Ethan Kai knew now where he was. He knew the name of this mall, and he recognized the voice on the other side of the door. Lying there on the floor with Carver still aiming the gun at him, he kept that knowledge to himself. He wanted to speak the name, but the cop was already balanced on the edge of breaking. The man's face, which had been panicked during the struggle, now looked deeply terrified.
Ethan shifted his weight against the floor, weighing his next move. That was when it came.
A cough. Mechanical and harsh, like an engine trying to catch. Another cough followed, and another, uneven and sputtering. The sound lacked the depth of a car or truck. It was smaller, sharper. It clawed at Ethan's memory until it settled into place. It sounded like a lawnmower, or perhaps a weedwhacker.
The coughs came again. Once, twice, three times. Each attempt rattled longer and came closer to ignition. The realization hit Ethan cold and hard. He knew the sound. He knew exactly what was about to happen. Both engines caught at almost the same instant. The air filled with the high-pitched, grinding whine of chains spinning at speed.
The door began to shake as the blades were applied to it from the other side, cracks forming rapidly on their side. The voice on the other side had lost all pretense of subtlety.
"SO HUNGRY, PIGGIES! SO VERY HUNGRY! We're gonna have ourselves some barbecue tonight!"
Carver shrieked, the sound cracking in the middle, raw with panic. His hands trembled on the pistol as his head whipped toward the door.
Ethan did not waste the distraction. He rolled to his side and pushed up to his feet in one motion, moving toward Carver as the cop's horrified gaze stayed locked on the writhing chainsaw blades tearing at the wood.
The chainsaw blades screamed against the door, tearing deeper, wood splintering under the assault. Carver's stance was wrong. His weight was back on his heels; shoulders hunched toward the noise. The pistol was still pointed at Ethan, but it wavered a fraction with every shudder of the frame. Ethan lunged. It was not the clumsy struggle when the cop had caught him by surprise.
One step closed the distance before Carver could re-center his aim. Ethan's left hand shot up, clamping over the slide of the pistol, shoving the muzzle off-line toward the floor. His right hand caught Carver's wrist and twisted it inward, locking the joint without snapping it.
Carver grunted, tried to wrench free, but Ethan pressed in close, chest to chest, using his own body as leverage. The barrel stayed pointed down and away.
"Easy," Ethan said, voice low but cutting through the noise. "You want to live, I need this gun."
Another shriek from the door drowned whatever Carver might have said. The chainsaw's pitch rose, then dropped again, chewing into a fresh section of wood. Ethan shifted his weight, rolled his forearm over Carver's hand, and peeled the grip free with a sharp jerk. Carver staggered back, empty-handed but still on his feet.
The pistol was in Ethan's hand now, finger off the trigger but ready. He gave Carver a quick shove toward the far wall, then rushed over to the wall left of the door, crouching low, just as one of the chainsaws punched all the way through, teeth snapping at empty air before retreating for another strike. The door splintered under the pressure, then collapsed inward.
The clown stepped through. A fucking clown! He wore an ill-fitting, greasy yellow jumpsuit, ballooned at the shoulders and cinched tight at the ankles. The fabric was streaked with rust-red stains and smudged grease. His round face was painted pale white, the paint cracking into deep fissures. A single red teardrop was painted under one eye. His hair was bright orange, styled into two tight puffs at the sides of his head, but matted with sweat and clotted with something darker. He was thick and barrel-chested—clearly padded to look heavier, yet he moved with unsettling speed and agility.
He wielded two small chainsaws, one in each hand, the teeth already whining with hungry intent. He did not look down as he crossed the threshold—too wrapped in his own mania, too focused on the chaos he intended to create.
Ethan pressed himself flat against the wall, knowing this freak as he stepped fully forward into the room before he gave him a name in his mind. Adam MacIntyre. The psychotic clown from Dead Rising.
Adam's painted grin spread wider, though his eyes held no mirth. They were just ravenous. At this moment the cop crumpled to the floor, his eyes rolling up in their sockets.
Ethan acted then, before Adam's could fully focus him. He was next to him in the space of a heartbeat. He snaked his left arm tight around the clown's neck, hauling him backward while the chainsaws screamed uselessly into the air. His right hand pressed the pistol's muzzle to Adam's temple, steady.
Two sharp cracks echoed in the small room. Adam jerked once, the saws clattering to the floor beside them. He sagged under the force.
Ethan let him drop. It was impossibly anticlimactic, especially compared to how difficult he had been in the game.
Ethan stepped back from the clown's motionless form and knelt by the body. The smell hit him instantly: a damp, rancid scent that combined spoiled sweat and the acidic tang of forced gut release. The clown's large belly, pale and unclean, jolted once as the bowels evacuated—an ugly, merciless final act for the start of decay. The sound was wet and immediate, like a slow leak in an abandoned machine.
He bent closer and reluctantly searched pockets, ignoring the revulsion that poked at his skin. In the left hip pocket of the stained jumpsuit he found a greasy key card. Just like in the game.
Ethan retrieved it, sliding it free, its surface grimy but intact. In the other hand pocket he felt something bulging—he pulled out a flattened button with a Servbot logo stamped on it, the little robot face cracked and smeared in red.
He checked other areas quickly. Around the waist, he found two small hunting knives, their blades still sharp, but crusted at the edges with dried blood. Those might still cut something. He unclipped a deflated balloon coated in rubbery residue. It was the kind filled with irritant gas—useless unless pumped and popped, but possibly a distraction device.
Ethan placed those items on the breakroom table—the key card, the Servbot button, the twin hunting knives, the limp balloon—then gently laid the pistol beside them, muzzle pointed in a safe direction. He picked up the chainsaws and also set them on the table.
Across the room Carver was still out cold on the floor. Ethan watched his breathing for a long moment. Steady. That was at least something.
Above the table, the overhead lights flickered in the silence. When the scent of the clown's death finally faded into something colder and more distant, Ethan began taking stock.
First, he crouched beside Carver and shook his shoulder. "Come on. I told you not to pass out, you useless fuck!" The cop's eyelids fluttered but did not open.
Overhead, the fluorescent lights buzzed and dimmed, their glow faltering to a sickly yellow before flaring back to life. The hum of the busted vending machine coughed once and then went silent. Somewhere deep in the building, a circuit tripped, and half the fixtures in the breakroom winked out, leaving the corners in shadow.
Ethan's eyes drifted toward the broken open doorway. The service corridor beyond looked the same as before—long, narrow, lined with chipped paint and numbered doors—but the air felt heavier, thicker.
At first it was nothing more than a suggestion of sound. A faint scrape. A muffled shuffle. But it grew. Slow at first, then joined by others. The soft chorus of moans began to filter in, like a bad memory forcing its way forward.
Carver stirred under his hand, but Ethan's attention had shifted entirely. He rose, the pistol loose but ready in his grip, and stepped to the doorway.
The corridor was empty near the breakroom, but the far end told a different story. The clown had left the door to the main mall wide open. Beyond it, the space was clogged with movement—dozens of forms, swaying and stumbling, pressing forward without thought. They had been drawn to the noise. Arms hung limp until they jerked upward, reaching. Heads lolled, mouths opening and closing with low, hungry moans.
They were coming, and there was nothing between them and this room except the long, straight artery of the service hall.
Ethan's pulse kicked hard against his ribs. Can't I just get a break? Just a few minutes to fucking breathe, dammit. He ejected the magazine and counted the rounds. Seven left. Maybe six if he saved one for himself before the horde caught up to him. He tucked the weapon into the back of his pants and looked down at the cop. It would be easy to walk away. Without the man slowing him with his panic and disbelief, Ethan might have a real chance to escape.
The thought lingered for only a moment before he shook it off. He stepped to the table and snatched up the two hunting knives lying there in their cracked leather sheaths. One he slid into the waistband of his pants, angling the grip for a clean draw. The other he pulled free from its sheath, feeling the worn handle fit into his palm. He considered the chainsaws, debated whether to take them with him, but discarded that notion quickly. They were heavy and he was not wholly familiar with their operation.
He moved back to Carver's side, knelt, and hooked his arms under the man's. With a grunt, he dragged him upright to a sitting position, then shifted his grip to clasp the cop's wrist with one hand and a fistful of his belt with the other. A practiced lift brought Carver halfway up, and with a pivot of his hips and a heave of his shoulders, Ethan rolled the man across his back into a fireman's carry. Carver's weight settled onto him, manageable, but not ideal.
He stepped to the doorway and risked a glance into the corridor. The shapes were closer now, moans rising over the scrape of countless shuffling feet. The open far door framed the mass in the mall's flickering light, dozens of the dead pressing forward in a slow, relentless tide.
Ethan adjusted his grip on the knife, heaved Carver's weight higher, and began to move. The air outside the breakroom carried the dry scent of dust and the wet stink of rot, and every footfall sounded too loud in the crowded hall.