Shopping Spree

Author's note: This is going to be somewhat of a revision or at least a tale of what happens to these women before Chuck meets them. Personally, the chapter I did on Erica, Rosa, and Bessie a long time ago is among the chapters that I am not fond of doing. Why? It's mostly due to the interaction between them and the Guardian Angels trio, whom I felt added nothing to that chapter. But I wrote that chapter a long time ago. This one is going to be more about a situation they got into. Enjoy!

For some people, the zombie had no real impact on people, except maybe opening some opportunities for some people to seize.

Such was the key for Rosa Collins, Bessie Kent, and Erica Mayes, three friends who were seemingly loaded. Given the way they were dressed, they had quite an expensive taste in clothing. But the clothes that they were wearing wasn't enough for them, as they seized the perfect opportunity to scope the stores in the Palisades Mall and the Royal Flush Plaza for any "special sales" going on.

The three ladies went around both malls in Fortune City. They searched for stores that sold women's clothes. There wasn't a lot to choose from, but they going make this worth their while, even with such danger occurring around them.

Erica, the woman who was of mixed descent looked around the Palisades Mall and a smirk rose on her face. She happened to be a fashion journalist. With that line of work, it would seem that she came from a rich upbringing to have such expensive tastes and mainly did journalism as a job but not for monetary reasons.

"Hey, Erica, did you find something?" Rosa said. Rosa was a brunette woman who had a gray dress on. Bessie wore a white and blue dress with some magenta near the shoulders and had more of a ginger appearance. She had the look of a debutante. Maybe she was a debutante.

"No, not yet," Erica said. "I just think that what we're doing could make for an interesting story."

Bessie shrugged. "Can we just go find some clothes right now? We don't have to worry about lines right now, so let's just get going."

They started to walk around, but with Bessie leading the way, as she was their de facto leader, being that she was the oldest of the trio.

While they were walking around trying to avoid the zombies, Rosa leaned towards Erica and whispered, "I like your idea for your article. That would be great."

The good thing about these three ladies was that they knew how to defend themselves, especially Rosa. They probably took some self-defense courses, but even then, there was more than just the undead roaming around the malls that they should be concerned about.

It seemed that there were a lot of men in the malls, as well as other areas of Fortune City that had similar ideas for similar opportunities. They were wearing gray sweatshirts and had bandannas on their faces to conceal their identities. Some were found in some shops of the malls, especially Marriage Makers in the Royal Flush Plaza. The way they were going about it was they looted the shops. No employees were present, nor was security around. So it was open season for those hooligans to loot the shops and also possibly, if likely rob some survivors.

The three ladies went to check out Brand New U on the second floor of the Palisades Mall. So many clothes lied around on display. Even a summer dress was on display on a mannequin in the store, which caught the eye of one of the ladies. They all went right for anything they could find in the store. But what separated these ladies from those looters out in the vicinity was that each of them left a sum of money on the counter so that they could ensure that they paid for the clothes.

However, it wasn't over for them, as they wanted to continue on their little shopping spree. There were no other women's clothing shops in the Palisades Mall. So it was now time to check out the Royal Flush Plaza.

It was true. These women were shopping around like it was any other time to go shopping. Except there was nobody to ring them up when making their purchases. It didn't matter to them that zombies were around.

The ladies managed to leave the Palisades Mall by going through a door that was close to a hallway that was mainly for employees as there was an elevator nearby, as well as a maintenance room. They found themselves in a back alley. Bessie, Rosa, and Erica all carried their bags from Brand New U and found a back door. Bessie led the way and saw some colorful stuff in the hallway until they found themselves inside a store that had some leather outfits, dirty magazines and DVDs, and of course, sex toys.

"What the hell?" Bessie said. "Where are we?"

"Um, it looks like a sex shop," Rosa said.

"We must be inside Hot Excitorama," Erica said.

Bessie and Rosa looked at their friend with confused looks on their faces.

"You've been here before?" Rosa said.

"Hey, I'm only familiar with this place," Erica said. "I saw this place around when we were walking around this strip earlier."

"Sure…" Rosa said in a sarcastic manner. Bessie started to laugh a bit.

"Whatever, let's just go find another store," Erica said. "I know a store we can check out in the Royal Flush Plaza. Come on."

As usual, Bessie led the way for her two friends as they exited the sex shop. But as they walked down the Silver Strip, a few guys dressed in gray hoodies were exiting the pawn shop called Tinkerbox. The ladies were carrying bags. One of the looters looked on at them. Perhaps given the way their dressed, they probably had some money on them.

"Hey, guys," the lead looter said. "I got an idea. Look over there." He point towards the trio of ladies.

"I think they got something we want," the lead looter said. Even though he had a mask on, the look in his eyes indicated that a smile rose on his face. "Come on, let's go."

It wasn't long until the ladies had gone down the stairs, even through taking down a few zombies in the process. They passed the sign that said "Silver Strip" on it that divided both sets of stairs and were now close to the entrance to the Royal Flush Plaza. But not too far behind was a trio of looters chasing them down.

Once they got inside the mall, through the eyes of the three ladies were a swarm of zombies, a sports car in between two sets of slot machines and to their right were Roy's Mart and Modern Businessman.

"Okay, Erica, what store do you want to check out?" Bessie said.

"It's upstairs, follow me," Erica said.

Bessie and Rosa stood behind Erica, as she was the one to lead this time. However…

"Hey, ladies!" a male voice yelled.

Bessie, then Rosa, and finally Erica turned around and saw three men with gray sweatshirts, bandannas cover their faces, and wielding crowbars, flashlights, and what looked like some weird weapon that looked like a taser, but was probably used for something else.

"Got any money, ladies?" the lead looter said in such a sinister tone, with another looter slamming a crowbar into the palm of his left hand.

Much to the looters' shock, a smirk rose on the face of each woman. They dropped their bags and purses and quickly went forth and attacked the looters. Bessie let out a hard swift kick to the lead looter in between the legs and let out a hard punch to his face.

Erica slapped one of them in the face and then punched him in the face with her other hand. Being close to Modern Businessman, she grabbed the man by his head, as his hood had come off and drove him right to the glass window near the entrance of that store.

Meanwhile, Rosa gave the other looter the "come on" signal to the looter, who got out his homemade taser weapon. She backed to where that car was parked. The guy looked like he wanted to shock her, but Rosa thought ahead and delivered a hard kick to the man's gut, as she had kicked off her high-heel shoes. She picked up the hacker weapon and shocked the looter right on his neck. The man was a bit incapacitated, but she wasn't done. They were close to the car. The man didn't seem that big, so she dragged him close to the passenger's side and opened the door with the looter's head right in there and closed the door right on his head. Not once, but twice.

Bessie and Erica looked on with looks of intrigue and shock mixed together. Was it because they didn't think she would go that far? Or was it because of the way she handled herself? They knew she was tough enough to fare in that kind of situation, but that seemed a little more than just trying to defend herself.

"Wow," Erica said.

"It was nothing," Rosa said. "Let's go shopping."

Erica led the way to get upstairs of the Royal Flush Plaza. It turned out the place was Kathy's Space. It seemed that there was quite a selection for these three ladies to choose from and like before, they left money on the counter like they did at Brand New U. They didn't even bother to grasp the idea that any employees for those stores were never going to put it in the registers or the money won't even go to the stores or the companies behind the clothes, but hey, the clothes were still paid for.

At some point, a man came right by. He talked to them about heading to a safe house. They said that they would follow them as long as he would carry their newly-purchased clothes. The man agreed and they were off.

It was crazy that they all did this in the middle of a zombie outbreak, but they made it to safety, regardless.

Another note: So I basically wrote what these ladies had gone through before Chuck finds them. FYI, you could talk to Bessie, Rosa, or Erica and they all have dialogue for each of them and they would follow. I decided not to include because each of the dialogue was different.

I also wanted to do a bit with them dealing with the looters. If anything, they were quite the contrast to the looters as they decided to not only go on a shopping spree, but also pay for their clothes. Whereas the looters were likely jacking stuff from stores and from survivors, maybe even people who had turned into zombies. Personally, I found the looters in Off the Record to be more annoying as they became more aggressive. Don't get me started on when they use the hacker to take money from you.

I also want to do another psychopath soon. Not just for this but also for my Dead Rising 1 anthology, "Tales of the Survivors of Willamette." Being that I am considering doing a Dead Rising 3 version, I think I will do psychopaths for that one as well. Stay tuned.