No Safety in Numbers (27 page)

“Everything out here is trashed,” Dotty said. “Let’s get the stuff from the ICU.”

She led Lexi toward the back of the PaperClips where a hole had been cut into the wall. A thick sheet of plastic hung over the opening.

“Wait here,” her mother said. “We’ve been using this space to store the bodies we’ve found.”

“How many have you found?” Lexi asked.

“So far, fifteen by my count.”

“Sixteen,” Lexi said. “A woman died in the Abercrombie.”

Her mother’s face softened. She pulled Lexi into a hug. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” she said.

Lexi relaxed into her mother’s arms, feeling like a weight had been lifted off her. She held tighter to her mother. “I’m so sorry I messed everything up,” she said.

Her mother’s breathing hiccupped; Lexi felt a tear against her cheek.

“Things were messed up from the beginning,” Dotty said. “I’m sorry I got so angry.”

The walkie-talkie crackled to life announcing that a doctor and two nurses had shown up at the front gate and were examining Arthur. Lexi and her mother unwound their arms. Looking at each other, they smiled.

“I should get those supplies,” her mother said.

“I’ll wait here,” Lexi said.

Her mother kissed her forehead, then went through the plastic door. Lexi craned her neck to check what they were doing with her father. Then she heard her mother scream from inside the ICU.

Lexi swept the thick plastic aside and was greeted with a stench the likes of which not even the grossest garbage bin had achieved.

“Mom?” The foul air choked her voice. She pulled her shirt collar over her nose and mouth. She was inside the Pancake Palace, though it had changed drastically since her breakfast there last Sunday—it seemed like years had passed since then. Boxes marked “Medical Equipment” and “Freeze-Dried Food” lined what used to be the counter. The booths had been torn out and replaced by rows of shrouded gurneys, some covered in plastic tents.

The doors to the kitchen were still swinging. Lexi pushed through them and saw her mother standing in front of what must have been the walk-in freezer, her hand on the handle of the huge metal door.

“Don’t come any closer,” her mother said.

Lexi came closer.

A cold mist curled from the doorway. Frost glinted off something that, as the mist swirled, revealed itself to be a forehead.

Inside the freezer, in neat stacks, were bodies. Lexi counted twenty in the doorway alone.

“They told me only twenty had died.” Her mother’s voice was light, trembling. “Only twenty. There have to be fifty bodies in there.”

Lexi guessed the number was higher.

“You can’t tell anyone about this,” her mother said, finally. She stepped forward, closing the door. “People will only panic if they know the flu is this serious.”

“People are already panicking,” Lexi said. How could her mother be talking about keeping more things secret? Hadn’t she already seen the damage the last round of lies had caused?

“What would telling people accomplish?” her mother asked. “Run this through with me: We tell people that if they get sick, they’re most likely going to die. Next, people will try to hide their symptoms, lie to themselves about being sick. This means they won’t seek treatment, they’ll stay out in the populace and infect more people.”

“But you have to be honest with them,” Lexi said.

“Honesty is not always the best policy.” The Senator pulled the walkie-talkie from her belt. “I need a team in the ICU. Bring duct tape and caulk to seal a doorway.”

Her mother walked into the kitchen, then noticed Lexi wasn’t following.

“The team will take care of it,” the Senator said. “Let’s go check on your dad.” She kept walking.

Lexi made a mental note of the space, projected the number of bodies inside. They were isolated in this mall for the foreseeable future and someone had to know the truth. Had to be ready with it for the next time the government decided to hide it with a deadly lie.

“Coming!” Lexi shouted, trotting to catch up.

And if that someone had to be her, then so fucking be it.

In the bright, clean, fresh air of the PaperClips, Lexi spotted her mother beside a gurney. It in rested her father,
his arm bound between two strips of cardboard and held to his chest in a sling. His shirt had been cut away from his shoulder, which was wrapped in gauze.

“The Ross clan,” he said. “Together again.”

“Always,” her mother said, smiling at Lexi.

“Always,” Lexi said. And hoped it could be true.

D
otty folded the list and handed it to Hank, the waiting chief of security, a large cop who smelled like he hadn’t even rinsed off since the beginning of this nightmare.

“You want me to make the announcement?” he said, perusing her work.

“No,” she said, cranking her head forward until her neck cracked. “They know my voice now, I should do it.” She took back the paper and stood. “You start the body search.”

If there was a dead saleslady in the Abercrombie stockroom, there had to be others littered around the mall, and she wanted the corpses brought to the Pancake Palace before they caused any additional hysteria. She would distract the masses with her new plan to organize their mall society. Given the massive failure of the Feds’
laissez
faire
, live-wherever policy, she felt any plan was an improvement.

At least she had a handle on her family. Arthur was convalescing on the couch in the Apple Store stockroom and Lexi was sitting next to him helping to type in the population database she’d asked them to create. It was nice having all of the Rosses on the same page.

She made her way to the mall offices on the third floor, at the far end of the hall near the ice-skating rink. She’d been given the mall manager’s access card after he fell ill. His was the first frozen face she’d recognized in the Pancake Palace freezer. It was a terrible thing to admit, but she would not miss his interfering presence.

The mall offices were empty save for the monitoring station. She and Hank had agreed that no matter what happened, they needed to keep one guard on the closed-circuit camera system. There were cameras covering every public space in the mall and the parking areas. These cameras were their eyes on the masses. It was through them that they’d had some warning of the oncoming riot and were able to evacuate the Feds and lock down the portal before anyone could escape and infect the world. That was the only order she’d been given by the president: Keep the virus from getting out.

This, of course, left the responsibility of managing a population—of several thousand—with her. She had four cops, one in a coma; a mall security force of fifty, a number that might be less after the bodies were finally identified; some hundred and fifty Tasers; four handguns, one of which was reported missing; two shotguns; ten canisters
of tear gas; and twenty riot shields. This required not a little creative thinking.

She reached the microphone connected to the mall announcement system and collapsed into the chair beside it. She wiped the arm rests with a disinfecting cloth, then the mic itself, took a sip from her water bottle, and turned the system on.

“Attention, residents of the Shops at Stonecliff,” she began. “I apologize for the manner in which yesterday’s announcement was made. It was not our intention to cause anyone to panic. Anyone who suffered any injuries as a result of last night’s incident should report to the medical center located in the PaperClips on the first floor. Anyone with any medical training should also please report to the PaperClips to assist in helping those injured.

“With respect to the flu virus announced yesterday, if you begin to develop symptoms, including chills, a cough, or a runny nose, please report to the PaperClips for treatment.

“Security guards will be handing out face masks and hand sanitizer. Please wear your mask and apply the sanitizer before touching any surface and before meals. Avoid touching your face. These small measures will help prevent the spread of the disease.

“We have been given additional cots by the government and will set these up in three locations within the mall. Families, please report to the HomeMart for registration and assignment of beds. Women and girls, please report to the JCPenney; men and boys, please report to the Lord and Taylor. These locations will be your Home Stores.

“If you are in need of a change of clothes, depots will be established on the first floor of each Home Store where you can trade in your clothes for a new set. You will no longer be able to purchase clothing. You will also not have a choice in what clothing you are given. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.

“We have been given sufficient quantities of food by the government for the duration of this quarantine, however long it lasts. Meals will be served in the first-floor common areas. If you have a life-threatening food allergy, please notify the security guard when you register at your Home Store. Other than life-threatening conditions, we cannot accommodate any dietary requests.

“If you have any comments or concerns, please bring them to the attention of one of the security guards. We will try to address every situation to the best of our ability. This is an unusual and trying situation, but we are all in this together. By working together and following a few simple rules, we can all make it through this with the least incident and suffering. Thank you for you patience and attention. God bless you all.”

She flipped off the machine and pushed the mic away. It was impossibly draining, infusing her voice with hope and energy to try to keep the masses from spiraling into despair. She just had to keep them hopeful. If they had hope, they could be controlled.

As she left the offices, she waved to the guard on duty—Ken, she thought; she had better learn their names—and stepped into the empty hall. This end of the third floor was always rather quiet, especially since the ice-skating rink was closed Thursday due to a coolant malfunction.

The senator glanced at the locked doors to the rink.
They couldn’t have…

She ran back into the offices. “Ken, where are the tenant keys?”

“Manager’s office should have ones to a few stores, but we don’t keep keys to the anchor stores.”

“The ice-skating rink,” she said. “I just need the key to that.”

“That’s one he should have,” Ken said, leading her into the dark office once occupied by the odious little troll. “We’re always having maintenance issues with that thing.” Ken opened a cabinet and picked a small ring from a hook. “Here you go. You need to cool off?” he said, winking.

Dotty laughed because that was what you did when someone thought they were funny.
There should be Oscars for politicians.
She took the key and stalked out to the hall.

The doors to the skating rink opened into a dark vestibule. The temperature inside was several degrees colder. Dotty flicked on the lights. Pictures of smiling girls in spandex lined the walls. On one side of the foyer, there was a counter behind which rental skates gleamed; on the other, a dark office. In front of her were two more doors.

Dotty touched the handle of one and was shocked by the cold. The metal bit her fingertips.
Coolant failure, my ass…

Slipping her hand inside her sleeve, she pushed the handle down and pulled open the door. A blast of freezing air slapped her skin. The rink was black as night—no light shined anywhere. Dotty felt around the inside of the doorway for a switch.

It took a minute for the lights strung high on the ceiling to reach full power, but even in their first dim glow, Dotty saw the bodies. They were piled on the ice. Row after row, not even wrapped in body bags. Arms splayed, hair falling over faces. The ice itself was tinged red.

Dotty’s legs gave out. She slid against the door and came to rest on the frozen tile. There had to be hundreds on the ice. Maybe a thousand. This many couldn’t have come through the med center—had these all been found in the mall or had patients died fast enough to keep pace with the newly sick? Was this why the Suits had refused to give her access to the intake logs at the PaperClips?
A thousand dead and they didn’t tell me.

But hadn’t they? Why else would the president order a quarantine of thousands of citizens? Only if the virus was this deadly would the government have authorized trapping them like rats on a sinking ship.

She didn’t have the luxury of panic. She pulled the walkie-talkie from its holster on her belt and clicked it to Hank’s channel.

“New orders,” she said.

“I’m listening.”

“Bring the bodies to the ice-skating rink,” she said. “Use the service passages. No civilians are to ever come into the skating rink.”

“Roger that.”

Had he known? He had to have known. How many people were harboring secrets from her? No more. She would canvass every goddamned inch of this mall before the end of the day. She would find that missing gun and
nail those kids who blasted her cops with fire extinguishers and get things in some semblance of order before night fell. This was her sinking ship now. And Dorothy Ross ran a tight ship.