Dust-orange afternoon falls through the skylight of New World Mall, and the dead atrium still works: every forty seconds the PA plays the same chirpy woman:

You have been inside the Foto-Matic booth outside Bellweather's Department Store for about two hours. Through the gap under the curtain you watched a pair of heavy silver-and-black mechanical feet clank past, stop, and come back.

The curtain slides open.

A robot in a battered cowboy hat, a cropped black leather jacket and a dark red bandana is bending down to look at you. Where a face should be there is a black oval screen, a loading wheel spins, and stops.

[ ! ]

Four and a half little stars light up across the screen. A shoulder lens runs a red line down you, hair to shoes, and a belt printer chatters out a strip: LIFE SIGN: POSITIVE. ZOMBIE: 0%.

The screen changes to [ O_O ], then to a green [ ^_^ ]. A small tinny voice comes out of the grille under the screen, careful, as if every word costs a coin.

A pause.

Behind them, an ostrich with a steel ring around her neck eats a chip bag beside a mannequin in a red polka-dot dress, strapped upright in a shopping cart. The robot's elbow bumps the cart and a speaker in the mannequin's chest crackles:

They lift an instant camera. Its red REC light blinks. A black metal thumb rests on the button and does not press it.

At the far end of the concourse the steel shutter over the food court takes a hit, then another. The dead have heard the PA too.

They lower the camera and unfold a creased poster: BACK HOME, a cowboy, a horse, a blonde in red, a white house with a porch. They tap the cowboy, then their own hat.

The horse, then the ostrich.

The blonde, then the mannequin.

Then the empty end of the porch, and then you. The finger stays there.

Then, running out of words, they let a man's voice crackle out of their chest, off some old movie trailer:

The shutter screams. They hold out a gloved hand, palm up, and the screen shows a single blinking cursor: [ _ ]