LAST SHIFT AT SLOPPY’S GIFTS

7:59 AM

A beat up green Hyundai pulls into the empty Mall parking lot. The engine idles as its driver, a young but tired looking woman with curly black hair nervously checks her surroundings. She’s in a black polo and jeans and around her neck hangs a bright yellow lanyard attached to a plastic badge that says “Sloppy’s Gifts and Adult Novelties” spelled out in an obnoxious corporate graffiti font. Below the logo is her name, written in sharpie: “Becca!”

Becca grabs a hair tie out of her purse and gathers her hair into a high ponytail. She takes one more look around the empty parking lot. She takes a deep breath and quickly exits the vehicle, breaking into a full run, the car’s horn beeping twice as she hits the lock button on her key fab before almost slamming into the metal and glass doors of the Mall’s main entrance. It’s just before sunrise.

Now inside the Mall, Becca keeps running. Past the rows of empty, boarded up stores. Weaving between the abandoned Dead Sea Salt scrub and Hair Extensions kiosks, and taking a hard right at the Shen Yun display. Its silent video of 5,000 years of Chinese culture is still playing on loop, distorted by the cracked LCD screen.

Becca runs down the broken escalator, past the eyebrow threading station and the Sushi Go Round. A mouse sits on the conveyor belt that has long since ground to a halt, nibbling on sesame seeds from a toxic California roll. It passively registers the human’s comparatively large form but doesn’t perceive it as a threat, at least not enough of one to interrupt breakfast. Suddenly the mouse finds itself gripped by huge talons that pierce the poor rodent’s neck and belly. Its prey firmly in its grasp, a large black crow with wet, matted feathers and pools of mucus and grit around its milky black eyes takes flight, disappearing into the harsh red sunlight that pours through the giant windows of the Mall’s glass ceiling.

Becca reaches her destination. Sloppy’s Gifts and Adult Novelties. The last store standing in this long dead mall.

“You’re late, Becca.”

Her manager, Douglas Corman, lifts up the gate just enough for her to run inside the trashy neon nightmare of a store. He closes it behind her. He’s holding a machete.

Carlos, her only remaining co-worker, stands behind the register. He’s holding a rusty aluminum bat.

Douglas puts the machete down on the counter and picks up a clipboard with a fresh copy of the Daily Safety Sign In sheet.

“Are you or anyone in your household feeling sick?”

Becca shakes her head.

“Are you experiencing any symptoms associated with the current outbreak of ‘Putrification’, including (but not limited to) loss of taste, hair loss, tooth loss, blurred vision, numbness, waxy skin, or the desire to consume live human flesh?”

“No.”

“Sign here with date and time, please. By the way, what time is it, Becca?”

8:05 AM

“What do we say about being on time here at Sloppy’s?”

“Please, Douglas. Not today.”

“What do we say?”

“‘If you’re early you’re on time, if you’re on-time you’re late, and if you’re late you’re too sloppy for Sloppy’s.”

“You got it. Now, punctuality hasn’t been a problem for you in the past. Is it going to be a problem now?”

“No. No, sir.”

“Good, because there aren’t a lot of jobs left out there. We’re all lucky to still have one. Right, Carlos?”

“What? Oh, yeah.”

“Right, Becca.”

Becca stares past Douglas, trying to focus on the row of lava lamps just behind his head. “Right. I’m sorry.”

“An attitude of gratitude is what you all need. Now, before we get rolling today I need you to stop by the loading dock. We just got a new shipment from Gilden. It’s just one box so you should be able to handle it on your own. Oh and take the fire ax.”

Becca picks up the old, heavy red ax with duct-tape crudely wrapped around its splintered wooden handle for a better grip.

Doug closes the gate behind her. Becca wastes no time although it’s hard to run while carrying the heavy axe so she settles into a brisk walk. She passes by Candy Time, American Doll, Streetz, and the Pretzel Stand, noting two 20-oz bottles of ginger ale left in the fridge. She stops and grabs one. It’s warm, a little flat, but these days?

“Take what you can get,” she mumbles to herself. She chugs it and throws the bottle away before resuming her quest.

Becca pushes open the heavy metal double doors underneath a sign that reads in big, bold letters “Authorized Access Only.” The doors slam shut behind her.

The corridor is long and narrow, its gray walls rendered a sickly pale yellow by humming, occasionally flickering fluorescent track lighting. Despite it’s deceptively simple appearance, it was easy to get lost back here, with a near absence of useful signage and EXIT signs that seemed to lead nowhere. Becca, however, is a veteran Sloppy’s employee of three years (employee of the month last June) and she knows these hallways like the back of her hand. Another bit of uniquely useless retail wisdom she’ll carry with her for the rest of her life.

She finally reaches the automatic doors leading to the loading dock. They open with the push of a large metal button. Becca spots the large cardboard box from Gilden, sitting abandoned on the platform. There’s a pair of bloody handprints that transition into long red smears, like it was ripped out of someone’s hands. The doors shut behind her.

Becca takes a breath and carefully approaches the package. She rests the axe on top of the box and strains as she lifts it off the ground. It’s just a bit too heavy and awkward to carry like that. She looks around for a hand cart. They were in extremely short supply these days. Sloppy’s Gifts used to have one but it was stolen months ago.

Becca stops to think for a moment, then decides to just push it back to the store. It doesn’t matter, no one’s going to buy this shit anyway. And it’s definitely not worth hurting her back.

Becca puts her shoulders into it and pushes the box slowly towards the corridor entrance, the cardboard loudly scraping against the rough cement floor. This is going to take a while. She pauses just before she reaches the bay doors. She presses another large metal button, identical to the one on the other side. The doors swing open wide, revealing an upright corpse wearing either a security or cleaning tech uniform. It was hard to tell, hard to see past the bits of flesh dangling off sinew and bone.

Becca backs away, axe in hand. The melting corpse lumbers toward her, its jaw hanging slack and grey tongue dangling out of its mouth as it drags its blood and shit-stained Shoos For Crews© non-slip boots across the floor, leaving behind a greasy red and black streak across the floor.

Without hesitation Becca takes a swing and the axe connects, landing dead center in the corpse’s chest. As she withdraws the axe she can hear bones weakly crack, the rotten slurry of coagulated blood and disintegrated organs sticking to the axe head like hot salt-water taffy.

She takes another swing but this time the corpse is able to wrap its fingers around her arms, its weak resistance just enough to throw her off balance. Becca stumbles, then falls backward, and the melting corpse falls with her, landing with its head between her knees. Only able to crawl now, the corpse makes its way towards Becca’s chest, it’s long grey tongue dragging across jeans, shirt, and plastic Sloppy’s badge. Becca slams the wooden axe handle into the corpse’s skull, which offers no resistance. It cracks like an egg and a stream of black blood gushes out, drenching Becca’s lower torso.

That’s when she hears the crow crawling up the corpse’s back. She hadn’t noticed it before. It must have flown into the loading dock at some point during the confusion. The bird daintily made its way up the corpe’s back, pecking and tearing at exposed bits of rotten flesh and then greedily devouring its spoils.

The corpse was now eye level with Becca. Its jaws clench around Becca’s neck but its teeth are at this point loose ornaments, bending and snapping off after meeting any kind of resistance. The crow takes a moment from his feast to examine the spectacle, its head bobbing and twitching with cruel, nervous intelligence. It hops across the back of the corpse towards Becca, briefly flutters its wings and lands on top of her head.

Becca looks up at the bird just before it devours her eyes.

9:20 AM

“If you got time to lean, you got time to clean, Carlos.”

“Don’t you think Becca’s been gone a really long time?”

“Yes, I do, and I intend to discuss the matter with her in great detail when she finally decides to return. Since you have a moment why don’t you straighten up the endcaps. I’ll watch the register.”

“Okay.”

“And then why don’t you take your fifteen. There’s still a couple of donuts left in the break room. One glazed and one jelly, I think.”

“Ugh, thanks but jelly donuts are gross.”

9:21 AM

Thick streams of blood and tears run down Becca’s cheeks from her empty eye sockets. She limply drags the axe behind her down the long gray back corridor. Her mouth hangs open, like the puddle of a corpse she left behind in the loading dock. The crow flew away after it was finished with Becca, it’s stomach full of live and dead flesh.

At this point the transformation was complete. The one mercy of Putrification is that it was quick, and the first thing it destroyed was the mind, leaving only the most basic of impulses and a numb desire for live meat. Even if Becca still had her eyes she couldn’t see anymore than a slug or earthworm. The body was just a shell, a rapidly deteriorating suit of armor for a microscopic enemy. Birds and bats were its preferred vessels but these awkward, slow moving land primates would do, if absolutely necessary. Still, there were fewer and fewer of them these days and they have the rude tendency to fall apart before effective transmission.

She finally reaches the metal doors leading to the mall. They present a bit of setback. Pushing a door open is a lot easier than turning a knob and pulling it open. There is a door open button but Becca has no awareness of it. She bangs on the door a couple times and eventually finds the large metal handle. She yanks on it as hard she can, with her last remaining ounce of strength and it flies open. The force rips off Becca’s rotten arm at the shoulder. She enters the mall, dragging the axe behind her with her left hand, leaving behind her right arm, the hand still tightly gripping the door’s metal handle.

Becca lumbers past The Pretzel Stand, Streetz, American Doll, and Candy Time, still limply dragging the axe behind her. The metal axehead loudly scrapes against the Mall’s tile floor.

9:55 AM

Carlos looks up from his phone. He runs to the gate.

“Douglas! Douglas, get out here!”

Douglas emerges from the back office. There are flecks of jelly filling around the sides of his mouth. “What? What’s going on?”

Carlos points at the gate. Douglas sees Becca slowly approach, dragging the red axe behind her.

Douglas runs back into the office and picks up the phone. “Hi Gustav. We got a Code Red here in Zone 4…Yeah, Sloppy’s…No, we’re fine, she’s outside the store. Can you send someone?… Great, thanks.”

Becca walks right into the metal gate.

“Don’t stand too close, Carlos.”

Carlos can’t help himself. He’s in shock. This is his coworker, his friend, three years at this crazy place…

A deafening boom echoes throughout the complex and Becca’s head disappears in a cloud of blood, hair, and teeth.

“Got ‘er in one.” Gustav the Mall Security Enforcer examines the headless body. He’s covered head to toe in black body armor. “This one of yours, Dougie?”

“Yeah, nice girl. Real shame.”

The Enforcer kicks the axe away from the still twitching body. “Uh huh. I’ll get janitorial out here.”

“Great, thanks, Gustav.”

Gustav gives a thumbs up and unceremoniously departs.

Carlos stands motionless, wide-eyed and mouth agape. He tastes copper. It’s like he’s sucking on a dirty old penny. He quickly realizes some of Becca’s blood must have gotten in his mouth. In fact, his face and chest is splattered with bits of Becca.

Three Janitorial Techs are already on the scene, clad in bright yellow HAZMAT suits. One mops up the blood while the other two tend to Becca’s headless body.

“Okay, on three.”

“Wait, check her pockets.”

“A lighter. Sweet. Okay, ready?”

The Techs pick up Becca’s corpse and toss it on top of a pile of other corpses, some of which are still writhing around, in a large orange bin.

“Okay, that’s a good haul. Let’s go to the furnace.”

The two techs wheel away the bin full of bodies while the third finishes mopping up the blood.

Carlos watches the whole scene play out. He can already feel the change begin.

“Hey Carlos, I know this must be hard, but did she happen to bring over that Gilden box? If not, you mind grabbing it before you take lunch? Thanks.”

He slowly turns towards Douglas, who’s already disappeared into the back office.

Carlos grabs the machete off the check out counter and makes his way to the back office. Douglas shut the door but he didn’t lock it.

11:45 PM

The dark, empty parking lot is lit only by the flashing yellow lights. Hank’s Towing is making the rounds and Becca’s Hyundai is clearly violating the Mall’s policy against overnight parking. Technically they’re not supposed to start towing until after midnight but it’s doubtful anyone will object to a fifteen minute head start.

Inside, the mall is pitch black except for the faint glow emanating from the handful of functioning ad-screens.

Sloppy’s is lit only by the hodge podge of lava lamps and black light posters, lit by battery powered black lights. The door to the back office is ajar and the bloody mess inside is just discernible to the naked eye, rendered in deep dark shades of blue, the blood and viscera glowing in the ambient ultraviolet light. The machete lies just outside the door.

Carlos stands silently at the store’s entrance, staring out into the darkness through the metal roll gate. He vaguely registers the barrier preventing his escape, but he doesn’t feel trapped. He can’t feel anything anymore. He already spent most of his remaining energy banging against the gate. Now all he can do is stand there until his legs aren’t strong enough to support him. Then he’ll collapse and proceed to rot away until he’s nothing but a hungry, sticky puddle of blood and bone.