Shonen Otaku's Diary of Frank West: Day 1 Part 2

It turned out the ducts led to the mall’s barren rooftop with not a zombie in sight.  Immediately after I got up there, I found a couple of old married fatsos looking for help.  After punting a soccer ball into the old lady’s gut for whining at me, I led the two of them over to the giant vent just a few feet away they apparently didn’t see.  Otis did tell me to try and rescue other survivors if I could; for emergency rations, I’m sure.

Unfortunately, the old jerks had trouble keeping up thanks to their cardio issues and I accidentally left them behind.  Naturally I went back to show them where the only human-sized vent on the rooftop was.

When I did, I saw that the two were somehow injured even though there wasn’t a single zombie on the rooftop!  I checked!  In the five seconds it took me to go back for them, a zombie attacked them, they killed it, and then ate it and lapped up the blood!  They aren’t just fat because of a bad diet!  They’re monsters!  I asked Otis to let them fight with me in the mall, but he told me they might get a heart attack.  As if eating a whole zombie wouldn’t do that!  If they won’t get off their ass and help me fight, they’ll at least make for good food themselves.  Those two should last us a month.

I'd be cautious about going to giant eating establishments if I ate a whole corpse too.  If she starts acting weird, I'm going to cap her.

With that little errand out of the way, I finally started to get into the meat of things.  The elevator on the rooftop led to a warehouse full of TVs, mannequins, buckets, and other equipment.  I think I heard the mannequin say something to me.  “Kill Otis,” they said.  To that I say no.  I like Otis.

Before I could get much further, I heard something in the exit hallway.  At first I thought it was a zombie, but then I remembered there wasn’t a single one on the way there.  I could hear a distinct clacking sound in the footsteps, and the only person I knew was wearing heels was Jessie.  Given her involvement with “Brad”, I knew she had to have some kind of firearm on her I could use to shoot the old shit I saw earlier.  I was ready to sneak attack her around the corner and bash her skull in with a nearby fire extinguisher, but I got spooked when I saw she had her gun out.  Luckily she was startled too and hurt her ankle anyway, making it the perfect time to get the gun.

She told me that Brad was under attack and she was going to go back him up.  Under the guise of helping him, I convinced Jessie to give me her gun.  She was reluctant at first, but I cleverly informed her of the fact that I had covered wars and she immediately trusted me.

I could have told her that all I meant was I wrote a plot synopsis of an episode of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series, but details weren’t important.  If I hadn’t wasted enough time already, I would have told her more interesting tidbits about my life.

I’ve opened doors, my skin has pores, I’ve slept with whores, I’ve wrestled boars, I hate Pauly Shore, I’ve done chores and I’ve eaten s’mores.

Maybe later.

I know how to use that gun, of course.  All you have to do is point it at bad people and they go away.  With my new toy in hand, I set off into the heart of the Willamette mall, already been completely overrun with the undead.  I could have gone to help out Brad in the food court across the park, but I’m pretty sure Nick Fury can handle himself.

Besides, he would have gotten in the way of the fun.  When there’s no living person around to see it, there’s only one thing you can do in a mall: loot!  And my first target just had to be the toy store nearby, where I seized some new duds only slightly smaller than my size, and a new friend: a giant bear I christened “Teddie,” named after that funny blue guy I keep seeing in my TV.

Teddie and I were ready for hours of fun, but tragedy struck prematurely when a couple of zombies wandered into the store and started to attack me!  I was able to keep them away using Teddie for a while, but then it happened.

Teddie broke.

He sacrificed himself to protect me, and those zombies killed him!  My best friend had just been murdered!  I was so upset I couldn’t control myself and wailed on their heads until there was nothing left but liquid stains all over the store.  I tried to pick up Teddie for one final burial, but his body had already ascended to the heavens.

Goodbye Teddie.  I will never forget you.

Five minutes of sobbing and zombie-smashing later, I started getting hungry.  After all, I hadn’t eaten anything for hours, and my Twinkies are still in the parking lot, locked safely away in my briefcase where the zombies can’t get them.  Luckily for me, the food court wasn’t very far, according to the handy dandy map Otis gave me.  Zombies must be pretty picky about what they eat, because I found three entire custard pies ripe for the eating and wolfed one down without a second thought like it was a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup!

It’s at that point I noticed something about the food in this mall.  When I took the last bite of that pie, the gashes and bite wounds all over my body disappeared!  In fact, that has happened whenever I eat anything!  All the food here has magical healing properties!  This mall is apparently so glorious and heavenly, it’s blessed by the power of Christ himself and has an enchantment placed that gives its food the power of healing!  Or, considering Jesus isn’t one for materialism, this may actually be the work of Santa Christ.

But I could do more than just eat entire pies in just three chomps!  The food court conveniently has blenders to make use of.  Some people just put fruit or smoothie mix in a blender for a nice treat, but that’s for people who aren’t hardcore!  I shoved a pie and some coffee creamer in there and made a hardcore, white super drink.  I should probably alert the nearest technician about the mixer though, because it rather violently spat the container out.

I then also added an apple into the mixture for a taste of flavor.  If I can find some gasoline somewhere, I can put that in with some coffee mix and really fuel myself up!

I didn’t realize at the time that while I was goofing around with the mixer, it was starting to get dark.  Hours had passed and forgot to back up Brad at the other food court across the park!

Not wanting to have Brad throw the F word at me, I made a B-line straight for his location, hoping to make it in time.  However, seconds after I stepped into the enormous Leisure Park, Otis informed me of another journalist taking photos right where I just was.

I knew the guy who handled a plane full of snakes could handle himself for a while longer.

I immediately U-turned right back into Paradise Plaza to look for this other journalist, whom I found in the food court taking pictures.  Luckily it seemed he didn’t lay a hand on any of the pies, meaning he had permission to live.

His name was Kent Swanson, a younger lad with more equipment for capturing photographs than I had, but I don’t need anything but my fine leather jacket.  At first I was suspicious of Kent’s twitchy movements, cackling laughter, irrational joy out of hurting zombies, and tendency to insult me, but he had spiky hair and a goatee.  In my experience, you can always trust anyone with spiky hair and a goatee.

Kent had a challenge for me, either as a way to train me to be as great a photographer as him or to feel good about someone taking photos of his handsome, goatee’d face.  I couldn’t argue with either reason, really.

All I had to do was take pictures of the guy doing various poses, first alone and then with zombies around.  I got poses like him performing his physics-defying flying jump kick, him taking a photo himself, and a shot of him doing his fist pumping gesture (which isn’t nearly as awesome as Ralf Jones’).

Rockin'. 

There’d be no challenge in it if he just did the damn poses when I told him to, as you do when you set up any other photo shoot.  He just went off and minded his own business, posing when he felt like it and calling me an old sack of crap when I missed it.  That Kent is one tough coach, but I’m older than him, so what do I know about how young people act today.

Once I had proven myself to be at least a competent journalist, I got an even harder challenge.  All I have to do is take pictures better than his most dramatic, sexy, and violent shots, which should be easy because the ones he had were so inferior I had to swat the camera away out of disgust when he showed them to me.

I could just use the timer on my camera to photograph me performing Hamlet with a zombie’s skull, stripping and sawing my own arm off, but that’d be too easy.

At the time of this writing, I believe I have a better dramatic and brutal shot, but I’ll have to try hard to get something that looks sexy when almost everyone in the mall is dead.

I thought I might be able to get my sexy shot by taking a picture of Brad, but just as the idea came into my head, I remembered I had to go back him up!  I wasted no time in rushing across the park to the North Plaza.  I got distracted again.

I couldn’t help it!  Otis told me there was a cutlery store there!  Or rather, he told me eventually.  I kept dropping the transceiver because of the zombies attacking me, to which Otis kept telling me that it was rude for me to cut him off.

I understand it when someone gets peeved at poor manners, but I feel he forgot just what I’m doing while he’s chilling in the security room.

The North Plaza was absolutely flooding with the things!  It was by and large the most zombie-packed area I’ve yet seen in the mall.  It’s a good thing the place is still partially under construction so I could travel on the scaffolding, because otherwise I’d have to plow through enough zombie guts to fill a swimming pool (one I would very much enjoy swimming in; I need to write that down).  I did try to see if the zombies might carry me across the place, but it turns out they aren’t very good at mosh pits.

Once I learned the zombies’ inability to mosh pit, and after I subsequently chugged my three gallons of Santa Christ orange juice, I found the cutlery store, just as Otis had told me!  They had some nice hunting knives, but to my squealing delight, they had Japanese katanas as well!  Obviously the first thing to come into my head was to put three of them between my fingers, jump from the scaffolding, and shout “phantom dive!”  Alas, it turns out putting Katanas between your fingers is harder than it looks.  Maybe with enough practice I will someday be able to do it like the masters of old.

While I was there, I also used the knives to shave my head.  With some sunglasses I swiped earlier, I look just like Vin Diesel, or the Engineer.  Or Brad.

It took me just as long to get to the bathroom as it did to get to the cutlery shop, and it was when I was headed back that I noticed that time has halted!  Literally, my watch has stopped moving and the sun is no longer going down!  Something in this mall seems to be causing some sort of temporal disruption that has trapped everyone in it in a stasis or purgatory of some sort!  Could it be we are all trapped in a certain period of time like in Stephen King’s The Langoliers?  Are we all doomed to be eaten by saw-toothed meatballs?

Not if I have anything to say about it!  I’m going to do some heavy investigating, but I can’t do it alone, so I’ll have to go get Brad.  But first, I still need to piss out all the Messiah Juice I’ve been chugging.

Sometimes it's nice to be alone.