No Easy Way Out (33 page)

Shay hugged her sister. Hidden beneath these words was her own betrayal. Preeti would never have had to worry about being alone if Shay had held it together for her sister’s sake. She clung to Preeti as tightly as she could and whispered into her hair that it would be okay now, that everything would be okay.

When Preeti had calmed down enough, Shay let her go and sat her outside the cave. Then she took a look at the two other girls. Both of them had terrible fevers. They groaned when Shay touched their foreheads, as if her warm hand were a cooling cloth.

Shay took off her sweatshirt and tore it to pieces, then told Preeti to wet them in the bathrooms. She dug Nani’s children’s Tylenol bottle out of her bag and dribbled what was left in it between the girls’ cracked lips. When Preeti returned, she handed Shay the dripping cloths.

“I screwed up,” she said. “I killed them.”

Shay heard her own fears from her sister’s mouth. She placed the cloths on the girls’ heads, then took Preeti’s hands. “You couldn’t do anything to help them.” Shay led her out of the cave and fished in her bag for her hand sanitizer, then rubbed it on Preeti’s skin. “Even the people in the med center can’t help people with the flu. You tried to save them the best you could. Now it’s time we take them to the professionals and get you somewhere safe.”

Preeti nodded, seemed happy to leave the decisions to Shay.

Just then, the mall speakers squealed. “Residents of Stonecliff. The mall is now on lockdown. Remain where you are until further notice. Any individual found in any of the open hallways or in the service hallways will be deemed hostile and dealt with in the appropriate manner. This is your only warning.”

Preeti’s eyes were wide with fear. Her lip trembled. Shay wanted to scream and run—what had happened to cause this new terror? How would she get back to Ryan? But she had Preeti now; she had what she’d searched for. She would do right by her sister, the way she should have since the beginning.

Shay took Preeti by the shoulders. “We are going to be fine,” she said. “Let’s look for cups or bottles or something and get some water, and then we’ll search for some food.”

“What’s going on?” Preeti whined.

“I’m here now,” Shay said. “Everything is going to be okay.”

Preeti nodded her head like Shay’s very words could alter reality. Shay smiled as if the world were already coming up roses. Preeti wiped her hand under her nose and began hunting for bottles. Shay allowed herself five seconds of terror, then got up and followed her own advice.

G
inger had never been in trouble before, and so even though she and Maddie were only in a fake jail in a Stuff-A-Pal Workshop in a quarantined mall, she was still completely freaked out. Insane thoughts like
Will this end up on my permanent record?
and
Will Princeton know I stole designer clothes?
burbled through the general fog of anxiety that was her brain.

For Maddie, this was nothing special. But Maddie was a rebel. Maddie once had to be picked up by her mom at the police station after getting nabbed running out the back door of a party at some senior’s house.

“God, will these people ever shut up?” Maddie groaned, shifting her position against the wall. The other inmates were banging on the security gate and hollering at the air. Ginger was too terrified of them to say anything, but Maddie? She would pick a fight at this point just to end her boredom.

“I feel like screaming too,” Ginger said. “Those gunshots this morning? What is going on?”

Maddie shrugged like gunshots were so blah. “It’s the beginning of the end, dearest. Bend over and kiss your tight little ballet butt good-bye.”

Maddie could be absolutely infuriating with her end-of-the-world, bummer sarcasm. Like it helped anything to give up. Ginger never quit anything. First of all, it looked bad to quit. There were sayings—Quitters suck and some such. Maddie never cared about how things looked, but Ginger did. And through her caring she’d saved Maddie’s rear end on more than one occasion. Call her a tight-ass or whatever, but sometimes being a tight-ass made all the difference.

“The next time the guard comes by, I am asking him to call Lexi’s mom again.”

“Your senator in shining armor is not going to swoop in and save our collective butt. You’ve had him call her, what? Five times now?”

“She’s busy.” Ginger was not a quitter. Even after five calls. Had she not gotten a date with Geoff Renner through persistent calling?

Maddie rolled her eyes. “Not like there’s anything better to do anyway.”

They’d been in jail for over twenty-four hours. Bottles of water had been thrown in along with granola bars twice now, as if they were animals at the zoo. Ginger felt like they should have been given a phone call or seen a lawyer or something. That was what happened on TV. Of course, not only were they not on TV, but not even in the real world. Rule of law was a foreign concept. Her father would not be happy to hear about that when they got out. Ginger was always careful to say
when
and never
if,
even when only thinking it to herself.

She spotted a guard coming.
Probably coming to feed the tigers once again . . .
But the guy was empty-handed. Maybe food was a luxury hardened criminals were no longer allowed.

She pressed herself against the security gate and waved her arms for his attention. “Hey!” she yelled. “Has the senator sent a message for me yet?”

The guard looked at a scrap of paper in his hand. “You Ginger Franklin or Madeline Flynn?”

Ginger’s heart leaped. “I’m Ginger!”

The guard told her to take Maddie and go to the back of the sales floor, to the farthest door on the right. When it opened, there were two guards in riot gear with tall, clear plastic shields.

“Ginger Franklin?” one asked.

Ginger raised her hand, prompting a groan from Maddie. “This is not homeroom.”

Flashing Maddie a smirk, Ginger shuffled between the shields, then waited in the blissful emptiness of the stockroom for Maddie to be let through. The guard led them down a series of back hallways and staircases up to the third floor. A lot of the doors looked like they’d been attacked—holes marred the door frames above the locks, and ripped wires hung loose like stiff hairs.

“Is there something going on?” Ginger asked. Between the gunshots, the lockdown, the busted door locks, and the makeshift jails, things did not seem to be running quite as smoothly as earlier in the week.

The guard laughed. “Something?” He pushed open a service door leading back into the mall proper. “Kid, the crap has hit the fan.”

Maddie raised her eyebrows, as if to say
See?

The guard let them into a collection of offices off the hall near the skating rink. He pointed to the far wall and said, “Last door on the left.” They walked inside and he slammed the door to the mall behind them.

“The hospitality here is first rate,” Maddie said as they walked. “And the décor?
Fab-oo!
” She waved her hand to indicate a stack of cots like the ones they’d slept on in the JCPenney, next to which lay piles of dirty clothing.

The senator was talking on a cell phone—
CELL PHONE!
How did she have a cell phone?

“Look, Commander, I am not making this up to spoil your grand endgame plans. Yes, I am happy to know that this new development puts on hold your final solution, but I am also in the unfortunate position of informing you that the virus has in fact mutated.”

Ginger was afraid to breathe for fear of alerting the woman to their presence. Maddie too stood uncharacteristically still and quiet.

The senator continued, “Dr. Chen told me he suspects it might be another H5N1 strain, or something very similar. No, I have no idea why he suspects this. You want answers, you’ll have to talk to him. Well, he’s a little busy right now actually doing the research you want information about.”

She wheeled in her chair and noticed them lurking in her doorway. “Commander, I will call you back.” She touched the phone’s screen and placed it on the desk. “Girls,” she said, smiling. “I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get you out of that jail.”

Lexi’s mom indicated that they should sit, and so they did. Maddie’s jaw hung open slightly. Ginger took that as her cue to answer for them both.

“No problem,” she said, smiling.
Mutated flu?

“I hate to admit that I was only able to get you released for a single purpose.”

“Anything,” Ginger said, hands squeezed between her jiggling legs.
Final Solution?
Wasn’t that what they called the Holocaust? Was there a holocaust in the plans for the mall?

“I seem to have lost my daughter.” She slid an iPad across the desktop. On it was displayed Lexi’s check-in record. “Lex seems to have checked in to the JCPenney yesterday and has not been seen since.”

“It’s not like we did anything,” Maddie said, suddenly recovering the power of speech. “We were in jail the whole time.”

The senator nodded. “I’m not saying you did anything. I’m asking for your help. I can’t leave this office without a four-man security detail. But you two, you can look for her without attracting so much attention.”

“Why not send your security goons to look for her?” Maddie said. Ginger did not think the senator was a woman who took kindly to attitude from any corner.

But Lexi’s mom did not rise to Maddie’s taunt. “Security is rather busy at the moment controlling a small riot of unruly teenagers. I have been informed that they will commence searching for Lexi at their earliest opportunity. I would like to begin the search earlier than that.” Ginger noted the bitter tone in the senator’s voice. There was clearly a problem between the senator and her security team.

Ginger was fine helping look for Lexi, but she recalled the earlier announcement of a lockdown. “Excuse me, Senator, but didn’t you announce that anyone caught in the halls would be shot or something?”

“She doesn’t care if we get shot,” Maddie snapped.

The senator frowned. “I would care very much if you got shot. If there was any other way, I would do it, but you’re my only hope. Here.” She pulled a card out of her pocket. “Take my access card. It will let you through any door in the mall. Once you find Lexi, bring her to the HomeMart. We’re segregating the adult and child population from the teens and college-aged kids. It seems this new variant of the flu only affects you guys, but Dr. Chen said we shouldn’t take any chances. However, I will protect you three. I’ve designated a special room for you in the HomeMart.”

A special room? Was this supposed to be a comfort?

Maddie snatched the card from the table. “We’ll look for her,” she said. “But not for you.”

The senator smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “If you get in trouble, call on this.” She slid a walkie-talkie across the table. Maddie snatched that up as well.

“You’ll protect us?” Ginger finally blurted.

“Just bring Lexi to the HomeMart,” the senator said.

“Let’s go,” Maddie said, grabbing Ginger’s arm. She didn’t so much as nod good-bye to the senator.

“Bye,” Ginger said. Politeness was a reflex; it felt wrong to be rude.

Maddie practically dragged her down the hallway. “I can’t believe it,” she muttered. “I can’t freaking believe it.”

Ginger staggered to walk straight. “What can’t you believe? That Lexi’s lost?”

Maddie gave her that I’m-sorry-you’re-that-slow look she often flashed. “Lexi disappearing I can believe. She went after Marco, obviously. What I can’t believe is that I was right. From the beginning, I was like, they’re just going to blow the mall up with us inside it, and I was totally right!” She laughed. What she said was not remotely funny.

“No.” Ginger shook her head for emphasis. “That was not what she meant.”

Maddie turned the look up a notch. “What do
you
think she meant?”

Ginger kept shaking her head as if that could change things. “Not that. My dad wouldn’t let them blow me up.”

That really got Maddie laughing. “You’re dad’s a pretty scary asshole, but he’s not Superman. If the army or government or whoever wants to blow you up, he can’t do diddly crap about it.”

“You’re wrong,” Ginger said, though she wasn’t entirely clear on what she thought Maddie was wrong about. Her dad hadn’t been able to get her out of the mall. And the senator did say “final solution.” What was more final than ending the flu where it started by nuking the place?

Maddie opened the service door and led them into the back hallways. Ginger was uncomfortable in the blank, tomblike service halls. Maddie, on the other hand, moved through them like she worked there. Maddie had an excellent sense of direction. Or perhaps it was just that all their time in the Shops at Stonecliff had finally produced a practical benefit.

Many of the doors were broken, so Maddie only used the card to let them into stockrooms when they heard someone coming. They agreed that running into anyone was worse than missing Lexi. First off, if she was running through the halls, she would probably be caught and end up in jail, and the senator would find her without their help. They agreed that the senator could not be counted on to get them released from jail a second time, seeing as she only got them out to save her daughter.

Second, Lexi was not the kind of person who would run blindly through the halls. Lexi thought stuff through. She would know that stumbling around the halls after a lockdown was utter idiocy. She would hide out. So exploring the stockrooms was both a defensive maneuver and part of the overall plan.

They reached a fire stairwell, on the other side of which was the door to the IMAX, which was the last known location of the party Maddie and Ginger had consistently failed to get into. Maddie figured this was the first place to look.

“Lexi said something about Marco being at the party,” Maddie said. “It seems a logical place to start.”

“Assuming she went looking for him.” Lexi had been pissy with Ginger ever since the whole Abercrombie thing. Why did Lexi blame her for running away? She was protecting herself! Even Maddie had forgiven her.

“Trust me,” Maddie said, pulling open the door. Of course, Maddie was snarkier than normal. Maybe “forgiven” was too strong a term.

The IMAX was relatively empty, but Ginger could tell from the stench of stale beer and sickly sweet fruitiness emanating from the carpet that there had been a party of major proportions in the place.

Maddie peered into a giant plastic bin near the wall. “Looks like we missed quite the event.”

Some kids stood around a keg trying to squeeze the last drops of skunked beer from the bottom. Others simply loitered on the terraced floor and chatted like this was the high school’s courtyard during free period. They must have decided it was safer to stay in a forbidden location than wander the halls during the lockdown.

“I don’t see Marco,” Maddie said, scanning the room, hand shielding her eyes.

“I don’t see Lexi either.”

“So I guess we start combing the million or so square feet of the rest of the mall?” Maddie smirked. This was an impossible task, and they both knew it.

Just then, the back doors to the theater exploded open and the unhinged rows of seating stacked in front of them were launched into the room. The closest ex-partiers screamed and crawled away from the debris. Then two muffled gunshots echoed around the walls. Columns of smoke hissed up from the floor. A girl near the canister grabbed her face and screamed, “My eyes!”

Maddie pushed Ginger toward the door to the fire stairwell. “Go!”

Ginger watched another canister fly through the air toward the lit tiki torches beneath the movie screen. One passed too close to the flame and exploded like a firecracker, lighting the nearby curtain on fire. Security guards streamed into the room. People shrieked, ran toward her. Then the sprinklers popped on and a stream of water woke her from the stupor of fear.

Ginger bolted toward the fire door. Maddie was on the other side waiting for her.

“I can’t see,” Maddie yelled. “Some of the smoke got in my eyes.” She coughed. “Throat too.” She held out the senator’s card.

Was she asking Ginger to take over planning?

“Let’s go!” she wheezed.

Maddie had asthma. Even a little tear gas would hurt her. Ginger snapped out of it, grabbed the card, and took Maddie’s hand.

She ran through doors, knowing only that they needed to get away from the IMAX. Security was concentrated there. Which meant they would not be in other places. She saw a door marked
ACTION ARCADE
and slid her card through its reader.

The back of the arcade was dark and cluttered with old game systems and spare parts. Ginger led Maddie deeper into the darkness, finally stopping when she noticed her friend holding her throat.