Closing Time: Inspired by Toto's Africa Empty Shopping Center Edit

Yolanda was just closing up; after being at work an extra hour because Chad had fucked his drawer all up. Again.

Fucking white college kids, Yolanda thought as she pulled the gate down. She shook her head. She was just being mean. Chad did smoke way too much weed, but he never messed up a frame, and well, working at a retail frame store? He was pretty indispensable when the turnaround was so high.

It bothered her sometimes, too. The turnaround. She was a junior manager after only six months after being a holiday hire in December.

She needed this job. Scholarships and all got her college paid for, and really, she could just stay on Towson University campus her entire four years, take summer classes, etc. But her grandparents were struggling. Still. After they struggled to raise her they struggled through her mother dying and her father slowly working himself to death.

And it's not fair! And it's bullshit! She caught herself getting angry and cleared her thoughts by checking her pockets. Cell phone, wallet, box cutter for work, the collapsable baton, and the short serrated flick-out blade her grandfather was always insisting she carry.

sssssss POP!

What the hell was that?!

Sounded like a gun or a firecracker. But the hiss was loud, right next to her and the pop was distant, at least as far away as the bottom floor.

Yolanda kept a collapsible baton on her at all times because Granddad always said "it just ain't safe, baby girl,"  and she snapped it out. There was no way to rob any of the stores...except hers if they found her.

She sprinted to the escalators at Nordstrom. She took out her little Nokia and... no signal. What the fuck? The battery charged, and no signal. Useless.

Then there were voices. They were coming from in front of her store. Then she saw their shadows splashed up against the closed entrance of Nordstrom.

There was a high-pitched whine, like a camera flash recharging but... hefty. Like it was a really big flash. And then some sort of click. No, a lot of clicks. All at once.

And then? The mall music came on.

"Idioot! Jy het die musiekstelsel begin!" said a rough, lacerated sounding voice. And old voice, too. Gravelly like a smoker and drinker.

Was that German? She thought.

"Sy is nog hier, meneer!" said another voice; almost boyish but with that same harsh anger.

That's not German, Yolanda thought. Granddad was in Germany for years and stayed for two years after the war was over. He still had a good ear for "fake-ass Hollywood German," and he would point it out at any opportunity.

There was an ozone smell in the air, too.

What did Granddad tell her? When he got separated from what was it? The 452nd. After they landed at Normandy, his truck got turned around and then they got sprayed with machine gun fire. Only he survived. Getting back the lines... the "fucking krauts, the hunted my black ass all the way," was how he would start that story.

These people sounded close to German. You wanna hunt my black ass? Yolanda thought. She took a box cutter from her work apron and flung it high in their direction. It was a heavy piece of metal, yellow like a banana with hand grips.

It hit the ground away from her.

POP! POP!

Oh shit... they had guns. She had another self-defense measure, strapped to her ankle was a small knife and if she was worried she could pretend to tie her shoe to get to it. 

"Hou op om te skiet! Julle twee, vind daardie koeëls! Sy is 'n blote kind." said the angry older voice.

How could she not hear their footsteps?! Their shadows got smaller, she hunched down and reversed her grip on the baton.

They walked right past her.

They have guns, she thought, her heart racing. They will kill me. This is self-defense. They will kill me. This is self-defense. 

One of them turned to his left and the other to his right. They were both wearing grey clothing; not exactly uniforms, but uniform overall in color and cut; but the grey looked like a memory of the color gray.

Her sneakers squeaked on the tiles and before the one who turned left knew, she smashed the side of his head with the baton. He fell over making a gurgling gasping noise and Yolanda moved to the next one, who brought up a knife.

A reverse grip was a good choice, she swatted it away with a straight arm and smashed him in the throat. His teeth clicked as he tried to inhale, but his trachea was completely caved in. He would suffocate.

A bright light shined on her.

"Had to stay out of that light! I'll tell you, baby girl, that light woulda got me shot." Granddad would say.

She moved again. How many more?

"Selfs as kinders, is hulle dodelik! Ek het jou gesê!" said the younger voice, Yolanda's sneakers squeaked again and she was on him, Reversing the baton again she brought it down hard on his collarbone, and a wet muffled crunch bled into his screaming.

She twisted his back toward her and used the baton to choke him, and his screaming stopped.

"What do you want?!" She demanded.

"I'm afraid it's not a want, my child." The old voice came from a bald silhouette. His accent was strange. With demonic speed, the silhouette raised a pistol and fired three shots into her hostage.

She didn't feel the bullets; they must not have gone through.

She dropped the body and doubled back to the other men still on the floor. She grabbed the knife the second one had dropped. The other one was coming to. If he worked for a man who would kill him to get to her? He was better off.

She closed the distance and brought her heel down hard into the bleeding spot she made earlier. He fell down hard.

"Jy ook! As sy leef, sterf ons toekoms!" the old voice growled. "Oop Vuur!"

POPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOP!

"Cover is what bullets can't get through," Granddad used to say.

Hold still. Wait. Wait behind cover. They'll come to check. They'll come to check like the Germans did. The large potted plant she hid behind was in pieces, but the bullets didn't get through it. The air was thick with cordite smell and smoke. Yolanda was shaking.

A foot came next to her and she jammed the knife into it; the foot's owner screamed and someone on the other side of the decimated plant shot them until his weapon clicked.

"When it clicks, you damn sure move" Granddad would say. The Germans really wanted to kill him after he took three of them out with a grenade that he had snuck from supply just in case, it wasn't issued to him. He was starving and had been running for almost a day.

They wanted him dead then and these men wanted her dead now. 

Yolanda sprung to her feet and smashed his hand down with the baton, the weapon clattered to the floor, and she put the knife into his face, shoving it into his eye socket, hot blood, and vitreous humor ran down her hand, to her forearm and dripped off the bend of her elbow.

She picked up the pistol from the foot she stabbed, not knowing anything about what kind of gun it was, she kept her finger off the trigger.

"What do you want?!" she shouted.

"Merely your death, I'm afraid, as I said before." He seemed.... so resolute.

"Why?" Yolanda shouted. If he answered she would move.

"It's far too complicated, but I can tell you that your death will save millions of lives..."

Yolanda sprung up, both hands on the pistol she fired the remaining rounds into the shadow.

POPOPOPOPOP click

"Amazing," the shadow said. Tried to level his pistol, and fired wildly as his strength left him. The pistol became too heavy as the rest of his body did, all his organic systems were failing as the critical parts were shattered by the rounds. 

Serves me right, he thought. Using sub-sonic hollow points to kill a child. 

"Who are you?" Yolanda asked as she came to stand over him.

"We have this song... in my time," he said, frighteningly calm as blood trickled from his mouth and a hole in his lung whistled wetly. 

It was a song Yolanda didn't know; some sort of harp and someone singing, the first song that had started playing had ended and it was something new.

"What?"

"Who taught you to fight?" he asked. He was bald, with tanned but white skin with a scar that went up the right side of his face.

"My grandfather. He fought Nazis. Men like you."

"Heh," he coughed up blood. "We aren't called Nazis anymore. Wrong timeline. Your grandfather was killed by Nazis, and your father taught you. You aren't even the right one...."

"What?" Yolanda asked.

"...complicated..." he died then.

Yolanda's phone buzzed.

"Granpa?!" she said.

"Baby girl, where are you? It's well past closing time..."

"Granpa...I think some Nazis just tried to kill me..." Yolanda started to cry. All the fear that she had tamped down to survive while she focused on remembering as much of Grandad's stories as she could? It was spilling out like the inside of a cracked egg.

"Stay right there, baby girl. I know someone who can help..."

"What?"

"It's a long story, baby girl, tell you the whole thing soon, just stay right there, catch your breath. A good friend of mine is going to meet you."

"Who?"

"He's a good man, but... he probably looks like someone you just killed. But he's a good man, trust me."

He hung up. What? Looks like... him?

His body was right next to her. He could be anyone, really. Without the scar, he could be any old white guy. Maybe some more hair? He was just... ordinary. He looked so ordinary. He could be anyone.

Yolanda breathed in. Let her heart slow down. She heard the music playing over the speakers, still.

"everybody wants to rule the woorrllld."