attribute of the mall.”

Mark looked back and forth at the corridor. “But the lengths look random.”

“It may look that way, but for every kilometer, there are always three 10-meter stores, six 20-meter stores, seven for both 30-meter and 40-meter, six for 50-meter, and one 60-meter store. For each of the last three kilometers, it’s always been the same.” Emily kicked off and began pedaling before Mark could express his admiration that she could keep track of such details as she biked. Then he began the hopeless task of trying to catch her. A couple hundred meters later, they all pulled up to the Dress Barn at about the same time. Emily and then Mark were in the passing lane, everyone else was on the right.

Fatima was smiling brightly from the exercise and she dismounted her bike and took off her helmet. “You know, this is kind of fun!”

Jada flashed Fatima a quick smile and nod and then knelt down and felt the floor with her hand. It was a neutral grayish color. “This floor is remarkable. It’s smooth but not slippery, the perfect material to bike on. I didn’t notice while we were walking, but I don’t think I felt one seam in three kilometers of biking.” Her knowledge of mechanical engineering was leaving her confused. “It’s a perfectly uniform floor. How did they make this, pour the whole floor at once?”

Mark shrugged as he looked at his phone, 2:42 PM. Jada’s point was troubling, but on the optimistic side, what a difference the bikes were making, more than three kilometers in less than ten minutes.

They left their bikes in the corridor and entered the store. A moment later the group was in the small dressing alcove on the second floor. Mark opened the second booth and walked inside, the other six women standing right behind him. Mark stared at the back wall of the booth. “Hell, look at this. I didn’t realize how perfectly it was camouflaged when we left. There doesn’t seem to be a door here at all.”

Hannah barely managed to avoid whimpering. She gritted her teeth and said nothing. She had an awful fear that the doorway had disappeared, trapping them forever in this insane mall.

Mark pushed on the wall with his hand for a moment. It felt rock solid. But then his hand came to the place where a doorknob to the door should be. He pushed and heard a very faint click and then the door swung open on silent hinges. Everyone let out audible sighs of relief. A moment later the group was standing at the bottom of the circular stairwell, the great dome of glass and golden ribbed alloy thirty meters above their heads.