Insert clever title here…

Writing Prompt 117

“ ‘Congratulations on your decision to purchase the Weintraub guardianator 3000 complete defense system, the only fully integrated, all inclusive, self automated security solution available today.’ ”

“Sigh. Harry, would you stop that?”

“What? I’m trying to help – ‘The Weintraub guardinator 3000 features fully automated control over lighting, air conditioning, ambient audio systems, security cameras, door locks and over 100 other electronic systems in use as standard in today’s marketplace’”

Chuck rubbed the heel of his palm around in circles on the side of his forehead, trying to massage away the building headache. Maybe with any luck he would knock free a clot that would kill him instantly and end his misery. That would be the perfect end to his crappy carrier in the retail security enforcement field… to stroke out and die in a puddle of his own piss while his Mongoloid assistant attempted his own kind of CPR that probably resembled a gorilla throwing some kind of spastic tantrum.

“Harry, that doesn’t help any… I know what the system is capable of, I’ve read the manual before and there is nothing in there that covers this particular situation, when all the systems are dead.”

“There not all dead Chuck, the music and light the lights still work… kinda.”

The lights slowly dimmed in time with the warping of the music playing over the speaker system and then came back to some semblance of normalcy before doing it again. It wouldn’t be so bad if it hadn’t been the same song looping over and over again for the past 3 hours. Chuck silently swore to himself that if he ever saw the girl from Ipa-freakin’-nema he’d punch her in the throat.

“And the fountain! The fountains’ still running down in the lobby Chuck’

“Great Harry, we’re saved! We can all swim to safety!”

“Ahh… You’re not aloud to swim in the fountain Chuck”

Chuck sat with his chin rested on his hand while he stared at Harry. Maybe he was dead, maybe this was his own private purgatory. A minimum wage hell in which he would be trapped for all eternity with an intellectually substandard primate.

He was woken from a homicidal daydream by a knock at the security office door. Harry had now switched to reading the manual to himself in a hushed voice, and glad of the relative quiet of it Chuck got up to answer the door himself.

He swung the door in and upon seeing who was there, smiled.

“H-hey Cindy”

“Hey Chuck, ahh… the natives are getting kind of restless again, do you think you could come out and give them an update?”

“Hey! Is that Cindy!? Hey Cindy!” Harry bellowed from his chair. Chuck winced and let out a slow calming breath.

“Yeah sure Cindy, I’ll come right out.” He smiled and turned to Harry while he adjusted his pants and shirt. “Ok Harry you hold down the fort, keep reading that manual and I’ll be right back”

“You got it Boss”

Chuck slipped out of the office and closed the door quietly. As he walked down the back hallway towards the central foyer, the area where most of the captive customers had congregated he ran his hands through his hair and tried to straighten his tie.

“So, how’s it going out there? He asked the pretty blonde sales assistant.

“Oh, you’ll see” she replied, sighing and letting out a long breath herself before they reached the set of double doors out into the store.

They each grabbed a handle and as they swung the doors inwards in unison the volume got suddenly much louder. The noise was overpowering as they walked slowly closer to the crowd of what had to be close to 300 people, earlier it was worse but apparently about 100 people had settled in for the long haul and had dispersed to all different corners of the store. He had been keeping half an eye on them through the security monitors while he racked his brain for a solution to their current predicament. People had grabbed books and filled the furniture department, laying on beds and sitting in the easy chairs reading their wait away.

A group of kids had started a tournament on the sample game station in the computer department but that hadn’t lasted long after the power started fluctuating and people lost their games, it broke down into a bored, frustrated extreme sports competition the last he saw. They had raided the sports department of every skateboard and bike they could get and now the entire north side of the store had become a skate park training ground for the x-games.

He didn’t care, he had basically already decided to quit, but before he could do that he had to get out of this damned store.

The murmur going through the angry mob seemed to increase as they approached, out of the corner of his eye he saw that Cindy had slowly drifted away from him and he found himself standing alone in front of the wrath of the crowd.

Bitch, he thought, screw her – everybody knew that she was one who’s genetalia got photocopied at last years Christmas party anyway. She’s probably been handed around more then the copies were.

“Ladies and gentleman can I please have your attention for a second” it took a few moments for the noise to quiet down but it never quite stopped.

“Thank you, now I’m sure you all probably have a lot of questions –“

“You’re damn right we do!” a guy in a dark grey suit shouted. “Like what the FUCK are you doing to get us the fuck out of here!?!”

Chuck took a breath and raised a placating hand towards the belligerent businessman. This guy probably went to college; you’d think he’d have a better vocabulary then that, he thought while he waited for the rumble of agreement that had burst from the crowd to die down again.

“Well Sir, to answer your question, we are doing everything that we can-”

“Bullshit!” the suit shouted again.

It was at times like this that Chuck was glad that they weren’t armed security because he would have knee-capped the guy for sure – pistol whiped him at the very least.

“Sir, I assure you that we are trying everything that we can think of, this is a new security system that was just installed a few days ago… there is nothing in the manual that covers this contingency”

“Contingency!? Contingency!? Just what the fuck is going on here!?!”

“Well sir, it appears that the building thinks that it is under some kind of biological terrorist attack”

That shut him up. It shut everyone up for a few microseconds before the dreaded “T” word sent a wave of panicked murmuring flooding through the mob again.

“Terrorists!? What? There’s no Terrorist attack, what the hell set it off?”

This came from a larger woman over to the other side, a little calmer then the Armani jackass, but not much.

“Ahh… we’re not sure at this point, we believe that it has something to do with the new restaurant that just opened up – the first to open in our newly remodeled food court”

“What, him?” The woman looked confused and glanced in the direction of the aforementioned eatery, everyone else followed suit.

Ranjeet the skinny, bug eyed, bucktoothed adolescent who was the sole employee on duty at the Curry-Hut stared on blankly as everyone looked at him. The poor guy hardly spoke a word of English and was only made more pathetic looking by the hair cut that only a mother can inflict upon a child using a small bowl and blunt scissors. He shifted uncomfortably but didn’t move.

The crowd all turned their heads from Ranjeet and his curry yellow shirt and hat in a unison that couldn’t have been more perfect if it had been practiced. Chuck had to fight from laughing, if he so much as let a smirk show on his face he was a dead man and he knew it. He’d be beaten to death with mannequin limbs or they’d use his head as a battering ram before the echo of his laugh could fade.

“Wha-why can’t you just open the damn doors!?!” a second woman’s voice came from somewhere in the throng.

“Well as part of the new security system there are electro magnetic locks on all the doors to deter shop lifting – if someone trips a theft alarm the doors automatically lock”

“Can’t you open them?” another disembodied voice.

“Actually no, the system is malfunctioning and as I said, because it thinks that we are under the threat of some kind of biological agent – ” He glanced momentarily at Ranjeet who just shifted slightly again, totally oblivious to what was going on. “it has quarantined the building.”

“Well can’t you just shut it off? Cut the power of something? It’s just a fucking computer for Christ’s sake!?” The suit shouted again.

They had guns in the sporting goods department… maybe if he ran he could get a rifle loaded and… no…

“No Sir, that won’t work, the system is designed that should there be a power outage all locks will… well… Lock into place should thieves try to use that as a means of robbing the store”

“What- all of them? Even the fire doors!?” Said a tall guy near the back, he looked toned and muscular, you know - like a fire firefighter or something.
“Unfortunately yes, sir”

“That’s a safety violation, I’m the local fire martial, I should know!”

Bingo.

“Yes sir, I am sure it is – but the system is malfunctioning, this is not the normal operating standard”

“Can’t we just break the fucking doors!?! They’re only made of glass for fuck’s sake!”

Chuck wondered if the suit guy was some kind of lawyer, was this what he was like in the courtroom? Or was he some kind of business man? Did his boardroom etiquette include Tourette’s style outbursts?

“No sir, unfortunately the glass is a highly re-enforced safety glass designed to stop vehicular burglary attempts”

“What about calling for help!?”

“Unfortunately the phone lines appear to be down as well, and as I am sure you know Cell phones are not working inside the building at this time either – this probably has something to do with the magnetic fields from the doors”

Chuck sensed the movement behind him and listening to the accompanying shuffle and jingling sounds knew it was Harry walking slowly up to him, but something sounded funny about the footsteps, they sounded… wet.

“Well what about –”

Chuck held up a finger, gesturing for a moment of quiet as he turned to Harry who was tugging gently on his sleeve like a gargantuan child trying to attract a parents’ attention.

“What is it Harry?” Chuck asked quietly.

“Ahh… we’ve got a problem”

“No foolin’ Harry? There are 400 people trapped in this store with no way out that I can find, yeah I’d say there’s a problem”

“No Chuck I mean there’s another problem”

“Well, what now!?”

“Ahhh… I kind of broke the toilet Chuck”

“Ahh, ok, well you know what to do, just like last time… put the caution tape up over that stall again and the janitor will take a look at it later”

“No Chuck, I don’t mean just the one stall this time, they all broke.”

“Wh- wha… what do you mean, they ALL broke. What are they doing Harry?”

“Well they’re all spilling poop back out all over the floor and they won’t stop”

For probably the 100th time that day Chuck just looked at Harry, words just didn’t want to come to mouth, he could not think of a single thing to say.

Slowly he turned away from the crowd and silently he started to shuffle away. There was a roar from the crowd as half of them all started to object and ask questions all at once, they mixed together so badly that he couldn’t understand any of them. Harry trotted up beside him again, squelching with every step.

“Where are you going Chuck?”

“Shopping” was all Chuck said in reply.

30 minutes later Chuck had finished shopping, the improvised explosive he had made inside of a water cooler bottle was ready to go. He placed it in front of the main entrance and lit the fuse. He still hadn’t said anything since simply saying “shopping” to Harry. People had followed him and tried to harass him while he calmly pulled the ingredients from their various shelves. When people started to see what it was that he was doing they started to leave him alone. By the time he was done and placing device in the front of the store everyone was keeping a large distance between themselves and him. They still followed him, curious at what the unhinged security guard was going to do… but they all parted around him like the red sea as he walked slowly back into the center of the store.

He stood silently watching with his arms crossed over his chest as the fuse burnt down. Everyone covered their ears and looked away as it burnt down to nothing and the bomb went off. Everyone except Chuck. There was a deafening roar and a blinding flash and the front glass doors evaporated outwards.

Everyone screamed and rushed for the front of the store and freedom, they pushed and trampled each other, most people carrying un-paid for goods. Chuck didn’t care. All he could hear was a high pitched ringing. He didn’t care. He’d closed his eyes at the last instant so he was able to see somewhat well through the smoke.

He walked calmly along at the rear of the mob, following them as they made their way outside. As he cleared the gaping, smoking maw the smoke dissipated quickly, everybody was running to their cars, desperate to get as far away as they could from the disaster zone.

Outside while everybody ran away from the building one figure stood motionless watching the madness as Chuck strolled clear of the throng.

The store owner’s eye twitched uncontrollably as he watched hundreds of people flood from the ruined mess that just minutes before had been his world. Grey blue smoke billowed up and away as packs of soccer mom’s, house wives, burly men and laughing teenagers spilled out of the smoking hole where the front doors had used to be.

When Chuck came within an arm’s length the store owner grabbed at his sleeve half heartedly and managed to squeak at him;

“Wh-wha - ?)

“Oh, you can consider that my resignation.” He said in a casual voice and just slipped away with the rest of the fleeing people.

The store owner pulled a small keychain from his pocket and pushed a button on the black plastic fob. The store’s systems instantly resent and there was a blissful quiet as the music and blaring claxon stopped, just the rumble of the crowd which too slowly faded as the parking lot evacuated.

One final figure came slowly walked out of the smoke. Harry lumbered out eating from a bag of potato chips. When he saw the owner he smiled and waved.

“Hey Uncle Ernie!”

Uncle Ernie just stood and stared.