No Dawn Without Darkness

  My shoulder slams into the door to the fire stairwell.

  Wait, I ran past Maddie.

  Clever Maddie. She let me run past her.

  I will my hands to stop shaking. They do not obey. Still, my fingers find my flashlight. Light! Only then do I see the blood on my hands.

  Doesn’t matter. I wipe them on my cheap Halloween robe. Reaper. Death.

  Doesn’t matter.

  My light finds Maddie. She’s sitting where I left her, quiet and still.

  “I got the mask!” I shake her. Her head lolls.

  No.

  I fit the mask over her face, turn the oxygen tank to the max.

  “Maddie!”

  I shake her again.

  “MADDIE!”

  S

  H

  A

  Y

  ON THE WAY TO HOMEMART

  Baxter’s is more than halfway to the HomeMart. I head for the nearest escalator, and am blinded by a headlamp.

  “No trespassing!” a voice shouts.

  “Hello, Shay.” Mike’s voice.

  Mike was terrifying when he was on my side. I push off the railing and make for the movie theaters. A third voice yells out—Ryan’s? No, he escaped through the service halls.

  The headlamper follows me into the theaters—I’m not sure if it’s Mike or the other one, but I’m also not sure it matters.

  My book fire in Baxter’s glints off the glass display cases of the refreshment stand, meaning it’s more than just a book fire now. I can taste the smoke all the way over here. I have to get down a floor.

  “Where’re you hiding, little girl?”

  It’s not Mike—that’s a relief. The headlamp sweeps the lobby. Damn, those things are handy. For a moment, I contemplate fighting the guy for it—I could hide, jump out at him as he passes—but it’s too big a risk. If I lose, we all lose, for sure the headlamper would burn the notebook before reading it. I slink into deeper shadow, away from the main part of the mall—I think. I end up at another door, another hall. The dark has me all turned around.

  Far up ahead, there’s a flashlight. The light is dim, like the batteries are almost gone, but any light is better than the no light I have.

  The light is beside a dead girl, whose arms cling to another dead girl, who—hold the phone, has a freaking oxygen mask? Where did she—who cares? I tug the strap holding the mask to the girl’s face.

  “Get off her!”

  The first girl throws herself at me, knocking me over, and lands on my chest.

  “Don’t touch her!” she screams, grabbing my arms.

  “I’m not!” I scream back, though why I think logic will hold sway is beyond me.

  “She’s going to be fine! She has to be fine.”

  Her tears drip onto my cheek. “I’m so sorry,” I say.

  The girl dissolves into loud sobs. She’s going to get us killed.

  “Please calm down.”

  “We should have gone straight to the HomeMart.” Her voice sounds wrung out. “We should have tried for a way onto the roof.”

  “There’s no way out,” I say. “And the HomeMart shut out my ten-year-old sister. They would not have let you in, especially if your friend was sick.”

  Her bloodshot eyes finally register my presence. “I know you,” she says, and climbs off me. “You’re Marco’s girlfriend.”

  A laugh escapes my lips, though she is clearly not making a joke. “I am not Marco’s girlfriend.”

  “I saw you hug him in the cafeteria, the courtyard,” she says. “My friend. She liked him. Before he became a complete asshole.”

  “He was my friend,” I say. “I haven’t seen him in days. Please, just let me go. I won’t touch your friend.”

  She snickers. “You have someplace you have to be?”

  “I have a notebook,” I begin. Maybe I sell her on my cause, maybe I get out of this without a fight. “It belonged to the guy who ran the med center.”

  “The dead guy next to your bed?”

  There’s a double-take moment. “You saw me in the med center?”

  “You were sick,” she says. “I didn’t think you’d make it.”

  Fair enough. “The notebook was in my bed. Dr. Chen stashed it there before he died.”

  “Before someone shot him, you mean.”

  “Before that,” I say.

  “People suck,” she says.

  “Not all people.”

  I tell her what’s in the notebook, how it could save us all.

  “It can’t save all of us,” she says, looking at her friend.

  “She wouldn’t want you to die here,” I say. “Not when there’s a chance to get out.”

  Tears fringe her eyelashes. “No, she wouldn’t,” she says.

  She pulls off the Grim Reaper cassock she was wearing and crawls to her friend. She lays it over the body like a shroud, slides the mask out from underneath, then stands.

  “Okay, I’ll help,” she says, wiping her face with her sleeve. “I’m Ginger.” She hands me the mask.

  “Shay,” I say, and put it on.

  “Let’s go,” she says, and walks back up the hall I had run down. “HomeMart is this way.”

  Already, she’s helping.

  At a door down the hall, she stops. “I have to get something,” she says, and disappears inside. When she comes out I don’t see anything new on her, though maybe it’s in her purse.

  “You find it?”

  “Yep.”

  She leads me to the exit into the main part of the mall. The fire rages in Baxter’s, and seems to have spread to a neighboring store. Thick clouds of smoke billow across the glass and metal struts of the ceiling. It’s only a matter of time before the entire third floor is either burning or enveloped in smoke.

  “So that’s what did it,” she says, staring at the blaze. “My friend, she had asthma.”

  I don’t tell her I started it.

  We race down the nearest escalator. On the second floor, two green faces drift toward us.

  “Cut the light,” I whisper.

  She turns it off and we make for the wall.

  “We hide here until they’re gone,” I say.

  Something rustles, then there’s a snap, and the light of a green glow stick blooms between us. “Got the right color on the first try.” She looks at my bag. “You have a pen in there?”

  I hand her one, and she stabs the glow stick. She squeezes some of the glowing goo from its center, then smears it on my face. The girl is proving her worth in spades.

  Faces glowing, we step out into the hallway. A green-faced patrol flashes a laser pointer at us, but we just keep walking for the down escalator. Just as we pass the escalator from the third floor, headlamps flash on.

  “Green-Faces! We have come for your souls!”

  Not good.

  “Go!” Ginger yells, and pulls an actual handgun from her bag and starts shooting.

  I break into a run for the escalator, which is now clearly visible some twenty feet ahead of us. I try to wipe the glow gunk from my face, but only succeed in spreading it to my sleeves.

  Headlampers are coming up the escalator.

  “There’s no escape!” one shouts at me.

  Wheeling around, I dart down the hall toward the food court, which is lit by a bonfire. I break into a sprint, hurdling toppled chairs and tables. I hope Ginger got away before she ran out of bullets.

  Just as an escalator’s handrail comes into view, headlamps click on from every direction. The nearest green-faces run at them, wielding bats and metal bars. I’ve stumbled into a war. I pull my IV pole free, and keep running for the escalator.

  A body smashes into me from the side, knocking the breath from my lungs. I manage to slide a hand under my head before I hit the tile.

  “I got one!” the guy shouts, standing over me, his headlamp in my face.

  I kick him soundly in the nuts and he falls over. Panting, gasping, I get to my knees, my feet, and stumble forward.

&
nbsp; But the headlampers are everywhere, driving the green- faces with arrows, slingshot baseballs, kayak paddles, and spray-can flamethrowers into the food court. I spin and race back toward where I left Ginger.

  Explosions. My ears ring. Somehow, I’m on the ground again. The green-faces scatter. In the fires that now consume my half of the food court, I see why: The huge circle of the Ferris wheel falls toward me. The head-lampers blew up its base.

  I scramble to my feet, run in the opposite direction, across the food court. The wheel crashes to the floor, sending a tremor through the tiles that knocks me flat.

  Headlamps slash the air around me. There are many fewer green faces.

  “That was awesome!” one headlamper shouts.

  Blend in, just act normal. I stand and attempt to walk past them.

  “Where the hell are you going?” A headlamper blinds me.

  “Dude, isn’t that Ryan’s girl?”

  “Mike’ll want to see her.”

  I make a dash for the dark beyond the food court and get three strides before lightning sizzles over my skin and I lose control of my muscles. Like Kris, the headlampers must have stolen a Taser. I fall to the floor. My head flops against my limp arm.

  Hands wrench my wrists back. I’m hauled up onto someone’s shoulder. I will my body to fight, but it hangs like a doll’s. They are taking me back up the steps, away from the HomeMart. I want to scream, I can save us all! but I’ve lost control of everything.

  M

  A

  R

  C

  O

  HEADED TOWARD THE POST OFFICE

  We waited and we watched and we schemed and we prepared and now the war with the green-faced gringos is ON.

  We know they have sentries every ten feet along the second floor. We know how they signal each other using flashes from laser pointers. We know that they like to overrun attackers, leaving only a skeleton crew to man their base.

  Heath is leading most of our team on a full-frontal assault. The plan is to pick off the outliers, then herd the roving patrols toward where we’ve set up our little surprise. The Green Faces have swarmed out to defend their home. Like clockwork.

  They do not expect Mike and me. They do not know they are about to get taken down.

  It’s what they deserve after killing Kyle on the escalator. The Green Faces had no idea who they were dealing with. They had no idea we already controlled the entire freaking mall.

  Now they will learn.

  “The halls are empty,” Mike says.

  “Let’s move.”

  We are so used to the dark, used to this mall, that we don’t turn on flashlights anywhere outside the bowling alley. Part of it’s that we know this mall like we know our own bodies, but the rest of it’s the result of experience. Even in the total black of the service hallways, we know it’s better to keep a hand on the wall than to turn on any sort of light and out yourself to all the vampire kids looking to scavenge the underwear off your ass.

  “Ten yards,” Mike whispers. He has this scary accurate ability to judge distances. He says it’s from football. Wherever it’s from, it’s been damn useful.

  We walk, feet silent, invisible. Muffled shouts and bangs from the battle in the food court thunder through the walls. We stop. I throw a tennis ball at the wall opposite, about ten feet back from where we stand.

  A flashlight clicks on next to us, showing the door sentry we expected.

  Mike punches him in the face.

  The kid drops.

  “After you,” I say.

  Mike kicks in the door. Light blazes from inside the post office. The Green Faces have a crapload of lanterns.

  Mike finds cover behind a sorting bin. I bolt across to the opposite wall and duck behind a shelf.

  “Just the two of you?” a voice calls. “We expected so much more from the terrifying headlampers.”

  My eyes adjust. I nod to Mike. He tips his head to the side.

  We stand and step into the room in unison—me brandishing my nail gun and Mike his Glock. Five guys are positioned in front of us, including the knife-fisted douche who runs the Green Faces.

  Even better, they surround what can only be called a healthy pile of food, including what looks like—praise Jesus—a tub of freeze-dried egg. Where in the hell did they find that juicy nugget?

  “Feel free to simply walk away,” I say. “I’ll even give you ten seconds instead of the usual five.”

  Knife-fist grimaces. “His gun isn’t even loaded,” he says, cocking his head at Mike. “Get the hell out of my post office.”

  “So that’s a no?” Great. I shoot Knife-fist in the chest, then keep shooting nails until the other two in front of me drop.

  Mike drops the empty gun, then flattens the two on the right with a bat-and-hockey-stick combo that’s just killer.

  I tuck the nail gun into the makeshift holster I’ve constructed. “How’d they know you’re out of ammo?” I ask.

  Mike tucks the two weapons back into the bandolier he’s fashioned from strips of canvas. “Lucky guess,” he says. “Maybe they saw the people in the med center.”

  “Huh.”

  I examine my handiwork. One of the two on the left is dead for sure. The other is kind of crawling away. Knife-fist is up on one elbow, glaring at me like that alone is going to inflict damage.

  “You are so dead,” he says.

  “Is that a threat?” I ask. “Mike, I think this asshole just threatened me!”

  Mike jams the Glock into his waistband and hefts the keg o’ dried egg. “Let’s go,” he growls.

  “Always so serious,” I say, grabbing the other food. “The rest of them won’t be back for at least another ten minutes.”

  He shifts the bucket to his other hand and opens the door to the service passage.

  At the side hall I marked earlier with a glow-in-the-dark sticker, we turn off, stopping at the exit into the main part of the mall. The food court is filled with the flaming wreckage of the Ferris wheel. Shrieks, thuds, and crashes resound, but there are far more Headlamps than Green Faces. Total domination has been achieved.

  We backtrack to the main service hallway, book it for the fire stairwell, and climb back up to our fortress in the bowling alley.

  “Is it always this fun?” I ask, once we’re in the mechanical room behind the bowling lanes, or Command Central, as I’ve come to think of it.

  “Is what always this fun?” Mike says, placing the egg bucket with the rest of our food stock.

  “Beating the crap out of people?”

  “You tell me.”

  “No,” I say. “I mean, on the outside. Is it this fun beating the crap out of people in the real world?”

  “What does it matter,” he says. “We’re never going to be out there again. This is as real as our lives are going to get.”

  This is the kind of thing Mike says that makes me nuts. It’s like he’s missing my point on purpose.

  “They had less food than we thought,” he says.

  “That egg alone will last us a week.”

  “Then what?” he says. “The post office was the last place we thought there would be a big stash.”

  “We’ll find another stash,” I say. “There’s always another stash.”

  “Yeah.” He sighs, which is total passive-aggressive crap. “I’ll watch the front with Laila and Jake. Two whistles means they’re back.”

  “Fine.”

  It’s like Mike has given up, like he’s ready to just throw in the towel and die. Screw that. We are the goddamned kings of this mall. If anyone’s going to live, it’s going to be us.

  I down an oxycontin—a gift from Mike for my busted face—and start calculating new rations for my team. We have managed to eat well every day. I have done that for my crew. It’s all about the protein, and we took it wherever we could. Heath had the idea to cook animals from the pet store. Laila protested at first, said no way she was eating Fido, but then she smelled it. When you’re starving, you can?
??t be choosy.

  With this egg, we are set for a week or more. And with the Green Faces in critical condition, it’s probably going to be an easy week. Just defense work, manning the perimeter, that kind of thing.

  We’ll need batteries. Maybe Mike and I will hit up the Green Faces for some of their lights. Ha! I just got that—hit up! Hilarious.

  Mike appears in the doorway.

  “Dude, you have to hear this,” I say. “I was just thinking—”

  “We have a guest,” he says, all cagey.

  “We’re running a hotel now?”

  “It’s Shay.”

  Ho-ly crap.

  She’s alive.

  “She came here?” I ask.

  “Heath and Naomi bagged her in the food court.”

  So she’s coming to beg for her freedom. Let her beg.

  I find the tallest stool in the most imposing corner and perch my ass upon it. “Well, bring our guest right in.”

  S

  H

  A

  Y

  BOWLING ALLEY

  My brain doesn’t recover control of my voice until we get to the third floor. My arms and legs hold out, willfully useless, until we’re inside the bowling alley. But even after I regain complete control of my body, I keep silent and limp. Better this jerk thinks I can’t escape. Better he finds out only when I bust loose and make a run for it.

  “We taking prisoners?”

  I know that voice—it’s Mike.

  “Ryan’s girl,” the one holding me says. “Thought you’d want to talk to her.”

  “You thought wrong.”

  “You want me to let her go?”

  Yes! Please!

  “Might as well send her to the back,” Mike says. “Marco will want to say hello. I’ll take her.”

  The guy holding me tries to pass me like an hors d’oeuvre, but I push myself out of his arms.

  “I can walk myself,” I say.

  A hand clamps down on my arm. “Fine by me.”

  I know better than to fight Mike. Even if he weren’t a cold-blooded killer, he still outweighs me by a hundred pounds.

  Mike leads me through the black like he has perfect night vision. He and Marco must know this whole mall that well. Not only that, but they might control the entire mall at this point.