No Safety in Numbers (26 page)

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.

H
is 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.

“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.

F
rom 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.