Book Five, Chapter 51: Shopping
I stood in the middle of a large stone corridor, like something out of Hogwarts to my eye. Fancy stonework. No formed concrete. Yet, these walls were not for some royal courtyard. They were storefronts. On either side, there were eight to ten glass doors with big glass windows packed with goods to draw customers in.
The only exit out of the corridor I could find was the same way we came in.
This was a kill box.
If something were to chase you into this place, you’d have to gamble on which door you entered, hoping there was an exit hidden from view.
To my right, I saw a large glass window that had once been filled with mannequins dressed for a 1970s summer at the beach: bright colors, a fair amount of modesty, and a wave of nostalgia I had only experienced second hand through movies.
All of the displays had been crushed, however, and standing on their remains were dozens of aimless zombies—the blue and green kind from back when rotten flesh was considered too obscene for movies—who pressed against the glass half-heartedly. I always thought the non-rotten ones were creepier.
Maybe that was because as people rot, they get lighter. A fully desiccated corpse only weighed about forty pounds. I would know; I wrestled with one.
These zombies were still wholly hydrated. They were barely dead. I’d hate to mess with them.
They didn’t draw in any customers. This store, the only one whose door was locked (and chained), had once sold summer water sports equipment and beach attire but was now a monster lair for wandering cretins waiting for their storyline to be triggered. I could feel the monster lair with my Hysteric scouting trope so easily with all of the monsters right in front of me. If only the werewolves were on display like this.