No Easy Way Out

  A door slammed nearby. No one had come near their corner of the parking garage in all the time they’d been there. Was it Ryan’s hulking compatriots? Or, worse, Marco?

  Shay grabbed whatever clothing she could and began covering herself. Footsteps tapped outside the door.

  “Ryan!” she whispered, shaking him.

  He mumbled something.

  She shook him harder. “Someone’s coming!” she hissed through her teeth.

  Ryan pushed himself up and dragged on a pair of shorts. He peeked out the door and instantly pressed it shut. “Security.”

  An animal panic seized Shay. They’d found her. They’d drag her back to jail.

  Ryan knelt by her, took her hand. “They must be here looking for Mike.”

  “They found me,” Shay mumbled. “They’re here for me.”

  Ryan squeezed her hand. “They think you went back into the real mall. But Marco may have told security that we lived here when he was working for the senator.”

  “Marco was working for the senator?” All the clarity Shay’d felt evaporated.

  “Yes,” Ryan said hurriedly. “Just hide. They’ll see me and won’t even look for you.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” he said. He kissed her, then pushed her toward a corner where a bunch of sandwich boards announcing “Lot Full” were piled.

  “I don’t want to hide.”

  “I don’t want them to take you. Go back to the Home Store. I’ll find you.”

  Security banged on the door. “Michael Richter, we know you are inside and have you surrounded. Place your firearm on the ground and come out with your hands where we can see them.”

  Ryan turned back to her. “Please!”

  Shay was so scared, she just did as he said. She lifted the pile of signs and arranged them over her. Ryan tossed a few pieces of clothing on the pile, then walked to the door.

  “Mike isn’t here,” he shouted.

  The door burst open, knocking Ryan back. The lights flared on and guards flooded into the tiny space. Two grabbed Ryan’s arms. Shay’s heart was in her throat.

  “Where’s Richter?” one guard asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ryan said. “I left him last night.”

  “Only one sleeping bag is unrolled, the other two are over here.”

  “Could be a fake-out,” the lead guard said. “Let’s see what Goldman can get from him.”

  The guards dragged Ryan out of the room. Shay remained hidden under the signs for a while longer, trying to calm her animal brain back into rational thought.

  She would not leave Ryan to whoever this Goldman character was. She would rescue him. But she needed help. No, she needed the card key she and Marco had stolen. She could search for Ryan herself, door by door through the whole mall. But where to find Marco?

  If he was working with Ryan’s friends, maybe they were where Ryan last saw them: the Pancake Palace. She would start there.

  The door to the Pancake Palace was closed, but unlocked. Shay pulled it open and found a mess. A telling mess. Two tables were overturned in the corner, their tops bristling with arrows. Black scorch marks marred the walls in several places. Broken glass sparkled on the tile floor. But worse, much worse, were the brownish stains on the floor. Blood.

  She remembered what Ryan had said about what he’d done, that he’d hurt people. For some reason, when he’d said it, she hadn’t pictured anything, just saw her Ryan, the guy who held her when she needed holding. But seeing this . . . She’d never hurt anyone, had never been involved with violence until she was run over by a rioting mob. Had Ryan caused another person to feel the way she’d felt? The thought made her sick.

  Something about this room and sickness triggered her brain. Nani. She glanced at the opposite wall; there was a hole cut into it. This was where Nani had died.

  Shay ran from the room, just making it into the hall before collapsing on a bench. How many horrible things could happen in one place?

  N

  O

  O

  N

  Ryan stood when he saw the shadows of feet outside the door. He’d been locked in a closet in the back of some store for hours now and his legs were tight and creaky. The door opened. A largish guy with a smug face and the nose of an old drunk stood in front of him.

  “Jimmy Murphy’s kid,” he said. “I thought I told you to keep out of trouble.”

  His father’s name did not inspire the same feeling of terror it once had. His father did not exist in this world. Ryan stared the guy down. “I’m not sure what trouble you think I’ve been involved in.”

  The guy held out a hand like he was escorting Ryan to a table at a fancy restaurant. “Why don’t you join me in my office?”

  The man was referring to a chair under a light in the stockroom. The chair was for Ryan. The light was blinding.

  The man pulled a chair in front of Ryan and sat his fat butt in it. “Young Mr. Murphy,” he began, “I feel that you have fallen under the influence of some rather unfortunate friends.”

  Ryan kept quiet. He had no idea how much this guy knew.

  “They’ve led you to try to bust out the garage with your friend’s Beamer, bust out the ceiling, and now you’ve busted in on some thieves and killed a man.”

  So the guy knew a lot. Ryan remained silent.

  “Now, all I want to know is where the fellows you’ve been hanging out with are right now. If you give them up to me, I might be inclined to forget you were ever involved with them. Might just let you join the rest of the law-abiding folks in the mall.”

  It was all Ryan had ever argued for since the quarantine: to just be a regular person in the mall. Not some stupid outlaw living off crackers and defrosted chicken strips in a closet. All he had to do was sell out Mike and he could be with Shay, no scheming, no scrounging for scraps, but really with her in the regular mall world.

  “I told your guys, I left Mike last night. I haven’t seen him since.”

  Whatever the offer, he would not sell out his teammates.

  The man frowned, folded his arms across his chest. Ryan was used to men who got off on being bullies. He’d lived with one all his life.

  “I’m disappointed in that answer, son,” the man said.

  Ryan braced himself for whatever came next.

  In his experience, it usually involved bloodshed.

  • • •

  Marco had yet to wash his hands. There was something magical about looking down at them. Every time he felt weak or scared, he glanced at his fingernails, still rimmed in blood, and remembered the power he’d felt beating the crap out of that asshole. He was not weak. He would never be scared again.

  Mike surveyed the theater from his perch on a seat at the back. Drew was stacking the alcohol by type down near the screen and Marco was counting the weaponry they’d recovered from the Pancake Palace. Goldman must have been planning some sort of coup with this stockpile. There were weapons or weapon-like objects looted from the sporting goods place—obvious things like compound bows and arrows, hunting knives, baseball bats, but also weird stuff like fishing hooks and line and fencing foils—and crap from elsewhere that could serve as weapons, like cast-iron pans, nail guns, welding torches, and battery-operated curling irons. There was defensive gear too, like catcher’s pads and football helmets. It was quite the spread.

  Mike hopped down from his perch and began loping down the aisle. “We need more men,” he said.

  Marco stuck the pen in the spiral of his notebook. “Absolutely not.”

  “More men?” Drew asked. “They bringing their own beer? Because I count only enough kegs to last me, myself, and I through this apocalypse.”

  Mike ignored Drew. “We need to clear out all these seats. Make this space
open so that if there’s an attack from either door, we have a direct line of escape.” He knelt in front of the first row of seats. “They’re all screwed to the floor. It’s a two-day job, at least, for the three of us, but with more, we could get it done tonight.”

  “If we get attacked,” Marco said, “they are probably going to try both doors. Our best plan is to fortify the two doors so they can’t get in.”

  “Even if we fortify the doors, the three of us are going to be wiped out in a freaking minute.”

  “Four,” Drew interrupted. “Remember, Shrimp.”

  “If he’s not here by now, he’s not coming.” Mike sounded the slightest bit heartbroken. It was the only crack Marco had detected in the impenetrable emotional fortress around Mike. There was some comfort in knowing every tough guy had a weak spot.

  Marco did not disagree with Mike’s assessment of their odds. This was an operation that succeeded mostly on the fact that no one knew where they were, a fact that could not be relied upon for long. The mall was, after all, only so big.

  “Do you have someone in mind or are we just going to post a sign: Wanted, couple of badasses to hold down a fort?”

  “I have a couple guys in mind,” Mike said. “We just need to—”

  All conversation ceased at the sound of someone knocking on the theater’s door. Mike held a hand out to silence the room, pulled his gun from his waistband, and walked slowly up to the door. Marco stared at the pile of weapons, trying to decide between the hunting knife and baseball bat.

  “It’s a girl,” Mike yelled down. “Ryan’s girl.”

  He opened the door and let Shay into the theater. Marco hated how happy he was to see her. He’d thought it impossible, but somehow, she’d become even more beautiful. But she’d made her choice. He could live with it.

  Shay walked right up to him. “I need our card,” she said without so much as a hello.

  “How did you find us?” he said, trying to keep the feeling of power from cracking off him like a shell.

  “Ryan said something about the IMAX,” she said. “I checked the pancake place first.” She looked at his hands. He was suddenly ashamed of them, then pissed at himself for feeling ashamed. Shay glanced back at his face. “Were you responsible for some of that?”

  Marco decided to avoid this line of questioning entirely. “Why do you need the card?”

  Shay raised an eyebrow. She looked meaner than he remembered. Her eyes were cold and she wasn’t smiling. “We stole it together, so it’s both of ours. Just give it to me.”

  “Where’s Ryan?” Mike asked, joining them.

  Shay kept glaring at Marco. Why was she so angry with him? She spoke evenly. “He was taken by security and I need the card to find him and get him back.”

  Mike snickered. “You know where he is or you planning to search every goddamned store in this mall?”

  Shay turned to him like a cannon on a target. “I’ll do whatever I have to.”

  “Knew I liked you,” Mike said, cocking his head. He pulled the police walkie-talkie Marco had given him from his back pocket and flipped it on, began scanning channels.

  “Non-essential store lockdown on second floor west completed . . .”

  “Suspected flu case in HomeMart removed to med center for evaluation . . .”

  “Deviants found hiding in BathWorks engaged in inappropriate contact. Transfer to lockup?”

  Mike turned the volume up. The walkie-talkie bleeped, then the answer came:

  “Shoe Hut lockup full. Transfer to Stuff-A-Pal Workshop.”

  It took a sick bastard like Goldman to turn a stuffed animal factory into a jail.

  Mike turned off the radio. “So he’s either in the shoe outlet or the stuffed toy place.”

  Drew hefted a bat. “I’m ready to stuff some pals.”

  “No,” Mike said. “You go talk to the Tarrytown guys. They should all be on the first floor catching lunch. See if you can’t convince them to join our cause.”

  “How convincing should I be?” Drew said, swinging the bat.

  Mike grabbed the bat. “We want them to help us, not join the guys trying to kill us.”

  Drew seemed deflated at having to leave his bat in the pile.

  “I don’t think I want your help,” Shay said. She was like a different person, all in-your-face and shut-the-hell-up.

  Mike slid the radio back into his cargo shorts. “I don’t think you have a choice.”

  “I saw what you did in the Pancake Palace,” she said. “Ryan told me you hurt people.”

  “And you think that’s all me, right?” Mike said. “Did Ryan tell you what he did?”

  Shay seemed to back down a little at that. “I don’t care what he did,” she said, not entirely convincingly. “I just want to get him out. I don’t want to hurt anyone.” She held her hand out to Marco. “Just give me the card.”

  Mike spat a nasty laugh. “You think you can just walk into what these guys are calling a lockup and take Ryan without hurting anybody?” He pointed to Marco. “Tell her what they did to you,” he said.

  Marco straightened his spine. “Shay, let us go get Ryan. You wait here.”

  Shay pointed at Marco’s hands. “Did they do that to you?” she asked. “Whose blood is that, Marco?”

  Marco did not like her self-righteous tone. “No one did that to me,” he said calmly. “The head of security used a stun gun on me several times in an effort to convince me to join his plot to overthrow the mall government.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said, though from how quickly the blood drained from her face, Marco knew she did.

  Mike picked up Drew’s bat. “You don’t have to believe us,” he said. “Just wait here and we’ll get Ryan.”

  Marco placed a hand on her shoulder, and she shrugged out from under his touch.

  So that’s how it was now between them? Fine. “Don’t touch anything while we’re gone,” he said.

  Shay pulled a thick leather floor-length jacket from Goldman’s stash over her shoulders and began buttoning it up. “Don’t think I’m not coming with you.”

  “Wait here,” Marco ordered.

  Mike rolled his eyes. “She wants to come, let her,” he said, then glared at Shay. “But I’m not guaranteeing your personal safety.”

  “Who asked you to?” she growled back.

  As Marco watched them exit into the fire stairwell, he allowed himself a brief moment to catalog how much had changed between when he and Shay had met outside the Grill’n’Shake, when they were on the same team, and now. How then, she’d let him kiss her and now she flinched at his touch. Screw her. He grabbed a hockey stick, tucked a hunting knife into his belt, and ran after them.

  • • •

  Shay watched Mike smash a person’s chest like a baseball as Marco checked another guy in the face. She’d made a decision outside the Pancake Palace to do whatever it took to get Ryan free, but now she was less sure of her choice. Not about Ryan, but about accepting this. The one guard hit the floor like a doll, head lolling. The other bent over clutching his side and called out for help. What had she done?

  They were in the back of the Stuff-A-Pal store. Around her were boxes of pelts, the unstuffed carcasses of what would have been toys for children. Shay closed her eyes and tried to stay focused on her goal: to find Ryan and free him. That was all that mattered.

  She ran past the terrible pair of Mike and Marco and pulled on the first door she found. It was locked. They would need keys. She crouched low around the edge of the fight. Two more guards had come to answer the other’s call. Her hands shook as she patted the body of the fallen guy.

  Something hit her jacket. Shay examined her sleeve and saw a small pronged object lodged in the leather of her coat. The object was attached by wires to a gun-like thin
g in the hands of a large man who stood in the doorway.

  “Piece of crap,” he said, dropping the gun, then stepped forward and punched Shay in the face.

  • • •

  Lexi’s butt was falling asleep. They’d been sitting outside the medical center all morning waiting for the inevitable bad news about her dad. Finally, she saw Dr. Chen coming toward them and knew that news was here.

  “Steve?” her mother said, standing.

  Dr. Chen seemed uncomfortable. “It’s the flu. He’s showing symptoms, the usual symptoms.”

  Dotty, in a rare break from protocol, allowed her lip to tremble. She grabbed Lexi’s hand like it was she who needed support.

  Dr. Chen cleared his throat. He looked ready to bolt. “I’d say his prognosis is the same as any man in his age group, though he does have the disadvantage of sustaining previous injuries, which may have somewhat weakened his immune response.”

  Now Lexi tightened her hand around her mother’s. Previous injuries. Was this guy saying that because Dad had come to rescue her, because he’d been shot, fallen down stairs, and been crushed and broken in the riots—all because of Lexi—that he was going to die?

  Dr. Chen kept his eyes on his iPad, kept sliding his finger over the screen. “That is the best information I can give you at this moment. I will be sure to update you personally if there is any change in his condition.”

  Was that it? Her father would be just another body on the ice?

  “Thank you, Steve,” her mother said. Dr. Chen nodded his head and fled back to whatever closet he’d crawled out of.

  Dotty stared after him for a moment, then took a deep breath in and straightened her lapels. She turned to Lexi, smoothed Lexi’s hair over her scalp. “I think we should both try to get back to our regular lives.”