The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (86 page)

She hated feeling dirty,
especially that
kind
of dirty.

She walked outside the
Fish Market, leaning out to see if anything had changed overnight.
She peered left, then right – nothing. It was exactly as they’d
left it the night before. Deserted. Wide-open. Silent.

Without thought, she
rubbed her hands on either side of her jeans, wondering if she
should go back for the flashlight. At the last minute, she decided
against it. She would look for another one while she went on her
quest for some new undergarments. They couldn’t be dependent on a
single source of light once the sun went down. It would be lame if
the one they had failed and they were forced to bumble around in
the dark.

She walked down the left
concourse of the mall toward the department store on the west side
of the structure. It was directly opposite the huge Target store
whose entrance was behind her, beyond the escalators, which, as she
deemed earlier, were illuminated by the giant skylight in the
middle of the mall. She walked on the tips her toes, desirous of
making as little noise as possible for some reason. Her head turned
this way and that, as she paced down one side of the large
duel-level passage, stores of varying types passing on either side
of her as she made her way toward the department store. The
darkness grew the further she moved from the skylights, so when she
came within few establishments of her destination, she decided it
was time to go find another flashlight.

She darted into an
accessory store, filled to the gills with custom jewelry, treading
slowing toward the front counter in hopes of finding what she was
looking for stashed somewhere behind it. She tip-toed around the
counter and found herself peering through the semi-darkness at a
crazed jumbled of shelves and cubbyholes. Some were filled with
small plastic bags of varying sizes, but most filled with junk that
really had no feasible reason for being there. Hyun let out an
exasperated huff at the disorganization, but began to move things
around in hopes she’d miraculously come across a flashlight
somewhere within the teeming mess.

After shoving random items
back and forth for a while, she gave up, realizing she was never
going to find anything of use in a place of such a low operating
standard. She stood to full height with a disgusted grunt,
carefully made her way out of the store, heading for the store on
the other side of the concourse. It was a women’s clothing store,
selling knock-offs of last year’s fashion at incredibly low
prices.

Probably owned by
Asians
, she deduced from her initial
impression of the shop. She noticed the racks were mismatched and
the signs inside the store seemed to be an amalgam of signage from
three or four different retail chains that had closed in the past
few years.
Yup, Asians, sooo
typical
. She frowned at her unbidden
racial profiling, wondering when she’d developed such a slant. She
was from that part of the world. Well, at least, ancestrally. She’d
been born in the United States.

Yet… that gave her an idea
and she was glad her thoughts had meandered. She made her way
through the store to the very back. It was almost completely dark.
She felt her way as she went, looking for the manager’s or the
owner’s office. She had a hunch somewhere, in such a room, a
flashlight would lurk.

Her father always had a
flashlight in his lower left desk drawer, among other things. To
her utter annoyance, he had always postulated every sane person in
the world should have an emergency stash somewhere in their desk
should there be an earthquake or a terrorist dirty bomb, etc.,
etc., etc.,
but
if these people were anything like her father… That is where
she would find something of practical use.

Asians.

Well, it was worth a
try…

She found the back door.
It had to lead to either the stockroom or a back office of some
sort. She put her weight against the door to open it. It moved
without impediment, but when the door itself came free of the jam,
she heard a faint click as if she had triggered something. She
froze, uncertain of what to do next.

There was a tiny whirling
sound and before she could react, the hallway beyond the door came
alight with a pale green glow. She pushed the door open a bit more
and saw along either side of the passage, where the walls met the
floor, two strips of floor lights had come to life. They were
strong enough, so she could see down the corridor. It was over
fifty feet in length with four doors, two on the left, one on the
right, and one at its’ end. The three leading to rooms along either
wall were office-type doors with simple locking doorknobs, while
the one at the end of the hallway was heavier and was equipped with
a panic lock and a punch-key, locking mechanism. She glanced down
to her right, to the bottom of the door jam and saw the small
battery operated device that must’ve triggered the running lights
once she’d broken the contact between it and the door.
Emergency lighting!
Maybe these
were
the same sort of people as her father, annoyingly
efficient.

She edged her way in,
walked to the closest door on the left and tried the knob. The door
opened readily. She poked her head inside the room beyond and could
barely see it was some type of storeroom. It was packed high with
all sorts of items necessary to run a retail clothing store.
Everything from clothing racks to trash bags to cleaning products
were stacked on shelves or stuffed in boxes that were, in turn,
stacked upon one another as well. It would take her forever to find
anything of use in that morass, let alone a flashlight, so she
closed the door and walked the next closest door on the right. She
turned the doorknob and walked into an orderly office, most likely
belonging to the store manager or the owner. It was pitch black
inside, so she peered about until she found something she could use
to prop open the door. The door return would close it the moment
she stopped applying pressure keeping it open. She scooted a potted
rubber tree plant up against the door and made her way in, angling
straight for the desk. She opened and closed all of the drawers,
finding nothing but papers, pens, pencils, scotch tape, paper
clips, and just about everything else one would need to run a
business, but still no -.

A dull gleam twinkled in
the corner of her eye and she turned to look at a row of five,
four-drawer, metal filing cabinets. She remained unmoving, letting
her eyes adjust to the dim emerald light diffused throughout the
chamber from the corridor beyond. Then, she saw it. It was sitting
atop one of the file cabinets - a classic looking, stainless steel
flashlight. The type with a handle a fraction larger than the
d-cell batteries inside before it ballooned three times wider at
the lighted end. It would shine with a larger stream of light than
other, newer models of manufacture.

She quickly made her way
around the desk to the cabinets, snatched the flashlight and
flicked the switch. Half a second later a wide beam of crystalline
white light shone throughout the office. She smiled her first real
smile of the new day.

Asians rock!

Without wasting any more
time, she walked back in the hallway, through the store, turning to
her left, and walked the forty feet to the entrance of Macy’s
department store and went in.

Immediately, she was glad
she had the light-stick, because the store was almost completely
dark. The doors leading to the outside world were too far away.
Plus, they were blocked by so much merchandise and portable
barriers, very little of the light they let in illuminated the
store.

She stepped quietly, but
purposefully, knowing the women’s lingerie department was on upper
level, toward the left-hand front of the establishment. She made
her way toward the escalators, both dead from the lack of
electricity. She paced up the awkward steps to the second level of
the store.

Once there, she
immediately doubled back on herself. What she was looking for was
behind her. She flashed the light ahead of her, already seeing the
racks holding the many bras and panties in the distance. She walked
down the narrow, twisting aisles and into the forest of lingerie,
already feeling relieved at the prospect of changing her underwear
and feeling clean again, even if it was mostly in her mind. She
prided herself on being a clean girl and usually went to the upmost
degree to maintain her high standards regarding personal hygiene.
Girls that weren’t as fastidious about themselves as she, always
put her off. In her book, there was nothing worse than smelling a
dirty girl. It was usually more than enough to make her puke within
seconds.

It was this type of
“
icky-ness”
that
made her shoulders shake and an unnerving tingle run up her spine.
Even thinking about it could garner a reaction of pure revulsion.
She pushed it from her mind and set about the task. She wasn’t
looking for anything fancy or, god forbid, sexy. She wanted
comfortable and practical, something she count on, especially now.
She went through the department back and forth and finally settled
on a few 3-packs of bikini style briefs (colors assorted). They
would ride high on her waist, and accentuated her hips, which was a
good thing since they were somewhat narrow from her perspective.
She also grabbed a few bras she knew would fit her, making her way
to the checkout counter to get a bag to carry her newfound
personals.

Without waiting any
longer, she extinguished the flashlight, though she knew absolutely
no one was around. She quickly stripped off her layers of clothing
and outwear, boots and all, until she was completely naked in the
mostly dark department store, shivering slightly at the coldness of
the air, goose bumps rising all about her body.

Real smart, Hyun, you must
really enjoy rock hard nipples.

She hadn’t thought how
cold it would be in the mall until she stood within it in just her
birthday suit.
Thank god, the floor is
carpeted!
At least, her feet wouldn’t
freeze up on her. She quickly put on her new undergarments, and
then had a thought. Grabbing the flashlight, she walked down a few
more aisles in her bright white (
and
fresh)
bra and panties, and grabbed two
plastic bags with six pairs of thick, athletic socks each. She
opened one of the bags of socks when she got back to the counter
and put them on. She got dressed hurriedly, of the mind the rest of
her clothes would hold up for another day or two. She stuffed her
soiled garments in the trashcan under the counter. She was becoming
anxious to get back to the others, being all alone in a place that
should’ve been teeming with people was starting to make her
uneasy.

She walked toward the mall
exit of the store, the beam of light bouncing about before as she
strode, the luminance growing with every step. She walked into the
mall proper and once again bathed in the semi-light of the day,
eking through the skylight at the center of the mall, where its
three concourses intersected. On this level, there was no floor in
the middle of the wide hall, so she could see down into lower level
of the structure if she walked near the railing. She didn’t though.
Rather, she kept to the center of the walkway, making her way
toward the escalators leading back down to the Fish Market and her
two companions.

She’d just about reached
the escalators when off to her left, down the only concourse that
led to the front of the mall and its great sets of double doors,
she heard a strange
swooshing
sound. It made her turn her head in that
direction.

She was surprised to see a
few of the doors were opening and closing violently, propelled by
what appeared to be varying gusts of wind. Her eyes focused beyond
the glass entryway and her jaw nearly dropped to her chest. Outside
howled the most violent storm she had
ever
seen.

Even from this distance,
she could make out huge eddies of snow, swirling and writhing in
the hurricane winds, towering mystical structures of precipitation,
soaring scores of feet into the nearly blackened sky of the
morning. They were tornados of snow, huge and stretching into the
roiling clouds above, easily EF2’s, maybe even 3’s on the Enhanced
Fujita scale. They were absolutely incredible to watch. They looked
alive, mean, and maybe even malevolent. She watched in amazement
for a few more seconds when one of the doors flew open, screeching
on its hinges. She was over a hundred feet away and still, she felt
the icy cold of the air outside.

Those doors are going to
break off and then we’re gonna freeze out asses off in
here
, she concluded, dropping her bag of
underwear, running toward them.

It took nearly five
minutes to get all six doors secured with both the thumb locks they
had at waist level and the floor locks, which she jammed into the
ground as far as they would go. She hoped, between them, the doors
would survive the blizzard ravaging the landscape about the
mall.

Jesus Christ, we are going
to be stuck here for a while. We need to plan. We need
supplies.

She turned on her heel and
ran back toward her discarded belongings, intent on telling the
others they were going to have to start scavenging in earnest.
Their stay at the Eagle Rock Plaza was going to be considerably
longer than they’d first anticipated.