“Stay behind us,” said Russell. “Which way to the employee parking garage?”
“Um.” I watched as Lydia pulled herself together. “That way.” She pointed down the service corridor. “If we go down the stairs to the third level, there’s a walkway to the parking structure. Mr. Loman always complained about how far he had to walk.”
“Good,” I said. “Let’s go, and don’t talk unless it’s important.”
I led the way into the gloom of the service corridor, Russell and Lydia following me.
Chapter 4: An Old Acquaintance
I kept my flashlight off, not wanting to draw attention, and strained to hear the sound of any enemies. The concrete walls and floor and the steel doors to the backs of the shops did a good job of muffling sounds, but from time to time I heard the distant thump of explosions, along with the stuttering pop of automatic gunfire. I wondered what was happening in the mall. I wondered what was happening in the rest of Milwaukee, if the entire city was under attack from the Archons.
I glanced at my phone, but the network was still jammed. I had no way of knowing what was happening in the outside world until we got out of the mall.
We didn’t encounter anyone else in the service corridors. I wondered what had happened to the employees and the shoppers. Maybe they had fled out the back and escaped when the orcs arrived and the shooting started. Maybe the veterans had put up a fight. Or maybe the orcs and the Archons had killed them all.
I turned another corner and came to a stop. The corridor ended in two steel doors, both of them unmarked. A single emergency light cast a harsh glare from its metal cage in the ceiling.
“Lydia,” I said. “Which door?”
“The right door,” she said. Her face was pale and drawn and her eyes bloodshot from weeping, but her voice only quavered a little. “It opens on the walkway to the employee parking structure.”
I frowned. “Where’s the left one go?”
“Stairs up to the HVAC vault,” said Lydia. “The main air handler for the third floor is in there. It feeds into the vents for the food court, and opens to the recyclers on the roof.”
“How did you know that?” I said.
“My grandfather works for the company that installed the air conditioning,” said Lydia, her arms folded tight against herself, her shoulders hunched as if she wished to make herself smaller. “I went to work with him a bunch of times when they installed the system.”
“I remember that,” said Russell. “Didn’t he come talk about it on Career Day? Mr. Rochester’s class?”
Lydia blinked, then smiled a little. “Yeah, he did. Oh my God. I forgot all about that. Julie in fifth period fell asleep, and…”
“That’s just fascinating,” I said. Lydia swallowed and fell silent. I stepped to the door on the right and listened for a moment, but I couldn’t hear anything through the thick steel. I checked the handle, and it was unlocked.
So I took a deep breath and pushed it open a crack. Sunlight spilled into the service corridor, and the smell of blood hit my nostrils.
Suddenly I knew why we hadn’t seen anyone else in the corridors.
The steel door opened into a covered skyway that connected the mall to the employee parking ramp. It had glass walls and a polished white floor now spattered with blood. Halfway down the skyway, a dozen orcish soldiers and a pair of black-uniformed Archons had set up a barricade. Maybe fifty dead human men and women lay sprawled on the floor, gunned down by the orcs. All of them wore uniforms or corporate polo shirts. They had been mall employees, fleeing for their lives, and the orcs had shot them dead.
And if I moved the door another inch, they would shoot us dead, too.
Gently, gently, I eased the door shut, letting it creep into place so it wouldn’t click. I stepped back and let out a long breath, thinking hard.
“What is it?” said Russell. “What’s wrong?”
I was very glad that he had not seen all those dead people lying upon the floor.
“Orcs,” I said. “Twelve of them, and two Archons. They’ve set up a little turkey shoot in the skyway.”
“Oh, God,” said Lydia. “Oh, God. We’re not going to get out. We’re…”
“Shut up,” I said. Lydia flinched, and Russell frowned. “If you have a panic attack, they’ll hear you.” Lydia swallowed and fell silent. “Just be quiet and let me think for a minute.”
I considered our options, but none of them were appealing. We could withdraw back the service corridors and head for the lower levels. It would be easy to get out of the mall on the ground floor, yet getting there would be the hard part. Sooner or later the Archons would send more orcs to sweep the service corridors, and the ground floor had to be crawling with soldiers. Maybe I could Mask myself as an Archon or an orcish soldier and claim that Russell and Lydia were my prisoners. The drawback of that plan was that any Archon would detect the spell, and I doubted all of them were as stupidly overconfident as the Elf I had killed in the bookstore.
My fingers tightened against the stock of my AK-47, a darker idea coming to me.
There was an easy way out of the mall. I could open a rift way, enter the Shadowlands, and open another rift way back to Earth. I could use the rift ways to transport us away from the mall, maybe even far from Milwaukee, all in the matter of a few moments.
That plan, though, had a number of practical difficulties.
For one, I could not predict where the second rift way might go. The Shadowlands and Earth’s umbra are not contiguous. I might take Russell and Lydia into the Shadowlands and return to Earth in the middle of the Sahara Desert, or the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, or a slave market in some hellhole town in the Caliphate…or right in the middle of a group of orcs in the mall.
Additionally, the creatures of the Shadowlands might kill us long before that happened. We might stumble into wraithwolves or bloodrats or worse things, and I didn’t have any way to fight them. The anthrophages were actively looking for me since I had pissed off the cult of the Dark Ones during the summer, and if I was in the Shadowlands for more than a few minutes they would find me and kill me.
I glanced at Russell and Lydia.
The final problem was that I would have to use magic in front of them, and I didn’t want to do that. I thought I could convince Russell to keep his mouth shut. Lydia would not keep quiet. If I used magic in front of her and we escaped, she would run screaming to the first Homeland Security officer or Inquisition agent that she could find.
I was wondering if I could find a way to knock her unconscious when the floor shivered beneath my shoes and I heard a rattling hum behind the door on the left. For a frantic instant I wondered if a bomb had gone off, and then I realized that one of the air handlers had kicked on behind the left door.
A new idea came to me.
I remembered the lunch I had eaten with Russell, the nasty greasy chicken sandwich in the food court. The food court had been a huge place, with balconies and dozens of restaurants and spotlights hanging from the ceiling. Thick metal ducts had gone through the beams of the ceiling…and I remembered seeing a narrow catwalk threading through the beams. The ducts wouldn’t support a grown man’s weight, so if somebody like Lydia’s grandfather needed to do maintenance, they would take the catwalk.
And it was possible the orcs and the Archons hadn’t sent a guard to the catwalk.
“Lydia,” I said. “Do you have a map on your phone?”
She blinked a couple of times. “A…a map?”
“When you started working at the bookstore,” I said, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice. I had to remind myself that a terrified fourteen-year-old girl would not have experience keeping her cool in a crisis. “They probably put an app on your phone, a welcome app or something.”
“Yeah,” said Lydia. “Yeah, Mr. Loman did.” She swallowed, trying to hold back the tears.
“Bring up the map and let me see it,” I said.
“But my phone isn’t working,” said Lydia.
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I started to snap back an answer, but Russell spoke first.
“But the app’s already on your phone, right?” said Russell, calm as ever. “It’s already downloaded. You don’t need the network for that.”
“Oh,” said Lydia. “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.” She produced her phone, tapped it a few times, and handed it to me. It was a cheap little phone with a bright pink case, the sort of thing parents bought their teenage daughter for her first phone, but she had installed the employee app and it did have a comprehensive map of the mall.
“Thanks, Lydia,” said Russell. “That will be really helpful.”
“How are you so calm?” said Lydia. Her arms wrapped tighter around herself. “I just want to crawl into a corner and hide. Or throw up.”
“Don’t crawl into the corner after throwing up in it,” I muttered as I scrolled through the map. “The smell would be unpleasant.”
Russell shrugged. “Everyone dies, Lydia.” He patted his white hair. “I just have a better idea of how I’m going to die than most people.”
“Oh,” said Lydia. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
“I really don’t want to get shot, though,” said Russell, “and panicking will not help with that.” There was an understatement. “So we’ll stay calm, and we’ll get you out of here. My sister will figure something out. She’s the smartest person I know.”
I glanced at Russell, smiled, and returned my attention to Lydia’s phone.
I wasn’t that smart, though. If I was, I would have found a way to get myself out from under Morvilind’s thumb.
Still, I thought I saw a way to save both Russell and Lydia.
“All right,” I said, handing Lydia her phone. “I think I see a way out.”
“How?” said Russell.
“Through the HVAC room,” I said. “A catwalk over the food court leads to a roof access ladder, and according to your map, there’s a ladder that goes from the roof to the top of the skyway to the employee parking structure. We just have to cross the catwalk, cut across the roof, go over the skyway, and we can get to the parking ramp.”
“Won’t they have…you know, snipers on the roof and stuff?” said Russell. “To secure the perimeter?”
“Maybe,” I said, “but there will be a lot of machinery up there…
“Eight Model 49C air handlers from Royal Heating & Cooling,” said Lydia promptly.
“Right,” I said. “So we sneak across the roof, get to the skyway, and get the hell out of here.” I checked the door on the left. It was locked, but I still had Mr. Loman’s keys. The third key opened the lock. I swung the door open, and immediately heard the whining rumble of industrial-grade air conditioning equipment. I wondered why the stuff was still on despite the power outage, then realized the air handling machinery likely had its own generator in case of power failure. Just as well – that meant the machines on the roof would still be running, and that noise would only help us.
I gestured for Russell and Lydia to follow me, and I flipped on my tactical flashlight. We ascended a narrow flight of metal stairs and entered a large room. The HVAC room was a big metal vault with a dusty concrete floor, the walls lined with enormous grumbling machines. I saw no trace of anyone, whether orcish soldiers, Archons, mall employees, or customers.
We crossed the vault and climbed a set of metal steps on the far wall. The stairs ended in a small balcony with a steel security door. I fumbled with Loman’s keys until I found one that clicked in the lock.
“Listen, both of you,” I said before I opened the door. “Don’t say anything, and walk as quietly as you can. This catwalk goes right over the food court. If there are any orcs down there and they happen to look up, we’re sitting ducks. Keep your mouths shut, and for God’s sake don’t make any noise. Understand?”
They bobbed their heads.
“Set your phones on silent,” I said, drawing out mine and making sure to follow my own advice. I also switched off my flashlight. “They’re jamming the network, but if it comes back I don’t want our phones making noise.”
“What if I have to cough?” said Lydia in a small voice.
“You’re still wearing your apron,” I said, gesturing at the bloodstained green cloth. “Cough or sneeze into that. Better yet, don’t do either. Let’s go.”
I undid the lock and pulled the door open. A gust of cool air hit me in the face, and I saw the catwalk stretching before me, a long, narrow walkway of metal grillwork bolted to the ceiling, lined with a steel railing. On either side of the catwalk ran thick metal ducts, some of them thumping as the machines behind me switched on and off. Between the catwalk and the ducts was a wide gap, and below the gap…
I swallowed and stepped onto the catwalk, keeping my AK-47 ready in both hands so it wouldn’t clang against the railings.
Below the gap was a long drop. It was at least a hundred feet from the ceiling to the lowest level of the food court. I suppose the fall would kill you instantly, though if you were unfortunate you might hit one of the balconies fifty or sixty feet down, and instead of dying instantly you would enjoy agony for the few remaining moments of your life. The catwalk was only wide enough for us to go single file, and I eased forward a few steps, peering over the railing.
The smell of blood hit my nostrils, and I saw dozens of corpses scattered within the food court. The orcish soldiers had been thorough and merciless. I hoped at least some people had gotten away. About twenty orcs stood upon the lowest level, AK-47s in hand. If just one of them happened to look up, they could riddle the catwalk with bullets and kill all three of us in seconds. The emergency lights threw harsh shadows everywhere, and I saw…
My frown deepened.
I saw the pale, flickering light of a rift way somewhere on the lowest level of the food court.
Russell and Lydia stood behind me, and I turned for a moment, gesturing for them to stay silent and motionless. Then I shifted my gun to my right hand, hid my left hand beneath my coat, and worked a spell. The coat hid the pale flicker of blue light that accompanied the spell to sense the presence of magic, and I focused my will on the food court, wondering if I could sense the rift way the Archons had opened from the Shadowlands.
The amount of power I sensed almost knocked me off my feet.
I knew what a rift way felt like. A rift way took a lot of magical power to open, all of my magical strength…but I wasn’t that strong. I could only open a rift way for a few seconds, but that was just as well, since that I was all I needed to use the rift way. Yet the rift way I sensed in the food court wasn’t going anywhere. It was stable, and it took a considerable amount of magical power to keep a rift way open.
But that wasn’t the most powerful thing I sensed.
I felt locus of magical power unlike anything I had ever sensed or encountered before. I didn’t know what to make of it. It was like some vast heart, every beat sending a wave of magical power through the air. For a moment I was overcome with something much like raw physical lust. I wanted to possess that power for myself. My mind spun with what I could do with that power. I could save Russell. I could free myself from Morvilind. I could…
Maybe the moth felt that way before it flung itself into the lantern flame.
Cold sanity reasserted itself, and I swallowed. Whatever the Archons were up to down there was far beyond my magical ability. Nevertheless, it was probably a good idea to find out what the Archons were doing. The more I knew about what was happening, the better chance I had of getting Russell out alive.
If the Archons were using that kind of magic, maybe I should find the Marneys and get all four of us the hell out of Milwaukee.
I turned back to the door, lifted one finger to my lips for silence, and then beckoned for Russell and Lydia to follow me. Russell nodded and started onto the catwalk. Lydia hesitated, her bloodshot eyes wide as she stared into the gap, and I wondered if she was afraid of heights. Then Russell reached back, took her left hand, and eased her forward. Lydia nodded and f
ollowed him.
If we got out of here alive, Russell would have no trouble getting further dates from Lydia. Hell, he would have no trouble getting more than a date from her. Maybe I should have a little talk with Russell about that. I didn’t want him to become a father by the time he was fifteen. On the other hand, I had heard him talk a lot about how God wanted people to stay abstinent until marriage, so maybe it wouldn’t be a problem. Of course, it was easy to forget good sense in the heat of the moment.
I knew that all too well.
Anyway, it was one more thing I could worry about if we lived through this.
We moved forward step by silent step, taking care to keep the stocks and barrels of the guns from clanging against the railing or the metallic grill of the floor. Lydia grasped at Russell’s hand, her knuckles shining white, sweat trickling down her forehead. I wasn’t afraid of heights, but I had to admit it was a long way down.
I spotted the rift way.
It was right before a counter that had once sold waffles, a flickering veil of grayish light and mist. Through it I glimpsed the dead forests and starless, lightless sky of the Shadowlands. Around the rift way moved orcish soldiers in black fatigues and tactical vests, carrying a wide variety of weapons…
No. Not orcs.
Humans.
Which meant that that black-clad men were Rebels. The orcs who had captured Lydia had indeed intended to bring her to the Rebels. I had run up against the Rebels a few times, and while they claimed to be fighting for the freedom of all mankind against the High Queen, I had noticed they were not too picky about how much of mankind they had to kill to do it. One Rebel commander I had met had quoted some old Marxist philosopher or another, claiming that if he had to kill ninety percent of the human population so the remaining ten percent could live free of the Elves, he would do it gladly.
Cloak Games: Rebel Fist Page 6