No Dawn without Darkness: No Safety In Numbers: Book 3 (2 page)

“Masks are dumb,” says another guy by the registers. “You can’t see anything.”

“Who cares if we can see?” a girl says from the other end of the store. “The emergency lights are already running out of power. It’s going to be completely dark again in a few hours.”

“The point is to identify our group,” says register guy—make that claw guy. His knuckles sparkle, like he’s wearing a fistful of rings, but the rings are all topped with curved knives. Whatever fear I had ticks up a notch.

The girl pulls out a black hooded dress, like what the Grim Reaper would wear. “This. We all wear this, but wrap tape from the post office around our arms.”

“We’d blend into the dark,” gorilla-mask guy says, shrugging. “How is this different than doing nothing?”

Claw guy abandons his post, examines the costume. “Doing nothing, we look like everyone else.” He grabs one of the robes off the rack, pulls something off the makeup display, and shoves it into the gorilla guy’s chest. “We’ll put this on our faces to stand out,” he says, and returns to the door. “Let’s move.”

Gorilla guy opens the package and smears his cheeks with slashes of glow-in-the-dark paint. “Hells yeah.”

When they’re gone, Maddie makes a beeline for the Grim Reaper rack and tugs one of the robes over her head. She grabs a second and shoves it into my chest.

“Why are we putting on their costume?”

“Because then, if they find us, they might think we’re with them and leave us alone. Also, it hides our bags. No one will know we have supplies.”

“Why would anyone bother us?” I ask, pulling the thin, itchy cloth over my head.

“Why wouldn’t they?”

Maddie seems to think the people in the mall are going to start turning on one another. I don’t believe it. The guy in the bathroom just wanted a drink. Yes, security went crazy, but the people left in here are just regular kids. Once things calm down—

The emergency lights in the store flicker, then die.

The world is black again.

A hand grabs my arm. “We have to hide.”

It’s Maddie.

I let her lead me through the dark.

R
Y
A
N

INSIDE THE SHOE HUT

I
f the main lights are out it means security has bigger problems than watching this crap jail. I’ve got to get out of here and look for Shay. I won’t leave the one person I care about alone in this hellhole.

When dull, yellow emergency lights come on, I head for the locked stockroom door. But everyone else has the same idea. I’m crushed against a shelf. The first guy to reach the door starts slamming his shoulder into the wood until it cracks and he breaks through. The crowd presses forward, smashing my face into a shelf of men’s dress shoes.

Enough.

I throw an elbow, then execute a tuck-and-roll—arms in, spin out—to get around this jerk who’s trying to pin me. But once free, there’s nowhere to go. It’s solid bodies from me to the lead guy, who’s stuck in the door.

People claw the guy, push him deeper into the wood panel. He screams, then disappears through the hole into the stockroom.

The crowd surges ahead. I’m shoved through by the force of the people behind me. My shoe gets caught against what remains of the door and I’m pinned down. Wood bites into a cut on my ankle.

I’m stuck, but then the pressure shifts and I jerk my leg, scraping the skin against the splinters, the pain so bad I see stars. Then my shoe pops off and my foor flops to the floor. I army-crawl across the narrow strip of tile, away from the flood of people headed for a set of double doors into the service hallway.

My ankle looks like crap. I pull out the bits of wood, but the skin all the way to the bottom of my foot is completely messed up.

Once the crowd is gone, I find my shoe, jam my foot into it, and wedge myself between a stool and the wall to lever my body to standing. I test the ankle. It holds. Sort of.

I take a step. It feels like a knife being jammed through my foot.

I’ve never had an injury I couldn’t play through. Concussions, sprained everything, even a chipped tibia—I kept going. This ankle is nothing.

I try again.

It takes five attempts before I’m convinced. I’m not going anywhere.

I drag myself into the deepest shadow I can find and lay my head back. Even if I found Shay now, what good would I be to her?

• • •

“Got a live one,” a woman’s voice says, followed by the squeal of a walkie-talkie. She’s in a black security uniform, and a stun stick hangs from her belt. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say.

She snorts. “You might be fine, but that ankle’s toast. I’m Tina Skelton,” she says, holding out her hand. “I promise, I don’t bite.”

Not having much of a choice, I grab her hand and let her haul me up. She digs her shoulder under mine to keep me standing. She’s surprisingly strong.

“I have a first aid kit back at the pet store,” she says, taking a step. “I’ll fix that foot good as new.”

“Why are you helping me?” I ask.

She looks confused by the question. “Don’t you need help?”

Tina lugs me down the service hall to the pet store. The back room is lit by a few dim emergency lights, which glint off the eyes and wet noses of the dogs caged along the walls. When they see us, they get all excited and start jumping and wagging their tails.

“Calm it down, kids!” Tina says, smiling at the cages. “I took care of them. Senator Ross didn’t worry about the animals, but me, I’m a dog person. How about you?”

“I was never allowed to have a pet,” I say as Tina eases me into a chair.

“Well, now you have ten.”

She closes the door to the main part of the store, then opens the cages. The puppies race out across the floor, yipping and wiggling their whole bodies. One little black guy licks my hand over and over, nipping my fingers with his sharp, spikey teeth.

“Knew you had a smile in there,” Tina says, winking at me.

She sits on the desk beside me and lifts my bad ankle. She dabs it with hydrogen peroxide, then smears on protective cream. Her fingers are warm and fat, nothing like my mom’s, but it still feels nice.

Tina pulls a thick roll of gauze from her bag and slowly wraps my ankle. I lift my hand and pet the dog’s head. My eyes swell up and leak, and my nose gets going.

“Allergic?” Tina asks, handing me a box of tissues.

“No,” I say, and wipe my face clean.

• • •

“Skelton!” a man’s voice shouts, waking me.

I’m dozing in the dog bed with Tuffer—the little black puppy. Tina gave me some Tylenol, and between it and the ankle, I was out. I’m not sure for how long, but it was long enough for the emergency lights to dim to nothing.

Tina appears from a back office with a flashlight. “Hold your water, Hank!”

Hank. Hank Goldman.

I grab on to the nearest desk and drag myself up. Tina’s wrap is good and tight, so I can almost put weight on the ankle.

“Where you going?” she asks, pointing the flashlight at me and opening the door into the main store.

Too late. Goldman walks in with two other security guys and I am screwed.

“I see we have a visitor,” Goldman says, striding toward me. He’s got a flashlight of his own and it’s blinding. “If it isn’t Jimmy Murphy’s kid.”

“You know him?” Tina asks.

“Everyone knows him. This is Spider-Kid!” Goldman is inches from my face. “He ran with a pretty tough crowd. You know anything about our little power problem?”

“Leave him alone,” Tina says, shoving her way between us. “Even if he had friends, he doesn’t anymore. I found him alone with a busted ankle in the back of the Shoe Hut.”

Goldman’s breath reeks of onions. My mouth waters.

“If he was jailed in the Shoe Hut,” Tina continues, “there’s no way he was involved with the blackout. Now tell me what you’re doing out of the HomeMart.”

“Senator has me on one of her errands,” says Goldman. “I was kicked out with an electrician to investigate the cause of this blackout. Turns out, someone pierced the transformer, blowing the whole mall’s electrical system apart. The thing can’t be fixed.

“Coming back, we were rushed by some kids and I lost the electrician. When I finally got to the HomeMart, it didn’t matter anyway. The senator’s gotten cute. Says she won’t let me or anyone else back in without her kid. Marshall and Kearns caught up with me on my way here.” Goldman sits, picks up my dog. He pats him like he’s his.

“That woman,” Tina says, shaking her head. “I’m not sure what we’ll do until we find the girl. We have a sink that works, but the only food back here is dog kibble.”

“We’re never going to find that girl.” Goldman puts down my dog and examines a giant bag of kibble. “But I think we can eat better than this.”

His plan is simple extortion. Goldman will wait until the kids have scavenged the Sam’s Club clean, then he’ll hit up anyone he finds for a protection fee. “No doubt they’re waking up to the fact that the biggest thing they have to fear now is each other.” He points to the bag. “We can sweeten the deal, maybe offer protection plus kibble.”

“And if they don’t give you their food?” Tina says.

“We zap them.”

“Why not just go in zapping?” Marshall asks.

“You have an extra cartridge I don’t know about?” Goldman says. “I used my last one getting here. And I don’t want to have to get in close. No telling what these”—he glances at me—“
animals
will do.”

He pulls the gun from his belt and holds it out to Marshall. “I go in first, negotiate with the bastards. If any of them make a move, wing them with this.”

Kearns says the Sam’s Club has cleared, so he, Marshall, and Goldman head out to shake down teenagers.

“Seems crazy,” Tina says, standing her flashlight on its end so it dimly lights the room. She sits and the dogs pile on her. “I wish I could say the man’s wrong, but most of these kids? They’re trouble.”

“Why’d you help me?”

She holds Tuffer up to me, and I cradle him against my chest. “You looked like good people,” she says.

If only she knew. A week ago, she would have left me for dead.

“See?” She points to Tuffer. “Dogs know good people too.”

The stupid puppy squirms to lick my face, and I loosen my arms so he can, the little idiot.

The door from the service hall slams open. A bright white light clicks on.

It’s a kid my age. “Dude, it’s just one old lady,” he says to someone behind him. He’s wearing a headlamp and holding a metal baseball bat smeared with blood. “Marco’s nuts.”

He’s from Mike’s gang.

Tina hops to her feet, brandishing her stun stick; the dogs scatter. “Security’s holding this location, so you’d better move on.”

“See? It
is
security. Just like Marco said.” A girl’s voice.

Two other headlamps click on. The girl and another guy. I drop to the floor, press my back to the desk to hide. Tuffer yelps and slips from my arms.

“My bad,” the first guy says. “Okay, lady. You give us that stick and the radio, and we’ll let you clear out.”

“You kids just find a place to hole up until we can sort this power situation out.”

“What’s to sort out?” the girl asks. “We blew the power.”

“Now hand them over like a nice security hack,” the first guy says.

“I will not ask you to leave again.”

Feet scuffle. The bat cracks against Tina’s stun stick. Glancing around the corner of the desk, I see the flash of a blade. The girl has a knife and goes for Tina’s gut. Tina kicks her in the knee, the girl topples. The second guy comes at Tina with a machete. She gets her stun stick in front of her, but the blow glances off and hits her arm.

Tina stumbles back, lifts her walkie-talkie. “Home base!” she screams.

The guys are on her again. She Tases one, dropping him like a bag, and smacks another in the head. They’re coming closer.

I crawl around the desk toward where I saw Tina come out of the back office, then, finding the door open, crawl into the dark.

Tina screams. “Help!” But there are three of them, and I can’t walk, can barely crawl. I can’t help anything. I’d only get myself killed.

Tina cries out. Something hit her hard. She screams again, then is silent.

“You see someone else in here?”

“Yo, flashlights outside!”

“Grab Pierce!”

Footsteps, the door slamming against the wall again, then silence. The light drops down to just Tina’s flashlight.

I crawl out of the office. Tina is on the ground. Her eyes are open, vacant. My arms shake. Tuffer pads out of the dark and licks her cheek.

I am what I always knew I was—the coward crouched in the corner behind Thad, watching my father hit him, just hoping Dad tired out before my brother went down.

“Skelton!” Goldman shouts. “Tina!” His flashlight shines in the store.

He’ll think I did this. I as good as did this.

My only thought is to run. I try to stand. Pain throbs from the ankle, but it holds and I hobble out, taking the same route as the killers.

The hall is so dark, it’s like I’ve disappeared, and that’s perfect, because all I want to be is nothing.

G
I
N
G
E
R

INSIDE THE STOCKROOM OF SHADES OF HALLOWEEN

T
ime is meaningless in the black. I feel like we’ve been sitting here for hours. Our hands groping for walls, knobs, carts, obstacles, anything, we slowly found our way to what felt like a safe corner to hunker down in and wait. For what, I don’t know.

I hear a wrapper crinkle beside me.

“Should I eat too?” I am this lost—I have to ask permission to snack.

“Eat, don’t eat,” Maddie says. “I’m not sure it matters.”

“I’m having another Snickers.”

Maddie cracks a glow stick, shakes it, and pink light blooms in front of my face. Oh god, I missed light. My eyes tear up and blur the bright wand into a brilliant haze.

“Thank you,” I manage, choking on a sob.

“Home sweet stockroom,” she says. “At least we’re better off than the people out there.”

“Like Lexi?” I ask. Before the lights went out, we were supposed to rescue her. We failed.

“I’m sure she’s safe with her senator mom in the HomeMart.” Maddie pops several Skittles into her mouth. “She probably has a nice bed, real food, a lantern.”

She throws the wrapper at the wall, goes digging in her bag for another packet, then freezes. “Holy crap,” she says. Her hand emerges with a walkie-talkie. “I totally forgot I had this!”

The senator gave it to us so we could call when we found Lexi. She’d promised to keep us all safe in the HomeMart.

Maddie turns it on and the thing squeals. We both freak and try to smother it. Maddie regains brain power first and winds down the volume.

We listen for a while, but all the conversations are in code—team numbers but never names, fake locations like “home base” and “red cave.” I wonder why they would be using codes to talk to other security guards. Maybe we’re not the only non-security people with a working walkie-talkie. Then we hear:

All teams have reported back except two and eleven.
A man’s voice.
I lost the electrician coming up from the garage.

Did anyone find my daughter?
The senator.

We have a little more to worry about than one lost kid.

Maddie turns off the radio. “We have to find Lexi.”

“We couldn’t find her when the lights were on,” I say. “It’s crazy to think we could find her now.” I cannot go back out into the dark.

“I’m not okay leaving her alone out there,” Maddie says, standing.

She can’t leave me. “What does it matter if the government’s just going to blow us up?” I can’t believe I said it.

Maddie jams the walkie-talkie into her bag. “It matters because that’s what friends do.”

A creak—the door.

“There!” a guy’s voice cries. “It’s a light!”

Maddie drops and sits on our glow stick.

“Where?” Another voice—a girl.

“In the corner,” the guy says. “Two people, I think. They’re wearing capes.”

Maddie slips a hand over my mouth.

“We don’t want to hurt you,” the girl says. “We came looking for glow sticks. Please, give us one. Just one. Then we’ll go.”

Footsteps. They are coming toward us.

I hear a crash, then swearing.

“Where are you?”

“Here! I hurt my knee.”

“Is this you?”

“Get off my face!”

I want to help them. I want to throw a glow stick—all the glow sticks at them.
Just go away! Leave us alone in our corner.

“We don’t want to hurt you!” the guy yells. “Please, just one stick.”

I stay silent and still.

Maddie moves, something rustles. Green light bursts forth, then flies. The glow stick hits the wall, then lands.

“Thank god!” the girl cries. The green light lifts. Lights a face. Glints off the wet trails of tears on her skin.

Then I feel a hand on my foot.

“Now give us another.”

I kick my legs, drive my feet into a body. All instinct, no thought.

The guy wraps his arms around my legs, crawls his fingers up my body. I punch him. He grunts, takes the blows. Maddie releases my mouth.

“Get off me!” I scream, grabbing at hair, eyes, ears—pushing them away.

“What are you doing, Gav?” the girl cries to her partner.

Then there’s a blur of pink light and the smash of something hard hitting something harder. The guy falls still, head in my lap.

“Gavin!” the girl screams. The green light comes toward us.

Maddie drops the pink glow stick and broken pieces of walkie-talkie, swings her bag, and nails the girl in the head. The girl’s body hits the ground with a thud.

“Stop it!” I scream, referring to everyone, though only Maddie is listening. I drag my butt along the floor, away from the guy’s body. His head slides over my thigh, then thunks onto the cement.

“I should have known,” Maddie mutters, slinging her bag over her cassock. “I can’t believe I was that stupid.” She bends to pick up the green glow stick. Her hand is shaking. “This is not a freaking charity event.”

Maddie shoves the green glow stick into my chest, and marches toward the door leading into the service halls. “We go right,” she says.

I shuffle along until I can catch a corner of her sleeve in my claw.

She looks back at me like she’s going to punch me.

“Please,” I yelp.

She pulls me into a hug. “You have seen my self-defense skills,” she says. “And yet you still think it’s wise to sneak up and grab me?” She kisses my head, then tows me along.

• • •

There are a few emergency lights still burning in the service halls. Maddie won’t let me linger by them. She says they are too dangerous. “People can see you,” she whispers, “but you can’t see them.”

How is stumbling through the dark with firefly-level lighting in our hands any less dangerous?

Maddie stops and tests the first door handle. “Unlocked,” she mutters. “All the magnetic doors must be unlocked.” The door is marked
CLAIRE’S
. “Did we check here before?” she asks.

“Maybe,” I say. After escaping security’s attack on the IMAX, we ran down the maze of service hallways, then searched around the arcade. Who knows what stores we missed?

“Then let’s check it out,” she says, and we enter, glow sticks first.

The first thing my glow stick illuminates is a dead body.

I scream. Maddie punches my arm. I stop screaming.

We roll the body over. It’s a boy. He smells god-awful. Blood dribbles from his mouth, nose, and eyes. His skin is weirdly dark, like patches have been blacked out. I step over him, grab the edge of a shelf, and throw up Snickers bits and bile.

“He’s not even cold,” Maddie says. What possessed her to touch him?

“Wipe off your hands,” I say, thrusting hand sanitizer at her.

“I already had the flu.”

“Just wipe them.” I haven’t had the flu. Plus the virus has mutated now. Maybe Maddie can get it again. I’d like for us to not end up like this guy.

When she hands it back to me, I rub a small amount of the stuff over my face and hands. It stings my eyes, but what’s a little pain compared with ending up an oozing obstacle on a stockroom floor?

We poke around the junk in the stockroom, but there’s no sign of Lexi. I don’t even know what a sign of Lexi would look like.

“Ready to call it?” I ask.

“Let’s check the store.” Maddie heads for the exit into the store proper.

I got my ears pierced with Maddie and her mom at a Claire’s when I was ten. My dad was furious. He pulled the studs out and let the holes close up. Then, when I was thirteen, he took me to a “nice place” and had real diamond-and-gold studs put in. Of course, I had a reaction to the fancy earrings, and had to switch to the cheap, surgical steel ones I’d gotten years before at Claire’s.

The store is narrow and crowded with merchandise. Apparently, the senator’s society had no use for Hello Kitty costume jewelry and faux-silk scarves. Further emphasizing the store’s uselessness is the fact that the security gate is pulled down over the entrance to the mall.

The screams and shouts we’d heard in the stockroom are louder here. The cavernous black of the main mall echoes with voices.

“Get that guy! He’s got a flashlight!”

“She stole a bag of nuts!”

“Get the boys together—I found some kids with a stash of batteries.”

“Hey! That’s my bag!”

“Get her!”

“Get him!”

“Get them!”

The space between the shouts is filled with slapping footsteps and the squealing shoe soles.

Flashlight beams cut through the black like a laser show, sometimes catching a fleeing person, sometimes simply glinting off the windows, sometimes hitting a mirror and sending sparks of light all over. Multicolored glow sticks, glow necklaces, and glow wands wink in the shadows or streak by in a blur. Down on the first floor, someone has lined the rim of the central fountain with candles. A bright orange blaze from an unseen corner on the third floor suggests others have sabotaged the sprinkler system and actually built bonfires. Even with this, the majority of the place is still black, black, black.

“Lexi?” Maddie says, then coughs. “The air tastes stale.” She pulls out her inhaler, gives it a shake. “Not good.”

“Do you feel an attack?” Sixth grade, in gym, Maddie’s breathing got so bad, the teacher brought in an oxygen mask.

“No,” she says. “But without air-conditioning, I doubt the air is going to get better.” She takes out a water bottle and sips. “Figures I survive the killer flu only to die from asthma.”

Die? Why is she talking about dying? “You said you’re fine.”

“Now,” she said. “But one more bonfire, and I’m going to be hacking up a lung.”

“What is it, the smoke?” I ask. I’m sort of yelling because that’s better than sort of crying. I rack my brain for the information handed out in those elementary school presentations by the fire department. Stay low to the ground. Cover your mouth with a wet cloth.

“Let’s get face masks,” I say. “From the med center. On the first floor.”

Maddie watches the craziness out in the halls. “We have to find Lexi,” she says, gripping the links of the gate.

I grab Maddie’s shoulders and turn her to face me. “You can’t help her if you can’t breathe.” I straighten the strap on her bag, then pull up the hood of her cassock. “We are going to the goddamned med center.”

Maddie smirks, then gives a little salute, shoulders squared. “Yes, sir!”

“Help!”

Someone crashes into the security gate. We stumble back and hit a display, sending beads bouncing everywhere.

It’s a guy. He rattles the links. “Let me in!”

Neither Maddie nor I move. We hide our glow sticks in our sleeves and pretend to be shadows.

“I’ve got him!” Another boy materializes from the black. He has a headlamp on, like he’s camping. More boys with headlamps surround the pathetic kid. They tug his hands loose from the gate, pull off his coat, and begin shaking out the pockets.

“You could let me keep a bag of chips,” the pathetic guy cries. Two headlamps have his arms and hold him still.

One of the headlamps is this guy I met early on in the quarantine: Mike. Egomaniac football player, a senior at one of the local high schools. We kind of hooked up, but he kissed like he was trying to bite my face off.

“Cleaned him out?” A tall kid in a duster coat steps forward, bends down, and picks through the loot. All beams are on him.

“It’s Marco,” Maddie whispers.

Marco’s with the headlamp gang? It looks like his face got messed up. One side is red and oozy, like he tried to burn it off.

“What should we do with him?” Mike asks—wait,
Mike
asks
Marco
?

Holy crap. Marco—scrawny, geeky, video-game-playing, nerdy-movie-quoting Marco—is the
leader
of the headlamp gang?

“Toss him,” Marco says. “He won’t try to steal our stash again.”

The headlamps gather the stuff they picked off the guy and slink away down the hall.

The pathetic guy is dropped into the black. “Thanks for the help,” he says. The gate rattles. “Hello? I know you’re in there.”

The gate will protect us. “What do you want?” I squeak.

Maddie elbows me in the side.

“Food, water,” he says, sounding almost jokey, “a nice place on Fire Island for the summer. You have any of the above?”

I pull out a Snickers and throw it at the gate. “Here.” I feel sorry for him. He doesn’t seem bad.

“Did you just throw food, water, or a very small beach hut?” The gate rattles.

But I’ve been the worst judge of bad, so I clamp down on that sorry feeling and hold on tighter to Maddie. “What should we do?” I whisper.

Maddie elbows me again. “What’s it like out there?” she asks him.

“Oh, it’s a picnic in the park.” The gate rattles again, then a bright white light flashes on. I’m blinded by its brilliance. Then the light goes out. We hear a wrapper crinkle. “Oh, god, chocolate has never tasted so good.”

“What was that light?” Maddie asks.

It flashes on again, this time illuminating his face. He is totally hot. And older. Like maybe twenty-five. He has long eyelashes that curl over soulful eyes. He is, like, the definition of my type. Then the light is gone again.