After climbing a while, Madelyn stopped to check the view against her map.
A decent wind had kicked up. She saw the smudgy smoke on the horizon. It was no longer a straight line. She had a lot of ground to cover to spy on the shopping center. Meanwhile, she wanted to know if there was any other activity going on in the town below. She chewed on her thumbnail as she scanned everywhere.
A bright patch of dirt looked like the source of the trees that fueled the bonfire. She saw a big gray roof that probably belonged to the shopping center. Off to the west, one of the neighborhoods had been burned down. There was a straight line of blackened houses right next to ones that were intact. It was too precise to be an accident. Maybe they had experimented with using houses as fuel sources to attract the Roamers. It wasn’t a crazy idea as long as the blaze didn’t get out of control.
Madelyn stood up when she saw the white letters. Parts were obscured by trees, or scattered by some force, but Madelyn could definitely piece together a big “ADH” in the flat plain beyond the dry riverbed. She had seen it before at a smaller scale. People would write ADH on a building to indicate “All Dead Here.” It was an old designation from the cull. Marking it improperly was a felony. Maybe it was a joke.
Madelyn spat and began to work her way down the rocks.
She scaled the iron ladder and then crawled to the edge of the shopping center. The roof was well built. It had held up through the years of neglect and felt solid under her hands and feet. Nature was in the process of taking it back though. Leaves had collected in the corners and seedlings had sprouted. Eventually, those roots would make progress down into the tar or whatever was beneath the gravel she was scraping across.
Madelyn reached the edge and peeked up over the wall.
Harper had been using the lot for a while—that was obvious. The parking lot had dozens of scorched spots with scattered ashes from previous fires. Over near a tilted light pole, someone had stacked the next set of trees. Madelyn rubbed her chin and tried to decide if this was the work of one person.
It was possible. Assuming that Harper had figured out what time of day it was safe to use the tractor without drawing attention from the Roamers, she could have done this by herself. The front loader looked electric. Those things generated a ton of noise when they were in use, but assuming that Harper knew when the Roamers were preoccupied…
But the girl had known Gabriel. At least she knew about the old man who limped and had guessed that he was the one who had tricked Madelyn.
Harper was clearly untrustworthy, but she seemed nice. Madelyn didn’t want to kill her. Madelyn hadn’t killed Gabriel, and that guy knew precisely where Madelyn lived. But circumstances were different with Gabriel. He was familiar. He was a known quantity of evil. Harper might be capable of anything. Sure, she hadn’t hurt Madelyn yet, but that might be simply because the young woman wanted to follow Madelyn back to her cabin so she could steal from her.
Madelyn shook her head. The idea didn’t make sense. Harper had a life here. Harper had a process to occupy the Roamers, and she clearly had supplies and was able to keep herself alive. Shame crept up from the corners of Madelyn’s brain and then flooded her consciousness. What was she doing? Harper didn’t mean her harm. She should just wait until the klaxon and then go home. Gabriel was the one who had tricked her and he wasn’t even here.
Madelyn pushed back from the edge of the roof and began to crawl backwards.
When she heard the click, she froze.
“Keep coming,” the voice said. “Slowly. Don’t reach for that rifle.”
Madelyn obeyed.
# # # # #
The man led the way down the ladder. Madelyn considered letting go of the rungs and dropping onto him. He might get off one good shot, but she would take him out. They would fall to the concrete below. More than likely, he would cushion her fall a little.
She considered it, but didn’t act. The bleakness of her current situation was due to acting rashly. It would not improve things to repeat that mistake.
The man’s eyes were glittering stones buried in his hairy face. He motioned with his gun. If Madelyn could have mustered the energy, it would have been a good time for her to rush him. Instead, she let him guide her towards the door.
The inside of the mall wasn’t faring as well as the roof. The walls leaned and the ceilings hung low. Madelyn followed the path that had seen many feet shuffle through the debris. Her captor led her down a flight of stairs and then motioned her towards a barred cell.
The only light came from a beam attached to his shoulder.
“I’m not going in there,” she said.
He moved so fast.
She barely saw his arm before the strike hit her. She flew backwards towards the bench and caught herself as the cell door shut. It clanged home with a metal finality. The shopping center was in bad shape, but someone had maintained the hinges and lock of the jail cell.
Madelyn came to the bars.
This time she dodged his strike. It might have been half-hearted—just a warning for her to stay back from the door when he was there.
He backed up.
“Hey,” she said. “You’re not going to leave me down here.”
He moved towards the door.
“You have to at least leave me a light. Don’t leave me here in the dark.”
He was gone.
In the darkness, the walls were closing in. She could hear her own breathing and then her own heartbeat. Madelyn explored the lock with her fingers. He had taken her rifle, knife, and handgun. She still had the small pack of tools in her bag. She rolled them out carefully on the floor and found a dental tool that might work. She fed it into the lock and felt around to explore the mechanism. As she worked, she developed a mental picture of the inside of the lock.
All she needed was time.
# # # # #
When the door creaked open and light came back into Madelyn’s world, she was nearly asleep on the bench. Given all the time in the world, she finally admitted that she would never puzzle out the lock. She had a better chance of using the dental tool to scrape away individual iron atoms from the bars.
An older woman held the light. She pulled out the moldy chair from behind the jailer’s desk and sat down with a sigh.
“They say you’ve been spying on us,” the woman said. She coughed into her sleeve. When she set her light down on the desk, enough light reflected so that Madelyn could see her eyes.
“No,” Madelyn said. “I was tricked into coming down here into town. Harper told me about the fire setup at the shopping center. I merely came to check it out. As you might expect, any strategy to lure away the Roamers is fascinating to me.”
The woman smiled. She pushed her finger through the dust on the desk. “I haven’t heard them called that in years. People here call them Hunters. I suppose some of the old-timers use the word Zumbidoes. They’re humanity’s first nightmare. That’s what we ought to call them.”
“Doesn’t roll off the tongue,” Madelyn said.
“Harper did all the right things. She saved you, showed you courtesy, told you the rules, and left you alone.”
“She didn’t tell me any rules.”
“She told you to stay in the house and leave when you heard the klaxon. Is that correct?”
“It sounded like advice, not like hard and fast rules.”
“Did it occur to you that we have a delicate system in place here?” the woman asked.
“What’s your name?” Madelyn asked.
The woman was silent for a second. Her demand the second time was at a lower, more menacing tone. “Did it occur to you that you might disturb our delicate system?”
“No,” Madelyn said. “Harper seemed confident and helpful, but she didn’t suggest that walking around might disturb any delicate system.”
“Did it occur to you that by ignoring our rules you would be putting people’s lives in jeopardy?”
“No,” Madelyn said
. “I was merely trying to verify the rather outlandish assertions made by an untrustworthy young woman.”
The old woman pushed herself up straighter.
“If you had simply followed the rules, we wouldn’t be here right now. You understand that, right?”
“Yes,” Madelyn said. She nodded vigorously. “Yup, I learned my lesson. When that klaxon sounds I will jump in the truck and keep it to seventy, all the way home. Sorry for any trouble.”
“You’ve broken our trust, and you missed the klaxon. We can’t simply let you go. You have to endure a trial before we can decide to trust you again.”
Madelyn rolled her eyes and sighed.
“You have to be all dramatic like this? Harper wasn’t exactly transparent that her advice was actually hard and fast rules. We live in a tough world. Why do you have to try to make it even tougher by falling back on some crazy old system that nobody believes in anymore?”
The old woman smoothed her hair back. She looked like she was looking up at a hill that she had climbed many times before.
“You’ve lived alone a long time, I imagine,” she said.
Madelyn shrugged.
“I suppose you’ve forgotten how much energy it takes to maintain a civil society. You have to come up with rules and then you have to follow them, regardless of how silly they seem. If you choose to ignore them, then suddenly everything falls apart. It’s a constant struggle.”
“Constant and unnecessary,” Madelyn said.
The old woman shook her head.
“Your trials will occur in two days. Try to get some rest.”
She stood and began to shuffle out. She left her light on the desk. Madelyn held still and hoped that the woman would somehow forget to pick up the light. It was an absurd thought—the old woman would need the light to negotiate the stairs. Somehow, Madelyn got her wish. The light stayed there. The old woman left.
Madelyn looked at the bars. The welds didn’t look that old, but like the laws of the people, they were relics of a time when people had more time and energy than they knew what to do with. The notion that locking up a person was a humane alternative to putting a bullet through their skull was laughable. She shook the door and knelt back down to the lock again.
Her fingers were raw from plying every tool at the mechanism. She narrowed her eyes and turned around. The place was a shopping center. It was crazy that they had a jail cell at all. Why was she assuming that the thing was well built? It was constructed on the philosophy that everyone was invested in the same set of rules. Perhaps the enclosure was more ideological than physical.
Madelyn glanced back at the door before she climbed on the bench. She picked the corner where the ceiling had collapsed somewhat. She pushed her hand into soft cement board and mold. A big chunk of it came back in her fist. Madelyn took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She used both hands to pull down a section of the wall. She found metal studs criss-crossed with cables. The wall on the other side was intact, but flexible. Working as quietly as she could, Madelyn began her demolition.
The wall was more sturdy towards the bottom. She was going to have to make a hole pretty high up and then climb through. Using a fork from her pack, she started the hole through to the other side. It revealed nothing but blackness. Still, it was better than being locked up.
There was no way to rip the hole big enough without making noise. Madelyn did as much quiet work as she could and then glanced back at the door. There might be a guard right on the other side. She had no idea how much time she had. There would never be a better moment.
With both hands, she grabbed the next piece of wall and began to tear it out. Her hole was big enough to push a pumpkin through when the door to the room flew open behind her.
She heard the gun cock.
“Get down from there or I shoot,” the man said.
Madelyn didn’t look back. She jumped for her hole.
Chapter 15
{Run}
In the darkness, she tumbled forever. Glass crashed and something metal scraped across the floor. Madelyn jumped up as her eyes began to adjust. She saw a long rectangle of glass at the far end of the room and figured it must be the window in a door.
She ran for it.
With two big strides, she crashed back down. She had tripped over something. Madelyn pushed up amidst a tangle of plastic arms and legs. Batting them out of the way, she clawed her way towards the exit. She pushed out into the dark hallway. As the door shut behind her, it took the last of the light with it. Madelyn felt her way down the wall.
The elevator doors were extra wide and long dead. Once past those, she dragged a hand down the wall to keep her balance and she ran in the dark. When she hit a puddle of water, her feet went out from under her. Madelyn crashed down on her back.
A door sprang open behind. Madelyn stayed low and still. Flashlights emerged into the hall and then turned to the door she had come through. When the two people rushed inside that room, Madelyn pushed to her feet and ran backwards. She made the corner before the people discovered she wasn’t in the room.
The door to the stairwell was unlocked, but blocked by something. Madelyn could only get it to open a few centimeters before it scraped. She heard footsteps coming from around the corner and saw the light bouncing on the wall. Madelyn put her shoulder to the door. It moved a couple more centimeters—still too narrow to slip through.
The man who came around the corner was unarmed. He trained his flashlight on her and Madelyn threw herself into the door again. She wasn’t fast enough. She had her head and shoulders through, but the man caught her by the arm when she was still trying to squeeze her pelvis through the opening.
Madelyn threw herself down on the far side of the door. He lost his grip on her arm.
The new angle allowed her hips to pop through the gap.
The man caught her again by the ankle.
Madelyn kicked at him.
She couldn’t shake his grip. She managed to pull her other foot through and pushed against the frame of the door. He was too strong and wouldn’t let go. In her desperation, Madelyn kicked at the door. It slammed shut on her shin, but also caught one of the man’s fingers. He yelled and she was free.
Madelyn pulled her foot through and climbed through the debris in the stairwell. She glanced back to see him trying to squeeze his head through the gap. He was too big. The debris wouldn’t hold the door shut forever. She had to move fast.
# # # # #
The guy below her grunted and groaned as he tried to push his way through the door. Madelyn climbed. She turned a corner and kept moving by the door to the next floor. Just as she turned the next flight, the door banged open. She heard that person descend while Madelyn climbed. She reached the next level as the man below yelled to his compatriot.
Madelyn slipped through the door and shut it quietly behind herself. She was on the second floor of a shopping center. A balcony looked down on the floor below. Light filtered in through broken skylights. The shops around her were all dark. Any one of them could make a decent hiding place for the moment. It might be good to wait and then double back behind their pursuit.
Madelyn rejected the idea.
Her instincts told her to find a weapon and stand up to these people. They had no right to capture and imprison her. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Then again, she couldn’t let indignation get her caught again. Madelyn looked for an exit.
She found an escalator and shuffled down it. She paused halfway to listen. All the action was above her. Feet were racing along the shops and she felt completely exposed on the escalator. She hurried down, jumping the divider halfway to change direction away from the sounds above.
She saw an exit sign.
Madelyn sprinted around the corner and ran for the big glass doors. A chain was looped through the handles. She veered left to where broken glass glittered on the floor. Madelyn vaulted over the metal frame of the broken pane. She was in the parking lot.
Madely
n ran for the fuel truck.
She opened the valve just above where the red hose was connected. Inside the rubber hose, liquid gurgled. She had turned it well beyond the helpful arrow that someone had marked on the handle. They had left a welding torch there for convenience. Madelyn ran to the stacked wood, locked the torch on, and dropped it on the pavement next to where the liquid would emerge from the steel burner.
She looked up and saw people bang through the door. One of them raised a gun to his shoulder. Madelyn ran.
Behind her, the propane torch hissed its blue flame at the burner.
A bullet ricocheted off the pavement as the fuel caught. With the valve opened all the way, a wall of fire burst up. It shielded Madelyn from the aim of the gunman, but there were still people running towards her. They were probably younger and faster. Madelyn got her bearings and ran in the direction she knew they would never head. She ran for the other bonfire—the one burning at the airfield.
# # # # #
Madelyn scooped mud and leaves over herself in the ditch as the explosion tore through the air. They must not have gotten to the truck in time. The fire had worked its way back up the fuel line somehow.
Even as the sound of the blast was still rumbling through the air, Madelyn heard the clicking. The Roamers passed her by. They had bigger prey to stalk.
Madelyn thought about the old woman and the scheduled trial. Now they had a reason to convict her. Even though it was self-defense, Madelyn had to admit that she had now committed legitimate crimes against this group of people. If the roles were reversed, she would hunt down the perpetrator and make them pay.
She didn’t have time to consider the morality of the situation. Madelyn had to get out of town before the locals decided to track her down. They already had a sense of which direction she was headed. Her only hope was to use their fear against them.
The truck was her best bet, even though they knew about it. The vehicle worked and it was supposedly refueled. She had no confidence that she could say that about any of the other cars she might find tucked away.
Madelyn waited another minute to be sure the clicking Roamers were gone. She brushed off the leaves and continued towards the airfield.