No Easy Way Out

  Mike didn’t say anything when they reached the service hall. He just raced to a door marked FIRE STAIRWELL, then climbed the stairs like nothing had happened, like he hadn’t just taken out most of the first floor of the mall and destroyed an entire store. Ryan’s legs felt weak beneath him. He was barely able to make it up the two flights.

  The rally point turned out to be the pinsetters’ catwalk in the back of the bowling alley; Ryan recalled the door from the stairwell that led right into the hall outside the storage room. It had been busted like the doors near the IMAX. Mike shoved it open and walked right through.

  A handful of people lounged around the rickety metal walkway. Security must have taken out most of Mike’s team. But not Marco. The instant Mike busted through the door, the kid slunk out of a shadow.

  Marco looked terrible. Not that any of them looked particularly good, but the kid was giving off a psycho vibe. He sneered at Ryan. “Rejoined the team?”

  Mike threw an arm around Marco. “Leave Shrimp alone,” he said. “I’m glad to see you made it, Taco.”

  Marco’s eyes did not leave Ryan’s. The hate came off him in waves.

  Mike released Marco and clapped his hands. “Let’s get this started,” he called to the others. “We have a medical center to bust open.”

  Ryan grabbed Mike’s arm. “You’re still going through with this?”

  Mike patted Ryan’s hand. “Of course,” he said. “And you’re going to be my wingman.”

  But Ryan had already made this choice.

  He pulled his hand from Mike’s. “I can’t do this.”

  Mike’s eyes narrowed. “I just saved your life,” he said. “You owe me.”

  “I won’t hurt people,” Ryan said. “I can’t survive like this.”

  “How else do you think you’re going to survive?” Mike turned to give Ryan his full attention.

  Ryan drew himself up, rolled his shoulders back. “Not this way.”

  Mike’s shoulders drooped for a second. “You sure you want this?”

  “I’m sorry, man,” Ryan said.

  “Me too.” Mike snapped to attention, brought the gun up level with Ryan’s eyes. “Get out of my sight.”

  Ryan stared back at Mike. Then nodded and left.

  • • •

  Security was not hard to find. Ryan walked out the front of the bowling alley and looked down over the third-floor railing to see masses of them rallying on the first floor, bunches of black bodies preparing to assault the BathWorks. If they thought Mike was still holed up in there, they did not deserve to find him.

  Forget the mall. Let Mike and Marco tear it down. Ryan had to find Shay. She was all that mattered at this point. Ryan took the steps two at a time down the escalators. The instant he hit the second floor, he had guys on him. Murphy Luck strikes again . . .

  “Hands in the air!” screamed the closest guard. The guy sounded completely freaked. Perhaps the car stunt had unnerved the guards as much as it had Ryan.

  He raised his arms. “I’m unarmed!” He did not need a pit stop in jail keeping him from Shay.

  The nearest guard grabbed his arms and another shoved something in his ear.

  Ryan didn’t put up any fight. “I swear, I’m just trying to get to the HomeMart.”

  “Sure you are,” muttered the guard pinning him.

  The guy pulled the thing from his ear. “He’s clean.”

  The one holding Ryan’s arms pushed him forward. “Move.”

  Ryan stumbled into a bench. “I’m telling you the truth,” he said. “Please, just let me go there.” He would figure a way to escape and find Shay once free of these assholes.

  The guard didn’t even respond. He grabbed Ryan’s arm and dragged him toward the Shoe Hut. That was when Ryan began to struggle. The last thing he wanted was another “interrogation session” with Goldman.

  “Where are we going?” Ryan asked. “I’m just trying to get to the HomeMart!”

  The guard opened a service door with a card key, dragged Ryan to another door, into the back of the Shoe Hut, then through a third door into the already packed sales floor and slammed it behind him. Inside the room were about twenty other teens, a number of whom hung on the security gate looking out on the mall.

  Ryan banged on the door. “You’re making a mistake!” he screamed. “Listen to me! I can help you!”

  One of the girls told him to stop banging, that he was hurting her head. Another informed him that banging only made them angry. The guard had said that if they didn’t keep quiet, they wouldn’t get lunch. Apparently, they’d been denied breakfast already.

  “You screw up my lunch and I will screw you up,” some big kid in a SUNY sweatshirt grumbled from his perch on a display table.

  Ryan flung his shoulders against the nearest wall and slid to the floor. He slammed his elbow into the plaster and received a second threat.

  It was all over. He had to admit that he’d failed. He’d left Mike to destroy the mall and abandoned Shay inside the destruction. He wished at that moment that he believed in God, in anything. It would have been nice to pray.

  G

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  They’d searched exactly four stockrooms and two kitchens on the third floor and were both beginning to feel hopeless about their search.

  “How many stockrooms are there in this godforsaken mall?” Maddie said, opening the door to what looked like a crap shop full of As Seen on TV junk.

  Ginger’s brain swam in her head. Had she breathed in something in the IMAX? She’d heard of smoke inhalation. Did that screw with your brain? Or was it that she hadn’t really eaten anything in—god, when was the last time she ate something?

  “Mad,” she said. “I don’t feel so good.”

  Maddie instantly turned around and slapped a palm to Ginger’s forehead. Then she sighed. “No fever, so it’s not the flu. You’ll live.”

  “Do you see any food?” Ginger sat on a large box.

  “Does a Magic Dicer count as food?”

  “Maybe we should taste it to make sure.”

  Maddie knelt beside her. “You’re a ballet dancer,” she said. “I thought you guys didn’t eat as a matter of course.”

  Ginger winced a smile. “Lettuce,” she said. “Feed me lettuce.”

  “All right,” Maddie said, standing. “I’m calling off this wild-goose chase. You’re wasting away, and I’m breathing on the reserve cylinder in my inhaler. I say we check in with the senator at the HomeMart. Maybe Lexi’s already there and we are just wasting our time.”

  Ginger nodded. Like she had any other choice.

  Like two broken dolls, they shuffled through the service halls and out into the mall. They made it to the first floor before they were stopped by a security guard in full riot gear.

  “Place your hands on your head and drop flat on the ground!”

  Maddie and Ginger looked at each other. Then Maddie reached into her pocket. “I have the senator’s card,” she began, but the guy hit her in the gut with a stun baton. Maddie doubled over and dropped to her knees.

  “Stop!” Ginger screamed. “She has asthma!”

  “Get on the ground!”

  Ginger tried to help Maddie.

  “I said drop before I hit you!”

  Ginger folded herself down onto the floor. Every part of her body shook and tears dripped uselessly from her eyes. “Please!” she cried out. “We are working for the senator! Just let us get to the HomeMart!”

  “No teens in the HomeMart,” the guard said, stepping on Ginger’s spine and fastening something around her wrists. He then removed the foot and stepped on Maddie, who groaned and wheezed in response.

  “The senator said we were a special case!” G
inger pleaded. “We are helping to find her daughter!”

  The guard laughed. “The senator is no longer in charge of the mall, and my orders from Goldman are to bag and tag only.”

  He shoved a thermometer first in her ear, then Maddie’s. He frowned and pulled out his walkie-talkie. “One sick, one clean.”

  “We’re not sick!” Ginger shouted. “She has asthma! Check it again!”

  The crazy voice worked. The guy glared at her, then retested Maddie.

  “Check that, two clean,” he growled into the walkie-talkie. “Where do I take them?”

  “Stuff-A-Pal,” the radio answered. “New store still being set up. I got one sick to deliver to Harry’s.”

  The guy hoisted Maddie onto his back, then pointed a Taser at Ginger. “You going to walk or am I going to have to drag you?”

  Ginger crawled to her knees. “I can walk.” It was all she could do to keep from shaking to pieces.

  He directed her back to the Stuff-A-Pal Workshop, which was now crammed full of people. They banged on the gate as the guard passed, screaming for food, water, freedom. Ginger tried to keep from throwing up. They were locking her in there? With them? Again?

  He shoved her and Maddie back through the doors from which they had only recently exited, into the sea of bodies.

  “Get off!” a guy screamed, shoving Ginger back like she had landed on him on purpose.

  Thanking god for her flexibility, Ginger managed to free her wrists from behind her back, then grabbed Maddie’s slumped body and dragged her to the nearest wall. She fumbled in Maddie’s bag for her inhaler and gave her a pump.

  Maddie coughed, then shook her head. “Don’t waste it,” she said.

  “What should we do?” Ginger asked, knowing how dumb the question was, given their situation.

  Maddie looked around at the forest of legs in front of them. “Pray?”

  Ginger closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her friend. “Dear God,” she began.

  “I was kidding,” Maddie said.

  But Ginger continued to pray in silence. It was all she had left.

  M

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  O

  Ryan had long since left the room and yet Mike still held the gun out to where his head had once been. Mike was trembling; his jaw was locked in a snarl.

  “He’s gone,” Marco said, eager to forget Ryan’s existence. “Screw him. I’ll be your wingman.”

  Mike remained frozen for a few seconds longer. Then he mimed firing the gun. “Bang.” He turned to Marco. Sweat ran in rivulets down his forehead and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked like he hadn’t slept in months. He looked like he and Marco were on the same page.

  “We’re thinking of starting a revolution,” Marco said. “I think you could be of some help with that.”

  “The senator and her security assholes killed Drew,” Mike growled. “They’ve taken everything.”

  Marco needed Mike, or whatever was left of Mike, to focus. “Sure,” he said. “But if you want to beat the senator, we need to take out her eyes and ears. Which means taking out the mall offices.”

  One of the flamethrower girls joined the pow-wow. “But we just want to stop them spreading this new flu, right?” she said. “Shouldn’t we go to the med center?”

  “They will stop you dead in your tracks,” Marco said, “because they can see you coming. There are cameras covering every inch of the mall. We take out the cameras, we can move without fear of Big Brother.”

  Mike clapped a hand on Marco’s shoulder. “I like it. How do we knock them out?”

  Marco figured they could just walk in the front door of the mall offices and take out anyone standing in their way. The hallway was short and narrow enough that they could cover the whole thing from the front door, then neutralize anyone in the adjoining rooms as they moved toward the senator.

  “We could snag her as a hostage,” Mike said, sounding excited. “Those doctors will have to give us the virus if we have her.”

  “See how it’s all coming together?” Marco replied, hefting Shay’s coat. Everything was coming up chaos.

  Mike pulled a black ski mask from his pocket and dragged it over his skull. “Let’s move.”

  • • •

  Marco had determined that a shock-and-awe entrance to the battlefield would best serve their purposes. Thus, Heath hefted a chair through the glass reception window of the mall offices, crawled in, and buzzed open the door. Much to everyone’s surprise, the offices were devoid of people.

  “What the hell?” a girl observed.

  “Interesting,” Marco mused. Something strange was going on indeed.

  He told Mike to cover him as he broke into the monitoring room for the closed-circuit camera system. There was no one in there either. But from that room, they could see the entire mall. There were few people save security in any of the monitored areas of the mall; teams of security seemed to be moving up the escalators toward the third floor; but the most intriguing activity was at the other end of the mall, at the HomeMart.

  “They’re done abandoning ship,” Marco said, pointing to the relevant screen. On it was pictured the closed-over front of the HomeMart. “They’ve taken the residents two by two and locked themselves in an ark.”

  Mike spat at the screen. “If they’re not here, then they’re not watching. I say we take out the med center.”

  Marco pointed to a blinking red light. “Remote access. They must have set up a link inside the HomeMart.”

  “Then unlink it,” Mike commanded.

  “Why would I know how to do that?” he said.

  “So what, then?” Mike was completely relying upon him. It was a delicious feeling.

  “We even the playing field.” Marco walked out of the room. “If we can’t see them, then they shouldn’t be able to see us either.”

  • • •

  They’d divided into two teams. Marco took Heath and one girl, Kaylee, with him on his mission to the parking level. He handed them little strap-on camping headlamps when they reached the door marked ELECTRICAL.

  “Won’t there be a light?” Kaylee asked.

  “Not for long.”

  The electrical transformer wasn’t in a cage like the HVAC system. It just sat in a room, four fat cubes with little yellow warning signs depicting a hand and a bolt of electricity. Wires came out the top and ran up the wall and across the ceiling.

  “What do we do?” Heath asked.

  Marco opened the door on one of the cubes, revealing the curved casing of the transformer. “Take the bat off your back and get to it,” he said, pointing at the thing. Marco had selected these two in particular because they had wooden bats strapped to their backs.

  Heath stared at Marco for a second, a dubious expression on his face, then shrugged and unsheathed his bat.

  “This one’s for Drew!” he shouted.

  The two of them whaled on the thing for a couple of seconds with no result.

  “The lights are still on,” Kaylee remarked.

  Marco flipped up the collar to his coat and took the hockey stick from his back. “Keep hitting it until they no longer are.”

  The three of them took aim at different parts of the thing, but no amount of abuse led to even a shuddering of the lightbulb. More drastic efforts were needed. Kaylee had a climbing ax hanging from her belt.

  “Might I borrow this?” he asked, pointing to the weapon.

  She unhooked it and passed it to Marco. There were gloves in the coat’s pockets, which Marco slipped on to protect his hands, then he took aim at the center of the nearest cylinder and drove the spike into the transformer’s side.

  The explosion knocked Marco across the room. Kaylee was thrown into the adjacent transformer. Sparks flashed.
She screamed, then didn’t—her body fell to the floor. The lights flickered, then blinked out.

  A headlamp flashed in Marco’s eyes. Marco saw Heath’s lips move, heard the word “Marco” all thick like they were under water. Heath grabbed Marco’s leg and began dragging him from the room. Marco noticed his arm was on fire. Panicked, he unbuttoned the charred leather coat and let it slip from him. It sunk in that without the coat, he’d have been fried. Like Kaylee.

  Once in the parking garage, Marco kicked his foot loose from Heath’s grasp.

  “I can walk,” he rasped. He stripped what remained of the leather gloves from his hands.

  “Then let’s get the hell out of here,” Heath said.

  As they ran between the cars, headlamp beams bouncing before them, they heard sizzles, saw flashes of light—their lamps bouncing off shattered windshields. But the world was dark now. Marco enjoyed the black.

  DR.

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  Doctor Stephen Chen lugged a crate of paper files closer to his worktable in the back of the second-floor stockroom of Harry’s department store. Every time he picked anything up, he was reminded of the foolishness that got him, one of the world’s experts in influenza epidemics, trapped in an outbreak. Help carry in a box, one of the FEMA guys had ordered in those last hours before the lockdown. A single box. One of the godforsaken patients had attacked him as he was leaving the PaperClips and ripped his hazmat suit, exposing him to the virus and thus forcing him to be included in the quarantine. Now he was one of his own statistics. The flu was not without a sense of irony.

  He was grateful for the little shrine of candles one particularly religious family had left to honor their dead relation. Because of them, he didn’t have to work in the dark. He was close now, he knew it. He looked over the charts once more. The pattern was in there.

  Somewhere outside, a person yowled in pain. It was strange having to deal with real people. He hadn’t had a live patient in a decade. As an epidemiologist, he was an expert in computer modeling, calculating the spread of a disease, analyzing how a particular strain of the virus worked to kill a population. Not since residency had he worked with this many actual living, breathing patients.