No Easy Way Out (34 page)

Ginger dropped Maddie on a chair, then ran to find a sink and a glass. Luckily, there was a bar in the arcade and both were available. She brought Maddie the water, which she slurped, then coughed up.

“We’re safe,” Ginger said, feeling the need to offer a word of comfort. Were they safe? She had no idea what the word even meant anymore.

Maddie took another sip of water. “I can’t breathe.”

Ginger remembered Maddie’s inhaler. “Your inhaler?”

“Cot,” she said.

Ginger nodded. One floor down. She scurried back through the dark storage area, swallowed, then opened the door and ran down the service hall away from the IMAX. She hit a stairwell and went down it. She was next to the Lord & Taylor. The JCPenney was just down the hall. She ran toward it, burst into the back stockroom, then crept through the dim light to the door and onto the sales floor.

Luckily, there was no one in the sales floor area—where was everyone? Who cared? This was a good thing. She crawled to where Lexi, Maddie, and she had slept. Thank goodness, their stuff was still there. She grabbed her and Maddie’s purses, found the inhaler, and crawled back to the stockroom. She thought she heard voices, but decided she did not have any interest in sticking her nose in anyone else’s business and let herself back into the maze of the service halls.

By some miracle, she made it back to the arcade without first off, getting lost, or second, running into hostile forces. Maddie was lying back against the wall clutching her chest. Ginger handed her the inhaler, which she sucked on several times before breathing normally. Ginger could cry to see her take a deep breath.

Maddie dropped her head back. “And I had given you up as a coward.”

Ginger wiped her eyes. “It’s incredibly motivating to see someone choking to death.”

“But not coughing up a lung?”

What could she say to make up for the past? “I freaked, I admit it. I don’t want to die. But I should have stayed. I should have helped.”

Maddie kicked her gently. “At least you admit it.”

“I’m sorry.” Ginger knelt beside Maddie and dropped her head on her shoulder.

“I know,” she said, and kissed Ginger’s hair.

“Should we go out again?” Ginger did not want to go out again.

“I think we deserve a small rest,” Maddie said, taking another pull on her inhaler.

“Lexi will be okay?”

“None of us will be okay,” Maddie said. “But she’ll live. Or not. With or without our help. Might as well wait until we’re at least not being actively chased by the cops to begin our needle-in-a-haystack search.”

Ginger nodded. Maddie was back in charge. That was a good thing. Ginger was not good at being in charge. Not in crisis situations. She snuggled against Maddie and felt her arm hug her closer. At least they had each other.

• • •

Marco sat against the back wall of the pinsetters’ catwalk counting and recounting his army. What had originally numbered somewhere near thirty was down to ten. Only his teams had returned. Mike’s were lost somewhere in the mall. Captured?
Probably
.

Scanning the police radio for information, Marco got nothing but vague chatter. Everything was coded—numbers were rarely given, names never, locations not at all. Goldman must suspect that he and Mike had a radio. Marco switched the thing off and chucked it against the wall.

They had hauled in a ridiculous amount of food. The recruits were busy tallying the stash so that Marco could work out rations. Heath and Leon—all that was left from Tarrytown, from the football contingent entirely—were in charge of considering what remained of their weapons store.

They could survive with what they had now, that much was obvious. But Marco was concerned that without Mike, the troops would disband with their share of the stash rather than stay together. And then where would Marco be? Alone, defending his pile of food like some rat in a hole?

So be it. If that was how it had to be, then that was freaking fine with him. He’d been alone all his life. He could be alone again.

Heath approached with a smirk on his face. “We lost a crap ton of weaponry, dude.”

“We’ll survive.” Marco didn’t need Heath or weapons. Didn’t need Mike or any of them.

“Dude,” Heath said, slapping Marco’s shoulder, “I have zero doubts about your ability to survive. The way you went nuts on that guy with the hockey stick? That was completely off the hook.”

Marco tried not to flinch from Heath’s touch. Was this the olive branch of friendship? “I’m a big hockey fan,” Marco ventured.

“Dude.” Heath held up a fist. “That was some beyond fan stuff.”

Marco bumped the fist. Heath left him alone like solitude was his due. Like he was their leader.

Could it be? Marco scanned the faces of his remaining army. When they looked at him, they smiled. The hairspray girls waved their lighters at him.

As insane as it seemed, as impossible, as unlikely, as completely illogical, Marco sensed that it was true. He was their leader.

A sense of calm washed over him. His shoulders melted from where they’d crept up against his neck. These people would protect him. Looked to him to protect them. These people—dared he think it?—respected him.
Of all the wonderful accidents . . .

Marco flipped back on the police radio. He would break the codes. He would figure everything out. He would bring the stragglers of his army back from the brinks of capture or rescue them from whatever jails Goldman had devised for them. He would conquer this new flu weapon. He would conquer all.

• • •

Ryan felt odd, bringing Mike to Ruthie’s SUV, but in the fog of escaping the chaos of the raid on the food convoy, he’d had to make a quick decision and it was the only thing that popped into his brain.

“You own a car I don’t know about?” Mike asked when Ryan opened the door.

“It’s a friend’s” was all Ryan said about it. Mike’s Beamer had been “impounded” after their escape attempt—keys taken, wheels booted in place.

They’d spent the afternoon running through the service halls and stockrooms, hiding where they could and creeping through the shadows when they couldn’t. Security was on the hunt: Every guard was in full riot gear, Tasers and stun batons ready to jolt any unaccounted-for teenager into submission. At one point, Ryan even swore he saw some gas hiss into the air around them.

Mike must have expected something like this. The broken service doors did more than lead to the IMAX, they allowed anyone to move from one end of the mall to the other, and then down into the parking garage. But more than that, Mike repeatedly proved his chops as a protector, shoving Ryan out of the line of sight, or forcing back any advancing guards with a random gunshot.

They hid in the truck’s belly for several hours, silent, the only noise their breathing. No footsteps echoed around them, no flashlights penetrated the shadows. Security had failed to sniff them out.

Mike apparently felt comfortable enough to take apart his handgun. He snapped the bullets out one by one and stood them like soldiers in a row.

Ryan shifted against the wall of the backseat. “You can stop this,” he said.

Mike snapped another bullet from the cartridge. “Didn’t start it.”

“But you can end it,” Ryan said. “If you call off your guys, maybe we could get security to back down. Everything could go back to normal.”

Mike looked at Ryan, eyebrows raised like he was barely containing a laugh. “When was anything in here normal?”

The magazine empty, Mike pulled out a small plastic box full of minute tools. He began to clean his gun. “Guns take a lot of care to maintain,” he said. “It’s almost like having a pet.”

Mike sounded nuts, but still, Ryan attempted to reason with him. “The people running this mall aren’t evil, Mike. Maybe if we try to talk to that senator lady, tell her about the security chief—maybe we could all just chill out until this whole stupid quarantine thing is over.”

Mike exhaled, shook his head. “You really think they’re letting any of us out of here alive?” He flashed a look at Ryan. “Just because you don’t see the disease doesn’t mean you’re cured. Your friend the senator has done something to the virus, changed it so the only people it kills are our people.” He snapped the barrel of the gun. “Look at what it did to Drew.”

So Mike was still convinced of his conspiracy theory. “Mike, Drew died of the flu.”

“No,” Mike said, slapping the empty magazine back into the handgun. “Marco heard on the radio last night that the doc running the med center had developed a new strain of the flu that only affects teenagers.” He took aim at the wall. “Apparently, we’ve become a bit of a nuisance and they’re taking us out to save themselves. How’s that for the senator not being evil?”
Snap.
Whatever Mike had in his sights was dead.

Ryan’s fingers dug deep into the seat cushion. Mike had to be wrong. There was no way the senator would do that. Why would they sabotage their own society?

“I don’t believe that,” Ryan whispered.

“Believe whatever you want.” Mike began jamming the bullets back into the magazine, counting each out loud like a prayer.

“When was the last time you slept?” Ryan asked when Mike had finished.

Mike leaned back, ran his hands over his face and through his hair. Then he laughed. “I have no clue.” He yawned as if at that instant all that not sleeping had caught up with him.

Ryan placed his hand on the gun. Mike glared at him, a guard dog instinct in his eyes, but then released it.

“I’ll take first watch,” Ryan said, placing the gun between them on the seat.

Mike stared at the gun a moment longer, then nodded and curled against the door. It seemed like the second he closed his eyes, he was asleep.

Ryan did not touch the gun again. He merely leaned his head against the window glass and prayed that Shay did not return to the car in the night.

• • •

It had gotten worse over the last hours. Shay was cold, but not like she needed a sweater, rather like her organs were freezing over. She had a headache, though that was at this point a constant bother. Both of these could have been written off, but just now, when she’d coughed, there’d been blood in her spit. That confirmed the diagnosis. How long before she was choking on the bloody, liquefied remains of her lungs?

Had she gotten the flu from these girls? Did it matter? She now had the flu, which meant that if she didn’t find some way to get Preeti out of the JCPenney, the girl would have to watch her sister and her two closest friends die.

Shay dipped the cooling cloths in the clean bowl of water she’d placed on the floor beside the two girls, then laid them back across the girls’ foreheads. The lockdown had to end soon. They had to feed people, right? She would wait for the announcement, then convince Preeti to leave.

Preeti returned with two mugs of water. “I could only find two,” she said, sitting beside Shay. “I think I heard someone, but they didn’t see me.” She looked at her friends like she expected them to wake up at any moment, like this was all just a bad dream.

“I came looking for you to apologize,” Shay said, sipping the water. She suddenly felt desperately thirsty.

Preeti laid her head in Shay’s lap. “I’m glad you found me.”

“I’m sorry I ever left.”

“Me too.”

Just touching her sister’s head, knowing that at least she would survive, was all the forgiveness Shay needed.

A
cough wracked Shay’s ribs. She leaned over the clothing rack to avoid hacking lung all over Preeti. A cardboard box caught the spatter; it must have been mostly blood, because Preeti’s face crumpled.

“You have the flu?” she asked. “You said it was a cold.”

They’d been awake for a little under an hour, Shay guessed, though it was hard to tell. The lights had stayed on all night in the mall, though in the stockroom there was only the one or two usual dim lights glowing, so she had no idea what time it was. Not that it mattered. Whatever the time, Shay had to get Preeti out of the JCPenney.

“I wanted it to be a cold,” Shay lied. “But I guess this proves me wrong.”

Preeti hugged herself. “You’re going to leave me? Again?”

Shay pulled a cooling cloth, now warm, from one of the girls’ foreheads and used it to wipe her mouth. “I don’t have much of a choice,” she said. “So how about this? I’ll make you a deal. You go to the HomeMart and stay with the healthy people, and I will stay here and take care of your friends.”

Preeti began to chew on her hoodie string. “I don’t want to be alone,” she said. “Don’t make me leave.”

“Here,” Shay said, pulling the Tagore book from her bag. “He’s always kept me company.”

Preeti glanced up from the book’s cover. “Nana’s book? You’re giving it to me?” She looked even more miserable.

Shay held Preeti’s shoulders and put on her best Scary Parent face, the one Ba always used. “I will only stay and help them”—she glanced at the prone girls—“if
you
go now. The people in the HomeMart will make sure you’re safe. You have to stay healthy, okay? One of us has to make it out of this for Ba and Bapuji.”

Preeti flung herself into Shay’s arms. “I don’t want you to die,” she whispered.

The room was spinning. Shay wasn’t sure how much longer she had before she would pass out. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled into Preeti’s hair.

“I love you,” Preeti said, still clinging to Shay’s neck.

Shay felt tears in her eyes. She ran her hand across her lids. She couldn’t cry. Crying would only scare her little sister. She needed to put on a good show of health or Preeti would never leave.

“Stop being dramatic,” Shay said. “You lived through the flu, right? So will your friends.”

“And you?”

“Why not,” Shay said, swallowing back the blood of her lungs. “Now go,” she commanded. “If a security guard stops you, play dumb and ask directions.”

The bitchy-big-sister voice worked like a charm.

“Stop being such a boss,” Preeti said, snagging her bag from where she’d left it and shoving Nana’s book into it. “I’ve been doing perfectly well without you telling me what to do.”

Shay gave her a playful shove. “So keep on with that.”

Preeti gave one last mournful look back, then exited the door. Shay collapsed against a shelf.

She slid to the floor and crawled to the two girls, who were curled like pencil shavings on the floor. Shay shoved the rear end of first one, then the other. “Wake up!” she droned as loudly as possible.

Both girls stirred. Two pairs of red eyes blinked at her.

“Get up and follow me,” Shay said. “We are going to the med center.”

“But that’s where my mom went and she never came back,” one of the girls whispered.

“If you stay here, you will die,” Shay said in as serious a voice as she could muster. “In the med center, you have a chance.” She summoned what strength remained in her and stood. “Now get up!”

The girls, perhaps out of fear that Shay might physically drag them to their feet—an impossibility, though they couldn’t know that—pushed themselves to standing.

She held her hands out; they each took one. Then together they stumbled down the escalator and out into the eerie silence of the main hallway.