My feet faithfully slips down the desert cactus hill and follows the trail to the huge plaza. The plaza—the first thing that’s introduced as I enter the wide sprawling space of La Azteca Mall. The central building juts out at me facing the hazy simmering heat of the Phoenix summer and the many streets that wind down into oblivion. There’s a wide parking lot that I had to stumble through that sits in front of the plaza. It’s crowded and heavily buffeted by vacant, forgotten cars of the animated past. A past when life was still normal and people were healthy.
There are several pillar buildings surrounding the main La Azteca building and they just carry the usual brand name titles on them, such as Gap, Ralph Lauren Polo, Addidas, Barnes & Nobles and etc. There are even small strips of restaurants surrounding us such as Subway, Chipotle, a restaurant called Red Robins (interesting name), and several other ones. There are a lot of Subways here, I’ve noticed, and too much fast food. The cattery here lacks originality. Back in Gothenburg, we could easily go to a local restaurant and they would serve Swedish food mixed with some American and other European dishes.
The plaza itself, as I’ve already witnessed, is a massive construction. In the center of the layout is a huge water fountain of a marble woman blowing a blossoming horn that’s dutifully spitting out water. Enveloping this atavistic artistic marble design are a bunch of stone benches, large black bowls with flowers and small trees in them, and a handful of canopies. However, painted underneath the fountain and fancy stone embroideries is what appears to be a large magnificent X, black and gleaming in melancholic glamor.
The poised, tonally malignant X leads to the most interesting sight, the kids— some of which are standing near the water fountain and some of which are scattered on the outer rims of the fountain. But it seems concerted that we are all here, on this mysterious plaza, for some quixotic ominous reason.
As I’m walking across the plaza, I notice a kid with a tear across his eyebrows sitting by himself closely trimming his machete with his fingers. Then I see a group of girls talking, one of which consists of an Asian girl with a pair of katanas sheathed behind her back. Behind them there’s a boy standing in a rather solitary stance, glaring at me. He has a dun horse beside him (which I have to admit is pretty weird but also intriguing.) His face is smooth and girly and he could honestly use a haircut. As he’s creepily staring at me, he seems to be ignoring the girl that is talking to him or rather just not paying attention. The girl appears to be a mixed girl with a trucker hat, smoking rather confidently under the hat's brim. She has the Norwegian slashed o symbol on her hat, which strikes my countenance. Where did she get the hat?
Then my attention swerves to a group of boys chatting about video games. They seem to be around their late teens and one of them is really obnoxiously loud. A disheveled-haired boy with small eyes and noticeable front teeth is staring at me through the babble of the group. I flinch, avoiding his gaze as take a seat on one of the benches. A pair dressed in a haughty school uniform of red and white ties breeze by me smirking. Maybe it’s just my weary eyes, having seen too many faces, but they don’t look very friendly.
I watch the vibrant desert sun sink behind the craggy mountains and soak in the glow. This state is always uniformly hot and sunny, a harrowing blessing and a curse. Below me is a hot, blistering palm tree street that’s infested with those demonic things. I start to wonder if there are any people roaming out there. Possibally feeling lost, alone, injured. Probably gone. And then I start to lament the thought of how it came to be like this. How it came to be that we are living in their world now. The world of those noxious, unforgivable creatures. The world of Z. It seems we are at the zombies’ mercy and yet simultaneously, we aren’t. We still have the human right to fight back and survive. Because that’s the best thing we can do in the world of Z. It’s to unapolegtically fight back.
The orange haze that kisses the cacti and palm trees starts to produce an unwanted film in my eyes. There’s literally no reason to get emotional over this. My father would probably be here to pat me on the back and say “everything will be ok, you’ll see.” But is it really ok, dad? Dad. Something annoying and naggy creeps into my mind. Like a biting tick sinking into my subconscious. That beleaguering tick is the mission. The mission of finding my father because something sinister in the summery air tells me he’s still alive somehow. I’d have to look through those letters again. And his room…the forbidden devil’s lair. A place I never dared to go. For all I know it could be riddled with more letters.
My thoughts run frantically through the jungle before it’s suddenly punctured by a boy’s shouting. And it’s stringing along toward the fountain.
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