What lies in the dark
Chapter 29
Everything became a blur. They ran hallway to hallway, shoving, kicking, slamming the dark shapes against the walls — but the sheer number of them was overwhelming. Neither Leo nor Duncan believed, in that moment, that they'd survive.
Then Leo caught sight of something from the corner of his eye — a sign mounted on the wall, half-lit by the moon bleeding through a skylight.
Fatigue and exhaustion were finally setting in. They could barely keep running, cutting sharp corners, using whatever stood in their path — carts, bins, mannequin frames — as cover and obstacles both.
"There — quick!" Leo barked, pointing at an open doorway, ordering them both inside. Duncan understood immediately, shoving back anything that got too close, buying them the half-second they needed to slip through. The hands and arms of the dead jammed the door before it could shut all the way. The room beyond was small and dark. Together, they threw their weight against it, straining with everything they had — and in that moment, without needing to say it aloud, they both understood. This was as far as they were going to get.
Just as their grip started to give, a sound cut through the chaos — a quacking, coming from behind a flower pot lit faintly by the moonlight. *Quack... quack... quack.*
Without a second thought, Duncan let go and lunged for it, leaving Leo alone to hold the door with everything he had left.
"Ugghh — hnnngh—" Leo groaned, lungs burning, the pressure from the other side far more than one man should have to bear. A gap was opening, inch by inch. Just before the door could burst open, Duncan hurled the duck out into the hallway. It waddled away in a panic, quacking wildly — and the horde's attention turned with it.
"Now!" Leo shouted, shoving the door open just enough to kick back the last stragglers before slamming it shut and locking it.
They sat in total silence after that, chests heaving, barely able to laugh between breaths, both of them braced against the door with their backs. If it hadn't been for the duck, things would have gone very differently.
Exhausted beyond words, they both blacked out where they sat — the stress, the fatigue, all of it finally catching up.
They woke the next morning to the stench of rotting flesh, jolting them upright. They listened first — straining for any sign the horde was still out there. Nothing but silence answered back. They didn't waste the moment, slipping out of the room and making their way back toward where Leo had spotted the sign, careful not to draw attention as they crossed the hallway.
"There it is," Leo said, pointing to the sign on the wall, smeared with dried blood.
"What do we do with it?" Duncan asked, scanning the hall to make sure they were alone.
"Just as I thought," Leo said, wiping the surface clean with a scrap of cloth. Underneath was a map — the layout of the entire mall.
"With this, all we have to do is find the security room. If we're lucky, the CCTV footage can tell us exactly where that car is. Beats searching blind." Leo's voice had settled, calm and relieved for the first time in a while.
The map gave them something they hadn't had until now — a sense of the building's actual shape, instead of stumbling room to room hoping to get lucky.
"So where's the security room?" Duncan asked, tearing strips of cloth to wrap around his arms and hands for better mobility against the dead.
"Let me see... yeah, here. Two floors up, northeast, near Daley's furniture store," Leo answered, tracing the map before folding it into his back pocket. They headed for the nearest stairwell.
The third floor, when they reached it, was oddly untouched — clean walls, glass windows still intact and gleaming. For a moment they just stood there, stunned, painfully aware of how out of place they looked covered in blood and sweat. It was too good an opportunity to pass up.
The bathrooms didn't disappoint — working showers, a small miracle. Once they'd cleaned up and dressed, Leo pulled on formal pants and a long-sleeve office shirt.
"Guess you can't outrun me now, huh?" he said dryly, studying himself in the mirror. Old habits from his job had never really left him — the way he dressed had always been something people teased him about.
Duncan went a different direction — a long-sleeve shirt over a tank top, tight pants, gloves, everything dark. Built for movement, not appearances. Something told him it would matter later.
Before heading for the escalator to the fourth floor, they swung through the hardware store — Duncan coming away with a wrench in one hand and his knife in the other, Leo settling for a nail gun loaded with a full magazine.
The fourth floor turned out the same as the third — empty, untouched, no sign of the dead anywhere. They moved fast, a careful ten-minute jog to the security room, reaching it without incident.
They locked eyes before Leo kicked the door in. A pause, then they stepped inside — surrounded by a wall of dead, blank screens.
"Well, damn," Duncan said. "Guess it's back to the search party." No power anywhere in the building meant no footage — and checking the underground lot car by car was a risk neither of them wanted to take.
"Wait," Leo said, already back at the map. "What about the backup generators? A building this size has to burn through serious power. In an emergency, they'd need the place running as long as possible."
He traced a finger down to a room marked on the lower level.
"There. Power supply room." He paused. "Unfortunately, it's underground."
