HOME | DD

Description
Chapter 3: The Mall

The City Center Shopping Mall sat quietly against the horizon like a massive tombstone. The parking lot, normally filled to the brim with cars was now mostly empty. A few cars were scattered haphazardly throughout the lot, abandoned and forgotten. A few lone zombies made their way around the parking lot wandering aimlessly, no real purpose for what they were doing. A single zombie that had most likely been a business man whilst alive stumbled toward a car, most likely believing it to contain fresh meat. Upon inspection though, it saw it was empty and began to walk away from it.

That was when its head exploded at the exact same time a gunshot rang out. A man was perched on top of the mall, sniper rifle in hand with its barrel smoking from having just been fired. The man was tall and wore a neatly pressed blue uniform with awards on it similar to a military official. His head was full of steely gray hair, and despite being of a slightly advanced age, was still quite muscular and fit.
"Goddamn zombies, I can't believe I ever wanted an army of these things." He peered out onto the parking lot and found another whose head he also took clean off. "Well these zombies will never get in here, not as long as I, Slab Rankle am here to defend this mall," the man declared as he took out yet another zombie with a headshot. "Ooh, that's always cool." Slab said to himself.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

In a neighborhood a bit farther from the mall, a school bus made its way through the streets. Inside were a group of people, all still very alive and otherwise uninfected by the virus. "How much farther is it?" Chase asked as the bus hit another zombie that ran in its way.
"Shouldn't be too much farther." Zim said from the driver's seat. Gaz was leaning over next to Zim keeping herself steady by holding on to a pole at the front.
"Why are we going this way?" she asked Zim as they continued through the neighbor hood they were in. "It would have been faster to take Fifth than to cut through Parkway." Zim kept his voice low so as to keep from alerting the passengers.
"We need to get GIR and Minimoose from my house," he said. "While I was waiting for you guys to get out of the Skool, I called GIR and told him I'd get him and Minimoose. We could seriously use their weapons systems." Zim continued.

Gaz knew there was something more to it than that though. "You just don't want them to be alone, don't you?" she asked.
Zim looked at her for a brief moment with an "are you kidding?" look on his face. "No, no. I know they're perfectly capable of handling themselves and the zombies wouldn't even touch them because…" He stopped before he could finish and looked at Gaz. She had a look on her face that showed that she knew Zim was lying. "Oh alright, I admit it. I do just want the little guys with us. I just can't stand to know that they'd be alone." Zim turned to Gaz and then added, "But just don't tell anyone, especially not Dib. He may not want to kill me now, but if he knew that little bit of info he'd never let me live it down."

Gaz chuckled. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone," she said as she patted Zim on his head jokingly. Zim grumbled at this little gesture. He hated to be treated like a little child, and Gaz knew it, which is exactly why she did it. Zim decided to ignore it though as he saw his house ahead and swung the bus around so the door would be facing the front of his house.
The others in the car undoubtedly noticed this occurrence. "What's going on, why are we stopping?" Ben asked as the bus came to a stop in front of the bizarre Day-Glo green and purple house. Zim had expected this and turned to reassure everyone in the bus.
"It's okay, I'm here to pick up my dog," he told the group.
"Your fucking dog?" Chase asked him.

Zim smacked his forehead. He hadn't counted on the fact that these people were most likely smarter than the average human he encountered in the city. Normally the people he dealt with were stupid and would have just nodded and said something like "Oh, okay," or something else completely devoid of rational thought. This would also be a problem as GIR's dog costume wasn't really all that good. It was pitiful actually. The chances of these people falling for the disguise were zero to none. So Zim had to come up with something to say to convince these people he needed to get GIR.

"I mean, um not just any ordinary dog. A uh, special robot toy dog from Japan I got from my father before he died in the uh, war." Zim said hoping they'd take the bait. Luckily he had long ago destroyed the robot parents due to them being annoying and no longer needed so no one would see his robot father and call his bluff.
"Alright, I say we let him go." Ben said.
"Are you crazy man, there are zombies out there! We can't risk it." Chunk yelled from the back of the bus.
"Hey! I've got more authority than you so I say he can go." Ben said to Chunk before turning to Zim. "Make sure that you're in and out in fifteen minutes or we'll have to leave your ass behind," the cop told him.
Zim smirked, "That's plenty of time for me." Once again, Zim was being overconfident in his abilities. Part of this was due to the years he acted like that, so it had become sort of second nature to him. The other part came from the fact that Zim was kinda worried about the short amount of time and how it might be a little hard to find GIR and Minimoose in his house. Hopefully they hadn't gone into the lab or else Zim would never find them in time. On the other hand, even if they did he'd still have access to his Voot Cruiser and could use that to get to the mall. But then he'd have to figure out a way to trick the other humans into thinking he had found a more conventional form of transportation. 'But hopefully it won't come to that,' Zim thought to himself.

Ben took out his gun and handed it to Zim. "In case you need it," the cop said.
"Thanks," Zim said to Ben. The alien took the gun and stuck it in the waistband of his jeans. He then turned to Gaz.
"Be careful," she told him. She then kissed him and said, "For luck."
Zim smiled a cocky little smile and said, "Don't worry; I'll be back before you can even say 'zombie'." Gaz just smiled at him in return. Zim then turned to the door. Ben had his hand on the opening mechanism ready to open it at Zim's command. "Alright let's do this." Zim said, signaling Ben to open the door. The door flew open and Zim jumped out with it flying shut right behind him. He looked around to make sure there were no zombies around, but pulled the pistol out just in case.

He made his way up to the front door of his house with his gun at the ready. Grabbing the knob he turned it slowly, making sure not to make too much noise and thanking God that GIR had forgotten to lock the front door again. He poked his head into the house to see GIR and Minimoose sitting on and floating above the couch respectively. They were both watching "The Scary Monkey Show" on TV and seemed blissfully unaware of anything going on around them. Zim then opened the door fully, entered the house and closed the door behind him.

GIR turned towards the door to see who it was. "Master, you is home!" he exclaimed giddily.
"Squeak!" was all that Minimoose said. Though that's all he ever really said anyway.
"Be quiet you two. I'm here to get you outta here." Zim said to his two robotic companions.
"YEAH! WE'RE GOING ON A TRIP!" GIR exclaimed excitedly.
Zim slapped his forehead before shushing his little robot sidekick. "GIR this is important, so I need you to listen to me." Zim said to GIR. The little robot then turned his attention to his master. "We need to get out of the house, okay? There is a bus outside which has a bunch of people in it, and we need to get there as quietly as possible."
"Is Gazzie out there too?" GIR asked.
Zim nodded, "Yes, Gaz is out there too," he assured the little droid.
"Yeah, I like Gazzie!" GIR exclaimed again.
"Yes I know that GIR, but you have to do something in order for us to get to the bus."

GIR looked at Zim with an inquisitive look on his face. "First GIR, you need to put Minimoose in your head." Zim told him.
"Okie dokie! Come on in Minimoose!" the little robot said to his flying buddy. Minimoose simply squeaked and flew into GIR's open head.
Zim then said that GIR needed to get into his doggie disguise too, which GIR did quite quickly. "Alright now, now I need you to jump on my shoulders GIR," he told the little mechanical spazoid. After GIR was situated on his left shoulder, Zim turned to him to give one more instruction. "Now GIR, it's important that you be as quiet as possible okay?"
GIR turned to Zim and asked, "Why?"
Zim hadn't thought of an excuse to give to GIR. While he knew zombies wouldn't go for a small robot, apparently GIR didn't. So he had to come up with an excuse. "Because, uh…we're playing hide and seek! Yeah, and we can't get tagged by any of the other players."

He knew GIR would believe that little lie. GIR just gave a thumbs up and said, "Okay." Zim breathed a sigh of relief before turning towards the door. Looking through the peephole, he saw that there weren't any zombies on the lawn. He quietly opened the door and stepped out. And that's when he heard a gurgling sound to his right. He whipped around to see a zombie standing right there, about two feet from him.
"Oh shit," he muttered as the zombie lunged at him forcing him to run. He looked back and saw a few other zombies coming out from in between his house. He began to wave franticly at the bus. "Open the door!" he shouted as he ran at full speed towards the vehicle. Ben was standing near the door and threw it open. Zim then dove into the bus with Ben closing the door behind him as he slammed face first into the one of the windows. "Ow," was all he said as he fell onto the floor.

Getting back up, he saw Gaz standing in front of him. "Got back with just a minute to spare," She told him.
Zim gave her a confident smile. "What can I say babe? I'm just that amazing," he said. Standing up, he got back behind the wheel of the bus and started it back up. "Now, let's get outta here!" Zim said as the bus drove off with zombies trying and failing to catch up with them.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

By now, Slab had mowed down most of the zombies in the parking lot. While a few remained, he figured that the lot was empty enough now and that using any more ammo would just be wasteful. "Well, guess it's time to go back down," he said to himself as he packed up his sniper rifle. That's when he noticed something moving on the horizon. Wondering what it was, Slab pulled out his binoculars. Looking out at the approaching object he could see it was a school bus. "More survivors, huh?" he said. He ran over to the CB radio he had out and attempted to get their frequency. Since he knew all the frequencies of every bus in the city, it was just a matter of elimination.

By some random stroke of blind luck, he was able to get it on the third try. "Hello, hello! Is everyone okay in there?" he asked into the mic.
"Eh? Who is this?" came a voice from the other end.
"This is Slab Rankle, head of mall security. I repeat is everyone all right in there, has anyone been bitten?"
"No, no ones been bitten. We're from the school, it's been over run and we need a new place to stay, will you let us in?" Slab silently contemplated this new predicament. He already had some survivors in the mall, but he couldn't in all good conscience turn them away.
"Okay, you can come in. There's a loading dock on the east side of the mall, park there and we'll throw down a ladder for you to get in." Slab said.
"Okay then we'll be there shortly," the voice said. Getting off the radio, Slab grabbed his walkie-talkie and flipped it on.
"Rookie, are you there?" he asked into the device.
"Yes, I'm here sir," came a female voice from the other end.
"Good, I'm gonna need you to get an emergency ladder and get to the roof over the eastern loading dock. We got us some more survivors to take care of."
"Yes, sir."

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

The bus made it's way around the side of the mall to the eastern loading dock. With careful precision, Zim backed it into the dock causing minimal damage. A dull thud was then heard from the roof. "Alright people, looks like that's our way to safety." Ben said as he popped the emergency escape hatch off the roof. "C'mon people, Move! We need to get out as quickly as possible," he shouted as everyone climbed out. The people in the back went first leaving Zim, Gaz and Dib to go last. Zim let Gaz go first and then himself as Dib was the last one out. Running to the ladder, Dib climbed it as quickly as he could. He slipped on one of the rungs but was grabbed by someone's hand. "I've got you", a familiar voice said as it pulled him up on the roof.
When he was safely on the roof of the mall, he turned to the person he helped him. "Thanks for the help, I…" His voice trailed off as the person who helped him turned around. "TAK!" Dib exclaimed.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

AN: Well, sorry this took so long to finish. I feel really bad, and I hate to leave this on a cliffhanger, but whatever. I promise I'll try and update more frequently, okay? So until next time readers.

Description
Chapter 3: The Mall

The City Center Shopping Mall sat quietly against the horizon like a massive tombstone. The parking lot, normally filled to the brim with cars was now mostly empty. A few cars were scattered haphazardly throughout the lot, abandoned and forgotten. A few lone zombies made their way around the parking lot wandering aimlessly, no real purpose for what they were doing. A single zombie that had most likely been a business man whilst alive stumbled toward a car, most likely believing it to contain fresh meat. Upon inspection though, it saw it was empty and began to walk away from it.

That was when its head exploded at the exact same time a gunshot rang out. A man was perched on top of the mall, sniper rifle in hand with its barrel smoking from having just been fired. The man was tall and wore a neatly pressed blue uniform with awards on it similar to a military official. His head was full of steely gray hair, and despite being of a slightly advanced age, was still quite muscular and fit.
"Goddamn zombies, I can't believe I ever wanted an army of these things." He peered out onto the parking lot and found another whose head he also took clean off. "Well these zombies will never get in here, not as long as I, Slab Rankle am here to defend this mall," the man declared as he took out yet another zombie with a headshot. "Ooh, that's always cool." Slab said to himself.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

In a neighborhood a bit farther from the mall, a school bus made its way through the streets. Inside were a group of people, all still very alive and otherwise uninfected by the virus. "How much farther is it?" Chase asked as the bus hit another zombie that ran in its way.
"Shouldn't be too much farther." Zim said from the driver's seat. Gaz was leaning over next to Zim keeping herself steady by holding on to a pole at the front.
"Why are we going this way?" she asked Zim as they continued through the neighbor hood they were in. "It would have been faster to take Fifth than to cut through Parkway." Zim kept his voice low so as to keep from alerting the passengers.
"We need to get GIR and Minimoose from my house," he said. "While I was waiting for you guys to get out of the Skool, I called GIR and told him I'd get him and Minimoose. We could seriously use their weapons systems." Zim continued.

Gaz knew there was something more to it than that though. "You just don't want them to be alone, don't you?" she asked.
Zim looked at her for a brief moment with an "are you kidding?" look on his face. "No, no. I know they're perfectly capable of handling themselves and the zombies wouldn't even touch them because…" He stopped before he could finish and looked at Gaz. She had a look on her face that showed that she knew Zim was lying. "Oh alright, I admit it. I do just want the little guys with us. I just can't stand to know that they'd be alone." Zim turned to Gaz and then added, "But just don't tell anyone, especially not Dib. He may not want to kill me now, but if he knew that little bit of info he'd never let me live it down."

Gaz chuckled. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone," she said as she patted Zim on his head jokingly. Zim grumbled at this little gesture. He hated to be treated like a little child, and Gaz knew it, which is exactly why she did it. Zim decided to ignore it though as he saw his house ahead and swung the bus around so the door would be facing the front of his house.
The others in the car undoubtedly noticed this occurrence. "What's going on, why are we stopping?" Ben asked as the bus came to a stop in front of the bizarre Day-Glo green and purple house. Zim had expected this and turned to reassure everyone in the bus.
"It's okay, I'm here to pick up my dog," he told the group.
"Your fucking dog?" Chase asked him.

Zim smacked his forehead. He hadn't counted on the fact that these people were most likely smarter than the average human he encountered in the city. Normally the people he dealt with were stupid and would have just nodded and said something like "Oh, okay," or something else completely devoid of rational thought. This would also be a problem as GIR's dog costume wasn't really all that good. It was pitiful actually. The chances of these people falling for the disguise were zero to none. So Zim had to come up with something to say to convince these people he needed to get GIR.

"I mean, um not just any ordinary dog. A uh, special robot toy dog from Japan I got from my father before he died in the uh, war." Zim said hoping they'd take the bait. Luckily he had long ago destroyed the robot parents due to them being annoying and no longer needed so no one would see his robot father and call his bluff.
"Alright, I say we let him go." Ben said.
"Are you crazy man, there are zombies out there! We can't risk it." Chunk yelled from the back of the bus.
"Hey! I've got more authority than you so I say he can go." Ben said to Chunk before turning to Zim. "Make sure that you're in and out in fifteen minutes or we'll have to leave your ass behind," the cop told him.
Zim smirked, "That's plenty of time for me." Once again, Zim was being overconfident in his abilities. Part of this was due to the years he acted like that, so it had become sort of second nature to him. The other part came from the fact that Zim was kinda worried about the short amount of time and how it might be a little hard to find GIR and Minimoose in his house. Hopefully they hadn't gone into the lab or else Zim would never find them in time. On the other hand, even if they did he'd still have access to his Voot Cruiser and could use that to get to the mall. But then he'd have to figure out a way to trick the other humans into thinking he had found a more conventional form of transportation. 'But hopefully it won't come to that,' Zim thought to himself.

Ben took out his gun and handed it to Zim. "In case you need it," the cop said.
"Thanks," Zim said to Ben. The alien took the gun and stuck it in the waistband of his jeans. He then turned to Gaz.
"Be careful," she told him. She then kissed him and said, "For luck."
Zim smiled a cocky little smile and said, "Don't worry; I'll be back before you can even say 'zombie'." Gaz just smiled at him in return. Zim then turned to the door. Ben had his hand on the opening mechanism ready to open it at Zim's command. "Alright let's do this." Zim said, signaling Ben to open the door. The door flew open and Zim jumped out with it flying shut right behind him. He looked around to make sure there were no zombies around, but pulled the pistol out just in case.

He made his way up to the front door of his house with his gun at the ready. Grabbing the knob he turned it slowly, making sure not to make too much noise and thanking God that GIR had forgotten to lock the front door again. He poked his head into the house to see GIR and Minimoose sitting on and floating above the couch respectively. They were both watching "The Scary Monkey Show" on TV and seemed blissfully unaware of anything going on around them. Zim then opened the door fully, entered the house and closed the door behind him.

GIR turned towards the door to see who it was. "Master, you is home!" he exclaimed giddily.
"Squeak!" was all that Minimoose said. Though that's all he ever really said anyway.
"Be quiet you two. I'm here to get you outta here." Zim said to his two robotic companions.
"YEAH! WE'RE GOING ON A TRIP!" GIR exclaimed excitedly.
Zim slapped his forehead before shushing his little robot sidekick. "GIR this is important, so I need you to listen to me." Zim said to GIR. The little robot then turned his attention to his master. "We need to get out of the house, okay? There is a bus outside which has a bunch of people in it, and we need to get there as quietly as possible."
"Is Gazzie out there too?" GIR asked.
Zim nodded, "Yes, Gaz is out there too," he assured the little droid.
"Yeah, I like Gazzie!" GIR exclaimed again.
"Yes I know that GIR, but you have to do something in order for us to get to the bus."

GIR looked at Zim with an inquisitive look on his face. "First GIR, you need to put Minimoose in your head." Zim told him.
"Okie dokie! Come on in Minimoose!" the little robot said to his flying buddy. Minimoose simply squeaked and flew into GIR's open head.
Zim then said that GIR needed to get into his doggie disguise too, which GIR did quite quickly. "Alright now, now I need you to jump on my shoulders GIR," he told the little mechanical spazoid. After GIR was situated on his left shoulder, Zim turned to him to give one more instruction. "Now GIR, it's important that you be as quiet as possible okay?"
GIR turned to Zim and asked, "Why?"
Zim hadn't thought of an excuse to give to GIR. While he knew zombies wouldn't go for a small robot, apparently GIR didn't. So he had to come up with an excuse. "Because, uh…we're playing hide and seek! Yeah, and we can't get tagged by any of the other players."

He knew GIR would believe that little lie. GIR just gave a thumbs up and said, "Okay." Zim breathed a sigh of relief before turning towards the door. Looking through the peephole, he saw that there weren't any zombies on the lawn. He quietly opened the door and stepped out. And that's when he heard a gurgling sound to his right. He whipped around to see a zombie standing right there, about two feet from him.
"Oh shit," he muttered as the zombie lunged at him forcing him to run. He looked back and saw a few other zombies coming out from in between his house. He began to wave franticly at the bus. "Open the door!" he shouted as he ran at full speed towards the vehicle. Ben was standing near the door and threw it open. Zim then dove into the bus with Ben closing the door behind him as he slammed face first into the one of the windows. "Ow," was all he said as he fell onto the floor.

Getting back up, he saw Gaz standing in front of him. "Got back with just a minute to spare," She told him.
Zim gave her a confident smile. "What can I say babe? I'm just that amazing," he said. Standing up, he got back behind the wheel of the bus and started it back up. "Now, let's get outta here!" Zim said as the bus drove off with zombies trying and failing to catch up with them.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

By now, Slab had mowed down most of the zombies in the parking lot. While a few remained, he figured that the lot was empty enough now and that using any more ammo would just be wasteful. "Well, guess it's time to go back down," he said to himself as he packed up his sniper rifle. That's when he noticed something moving on the horizon. Wondering what it was, Slab pulled out his binoculars. Looking out at the approaching object he could see it was a school bus. "More survivors, huh?" he said. He ran over to the CB radio he had out and attempted to get their frequency. Since he knew all the frequencies of every bus in the city, it was just a matter of elimination.

By some random stroke of blind luck, he was able to get it on the third try. "Hello, hello! Is everyone okay in there?" he asked into the mic.
"Eh? Who is this?" came a voice from the other end.
"This is Slab Rankle, head of mall security. I repeat is everyone all right in there, has anyone been bitten?"
"No, no ones been bitten. We're from the school, it's been over run and we need a new place to stay, will you let us in?" Slab silently contemplated this new predicament. He already had some survivors in the mall, but he couldn't in all good conscience turn them away.
"Okay, you can come in. There's a loading dock on the east side of the mall, park there and we'll throw down a ladder for you to get in." Slab said.
"Okay then we'll be there shortly," the voice said. Getting off the radio, Slab grabbed his walkie-talkie and flipped it on.
"Rookie, are you there?" he asked into the device.
"Yes, I'm here sir," came a female voice from the other end.
"Good, I'm gonna need you to get an emergency ladder and get to the roof over the eastern loading dock. We got us some more survivors to take care of."
"Yes, sir."

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

The bus made it's way around the side of the mall to the eastern loading dock. With careful precision, Zim backed it into the dock causing minimal damage. A dull thud was then heard from the roof. "Alright people, looks like that's our way to safety." Ben said as he popped the emergency escape hatch off the roof. "C'mon people, Move! We need to get out as quickly as possible," he shouted as everyone climbed out. The people in the back went first leaving Zim, Gaz and Dib to go last. Zim let Gaz go first and then himself as Dib was the last one out. Running to the ladder, Dib climbed it as quickly as he could. He slipped on one of the rungs but was grabbed by someone's hand. "I've got you", a familiar voice said as it pulled him up on the roof.
When he was safely on the roof of the mall, he turned to the person he helped him. "Thanks for the help, I…" His voice trailed off as the person who helped him turned around. "TAK!" Dib exclaimed.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

AN: Well, sorry this took so long to finish. I feel really bad, and I hate to leave this on a cliffhanger, but whatever. I promise I'll try and update more frequently, okay? So until next time readers.