She cradles the baby close to her as she walks past the stores that line each side of the mall. I watch her stroll by in her own world, occasionally cooing to the infant she carries. Content. At peace. Happy. Things I wish to be. I’ve always dreamt of being a mother but unfortunately it’s not happened, yet. Fingers crossed. The mother has gone now. I go back to my book, stirring my coffee absentmindedly with my spare hand. It’s a Saturday afternoon in the middle of December, seemingly the whole town is here. In a rush to finish the dreaded Christmas shopping. My plan was to push through and finish my own Christmas shopping, but two blisters and four very heavy bags later, I needed a break. Besides, people watching is one of my favourite pastimes. It’s just fascinating.

One last mouthful of way-too-frothy coffee down and I scoot out of my chair, gathering my bags before I go. I start heading to another store, trying to recall the mental list I made before I left the house this morning;

Toys for the nieces and nephews, check. 

Biscuits and mugs for my parents, check. 

My mental checklist is interrupted suddenly by a commotion, down by the entrance to the mall. There appears to be something coming through the door. It looks like its big. I’m on my tip-toes now, straining for a glimpse of whatever is happening down there. It looks like a crowd of people, a swarm of them even, but they seem to be heading in the opposite direction to the doors. It’s as if they know something I don’t. That’s when I see what’s really coming through those doors. 

It’s a small army of men, in black uniforms kitted with guns, knives and shields. 

“Run, woman, run. They’ll kill you if they get you.” The same woman I saw with her baby earlier is now shaking my shoulder, tears streaming down her face as she shouts in my face. She must know something I don’t so I start moving forward with her, not quite commiting to running yet.

“I’m so confused, who are they? Why will they kill me?” I ask her, gasping for enough breath to utter a few words. She quickly glances behind us, before pulling me into a cafe and pulling me to crouch behind a counter. She checks the area is clear and is satisfied when the guards jog past the shop. 

“They’re part of the movement. You’ve seen the news haven’t you? They want a return to tradition or so they say. They kill women who don’t fulfill their purpose or don’t do it right.” She’s speaking in a whisper so close to my face that I feel her breath with every syllable. That’s when I see it, in her eyes. Fear, for me, herself and for the baby still in her arms.

“What do you mean ‘purpose’?” 

“Oh you know, have babies, worship men, be good housewives who don’t say boo” 

She’s rolling her eyes in clear contempt, but her voice is shaky and she’s holding the infant tighter to her chest and wiping her tears with her other hand.

I put my hand on hers, holding it and I shove my shopping bags away from us now. No need for them now, it’ll be a miracle if I make it out of here alive, never mind making it till christmas. 

She squeezes my hand and lets it go, so that she can hold the infant in both arms as she gently rocks it back to sleep. I take the hair tie off of my wrist and tie my hair back in an attempt to clear my mind. God what do I do? We could make a break for the doors, but they have guns. We could block up the shop and stay here. It’s a cafe, it has food. They might hear us blocking it up and investigate though. Not to mention, an organisation of this kind is bound to have guards on all the back entrances, so there goes that option. They won’t want any escapees, just a clean sweep. I shudder at the horrifying thought. This baby doesn’t deserve this. The young mother doesn’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this. Hell, nobody trapped in this building deserves this.

A sudden crash in the hallway snaps me out of my own mind. I peek around the counter to see what it is. One of the guards is wrestling with another man, who seems to be reaching for something or someone. Three gunshots are suddenly fired and I hear the man wrestling the guard, wail. He slumps to the floor in defeat, grasping something. It’s a body. A tiny body. Oh, dear God. it’s horrifying, I don’t want to watch this. Fear keeps me compelled. Another shot is fired and the man stops crying. I realise there are tears cascading down my cheeks. I don’t have the will to wipe them away. It’s too much. Suddenly, I’m aware of the mother and child behind me and turn to reach for them, to shield them from the horror. As I turn I knock a plate off a shelf, with a large crash it splinters and smashes before I can reach for it. Oh fuck. 

Panic, puts life in slow motion. 

I barely have time to warn mother and child before the guards are upon us. 

“Run, Run, Don’t let them catch you” 

I’m screaming out of desperation now. Next thing I know, I’m grabbed by the arm, spun and thumped to the floor.

It all goes black. 

Live News Bulletin at 19:00, 21/12/19;

NEWCASTLE SHOPPING CENTRE UNDER ATTACK

On the 21st of December a Newcastle shopping centre was targeted and taken control of by Christian Extremists. There is an estimated 5100 civilians being held captive. It is being rumored that there have been around 200 deaths already since this morning, with the youngest of the suspected dead being a two month old baby. Authorities are yet to confirm anything or make a comment.

There’s a dim flickering light. Everything’s blurry. I blink a few times to try to clear the fog. There’s a few shadows in the room that I can’t quite make out. Where the hell am I?

I prop myself up against a wall behind me. I’m pushing myself up using the palms of my hands, with every movement I discover a new source of pain. Ouch. I’m finally upright, I can get a better view of where I am now. I’m still in the cafe where I was before, it’s dimly lit now. I can see the chairs and tables which have been shoved into the far corner, the counter which I hid behind before, with the mother and child. Oh God, where are they? I move my eyes away from the tables and chairs and begin scanning the room for them. There’s a whimper and sniffle from someone in the room. I recognise the shadows as other people, now. Curled about an arms reach away in the fetal position, is the mother, she’s crying. No sign of the baby. I feel my heart fall into the pit of my stomach. I shuffle closer to her, wincing with every movement. I tap her shoulder.

“Hey, hey, what happened?” 

The question fills the silence and finally she raises her head to look at me. She sits up, roughly brushing her brown, straggly, curls out of her face and wiping her tears away. She doesn’t say anything, she just glares.

“What happened? I don’t remember anything. Where’s your son? Please, tell me he’s ok.”

I’m pleading with her now, my hand on her shoulder, an attempt at comfort. She shrugs it off, still glaring, before finally speaking;

“How dare you ask me what happened! You were the one who knocked the plate off, so of course the guards came and knocked you out. Poor you.”

She’s practically spitting on me out of anger, and I don’t blame her.

“They took my baby away from me. My baby. You bitch.”

That’s when she lunges for me, I’m so shocked I don’t even have time to react. She beats at me with her fists, sobbing and yelling “bitch,bitch,bitch” over and over again. I regain control of my arms and push her off.  

“Please, I’m sorry. Just stop. Let me help you.”

She releases a gut wrenching scream and launches herself back at me, ripping at me with her nails. Thundering footsteps approaching us at speed and suddenly she’s off of me and being dragged backwards by two guards. A third one pulls me upright by my arm and shoves me back against the wall. He pulls out a nightstick and I shield my face in anticipation, but he turns and starts walking towards the young woman. I realise he means to hit her with it, to punish her.

“No stop. Don’t hit her please. No.” I scream in protest, but it’s no use. I’m shoved against the wall, again. Hard. I thump against it with enough force, that my body collapses and crumples on the floor in a heap. I raise my head in time to see the stick make contact with her frail frame, again, again, again and again. It seems to go on forever, this endless torture of a poor bereaved, young mother. 

Finally it stops, the three guards walk away, self satisfied smiles decorating their faces. My stomach turns in disgust. 

There she lays, sobbing, bleeding, broken and bruised unable to move, and I’m unable to help her. 

For the first time since the guards walked in, I cry. I sob out of empathy, for the baby, for the woman and for myself. It’s all I can do. We’re trapped in this damnation.

Hours must have passed, with me sitting here, feeling sorry for myself. The whole mall appears dark now, haunted by the guards that patrol the halls, two by two. Like the animals on Noah’s Ark, if that were real. They’d be the lions. The predators. Separating the weak from the herd and eating us alive.

All this crying must have made me delusional, rambling on about Noah’s Ark. I lean my head back against the wall and stare at the ceiling. I can’t face the floor. 

The horror that greets me when my eyes lay upon the dark, oak wood panels. I can’t look again, I stare at the ceiling in avoidance, but I remember it clearly.

The wood is stained by the blood, encircling the shape of a figure. A figure of a woman, a mother, a daughter. They took the body out a while ago, after she stopped sobbing and choked on her last breath. Her life ended in an undignified, brutal way that no person deserved, especially not her. Strange how I didn’t even know her name, but yet her death will remain with me forever, haunting my very soul.

The metallic smell of spilled blood lingers in the air like a suffocating promise of death. 

There are other people in this room, I remember noticing them properly for the first time when they were dragging her body out. They dragged it out carelessly, by the feet, no respect for the dead. Scratch that. No respect for women. They were respectful of the dead when it was one of their own, but a woman is dragged feet first into a dumpster pile of corpses in the hall.

That’s all we are worth. 

A News Bulletin, three days later;

MORE ON THE NEWCASTLE SHOPPING CENTRE UNDER ATTACK

It is confirmed by authorities that around 2000 bodies have been seen outside the Newcastle Shopping Centre, including an estimated 74 children as young as 2 months old. Police are yet to be able to enter the building to rescue any survivors.

It’s been three days now, since her death. I’ve counted the days going by using the sun rising and falling. There’s not been any more deaths in this cafe, only a few beatings. I say that like its ordinary, maybe it is now. The woman across from me, Mandy, is 68. She came across the room and comforted me after the poor woman had been beaten to death. She’d looked after me and the others since. There was also another young woman, a lot younger than me she looks about eighteen at most, her name’s Cara I think or Lara, something like that. I only spoke to her once, when we passed round stale bread that we found. She doesn’t talk a lot, just sits quietly. She’s probably just scared silent. I’ve passed the time talking to Mandy and the young man that was sat next to her originally, James. Turns out, he’s her son, he’s only a few years older than me. He’s thirty three to my thirty. He’s not much of a talker either, likes to keep to himself, he dotes on his mother though. Always doing what she asks and constantly checking she’s alright. Even on a night, when I can’t sleep I catch him sat upright awake, watching over all of us. It was on the second day that he actually spoke to me more than just a “yeah” or a “hmm”. Mandy was asleep, with the young woman who’d been awake crying most of the night, and it was just me and James keeping watch, mainly of the guards. 

I was bored and desperate for some distraction so I decided to try and get a conversation out of the only other awake person in the room. 

“So why were you in the mall then? Christmas shopping for your wife and kids?”

“Just for my daughter, I don’t have a wife, luckily”

He chuckles and I must of looked confused because he carried on.

“My daughter is three, I was engaged to her mother but it didn’t quite work out”

“Oh no I’m sorry, did you just grow apart or?”

“Or she was just into fucking my best friend when I worked away”

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry”

I reach to put my hand on his, he gives me a sad smile and nods before turning away from me. 

We sat quietly for a little while, the awkwardness filled the room around us, before I felt a sharp nudge in my ribs. I look to James and he nods in the direction of the group of guards that are talking in front of the entrance to our cafe, before turning back to whisper to me.

“Look, there’s more of them. They keep talking and looking in our direction, I reckon something is going down and soon.”

“What? What do you think is going to happen?”

“Well, look see that guy over there with the purple cross on his arm, I reckon he’s in charge because none of the others have one. They keep looking at us and talking again, so either they’re going to move us, kill us or god knows what else”

He runs a hand through his hair and slumps back against the wall. 

“We should wake the others”

He looks back up at me then and with brisk nod, moved to wake the sleeping women.

Despite our worries, nothing happened that day. There’s been more gathering and talking and the ‘boss guy’ has stayed at the entrance. It’s as if they are waiting for something.

Today, has been pretty uneventful. There’s no more sirens outside that we can hear, just the steady thump of guards patrolling. It’s almost like the outside world has given up on us, or just sacrificed us. Then I remember, the outside world is probably busy celebrating Christmas. It’s the 25th after all. If I wasn’t trapped here, I’d be at my sisters, same as every year. My niece and nephew would be running riot with their new toys. They are my greatest joy at 5 and 7 they are full of life and I love spoiling them, especially with no kids of my own. After presents we’d sit around the dinner table and over stuff ourselves with a gorgeous dinner whilst my sister asked me the same questions every year; when am I going to get married and have kids. With my job though, it’s hard to find someone as I’m always on the go. That’s the curse of journalism.

A News Bulletin, 26/12/19;

NEWCASTLE SHOPPING SURVIVORS RESCUED

Police have confirmed that they have managed to enter the shopping centre this morning after the explosion last night. It is thought that the explosion was from multiple suicide bombers from the terrorist organisation.

We’ve just received word from the authorities that there is expected only to be 150 survivors from this tragic event. 5000 civilians have been found dead or have been marked missing at this current time.

World leaders are sending their condolences to the British public. According to Downing Street; Donald Trump has already spoken to Boris Johnson on the phone and informed him he will help with whatever it takes to rebuild the building back to its former glory.