Anarchy of the Mice

Chapter Forty-Two

The air felt oily and saccharine on Josiah's skin, and a casino of sound assaulted his ears—registers ringing, specials singing over the PA, an indeterminate zzzzzzzip! from Home Electronics every fifteen seconds. Any direction you looked, Shop-All had cheap junk to fix your life.

Fifty-quart coolers for ten dollars! Tins of pressed ham, free with the purchase of any deep-fryer!

When Josiah separated from the Mice to begin, a greeter stepped in his path.

"Welcome to Pickles and Olives," said the elderly woman, spreading her arms as though presenting Shangri-La. "The tastes may be sour, but our deals are sweet as cherry pie. Have yourself an amazing afternoon!"

Josiah matched her brio with his own excruciatingly wide grin. He felt his wig clips in front stretch away from his sideburns.

"You do the same, Sister!"

She offered him a cart after cleaning its handle with an antibacterial wipe—then cheerfully tossing it into landfill trash.

Josiah spurned her offer and started up an aisle at random, his albino eyes ranging over the obscene volumes, quivering with rage.

Shop-All trafficked in a nauseating breed of nostalgia for pre-Anarchy times. No guns. (Confiscated at the entrance.) No casual shoplifting. Products in orderly stacks rather than spilling from ripped-open cardboard, as most local markets did nowadays.

Average weight had dropped 35 percent in the Anarchy, either from stress or hunger or both, but you wouldn't know it here. Necks had folds—and folds within folds. Arm fat jiggled. A full third of the customers puttered along in motorized scooters.

Overhead banners proclaimed, "Experience the Shop-All Difference: Security, Savings, Serenity."

Josiah snickered. Serenity.

Choosing his first act, he boosted up on his tiptoes—feeling a burn in his calves—and fought the urge to squeeze or bite the people streaming by, to grip them by the shoulders and shake shake shake until they shopped no more.

They are merely the symptom, he reminded himself. You don't punish the pawns.

He emerged from Pickles and Olives to stand at a point equidistant from Leather Recliners, Giant TVs, and six other micro-sections. In the front-right pocket of his cargo shorts was a tiny remote. He tapped its button.

A stitch of unease passed through the mass. A change had occurred—they felt this, but hadn't yet identified the source.

A woman pointed to a blank LCD box beside an eighty-three inch television. "The price! What happened to my price?"

Another television was being admired by a teenager crinkling a bag of potato chips.

"Momma, why does it say 'out of stock?'" he asked. "I see like fifty of them."

Shop-All employees rushed to address the situation, blurs of blue and yellow checking coaxial connections, pressing reset buttons, calling supervisors on red phones. Nothing helped.

Josiah pushed his remote again, and the prices came back—all reduced to one penny.

The chaos fed Josiah's growing glee. He popped four pills into his mouth and chewed them to minty dust, thinking to accelerate and clarify his mood.

He stalked next to the food court. The smell staggered him. Transfat, yellow dye #6, GMO sludge—the sort of chain food that'd been chased from the landscape but persisted here.

A maple syrup bar. Non-perishable cheesefood. Meat cubes on toothpicks.

Josiah became giddy with revulsion.

He tapped his remote again. A stereophonic hissing began, several kitchen areas affected at once. Diners weebled off their hard-plastic seats to look. Food workers hopped back from stations, rubbing their arms.

"The fries are possessed!" yelled a kid in a paper hat.

Chicken tenders, corn dogs, funnel cakes—all burned to a dark caramel as digital temp readings over wire baskets climbed higher and higher.

Next, Josiah superheated the griddles. Pink patties seared black. Onions shriveled to crisps. Eggs bubbled like exploding eyeballs. After that—and Josiah couldn't take credit for this master stroke; it'd been Piper's idea—the soft serve dispensers went berserk, spurting milky jets.

As people screamed and messes ran together on tile, Josiah felt suffused by warmth.

Who needs Rivard LLC anyway?

Rivard hadn't wanted the Shop-All attack. That steroid jock Leathersby had told him it wasn't a priority. "Does bugger all good for us, mate." Fabienne Rivard had other sites she wanted to see hit.

They could both kiss his ass. From now on, the Blind Mice made the mayhem unassisted. Au naturel.

Josiah rode moving walkways through other sections, frazzing out Shop-All systems like some vengeful god. At checkout, he made the rubber conveyor belts run triple-speed. He changed the SuperSaver siren from a hopeful bring-bring to the low, dull moo of cattle.

When the confusion had reached a fever pitch, he made his way to the management offices. A man in a supervisor's vest stood at a podium, receiving updates by earpiece.

"Please—everyone, please remain calm," he said into a loudspeaker mic. "Clearly we're experiencing a malfunction, some systems issue, but it will be resolved soon. I assure you."

Josiah strode up the podium jauntily, clapped a hand on the shoulder of the man's vest. "You think?"

The man glanced up at Josiah's blue hair, then out across the deluged food court, overrun sackers, and panicking shoppers. Security guards were rushing ten ways at once.

"Uh—er, stay where you are," the man continued to his customers. "Don't abandon your carts. We'll get this straightened out in a jiff."

This was too much for Josiah—that the pig's primary concern was lost sales. He ripped off the wig, revealing his ghost-white hair.

Everybody around gasped, recognizing the notorious leader of the Blind Mice.

Before the man at the podium could react, Josiah ran a knifepoint from his temple, down through the cauliflower stem of his ear, to his cheek.

The earpiece—and the flesh is was still hooked around—dropped to the floor.

Josiah took the mic. "Attention, consumers!" boomed his voice through all ten floors. "I have an important announcement to make. Your way of life is over. I hereby declare this..." He felt his face curdle as he groped for a word. "...this grotesquerie over. The Blind Mice are here to deliver you! To supply a firm push toward rebirth."