The deep ink-black shadows under the counter shifted.
I froze.
An eerie rustling sound came from the darkness, the whispery noise of some sort of creature moving around. The stench hit me, a foul, sour reek of excrement and animal fur.
The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.
Don’t see me. I’m not here. Just stay where you are.
The thing in the darkness crept forward.
It had to be a rat. Just a rat. Nothing special.
The thing shimmied closer.
Not a rat. Too big. An opossum? A raccoon? A small monster? I could stab it with my sword, but I didn’t want to kill it before figuring out what it was.
The dry staccato of claws on a concrete floor echoed softly. Click. Click. Click.
I lay perfectly still.
Click. Click.
Click.
A long black muzzle framed by matted hair emerged from under the counter. Two big round eyes stared into mine. The muzzle split open, showing sharp white teeth. A little pink tongue slid out and licked my nose.
A dog. A small, filthy, matted dog.
The dog licked my face again and whimpered.
Whoever was hiding behind the counter had to have heard it. I had to strike first.
I took a deep steadying breath, rolled to the right, came up on one knee, and lunged, thrusting my sword. The gladius sliced into fabric and fiberglass.
A zombie face, half rotten and stained with dry green pus, leered back at me with plastic eyes, its mouth twisted in a grin, showing off rotten yellow fangs.
Fuck!
I landed on my butt and let out a breath. The zombie mannequin laughed at me, a hideous sequined dress the color of blood hanging off its bony shoulders. Prom Queen Zombie. Fucking Fright Fest.
The little dog trotted over to me, curled up against my thigh, and licked my pant leg. Its black tail wagged, sweeping broken glass in all directions. You could barely make out its shape under the mass of matted fur.
I reached over and gently stroked its back. The tail wagged harder.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered. How had it survived here? What did it eat? On second thought, I didn’t want to know.
The dog stared up at me with big brown eyes full of endless canine devotion. It seemed to be saying, Please don’t leave me alone in the dark. I’m hungry and dirty and lonely with no one to take care of me.
The beam of a flashlight sliced through the gloom in the hallway behind me.
“Bad people are coming,” I whispered. “What am I going to do with you?”
The little dog scooted closer to me.
I scooped the dog off the floor. It was so light, it had to have been starving.
Another thud. They were getting closer.
If I left the doggie in the open, it would make noise and they would shoot it and me. No, that would not be happening.
I squinted at the store, taking in the width of the entrance, the distance to Sephora, and the piles of debris. I’d have to take off my shoes for this plan to work.
“Time to go.” I ran into Sephora. Here’s hoping I had time to prepare a nice surprise.
Ten minutes later, the hunter team entered JC Penney in a standard formation for clearing large rooms. There were three rules all SWAT and military teams lived by when searching a building: never enter alone, don’t move faster than you can think, and stay out of your partner’s line of fire. I had hoped for some wannabes who would wander around in groups of one or two doing the dynamic entry with dramatic jumping and running, but no. These people knew their business.
The first two hunters, dressed in black tactical gear and wearing ballistic vests, walked in at opposite sides of the wide entrance and halted, each of them covering their sector of the room, slow and methodical. They knew I was alone, and they had cleared the rest of the mall, so they had me cornered.
The two sentries stopped, just as I thought they would. The one on the right halted less than five feet from where I lay under dirty plastic stained with fake blood. I had arranged the debris into a pile of generic garbage identical to other such piles scattered around the mall and buried myself in it.
A five-man team moved forward between the sentries, passed them, and cautiously walked deeper into the store, heading for Sephora. There should have been more of them. They must have split up and left the second team upstairs to clear the upper