The Beginning

It's been a weird day, so to say. Every day can be weird I guess if you look at things differently in your own way.

Anyway.

Today was just another grueling day at the Mall working as a cashier during the summer. The air conditioner was at full blast, but it still felt as if I was melting to death while standing in the same spot just running bar codes and punching in numerous keys on the register. There was the usual hordes of families taking their kids shopping for back-to-school clothes as if they were going back to school tomorrow. Then there were the valley girls who just seem to live in the stores. Hell, I think I've seen this one brunette girl with GG sunglasses for the fifth time today asking where the hell the perfume shop was for the third time. I had a headache growing like fizzed soda.

Only five minutes away until my last break, I heard some screams come down from the nearby carousel while frantic citizens passed by the store's entrance in fear, as some went towards the screams to see what was going on.

Leaving early for break, I walked out of the shop to head down and meet a crowd just making a wall around the carousel gates. Squeezing myself in as best as I could, I suddenly caught a glimpse inside the ride. There were two legs I could see lying on the floor. Adjusting my eyesight, there then showed to be a darker red atop the already red carousel floor. Observing a bit longer, it was clear that it was a puddle of blood. The next thing I noticed was constant muffled yelling. I looked around to see who was making the noise, but when I got closer to the gates, I could clearly see two security guards manhandling a really large woman. Her eyes were wide open while one of the guards was blocking her mouth with a towel. Wiggling within their grasp, she seemed to have gone into a manic seizure as the towel covering her mouth had blood leaking through the fabric.

Aiming my sights back towards the laying body, it seemed like the covered body looked to be a small skinny child. The face was covered, though some blood spilled from under the cloth. People gossiped around me until policemen and a paramedic team started appearing hastily. Policemen abruptly started forcing people to move along as the paramedics had started to sedate the mad woman. Before I left to head back to the shop, I looked back to see the dead child once more. In moments, the child started to convulse. A paramedic came to the body's side. While preparing a stretcher, the child slowly sat up with the cloth covering its face had slowly slid off. Revealing to some horror the bleeding bit wound present on his cheek. Looking confused, the paramedic shinned a light into the child's eye. After a minute, the paramedic started talking to the child like, "Aren't you in pain?"

Then after, the child lunged at the paramedic's neck as one of the policemen came and tried to pull off the kid.

Not wanting to look any longer, I hastily ran back into the shop...

I think I only worked for thirty more minutes until our manager announced that we would be closing early due to the murder at the carousel. I remember sighing with much relief and clocking out to go home and just watch TV and eat Oreos for the rest of the weekend. I really was naive to what was happening. When I came home, my roommates had told me about a recent newscast as well as the local sheriff driving by earlier in our neighborhood announcing that we would all be evacuated to a nearby safe spot due to ongoing murders happening around the city.

My roommates were both excited yet worried at what was happening. I didn't have time to tell them what had happened at the mall today in annoyance that they would question me all this shit for hours on end. I packed up some clothes, some money, and got changed.

Repeating what the sheriff said earlier, armored trucks would be moving people to a specific safe house close to their suburb. We all waited for about twenty minutes for our pick-up as we decided to eat what was left in our cupboard and refrigerator. In moments a loud monotone voice bellowed from outside. Everyone in the neighborhood started moving out of their houses and into the trucks. I lunged up into the back of one as I helped lift one of my roommates inside. Once every truck was full and that all the houses were empty, the doors shut and the vehicles started to move.

While riding inside the trucks, everyone gossiped about what was going on and why the forced evacuation was happening. Listening in from three different groups, all their stories were different. Thinking it was a religious debate or some political plan. Others in the truck like couples and families were just pretending as if nothing bad was going on. One little girl was talking to her father with a barbie doll while a couple just held each other for the rest of the way without much worries.

My roommate Frankie gave me a stick of gum saying it might be a long ride to wherever we might land. I chuckled and slipped the gum inside my mouth. Blowing up bubbles, I looked outside the fenced rear window. I couldn't properly hear what was going on outside with the loud metallic clanking of the truck moving pretty fast. With what I could see, we seemed to be moving through downtown as hordes of people moved in different ways hastily. Some shops had been boarded up as some windows were broken in. We had passed one fire while one stranger tried to run towards our truck. Grabbing at one of the bars, they started beating on the door. Alarming everyone inside, the stranger screamed, "LET ME IN, LET ME IN!!!" Sobbing insistently in hopes of the truck stopping, the stranger was suddenly tackled by two others who had pinned him on the ground. His screams were loud for a minute until we had gotten pretty far. Everyone inside had gone dead silent.

Turning back to Frankie, her face had a solid shock that had froze. Taking a quick sigh, I asked her, "You saw what I saw?"