No Dawn Without Darkness

  And it hits me like a fist: They are my ticket to getting to the senator.

  “Wait here,” Mike says, jerking me to a stop.

  Mike opens a door, pouring light into what I now see is a narrow hallway, and speaks to Marco. He sounds like the same Marco. I wonder if this is a good or a bad thing.

  “Go in,” Mike says, releasing me.

  Marco sits on a stool near the back of a small room bright with lights. His face is bruised, but that’s nothing compared to the red welt covering one entire side of his face, from his temple down to his cheek and back over his ear. The skin is black in places, and the surface of the wound looks shiny. He must be in so much pain.

  “You look like you’ve been sick,” he says.

  “I have. You look like you burned off your face.”

  “Only half.”

  Behind him, surrounding the stool, is a stockpile of food that could feed every person in this mall.

  “You steal all that?”

  “It’s a dog-eat-dog world,” he says. “Mind you, we ate the dogs, so it’s really a man-eat-dog world in here.”

  “You’re wearing my duster.”

  “You left it,” he says. “Finders, keepers.”

  It’s like eighty degrees in here, there’s no need for the coat. So it’s all show. This whole thing, it’s theater.

  “Please let me go,” I say. I don’t play it too over-the-top. No eye-batting, no pouty lips. Just your ordinary damsel in distress.

  “So soon?” he says. “You haven’t even told me what you and the boy wonder have been up to! Where is that jerk-off friend of yours, anyway?”

  “Ryan’s saving lives,” I say. “You want to give me some of your food? I could drop it off for him. Might help.”

  “This isn’t my food. This is our food. My crew’s food. I can’t give you any without taking it from their mouths, and after all, they’re the ones who fought to get this stuff.”

  “Well, there’s not much more to tell,” I say, shrugging, smiling. “I’d best be off.”

  “Really,” he says, sounding interested. “You have some pressing engagement I should know about? What have you been doing? Because I’m told you were with the green- faces. And we have a policy of extermination regarding those particular assholes.”

  Am I to understand that, had his friend not recognized me, Marco would have had me killed?

  “I put the goo from the inside of a glow stick on my face to cross the second floor,” I say.

  “You always were a clever one,” he says. “Now tell me where you got the glow stick.”

  He’s smiling like this is all just a game, like the lives of every single person in this mall aren’t riding on this exchange. Truth seems to be getting through to him. Let’s see how the whole truth and nothing but lands.

  “I can get us out of the mall,” I say.

  “Did Dr. Who show up with his magic police box? Or was it Captain Kirk who offered to beam you up?”

  I reach into my bag.

  “Not so fast,” he says, sitting upright, preparing to strike, as if I’m reaching for a concealed weapon.

  “It’s just a notebook,” I say, holding open the flap of my bag. “But it contains the last notes of Dr. S. Chen, who discovered that the mutated version of the flu is a better flu. It can’t cause a pandemic. We are no longer a threat to humanity.”

  “Whoop-de-freakin’-doo.” Marco twirls a finger above his head. “Thank you, Dr. Chen, for that little newsflash. I’m sure all the nice men with guns surrounding the mall give a rat’s ass whether we’re contagious.”

  “They don’t know about what he found yet,” I say. “I—we have to tell them. The senator has to have some way to communicate with the outside. We just need to get her these notes, and then she can call the person running things for the government. This can all be over. Once the people on the outside know we’re safe, they’ll let us out.”

  Marco snorts a laugh.

  I’m not sure what he thinks is funny. I continue, “And you and Mike, you know this mall so well, you could get me there. It would take, like, five minutes.” I’m not above flattery. “No one would bother me, not if I’m with you.”

  Marco slides off the stool, approaches. “I hate to be the first to tell you this, Shaila, though really, how you missed it is beyond me, but”—and he’s in my face—“WE. ARE. DEAD TO THEM. The people on the outside don’t care if we’ve discovered the secret to world peace in here. They don’t want to hear from us, not ever, not about anything. They have completely cut us off. There’s no white flag to wave, no Oh-Crap button to push if things get really bad. Because let me tell you, if there were, the senator would have pushed it long before now.

  “You think she hasn’t told them anything and everything, including that we’re all fine and please let us out now, over her phone or CB or soup can? Do you honestly believe that she hasn’t used everything in her bullshit arsenal to try to get them to open up the doors, even just for all the nice people in the HomeMart? You think she has a shred of credibility left with the people on the outside?

  “God, I see it in your face. You really thought this would work. You really thought you were going to pop your head out and everything was going to be sunshine and daisies. You thought there was a happy ending to all this.

  “Well, sorry to crush your little dream of being our savior, but really, Shay. You’ve got to face facts. And the facts are not in your favor.”

  My hands begin to shake.

  “I have to try,” I say. “Just let me try.”

  “No.” He walks away from me.

  I run at him.

  Marco mule-kicks me in the chest and I fall.

  He kneels over me. “Shaila, Shaila,” he says. “Tsk, tsk. No attacking from behind. It’s not sportsman-like.”

  I gasp for breath.

  The door swings open and slams against the wall.

  “This girl had a gun,” a guy says. He pushes Ginger in through the door and she sprawls onto the floor beside me. “Won’t say where she got it, but must have been from security.”

  “You are such an asshole!” she yells back at the guy in the doorway.

  “Everybody’s so angry,” Marco says, ascending to his perch. “Why is everyone always so angry?”

  Ginger cradles her hand in her lap. She’s wrapped the bottom of her shirt around it. The fabric is dark with blood.

  “Just let us go, Marco,” she says. “This whole gang thing is ridiculous enough without you taking prisoners.”

  “But we’re all having so much fun.”

  Ginger glares at him. “I’m not. Lexi wasn’t. Or did you forget about her? All she wanted was to go on a date with you and you treated her like crap, all to join this stupid gang. And now she’s disappeared, probably dead. And that’s probably your fault too. If you’d thought about anyone besides yourself.”

  “I think about other people all the—”

  Ginger stands. “If it weren’t for this ridiculous gang, you might have saved her.”

  Marco has collapsed into a mean, dark knot. “What the hell do you know about it?”

  “I know you were the last one to see her alive. I know she came to you for help.”

  I get to my knees beside her.

  “We’re not even asking for your help,” I say, continuing on her thread. “Just let us go. If we die, we die. If we’re crazy, we’re crazy. If we fail, then you were right and we’re all dead anyway, so who cares.”

  Marco sits back. His face brightens. “Ah, but if you succeed, then I’m wrong, and I’d hate to give you another shot at making me look like an asshole.”

  Everyone will not die because I broke one loser’s heart. “Then keep me here,” I say. “Let Ginger go.”

  “I’d be happy to make you look like an asshole.” Ginger rips the hem of her shirt and winds it around the bleeding hand.

  “Exactly,” he says. “So you see why I can’t let either of you go. Now, if you had something to trade,
like that glow stick, or perhaps where and how the hell you got your hands on a gun?”

  “How about a cure for the flu?” Ginger says.

  “You have a cure for the flu?” Marco asks, eyes wide.

  Something he cares about?

  “It’s an antiviral,” she says, pulling a syringe of Tamiflu from her back pocket. “It can make the illness less serious.”

  Tamiflu. The notebook. Dr. Chen must have given it to me, I was his test subject.

  “It is a cure,” I add. “I had the new flu, and this stuff saved my life.”

  Marco holds out his hand. “Give it to me.”

  Oh my god, this could work. Please, let this work.

  She places the tube in his palm.

  “We can go?” I ask.

  He walks out of the room and the door slams closed behind him.

  M

  A

  R

  C

  O

  STAIRWELL NEXT TO THE BOWLING ALLEY

  I almost trip over my feet going down the fire stairwell. But I can’t slow down. I go faster, jump flights, land at the bottom and burst out the door into the thick darkness. Fifteen paces in, I hit the fender of her car. I open the door and the dim overhead light blinks on.

  Lexi.

  She groans, her head rolls away from the light.

  “I have something for you,” I say.

  I crawl into the back of the car, and dribble some of my Tylenol-Sportade concoction between her lips, just to get her in the drinking mood. Then I slip the syringe into her mouth and press the plunger.

  Lex, no matter if this stuff works or not, you have to know that I’m the one who saved your life. Not your mom, not your friends—me. Marco Carvajal. Life saver.

  I’m the one who found you in that stockroom, curled under a shelf and wrapped in bubble wrap like a blanket, so still I held my cheek to your lips to make sure you were breathing.

  Why did you stay there? If you felt sick after you left the party, why not come back to the IMAX? I could have helped you. You may have dropped me like a bad habit, but I would have taken you back.

  This is your fault, Lexi. If you had listened to me, if you had trusted me, this never would have happened. But you had to believe Goldman. You thought I was the liar. Well, now you know. I may have lied, but not like him.

  Ginger says I failed you. She doesn’t know a goddamned thing.

  Come on, Lexi! It’s been five minutes. Why aren’t you responding to the drugs?

  You have to respond to the drugs.

  You know what, Lex? If you wake up, I’ll let them go. That’s the deal. If you get better, they can go free and do whatever they want. Call the senator, jump out a window, it doesn’t matter to me. But first, Lexi, you have to wake up.

  You should have stuck with me, Lex. Look where I am now, and look where you are. I survived, am surviving.

  I know, I know. You never would have gone in for this. You chose Burton’s Batman—I’m with Nolan: The Dark Knight. You would have balked the first time we had to kick some teeth in to get more food. No way you would have eaten a guinea pig. No way you would have done the things I had to do to make sure that we survived.

  Come on, Lex. Wake up. Your friend gave me this stuff. She called it a cure. Just open your eyes. Something. Anything. Some small sign of life and I’ll let them go.

  If you’re just going to die, why’d I bother dragging your ass down here to this Caddy? I could have just left you in that stockroom. Maybe your friends would have found you—eventually. Hell, if I’d left you alone entirely, you’d be with your mom, safe in the HomeMart. You would never have come to that party. You would never have gotten sick.

  But you wanted to be with me, right? You could have left me alone. I was good at alone.

  What did I know about friends? What did I know about anything?

  Fine, I admit it. I was a bad friend to you. I asked you to do favors for me, to take chances for me, then lied to your face. I screwed you over, Lexi.

  There, I said it. Now wake up. Wake up, and I’ll give you one free shot at me. Wake up and you can punch me in the face.

  This isn’t a cheap offer, Lex, not with how fried my face is. I can’t open my mouth or even breathe without pain. It hurts to swallow. And no way this heals normal. Punch or no punch, I’m going to be a freak for the rest of my life.

  The thing about you, Lexi? You wouldn’t care about that. You liked the freak in me. Hell, you’re a freak. You play Minecraft, for Christ’s sake. You know how to hotwire a magnetically sealed door.

  The freak in you is what I liked too. God knows what you saw in me. It certainly wasn’t what you saw on the outside that kept you coming back. I mean, let’s be honest—we can be honest now—I wasn’t much to look at, even before I turned into Two-Face. When you kissed me, it was dark. If there had been lights, you probably would have come to your senses before you closed the deal.

  Would you have, Lex? Would you still have kissed me?

  Wake up, Lexi. Please, wake up.

  • • •

  “Marco?”

  It’s Rafe. I slip out of the car and close the door, returning Lexi to the dark. “What?”

  “There’s some kind of fire,” he says. “The third floor is filling with smoke. Mike says we have to go down a floor, but we haven’t gotten word from Heath that the Green Faces are cleared out.”

  “They’re as good as cleared out,” I say, grabbing his arm and heading up the stairs two at a time. “Where’s the fire?”

  “Mike says Baxter’s.”

  How the hell does Mike know this? And why did he not tell me about the fire before it’s choking us out?

  “So we have some time,” I say. Baxter’s is half a mall away from us.

  We’ll move the weapons first, then we find a new command center. Hopefully before the fire burns all our food to a crisp.

  Just when everything’s coming together, some snag has to come in and rip my carefully wrought masterpiece to shit.

  S

  H

  A

  Y

  BOWLING ALLEY

  Marco just walked out on us. Not a word. Just left.

  “There’s a back door,” I say.

  “On it.” Ginger crosses the room to the short door marked PINSETTER.

  It opens to some sort of catwalk spanning the glittering maze of machinery that covers the floor. And on the catwalk is a guard, whose headlamp whips around and blinds me. “Going somewhere?” she asks.

  We close the door. Back in our room, I climb on top of a tool chest tucked between spare parts to check the drop ceiling.

  “No go,” I say. “The wall extends up into a cloud of smoke.”

  “Then we go out the front door,” Ginger says.

  We hear Marco on the other side shouting orders in the hallway.

  “He’ll come back for us,” I say, eyeing the tool chest.

  “No doubt,” Ginger says.

  There’s nothing weapon-like in the chest. Marco’s gang must have cleaned it out long ago. All we find is a tape measure. Ginger pockets it.

  “I need the mask,” Ginger says, hand out, and I take it out of my bag.

  “You wait by the door,” she says, putting the mask on. She then climbs up into the drop ceiling.

  As expected, Marco does not leave without saying good-bye.

  “Shay,” he says as he walks through the door.

  Ginger drops down onto him and I shut the door so none of his thug friends can see.

  “You’re going to walk us out of here,” Ginger says, crouched on top of him, the metal strip from the tape measure held taut across his throat.

  Marco elbows her in the chest, but Ginger doesn’t even flinch. She digs her knee into his spine.

  “I was coming to let you out,” he says, gasping.

  “Right,” I say, peeking out the door. Headlamps slice the air like a laser show. The gang is shouting at one another; no one would notice if Marco screamed. There’s
a door across the hall marked FIRE. “We’ll take the stairs,” I say to Ginger.

  She pulls the nail gun from Marco’s homemade holster and slides it across the floor to me. Then she drags him by the throat to his feet.

  “Seriously,” he says. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “One more word,” Ginger says, “and I will choke you.”

  The headlampers seem more interested in running down the hall than in watching us, so we cross into the fire stairwell without incident. Marco doesn’t even fight us as we stumble down through the darkness, pushing him out front in case the place is booby-trapped.

  We reach the first floor.

  “Keep going,” Marco says. “Go to the parking garage.”

  “Yeah,” Ginger says. “Let’s follow the killer’s advice.”

  “Please,” Marco says. He sounds so earnest, I almost want to believe him.

  “Did they take your flashlight?” I ask Ginger. The service hall beyond the door is pitch-black and I’m sick of being jumped.

  “Yeah,” Ginger says. “You have a light, tough guy?” The tape measure clicks tighter.

  “I’m clean out,” he says. “I will help you, but you have to go to the parking garage.”

  Do we want any kind of help Marco could offer?

  “I could have gotten away from you at any point,” he says. “But I’m still here.”

  “What’s in the garage?” Ginger asks.

  “My gang’s last-ditch escape plan.”

  We go down the last flight of steps with Ginger still holding Marco by the throat.

  “You open it,” I say to Marco when we reach the door.

  The handle squeals. The parking garage is as dark as the stairs, the air still and musty as a tomb.

  “Walk forward about twenty feet,” he says.

  We do, pushing him out in front of us, until he stops.

  “Open the rear door.”

  My fingers feel smooth metal, then glass—a car door? I find and lift the handle, and the car’s interior light pierces the dark. There’s a body in the backseat.

  “Lexi!” Ginger shouts. I hear the metal strip snap back into the tape measure. Marco’s free.

  Ginger climbs into the car’s backseat. Marco stashed a dead body in the car, and Ginger is now hugging it.