No Safety in Numbers

  The other people in the line screamed and began pushing at each other to get away from the table. Shay’s knuckles were white where she gripped the door frame.

  Preeti buried her face into Shay’s armpit.

  Something terrible was going on in this mall. Shay just had to keep Preeti and Nani safe. Hide them until this—whatever it was—was over. If she could do that, everything would be fine.

  M

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  Someone had discovered Marco’s baby monitor. When he turned the receiver on, it started beeping, which he knew from experience meant he’d been found out. Now he would have to examine the PaperClips personally if he wanted to know what had happened with Shay and her grandmother, or the senator for that matter.

  The only problem was how to convince Seveglia to let him leave. There’d been some desertions in the ranks of the Grill’n’Shake staff, leading the manager to become suspicious of any and all break requests. He should have known he had nothing to fear from Marco—he needed this job and he had no desire to mingle with the gangs of kids aimlessly wandering the halls.

  One of the older dishwashers had developed a cough. Marco decided to check up on him. Roberto sat in a back corner on a stool. He held a well-used handkerchief in his hand.

  “Cold?” Marco asked in Spanish.

  “It’s sleeping in the damned kitchen,” Roberto said. “They could at least give us beds.”

  “I could take you to the emergency medical team that was in here last night.”

  “Like the boss would give us the time off,” Roberto said, smiling wryly.

  Marco held up a finger and went into Mr. Seveglia’s office. “Sir?”

  The manager, who was beginning to look pretty worn out himself, took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. “You got a problem, Carvajal?”

  “It’s not me, sir,” Marco said. “Roberto isn’t feeling great and I think it would be best to get him out of the kitchen. We can’t afford to have any of the remaining staff get sick.”

  Mr. Seveglia squinted at Marco as if probing his soul for the truth of the statement. Then he put the glasses back on and turned to his computer. “You take him down and bring him back,” Mr. Seveglia said. “No funny business.”

  Marco nodded and ducked out. He gave Roberto the thumbs-up. The old man looked shocked, but stood and followed Marco out of the kitchen.

  Outside of the Grill’n’Shake, the mall was bedlam. The older folks and families tended to stay in the stores during the day, only coming out at mealtimes or to use the bathrooms, and what few security guards there were seemed to only be interested in the sick. This left the halls and open spaces to the kids, and they were taking full advantage. If Marco had felt uncomfortable in high school, this situation was like the worst-case school scenario on steroids.

  “Get off my escalator!” some jerk taunted.

  “Yeah, get your illegal asses back to Mexico!”

  Roberto glanced at the kids, a look of concern on his face. “Is no one even trying to keep them in line?”

  “They didn’t throw anything,” Marco replied, stepping off the escalator. “I would say they’re practically restrained.” He would finish this recon mission, then get his ass back into the restaurant.

  The hall with the PaperClips was short and out of the way, so it was mostly empty. A guy rummaged through a trash bin near the corner off the main hall. As Marco passed, he emerged with a discarded fast-food bag.

  “Lunch,” the guy said to himself.

  Marco noted that the Pancake Palace, which stood behind the Dumpster diver, was now mysteriously closed, its windows papered over during the night from the inside. Since the restaurant bordered the PaperClips, Marco assumed the emergency medical people had expanded their domain. But why?

  “Where are we going?” Roberto asked as they neared the blocked exits.

  Marco tapped the door in the plywood wall. “Right this way,” he said.

  Marco pulled open the door, allowing Roberto to step in first.

  “Halt!”

  Marco remained hidden behind the door.

  “This area is restricted.” The voice sounded distorted. It must have been an Outsider in a mask.

  “Doctor?” Roberto asked in English.

  “Dr. Chen!” the voice called.

  Roberto began protesting in Spanish. “The kid told me you were medical people. I have a cold. Get your hands off of me!”

  The voices moved away, beyond Marco’s hearing. At least he’ll see a doctor…

  So there was no going in this door. Where else could the senator be? He recalled her mentioning something about the Apple Store during his confinement in the squad car. Perhaps she was using the Apple Store as a base of operations? It was also on the first floor and would have Internet access. He decided to check it out.

  Though the senator was absent, the Apple Store was clearly the center of something. Near the back of the store, a rotund man with a badge dangling from his pocket—some mall official—conferred with a man sitting at a desk with three different screens on it. The two were reviewing a thick stack of papers. From the handwriting and generally wrinkled state of the paper, those must have been the lists of people trapped in the mall.

  A girl in a hoodie sat under a computer table. In her lap was what appeared to be a walkie-talkie, but upon closer examination turned out to be a police scanner. Marco pretended to check out a nearby camera to better observe her. She clearly knew something was up. And she looked a bit like the senator, so he guessed she was her kid. He remembered the senator mentioning something about a kid.

  The girl suddenly dropped the scanner. It clattered to the floor. The man—her father?—stood and asked if she was all right. She waved him off, then stood, checked something on the computer, and walked out of the store. What did she hear?

  Marco had to talk to this girl. He’d gotten halfway down the hall after her when the guy who’d been with Richter and Bonner came running toward him. From the multi-colored bruise that was now his face, Marco guessed he’d taken a trip through a trash compactor.

  “Hey, Marco!” he shouted.

  That’s new, Marco thought. A Richterite who uses my given name.

  “What do you want?” Marco said, not stopping.

  The guy trotted to his side. “We’ve been looking for you,” he said.

  “How lucky for me,” Marco said, feigning surprise. “News flash: I don’t want to see you or your best pal Mike.”

  “Is this about yesterday?” the kid said. “Mike said you dinged his car, but he seems to be taking it way hard.”

  Marco stopped and gave this guy the once-over. “What happened to your face?”

  The kid brushed back his shaggy brown hair. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “We need your help.”

  Marco wondered if the face was Richter’s doing. “What makes Richter think I’d help him?”

  “Because we want to escape.”

  The word escape caught Marco’s interest. There would be no need to figure out what was wrong with the mall if he was no longer in it. “What makes you think I know how to escape the mall?” he said.

  “You know the service halls and stuff,” the guy said, waving his hand like Marco ran some black-market operation. “Look, you don’t have to help us, but this place is not safe.” He adjusted his shirt, wincing as if his own skin were painful to him. “You might want some people watching out for you. If you help us, we’ll have your back.”

  “Not once you get out of here you won’t,” Marco said.

  “Well, if we get out, you won’t need your back watched because we’ll be out.” He shuffled on his feet. “We just want to see if there’s a way to escape.”

  Marco thought about whether there could be any unguarded exit. The loading docks had to be watched—they were the obvious escape routes. And he’d seen on his last garbage run that all the parking garage entrance ramps were blocked with airtight barriers.
But there was an old fire escape out of the parking garage level in the service hallway that might be obscure enough to have been forgotten. It was down a little side hall and was just a hatch in the ceiling. Maybe that was unlocked? Perhaps I can find Shay and help her out of here?

  “Why would I show you an escape route when I can just go there myself, without you?” Marco said.

  “Because I’d skin you alive.” Fleshy hands plopped down on Marco’s shoulders. Bonner.

  “You wouldn’t be holding out on us, would you, Taco?” Mike said, slinking up from behind Drew.

  Having already implied the existence of an escape route, outright denial seemed impossible or at least the move most likely to result in a punch to the face. The better plan was balls-out confidence.

  “I might have an idea of how to escape,” Marco said, rolling his shoulders and shrugging off Drew’s grasp. “But I want something in return for showing it to you.”

  Drew cracked his knuckles. “You don’t seem to be in too great a bargaining position, Mallrat.”

  “I have an escape plan, and you don’t,” Marco said, crossing his arms over his chest, trying to look a bit braver than he felt. “So, yeah, I’m in a fairly good bargaining position.”

  Mike’s eyes squinted down to slivers. “All right, Taco,” he said. “What are your terms?”

  “First,” he said. “It’s Marco. And second, you give up trying to kill me.” This would be his insurance policy: In case he survived the killer air in the mall, he would not have to worry about being murdered by Mike at school.

  Mike lifted his eyebrows. “Whoa,” he said. “That’s steep. But I’m willing to meet your terms.” He held out a hand. “One escape for one get-out-of-beat-down-free card. What do you say, Marco?”

  Marco smiled and took his hand. “Not one. Forever.”

  Mike tugged on Marco’s clasped hand, pulling him closer. “This better work or all bets are off.”

  Marco jerked his hand out of Mike’s death grip. “No deal, then.”

  “Fine,” Mike said. “You show us the escape route and no matter what, hunting season’s over.”

  Was that fear in Mike’s voice? Marco couldn’t believe it: Richter the Rioter was freaked out. So there is a human being under all that macho crap. Marco felt like he could trust this human Mike’s word. And if they ran into any cops or anything in the service hallways, Marco would have some muscle with him to fend them off. It was too bad he hadn’t located Shay first, but opportunity was knocking and this was his best shot.

  “Then we have an agreement,” he said.

  Mike and Drew were ticked when Marco told them that they had to go all the way up to the third floor to get down to the basement. And not only the third floor, but the service corridor by the Grill’n’Shake.

  “My card key works for that elevator door and that elevator door only,” Marco said. “Otherwise, I could just ride into the service area of the BestBuy and take whatever I wanted from their storage shelves.”

  “Are you saying that all of these stores have service halls behind them?” Drew asked, brow furrowed like a Neanderthal contemplating his first tool.

  “No, this is the only one,” Marco said. “The other stores beam in their merchandise.”

  “How about you check the attitude before he breaks your face.” Mike was not amused.

  The service corridor was off the public hallway that led to the mall bathrooms. Marco wondered why there weren’t more people lined up to use the bathrooms, but as he got closer, the question was answered by his nose. There were outhouses that smelled better.

  “Does anyone clean this place?” asked the kid who’d introduced himself as Ryan. He held his hand to his face.

  “After cleaning the bathrooms in the Grill’n’Shake,” Marco said, “I can assure you that trying to keep up with the slobs trapped in this mall would be a full-time job for a four-man cleaning crew.”

  “So where is this cleaning crew?” Mike said, peeking into the men’s room and instantly ducking back out.

  “Janitors normally come in at night,” Marco said. “Guess no one was here when they locked us in.”

  “I am so glad we’re getting out of here,” Drew said.

  They arrived at the unmarked service door. Marco checked to make sure no one was watching, then slipped his card key into the scanner and pushed open the door. “This way,” he said.

  The service corridor was wide—it had to be to roll in the huge pallets of frozen food they used at the Grill’n’Shake and roll out the giant garbage carts. The walls were gray-white, perhaps to match the cement floor, and fluorescent lights hung from the high ceiling. It had all the charm of a morgue.

  The elevator required another scan to open it, and yet another to select the floor you wanted to go to. Marco’s card opened every one. Once The Three Douches were on board, Marco ran his card and hit PARKING LEVEL, and they began to sink down.

  “So what’s the plan once we get there?” asked Ryan. He seemed jumpy.

  “We pray there are no cops or government agents in hazmat suits and make for the escape hatch.” Marco slipped the card back into his pocket.

  Everyone stiffened at the idea of meeting anyone official on their little mission. Drew cracked his knuckles like he was cocking his six-shooters for the big showdown.

  The elevator dinged and the doors opened on the familiar grayness that was the parking garage service hall. The HVAC fans clicked on and began their growling whir.

  “What’s that?” Drew asked, sounding like a freaked-out little kid.

  “The HVAC fans,” Marco said, feeling smugly superior. “Remember? You chased me in there two days ago.”

  “So that’s where you went,” Mike said, like he should have known, like it had all been some game of hide-and-seek and not find-and-obliterate.

  Marco wanted to say, That’s where I found the bomb that’s meant to kill us all, but decided against it.

  Down the hall on the left was the tiny indent in the cement wall with the cheap exit sign over it. Mike peered into the space, suspicious, like Marco was playing some joke, then noticed the hatch in the ceiling. “Well, I’ll be a donkey’s dick.” He whipped a finger at Drew and pointed at the floor. “Down.”

  Drew complied like the lapdog he was, getting down on all fours. Mike climbed onto his friend’s back and began twisting the hatch’s wheel-handle. It wound a half turn, then jammed.

  “What the,” Mike said, throwing all his weight into turning the thing. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Shrimp,” he yelled. “Broom.”

  Ryan grabbed a broom that had been left leaning against the wall and handed it to Mike. Mike jammed the broom handle into the wheel and tried turning it again. Marco gritted his jaw to mirror Mike’s effort. Turn, you bastard.

  The broom handle snapped.

  Mike threw the pieces, dropped off Drew’s back, and slammed his fists against the wall. “Fuck!” he shouted. His voice echoed up and down the halls.

  Marco felt disappointment seep through his body. If even this exit was locked down, what escape route remained? “Shut up,” he said. “Last thing we need is a visit from the cops.”

  “You shut up, Taco,” Mike said. He shoved past Marco and walked toward the service elevator. “Take us back into our prison.”

  They rode up to the third floor in silence. When they reached the service hall, Mike pushed his way out first, followed by Drew. They stormed down the passage and out into the public hall without so much as a see you later. Ryan, however, clapped a hand on Marco’s shoulder before leaving the elevator.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “For nothing,” Marco added.

  Ryan shrugged. “At least we tried.” He ran down the hall after his fellow Douches.

  Marco checked his watch. He’d wasted an hour. Seveglia would be looking for him. Marco decided to abandon his search for the senator’s kid and Shay. There was no sense in pissing off the boss by being late. He would already have to explai
n away Roberto’s abduction. He took the service corridor to the back entrance of the Grill’n’Shake and prepared for his fifth shift.

  L

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  I

  Knowing one’s way around a home electronics department had its advantages. When Lexi noticed that the police communicated with the medical teams through walkie-talkies, she picked up a multi-frequency scanner at the HomeMart and took the liberty of modifying it to listen in on their conversation. No need to snoop on the PaperClips now that she had one of these babies. She slid on some headphones and leaned back on her unicorn comforter to let the information come to her.

  At first the chatter was bland. Then it got interesting.

  “Samples have been prepped for testing.”

  Then it got terrifying.

  “Negative for smallpox. Beginning tests for tularemia. Team considering not going forward with Ebola screen as too few dead.”

  She dropped the thing onto the tile.

  “You okay, hon?” her dad called. He was trying to organize something for the Senator at a computer across the room.

  Lexi snatched back the scanner, pressed it against her chest.

  “Yes,” she yelled, too loud.

  She scrambled onto the stool, hacked the Internet, and began searching for what the hell tularemia was.

  The Internet was surprisingly helpful. She found all sorts of information on bioterrorism. Signs and symptoms of various toxins. After scanning a few webpages, she needed to excuse herself to the bathroom to throw up.

  So this was what the evil scientists were looking for.

  Deadly bioweapons.

  She had to walk. Every time someone coughed, she lurched the other way. The flimsy surgical masks she could get at the pharmacy wouldn’t protect her, so she focused on what she could do: hand washing, avoiding physical contact with other human beings. From her vomit-visit, she knew the bathrooms were the last place one should go to wash one’s hands, so she bought a giant bottle of hand sanitizer. She’d rubbed the stuff over her skin about fifty times.