At least she had a handle on her family. Arthur was convalescing on the couch in the Apple Store stockroom and Lexi was sitting next to him helping to type in the population database she’d asked them to create. It was nice having all of the Rosses on the same page.
She made her way to the mall offices on the third floor, at the far end of the hall near the ice-skating rink. She’d been given the mall manager’s access card after he fell ill. His was the first frozen face she’d recognized in the Pancake Palace freezer. It was a terrible thing to admit, but she would not miss his interfering presence.
The mall offices were empty save for the monitoring station. She and Hank had agreed that no matter what happened, they needed to keep one guard on the closed-circuit camera system. There were cameras covering every public space in the mall and the parking areas. These cameras were their eyes on the masses. It was through them that they’d had some warning of the oncoming riot and were able to evacuate the Feds and lock down the portal before anyone could escape and infect the world. That was the only order she’d been given by the president: Keep the virus from getting out.
This, of course, left the responsibility of managing a population—of several thousand—with her. She had four cops, one in a coma; a mall security force of fifty, a number that might be less after the bodies were finally identified; some hundred and fifty Tasers; four handguns, one of which was reported missing; two shotguns; ten canisters of tear gas; and twenty riot shields. This required not a little creative thinking.
She reached the microphone connected to the mall announcement system and collapsed into the chair beside it. She wiped the arm rests with a disinfecting cloth, then the mic itself, took a sip from her water bottle, and turned the system on.
“Attention, residents of the Shops at Stonecliff,” she began. “I apologize for the manner in which yesterday’s announcement was made. It was not our intention to cause anyone to panic. Anyone who suffered any injuries as a result of last night’s incident should report to the medical center located in the PaperClips on the first floor. Anyone with any medical training should also please report to the PaperClips to assist in helping those injured.
“With respect to the flu virus announced yesterday, if you begin to develop symptoms, including chills, a cough, or a runny nose, please report to the PaperClips for treatment.
“Security guards will be handing out face masks and hand sanitizer. Please wear your mask and apply the sanitizer before touching any surface and before meals. Avoid touching your face. These small measures will help prevent the spread of the disease.
“We have been given additional cots by the government and will set these up in three locations within the mall. Families, please report to the HomeMart for registration and assignment of beds. Women and girls, please report to the JCPenney; men and boys, please report to the Lord and Taylor. These locations will be your Home Stores.
“If you are in need of a change of clothes, depots will be established on the first floor of each Home Store where you can trade in your clothes for a new set. You will no longer be able to purchase clothing. You will also not have a choice in what clothing you are given. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.
“We have been given sufficient quantities of food by the government for the duration of this quarantine, however long it lasts. Meals will be served in the first-floor common areas. If you have a life-threatening food allergy, please notify the security guard when you register at your Home Store. Other than life-threatening conditions, we cannot accommodate any dietary requests.
“If you have any comments or concerns, please bring them to the attention of one of the security guards. We will try to address every situation to the best of our ability. This is an unusual and trying situation, but we are all in this together. By working together and following a few simple rules, we can all make it through this with the least incident and suffering. Thank you for you patience and attention. God bless you all.”
She flipped off the machine and pushed the mic away. It was impossibly draining, infusing her voice with hope and energy to try to keep the masses from spiraling into despair. She just had to keep them hopeful. If they had hope, they could be controlled.
As she left the offices, she waved to the guard on duty—Ken, she thought; she had better learn their names—and stepped into the empty hall. This end of the third floor was always rather quiet, especially since the ice-skating rink was closed Thursday due to a coolant malfunction.
The senator glanced at the locked doors to the rink. They couldn’t have…
She ran back into the offices. “Ken, where are the tenant keys?”
“Manager’s office should have ones to a few stores, but we don’t keep keys to the anchor stores.”
“The ice-skating rink,” she said. “I just need the key to that.”
“That’s one he should have,” Ken said, leading her into the dark office once occupied by the odious little troll. “We’re always having maintenance issues with that thing.” Ken opened a cabinet and picked a small ring from a hook. “Here you go. You need to cool off?” he said, winking.
Dotty laughed because that was what you did when someone thought they were funny. There should be Oscars for politicians. She took the key and stalked out to the hall.
The doors to the skating rink opened into a dark vestibule. The temperature inside was several degrees colder. Dotty flicked on the lights. Pictures of smiling girls in spandex lined the walls. On one side of the foyer, there was a counter behind which rental skates gleamed; on the other, a dark office. In front of her were two more doors.
Dotty touched the handle of one and was shocked by the cold. The metal bit her fingertips. Coolant failure, my ass…
Slipping her hand inside her sleeve, she pushed the handle down and pulled open the door. A blast of freezing air slapped her skin. The rink was black as night—no light shined anywhere. Dotty felt around the inside of the doorway for a switch.
It took a minute for the lights strung high on the ceiling to reach full power, but even in their first dim glow, Dotty saw the bodies. They were piled on the ice. Row after row, not even wrapped in body bags. Arms splayed, hair falling over faces. The ice itself was tinged red.
Dotty’s legs gave out. She slid against the door and came to rest on the frozen tile. There had to be hundreds on the ice. Maybe a thousand. This many couldn’t have come through the med center—had these all been found in the mall or had patients died fast enough to keep pace with the newly sick? Was this why the Suits had refused to give her access to the intake logs at the PaperClips? A thousand dead and they didn’t tell me.
But hadn’t they? Why else would the president order a quarantine of thousands of citizens? Only if the virus was this deadly would the government have authorized trapping them like rats on a sinking ship.
She didn’t have the luxury of panic. She pulled the walkie-talkie from its holster on her belt and clicked it to Hank’s channel.
“New orders,” she said.
“I’m listening.”
“Bring the bodies to the ice-skating rink,” she said. “Use the service passages. No civilians are to ever come into the skating rink.”
“Roger that.”
Had he known? He had to have known. How many people were harboring secrets from her? No more. She would canvass every goddamned inch of this mall before the end of the day. She would find that missing gun and nail those kids who blasted her cops with fire extinguishers and get things in some semblance of order before night fell. This was her sinking ship now. And Dorothy Ross ran a tight ship.
END OF BOOK ONE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my early readers, Anne Cunningham, Matt Weiner, Mary Beth McNulty, Alison Moncrief Bromage, Tui Sutherland, and my mom, Chris Kaufman—your comments helped me figure out the important stuff and your encouragement kept me going. Thank you, Brad Bergstresser, for your insights into online gaming. Thank you, Karen Mangold, for
answering my endless questions and helping me kill more people more effectively. Thank you to my agent, Faye Bender, for believing in me and in this story. Thank you to my editor, Kathy Dawson, for being awesome, and to the whole team at Dial for making this dream a reality. And thank you to my wonderful husband for shouldering all the extra walkies and child care during the writing of this one, and thank you to my goat girl for being the best little girl in the whole wide world.
No Safety in Numbers Page 19
