No Safety in Numbers (21 page)

As much as the hazmat-suited doctors pretended to give a crap about Preeti and Nani, Shay could tell they couldn’t care less about her family’s survival. Every hour or so, someone would poke their tented head through the curtains, but only to ensure that the machines were all beeping properly. Not so at her mother’s hospital. If they could just get the hell out of here, Shay knew that Ba could save them.

But how to escape? Ryan was long gone. Nani’s car was in the outdoor lot. All Shay had was a piece of information, something the senator would not like let out of the bag.

Shay put the cup of ice on the metal tray between the two beds and exited the curtain-room. She grabbed a hazmat suit by the sleeve.

“I need the senator,” she said.

The suit turned. The man picked her fingers from the plastic. “Please don’t pull the fabric,” he said. “The senator is helping other patients. She’ll see you when she’s available.”

She’ll see me now or she’ll regret it.

Shay began a room by room search for the woman. As she neared the front, she saw her step out of a curtain-room.

“Senator,” Shay stated. “I have to speak with you.”

The woman looked worn out. Her suit was wrinkled. A piece of hair stuck out at an awkward angle. Her dark skin had an ashy tone. But her eyes were fierce as a tiger’s. “Miss Dixit, there’s a bit of a line.”

“I know you’re the reason we’re all stuck in here.” Shay felt rather ferocious herself.

The senator stood straighter. “I’m not sure what you think you know, Shaila, but I’m happy to hear what you have to say.”

“I have a proposition.” Shay swallowed. “You get my grandmother and sister out of here and to my mother’s hospital and I won’t tell people that it was your screwup that got us all quarantined in the first place.”

The senator’s face softened. Shay wanted to punch that face with its look of pity.

“Miss Dixit,” the senator said, placing her hand on Shay’s shoulder. “Even if I could get your grandmother and sister out, I would not do it. Yes, you’re right, it was my call originally to lock down the mall, and that was technically against protocol. But protocol is being altered as we speak, given the gravity of our current situation, and I doubt you could find many outside the mall to support your claims of wrongful imprisonment.

“I understand that you are upset and worried, but that is really no excuse for extortion and I would appreciate you thinking more carefully before attempting to blackmail a public official. It is, after all, a crime.”

The senator squeezed her shoulder and walked away.

Shay felt like a husk, like her soul had flown free quite some time ago. She had to get out. Get away. There had to be a way out.

She needed an ally, a friend, a coconspirator. Ryan had mentioned that Marco had tried to help him escape. Maybe he could help her. Maybe together, they could come up with some previously inconceivable route out.

Shay checked back in on Preeti and Nani. No change—Preeti slept, Nani coughed.
I will get you out of here.

She grabbed her bag and legged it for the Grill’n’Shake. By some lucky twist of fate, Marco was leaving the restaurant just as she approached.

“Hey!” she yelled, putting on her friendliest face and giving him a big wave.

Marco froze for a second, glared at her. “What do you want?”

Shay wasn’t sure why he was so cold. It didn’t matter. Whatever the reason, she had to turn things around. “Just the person I was looking for!” she said, smiling wide.

His shoulders relaxed slightly. “Really?”

She threw her arms around him. “Really,” she said. It felt good to hold a body.

Marco stiffened in her embrace and she let him go.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m all messed up. Nani’s sick. So is Preeti.”

“Sick how?”

Shay felt tears bloat her eyelids. “The doctors won’t say anything. They’re both just sick with like the worst cold ever.”

“It’s not a cold,” Marco said. He waved her over to a bench in the corner, away from the crowds. “It’s the flu. A killer flu, like in the movies.”

It was as if she’d known all along. “The bomb?”

He nodded. “We have to get out of here,” he said.

“That is exactly why I came up here,” she said, relieved he’d brought it up, relieved that maybe he’d already worked out the method of their escape. “So how do we do it?” she asked.

Marco leaned back on the bench, raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m working on it.”

Shay held her head in her hands. There had to be some way out.
Think, think.

Somewhere, off to her left, a woman dropped to the floor, taking a metal stand of whirligigs down with her. The people around her backed away. The woman began to wheeze and suck air, like she was choking. A security guard used his walkie-talkie, and a hazmat guy arrived within minutes with a stretcher. He loaded the woman onto it and took her away. As soon as she was gone, the crowd began to flow again. The merchant picked up the stand, rearranged the whirligigs. It was like nothing had ever happened.

“The EMC,” Shay said. “In the PaperClips. The hazmat people have to be going in and out from somewhere in there.”

Marco sat up. “We could sneak in through the service corridor, leave without them even knowing we were there.”

“You have a key?” Shay leaned toward him.

“No,” he said. “But I know where we can get one.”

They sat outside the Grill’n’Shake and watched for the two guards Marco had served earlier. After a half hour, they emerged and trotted toward the elevators.

Shay and Marco watched them sink down the glass-enclosed shaft, saw them travel all the way down past the first floor.

“The parking garage,” Marco said.

They followed the officers down in the next elevator. The garage was mostly empty. Toward the back wall, they heard voices, the bleat of a walkie-talkie. Marco motioned
to her, and they slunk along behind the parked cars toward the rear wall.

Some makeshift cages of chain-link fencing stood along the wall. The two guards they’d followed were leaning over the prone body of a cop.

“He’s breathing,” one guard said.

“Those demolition derby assholes did this,” the other said. “I will make them pay.”

The first guard patted his partner’s shoulder. “Let’s get him to the Suits.”

They picked up their friend by the arms and legs and carried him back toward the elevator.

“What do we do now?” Shay whispered.

Marco held a finger to his lips. Then he pointed at a shadow beyond the cages: Another downed guard.

Once the two had carried their friend to the elevator, Marco and Shay crept up to the guard lying in the shadows. A walkie-talkie lay next to him. A thin dribble of blood ran from the corner of his mouth.

“Is he dead?” Shay asked.

Marco seemed less sure of himself. Then he sighed. “He breathed,” he said, pointing. “I saw his chest move.”

“And how is he going to help us?” Shay asked.

“He isn’t,” Marco said. He began patting around the guy’s belt. He emerged with a card key. “This is.”

Marco explained that all the security doors were controlled by card keys—he showed her the one from his wallet. The mall cops had a special card key that, unlike his, could open any door in the mall.

Hope spread like warmth throughout her empty body. “We’re on our way,” she said.

“Wait,” he said. He picked up the walkie-talkie and pushed the
TALK
button. “Second man down in the parking garage.”

A voice responded, acknowledging the call. “Sending a team.”

Marco then turned the volume way down and pocketed the thing. “Just in case,” he said.

He’d get no argument from Shay.

As they neared the medical ward, Shay laid out her plan for getting Preeti and Nani out of the EMC.

Marco scowled. “You never mentioned getting them out too,” he said.

“They’re coming with us or I scream that you have the flu.” Shay was utterly serious.

Marco held up his hands. “Okay,” he said. “Calm yourself. What’s your plan?”

“There’s a space between the windows and the curtained wall. We get them out the front, then all sneak around to the service hall.”

Shay saw doubt on his face. She took his hand and squeezed it. He looked at his hand and blushed. So what if she didn’t feel anything? She would get his help whichever way she had to.

Marco shrugged like
what the hell
and followed her into the EMC.

All was not well in the med center. Hazmat suits ran from one side of the curtain complex to the other. Machines beeped and wailed. No one noticed Shay and Marco as they walked into the main area. For a minute, Shay wondered
if they needed any plan, whether they might just walk out without anyone paying them any mind.

But then they got to Nani and Preeti’s room. Three hazmat suits crowded Nani’s bed. Preeti was sitting up, crying.

“What are you doing?” Shay yelled.

The hazmat people parted. Nani lay still but with a huge plastic tube coming out of her mouth. An IV dripped into her arm. A machine attached to the bed pole wheezed rhythmically, pumping air into and out of Nani’s lungs.

A hazmat doctor put a hand on Shay’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, but your grandmother has not responded to the antiviral medication. She has developed acute respiratory distress syndrome,” she said. “We have to move her to our ICU area.”

“Can I come?” Shay tried to touch Nani’s hand; the doctor caught her fingers.

“We’ll let you know if her condition improves.”

The doctors wheeled Nani out.

“Why are you always gone?” Preeti cried, her voice catching on a sob.

Tears ran down Shay’s cheeks. She hugged her sister. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was trying to get help.”

Preeti cried, soaking Shay’s choli, until a coughing fit forced her to lie down. She fell into a feverish sleep, mumbling something about spinning. Shay stumbled back. Marco caught her.

“You should go, escape,” she said, not looking at him. “I can’t leave, not without them.”

He stepped around to face her. “If you want me to, I’ll stay.”

He should leave. He should save himself. But Shay didn’t want to be alone. She couldn’t handle this alone.

“That would be really nice,” she said.

He seemed to be waiting for something.

She lifted herself to her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. Her lips felt papery against his skin. But he glowed like she had given him something better than escape.

“Then I’ll stay,” he said. He sat on the floor and patted the tile next to him. She sat. And when he put his arm around her, she let it stay because any arm was a comfort at this point. Any boy would do.

THURSDAY