Jacked

by Kirk Dougal

  “There are metal pieces that roll down over the glass,” answered Tar. “I fixed one a long time ago but when it opened it made an awful sound and I was afraid people would know I was inside so I closed it and never opened them again.” He turned his light toward a silver and black stairway at the other end of the open area. “We need to get up on the second floor to see the school.”

  The air smelled stale as the boys moved toward the stairs. The last time he had been in the building Tar needed to wait before he could leave because some older boys were hanging around outside the loading area. He had been afraid they had found their own way in and he did not want to get caught in the dark with them. But everything inside still looked untouched with a layer of dust over the floor and the benches.

  Toby wandered off right and stopped just short of a shop front. A flexible barred gate hung about six feet from the floor, leaving the store open to anyone who wanted to go inside. But there was no reason to. Not anymore.

  “Not much left,” he said, staring at the empty shelves. “Wonder what happened to everything?”

  Tar shrugged.

  “After The Crash people got desperate. They grepped everything they could—clothes, paper, food—it was a real mess. There were fights in the streets and people got killed. There was nobody to stop them. The police all went hard boot because they were hooked into the Mind.”

  “Our teachers don’t really talk about it a lot,” said Toby. “But most of them aren’t much older than us so they probably don’t remember the before time. When I was little there were still a couple of older ones around but they just seemed…sad. They just never talked about it.”

  “Uncle Jahn doesn’t like to, either. Mr. Keisler told me once that after all the troubles started, that’s when the Black Shirts came around. They made the fighting stop and took care of the ones that went hard boot.” Tar walked toward the stairs again and Toby followed. “When I let it slip that he was telling me stuff about the Before Uncle Jahn got mad and Mr. Keisler stopped saying as much.”

  The stairs were strange. The steps had bar-shaped treads that were made of cracked rubber with a rounded handrail to match. But the sides were shiny metal and the risers were solid so they quickly made it to the second floor.

  Tar turned left and headed into an even darker hallway. Their lights showed the walls closing in and a ceiling appeared over their heads. The echoes of their steps were louder and when Toby stumbled over a small metal bar, sending it clanging off into the black, the noise echoed and made them both jump.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “It’s okay,” Tar said. “The shop is right up here around the corner.”

  They walked on for another hundred feet before a wall of glass loomed up in front of them. Tar led them to the right for a few strides before he turned left again, ducking under where the security gate had been cut open and bent back.

  “We won’t be able to hear what they are saying,” Tar said. It made him feel better that the Black Shirts would not be able to hear them either. “But as long as they are outside in the play area we should be able to see what they are doing.”

  They had taken another few steps when Toby suddenly leaped sideways and swung his light around.

  “Frag me!” he exclaimed.

  His light wavered on a mannequin, its white plastic cover shining back at them.

  Tar smiled but he did not laugh out loud. The first time he had come into the store the plastic people had scared him, too. So much, in fact, he had fallen to the floor and stayed there several minutes until realizing it was not some person who was going to walk over and grab him.

  “That’s my fault,” he said. “I should’ve warned you.” He shined his light behind the mannequin. Torsos and smaller body parts were scattered over the floor.

  Toby took a tentative step forward.

  “Whoa. It’s a woman,” he said, “and she’s naked.”

  “They all are. People must have taken their clothes.” Tar shined his light toward the far wall. “Come on. Do you want to stare at plastic boobs all day or see what the Black Shirts are doing?” He didn’t wait for an answer but Toby’s light appeared on the floor beside him as he walked away.

  “Shovel’s gonna be sorry he missed that,” his friend said with a laugh. “We’ll have to bring him here some time.”

  Tar nodded in the dark but kept weaving his way through the store’s debris. When they reached the outside wall he turned off his light and waited until Toby did the same, then he slowly pulled back the floor-to-ceiling curtain that blocked out the sunlight.

  He saw another reason why Shovel would have wanted to be with them, and not just to see naked, plastic women.

  Shovel knelt shirtless in the middle of the schoolyard, his dark skin glistening with sweat. Black Shirts were formed up in two rows and at the far end stood a man, sunlight shining off his bald head. The man was talking, maybe shouting, and Shovel was slowly shaking his head from side to side.

  “Oh no! What are they doing to him?” asked Toby.

  The other students were lined up against the school’s brick walls in an L-shaped theater around the action. Most of the girls were crying, even some of the boys, while those too stunned to react only stared in horror at what was happening.

  The bald man beckoned Devin over to him. In the student’s hand was the little machine he had tossed to Tar, the one that played music. The Black Shirt leader took the app and waved it back and forth. He yelled at Shovel but the boy never looked up. The man finally stopped, his chest heaving from the tirade, and gestured to the men at the far end of the lane. They jerked Shovel to his feet.

  Then Tar noticed the sheen on his friend’s body was not all sweat. Some of the shine was blood and when Shovel looked up they could see his face was cut and his eyes were swelling shut.

  Every Black Shirt raised an arm. Some held short riding whips, others held pieces of wood or metal. The bald man shouted and the two men on the end struck Shovel across the back with their weapons.

  He lurched into a run, protecting his head with his hands as much as possible. Tar watched him lurch to one side when a wooden stick landed hard on a rib, and then nearly go down when a metal bar struck across his thigh. The boy continued on, however, even when one of the Black Shirts swung from low to high, striking him with a crop across the face. When he reached the end of the lines he collapsed to the ground at the bald man’s feet. Devin, who had been standing just behind the man, took a small step back.

  The Black Shirt leader bent over and said something to Shovel but their friend just shook his head again. The man rose and walked to the far end of the lines. He pointed and two more Black Shirts stepped out from watching the other students and teachers and joined the others.

  “That’s eighteen of them,” Toby said. He wiped his sleeve under his nose. “How many times have they made Shovel go through that?”

  “Why?” Tar asked. He realized he was having trouble seeing what was going on because of the tears in his eyes. “That’s just a crappy old piece of tech. You can buy them almost anywhere.”

  They fell silent as the bald man repeated the same scene, speaking down the line to Shovel. Their friend only shook his head.

  Two Black Shirts yanked him to his feet. The rest raised their weapons again.

  Tar flinched, knowing what was about to happen, and in his concern for his friend he leaned on the curtain hiding them from the outside. More than a decade’s worth of neglect and dry rot gave way and the thick material ripped from it holders. As Tar looked up in horror, a six-foot section of the curtain plummeted to the floor of the old store and revealed them to the world.

  They were framed in the giant window and Tar looked down to see every person in the schoolyard staring up at them, including Shovel. His friend’s eyes bored through the glass into Tar’s body, drilling into him with a bolt of pain and sadness. But then a fire lit up within that stare and Shovel turned his battered face
in the bald man’s direction.

  Shovel made it past half of the Black Shirts before they realized what was happening. The next three or four landed glancing blows on him but the last few made him shudder as their metal and wood weapons struck flesh. His momentum carried him until he only had a few more strides to his target.

  But the leader had not stood by in shock. As Shovel reached out with his blood-covered fingers the bald man raised his hand and fired a gun once, twice, three times, each bullet tearing into Shovel’s chest. The boy sank to his knees, balanced for an eternal second, before slumping forward, head bouncing on the asphalt next to the bald man’s boots.

  “We’ve got to go, Tar! We’ve got to go now!”

  Toby pulled Tar away from the window even as the Black Shirts in the schoolyard ran across the street toward the mall. After a few hesitant strides Tar was running on his own and passing Toby. He didn’t need to be told to run away anymore. He had recognized the bald man when he stared up at them with hatred blazing in his eyes. He was older and he no longer had a beard but Tar knew him.

  It was the man, the scary one. The one standing behind Father Eli in the newscast from before The Crash. That bald man had stared right at him, then just as now, crossing nearly a decade and a half and directing his hatred at Tar through the window.

  Chapter 10

  Tar turned on his flashlight just in time to miss running into a mannequin. Toby was not so lucky and plowed into the plastic figure, stumbling over it, and nearly losing his feet.

  They ran deeper into the darkness, Tar gripping his flashlight so tight his fingers ached. It lit up the opening in the damaged security gate and he ducked through, with Toby rattling the metal behind him as he followed.

  The beams of light bounced wildly on the floors and walls as they sprinted through the mall. The glass around the second floor overlook reflected the light and their echoing footsteps confirmed they had arrived at the strange stairway. They pounded their way down, each thump bouncing back until it sounded like a crowd of shoppers were running with them.

  Tar almost missed the hallway to the Food Court. His shoes squeaked on the shiny floor and he pushed off with his left hand when he bumped into the wall. Toby’s light was not bouncing along with his but Tar heard his friend running nearby so he kept going.

  The dark played tricks on Tar. The short hallway stretched in his mind until it was many times its true length. But, just that quick, the plastic tables and chairs were beside him and suddenly the Mary Round loomed, the gleam of his flashlight shining on the body of a brightly painted horse. He veered to his right and nearly tripped over Toby, the two boys stumbling toward the loading docks. The metal door slammed against the cinder block wall as they burst through and Tar cringed at the echo. Only then did he slow. Toby continued a few more steps, appearing in Tar’s light, before he stopped and came back, breathing hard.

  “Turn on your light,” whispered Tar.

  “It won’t come on,” said Toby. “I smashed it on the floor when I tripped over that stupid fake person in the store. I think it’s brick now.”

  Tar shined his light at Toby’s hand and saw the cracked lens and bulb.

  “Put it in my backpack. I might be able to replace the bulb.”

  He turned and Toby unzipped a pocket on his pack.

  “Do you think we’ll be able to get out the way we came in?” Toby asked.

  “I don’t know. We need to be quiet and see if we can hear anything before we go out. Follow me.”

  Tar started walking toward the door with the computer lock. They were still several strides away when they heard raised voices outside.

  “I tell you I heard something,” said one.

  “We can’t get in here,” said another.

  “You two stay and guard the exit,” said a third. “We’ll go around and see if we can find any other doors.”

  The boys stopped.

  “We’re fragged,” whispered Toby. “Do you know another way out?”

  Tar started walking back toward the Food Court door.

  “Maybe,” he whispered after a few strides. “I usually just wait out whoever is out there.” This time he slowly opened the door so it made only a little squeak, and shut it just as carefully. “On the other side of this building is a walkway that goes to a parking garage across the street. It goes over the top so cars could drive under.”

  “We can get over to that?” asked Toby.

  “I think so, but not on the walkway. There’s a heavy door blocking it. I can unlock it, but without juice to crank it up it’s brick.”

  “So how do we get over?”

  “We don’t,” Tar said as they entered the open area. This time he turned in the opposite direction of the store overlooking the school. “We go under.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Toby.

  “There’s hallways behind these stores. Uncle Jahn says it’s how the workers would come and go and how they got everything to the stores without going through the shopping areas.”

  “So?”

  “So, don’t you get it? If the workers were able to get from their cars to the stores without being seen then they had to have their own way to get to the garage.”

  “But you don’t know for sure, do you, Tar?”

  His friend was right. He did not know for certain if there was a tunnel to the parking garage but it made sense for it to be there. He never had a chance to answer.

  The sounds of shattering glass echoed down the length of the open area, followed by voices and the sounds of running footsteps.

  “Come on,” whispered Tar.

  He ran to the store fronts and down the line until he found one that had its gate stuck open about three feet from the bottom. He dropped to his knees and rolled under it onto the musty carpet on the other side. Toby joined him a second later. They stayed still and listened. The footsteps were moving closer but the men had stopped talking.

  “Grab my shirt,” he whispered.

  Tar pointed the flashlight toward the back of the store. They were standing in the middle of a walkway between two rows of empty clothes racks. At the back of the store, directly behind the counter, an empty doorway opened into a hall.

  Tar switched off his flashlight and they were thrust into darkness.

  “What the…!” started Toby.

  “Shhh!”

  Tar walked straight toward the back of the store, pulling Toby behind him. He kept his left arm out straight in front of his body. After about twenty steps he jammed his fingertips into the counter. Tar let his left hand lead them around the corner and, once they were behind the counter, he put his other hand out and reached for the back wall, trailing his fingers down its length until it disappeared.

  Just then a light played across the front of the store. They dropped behind the counter. Tar was sure the Black Shirts would find them just by following the sound of his pounding heart. But the footsteps trailed past the gate and continued on. Only then did he realize Toby gripped his shirt hard enough to make it cut into his shoulders.

  “Let’s go,” he whispered.

  The boys stayed low and moved into the back hallway. It snaked around to the right and then back to the left.

  “You’re going to have to turn the light on for a second,” whispered Toby. “We don’t know what’s back here. We’ll make a lot of noise if we start banging into stuff.”

  “Okay,” said Tar.

  He flipped on the flashlight. In front of the boys were several rows of empty shelves, two of them tipped over so they formed a loose triangle against the wall. Empty boxes littered the floor.

  “We’re going to have to chance it,” Tar whispered.

  He and Toby moved forward, walking and jumping around the debris as quickly as they could while trying to be quiet. Even so, the occasionally slide of a box or kick of a metal hanger made them wince. Once, when he thought he heard something in the front of the store, Tar signaled with his
hand and shut off the flashlight, plunging them back into darkness.

  He had no idea how long they stood there, waiting for the shouts and flashlights sweeping across their faces. But after a while, when no one appeared in the doorway, Tar’s breathing slowed. He turned the flashlight on and they continued to the back of the room. On the far wall was a wide double door.

  “Hurry, Tar,” said Toby. “Open it.”

  Tar could not find a tech box alongside the door. He searched one side while Toby looked at the other. The concrete walls were smooth and Tar was on the verge of panic when his friend laughed.

  “The box must be on the other side.” Toby turned the knob on one of the doors and it swung open with only a little squeak from the hinges. “It’s not locked.”

  They walked into the hallway and pushed the door shut behind them. Tar saw his friend had been correct. Outside the door was a tech box on the wall.

  “That’s not good,” Toby said. “That means the Black Shirts can get back here, too. We gotta move, Tar.”

  They took off down the hall toward the back of the building. But they had to be careful. Shopping carts, piles of skids, and empty wood crates were scattered throughout the concrete cavern. Tar kept the flashlight on and looked at every door sign as they passed. It did not take long for him to realize the doors on the left led to stores while the ones on the right were for the more mundane side of keeping the building running. Several doors to the loading docks made him nervous and they went slowly past these, expecting Black Shirts to leap out and grab them at any moment. Once they turned a corner the doorplates said things like “Mechanical Room 12” or “HVAC.” The boys were halfway down the second hall when the unthinkable happened.

  The lights on the walls winked on.

  Not completely on but, after walking and running for so long in the pitch black with only the flashlight to guide them, the red-and-white emergency lights seemed like small suns to their eyes. Even more frightening, somewhere off in the distance, a door slammed, the echo bouncing down the concrete walls and hitting into them like a punch.