The shambling zombies on the upper level didn't seem to spot her, they were involved in an epic battle with some of the malls indoor plant life. 'If I stay to one side they might not even hear me.' She thought, planning her route mentally after she ducked back around the corner out of sight. The zeds couldn't see her, but from her position she could see the bodies sprawled in front of the major retailer that anchored that end of the mall. 'So much for going there to get stuff as my backup plan. I'll keep heading north, I ain't wading through corpses for underwear and shoes.'
Nodding to herself she darted around the corner and did a quick jog towards the store she wanted, a familiar shoe place with a sunny, bright logo. Katie hadn't counted on the darkness inside. The store was on the lower level and the mall was of a more modern design, with plenty of ambient light, but 'ambient' only goes so far in the dark recesses of a shopping mall. The back of the store was lost in the shadows, at least the security grill was up and open, alleviating one worry that Katie had thought of when she decided to come in here.
'Wouldn't you fucking know it, my size has to be at the far end.' Katie wore eights, and following the sizes down she could estimate where they would be. 'Dash and grab?' She thought, 'Or find a light? Do I want to shine a light in here?' To give herself the option she looked around for flashlights, however, there were not any in sight, nor was there one behind the cash register. There was, however another corpse. This one too, was dead. It was the body of a young teenager, female and bloated from days of lying behind the counter. The youth's head had been smashed open, and though the decomposition and darkness made it hard to see, Katie suspected the woman had died from being eaten.
Katie crouched behind the counter to get out of sight from outside the shop and to plan her next move. There was a peg board near her back full of socks, absentmindedly Katie grabbed a bag of socks her size and kicked off the man's shoes, she would not leave here without footwear. Now how would she get the shoes she came here for?
'Patience.' That is one thing being a sniper had taught her. You could never have too much patience. She waited for three or four minutes to let her eyes adjust fully to the gloom, the light from outside, surprisingly, was enough to let her see the back of the store. It was empty. At least 'her' aisle was. Taking her bag of socks with her she crept down between the rows of shoes until she found some athletic shoes in her size. Instead of dashing back to the front of the store as she had planned, she took her shoes to rear of the store then quietly crawled the length of the place looking down the aisles, empty. It was just as she had thought when she was crouched behind the counter. There hadn't been any noise at all from inside the store, just the quiet scuffle from outside in the plants versus zombies struggle that was going on upstairs. Patience was a virtue sometimes. Now she could sit at the back of the store and anything coming in would be back lit and probably half blinded by the darkness to which her eyes were accustomed.
Pulling a stool to the middle of the aisle with the size eights, Katie tried on the shoes. She ended up going with a black pair of Nikes, the first pair she had tried on. During that time one of the zombies fell from the second level to the floor out in front of the shop, the zombie was laying there squirming on the ground, too broken to get up and walk. This one was a heavy white male, with a bald head and a sleeveless denim jacket. The guy rolled around on his bloated belly and Katie was wondering if he was fat from before he was turned or if he was bloated from decomposing. If it was decomposing then humanity might only have to wait for nature to take its course to be free from the zombies, otherwise it was going to be a long fight.
Katie grabbed a large canvas purse from an accessory rack near the front of the store and put a backup pair of the same shoes and her extra socks in it before stepping out to examine the zombie, which was still twitching on the floor in front of the store. Again she crouched down, this time just a step outside of the shoe store, and watched, slowly counting off the time in her head as she looked at the guy.
'Not decomposing.' She finally decided. Katie realized she could be wrong, the man might have been turned yesterday, which is why the eagle tattoo on his arm was still in good shape. That tattoo had decided her, this guy had just been fat; he was not bloated or swollen from decomposing. The artwork from the ink on his massive arm was not distorted or disfigured in any way, had the zed been decomposing she would have expected it to be different in some manner. Going on a couple of admittedly unsupportable assumptions, such as he had died more than two weeks ago and he had been here most of that time, she would have expected to see some decay by now. 'Damn. Nothing is ever easy.'
The zombie was not making any headway on getting to his feet. 'He is a slow one too, probably won't heal the damage from that fall anytime soon.' If healing was actually what they did. Katie still didn't know how they 'got better' or shrugged off injuries the way they did. She knew they had to eat the living to get smarter and figured they might need to do that to heal too. 'Well this one is out of luck as far as getting to me is concerned.'
The shoes felt wonderful, next stop would be clothing that actually fit and who knew where she would end up? If she were lucky there might be a shower, or at least a dip in a local pond to clean up. Mentally she added 'towel' to the list of things she wanted to acquire.
'And not one of those cheap forty-thread pieces of sandpaper, now I can get the good stuff.' In her mind she was seeing a soft, oversized towel that she could wrap up in. The picture was tarnished a little when she added herself stepping out of a lake, but clean was clean. Katie kept to the front edge of the stores as she made her way to the woman's clothing store, she didn't see any movement anywhere and the place was a lot less damaged than she would have thought, given the amount of bodies that lay behind her down the other wing. Frowning, she paused and looked at a cell phone kiosk, the glass had all been shattered in the display cases and the register was pock marked with bullet holes as well. Shaking her head she carefully trod by it to her destination.
The clothing store boasted a wide entrance, typical of most stores in a mall, but was darker than the shoe store. The front of the store fell under a large overhang that probably accommodated a wider pedestrian walkway above. Moving into the store Katie went for the underwear first. She thought that there was nothing so bad as riding two hours in a pair of dirty men's jogging shorts to make someone want to have fresh panties, especially when she had been commando at the time. Katie snatched the first pair of one hundred percent cotton underwear off the rack that she saw and slipped the men's short off over her shoes.
Softly she laughed out loud, 'Here I am standing half naked in a dark store at the mall, even in a million years I would not have guessed this would ever happen to me.' Katie pulled the underwear on and moved to grab some jogging shorts more appropriate to her gender. Continuing her shopping she made sure to grab three of everything, it all went into the canvas bag she was carrying. The store was completely empty of zombies and other than the wrappings and packaging she had left on the floor it was as clean as it would have been when if it had been open for business.