I picked out the next battlefield without even seeing the street number. I could just tell the uSoak guy had picked it for its look: A deserted, empty mall of aquamarine glass and red brick. When you’ve lived in big cities all your life, something like this doesn’t really look that cool anymore. But in a place like Green Bay? It stood out, no questions asked.
The address on the front of the building confirmed my guess, and I pulled the car into the nearly deserted lot. A few semis on the far right of the lot were using the place as a rest stop. A knot of cars on the far left were clustered with people using bright blue water guns on each other.
I parked right in front of the cool blue-green glass doors and got out. There was another one of those fifty-five gallon drums filled with water right in the shade of the tall entryway, and I paused to unscrew the cap on the Pulse Master and dunk it. Then I walked inside.
Another deserted building. Did uSoak get a group-rate discount or something?
Fake potted palms about my height dotted the front-facing floor-to-ceiling aquamarine windows every few yards. Opposite the windows, storefronts were blocked off with sliding chainlink security doors. It was dim and warm, but without the sun beating down and the hot wind, it wasn’t unpleasant. It wasn’t enough to keep my shirt from sticking to my back, but it was better than outside.
There was an arched entryway on the inside too, and before I stepped through into the mall, I paused. Something didn’t feel right.
I strafed at a sprint, facing left, and tagged out the guy who stepped out from beside the archway with a blast of cold water to the face. I was getting better at this not-aiming thing.
Water landed on the tile floor beside me, and I whipped around, dropping into a crouch and striping another stream of water the guy on the right side from just over his left shoulder to just below his right hip. His white polo stuck to him along the wet path of the blast.
I rose slowly, keeping the Pulse Master pointed in their general direction and pumping quickly to bring it back to full pressure.
They exited the building, looking mournful and regretful and angry all at the same time, and then I turned and walked down the expanse of hallway.
The whole mall was closed down. Not a single store remained. Behind the chain gates, the interiors of the stores were buried in shadow, displays occasionally protruding from the blackness, probably too expensive to throw away.
I spun around a corner to point the Pulse Master down a service hallway and nobody moved. No sound but my own footsteps. My instincts are pretty good, but the deserted atmosphere was getting me kind of jumpy. I tried the door just in case the next clue was “behind the scenes.” Locked.
Benches and deserted kiosks dotted the wide hallway between the windows and the stores along with tall plexiglass displays showing “You Are Here relative” to Sam Goody and The Gap, and a few dead vending machines remained, plugged into the walls. I tried to imagine what this place looked like before the recession. Before near worthless money drove people to spend it on things they actually needed. It’d probably be crowded on a day like today, people escaping the brutal glare outside by coming into the shade. I felt like a trespasser in a tomb that time forgot.
I saw feet below the open bottom of one of the floor-to-tall-ceiling plexi map holders, and smiled. Flat-footed, one in front of the other, I approached from the person’s back. Shorts, an ugly Hawaiian print shirt, and black hair. I shot him in the back of the neck, suppressed a giggle at his jump of surprise, and moved on.
The wide hallway took a ninety degree turn to the right, and I ducked behind a nearby sunglasses kiosk when I heard fighting. Peering out, I watched a rather furious fight, contestants dodging behind sign holders and kiosks and, in one imaginative and stupid person’s case – attempting to hide behind a potted plant.
They seemed unorganized, not sure in the least of what they were doing. Just shooting and hoping they’d hit somebody. Which they weren’t doing much of.
The guy behind the potted plant was closest. I moved fast and low, hoping that the guy parallel with him in the center of the hall, hiding behind a vending machine didn’t look my way. Potted Plant Man stood to open up on someone taking potshot at him from behind a kiosk farther down the hall, and I pulsed the trigger three times, hitting him in the arm and leg and missing with the last shot. I turned on my heel and moved towards the vending machine before Potted Plant Man even registered I was there and had shot him.
Around the corner of the Coke machine, Pulse Master held low, and I fired a blast into the next player’s midsection. “Sarah, watch out! There’s someone else here!” he shouted as he sprinted away.
The kiosk shooter was male, and Sarah was nowhere to be seen. That concerned me. I dropped down to crouch with my back against the back of the machine, and pumped back to full pressure.
Water hissed above my head, three shots and three clacks on a trigger from my left. The Pulse Master was angled awkwardly away from that direction, and without even thinking about it, my right hand found the grip of the Triple Shot in my satchel. I one-handed it across my body as a person who was presumably Sarah shifted her aim down. I pulled the trigger several times, my first shot bursting into rain off the front of the exceptionally futuristic soaker she was adjusting to point at my head. The mist felt refreshing. The next shot hit her in the thigh, and finally I got one to splatter center of mass.
I pushed the pistol back in my bag, got the Pulse Master up to something approximating ready, and moved out from behind the soda machine. Water pelted towards me, splashing off the floor, and I got back behind cover. Someone was going to run out of ammo soon.
At the first hint of a lull in the shooting, I started moving again, fast. I fired at the kiosk in a measured cadence, making sure whoever was behind it kept their head down. Before I reached the structure but inside my range, I quit firing, and waited. I’d used up a lot of water with the cover fire, and I hoped there was still some in the pressure chamber. If there wasn’t, I was gonna feel really stupid…
Kiosk Shooter stuck his head up from behind cover, and I walked water off the flat wood display surface and into his forehead. The gun quit firing, just as another started. My proximity to the kiosk saved me, as the woman I hadn’t noticed behind the cover of the Payless Shoes doorway opened up on me, only to have the supports holding up the kiosk roof deflect her shots.
I made myself a smaller target my diving to the floor. It didn’t hurt much as I turned the belly flop into a slide. I elbow-crawled behind the cover of the kiosk. Now that hurt. I arched up off the floor a little and pushed the Pulse Master to my left side on its strap. Now that I wasn’t laying on top of plastic… I dug the pistol out of my bag and snaked around the corner of the kiosk. Laying on my side, I started shooting at the woman by the Payless doorway. Not only wasn’t she expecting it, but I had cover and was a small target, and at this angle she didn’t and was a big target. And moving simply exposed her to more fire. So even though she was just at the edge of my pistol’s range – and I missed a few times – it didn’t take much time or risk to tag her out.
I rolled over, aiming at the other side of the hallway, sweeping my point of aim up and down the hall. Nobody else was around. I pumped back to full pressure and rose. The last combatant was departing. I set the pistol on the tabletop and pumped the Pulse Master back to full pressure as well and started walking again.
There was one open storefront just before the hallway ended in the now-dead WGNR anchor store. More shadowy interiors.
I filled the Triple Shot to the recommended eighty percent at the blue barrel just outside the door, and dug the Surefire out of my bag again. Pistol and light beat rifle and no light at these distances in these conditions. I held both in a Harries grip and walked into the clothing store.
The mannequins were an extra creepy touch. They stood on pedestals, asexual, amorphous, melted-looking artificial humans. None of them were dressed, and the tan plastic seemed to glow in the darkness. There were lots of them, more than I thought was usual for a clothing store.
I wandered through the circular racks, the Surefire casting a hard cone of light through the shadows and swirls of disturbed dust as it heated up in my hand. Surefires are indestructible hand-sized spotlights, but they can burn your hand in pretty short order, and they chew through batteries really fast.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the mannequin move. Something inside me lurched, and something else clamped down on it. Get a grip stupid. This mannequin was wearing clothes. I acted like I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary and wandered closer. A second-long flick of the Surefire to the eyes, and the “mannequin” put his arm up to shield his face, and I shot him twice, high in the chest. He stumbled backwards at the blast, and I moved quickly forwards.
Good thing I did, too.
Water came blasting towards me out of the darkness to my right, and I whipped around, shooting twice as soon as I thought my Surefire was on target. I moved through the racks quickly, bent over the pistol and light in my hand, all my will focused on the space where a front sight should be.
The light reflected weirdly off the circular metal racks, casting a forest of odd shadows and highlights across the walls and ceiling. It was like being in a room of mirrors, except the mirrors were shadows. I couldn’t tell if what I was seeing was shadow or solid.
I bounced off a rack and hit the floor on my butt. Dammit. I clicked off the flashlight, killing all the illumination in the store except what little filtered in from the hallway. I heard crashes and profanity in the darkness, and oriented myself towards the noise. Another click and someone groaned as the light hit their eyes. I fired very slowly and deliberately over the tops of the displays as I strafed towards the front of the store.
More water from someone standing over by what looked like a jewelry display, a few feet behind the guy I’d tagged out, and I clicked the light off again.
The person I’d shot said “I’m out” and the person I hadn’t shot said “Leave the freakin’ light on already.”
“Not a chance,” I told the darkness with a chuckle. I stayed put as blundering and crashing sounds moved from the side of the store towards the center back half. He was either circling me or thought I was farther back than I was.
Another press on the rubberized button, and I ducked as water sailed towards me. Not only did the light illuminate my target, but it gave away my position. I crouched and fired in a measured rhythm through the legs of the racks. Had there been clothes hanging from them, I would’ve had no shot. Now though, it was just a thick forest of obstructions. And I’m a good shot.
I was pretty sure I’d shot him in the legs, but stood anyway, and hitting him in the shoulder and ear with quick bursts.
I waited until he’d left the store to continue. A glance at my watch put the time at less than a minute to six. Where was that telephone number? Shouldn’t it be obvious?
It was. A giant poster of a couple relaxing on the beach with a dog dominated the back wall of the store, and someone had spraypainted a ten digit onto the ocean in yellow.
I punched it in and was out the door and running down the hall before the phone even started ringing.
