I stood astonished. The complete god-damn lunacy of the whole thing was...was just crazy. First this freakish fog, then the monsters in the woods (and I still wasn't sure what the hell had happened there, especially since the girl, Kate, hadn't seen anything like them, was I going crazy myself?) and now the desolate mall, all grimy and filthy, like the cleaning crew hadn't so much been fired as set on fire and then been rubbed all over the place, ashes, blood and oozing burn wounds combined to redecorate. So yeah, I'd ducked outta sight, headed for higher ground, and got into the first store with an open door for sanctuary. To find a choice of outfits? What the hell?

I read the note over. 'These will be useful' A pair of denim pants and a sweater would be useful against those freaks out there? Then I remembered the woods themselves, how they'd turned from fluffy leaves and sunshine to a patch of scratching, clawing thornbushes, how the wolves had gone after her sweet young flesh. In a way, she'd been asking for trouble from the start. All sorts of trouble, I thought, remembering the long, slow look I'd taken at her legs and tits when she'd been standing over me. Oh yeah, all sorts. Plus which...a bright green jacket with no sleeves in a cold white fog? She stood out like a damn lighthouse, that's how I'd been following her. So this bundle of rags was a way for her to protect herself! She could handle the gun she'd taken from me. My gun, thank you so very much, she could handle my gun that she'd stolen from me. And she had those two sharp knives, my back and neck still twinged from the memory. So clothes like this would be...to help her disappear, to make her invisible.

I was furious. My golden angel, suddenly to be hidden from me? I might never see her again, never get to watch those lovely legs and that wondrous ass. These ugly rags would see to that. Or not... I grabbed the clothes, the whole lot, and started looking for a garbage can to stuff them, and then stopped. I realised I could make a better move here after all. I took the note off the denims, nice and easy, and pinned it to the skirt and the tough shirt, piercing the fabric and tying them together with the cold steel.. Perfect. The best of both worlds. Really I was doing the kid a favour, she'd stay warm and still look great. The other ugly rags, though, had to go.

I started hunting around the store, sweating it slightly that she might arrive soon and catch me at it. She'd freak, get all hysterical. Women do that too much, you know, even when they're not full women yet, it must be something in the genetics or so. An XX gene equalling extra craziness or something. Don't ask me. I found a hidey-hole in a cabinet under the cash desk and stuffed them in there. There was, to my surprise, a writing pad on the desk, but turned outward, so you could only get at it from the outer edge. Some automatic handgun ammo and revolver ammo were also sat there, right next to it. I coulda sworn none of that had been there before I put the clothes in the cabinet. Nevermind. I figured that a part of the world, or effect or whatever on the world, that could make Dog monsters, call up unearthly fogs and smear entire malls with blood and soot might not be completely logical. Resolving to start expecting the unexpected, I grabbed the handgun bullets. The revolver bullets were no use to me now that bitch Kate had my revolver, and if she came here and picked up the clothes I'd left her, she'd find the bullets too, which meant I'd be more likely to see her survive any monsters she might still meet, and I'd be more likely to get a loaded gun back when I took my property back from the stupid girl.

I was about to leave when something on the pad caught my eye. A blood red stain, pulsing with some kinda weird light. I went to touch it and musta...I dunno, I musta blacked out, because I remember not remembering, if you get my drift. After I touched it there's a blank in my mind, and the next thing I remember is taking my hand back from the pad and wondering 'what the fuck just happened there?' One other thing, the pad wasn't blank anymore. A single entry stood in crimson ink: Nathan Crawley - Fred's Fashions. You better believe I got the fuck outta there when I saw that.

Back in the main area of the mall, I saw the structure of the place was a kind of concrete donut shape. A ring of stores, eateries and whatever else around a gap in the middle so that you could look up or down from one storey to another and not feel crowded in. I didn't feel crowded in, I felt exposed, naked to the grubbiness and filth of the place...and starting to get spooked about what else might be in here with me. After all, blood smears on walls don't get there by themselves, and the amount of blood meant someone had died, and that not too long ago, either. I needed to get back in a contained place, somewhere I didn't feel like anything could suddenly drop down from the next storey up and claw my face off or crawl up from beneath me and start munching on me. I headed back to the service stairwell, giving just a little glance at a dead dog lying outside a bakery directly opposite me. Death seemed to be catching, but there was no sense in sticking around for it to catch me.

Once on the stairwell, I decided to head back down to the Happy Burger. Whatever had been spooking me about the place before, I was feeling much braver about it now. Another dead dog lay across the entrance to the mall, off on my left as I left the stairwell, and this one being closer I could see it had most likely been skinned alive. Things skinned when they're dead don't bleed so much (trust me on this one, there's more than one way to skin a cat). Nothing could survive that, though, and of all dogs, dead ones are the least dangerous. So I turned my back on it and headed for the Happy Burger, ignoring my imagination telling me I could hear its claws clicking on the paving stones, hear its blood dripping as it came towards me. I almost made it, too, but I couldn't not look back, just couldn't. And there it was, swaggering towards me, longer than most dogs, about the size of a wolf maybe, the damn corpse was coming towards me, growling and slobbering. I panicked and dove through the doors of the burger joint, slammed them shut behind me and leant on them to keep them shut and get my breath back. As I stood there, gasping for breath, watching a garbage can I'd knocked flying with the doors roll to a stop, I took in my surroundings. Took in the presence of the blonde girl from the woods, Kate, sat at a table near the serving counter, with a coffee mug and smoking ashtray on the table in front of her. I've never seen anyone look so shocked, nor been so shocked to find someone in a burger bar.

A/N - It's gonna get better. Promise.