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

“It’s a book light,” he says. “I keep this puppy hidden on my person to avoid losing it in such shakedowns as you girls just witnessed. Thanks for the help, by the way.”

“What would you have liked us to do?” Maddie says. “We can’t open that gate. And even if we could have, it’s not like we’re looking to hang with thieves.”

He leans against the gate, causing it to creak. “Girlfriend,” he says, “thieving is all we’ve got left.” He offers to share his tale of woe for two more Snickers. This sounds like a good deal to me, so I toss two more at the gate. Once he locates them with his light, he continues.

His name is Kris. “When the lights went out, I was hiding in Baxter’s Books. I left the store, and came across those headlamp nutbags in the bowling alley just sitting on a huge pile of grub. We’re talking jerky, pretzels, trail mix in little bags.” He takes a moment. “Anyway, they chased me over here and now you know as much as I.”

Maddie is frozen against the table, arms crossed over her chest. I slide down to the floor, to his level. I would feed him all my food if he would just turn on that light again.

“How could the headlamp people have gotten so much food, and hauled it all the way up to the bowling alley?” Maddie asks, still sounding wary.

“Before the blackout, a bunch of lunatics armed to the teeth took on a food caravan guarded by security. Security was trying to move the food into the HomeMart before it was locked down. The headlamp people must have been with the lunatics. Which suggests they have weapons. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried stealing from them first.”

I crawl to the gate. “Please turn on your light,” I say, holding out a Snickers.

Just when he’s about the grab it, he snatches at my bag instead.

Maddie kicks the gate, knocking his hand loose, and drags me back. “Ginger!” she scolds.

He laughs. “Oh, come now,” he says. “I won’t bite. Okay, I might bite, but I’m just starving. There’s been no food service for, god, how long? A day? And how many packets of madeleine cookies from the bookstore coffee shop can you eat?” He turns on the light—a peace offering? “Actually, I can tell you exactly how many—fifteen. Then you begin to hate madeleines.”

“Was there a girl with the headlamps?” Maddie asks. “A black girl, kind of curvy? With the burned guy, the leader?”

Kris flashes his light at us. “I don’t know. There were a bunch of them there. We could go check,” he says. “I’ll show you where they’re hiding for a bag of candy.”

“No need,” Maddie says. “I’m sure we can find the bowling alley ourselves.”

“Suit yourself,” he mutters, shrugging. “But you sure you don’t want a hulking male presence along to defend you?”

Kris is far from a hulking male presence. Even Maddie cracks a smile.

“I think we’ll do all right on our own,” she says.

“Best of luck, then.” He flicks off his light. I hear the gate clatter, then footsteps. We are alone again.

“You think Lexi’s with the headlamps?” I ask, shuffling in the dark.

“Marco’s face was burned,” she says. “Maybe he was in the IMAX when the tear gas exploded. And maybe Lex was there with him. We didn’t exactly scour the place before security busted in—” She’s cut off by a wracking cough.

“First, we get face masks,” I say.

She nods and takes another sip.

THE
S
E
N
A
T
O
R

AUDIO LOG

Left on a machine using a satellite phone and a pre-arranged phone number:

This is Dorothy Ross calling with my report on the status inside the mall, in accordance with your order after the loss of internal and external monitoring due to the power outage. I had expected to speak with someone directly. Maybe I got the time wrong? Please confirm my call-in times for the future.

We have approximately five hundred people packed in the HomeMart—adults and young children. The temperature is seventy-five degrees; last night it was seventy-two.

As requested, I sent my chief of security, Hank Goldman, out with John Dawes, an electrician, to investigate the power situation. They made it to the transformer, but found it had been damaged beyond repair. Mr. Dawes suggested that the transformer would not have exploded on its own. Mr. Goldman readily supported his claim that this was deliberate sabotage. I have not had further reports from Misters Goldman or Dawes, nor have they returned to the HomeMart.

I have collected all batteries and hand-crank generators, light sources, and walkie-talkies. What power we have will be directed toward maintaining the walkie-talkies and this satellite phone, then to the light sources.

We have food, though not enough. I have ordered the remaining members of security to divide what we have into rations, giving the most to the children. By some blessing, the plumbing still works, so we have water, and there are bathrooms and a staff kitchen in the store.

I have asked all the adults to pitch in to keep the store clean, including maintaining the bathrooms. The HomeMart is conveniently well-stocked with cleaning materials.

I have limited information about the conditions in the rest of the mall. From what I hear through the locked security gate, which is solid like a garage door, the situation has descended into chaos. I have not heard further reports from Dr. Chen, and assume that he has either succumbed to illness or been compromised in some other way. He was not able to update me on the progress of his research before all communication was cut off.

Please call me back to update me on your timeline for the situation. In particular as to whether you have decided to go forward with Project Closed Book. I fear the news about Dr. Chen decides the matter. I would like to be informed before you destroy the mall with me and everyone I love inside it.

R
Y
A
N

INSIDE THE POST OFFICE

W
ake up!” a guy yells, then slaps my face.

I block, too late, and scurry back, away from the hand. Last thing I remember, I was running from Goldman. He was yelling that he’d kill me. Then two people with glowing green heads jumped me.

My eyes are blurred out by the light. I’m somewhere with power.

“I don’t know why you brought him back here,” the guy says. The voice is familiar.

“Giles punched him,” a girl says. “I didn’t want to just leave him out there.”

“Last time I saw him, he attacked us.” A new guy—Giles, I bet. “Better safe than sorry.”

“Bet your ass,” the first guy says. “And Diane, no more bringing home strays. We are not running a goddamned shelter.”

This room is the back of the post office and this guy is the leader of the post office gang—Simon, I think. The ceiling lights are out, so I was wrong about there being power, but with all the flashlights and lanterns hung everywhere, it’s as bright as it was the last time I was here, three days ago. With Shay.

“The girl I was with,” I say.

“He speaks!” Simon says.

“Did she come here?”

Simon throws Shay’s universal key card at me. “Traded information on the whereabouts of her sister for this, which is useless now that all the service hall doors are open.”

Out of nowhere, a guy in a hooded sweatshirt steps forward. “Where is she?”

“Who let this guy in?” Simon yells, brandishing his fist of knives and grabbing the guy’s arm.

The postal people are on the intruder in a second. One pulls back his hood. It’s Kris. Shay’s co-teacher. The guy who hates me.

Kris puts his hands up. “I’m just looking for Shay,” he says. “Tell me where you sent her and I’ll get lost.”

Diane frisks him and pulls a bag of chips from his pocket. “He stole food.”

“Borrowed,” Kris says. “Just borrowing.”

Simon throws his arms up. “What the hell did we set up patrols for? Where are my door guards?” He grabs the chips and hurls the bag across the room. “What the hell are we doing here, people?!” Simon picks up a tablet and begins reading from a list. “Jake, Liz—door duty. Diane, Giles—first patrol. We have a system, people. This is the way we’ve survived.”

A girl plays with the zipper on her hoodie. “I had to go to the bathroom.”

“And you let in a thief,” Simon says, slamming the tablet down. “I want two people per door at all times from now on.”

Another girl, the one who caught Shay and me—Sydney—nods and takes the tablet.

The postal people tape Kris’s hands behind his back, then toss him beside me, under a wide shelf, between boxes and a huge canvas bin of trash.

He’s got a black eye. It makes him look less like a pretty-boy actor. “Who gave you that?” I ask.

“Your pals Mike and Marco,” he says. “Thanks for leaving me, by the way.”

Last time I saw Kris, he was helping me get a little girl named Ruthie into the HomeMart. Once we got her inside I had to ditch Kris because Mike’s gang ambushed the security team’s food caravan and I saw my old teammate Drew go down in the fight.

“I thought my friend had been shot,” I say. “But it was the flu.”

“You’re better off without them,” Kris says. He shuffles toward one of the legs of the shelving unit and begins rubbing the tape holding his wrists against the edge.

I can’t argue. When I left Mike, he had a gun pointed to my face.

The postal people huddle in the opposite corner. From what I can hear, Simon is tearing them a new one over their failure to take security seriously. My arms are free. There’s nothing holding me down except my ankle. They can tell just by looking at me that I’m no threat.

The tape cuffing Kris snags, and he tugs his arms apart until it splits. He then crawls, slowly, toward the edge of the shelf, slides his hand onto the top, and feels around. “Gotcha.” He brings his hand back down, holding a thin laptop.

“Saw it while they were taping me up.” Kris opens it and begins clicking through windows. “We can find Shay. Here we are.” It’s a database of names, ages, whether someone’s sick or dead, and current check-ins. Kris scrolls down to Dixit. Next to Shay’s sister’s name, it says
JCPenney
.

That’s where Shay went. She could still be there.

He looks at me. “Coming?”

Shay would come for me, no question. Hurt, sick, outgunned, she’d be there.

I could play defense between Shay and an attacker. Even broken, I could at least do that.

I try to stand and hit my head.

“Slow down, champ. We need a plan,” Kris says, slipping the computer back where he found it. “There’s a door over there.” He points past the garbage bin.

I get my knees under me. “That’s our plan,” I say. I crawl over, then jam myself between the bin and the wall. Kris positions his arms behind the other corner of the bin, and on my nod, we shove the whole thing over, sending weeks’ worth of trash spilling across the room.

Simon whips his head around. “Was no one watching them? What the hell have we just been talking about?” he screams, and the whole group of them comes charging.

Kris pulls open the door. I scramble up, using the wall as a crutch, and hobble to him.

“You have to move faster than that,” he says, glancing over my shoulder at the advancing line of postal people wading through the foot-deep pile of crap.

There’s a brick by the door that must have been some kind of doorstop when this place was still functioning. I heft it, then slam it down on the inside door handle, which pops off the door and into my hand. I step into the service hall and then shut the door.

“Where’d you get that idea?” Kris asks.

One night, my dad got fed up with some stupid fight Thad and I were having over a video game. My dad hauled us up to our room, and to keep us in there, he busted the doorknob. Thad crawled out the window, just to stick it to the old man.

“Just came to me,” I say.

Kris flips on a book light. “I keep this
well
hidden,” he says, smiling. I do not want to know where.

Next to us are the smooth metal doors of an elevator. I wedge the door handle into the seam and wrench the elevator doors apart far enough to get my fingertips in.

“I don’t think the elevator’s working,” Kris says.

“The postal people expect us to come out the service halls on this side,” I say. “No way I can outrun them.” The doors slide open onto the empty shaft. “They won’t expect us to change floors.”

Kris shines his light into the elevator shaft. I guessed right. Just like in that movie, there’s an emergency ladder on one wall.

The elevator car is above us. “We’re going down,” Kris says.

He helps me get onto the rungs, then slides the doors shut behind us.

It’s a slow climb down. Kris stops at the first floor, but I shake my head.

“Parking level.”

“It’s got to be pitch-black down there,” he says.

“Security controls the first floor.”

He nods, keeps descending. Seems he’s aware that security is the enemy. We drop onto the floor of the shaft, push the release on the doors, and crawl into the black of the parking level.

We’re near where they built the showers. The air feels damp, and it smells like mildew. Kris scans around with his light, but it gets lost in the huge, black space.

“JCPenney’s on the other side,” he says, and we begin picking our way across the mall.

I have to lean on Kris after a few steps. We move even slower. He’s no athlete.

“Can’t you put
any
weight on that leg?” he grunts.

“I
am
putting weight on it,” I snap.

A door opens somewhere nearby. We stop. Beams of light swing around.

“Headlamps,” Kris says. “Crap.” He turns off his light.

A voice echoes, “I think the bikes were parked somewhere over here.” It’s the guy from the pet store.

“You have to hotwire them or can we just roll them?” Mike’s voice.

No thought, just instinct, forgetting everything except Mike’s gun in my face and Tina’s dead eyes, I bolt. I get one step before my ankle gives out and I fall onto a car. The alarm blares. Headlights flash.

Kris grabs me, hauls me up. “Nice move.”

“Someone’s down here!” Mike yells. Footsteps echo.

We try to run, but I am too slow. The footsteps gain on us.

“It’s Ryan!” Mike screams. He’s close enough to make me out in the flashing of the headlights.

In front of us is a crappy old van advertising some car repair business. Its windows are blown out.

“Stop,” I say.

I reach in the broken back window and open the rear doors. The van’s floor is crammed full of car parts, including a car battery and screwdriver.

“Make for the wall,” I say, stumbling to the side of the van.

I lay the car battery under the gas tank, then place the screwdriver across the terminals and pray the thing isn’t completely dead.

I scramble for the wall, ankle be damned.

The battery explodes, launching the van a foot in the air and shooting flames out from under it. The gas tank catches, and there’s another explosion that knocks me into a sedan. I hear shouts, and a bunch of car alarms start to blare. I make it to the wall and find Kris.

“What the hell did you find in that van?” he asks, face lit by the fire.

“Car battery,” I say. “My grandfather tested old ones by touching the terminals with a screwdriver. Lost two fingers when one exploded.”

“So you knew it would do that? Weren’t those your friends?”

“A couple parked cars were between them and the van,” I say. “And no, not anymore.”

• • •

We find a door to a fire stairwell, and go up a flight.

Kris stops on the first-floor landing. “Postal people will be looking for us on two.”

I pull myself up using the handrail. Goldman and his two guys can’t be everywhere on the first floor.

“JCPenney should be over there,” I say, opening the door on the right.

Kris turns on his light and shoves his shoulder under mine. “And we’re off.”