No Dawn without Darkness: No Safety In Numbers: Book 3 (12 page)

G
I
N
G
E
R

ON THE WAY TO HOMEMART

S
hay stops the bike when the headlamp finds solid wall. She twists the handlebars, scanning the concrete with the beam until she finds a door marked
FIRE
.

“The HomeMart should be up those stairs,” she says, and cuts the engine.

We slip off the bike. Shay leaves the headlight on, so we’re not sucked back into the endless black that surrounds us. I drop the nail gun and walkie-talkie by the wall, then help Shay carry Lexi across the pavement.

“I’ll get the door,” Shay says.

The last time I saw Lexi, we’d been doing laundry, the three of us. Maddie and I left to sample clothes from our secret closet. I’m still wearing the top she told me to try on.

Marco stole our chance. He took the
one
chance Maddie had and hid it from us in the basement. So our plan didn’t fail, it never could have succeeded in the first place. All because of Marco.

Lexi’s eyes flutter, then squint at me. “Ginger?” she whispers.

Tears spill down my cheeks. “We’re taking you to your mom,” I say.

“Help me!” a voice rasps and a man claws his way into the cone of the headlight.

Shay grabs the nail gun.

“This is almost over,” she says to him. “We have no food. Just the bike, which you can have. But we need to go up those stairs to the HomeMart.”

“Take me with you,” the man says. “Don’t leave me.”

“We won’t leave you,” Shay says, taking the man’s hand.

Is she insane? He’s going to kill us.

But he doesn’t. The man takes her hand and begins to cry.

Then she turns to me, smiling. It’s like she’s seen the future, already knows we make it out.

I nod, and pick up the walkie-talkie.

Shay leaves the nail gun by the bike. We each take a side, shoulder to Lexi’s shoulder, and slowly, the shadow guy gripping Shay’s hand like a lifeline, make our way up the stairs.

• • •

The stairwell lets us out in a service hallway. The first door we come to has the word
HomeMart
spray-painted across it.

Shay goes right up to it and knocks.

“I knocked,” the man says. “They didn’t answer.”

“I’m sure a lot of people have knocked on this door,” I say. Lexi is heavier than I can manage, and we slump down the wall to the floor.

“I’m sure people haven’t knocked, then
called
.” Shay takes the walkie-talkie from my hand, clicks on the volume, and squeezes the talk button. “Senator Ross, it’s Shaila Dixit. I have Lexi. I’m at the service door. Please let us in.”

She releases the button.

The senator’s probably long gone by now. The government cleared the adults out, I’m sure, left the rest of us—

“Miss Dixit?”

We lock eyes. Holy crap, she’s really still here. It hits me that I never thought this would work, that the whole time, even with Maddie, I thought I was merely stalling Death, not betting on survival.

“Yes!” Shay yells, then remembers to hold the talk button. “Yes,” she says again, more calmly. “Senator, we need to talk to you—”

“You have Lexi? She’s alive?”

“Yes,” she says, giving me the thumbs-up. “We’re outside a door on the south side of the store. I need to tell you something. I have Dr. Chen’s notes.”

There’s a pause.

“Wait by the door.”

I clutch Lexi to me, hug her so hard that even in her near-comatose state she weakly swats at me and whispers, “Too tight.”

Something in the door clunks. It opens. The senator stumbles out into the dark. “Shaila?” A lantern flickers to life. The senator’s face is haggard. Her hair is a spiky nest. “Miss Dixit?”

Behind her is more darkness. Shouldn’t there be light? People? I think I hear banging.

“Where is everyone?” Shay asks.

“They’re trying to escape, have been for hours. At this point, it’s just something to do,” she says. Then she turns to me. “Lexi!” she cries, and falls to her knees.

She throws her arms around her daughter and catches me in the hug too. My body starts shaking with sobs. I don’t even feel sad, I’m just crying, like my brain still has to catch up.

“I have Dr. Chen’s notes,” Shay says, interrupting. “Do you still have some connection to the government outside?”

The senator releases me, keeps one hand on Lexi like she could disappear at any moment. “Thank you for bringing her. I didn’t think I’d get to say good-bye.” She smiles at Shay like Lexi’s already dead. “Here,” she says, and pulls the satellite phone I’d seen her with back in the normal mall from a pocket. “You can call, but they won’t answer. I’ve been leaving messages for days. At least you both can say good-bye to your families.”

And I thought I’d been blown away before. My chest sucks inward, but it’s not breath, it’s just that I’m completely shattered.

Shay takes the phone. “They’ll answer my call,” she says, and hits the call button.

She waits, and I hear the recording. Shay gazes into the lantern light, then speaks. “My name is Shaila Dixit. I have the notes of Dr. Chen from the CDC.” She explains about the mutation. That we’re not a threat anymore. Then hangs up.

“Do you know what happened to Dr. Chen?” the senator asks.

“Someone shot him,” Shay says.

The senator nods like she expected it.

Shay calls again. She tells about how Dr. Chen must have figured all this stuff about the mutation out right before he died, that he must have tested his idea on her because she was coughing blood, hours from death herself, when she got to the med center, but she lived. She’s the proof he was right. She hangs up.

“I’m so sorry,” the senator says. She holds Lexi, and it’s not clear which of us she’s speaking to.

Shay calls again. She tells them she started a fire in the bookstore and that it’s spread. That the whole mall will burn to the ground with everyone inside it, and that it doesn’t have to be that way. That they could save us. That all they have to do is pick up the phone.

She started the fire? And Marco stole Lexi out from under us. The senator locked us out in the mall, the government locked us in here. They all screwed us, Maddie. Everyone let us down.

“My next call is to 911,” Shay says, leaving yet another message. “I will tell them everything I told you, and ask that they share it with whatever news agency will listen. I am not letting this place go down without a fight.”

The man from the basement crawls into the circle of light.

“John?” the senator says. “Goldman said you got separated. I had hoped you survived.”

He gives her a pinched smile.

And then the phone rings.

All four of us jump.

“Hello?” Shay says.

We all lean in for the answer.

M
A
R
C
O

MALL OFFICES AND PET STORE

I
carry Preeti and another kid down to the first floor on my bike. The pet store is near the escalator and looks empty, so I stash them in there in a dog bed. As I ride back up to get the next invalid, I pass Ryan and the gimps fumbling down the steps through the smoke.

“I put the kids in the pet store,” I say, pausing at the top of the stairs.

“There’re more in the back room on the right.”

The book light in the hall looks like a lighthouse locked in fog, the smoke’s so thick. I haul the girl closest to the door out into the hall. The air is sticking in my throat. Thank you, Senator, for keeping a supply of face masks handy. I sling on two, but still can barely breathe.

I heft the girl’s body onto the bike. One arm on the handlebars, one arm around the girl, we bump and ride down to the first floor.

Ryan’s made it down with the crew of the damned. He’s setting them up near the cloudy remains of the fish tanks.

“Here’s another.” I let the kid slide off the bike onto a stack of cat litter bags. She starts to roll off. I stick a leg out and catch her before she hits the tile.

“This is better, right?” Ryan asks as he eases the sick girl off my foot and onto the ground.

“Better than running a crew? Better than kicking everyone’s ass? No. This is not better than that.”

He shakes his head like I’m such a moron.

“You self-righteous prick,” I say. “Like you’re not getting off on your moral superiority. Like your bagging Shay doesn’t make you feel like the biggest dick in the room. In the immortal words of Mel Brooks,
It’s good to be the king,
and you know it.”

“It feels good to help people, yeah,” he says, dragging the girl to a pile of dog jackets near the wall. “But I didn’t bag Shay. She’s not baggable. Your problem?” He’s back in my face. “You’re pissed because she chose me over you. You just wanted someone to like you. But who the hell really likes a bully?”

“Screw you.” I start the damn bike and roar out of there like a goddamned hurricane.

Screw all of these people. Screw the whole goddamned mall. Screw this fire. Screw the smoke. I rev the bike and just ride and ride. As a wall looms, I turn up the stairs and fly the other way.

Holy crap. The whole second floor is just people running, screaming. Some are trying to get down out of the smoke, but most have joined in the bedlam my old crew ignited in the food court. That place is like a mosh pit.

Bodies slam into one another. Punches fly. Hair is pulled. They don’t even seem to notice the fire.

I keep riding. I bump up the stairs and park outside the mall offices and slink inside like the asshole I am and grab the next sick douche in the lineup.

As I drag his limp body down the hall, the front door handle rattles.

No one I want to run into would be coming in here. I drop the guy’s arms. What the hell is weaponizable in this place?

“I saw you come in here, Headlamp.”

Holy shit, it’s Knife-fist. This guy won’t die!

The nearest door opens into an office crammed with useless computers. I duck in, grab a flat screen, and wait. He steps into the doorway.

I smash him in the face with the screen and drive him back down the hall.

He swipes at me with his armored knuckles, catches the good side of my face. I duck, and the blades scrape up my cheek. He knees me in the gut, kicks my calf.

“Told you I would kill you,” he says.

I catch him in a headlock. “You’ll have to try harder than that.”

He pulls me onto his back and drags me into the reception room, then spins and slams my spine against the wall, squeezing the air from my lungs. I lose my grip on him. Knife-fist thrusts away from my body, turns, pulls back his arm to nail me with his claws.

I tackle him. He falls onto the reception desk. I pin his arms with my knees. His head hits the window frame Heath broke forever ago. I crawl on top of him. This all started because of him. My hands wrap around his neck. Everything was fine before his people started the stupid war. I have him over the edge of the window frame. I had a gang before he broke them apart. Shards of broken glass cut his skin, and his blood runs over my fingers.

He’s glaring up at me.

Then his face changes.

His eyes widen. Mouth falls open.

He’s afraid.

Knife-fist, afraid?

Of what?

Of
me.

I start to sweat. He’s not moving. His head lolls over the edge of the window frame. I’m sweating so much, it’s running off my scalp, down my forehead, across my nose. Drops fall onto Knife-fist’s dead face. I hate this guy. He tried to kill me. And yet I pull away so I don’t drip on him. The sweat hits my burned cheek and the skin flares anew. Snot runs out of my nose.

I crawl off Knife-fist and stumble back into the mall.

Then somewhere outside, thunder booms.

An explosion?

Does it matter?

Glass shatters. Light, brighter than a thousand headlamps, shines down from above.

The central skylight has dropped inward. Black smoke belches out into clear blue.

It’s sunlight. It’s blinding.

• • •

The sick guy I dragged from the back has risen from the dead and finds me.

“Is it—?” he asks, arm shielding his eyes from the strip of sunlight. I guess he’s too afraid to say
over.

It doesn’t feel over.

“Attention, shoppers.” The voice is alien, shouting down at us like a god.

Can they seriously be calling us shoppers?

The sky is so blue, it seems fake. Using my hand as a visor, I scan the rim of black ceiling and find a person clad in a blue hazmat suit holding a megaphone perched on the edge of the roof.

“May I have your attention.”

Like we’re paying attention to anything else.

“The quarantine has been suspended. Emergency fire and rescue personnel have been brought in to control the blaze. Please make your way to the central courtyard. We are working on an exit strategy.”

Mike.

I need Mike.

I stumble forward, out of the mall offices, down the escalator, and run for the food court. I step over a girl whose leg is bent the wrong way. Two kids stand frozen mid-fight, fists gripping each other’s clothing, and stare up at the tear in our universe.

“Smell the air?” one says.

“It’s cold,” replies the other.

“Mike!” I yell.

Some people are crying. Some are running toward the escalators, racing to the central courtyard, desperate to be processed. Some reach a hand out to help those who can’t run on their own.

“Mike!” I scream.

He’s not near the carousel or the twisted remains of the Ferris wheel. I look across the food court, past the stream of people. A shadow moves in the billowing smoke on the other side.

“Mike!”

The smoke and flames blow sideways, first one way, then the other, as the clean air flows down and the hot, dead air of the mall rushes out. A cloud separates and I catch Mike’s legs, then his body, then his elbow, bent.

Glock barrel against his head.

“Don’t you dare!” My words catch. Tears shred my face.

He stumbles deeper into the smoke.

I chase him into the atrium.

“Get away from me,” he says, still holding the gun to his head.

“We walk out of here together.”

He pushes me away. “Tell them I had the flu.”

I punch him in the gut, and make a grab for the gun.

The gunshot is deafening. My hand feels like it’s been ripped in two.

“What the hell?” Mike rasps.

I fall to my knees, tuck my hand into my belly. So much pain. But also no pain, just a fizz, my whole body dissolving.

Mike grabs my shoulder, shakes me hard. “I only had the one bullet,” he yells. “I was saving it!”

“You shot me,” I say.

“I was fucking saving it!”

The smoke is thick, and I can’t see his face.

“I can’t walk out of here without you,” I say.

Mike lets go of my shoulder. I hear footsteps. He’s leaving me.

Then the smoke shifts. And Mike is wrapping my hand in something. He didn’t leave. I drop my head against his chest.

When I come to, he is dragging me, my arm slung across his shoulders, out into the light.