No Safety in Numbers

  Marco hugged Shay’s body to him—her arms dragged on the floor as he shifted her torso. With another heaving of strength, Marco managed to get Shay balanced across his spine in a fireman’s carry, then put one foot in front of the other down the concrete.

  By some miracle, the service door to the PaperClips was still open. Marco stumbled into the stockroom, ready to grab the first doctor he saw. But there was no one there.

  The stockroom had been emptied. Two Outsiders stomped through the double doors from the sales floor and began packing the remaining machinery into boxes and loading them onto mobile pallets.

  The strap from the satchel snapped and Shay slid from his back to the floor. “Please!” Marco shouted, grabbing the arm of the nearest one. “My friend needs help!”

  The Outsider shrugged him off. “Watch the suit!” Then he noticed Shay on the floor. “Sorry, kid,” he said. “Orders are to lock down. Anyone not already exposed has to leave. Quarantine.”

  The guy lugged the last box onto his pallet and pushed the whole thing toward the car-wash doorway of the loading dock.

  Marco dragged Shay into the stockroom. One of these assholes had to help.

  “Hey!” he shouted as a hazmat suit bustled past. “I need a doctor!”

  The person paused, squeezed Marco’s shoulder, and said, “I’m sorry. God help us all.” Then he ducked out through the loading dock.

  Marco stumbled forward, through the stockroom’s open doors into the curtained maze of the former sales floor. Overflow patients lay on cots in the halls between the curtains, some unconscious, some aware enough to be screaming for help. The hazmat suits acted like they couldn’t see them, stepped over them as if they were trash. The suits were following orders. Some ran boxes through a hole cut in the back wall, others pushed past him toward the Outside. Marco’s shouts for help were lost in the chaos. Then one of the curtained walls parted and out stepped the senator.

  “Where are my extra stores of Tamiflu?” she yelled at a passing hazmat suit, who pointed to the hole in the wall. She mumbled something into a walkie-talkie, then noticed Marco. “How did you get in here?”

  “Service hall,” he said, breathless, grateful. “She needs help.” He lifted Shay off his back and laid her down across a chair.

  The senator gave them a pitying look, then bent her head to the side as if cracking her neck. She touched Shay’s forehead. Shay’s eyelids fluttered and she moaned. The senator pointed to a plastic crate. “Use one of the cold packs in there and wrap it to wherever you feel a bump on her head.” Then she bustled off into the stockroom.

  Marco did as he was told—his brain was too scared to try to rustle up its own thoughts. He poked through the plastic crate until he found a white bag that said “Instant Cold Pack.” He followed the directions—cracked it, shook it—and felt it become freezing cold against his palms. The sensation brought tears to his eyes. Something that worked as it was supposed to!

  He touched Shay’s beautiful head and felt a goose egg above and behind her right temple. He pressed the cold pack to her, and she groaned in response.

  Marco then became aware of a sound like thunder coming from the front of the store. No, not thunder. Banging. The crowds were banging on the plywood wall that covered the PaperClips. They were going to bust through and storm the medical ward. The two of them would be crushed if they didn’t get out of the way.

  Marco grabbed a roll of gauze, wrapped the ice pack to Shay’s forehead, and lifted her off the chair.

  The banging was now mixed with horrible creaking sounds—the wood was giving way. The cries of the sick became screams as some of the rioters broke through the plywood door and came raging into the curtain maze. Marco dragged Shay as fast as he could, waiting for the ominous sound of breaking glass. That was the signal for when the true chaos would erupt. A security guard with a megaphone began shouting for people to remain calm. The screams only got louder.

  Marco stumbled into the stockroom. The senator stood in front of the loading dock, the overhead door of which was closed. Every few seconds, the metal rattled—the Outsiders were sealing them in.

  The service hallway was only feet away. Marco hefted Shay’s body and stumbled forward, nearly butting heads with a guard.

  “Senator!” the guard shouted. “We have to seal this door!”

  The senator stared for a heartbeat longer at the loading dock doorway, then she turned, bumping into Marco. It took her a moment to realize that he was a person and not some empty box, but then she lifted Shay’s other arm and helped Marco carry her into the service corridor. Just as they crossed the threshold, Marco heard the glass of the front windows of the PaperClips smash.

  The cop pulled the double doors closed behind them and locked the handles with a crowbar. Marco heard the rising cacophony of shouts from inside the PaperClips. The senator left Shay in Marco’s arms and began walking down the hallway, away from the mob.

  “You’re just going to let this happen?” Marco asked, incredulous.

  The senator turned, a sad look on her face. “What would you like me to do?” she asked. “Please, tell me, what am I supposed to do?”

  Marco had no words. The leader of this mall was asking him what to do. Him, Marco Carvajal: a nobody, a busboy, a kid.

  The senator shrugged, sighing, then turned away again and disappeared down the hallway.

  Marco slumped against the wall and slid down, holding Shay to him. Someone banged against the barred service doors and he jumped, sure the end was coming for them all. But the bar held. For the moment, they were safe.

  Marco hugged Shay and waited for it all to be over.

  L

  E

  X

  I

  Lexi lifted Maddie’s head and dribbled some water into her mouth. She sputtered, then swallowed. Lexi pulled the face mask back over Maddie’s mouth.

  “I don’t know why you’re doing this,” Maddie said, lying back onto her pillow of sweaters. “But thanks.”

  “You’d do the same for me,” Lexi said, rubbing sanitizer over her hands and face. Her skin stung from the endless applications.

  “I wouldn’t,” Maddie said. “Isn’t that horrible?” She coughed into the mask.

  Lexi stood, using the nearby shelf for support. “Yes, that is horrible.”

  Maddie grabbed Lexi’s ankle. “I’m sorry I was such a bitch the other day, making you do that lap dance and everything.” Her blue eyes were ringed in purple and her hair was plastered against her forehead from having sweated so horribly after her fever broke.

  Lexi shook off her fingers and smiled. “Yeah, well, now you have all the time in the world to make it up to me.” They’d heard the announcement earlier that morning about the quarantine.

  Maddie’s eyes smiled. “I guess I do.”

  When Lexi had arrived yesterday, she’d found six people lying in various states of illness around the floor of the Abercrombie. A salesperson, who was feeling chilled and achy herself, offered to help Lexi and move them all into the stockroom in the back if Lexi shared her medicine. Lexi had gratefully agreed.

  It had been a long, horrible, scary night. First thing Lexi did was put face masks on them all; even she wore one, though she knew it wouldn’t do anything. The saleslady soon succumbed to the flu and had to be cared for like the others. Lexi poured swallows of soup down each person’s throat and dosed them all with Tylenol and vitamins. When they felt too hot, she covered their foreheads with the ice packs. She helped them hobble to the tiny staff bathroom when they needed it. So far, everyone but the saleslady’s fever had broken.

  When the announcement was made and the screaming started, Lexi locked the stockroom door and barred the doors to the service hall. She did not want the riot to come to them. Now the screams sounded farther away. But there was still screaming.

  “Lexi!”

  She had to wait for the person to yell a second time before she believed it.

  “Dad?” she asked.

 
She ran to the stockroom door and flicked open the lock. Her father was poking into the racks of clothes.

  “Dad!” she yelled, feeling a rush of relief.

  He turned and grabbed her, hugging her tight to him. “Thank god,” he whispered into her hair. “Ginger said you would be here, and I prayed she was right. I have to get you out of here.”

  In the store, the screaming from the mall was louder. “And go where?” Lexi asked. “Stay with me,” she said. “It’s safe in the stockroom.”

  Her father held her shoulders and looked her in the face. “It is not safe in the stockroom,” he said. “It’s not safe anywhere but the Apple Store. The police can protect us there.”

  Lexi pulled away from him. “I can’t leave,” she said. “There are people who need me here.”

  Her father looked at her like he did not know her. “Lex, please.” He took her hand. “Can’t you listen to me just this once?”

  A tear tickled her cheek. “Please stay and help me.”

  Dad started to cry too. He nodded. She led him into the stockroom.

  They began changing the sick people, Arthur, the boys, and Lexi, the girls. They needed to get them out of their sweat-ridden, germy clothes before they got chilled. Four of the kids were feeling well enough that they could change themselves. Lexi and her dad just handed them whatever clothes were within arm’s reach and a wet cloth.

  “Here,” Lexi said, dropping a long-sleeved tee and a pair of sweats onto Maddie’s winter-coat blanket.

  Maddie raised an eyebrow at the offering. “This doesn’t even match.”

  “All complaints can be directed to the Department of I Don’t Give a Crap.”

  Maddie snorted a laugh that morphed into a fit of coughing. “You’re literally—cough—killing me.”

  Lexi walked around the shelf to where she’d left the saleslady. The woman had her face buried in a stack of sweatshirts.

  “Don’t cough on them,” Lexi said, putting a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “We might need th—”

  The saleslady rolled toward Lexi. Her eyes were open. Glassy. Dead.

  It wasn’t until her father pulled her away from the body that Lexi realized she was screaming. Dad sat her in a different aisle, then went back to the woman. Lexi sat, stunned, trembling.

  “I thought she was getting better,” Lexi mumbled when her father returned. “I swear, I thought her fever would break, like the others.”

  Her father wiped her skin with sanitizer. “There is nothing you could have done to save her,” he said. “We should get all these kids down to the med center.” He squeezed her hands. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

  Lexi fell forward, hugging him, and let herself cry.

  Her father ordered her to put on some clean clothes before they moved anyone out of the Abercrombie. Lexi went out into the store, more to clear her head than because she wanted to browse the displays. She found some new jeans, a T-shirt, and hoodie and changed in a dark corner. Deciding she could use some new shoes, she headed back toward the stockroom to see what they had in her size.

  “Hey!” a voice shouted. “Hand over the register key!”

  Lexi turned, surprised by the bizarre request, and found herself face-to-face with a wiry dude wielding what looked like a drill.

  Are you shitting me?

  “I don’t work here,” she said, frozen. “I don’t have a key.”

  The guy squeezed the drill and there was a bang and something whizzed past Lexi. “Get me the fucking key!”

  The guy’s face suddenly changed. “Oh shit,” he said, dropping the nail gun. “I thought you were alone.” He bolted out of the store.

  Lexi turned. Her father stood in the doorway of the stockroom. Red soaked through his shirt near his right shoulder. He stumbled forward.

  Lexi ran to him. “Nononononono,” she muttered, catching him as he sagged into her embrace.

  Her father touched his shoulder, teeth gritted. “I think it hit bone,” he said.

  “What do I do?” Lexi said.

  “Get me to the PaperClips,” her father said.

  He tried to push himself up. Lexi shoved her shoulder under his left arm. They lurched out of the Abercrombie.

  The hall on the second floor was nearly empty, but from the top of the motionless escalator, Lexi saw the crowds—a sea of people—raging beneath her. Her father tried to hold his own weight on the railing with his right arm and red bled out across his shirt.

  “Just lean on me,” Lexi said.

  They hobbled, one step at a time, down the escalator. As they neared the bottom, some kid shoved past Arthur, screaming, “Move it, Grandpa!”

  Arthur was thrown forward. Lexi lost her grip on his arm. Her father yelped, fell off the step, then tried to catch himself on the railing.

  He screamed. Lexi screamed. She dove forward, trying to throw her body beneath him before he fell, but she was too slow. He landed against the stone of the first-floor hall.

  “Dad!” she said, kneeling beside him.

  He groaned. “I think I broke the arm,” he said, “catching myself.”

  Lexi heard feet on the escalator. Her father would be trampled if she didn’t move him.

  “We have to get away from here,” she said.

  Her father nodded. He rolled himself over by throwing his hips. His left arm hung at an odd angle.

  Lexi pressed her back to her father’s, then pushed against him with her legs, lifting him off the ground. He stumbled forward, grabbed the railing with his right arm, shouted obscenities, and stood on his own.

  “Let’s go,” he whispered.

  Lexi nodded.

  Her father lifted his right arm and Lexi gently pushed against his rib cage, trying to keep from touching the shoulder.

  In the short hall leading to the PaperClips, an enormous number of people were amassed against the exit doors.

  “There’s no way we’re getting through that,” she said to her dad.

  He watched for a second. “No, this is good.” He drove himself in between the first few people, then looked back at her, wincing. “See? They can hold me up.”

  Lexi shoved into the crowd after him and they moved slowly through the undulating bodies, being tossed one way, then another, at times being lifted off their feet entirely. It was like swimming, only unpleasant and loud and terrifying. Lexi felt the hot mist of people’s breath on her skin like a poison. She tried to hold her breath, but that only made her feel sick. Her father pushed forward, every once in a while barking with pain as someone hit his shoulder or arm. Somehow, after an eternity, they pressed against the plywood of the PaperClips’ barrier.

  They slipped along the outside of the crowd against the wall to the door. Lexi had to throw herself back into the throng to eke open the door, but somehow they both managed to jam themselves into the empty space behind the plywood. The door was slammed shut behind them. Dad tumbled to the floor.

  Lexi shouted for help, but with all the screaming and shouting, who could hear her?

  “I’ll run in and get someone,” she said. Her father nodded.

  The people began banging on the plywood wall. The beams groaned.

  “Hurry,” he said.

  Inside, Lexi saw only people on gurneys. Coughing, screaming, prostrate patients, but no doctors. She yelled for help, flapping open each curtain as she ducked through the maze of rooms. But there was no one.

  The wood groaned louder. Snapped.

  Dad.

  Lexi bolted back toward the entrance. He’d be crushed. She had to save him.

  The wall collapsed, crashed into the glass entryway of the PaperClips. Lexi turned from the spray of shards, throwing her arm over her face, and crouched behind a gurney. Then the gurney was on top of her. She screamed with pain—the bed had fallen across her legs just above her knees, tossing the patient who’d been in it onto her back. A wall of curtain fell on top of the pile. Feet trampled the fabric around her, but the bulk of the gurney must have worked t
o drive the masses of people aside.

  She wiggled her toes—her legs must not have been broken. She curled her head down and wrapped her arms over her skull and neck. The person on top of her coughed; luckily, the body lay perpendicular to her over her butt, the head several feet from her rear.

  The feet pounded. Voices screamed. Glass crashed to the floor. More shouting. More crashing. Then less. Fewer voices. Then only the cries and groans of the other people buried in the wreckage.

  Lexi strained against the weight of the gurney. She could not move. She screamed for help. The only answer was the hacking cough of the dying patient on top of her.

  R

  Y

  A

  N

  Ryan pulled the thick jacket tighter around his shoulders. The shivers were overwhelming now, rattling his teeth if he unclenched his jaws. He was cold, so very cold, and couldn’t get warm no matter how many jackets he buried himself under.

  They’d hidden in Harry’s after escaping the jail in the parking garage. Mr. Reynolds had thought they could hole up in one of the back sections between the crowded racks and avoid the cops. He’d been right—not a soul had bothered them. Ryan had excused himself, saying he’d hurt his shoulder tackling the guard, and curled up in the winter coats. He wasn’t sure how many hours had passed—he’d fallen in and out of consciousness. Once, he’d opened his eyes to darkness, a spinning black that terrified him like he was a kid again. Cracking open his eyelids now, he saw the comforting glare of the overhead lighting. It seemed unsteady, but swirling light was somehow better than swirling black.

  “Ryan?”

  The voice was nearby, though it sounded muffled to Ryan’s ears. A hand shook his shoulder.

  “Shrimp.” Mike peeled back the jacket. “Oh shit.”

  It must have been bad. Were his fingers blue? His eyes red? When would the coughing start? How long until he died?

  Mr. Reynolds stood a good distance apart. “We should leave him,” he said. “No way he’s going to make an escape in that condition.”

  “We don’t leave a man behind,” Drew said from somewhere behind Ryan. “I’ll carry him.”