“Mom?” Anna called again, pointedly ignoring Oliver.
“It’s all good,” she said loudly.
“Don’t try to be hip, Mom. That’s so old.”
“I’m fine, thank you,” she yelled.
She searched for maps, but that shelf stood bare. She started back toward the store entrance, thought better of it and went to the far wall. It didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for.
“Turn around, guys,” Jack told her children when she emerged from the blackness. She unzipped their backpacks. “Graduation presents,” she said. “It’s time Jaimie read Catcher and Anna, for you, I think you’re old enough to read Portnoy’s Complaint.”
“I read Catcher in the Rye already,” Anna said, “but Portnoy’s Complaint? Isn’t that an old person’s book?”
“It’s the funniest book you’ll ever read,” Jack said flatly. “Your father will be pleased.”
“I’m probably way past the time when I should have been introduced to it then,” Anna said in her wry, I-am-not-a-child tone.
An image of her daughter with Trent came up unbidden. She’s a healthy, pretty18 and Trent’s a good-looking idiot, Jack thought. Yes, she’d probably been protecting Anna too long.
Two of Anna’s schoolmates had unplanned pregnancies. They’d had the condom talk when her daughter had turned fifteen, but Jack had hoped fervently that Anna had not used any of the box of condoms she handed her. Anna had uttered a disgusted, comforting “Ew!”, which pleased Jack. She promised her daughter she would never count the number of condoms in the box.
Such conventions and passages seemed a trite, almost silly thing now. The new world was born with the Sutr virus and safe, prolonged childhoods were at an end.
“If the book club is finished its meeting, could we get on with the fight for survival and all that?” Oliver said. “If it’s not too inconvenient?”
“Somebody needs to read a funny book,” Jack said.
“Sorry. Almost dying of Sutr must have made me cranky.”
They picked their way forward. The glass displays were all broken but someone had gone at the mess with a push broom. Farther on, the shards of glass had been pushed to the side and piled out of the way.
Most stores were empty. Racks and shelving littered the floor. At each empty doorway, they peered in and shone their lights to see if there was anything worth daring the dark.
“It’s worse than when I was here the last time,” Oliver whispered to Jack. “We should leave soon. Feels like a shrine to conspicuous consumption has become a tomb.”
The quartet doubled back, Anna still holding Jaimie’s hand and pulling him along at the rear. Several times they stopped to listen. The rise and fall of the voice did not come again.
Oliver motioned for them to move faster. However, Jack darted into a kitchen supply store. They heard her shift something out of the way. A crash and a clang.
“Mom!’ Anna called. “Is everything okay?”
“Fine!” A moment later, Jack emerged from the store holding a frying pan in each hand. One was small and light. The other was a heavy iron skillet. “Found it under a display,” she said. “Almost missed it, but the handle was sticking out.”
They moved forward again, passing a dead fountain. The clothing stores had been sacked. Jack turned Anna around and put the small pan in her backpack. The big skillet wouldn’t fit easily. Jack felt its heft and opted to keep it as a weapon.
They came upon another dark store. Jack motioned for the group to stay at the storefront and disappeared. While Oliver kept a wary eye on the corridor ahead and behind them, Anna watched the bobbing circle of light play over the store’s debris.
The shop was narrow and deep. Before she walked more than ten feet, Jack’s feet slipped out from under her and she was on her back. The flashlight rolled and spun away to her right. She had a firm grasp of the iron skillet and it made a formidable clang against the floor as she went down. She arched her back and looked toward the entry point again.
Anna, Jaimie and Oliver stood, upside down and far away. The breath had been knocked from her, but only for a moment.
“Mom? Mom!”
When she caught her breath, Jack assured them she was well. She leaned on an empty display as she got to her feet. “Hell of a lot of trouble to find a good sweater or two.”
“I shopped here not long ago,” Anna said.
“Things change,” Oliver said, looking away, searching for…what?
Jack realized the old man had not moved, or even looked in her direction, when she’d fallen. Instead, he had kept watch. Jack knew the old man was nervous, but even Jaimie had looked her way when the skillet banged on the floor. Jaw tight, she recovered the flashlight.
Despite all he’d said and done, Douglas Oliver didn’t care enough about her. This little expedition had taught her that. When they got back, she’d sit down with Theo and discuss whether they could risk taking their old neighbor along with them if they had to run.
“I slipped on a plastic shopping bag,” she announced.
“Grab it,” Oliver said.
She found a pile of them behind the counter. She stuffed a few in a pocket and, when that proved inadequate, tucked the rest under her belt. She played the light over the floor. There must have been a fight. There were shreds of fabric here and there, as if looters had actually had a tug of war and T-shirts were the rope.
Jack wanted to turn around and return to the light, but she thought she might find something in a change room. Fallen shelving made the floor uneven. She almost lost her footing again a couple of times.
Jack directed the flashlight beam at her feet, not comprehending what she was seeing at first. Jack turned her light upward and understood. “People ripped out the ceiling tiles!”
“Why would anyone waste energy doing that?” Anna called back.
“Because they could,” Oliver said.
Jack looked back, feeling foolish for staying so long. In a store where even the ceiling tiles were ripped out, she was lucky to find discarded plastic bags for salvage. She was about to back out when the smell hit her. She sniffed the air like an animal, searching not just to identify the smell, but to find a direction. It was coming from the back of the store.
She moved deeper into the darkness. She knew it would be better just to turn around now, but what if someone had a cache of food? Among maggot-riddled and stinking waste, there might be a useful can of tuna or salmon.
The closer she got, the less likely that seemed, but she had come this far, so what was a few more steps? Perhaps that same smell would have repelled other searchers, so they missed something she would not. However, the closer she got to the source of the stench, the less it was about finding food. Curiosity took over. She needed to know.
A bank of change rooms lined the rear wall. A steel door that must lead to a storage room or an office stood to her right. She knocked twice and, suddenly feeling silly at the pre-pandemic gesture, put the end of the flashlight in her mouth and yanked on the handle several times. Locked.
There might be useful things in the office, but she moved on. A cross bar from a coat rack might give her the leverage she needed to crank that steel door open.
There was no one in there waiting to be rescued. She was sure there was at least one decaying body behind that door. Maybe more.
Jack thought of Sigourney Weaver’s character, Ripley, from Aliens. By some unlikely Hollywood miracle, the hero of the movie discovered a little girl who had survived a massacre by evil, rampaging monster aliens.
There must be heroes in every disaster. There must be children who survive while everyone else around them dies horribly. Real life is not so mercifully scripted, she knew. She thought of Nature’s wrath leaving dead children in trees after a mile-wide tornado ripped through Oklahoma.
After she spoke with her husband about Douglas Oliver and made sure everyone was fed, she planned to curl up with her Bi
ble and study by the light of her flashlight. Maybe there was no making sense of the Sutr plague, but Jack needed to try again. She still hoped for solace.
Jack checked the change rooms for discarded clothes. Something that hadn’t fit someone else might fit Anna or herself. Jack smiled at her own naiveté, at how hard old habits died. She was in the wreck of a women’s clothing store and she was still thinking that what she found there could only serve Anna or herself. On a cold night this winter, sitting around a fire, neither Jaimie nor Theo would object to the warmth gained from another sweater, even if it had big girly flowers on it.
The first change room was empty. The second booth was not. She kicked the flimsy door back with a bang and the stench hit her in the nose, as if the disturbed air currents mixed and stirred risen death.
Advantage: vampires, Anna had said.
Jack reflexively held her mask tighter to her mouth with the hand that held the skillet, lightly conking herself in the temple. Ripley wouldn’t do that, she thought.
Heat rose to her cheeks. She felt incredibly stupid banging around the back of a deserted store with bodies in the back. Plastic bags couldn’t be worth this.
After this, Jack knew she’d never return to the hulk of a mall. The new place to shop would be the homes of the dead. They’d undoubtedly passed hundreds of empty homes behind the wall. In each home, there were plenty of closets with more clothes than they could wear in a lifetime, let alone carry. This trip had been Douglas Oliver’s idea and now she realized how stupid an errand it was.
The thing on the floor (this corpse, this poor, abandoned husk, Jack thought) had been a woman who favored wearing red pumps to a looting. The skirt was long and matronly. Jack thought she spotted a clot of varicose veins where the skirt rode up high on a blue-gray thigh. It could be one of her neighbors or the mother of someone at her kids’ school.
Curiosity pulled again. She let the flashlight beam play up the body slowly, steeling herself for what she might see. This had been someone once. How had she died? Who was she?
In the next moment she was to learn the lesson again: pre-pandemic thinking did not apply anymore. How this woman had died, her identity, were heavy concerns in the old world. Now it was knowledge to be avoided. The lesson came hard: Jack saw the pool of crusted blood. So much blood.
Then she thought she saw the head move.
The thing’s eyes opened. Bright yellow, wild eyes.
Nowhere to hide, few places to run
They heard a bang and a short shout from within the clothing store.
“Mom!”
Anna let go of Jaimie’s hand and searched for her flashlight, cursing herself. She should have had it out and ready. She should have gone in with her mother.
Before she could pull the flashlight out of her front pocket — her jeans were too tight — Jack burst out of the darkness with her hand over her mask. She was gasping for air as if she had just risen from deep water. She leaned against Anna.
“It’s okay! I’m alright!” She pulled her mask away from her mouth to pull in fresh air. After a few more long drags to fill her lungs, she readjusted the mask over her mouth again. “At first, I thought someone had taken a dump in a change room,” she said. “There’s a body in there.”
“That’s awful,” Anna said.
Jack shook her head vigorously and swallowed hard. “— and a cat!”
Her mother’s eyes told all Anna needed to know. Her eyes widened as she guessed what her mother had seen. “That’s much worse,” Anna said.
“Was it Sutr?” Oliver asked.
“I don’t think so…but I hope cats get the virus. Every one of them.”
They were silent for a time after that and surveyed each store more quickly. The carnage seemed complete. Overturned kiosks littered the centre of the corridors.
“I guess people really thought they’d need skin lotion from the dead sea,” Anna said, pointing at a sacked kiosk.
A scatter of cell phones littered the floor. “And people finally got some vengeance on their cell providers,” Oliver added, poking a pile of the phones with the end of his walking stick.
“Couldn’t those phones be useful? I mean, the network isn’t working now, but it might later, right?” Anna asked.
Kind silence met her naive suggestion.
Douglas Oliver bent to look under a Cookie Hut kiosk. He found nothing in a sealed package and sighed. “Anna, the only central service that’s still intact, the one that requires the least maintenance in the short run, is water. I’d guess we’re a long way from having cell phone service back up. Whatever services that might return are no doubt prioritized by the government. They don’t want us talking to each other on cell phones, I’ll bet.”
“What government would that be?” a young man’s voice came from above. “You see any government here?”
The search party craned their necks but saw no one. Someone on the second floor moved around, sneakers squeaking on the tile, but they couldn’t spot him.
“Who’s there?” Oliver said, his hand tensing on his canister of bear spray. He held it up in a gesture of defense and then let it go slack at his side, feeling foolish. The spray was no use at this distance. If he tried to spray up at such a steep angle, he’d give himself a dose of the stuff.
Jack waved her children back toward the wall, out from under the second-floor balcony. They were slow to comply, still searching for a face to go with the voice. Frustrated, Jack jumped up and down to draw their attention. “In case he decides to drop a couch from Sears on top of us, move!”
“Who is that?” Anna called.
“Mallrats!” the man replied. “The only government here, baby!”
There was a rustling and more footsteps. Jaimie glimpsed a beautiful young black girl, maybe aged five, with a fall of curly hair framing her sweet, oval face. She looked afraid. Unseen hands pulled her away from the balcony railing and it grew quiet again.
“Hello?” Jack called. “We’re not looking for trouble!”
There came a murmur from above. The high arched ceilings above acted as a whispering gallery. “If you’re taking things from the mall, you’re taking something from us and that’s trouble!”
Someone stomped their feet to a beat. Others joined in. The beat started slow but quickly built to a crescendo. It sounded like an angry platoon of crazed soldiers.
“I think we should run before I pee my pants,” Anna said.
Jack stepped out from the wall to show herself. Oliver waved her back but she held up a hand.
The drumbeat of heels on tile suddenly stopped. “I’m unarmed!” Jack called up.
Oliver gritted his teeth and backed away, headed for the exit. Jack signalled for the old man to wait.
“How many are you?” the young man’s voice came again from a different spot, a little farther away.
“Four!”
Oliver frowned at Jack’s honesty.
Another murmur hummed, followed by sounds of running feet receding from the upper balcony. A moment later, the pounding feet and shouting returned, this time on the ground floor. They came in a rush, five from in front, two cutting off the way to the exit. None of the Mallrats wore masks.
Most carried weapons fashioned from sticks. One crept from behind holding a bow, the arrow poised to fly. All were teenagers. Above them, a young man appeared with the little black girl in his arms.
Oliver held up the can of bear retardant, though the kid with the bow and arrow was outside the range of the canister’s spray. The kid’s weapon was a large compound bow, which could be very effective in putting an arrow through Oliver’s chest or brain, if the kid was steady and practiced. The old man’s eyes locked on those of the archer. The kid had the bowstring pulled all the way back, yet he didn’t appear to shake at all under the strain. Oliver stepped behind Jaimie, using him as a human shield.
The archer grinned and said, “That’s cold, dawg, but my arrow will go thr
ough you both!”
Jack put her hands up in an openhanded, please-sherriff-don’t-shoot gesture. She stepped in front of her son.
Oliver scowled and barked, “Jacquelin — ”
“Shut up, Oliver!” Jack said.
“Yeah, shut up, Oliver!” the man standing above them said. “This is Mallrat territory. You shouldn’ta come here.”
“Is your mom okay?” Jack called up to the young man.
“Wha — ?”
“I haven’t seen you since you were much younger, but occasionally I see your Mom around…at school.”
His eyes narrowing. “I don’t know you!”
“I’ve got a girl about your age,” Jack said. “If you’re from the neighborhood, we’ve probably met at the same playgrounds. Have I seen you in a school play? Or at church maybe?”
He put the girl down and stepped close to the railing to look closely at Jack. He was a handsome fellow, though he wore microdermal implanted silver studs over his left eye and a Chinese tattoo on his neck. “Do I look like I was in a school play, bitch?”
“Every kid is in the school play when they’re in elementary school,” Jack said evenly. “You go to Jefferson? Or Ginsberg Private?”
“Ha!” he said. “You’re bluffing.”
Jack shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know your name. I’m going to guess either Chad or Spider. How should I know? You do look familiar, though.”
“It’s David. My name is David. And you’re starting to really piss me off.” He squinted down at her.
She cursed herself. Chad? Spider? She could at least have tried a common name, like Joe, for instance, though no one his age was called Joe anymore, either. In a moment, she was going to tell the kids to run. Oliver would be the slowest moving target, but he was the one with the bear spray. He was the one so willing to sacrifice her son. She would sacrifice the old man. Jack was ready to gamble that the gang wouldn’t be so organized as to catch her or her kids with the old man drawing fire.
This Plague of Days (Omnibus): Seasons 1-3 Page 26
