Portage Place Meat

Chad rested his phone against the lip of the concrete planter. The screen had a dense web of cracks radiating from the bottom left corner, completely obscuring the record button. He pressed his thumb into the shattered glass anyway. A red light blinked on the interface. He stepped back and wiped his hands on his jeans.

The Portage Place mall was dead for a Tuesday afternoon in early May. Outside, through the massive glass atrium, a late spring snowstorm was dumping heavy, wet slush onto the streets of downtown Winnipeg. The light filtering in from the sky was gray, flat, and cold. It made the interior of the mall look like a hospital waiting room.

Chad looked at the camera. He checked his outfit. Baggy denim, worn to white threads at the heels. A faded black hoodie with a frayed drawcord. His deck was tucked under his right arm, the black grip tape scraping aggressively against the cotton of his sleeve. He hated the grip tape he bought last week. It was too coarse. It was tearing up his thumbs. His Vans were soaked through from the slush outside, the cold water seeping into his socks.

He stood directly in front of the Gap. The storefront was wide open, the metal security grate rolled up into the ceiling. Inside, four mannequins stood on a raised white platform. They were posed in mid-stride, wearing pastel spring collections. Light blue shorts. Yellow polo shirts. Khakis. Their plastic skin was a uniform, featureless beige. They had no faces. Just smooth, blank slopes where eyes and a mouth should be.

"Alright," Chad said.

He didn't get to finish the sentence.

The hum started.

It was not a sound. It was a physical pressure in the room. It started at the base of his skull, a heavy, sinking weight that pushed down into his jaw. His teeth vibrated. His molars clicked together. He dropped his board. The wood clattered hard against the faux-marble tile of the mall floor.

Then the lights went out.

All of them. The bright, sterile fluorescents inside the Gap. The overhead mall lights. The buzzing neon sign for the food court down the hall. Everything went completely black for exactly three seconds.

Chad stood still. His stomach turned over. The air in his lungs felt heavy. The hum was getting louder. It felt like an industrial drill pressing directly against his eardrums. He swallowed, but his mouth was dry.

The emergency lights kicked on. They were a weak, sickly yellow. They cast long, hard shadows across the empty concourse.

Chad looked at the Gap.

The mannequins were moving.

He did not blink. He stared. His brain simply refused to process the visual information. It rejected the input.

The mannequin in the yellow polo shirt was shivering. The plastic shell of its right arm cracked. It made a loud, sharp snap, like a heavy boot stepping on a dry branch. The beige surface split open from the shoulder down to the elbow.

Underneath the rigid plastic, there was meat.

Wet, red muscle tissue. Thick blue veins pulsed violently against the raw flesh. The mannequin's chest heaved. The fabric of the yellow polo shirt stretched tight over an expanding ribcage. The plastic of its blank face began to melt or shift, tearing open in the center to reveal a jagged, wet hole.

Inside the hole were teeth. Human teeth, but there were far too many of them. Row after row of flat, yellowed molars and sharp, overlapping incisors grinding together in the dim light.

Chad backed up. His heel caught on the edge of his fallen skateboard. He stumbled, catching himself hard on the rough edge of the concrete planter. His breath caught in his throat. His heart hammered rapidly against his ribs, a frantic, painful rhythm.

The mannequin stepped off the platform.

Its bare plastic foot hit the tile with a heavy, wet slap. The plastic of its leg shattered around the knee as it moved, exposing a joint of raw bone and yellow gristle. Blood, thick and dark, began to leak down its calf and pool onto the white floor.

"Hey," Chad said. His voice was a thin, useless whisper.

The thing turned its featureless, gaping face toward him. The air suddenly smelled terrible. It smelled like copper, rust, and rotting pork.

It lunged.

Chad didn't think. Panic seized his muscles. He grabbed the nose of his maple deck from the floor and swung it up in front of his face like a shield.

The mannequin hit him. The force was unbelievable. It felt like being hit by a moving truck. Chad fell backward over the planter, landing hard in the dry dirt and dead ferns inside. The breath left his lungs in a violent rush. Dust filled his nose.

The mannequin fell directly on top of him. Its jaws clamped down.

Not on his arm. On the skateboard.

The teeth sank deep into the pressed maple. The wood splintered instantly. The sound was deafening in the quiet mall, a wet crunching noise mixed with the horrific grinding of teeth on coarse griptape. The mannequin bit down again, its jaw unhinging with a wet pop to accommodate the width of the board.

With a violent jerk of its thick, fleshy neck, the mannequin ripped its head back.

Half of the maple deck tore away. The metal trucks clattered loudly against the tile.

Chad kicked out blindly. His heavy skate shoe connected with the thing's chest. The plastic ribs caved in with a sickening squelch. The mannequin rolled off him, thrashing on the floor, its jaws still aggressively chewing the wood and urethane wheel.

Chad scrambled out of the planter. He left the phone. He left the broken half of his board. He ran.

He sprinted down the concourse, his wet shoes squeaking wildly on the polished floor. The emergency lights flickered overhead. He looked over his shoulder. Three more mannequins were stepping out of an Old Navy. Their bodies were cracking open. Blood was smearing against the glass storefronts.

"Chad!"

He turned. Near the escalators leading to the lower level, Bri and Skater Dave were waving frantically. Dave was thirty-five, an ancient skater by local standards. He had bad knees, a slight beer gut, and a heavy canvas camera bag slung over his shoulder. He was sweating through his flannel shirt. Bri was younger, sharp-featured, holding a heavy steel crowbar she kept in her backpack for cracking open abandoned skate spots.

"What the hell is happening?" Dave yelled. His voice was cracking.

Chad slid to a halt, grabbing the handrail of the broken escalator. His lungs burned. "The Gap. The mannequins. They have teeth."

"What?" Bri said.

"It ate my board," Chad said. He pointed back down the hall. "It bit it in half."

Dave looked past Chad. His face went entirely pale. A mannequin from a jewelry kiosk was crawling on the floor. Its legs were broken backward, but wet, red muscle was dragging it forward. It left a thick trail of blood on the white tile.

"Stairs," Bri said. She turned and sprinted toward the gray maintenance door at the end of the hall.

They ran. Chad slammed his shoulder into the heavy steel door. It was locked. Bri didn't hesitate. She stepped up, jammed the flat end of the crowbar into the doorframe, and threw her entire body weight against the steel.

The lock snapped with a sharp crack. The door swung open into total darkness.

"Get in," Bri said.

Chad pushed past her into the cold stairwell. Dave followed, breathing heavy, his camera bag slapping against his hip. Bri pulled the door shut behind them. The lock was broken, but it clicked shut.

The stairwell was pitch black. The air was freezing. It smelled like dust and old concrete.

"Lights," Bri said.

Chad patted his pockets, his hands shaking violently. "I left my phone by the planter."

Dave pulled out his phone. He tapped the screen. The flashlight beam cut a harsh white cone through the dark. It hit the raw concrete stairs leading down.

"We need to get to the concourse," Bri said. She kept her voice low. "We can take the tunnels under Portage and Main. Pop out near the Exchange District. It's too open up here."

"They're mannequins," Dave said. He leaned against the concrete wall. "They were mannequins."

"Now they're meat," Bri said. "Move."

They descended. The stairs went deep underground. The hum was still there, vibrating in the concrete under their shoes. It felt like the entire city grid was groaning under a massive weight.

They reached the bottom. A heavy metal push-door led out into the Winnipeg Square concourse. The vast network of underground tunnels connected the major downtown office buildings. Usually, at this hour, it was packed with office workers. It usually smelled like cheap coffee and damp wool coats.

Now, it was empty. It smelled like ozone and raw flesh.

Dave pushed the door open. The emergency lights down here were functioning, but barely. The long, straight hallways were lit in dim, yellow patches. The floor was covered in a layer of fine grit from the winter salt brought in by thousands of boots over the months.

They walked. They did not skate. It was too loud. Dave had unstrapped a spare wooden cruiser board from his camera bag and handed it to Chad. Chad gripped it tight, his knuckles white.

They passed a closed coffee shop. The glass was dark. They passed a small pharmacy, the security gates pulled down tight. The silence was heavy. Every footstep echoed off the low ceiling.

They turned a corner toward the old underground food court. The lights here were flickering rapidly.

They heard a noise. A low murmuring.

Chad stopped. He held his hand up. Bri gripped her crowbar. Dave killed the flashlight on his phone.

They crept to the edge of the concourse seating area and looked around a thick concrete pillar.

There were fifty people in the food court. They were dressed in expensive vintage denim, oversized wool coats, beanie hats, and round wire glasses. They looked like art students or baristas from the nearby Exchange District.

They were sitting cross-legged on the beige tile, forming a wide circle.

In the center of the food court, sitting on a plastic table, was a mannequin from Zara. It was wearing a floral spring dress. Its plastic skin was peeling back in thick strips. Wet, pink lungs were expanding and contracting visibly outside of its chest cavity.

A man with a waxed handlebar mustache was standing next to the table. He was holding out his bare left arm. He had sliced it open with a yellow box cutter. He was letting the mannequin lick the blood from his forearm with a long, gray tongue.

"It is the new reality," the man with the mustache said to the kneeling crowd. His voice was calm, almost bored. "It is the synthesis of our material waste and our biological imperative. Do not fear it. Feed it."

Chad watched from behind the pillar. His throat was completely dry. He wanted to throw up. The sheer idiocy of it. The horrific compliance of these people sitting in a circle while a plastic monster ate a man's arm.

Dave shifted his weight. His heavy skate shoe squeaked loudly against the tile.

The man with the mustache stopped speaking. He looked up. The entire crowd turned their heads in perfect unison.

"Non-believers," the man said. He pointed his bleeding arm at the pillar.

The mannequin turned its head. It opened its wet, jagged mouth. A high-pitched scream, sounding exactly like tearing sheet metal, erupted from its throat.

"Run," Bri said.

Chad dropped the cruiser board to the floor. The urethane wheels hit the tile with a sharp clack. Dave threw his board down. Bri dropped hers.

They pushed. Hard.

The cultists scrambled to their feet, shouting. The mannequins were faster. Two more fleshy hybrids dropped from the ceiling of the food court, shattering the acoustic tiles. They hit the floor on all fours, their plastic joints snapping and resetting as they sprinted.

The sound of the skateboards was deafening now. A massive roar of bearings and urethane rolling over the hard tile. The cracks between the tiles clicked in rapid succession. Clack-clack. Clack-clack.

Chad pushed his back foot against the floor, propelling himself forward. His thighs burned. He looked back over his shoulder. The fleshy mannequins were closing the distance. They ran like dogs, their plastic hands slipping on the smooth floor, leaving wet red streaks behind them.

The cultists were running behind the monsters, screaming about evolution.

Chad faced forward. They were passing the food court kiosks. An old pretzel stand called 'Mr. Pretzel' sat in the middle of the hall. The glass front was completely smashed, the metal frame bent.

Bri reached out as she skated past the kiosk. She grabbed a massive plastic tub off the counter. It was full of stale, rock-hard pretzels. Leftovers from days ago.

She tossed the tub backward.

Chad caught it against his chest. It was heavy. He reached in and grabbed a pretzel. It felt like a brick of solid salt and dough.

He turned his torso, still rolling at top speed, and threw it as hard as he could.

The hard pretzel hit the lead mannequin square in the face. The solid mass of baked dough crushed the plastic nose inward. Blood sprayed across the tile. The mannequin stumbled, its front limbs getting tangled. It crashed hard onto the floor, sliding for ten feet and taking out two of the cultists behind it in a tangle of limbs and vintage coats.

"Keep pushing!" Dave yelled. He was panting heavily, his face red.

Chad reached into the tub and threw another pretzel. Then another. It was utterly ridiculous, but it was working. The hard baked goods were essentially heavy stones. They shattered plastic ribs and bruised wet meat.

The physical exertion was taking its toll. Chad's ankles ached. His lungs were begging for air. The end of the tunnel was approaching. A massive set of glass doors led up a concrete ramp to the street level of Main Street.

The doors were chained shut.

A thick steel chain was wrapped around the handles, secured with a heavy padlock.

"We can't stop," Bri yelled over the roar of the wheels.

"We hit it," Chad said. He dropped the plastic tub. It clattered away, spilling stale pretzels across the floor.

They picked up speed, pushing with everything they had left.

"Cover your face!" Dave yelled.

Ten feet from the doors, they leaped off their boards. Chad kicked the tail of his board up, catching the nose in his hand. He held the heavy wooden deck in front of his face like a battering ram.

They hit the glass simultaneously.

The impact was brutal. The heavy glass shattered outward into a million tiny, cubed shards. The chain whipped back, tearing the metal handles off the frame.

Chad tumbled out onto the concrete of the sidewalk, rolling over his shoulder to absorb the impact. The broken glass rained down around him like ice.

The cold air hit him instantly. It was freezing. The late spring snow was falling in thick, silent flakes, accumulating on the gray pavement.

Main Street was completely empty. Cars were parked at odd angles against the curbs. The traffic lights overhead were dead, dark squares against the gray sky.

Chad rolled over onto his back. He looked around. The snow was already gathering on his black hoodie, melting against his sweaty neck.

He looked back at the broken glass doors. The tunnel below was pitch black. Nothing was coming up the ramp. The cultists and the mannequins were gone, swallowed by the dark.

Dave sat up slowly, spitting blood from a cut on his bottom lip. Bri was kneeling on the concrete, checking her forearm for embedded glass shards.

The city was totally silent. There were no sirens. There were no alarms. Just the low moan of the wind pushing down the concrete canyon of the street.

Chad gripped the edge of his borrowed skateboard. He didn't know if the rest of the city was infected, or if they were the only ones left awake.

The snow fell on the empty street, and Chad gripped the wooden deck, waiting for a scream that never came.