And he was at the top. With a hard-on. But at the top. Sixty feet stretched between him and the first floor, but he was mere inches from the skylight and freedom. He pressed his fingers to the cold glass, then clipped himself to the column with a quickdraw. He arranged the rope through the bottom carabiners of two other quickdraws, attached to two points on the scaffold, and signaled Mike to release the belay device. Ryan pulled it up, hooked the belay device to his harness, and threaded the other end of the rope back down to Mike.
Mr. Reynolds climbed next. The fact that he was old and out of shape combined with his bum foot made him doubly slow. The wait was agonizing. Ryan sucked water from the pouch he’d strapped to his back to keep the tickles in his throat at bay.
Once Mr. Reynolds was up, Ryan hooked him to the column with a quickdraw, then lowered the rope down for Mike to climb. Mike was fast, scampering up the rungs like a squirrel on a tree.
A hand pulled the ice ax from the webbing of Ryan’s hydration pack. Ryan glanced over his shoulder, securing the belay rope tight across his thigh. Mr. Reynolds had shuffled to the side of the column nearest the skylight. He had the ax poised below the glass.
“What are you doing?” Ryan yelled. “The plan is to wait for everyone to get to the top before busting out.”
“I’ve waited long enough.”
Mr. Reynolds smashed the skylight. Ryan threw his free arm over his face as splinters of glass rained down into the fountain below. Screams erupted from the first floor— apparently, they had attracted an audience.
Mr. Reynolds hoisted himself through the hole in the glass. Fresh air tousled Ryan’s hair. He’d forgotten the scent of fall air, the feeling of crispness.
Mike pulled himself to the top. “What the hell?” he shouted.
Ryan heard the pulsing chop of a helicopter’s blades through the broken window. As it grew louder, a breeze gusted to match the noise.
Mike pulled himself up and peered through the hole. “We’re fucked.” He dropped back down.
Ryan heard tromping footsteps. He could almost see the cops on the roof. Mr. Reynolds would be driven back through the hole. Ryan unhooked the ’biner from Mike’s harness and attached it to the back of his own. He handed Mike the belay device.
“Catch me,” he said.
Just then, Mr. Reynolds plummeted through the fractured glass, dropping down toward the fountain, screaming.
Ryan pushed off from the column and fell. Adrenaline rushed through his veins. He opened his arms and legs in time to wrap them around Mr. Reynolds. Mike pulled the line taut. Between the gut-busting force of the rope catching and the drag of Mr. Reynolds’s body, Ryan nearly lost his grip, but the bear hug held them together.
The line swung toward the strips of walkway spanning the open courtyard. When the line bent and swung them under the third-floor passage, Ryan released Mr. Reynolds onto the second-floor walkway. The old bastard dropped onto the tile and cried out.
Ryan owed him nothing now.
The rope swung back out into the void and Ryan closed his eyes. Blood pumped through him. Sweat dripped off his face. He was alive.
Opening his eyes, he saw a crowd of cops gathering. They were screwed, all of them. Nowhere to hide dangling in space. But he was alive. For the moment, that was enough.
M
A
R
C
O
His first thought upon waking: Where is Shay? Her body had been beside him, now he was alone. The lights buzzed overhead. He heard voices from inside the PaperClips.
On the sales floor, a man in a hazmat suit stood knee-deep in toppled curtains and equipment. His tent of a helmet hung behind him—an Outsider now trapped on the inside. The senator was in the room with him, as were a couple of security guards and a cop. They were all digging through the trash. The voices came from beneath the trash.
“Where’s Shaila?” Marco yelled.
The hazmat guy pointed to a part of the room behind him, the already cleared part. Marco found her asleep on a gurney beside the little sister. The grandmother was nowhere in sight. From how sick she’d been, she was most likely dead. Shay and the sister were alone in this mall. Like him.
Marco touched Shay’s arm. She rolled slightly, groaned. His mind whirred into action. They needed food, a safe place to hide out, medicine. He could try to steal supplies from the EMC, but the cops would be on him before he got halfway out the door. Did he dare venture out into the chaos of the mall proper alone?
Two guards made their way back toward Marco—it was the guys from the restaurant the other day. Marco hid behind a curtain that had been righted and turned on his pilfered police radio.
“We have one on the third floor, and another is descending the pillar. You guys grab the kid hanging from the rope.”
“And you’re sure it’s the demolition derby guys?”
“Yep—the ID on the guy at the bottom of the pillar says Drew Bonner. No doubt it’s Richter on the pole and Murphy on the rope. Old guy’s being subdued on a second-floor walkway.”
So Richter had been the one to organize the escape through the garage. He should have stuck with Marco. Now he was one descent away from being arrested.
And then it dawned on him: He could help Mike Richter. And Richter could watch his back and protect Shay and the sister. It was a match made in hell.
Marco stuck the radio into his jacket. He tucked the thin hospital blanket around Shay and the sister, then left through the back doors into the service hallway. He slid the cop’s card key through the elevator’s reader and the doors opened.
I am the master of all I survey…
He rode up to the third floor, then exited the service halls into the main corridor. Scanning the area, he spotted Richter on the central column nearest the movie theaters. Two cops stood at the base, one with a hand on Drew Bonner’s arm, both of which were behind his back, most likely in cuffs. A few people gawked from inside the entrance to the movie theater, but it was early yet, so the halls were empty.
Based on the distribution of service doors near the Grill’n’Shake, Marco assumed that a service door existed down the hall away from the theaters. But how to distract the cops? There was no time to search for the perfect tool; he glanced around him.
A fire extinguisher.
Marco ripped the thing from the wall. An alarm began to sound. The cops started, looked around. Marco walked straight up to them and sprayed the two in the face. A cloud of white exploded from the extinguisher. The two cops fell to the floor, coughing and wheezing and holding their throats.
Drew began to cough—a bonus for Marco. “It’s the fucking mallrat!” he shouted up to Mike.
Marco blasted the cops again. “I’m your knight in shining armor, you ass.”
Mike hopped off the column. He unhooked himself from the rope. “What’s your plan, Taco?” he said.
Marco blasted the cops again; they fell back. “Follow me.”
He dropped the fire extinguisher and bolted for the service hallway. Mike and Drew raced after him. At the door, Marco slid the key through the port. The scanner flashed green and the door opened with a clank—the magnetic lock unlocking. He pulled it open.
“After you,” he said.
Mike and Drew dashed in and Marco closed the door behind all three of them.
“We have to get Ryan,” Mike growled.
“Follow me,” Marco said, leading them down the hall. There had to be an elevator somewhere.
Drew strode up to his side. “I thought your card key only worked on the door near the Grease’n’Suck?”
“I got a new key.”
At the elevator, Marco slid the card through and the doors opened. “Again, after you,” he said.
They trundled into the elevator and Marco slid the card key through the panel and selected the first floor.
Mike pulled a six-inch hunting knife from his waistband and sliced through the plastic cuffs on Bonner’s wrists. Then they turned on Marco.
r /> “We appreciate the rescue,” Mike said. Using the butt of the knife, he lifted his shirt to reveal a gun in his waistband. “Not that I needed it. But I’m a little confused as to your motives.”
“I want protection,” Marco said, trying to ignore the gun’s presence. “We’re trapped in here for potentially the rest of our lives. I want to know you have my back.” Marco slipped the card into his pocket. “And there’s a girl and her sister. I need to know you’ll watch out for all three of us.”
“What’s to keep me from gutting you and taking your new card?”
Marco was surprised only by the up-front nature of Mike’s threat. He pulled out two cards. “Only I know which is mine and which is the universal,” he said. “And I will snap them both in half before I die, I promise you.” Mike and Drew took a less menacing posture. “Plus, I know these back hallways. It will take you days to discover what I already know.”
Marco could almost hear the wheels spinning in Mike’s brain. They were not so dissimilar, he realized.
“All right,” Mike said, holding out his hand.
Marco did not take the hand. “Let’s not pretend we’re anything more than allies of circumstance.”
Mike smiled. “I’m beginning to take a liking to you, Taco.”
“I won’t let it go to my head.”
The doors opened. Marco stepped out. “If you run, you can use the fire extinguisher at the end of the hall to free Ryan. Two cops are waiting for him near the fountain.”
Drew loped for the extinguisher.
Mike stayed behind. “Come with us,” he said.
“What’s in it for me?” Marco had his hand in his pants pocket, his exit card at the ready—he’d notched the edge of the universal card near the corner to identify it.
Mike smiled. “The mall is our oyster,” he said. “Between the two of us, I think we can make all our dreams come true.”
Marco took his hand off the card. He pulled the police radio from his jacket and turned it on.
Mike’s face expressed approval. “You’ve been busy.”
Marco couldn’t help but smile at Mike’s praise. He turned the radio off. “They almost have Ryan down off the rope. We’d better move.”
They caught up with Drew near the door, then busted out, extinguisher blasting. People ran from their path, screaming. They were the masters of all they surveyed.
L
E
X
I
From beneath the pile of wreckage that was once the medical center, Lexi could hear people around her, voices talking. That was all she could sense beyond the darkness. Fabric pressed against her face, making it hard to breathe. She angled her head, creating a larger pocket of air between the curtain and the floor.
Every few seconds, she cried out to the people, banged on the curtain above her. She couldn’t feel her feet anymore. The person on top of her had stopped coughing. The body felt cold against her skin. She would not die like this.
It took the voices time (minutes? hours?) to get close to her. She saw the bright flash of Lights On and that brought some hope. Soon, she could hear actual words, then the curtain was lifted off her.
The man’s eyes widened upon finding her. “I’ve got a live one!” he shouted, then knelt and pushed the gurney off of her.
Pins and needles pricked through Lexi’s legs as the blood flowed back through them. She cried out—it was so painful, she wished he’d just left the bed on top of her.
“Lexi!” Her mother pushed past a stack of crates and fell beside her, began to kiss her face.
Lexi dragged her legs from under the body and threw her arms around her mother’s neck. The pins and needles were agonizing, like a million bees stinging her from the inside. “Did you get Dad?” she asked, pulling back to arrange her body better.
Dotty sat straighter. “He’s in here?”
Lexi explained how Arthur had been near the plywood wall when the rioters broke through. The Senator immediately ran toward the broken front wall of the store. The man who’d found Lexi—Dr. Chen, she was told—joined the Senator.
Lexi crawled from behind the gurney to better see where they were digging. “He was closer to the center, near the door!” she shouted.
Soon, they lifted a huge flap of broken plywood and found Arthur, barely conscious. Her mother screamed, thinking he was dead, until his eyes flickered, then she cried and kissed his face. Tears ran down Lexi’s cheeks—she hadn’t killed her father after all.
The Senator yelled into her walkie-talkie to have an announcement made that any medical personnel left in the mall should report to the emergency medical center in the PaperClips on the first floor to assist with helping those hurt in the riot. Then her mother began hunting through the wreckage for supplies.
“Let me help,” Lexi said, pushing herself to standing. Her legs still tingled, but they worked.
“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?
&nbs
p; “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.
THE
S
E
N
A
T
O
R
Dotty 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.