No Safety in Numbers (12 page)

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.

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.

S
omeone 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.