No Dawn without Darkness: No Safety In Numbers: Book 3 (9 page)

G
I
N
G
E
R

IN THE THIRD-FLOOR SERVICE HALLS

W
e started at the IMAX and we’ve been working our way out, searching stockrooms, stores, even under the tables in restaurants for Lexi. I time the pace of our search to the volume of Maddie’s breaths: As she wheezes louder, I search faster. When we started, I was careful—I knocked on doors, threw in a glow stick to check for potential attackers, searched methodically and tried not to make too much of a mess—now I fling open the door, flash on my light, and tear through every goddamned corner.

We’ve found some people, none of them Lexi. In one stockroom, we were nearly shot by a security guard hunkered down behind a wall of shelving, his voice distorted by a fireman’s plastic face mask as he warned, “I will kill both of you if you come any closer.”

In the back of the sports bar, we find a pile of bodies. All flu deaths. They must have gotten sick together and died, one by one.

“What do you
(wheeze),
think it feels like
(wheeze),
to die?” Maddie stares at the pile, leaning against the edge of a countertop like she’d crumble without it.

“These people died of the flu,” I say. “It felt like having the flu.” She shouldn’t be dwelling on this. We need to keep moving. I sweep the room with my light.

“Do you think it hurts?” She takes a pull on her inhaler. “I don’t remember what it felt like when I had the flu.”

The bodies are bloated and smelly. Blood oozes from the eyes, the mouths, the noses. The skin of the hands and faces is splotchy black. How could they not have felt that? How could their deaths have been anything other than horrific?

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Neither of us have the flu.” I flash my light in the last unexplored corner. “Lexi’s not here. Next stockroom.”

“I’m going to die,” Maddie says.

I refuse to look at her. I storm over to the door and open it. “Let’s go.”

“I can
(wheeze),
feel it.”

“It’s just the dark,” I say. “The dark is depressing.”

She laughs, wheezes, coughs. “We’re tripping over bodies stacked like pancakes and you say the
dark
is depressing?”

“The dark is depressing
me,
” I say, though we both know the dark is nothing compared to the sound of Maddie’s breathing.

Please, Lexi, be in the next stockroom.
Please . . .

• • •

We reach the arcade, which we know is clear, and I’m about to suggest braving the fire stairway toll-takers to begin searching the second floor, when I realize Maddie is not beside me.

“Mad?” I whisper into the black.

My voice echoes around the hall. No answer.

I fumble in my bag for my light. Turn it on. To hell with any attacker, I have lost Maddie.

The light finds her some ten feet back, slumped against the wall. I run to her.

“Mad!”

She’s wheezing. I grab her bag, but she stops my hands.

“It’s empty,” she manages between choked breaths.

“Both?”

She drops her chin to her chest, coughing and wheezing on.

No. This is too soon. Goddammit, Maddie, you used too much. Wasted what you had! We need Lexi to get into the HomeMart, and we need to get into the HomeMart to save you!

“Okay,” I say. “We go to the HomeMart and bang on the door until they answer. They can leave us out here, but they have to give us an inhaler. They have to.”

Maddie feebly waves a hand. “Look at the light,” she whispers.

The beam from my flashlight is a solid cone of sparkles. I can taste the air on my tongue. It’s like licking the inside of a chimney.

“You’ll be fine once we get a new—”

She coughs, swipes a hand at my face. “Can’t make it,” she wheezes. “Can’t walk.”

I wish I could carry her. But I couldn’t carry anyone on a good day, let alone when I’m exhausted and have only eaten Snickers bars and water for days. I could go there on my own—except how could she defend herself? No, we have to stay together. But she needs air.

The security guard.

He had an oxygen mask.

He doesn’t need it. He would be just like the rest of us without his mask. But Maddie, she’ll die without it. I could go talk to him. Reason with him. He’s a policeman. Sort of. It’s his duty to serve and protect. His duty to give me his mask.

“I’m going to get you an oxygen mask.”

Maddie gives me the
oh-honey
look. Screw it. I hug her, drag her as best I can flush against the wall so no one will trip over her, and then run through the dark, flashlight beam bouncing, to find that stupid guard.

• • •

His was the second door down from where we started. Or was it the third? The third is silent, no guard. So the second.

I open the door, throw in a glow stick.

“I will shoot!” he barks.

“I need your help!” I yell back.

“Go away!”

“Please!” I shine the light on myself, reveal my completely unthreatening lameness to him. “I couldn’t hurt you if I wanted to.”

He doesn’t say anything in response, which I take as a good sign.

“I need your help,” I continue. “My friend is dying.” My voice chokes on the word. I force myself to keep going. “She has asthma and can’t breathe this disgusting air. Please, give me your oxygen mask. She’ll die without it.”

“I’m not giving you crap.”

“What?” Did he just say what I think he said?

“All you teens can die as far as I care. Get out before I shoot you.”

“Aren’t you supposed to help people?” I manage. “Isn’t that your job?”

“My job, kid, was to lock all of the healthy teens up and tie down the sick in the med center to try to keep all of you from dying.” I hear a click—did he just load a weapon? “But that was before you blew the electricity. Then you killed Skelton, Goldman, Kearns. Now I’m staying locked down until I get the all clear to return to the HomeMart.”

“The all clear?” I click off my light. No sense in giving him a target.

“Once you all have died of the flu or have killed each other—the all clear. I knew you kids would lose it the second security pulled out. I told Goldman. He should have stayed in the HomeMart.” His feet scuffle across the ground. “You still here?” He pauses. “You better get out before I make you get the hell out. I am not dying out here, not for you animals.”

I drop to the ground and crawl into his room, toward where his voice had been.

“Hey,” he shouts. “I said get out of here!” His voice is quieter, echoes down the hall. He’s yelling into the service passage.

The door clicks shut. “You still in here?”

I try to remember the layout. His shelf was about fifteen feet from the door, on the left. My hand hits something. The shelf? I lie down in front of it, inch onto my side to make myself invisible.

His footsteps slap on the cement toward me, then I hear clothing rustle—he must have to squeeze himself between something and the shelf to get back behind it.

What am I doing here? How am I going to get the mask from him? I need a plan. I’ll wait for him to fall asleep—no, Maddie needs the mask now. No waiting. No plan. I need the mask.

The shelf.

Lying on my back, I spin my body and brace my shoulders against the floor. My toe hits a solid part of the shelf. I kick hard against it with both legs.

The shelf is heavy but this is for Maddie’s goddamned life, so I push harder, put every muscle I have into it, and the thing starts to tilt.

“What the hell?” the guard screams, and then I hear the thud and crash of boxes and whatever else was on the shelf. The guard groans, yells, swears, then shouts, “I will shoot you!” and clicks on a flashlight.

He’s trapped, caught between the shelf and the one behind it, suspended like a fly in a web.

I climb onto the shelf, my fingers grabbing for whatever part of him I can find. I locate what I think is an arm, then grope around until my knuckles knock on something smooth—the mask.

“I will kill you!” He reaches for me and drops the light.

The floor is now visible. I grab a metal tube lying under him. And then I kneel over his writhing body, silhouetted through the shelving, and hit him with it, anywhere, everywhere, except for where the mask is.

A gun fires.

I smash his hand. He yelps with pain and the gun clatters to the ground.

Fingers reach through the shelf, scratch my legs. I hit him over and over. The shelf shifts, like he’s trying to push it. I keep going. The shelf settles. His hand falls away.

I swallow, my throat is dry.

The mask.

I pull it free. Then follow the tube to the oxygen tank, which is strapped to him. My trembling hands work the release buckle, and the tank comes loose. I lift it and the tube through the shelves.

And then I’m gone, through the black, into the deeper black of the hallway, down, down the hall, into the darkness. My breath hiccups.

It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter. He should have given it to me. He didn’t need it. He should have given it to me.

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

B
axter’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.

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.