No Easy Way Out (6 page)

Jazmine, as if reading her mind, handed her her bag. “What did I say this morning?”

Shay snatched the strap.

Jazmine grasped her shoulder. “I told you that you have to trust someone.”

Shay nodded because that was what Jazmine wanted, but the woman was wrong. Shay would not trust anyone but herself. Who else could she really count on?

“Can I finish my food?” She needed some more time to come up with a strategy.

Jazmine sighed. “Take your time,” she said. “I’ll be back in an hour to check you out.”

Good
. An hour to plan her actions. She scooped the rest of the chicken mush into her mouth. She wasn’t sure what food existed outside the med center; who knew when her next meal would be? She dumped out her bag and sorted the items: wallet, iPod, headphones, dead cell phone, contact solution and case, children’s Tylenol . . .

The bottle stopped her brain cold. She’d last held it to Nani’s lips in an attempt to drive back her fever. How deeply she’d failed Nani. What an idiot she’d been to think she could save her. What good were her plans, really? She’d screwed up everything, killed her grandmother, nearly killed her sister. Better to just lie back and let the mall take her.

Preeti stirred. “Shaila?”

Shay froze, caught between the sadness inside, sucking her against the bed, weighing her body down, and the need to show her sister everything was okay.

“Shay?” Preeti’s voice trembled. “Are you here?”

Jazmine was right about one thing: Shay had to be strong for Preeti. She sealed up the sadness like a sandwich bag.
Poof!
The emptiness felt like joy.

Shay sat up. “I’m here.”

Preeti, who hadn’t even really been awake, rolled over. “Tell Mom I’m not going to school.”

“Okay,” Shay chirped. She stuffed all the crap back into her bag. Her hand stroked the smooth surface of the notebook, nestled amid the sheets. Did she even need it? She felt so clean inside.
Take it,
whispered the sadness. Shay slipped it into her bag.

• • •

Ryan tapped the pill bottle against his legs as he padded through the service halls back toward the Grill’n’Shake. At least he thought he was heading back to the Grill’n’Shake. Ryan tried to stick to the path Marco had taken, but all the halls looked alike and, without Marco’s card, most doors were closed to him. He was beginning to consider the possibility that he was lost.

There were store names printed in block letters on some of the doors, but that information was of little use to Ryan. It’s not like knowing he was outside the Candy Hut gave him a clue about where he was relative to the Grease’n’Suck. He wasn’t a big mall person, not like other people. Funny, to go to the mall maybe five times in a year and end up getting quarantined on one of those visits.
Typical Murphy Luck.

Ryan’s older brother, Thad, had a theory about Murphy Luck. Murphy Luck was always to blame for an interception. Murphy Luck explained why Thad could drink a twelve-pack of light beer and not even get buzzed. Murphy Luck was why Dad was such a dick. The man couldn’t even keep a one-day construction job without pissing someone off. Crap like getting lost in the service halls of a mall qualified as undeniable Murphy Luck.

Voices echoed from around the corner. Not wanting to find out if they belonged to security, Ryan pushed open the nearest exit door. It opened into the second-floor hallway next to the Sports Authority. Feeling like perhaps Murphy Luck had taken a time-out, and that he should not be in the hall, Ryan decided to upgrade from his crusty climbing clothes.

The store was empty—no salespeople, no shoppers, and most importantly, no insane looters with guns. Things seemed normal, like there had never been a riot. Were people really following the mall leader’s orders?

Not that it mattered to Ryan. Mike had made the call that they were staying under the radar. Ryan was not going to rock the very small boat of protection he’d found in this hellhole, even if it meant also staying under the thumb of Marco. Mike had watched his back from minute one of this nightmare. Ryan owed it to him to stick with his plans. They were teammates, and a team was a powerful thing. He would find some way around the Marco-Shay situation.

He grabbed a pair of basketball shorts and a T-shirt, then decided, why stop there? They were obviously taking up residence in the place and might want a change of clothes. He grabbed a duffel and packed it with some T-shirts in his size, then a bunch larger for Mike and Drew, shorts, socks, and boxers. He went into the back to look for some sneakers.

As he rounded the corner of one floor-to-ceiling shelf, he discovered a person who’d not been as lucky with the flu. It was a man. Old. His dad’s age. His face was bluish and blood had dried in thin trails from his nostrils. Puddles Ryan did not want to know the origins of pooled around his legs. He smelled terrible.

Ryan scrambled back to the other side of the shelf. His second dead body in as many days. Why was this happening to him? To any of them?

Forget about it.
There was nothing he could do to help that guy or Mike or himself, any of them. Best to just forget about it. Move on. Find the sneakers and get the hell out of there.

He found a pair of sneakers in his size. The things cost two hundred dollars. In the real world, he couldn’t have ever hoped to buy them.
Screw the Shops at Stonecliff.
The place owed him some freaking nice sneakers for all the crap he’d been through.

The coast was clear outside the store. Ryan heard voices down below, but just regular talking. He checked over the railing and saw people sitting on the floor with paper plates. There were dead bodies lying around and these people were at a goddamn block party. It was like bizarre-o-world.

The ground seemed to pull away, and Ryan felt a wave of nausea course through him. He found a bench and parked his ass on it.

He was not fully recovered from the flu. He pretended he was fine, but there was a constant ache in his muscles and his brain went fuzzy if he moved too fast. He should get back to the Grease’n’Suck. He waited for the nausea to subside, then shouldered the bag and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible.

There was no one on the third floor, so Ryan walked faster, nearly running into the Grill’n’Shake. The dining area was empty now. Ryan headed straight into the kitchens.

Mike and Drew were sitting beside a small pile of boxes overflowing with bags of defrosting chicken strips, crackers, and what appeared to be a handle of vodka.

“Looks like you’ve got all the food groups,” he said, dropping the duffel.

Mike looked up. “What the hell took you so long?” He stood and grabbed the back of Ryan’s head, pulling him into a hug. “You okay?”

Ryan shrugged him off. “Fine.” Mike’s caring was a little intense. “I’m not at death’s door.”

“You were at death’s door, idiot.” Mike shoved Ryan’s head.

“I’m fine, really,” he said, trying to ignore the throbbing Mike’s jostling had ignited in his skull. “I got us some clothes.”

Drew rifled through the duffel. “Packers!” He pulled out a jersey.

“What kind of crap are they selling in this mall?” Mike said, grabbing the bag.

It was the one point of dissention between Mike and Drew. Mike was a Giants guy and Drew had been raised a cheesehead like his dad. The only fight Ryan had seen between the two started when Mike in a drunken haze pissed on Drew’s cheese-wedge hat. Drew had tackled him, busting a hole in his basement wall. The fight ended when Mike promised to not only buy a new hat, but to wear a Packers jersey for a week.

“Don’t get your jocks in a twist,” Ryan said, rubbing his temples. “There’s something for everyone.”

Mike dug out a Giants jersey and pulled it over his head. “Now we’re in business.”

“Jumbo Shrimp comes through in the clutch.” Drew tugged on some new socks.

Ryan ducked into the bathroom to change and splash water on his face. He slurped some from his cupped hand, then examined himself in the mirror. He didn’t look good. Pale. Bags under the eyes. He’d bench himself. But this was no game. There was no bench to rest on.

When he came back, Marco had rejoined their crew and was skulking in the corner. He was smiling, but still looked pissed off. The guy was weird.

“Now that the whole gang’s back together, let’s mosey to our new quarters.” Marco clapped his hands like this was some class trip.

Ryan was not ready to follow Marco blindly. “What did the senator want to see you about?”

• • •

Marco gritted his teeth. He had not wanted to share that particular tidbit with Mike, but it figured the douche wouldn’t allow even that small lapse in information. Perhaps he’d twisted the knife too hard on the whole Shay issue.

“She asked me if I had a stolen card key. She’d seen me in a back hall during the riots. I was trying to save my friend’s life.” Marco looked purposefully at Ryan, who looked a bit peaked. “The senator was suspicious, so I gave her my old one from the Grill’n’Shake.” It was a decent lie. The douche did not question him further and slogged over to a duffel bag.

Mike nodded. “Nice thinking.”

“I thought so.” Marco was impressed with himself. Everything was coming up Carvajal today. If you discounted the whole trapped-in-a-mall-with-a-deadly-virus thing.

The mall speakers squealed and announced the end of dinner in fifteen. “Please return to your Home Store for distribution of new clothes and toiletries.”

Marco checked his watch. It was six forty-five, a little early for curfew, if you asked him, but nobody was asking, so he’d better get this show on the road. “I have to get back before anyone cares that I’m gone.”

“Calm down, Taco,” Drew muttered, pushing himself to standing.

“Marco.” Marco would not let that nickname back into their vocabulary.

“
Mar
-co.”

The nickname had sounded kinder.

The Three Douches hefted their boxes of nutritionally dubious food and followed Marco into the service halls. Marco decided to risk the elevator—he was now a sanctioned mall employee of sorts; who was going to stop him? He led them down to the parking garage, then wove through the rows of cars to the far wall where he knew of a storage closet for cones and other parking-related crap.

The door to the room wasn’t even locked, so Marco swung it open and was greeted with a cloud of stale air. He flipped on the light. The space was the size of a minivan and was empty save for a stack of cones and some sandwich board signs used for indicating that the lot was full.

“There’s no window,” Ryan said, poking his head through the doorway. “How are we supposed to breathe?”

Mike pushed past him into the space. “It’s perfect. No one will bother us here.”

“Glad I packed the vodka,” Drew said, pulling the bottle from the box.

“I’ll come back in the morning to check in,” Marco said, dusting off his hands. He didn’t want any residue from that hole following him up into the mall.

“What are we supposed to do for a bathroom?” Ryan’s voice sounded squeaky, like he was about to cry. Marco would have liked to see that. He would have liked to record it for Shay.
Here’s your big strong boyfriend
 . . .

“The parking garage is your oyster,” Marco said, waving a hand.

Mike grabbed Ryan by the shoulders. “We’ll manage.”

Mike held a hand out for Marco to shake.

Marco took it. “See you in the morning,” he said, then shut the door on them for the night.

L
exi had finished typing in the last entry when a guard approached with a late arrival, fresh from the med center.

“She’s a riot intake, not flu,” the guard said. This diagnosis seemed hasty to Lexi. The girl did not look well.

“Shaila Dixit,” she mumbled, eyes bloodshot and scanning the inside of the JCPenney as if ready to run at the least provocation.

Even through the mist of sick and crazy the girl was giving off, Lexi could tell she was gorgeous. Much prettier than Lexi. But wasn’t everyone?

“I can’t really check people in,” Lexi said. “There’s a guard.”

“I’m not waiting,” the guard said, and left.

The girl kept sweeping the room with her eyes.

“I guess I can just tell him when he gets back,” Lexi offered.

The girl glanced at her. “It looks safe,” she said. “Is it safe?”

Lexi shrugged. “Compared to what? We’re in a mall with a lethal virus.”

The girl was not amused. “What do I do? Just find somewhere to sleep?”

Lexi checked the list. The guard had left his clipboard on the counter when he went to the bathroom. Maddie had said she had to go too, and would he show her where they were? That had been like a half hour ago. It did not take much imagination to picture what had caused the intervening delay. The guard had been on the “youngish and cutish side”—Maddie’s words.

“You’re cot number fifteen-twenty. That means first floor. Look for a cot with a five-twenty on it.” Lexi reached under the counter, where perfumes had once been stored, by the smell of it. “Here’s a nightgown.”

The girl took what looked like a nightie Laura Ingalls Wilder would have donned on the prairie.

“And here’s some soap, hand sanitizer, a mask, and I think a toothbrush?” Lexi passed a plastic bag across the glass.

“Thanks,” the girl mumbled, taking the items and stuffing them into her shoulder bag. She all but tiptoed into the store, head turning this way and that, as if watching for ghosts haunting the empty cosmetics counters. For all Lexi knew, they were—who knew how many had died in this very spot?

The question having been posed, Lexi realized she now possessed the power to answer it. In front of her, on her laptop, was a database of the entire population of the mall. Her father had set up an intranet linking Lexi’s laptop with a server in the mall offices. He had entered all the names from the med center himself instead of letting Lexi do it—some lame attempt at preserving people’s privacy or something. All she had to do was run a search for all the entries that had not been checked in to one of the Home Stores or the medical center and she would get—one thousand five hundred and thirty-five.

ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE?

Her father must not have finished entering his names. No way there were over one thousand dead. First of all, where would the Senator have put them?

Maddie trotted back to the counter. “What’d I miss?” Her shirt was disheveled. Her cheeks were flushed. Her face mask hung like a necklace around her neck.

“You know, my mom made an announcement about minimizing contact to prevent the spread of disease.” Lexi canceled her search, erasing the impossible number.

Maddie poked her in the arm. “But I already
had
the disease, so that rule totally does not apply to
moi
.” She winked at the guard as he passed to begin shutting the security gates.

Lexi rolled her eyes and closed the laptop. “I’m going to check on our new home.”

Maddie brushed her hands over her shirt. “Excellent. I want to use the bathroom.” She replaced her mask.

“You just came from the bathroom.”

“Oh,” she said. “Right.” She laughed. No, cackled. Lexi was not sure how to respond, so she kept silent.

Their cots were on the second floor in what had been an evening gown display. Lexi had pulled rank and gotten them these digs. The area was a small bubble off the main floor, offering them an iota of privacy, something the rest of the floor lacked. There were two other cots in the space, both occupied by older women who were already prone and staring at the ceiling.

Lexi had left her assigned Ziploc bag and pajamas on the cot closest to the wall. Maddie had moved both one cot over, giving herself the cot next to the wall.

“You moved my stuff,” Lexi said.

“Is that okay?” Maddie asked. She grabbed her stuff and sashayed out of the bubble.

It was okay, Lexi guessed. But Maddie should have asked. Maybe she’d thought it was someone else’s stuff? No, Maddie had seen Lexi’s assigned paisley boxer pj’s after dinner check-in.
Whatever
. It didn’t matter. One cot was as good as the next. And it was better than sleeping with her parents in the mall offices. That was the message the Senator had relayed after dinner via the guard’s walkie-talkie. “Please ask my daughter if she would please sleep up here with her parents.” Just the words every girl longs to hear. She told the guard to reply in the negative.

Lexi grabbed her stuff and headed for the dressing rooms. There were lines for the bathroom and she wanted out of this hairy nightmare sweater ASAP.

• • •

Shay sat on the cot marked 520. There were far too many people in this room. The nearest cot was a mere foot away and the woman on it was already snoring.

The guard had closed the security gate over the exit to the rest of the mall. Was this supposed to make her feel safe? She felt trapped, caged. There was no running back into the mall through the front entrance. To escape, she was going to have to go out the back.

As if to emphasize the prison aspect, a security guard stalked by her cot, stun baton swinging beside his leg and Taser in its holster. There were only a few guards. After Lights Out, it wouldn’t be hard to sneak by them. Shay tried to memorize the path from her cot to the stockroom door. Once she was in the stockroom, she could use her key-light to find the service door. After that, she was home free. She would fetch Preeti from the med center under cover of darkness and then hide out in a nearby stationery store until morning, at which point she would find Marco and they would hole up in some back-room fortress until the government decided to open the doors.

Now the only difficulty was the waiting. She did not know how long she had until Lights Out. How to kill the time? She went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth. Some other women were washing with wet paper towels, splashing water over their faces and hair. Shay decided to follow suit. She bent over her sink and tried to get her hair under the faucet.

“It’s easier if you use your Ziploc bag like a bucket,” the woman next to her said. “If you want, you can use mine.” She held out her plastic bag.

The woman had a nice face. She looked old, but not Nani old.

“Thanks,” Shay managed, and took the bag.

The woman returned to running her fingers through her mane of brown hair. Shay wondered if the bag was okay—was the woman infected? It was too late now. Shay filled the bag, added some soap, and doused herself, then passed it back to the woman. Only afterward did she realize that she’d failed to remove her T-shirt, the top quarter of which was now soaked. She would have to change into the wretched nightgown she’d been given: red plaid with small blue flowers and a lace-trim collar. It fit her about as well as a garbage bag and was only slightly more comfortable. The fabric was a weird polyester that crinkled with her every motion. She left her jeans and boots on.

Another fifteen minutes were consumed in the finger-combing and braiding of her hair. Shay contemplated hacking the mess off, but the mere idea of losing her hair brought tears to her eyes. She found a stray elastic in her bag and wrapped it around the end of the braid.

The lights still glared down at her. There was more time left to kill.

The notebook found its way into her hands. She flipped it open. She clicked the pen light on and off, on and off. No words came. Normally, she couldn’t write fast enough, the words poured so rapidly from her brain. Nothing. She put the pen tip on the page, wondering if mere proximity would inspire, but no. Still nothing. Her words had died.

She closed the journal and dropped onto the cot, which was a mistake, as the thing was barely softer than the cement floor. Her head throbbed. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the pain. At least in it there was something to hold on to.

• • •

“Pass the crackers,” Ryan said into the black. Mike had ordered the lights be left off to keep their hiding place inconspicuous.

A bag hit him in the side of the head.

“Nice aim,” he grumbled, rubbing his cheek. His head could not withstand much more abuse.

“I am like a freaking laser guided missile, J.S.,” Drew said from somewhere off to Ryan’s right. He sounded drunk. Ryan wondered how many handles of vodka the two had stowed away and whether there was anything of a non-alcoholic variety available. He was not going to risk a flu relapse by getting hammered.

Munching stale saltines, Ryan contemplated his options for reconnecting with Shay. He could sneak out tomorrow during a bathroom break and try to locate her in the med center again. Maybe just seeing him would be enough to bust up whatever she had going with Marco. Taco had said she’d come to him for help.
I can help her now.

The thought made him laugh. How could he help anyone from a dark closet in the parking garage? And what, was he going to propose that she live with the three of them in this tomb? He wasn’t even sure he’d make it through the night. The floor was cold and kind of wet, and the air smelled of exhaust fumes and was thick with dust.

Plus, would Marco retaliate if Ryan made a move for her? Not like things could get much crappier. He could move them to an even dirtier hole in the parking garage, but Ryan doubted such a place existed. He could rat them out to security, but if he hadn’t done that already, it seemed unlikely. Mike had mentioned something about them watching out for Marco. Maybe the weasel needed them more than he needed to keep Ryan away from Shay.

Ryan’s brain throbbed. He was not known for his strategizing skills off the field. Ryan’s plan was just to be nice enough to people, to pass his classes, and generally not make any waves outside of the football arena. Mike was the guy who was always running some scheme. Maybe he could help with Shay?

It would have to wait. Ryan’s head was killing him. He pulled the pill bottle from his pocket and decided to take two. Whatever they were, they had to help. His head couldn’t feel any worse.

“I need a drink,” Ryan said, palming the pills.

“I’ve got a bottle of joy juice with your name on it.” Mike’s voice sounded like it was coming from the floor. Was he already flat-on-his-back drunk?

“Anything of the less flammable variety?”

“You can’t light vodka,” Drew mumbled, like Ryan was such an idiot for not knowing this.

“Water,” he said, growing more tired of this stupid plan by the second. “Do we have any water?”

“You need Bacardi 151, something serious,” Drew continued.

“Shut up,” Mike drawled. “Any drink you make, I can light it. You just have to hold the freaking lighter over the glass for more than two seconds.”

“Like you know anything.”

“Like
you
know anything.”

Ryan slapped the pills into his mouth and choked them down with spit alone. He curled up on the gross floor, head on his duffel, and prayed that whatever he’d just taken didn’t kill him. This could not be how he lived for the rest of his potentially shortened life. There had to be a Plan B. Plan A sucked.

• • •

The line for the bathroom was no shorter when Lexi emerged from the dressing rooms in her boxers and T-shirt. It snaked around the perimeter of the sales floor. The women in line chatted with those seated on cots. Everyone seemed happy, some even laughed, like it was okay to joke around again. The mall, well, the JCPenney felt safe. Like no one would leave a girl trapped under a corpse beneath a pile of garbage ever again.

Even with all the women using it, the bathroom was relatively clean. One girl tossed her paper towel into the trash only to miss. Instead of walking away, she trotted over and put the crumpled sheet into the bin. It was like people cared again. Had Lexi’s mom actually pulled this thing off?

“Hi.”

Lexi had just splashed water on her face, so it took a second for her to wipe her skin dry and address the person belonging to the voice. She knew who it was, though. It was undoubtedly Ginger Franklin’s tremulous warble.

“I’m so glad you’re okay.” Ginger twisted a strand of her hair around a finger.

Ginger had a bruise on her cheek. Lexi did not really care how she got it.

“No thanks to you,” Lexi said.

Ginger looked like she was tearing up.
Good.

“I’m really sorry,” Ginger said. “I was just so scared. I don’t want to die in here.”

“Really? Because everyone else is totally lining up for the chance to kick it in the Gap.”

“I suck, I know it. What can I do to make it up to you?”

“Go away.” Lexi turned back to the mirror and dug the mini toothbrush out of her bag.

Ginger wiped her eyes with her hand. “I never took you for a mean girl,” Ginger said.

“No, you only took me for a loser you could use and then abandon.”

“I never took you for a loser.” Ginger disappeared from Lexi’s mirror.

Lexi didn’t need Ginger. Ginger had bailed when Lexi needed her most. When her supposed best friend needed her most. Friends like that were no friends at all. Still, Lexi felt like a jerk. She wasn’t used to being pissed off at anyone except her mom. Her computer nerd friends, or friend, really—Darren and her, they never fought.

Lexi allowed herself to wish Darren were here. Yes, it was kind of a death sentence, but it would have been great to have had one of her people stuck in here with her. Darren would have been the perfect partner for spying on the Senator. Darren would never have ruined everything by calling his dad and starting a riot outside the mall.

Lexi finished brushing her teeth. The fantasy swirled down the drain with her spit. She was trapped in here with one friend who was kind of a bitch and another who was no friend at all.
Welcome to your life.