No Safety in Numbers

  Racing away from one testing station only brought him closer to another—they were set up everywhere. And now security guards patrolled the halls in groups of two. Ryan passed a man who began coughing up a lung. A pair of guards was on him in a second.

  Ryan ran to Shep’s, stopping only once he was inside the doorway. He bent over a weight bench display to catch his breath. The climbing wall was at the back. Thankfully, it looked like they were letting people up and still had the auto belay devices running for solos.

  “Well, look what just fell into our laps,” a voice snarled from down the aisle.

  Ryan checked over his shoulder and saw two of the Tarrytown linemen striding toward him. He was about to bolt for the door when a hand caught him around the back of the neck. “We have some unfinished business.”

  They dragged Ryan out into the hall, and steered him toward a narrow hallway labeled “Staff Only.” He knew he should scream. But what kind of loser screams for help in the middle of a mall?

  The guy holding his neck threw him forward, and Ryan thrust his hands in front of himself to keep from smashing against a metal door. He flipped over to face them.

  “You West Nyack cocksuckers are always strutting around like you’re hot shit,” one of them said. He feinted at Ryan’s head; Ryan blocked high; the kid nailed him in the gut.

  Ryan doubled over. He’d never been punched before. Sacked, tackled, but not punched. The pain was exquisite.

  “He doesn’t look like hot shit now,” another grunted.

  A foot connected with his face, dropping Ryan to his butt. He held his head to keep it from fracturing apart.

  “Asswipe’s not even defending himself,” another said.

  Ryan was pulled to his feet. A drop of blood fell from his nose, marking the tile. He lifted his eyes.

  “Put your hands up, you pussy,” the first snarled, bouncing slightly like some sort of boxer. “I guess Thad’s the only one with balls in your family.”

  Ryan wiped the back of his hand under his nose, leaving a trail of bright red across his skin. “I don’t want to fight,” he said. Blood dripped down his throat. After ten years of football, he was used to the taste.

  “I don’t give a shit what you want,” the guy said.

  He threw another punch at Ryan’s face. Ryan expected it this time and blocked. He ducked and drove his shoulder into the guy, pushing him against the other three. If he could push them down the hall, he could break free at the main corridor.

  “Get around him!” another shouted.

  Arms encircled Ryan’s chest, lifting him away from his target. One arm pulled back and punched him in the kidney. A knee connected with his groin, and Ryan collapsed forward. The guy let him flop onto the tile. They were all laughing. One gave him a final kick in the stomach. Then they left.

  Ryan allowed himself a few minutes to lie curled on the floor. He’d expected a fight to be more like practice—brutal, but not terrible. He’d forgotten the power of padding, the simple safety of a cup. It made him think of the time his father punched his mother. Ryan had not understood the pain involved. The violation. But Thad had gone ballistic and driven Dad’s car into a tree. Apparently, Thad had understood.

  Standing, he forced himself not to cry, but water slicked his cheeks nonetheless. He wiped his face on his shirt, which he thanked god was navy so the blood didn’t stand out too much. He managed a shambling walk down the hall. He prayed Mike and Drew were still in Abercrombie.

  The store was dark as usual, but Ryan spotted Mike in a pool of light shoving Sportade bottles and PowerBars into a backpack.

  “Shrimp,” Mike said, seeing Ryan’s silhouette approach. “We gathered some food in case of shortages.”

  Ryan stumbled forward, leaning on a rack of sweatshirts. “Tarrytown,” he muttered. “Assholes cornered me.”

  Mike dropped the bag and caught Ryan’s shirt, lowered him to the floor and helped him to lean against the wall.

  “What happened?” Mike said.

  Ryan told him. Mike’s face was stony. His eyes became harder, fiercer with each word.

  “Bonner,” Mike snarled at a dark corner. “Drop the chick. There are some shitheads in need of a lesson in manners.”

  Bonner emerged from the shadows, adjusting himself and zipping his fly. He caught a glimpse of Ryan’s face, which must have looked about as bad as Ryan felt.

  “Where are they?” Drew said.

  Ryan would not stay behind. He followed Mike and Drew through the halls as they trolled for the Tarrytown guys. They found the four dunking baskets at a game in the arcade. Drew ripped a fake shotgun out of the neighboring game and smashed three of them in the back of their heads, dropping them like rocks. Mike sucker-punched the other guy in the back, then grabbed his hair and wheeled him around to face Ryan.

  “Do you see what you did?” he whispered into the kid’s hair.

  The Tarrytown kid looked at Ryan. “Got your boys to come to your defense?” he taunted.

  Ryan took the plastic shotgun from Drew and smashed the kid in the face with the butt. The kid screamed. Blood shot from his nose, which lay at an odd angle to his face. Satisfaction calmed Ryan’s body; at the same time, fear bubbled up. Did I just break his nose?

  “What the fuck, Richter?” The kid’s voice sounded wet with blood.

  Mike smashed the kid’s head into the wall of a video game. “You mess with my family,” he said, “you mess with me.” He let the kid drop to the floor. “And my team is my family, got it, Martin?”

  The other three began to push themselves to standing. Drew nailed all three in the gut and they fell back to the floor.

  “Stay, shitbags,” he said.

  The manager of the arcade yelled for the cops and Mike cocked his head like it was time to go.

  “Hope you’ve learned your lesson,” Mike said. He put a shoulder under Ryan’s arm and helped him out of the arcade.

  Mike patted the manager on the shoulder as he passed. “Sorry about the mess.”

  The manager shrank back. That was the power of Mike—no one fucked with him.

  Drew seemed invigorated. He bounced on his feet as he walked, then turned to a random woman and screamed in her face, causing her to run shrieking in the opposite direction. Drew laughed and punched the air.

  A hazmat dude stepped out of the crowd, stared at Drew, then waved for a nearby mall cop.

  Mike smacked Drew in the back of the head. “Chill.”

  Drew dialed it down and tried to blend in. They reached the escalator and rode down toward the Abercrombie.

  Mike leaned Ryan against the railing, checked to see if the mall cop had followed. “I think it’s time we check in with Taco about our exit strategy.”

  Ryan had no idea what the dish kid had to do with an exit, but he was willing to go along with any strategy if it meant getting out of this rat cage.

  S

  H

  A

  Y

  Shay stroked Preeti’s head, which lay in her lap. Ever since their arrival yesterday at the emergency medical center, they’d been told to wait on folding chairs beside the glass front wall of what had once been a PaperClips. From the tinny beat thumping out of the headphones, Shay could tell Preeti was listening to Shay’s dance mix, made for her birthday party last spring. Ba had agreed to let Shay invite the whole theater company over. They played a game of Pictionary on a wipe board filched from Bapuji’s office, then turned on this silly spinning light thing Shweta had brought and had a massive dance party in the living room. When Shay escaped onto the back deck to get a breath of fresh air, Raj Patel had kissed her. It’d been nothing special, but nice anyway.

  Her family should never have moved. So what if Ba got a whole department to run at this new hospital? If they had stayed in Edison, Shay would never have dragged Nani to the mall on a Saturday—she would have gone with Shweta or Kaitlyn. Nani would have been home, safe.

  If only the stupid hazmat doctors would talk to her. Every time
she poked her head through the wall of curtain—which delineated the meager waiting area at the front of the ex-PaperClips from the actual medical part of the emergency medical center—she was told that someone would be with her shortly and would she please sit back down. She had been sitting on this folding chair for more than twelve hours—clearly “shortly” meant something different to these hazmat people.

  It was Preeti who’d reminded her about the date with Ryan. “Isn’t one of your boyfriends waiting for you in a bookstore?” she’d asked. Shay had completely forgotten. She’d bolted across to the Domestic Decor, snuck over to an abandoned sales desk, and called the bookstore to cancel. No way she was leaving that medical center without Nani. At this point, however—some seventeen hours after their arrival, now that she was looking at her watch—Shay was beginning to suspect the hazmat people would never consent to Nani’s removal from their clutches.

  A pair of security guards tromped through the plastic covering the former PaperClips’ doorway. Between them, an old woman stumbled on shaking legs. She began to cough loud, hacking coughs. She slipped from the guards’ grasp and fell to the floor, still coughing.

  Her ears were blue. Somehow, all Shay could focus on were the ears. They looked like something off a Halloween mask. The guards hefted the woman back to her feet and dragged her behind the curtain. Shay listened to the coughing as it drifted back through the space beyond the Wall of Curtain.

  “That lady seems pretty sick,” Preeti said.

  She did. And not normal sick. Shay hadn’t allowed herself to think too much about why the hell members of the medical team were in hazmat suits. In the parking garage, she’d heard the senator say something about anthrax. Had the bomb exposed them to anthrax?

  No. That was paranoid thinking. She felt fine. If there was anthrax somewhere, she would not feel fine. But what if old blue-ears was contagious? She had to get Nani out of this place.

  Shay held open the main curtain door for Preeti.

  “There’s just more curtain,” Preeti said. “How are we going to find Nani?”

  Shay peeked behind the nearest curtain. “Trial and error.”

  A machine started beeping madly somewhere near the back of the vast curtain complex. Several hazmat people swept aside a neighboring curtain, pushed past Shay and Preeti, and rushed to the source. They hadn’t even noticed the two infiltrators. This was Shay’s chance.

  Each curtain-room contained two cots, most only one person. On the fourth try, Shay found Nani lying down, looking up at the sliver of sky visible over the top of the curtain wall through the windowed front of the PaperClips. If Nani was awake, whatever diabetes crisis she’d suffered had to be over. Shay grabbed Preeti by the arm and dragged her swiftly into the room.

  “Nani?” Shaila asked, kneeling beside the cot.

  Nani covered her face with her sari and coughed. “Sweet girl,” Nani said, pushing herself up.

  “I’m getting you out of here,” Shay said.

  Nani nodded. “This is not a good place.”

  The beeping became a steady, high-pitched drone, then ceased. The tops of two hazmat suits drifted past the curtain that led to the main hall; Shay heard the scratchy voices of the medical people inside say “flatlined.”

  That old lady died?

  Nani slipped her feet over the side of the cot. She coughed again. But her ears were brown—the right color. She did not have whatever that other old lady had. She was not going to die.

  More hazmat suits were visible outside of their curtain-room. Shay would not be able to sneak Nani out the way she and Preeti had come in.

  Shay began peeking behind the other three curtain-walls. The two side walls bordered other curtained rooms, but the back curtain hung a few inches from the windowed exterior wall, and that narrow span of floor ran from where Shay stood all the way to the front of the store.

  Shay swept aside the back curtain. “Nani, come hide behind here,” she whispered.

  Nani looked at Shay, confused. “Dear one, you think they won’t notice us hiding?”

  Shay smiled wickedly. “Not if we sneak to the front of this place and out the door, they won’t.”

  Preeti bounced up. “Yes,” she said, grabbing Nani’s arm. “Come on, Nani.”

  Shay stood in front of Nani, and Preeti took up the rear. With their backs pressed against the windows, they walked on tiptoes with stomachs sucked in along the wall of the PaperClips. They passed beyond their room’s curtain to that of the one next to it. The person in that room—a woman, judging by the voice—was talking to someone.

  “I just have a cold,” she said. “The guy in the suit brought me here without even asking why I was coughing.”

  “That was protocol.” Another woman’s voice. Shay recognized it—it was the senator she’d seen on the first night in the parking garage. The senator continued, “We’re testing everyone, but I’ve asked the staff to bring anyone who seems sick here for more private treatment.”

  I’ve asked… Shay realized that the senator was running this show. The same senator who’d screwed up and gotten them all quarantined.

  In the next curtain-room, the person—a man—was shouting. “I want out of here, right now!” he bellowed.

  Suddenly, an elbow pierced through the curtains, smashing into the wall of the PaperClips and barely missing Nani’s head. Her eyes went wide with shock and Shay slapped her hand over her own mouth to remind Nani not to scream. Preeti’s face crumpled as if about to break into a sob. Silent tears trickled down her cheeks.

  The elbow was dragged back through the curtain wall. A muffled voice from one of the hazmat masks shouted, “Sedate him!” The man kicked the curtain, nailing Shay in the shin. She clamped her jaws to keep from screaming—he’d hit her good and hard. There’d be a mega bruise. Then the foot dropped onto the tile and slid back under the curtain. From the sounds of men grunting and metal squealing, the man was being wrestled onto a cot.

  Shay cocked her head and shuffled forward, limping slightly now. Her left leg throbbed from the blow. She bit the inside of her cheek to stay focused.

  The curtains ended ten feet from the front wall of the PaperClips. Shay peeked around the edge and saw that the only person in the waiting area was a guy about her age. He stared vacantly at the Wall of Curtain. Shay waved to Nani and Preeti and stepped quickly out into the waiting area.

  The boy looked up. He seemed surprised. Shay froze, afraid he’d give them away. Please, she mouthed, holding a finger to her lips.

  The kid nodded, then went back to staring at the curtains. He understood. She wondered if she should tell him about the space between the curtain and the wall, in case he needed it in the near future.

  “What are we waiting for?” Preeti whispered, taking her arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Shay nodded and took Nani’s hand.

  They walked slowly, casually out of the PaperClips, then through the plywood door and into the hall. Though Shay wanted to run as fast as possible away from that place, she didn’t want to draw any unwanted attention, so they walked at a snail’s pace down the short corridor. Once they reached the main hall, there were more people. Shay risked moving at a fast trot all the way to the other end of the mall.

  Shay had decided upon the inflatable mattress store, SnoozeSelect, because first, she’d never seen anyone shopping in it before, and second, there would be lots of full-sized beds for Nani to rest on. When they arrived at its entry, Shay noticed that no one—neither shopper nor salesperson—was inside. It was a lucky break—now Nani had a private bedroom down a corridor, off the main passageway, on the second floor, far from the senator’s prying eyes.

  Nani was breathing heavily.

  “Let’s get you resting on one of these,” Shay said, taking her grandmother’s arm and leading her to the bed farthest from the door.

  Nani patted her hand. “You’re so good to me,” she said. “I will have to show you my secret store of henna.”

  Shay pressed
her fingers to her chest in mock astonishment. “You have a secret henna store you haven’t told me about?”

  Nani leaned back into the pillows, smiling. “I have many secrets I have yet to tell you,” she said. “I thought this was why you kept trying to save me from death.”

  Shay smiled, more because her grandmother was trying to make a joke than at the joke itself.

  “What Snooze Setting are you?” Shay asked, picking up the remote. She pushed a button and a machine began pumping air into the mattress.

  Nani’s eyes widened and she gripped the sides of the bed. “What will they think of next?”

  Shay handed her the remote and left Nani to play with the settings. Preeti remained by the door, fingers wrapped around the door frame. Shay placed a hand on Preeti’s shoulder and she jumped.

  “There’s a table down there,” Preeti said, pointing at the end of the hall where the corridor met the main passage. “There’s a space-suited guy and a security guard sitting at it.”

  Shay watched people line up in front of the table. It was one of the testing stations mentioned in the morning announcement. One by one, the ex-shoppers sat in the chair next to the hazmat person. Each one had some blood drawn, and the vial of blood was placed in a metal box at the hazmat person’s feet. The security guard checked something off on his list—the person’s name, if the announcement was to be believed.

  Shay and Preeti stared at the operation for a few minutes. Shay wondered if it would have been better to have just stayed in the medical ward. Have I screwed up yet another thing?

  A little boy sat in the chair at the testing station. His mother stood behind him, hands gripping the plastic back. The boy coughed. The hazmat man looked up. The boy coughed again. The security guard lifted a walkie-talkie to his lips.

  A man—the boy’s father, it seemed—stepped forward and put one hand on his son’s shoulder, the other around his wife. When the hazmat man stood, the father picked his kid up and tried to leave. Two more security guards appeared from down the main hallway, behind the family. The mother punched at them and the father tried to run, boy under his arm like a sack of laundry. The guards grabbed the father and boy, who was crying. The first security guard came behind the mother, who was still attacking the two holding her family, and Tasered her in the back. She slumped into the guard’s arms.