Chapter 12

chapter twelve My eyes snap open. I'm awakened by an earthquake, or something like one. Could be a stampede of Mack Trucks. Possibly an elephant tap dance routine. "WHAT'S HAPPENING?" Dirk shouts. I roll over and spot him on the floor, trying to squirm out of his sleeping bag. "Shake loud...?" Quint mutters, still half- asleep. "C'mon!" June says, springing out of bed. In moments, we're awake and dressed. During the Monster Apocalypse, you sorta get used to throwing on a pair of jeans at a second's notice. We're like modern-day minutemen, minus the muskets, wigs, and weird obsession with tea. June shimmies open the door and we stagger outside. Greeting us is the single largest moving object any of us has ever seen....

In the moonlight, all I can make out is a massive form rumbling toward us. No, "massive" is underselling it. This is leviathan- level large. "Wait," Quint says, rubbing his eyes. "Is that...?" "It is!" I say. "It can't be, but it is. It's a mall!" June says, "Not just a mall. THE Mall. That's the Millennium Super Mall, biggest mall in the hemisphere!" As the thing's crumbling path brings it into full view, Dirk says, "Biggest mall in the hemisphere is ridin' a centipede-looking monster. Great."

"Colossal centipede," I add. "Combined with a slug or a snail or something...." "Mollusks," Quint says. "Slugs and snails are both mollusks." "So does that make this big thing a... MALLusk?" June asks. "Oh, June, dude..." I say. "Nice. So nice." Dirk is stomping back to Big Mama. "Yeah, well—your 'Mallusk' is about to mush us into a fine paste. Let's move!"

We rush back into Big Mama—and it's chaos. Outside, the ground is splitting as the creature approaches. Inside, the metal floor is twisting and windows are bursting from their frames! "Hang on!" Dirk barks from up front. "We're gettin' out of here!" I hear a door pop open. Outside, I spot— "My zombies!" The vibrations must have popped open their trailer door—now they're staggering around outside. I reach for my Slicer while Big Mama sputters forward unsteadily. "Wait, guys! Not yet!" I shout. "I have to get my squad! I ne-eeee- ee—" Suddenly, the ground rolls, Big Mama lurches, and I'm flung out the door! My stomach flips. I realize the ground has been split into two. I'm separated from my friends, being carried off. It's like I'm on an iceberg that's drifting out to sea. In moments, Big Mama is hundreds of feet away. And the chasm is only growing wider.

Then I can no longer see Big Mama at all. I only see the massive Mallusk charging over and through the ground like a freight train that's jumped the tracks.... CRUUNSSHH-GRRRRRMM! No way I can reach my buddies now—and I won't be able to until the mall passes. But I've got my Slicer, so I search, scanning for any sign of my squad. With the chasm behind us, there's

really only one place they could have gone: forward. So I go forward. And as I make my way down a cracked, torn-up street, I think, It's way too early for this. Far behind me, the roar of the Mega Mallusk continues. It's foggy and I can barely see anything. But there's a strange glow up ahead, so I decide to follow that—thinking it might have attracted the zombies like moths. After a few hundred feet, I cross a moss- covered interstate and discover an old roadside motel. A rusted sign reads: THE C'MON INN. The moon bathes it all in a strange blue glow. "Like this place wasn't creepy enough," I say under my breath. "Thanks a lot, moon." Interdimensional foliage grows wild across the parking lot. Cars, skewered by some strange species of rigid and razor-sharp vine, are suspended in the air. A VW Bug rests, upside down, in the gnarled crook of a tree that radiates a fiery red.