This is terrible, man. Tragic. Just… tragic, Antler said almost breathlessly.

J'Mel Davidson

You may be right, I answered near conceding, but I’m sticking to my answer: I think the Batman album is much worse than the Dick Tracy album.

But — I quickly interrupted.

But nothing! They’re not just horrible songs for the movie. They’re horrible Prince songs. And that’s unforgivable.

Except Scandalous… Antler said

Except Scandalous. Bottom line is, I don’t like Madonna, so Madonna can’t disappoint me. But Prince let me down. Maybe it was some sort of contractual obligation, maybe it was just bad planning, but I don’t see how songs from and inspired by Batman The Motion Picture was part of God’s plan.

Yeah, well lately, I can’t see how WE were part of God’s plan.

I tried to respond, but couldn’t. Things had been a little biblical lately, no doubt about that. Well, maybe there was a little doubt. It’s not like there was anyone to ask. When this had all started, I ignored it. I thought it’d be like all the other times the media had stirred up fright in the public. Times like Ebola or the flesh eating virus or mad cow disease. One day the entire world was scared to death of the creeping crud that would kill them, then the next it was no big deal. This was different, though. It never stopped being a big deal. Soon, there was the news of violence. Then there was news of quarantines. Eventually, there was no news at all.

Antler looked at his watch. It was only 3:38 p.m. Still plenty of sunlight. Still plenty of time for a detour.

He said we were going to the mall.

Antler clipped along Highway 31 towards the Riverchase Galleria. While the right side of the highway was a stretch of abandoned cars, all the left held was the occasional overturned car or burned out truck to swerve around.

I’d seen worse. There was no more downtown Birmingham, or at least, there was a lot less than there once was. Some airplane, Delta I think, had taken care of that. I didn’t see it happen, but I was close enough to feel it. I saw the dark smoke rising from the crater. Planes had probably fallen from the sky all over the world. There was so much residual death and destruction — so much we’d never know about. We were o.k. with that.

We pulled into the parking lot of the Galleria. We’d seen plenty of frightening things in the past few months, but nothing was as unnerving as the quietness of it all in the daytime. It was a little after three thirty on a Saturday afternoon, the sun was shining, birds sang, but it was still quiet. Too quiet for the usually bustling parking lot of a major shopping mall. There was plenty of noise at night, and it wasn’t pleasant, but it gave you something to react to, at least.

Antler drove through the rows of cars towards the entrance. They were all locked up nice and tight, a great deal of them equipped with the best in auto-security. Well guarded for their owners, who in no way were ever to return… not to drive, at least.

It won’t be dark for a while. We’re going music shopping, Antler said.

The Batman soundtrack is out of print, I answered matter-of-factly.

Yeah? Antler responded calmly. He parked, and looked around a bit. There were no bones. The occasional bone sometimes surfaced in these public places. A stray jaw bone, a femur picked clean — we had gotten used to seeing them by now. It was one of the many things they’d gotten used to, and one of the few things you should never have to. Antler put out the menthol he’d been puffing.

Let’s go anyway.

We got out of the car and I stretched. He cracked his back. We both took rifles from the back seat, and slung the straps over our shoulders. Antler chambered a round in the pistol he always carried, and I reached for the nine iron I’d come to think of as my good luck charm.

Do you have any idea how ironic a trip to the mall is in this situation? — I asked.

Hadn’t crossed my mind, Antler said with a grin, and lit another cigarette.

It’s the end of the world, and we’re going to the mall to swipe two albums we don’t even like.

Yup.

All right. Let’s play the feud.

The power was still on, which was good. If it hadn’t been, this little excursion would have been a no go. Still, we had to be quiet.

At this point, the few rules we’d determined necessary in surviving the end of time were not nearly as numerous as the things we still had no idea about. What we had figured out was that daytime was safer than nighttime, that light was better than dark, but daytime was no substitute for common sense, and common sense told us to be careful, and be quiet. There were still enough dark places in the mall to hide nasty biting surprises for us if we let our guard down for too long. The surprises were everywhere.

There was still the stale music that pumped through the speakers at every other store, not to mention the generic musak that covered the spaces in between in an unpleasant mix of distracting background noise. This would be layered with thousands of human movements, voices and otherwise — the white noise of shopping — to create a Phil Spector like wall of sound that most mallrats had learned to filter out in their infancies. Now, the music was alone, cavernous, and sad. The Gap, Macy’s, the Disney store — it took the end of the world to render these places even more useless than they once were. But the music… it had survived. We made their way deeper into the mall. Everything was open. No closed doors, no security gates… even when things were at their worst, the mall didn’t close.

I surveyed the surroundings carefully as we hit the down escalator. Antler turned towards the top floor to watch the rear. There was a Sam Goodys about 30 yards from the escalator.

I’ll check the soundtracks, Antler said.

Grab some other stuff, and let’s get out of here.

Cool, I answered.

I made my way to the jazz section first. I was almost finished with my latest mix-tape opus, and I needed “This Bitter Earth,” by Dinah Washington, to complete it. I grabbed a few Vince Guaraldi albums, and Headhunters by Herbie Hancock, then made my way to Pop/Rock and grabbed The Sea and Cake by Oui, drukqs by Aphex Twin  and The Best of Todd Rundgren.

They have it! Antler said, surprised, as he waved the disc in the air. They actually have a copy of Batman!

Small blessings huh, I mused. Will wonders never cease?

Blackout.

The mall was outfitted with skylights in case of this. There was always enough natural light to ensure that, in the day time anyway, the mall never fell into complete darkness. But natural light was no substitute. No substitute at all.

We stood perfectly still as the hum of electricity wound down around us. The music had all ceased simultaneously, and while the music was never loud enough to discomfort, this sudden silence was deafening.

We looked at each other and drew our weapons as silently as possible. If there was something in the mall, it might or might not know we were here, too. If there was something in the mall, it might want us bad enough to risk the large portals of natural light that streamed down into that mall to get to us.

I slipped the new acquisitions into a backpack I’d grabbed from some random back-2-school kiosk, and stepped slowly into the mall proper, took a deep breath, and took off towards the escalator.

In the dark corners of the mall, beneath the shadows and just out of line of sight, I could hear rustling. There was what sounded like voices, thousands of faint voices, growing and coming towards us.  The white noise of shopping.

The rustling quickly became rumbling and the white noise quickly became snarling, angry and wet. I had been in close situations before but the fear was still there; the fear that came with very little understanding of what you were dealing with, or why it wanted to bite you.

I knew to keep moving and to avoid the dark places, the places where the evil blended so well with the dark that the shadows themselves seem to be reaching for me. We were on the top floor so quickly it was if we’d flown there, and the shadows were close behind…

Stories by J’mel Davidson appear in every issue of Birmingham Weekly. Write to jmel@bhamweekly.com