The three adults looked at the door, then at each other. “Next move?” Tara raised her rifle over her shoulder.
“The second story balcony is probably on the other side,” Carl said. “But we don’t know if Jason or Cyrus are out there, or any of their men.”
Tara then glanced at her scope. “I think I know how to get a head’s up on things.”
Carl, Preston and Shyanne waited as Tara glanced through the scope. They had opened the door just a crack, but enough for Tara to poke the barrel of her rifle through and gaze through her scope. “I don’t see anything but an empty mall,” she said.
“It might be clear out there,” Carl said, “Alright. Let’s go out there, but carefully.”
Tara withdrew her gun, allowing Carl to open the door and step into the mall’s second floor balcony. The area up here was as Carl remembered it, with two paths on either side of the mall and an open gap in the center looking down on the mall. Thanks to Tara’s scouting, it seemed at least this area was clear, but now Carl wanted to make sure no one below could see them up here.
First, Carl quickly checked the immediate path. The store where he and Tara had ambushed Cyrus and his men lay a few steps behind him, with the cleaning cart Preston had used still resting on the floor. The rear wall, where the path curved around to the other side, was not much farther. The path ahead stretched on alongside store after store, and while none of Cyrus’s or Jason’s men were in evidence, there were enough stores and protrusions from the walls that still could hide an assailant.
Carl turned and motioned to his companions inside the HVAC room. Time to come out and investigate, but with caution.
Shyanne pressed her face against the banister looking out over the mall’s first floor corridor. “I still don’t see anybody,” she said.
Behind her, Preston cleared his throat. “Shyanne, maybe you shouldn’t lay so close to the end like that.” The little girl, flat on her belly, had been checking out the view below. Tara and Carl also were casing the area below with their rifle scope and binoculars, respectively.
Shyanne turned around. “You still afraid of high places?”
Preston grimaced. “I’d say I’m more uncomfortable with them,” he said.
Carl walked by. “Shyanne, don’t stay too close to the edge. You don’t know if that banister is weak for any reason. It’s a nasty spill all the way to the bottom.”
Shyanne sprang to her feet. “Okay.” she whispered.
“Hey, how about helping Tara over there? She could use another pair of eyes.” Carl pointed to Tara, who was a few steps to their right, looking over the mall with her scope.
Shyanne complied. Preston then let out a contented sigh. “Thanks for the help.”
“No problem.” Carl shook his head. “I don’t like this. There’s no sign at all of the survivors, and we’re not running into bad guys either.”
“Maybe their sense of humanity and good will finally kicked in and they decided to bail,” Preston said.
“I doubt it, but wouldn’t I wish,” Carl replied.
Preston glanced at the gun on his belt. “I hate to say this, with all of us on this mission, but the thought of having to pull this out and use it does make me a little sick.”
“First time using it for defense?” Carl asked.
“Yeah.” Preston swallowed between his words. “Probably not the time you want to hear this. Look, you know where I stand on a lot of things. The idea of using force makes me sick to my stomach. But the past few hours have really been getting to me. I think of firing my gun at one of those men and it makes me sick. It might have been a mistake to come along at all.”
“You saved all of our lives. You even helped keep Shyanne safe. I think you’re not giving yourself enough credit,” Carl said.
“It’s more than that. You remember I went berserk after we picked up Shyanne? I’m worried about turning into that guy again. Putting a bullet in somebody’s gut might do that.”
“After what you just had seen, I guess I couldn’t blame you for acting out,” Carl said. “To be honest, I had my doubts about you afterward.”
“What, with me charging into that burning hotel?”
Carl nodded. “Yeah.”
Carl remembered the scene well. After the pair had retrieved Shyanne out of the refrigerator inside the drug store, Preston had melted down into a fit of rage mixed with despair at the inhumanity around him. They had encountered Shyanne’s father lying dead along with other victims. Preston then led Carl and Shyanne to the hotel where he was staying to retrieve his gun. By then the hotel was on fire, but Preston stormed into his room to get the gun, fire be damned. The three of them nearly became trapped inside. Carl had to use Preston’s gun to shoot out the glass so they could escape.
Preston nodded. “Yeah, I can understand that. It’s been bugging me since. Whenever it looks like I have to use my gun, I get a little jittery. I think about that moment, and I get scared that I’m going to really fly off the handle.”
“Using your gun won’t make you a monster. Trust me. Sometimes we don’t have a choice,” Carl said.
Before Preston could reply, a woman’s shout drew the attention of both men to their right. “Tara!” Carl cried out. That was the voice of their friend. In the distance, Tara was struggling with a man only slightly taller than her.
Carl broke into a run, with Preston following.
A man had wrapped himself around Tara. Her rifle lay on the ground near the mall banister. Shyanne, close by, was screaming. Carl caught up to Shyanne. “We’re here!” he said as Preston quickly took hold of Shyanne and lead her off toward one of the storefronts.
Tara was wrestling with the man, spinning around to get him off her back. “You little bastard…” In a fit of cursing, she did all she could to free herself, from stomping on the man’s foot to biting the man’s flesh, but he seemed too delirious to care. He laughed loudly as he clung to her.
“What’s the matter, redhead? You know you like it! Ha ha!” he cried.
Carl grabbed the assailant by the back of his shirt collar. “Get off her!” the former Marine growled as he pried the attacker off Tara. Carl then flung the man into the wall of a nearby jewelry store.
Tara, gasping, raced for her gun. “Son of a bitch!” she whispered fiercely as she grabbed her weapon. At the same time, the man turned, exposing his face for all to see. It was Ilario. Tara quickly pointed her rifle at him. “He got the drop on me. Creepy little asshole tried to fondle me…”
“Too bad. Your ass is smaller than Whitney’s. What a shame,” he said.
“Carl, I’m going to blow his head off,” Tara said.
“Wait.” Carl raised his hand. “He might have valuable info. He’s the first person we’ve run into here.” He grabbed Ilario and dragged him into the store. If he was going to interrogate this guy, better to do it inside the store where the sound wouldn’t carry into the main body of the mall.
With Ilario parked against a wall, Carl began questioning him. “Start talking. Where’s Cyrus? What are you planning to do to this mall?”
“Hell if I know where Cyrus is. And you’re stupid for wanting to find him after he nearly planted your ass six feet under.” He turned to Preston. “Oh yeah, I remember you. The little geek who sprayed us.” Ilario’s teeth grinded together. “I was hoping to run into you, though I would have liked to have finished with the redhead before carving you up like a roast.”
Tara had taken a step forward, her gun still trained on Ilario. “You know, my hand could slip.”
“Hey, you heard your Marine friend. I got valuable info, so you can’t touch me,” Ilario stuck out his tongue.
Carl raised his fist. “That doesn’t mean I won’t apply a little friendly persuasion if you don’t behave. Now, what’s going on? We saw a band of refugees from the city walk in here. I know you must have seen them. Where are they?”
“Yeah, I saw them. They walked…” Ilario stuck his thumb to the right. “That way.
I didn’t get a good look because I was…” He licked his lips. “Busy.”
Preston walked up to Carl and said quietly, “That’s the direction of Kelly’s Boutique. I know it.”
“Then your friends did take them in,” Carl whispered back. He turned back to Ilario, speaking normally. “Now, let’s talk about Jason Maltesta. He’s here, isn’t he?”
A shudder ran across Ilario’s face. “Yeah. He is,” he said, no longer sounding so smug. “And if you go anywhere near him, you’ll regret it.”
Suddenly, Ilario was thrown forward while letting out a scream. A woman had sprung from behind a wall partition, leaping onto Ilario and impaling him in the back with a knife. The woman was wild-eyed. She screamed as she leaped onto Ilario, withdrawing the knife and stabbing him again.
“Holy shit!” Tara shouted.
“Don’t open fire!” Carl rushed up to the woman. He felt he knew this woman and didn’t want to kill her. He quickly seized her by the arm and pulled her off.
“Bastard!” she cried, “Bastard! Die! Die!”
He finally flung her off. Ilario laid flat on the ground with two bleeding stab wounds. Trembling, he turned to his assailant. “Whit…nee…”
Whitney. So that was her. But what had happened to her? Whitney was acting like a feral animal. Even when Carl had pried her off, she still was crouched while holding the bloody knife in her hand.
“Yeah, I got you. You like to hide, huh? Get the jump on women? Well, I got the jump on you!” she shouted, spittle flying from her mouth. “I got you! I got you!”
Ilario tried pushing himself up from the floor, but he slipped and flopped back down. “Damn you,” he whispered.
“No.” Whitney raised the knife. “Damn you!”
She sped past Carl and impaled Ilario in the back once again. Then she plunged her knife in and out while screaming.
“Easy, easy! Calm down!” Carl grabbed her and flung her down to the floor. “I think you got him.”
“I haven’t gotten him until I’ve cut him up into a million pieces and burned them. And then…and then…”
Whitney then collapsed onto the floor in a fit of sobs. Tara knelt beside her while Carl glanced at the bloody corpse of Ilario, wondering what he had done to turn Whitney so violently against him.
Chapter Sixteen
Carl glanced down over the side of the banister. Once again, he had spotted no activity down there, which made him both relieved and a little nervous. Cyrus and his goons could be occupied in another part of the mall. Perhaps they were rampaging through one of the major department stores trying to sniff out the refugees.
Still, how come nobody heard all this commotion? Carl was puzzled. Granted, the fracas had occurred inside of the store behind him, but even so, Whitney’s screams should have penetrated loud enough to attract someone’s attention to come and check it out.
As for Whitney, she spent some time in the store with Carl’s companions composing herself until she was ready to spill her story. She told her tale briefly, but in enough grisly detail to reveal why she had butchered Ilario. Her story quelled much of his doubts about her. Even though she had been working with Cyrus and his men, one of them had turned on her and raped her.
Tara and Preston stuck with Whitney while Carl finished his rounds. Shyanne sat against the store’s wall. Carl didn’t want her to listen in on Whitney’s story once he got wind of her grisly fate. Better not to expose a little girl to such horrors. There was enough horror today to go around.
Carl stepped inside the store. “Nothing. Our little scuffle didn’t seem to attract any attention.” He glanced at Whitney, Preston and Tara.
“Hey,” Carl said to Whitney, “I know you’ve been through hell. I don’t mean to pry, but we really need to know what we’re up against and where the refugees are.”
Whitney shook her head. “I already told Tara everything I can think of. Look, I wasn’t in the loop.” She spread her arms. “I was too busy getting…” She shivered. “…That and trying to find a shirt to cover me after Ilario ripped my clothes to pieces.” Tara then wrapped her hand around Whitney’s arm.
“Cyrus and the other men have zip tied this place shut, but we do have one way in and out. There’s an air conditioning and heating maintenance room on this floor. It’s not far from here. Now, it’ll be a little awkward, but you can climb out a door and down to the parking lot outside. With all those cars in the lot, you could find a hiding place. Or if you want, you can stick around in the maintenance room until we’ve secured the mall.”
Whitney nodded. “That sounds great. Thanks.”
Carl opened the door to the HVAC maintenance room. Shyanne quickly slipped inside as Carl turned to Whitney. “Now, this place actually has some good hiding places. If you want, you can hide out behind the air conditioning machinery. We also can leave you with a weapon.”
“I still have my knife,” Whitney said, “but I would love a sweet gun like your friend.”
Carl shook his head. “Sorry, but we need those to bust Cyrus and his goon squad. Don’t worry. I don’t think Cyrus or his other flunkies know about this room. In fact, they don’t seem to be hanging around—”
“Mister Carl! Mister Carl!” Shyanne was jumping up and down inside the HVAC room’s doorway.
“What is it?” Carl asked.
“I heard voices! In the wall!” the little girl replied excitedly.
Back in the HVAC room, Shyanne pointed to the pipe that fed through the right-side wall. “Right there! I heard voices in the pipe!”
Carl leaned up against the pipe. “You’re right. I can hear them. It just sounds like normal conversation, no panic or anything.” He turned to Preston. “I think these might be those people you found. We’re on the second floor, and we’re not too far from Kelly’s Boutique.”
“I saw some air vents in there, but they were taped up. That whole floor was sealed off,” Preston said.
“But it’s still a major store. All those big clothing stores have outlets up on the second floor. That one must have an exit up here, too. It’s just sealed off. Now, it could be sealed with a solid wall, but maybe, if it’s just a temporary wall, we can get through it,” he said as he made a fist and pumped it. “And if we do, we’ve just found a back door into the hiding spot.”
“And a way to reach Michael,” Tara said with bated breath.
With great caution, Carl and his companions, plus Whitney, strolled out of the HVAC room and crept along the walls of the second floor. Since Kelly’s Boutique occupied the whole section of the back end of the mall, then the outlet for the store should be on the back wall of this part of the second floor. However, Carl and Tara did not spot a store opening when they had fled down this way initially trying to escape Cyrus and his men. So, it was no surprise that when they finally reached the end of the second floor, a solid white wall greeted them.
Carl pushed on it. “Feels like drywall.” He ran his hand near a set of nails in the drywall. “They probably put this together to wall off the entrance. Hopefully, the entrance actually is behind this thing.” Then he walked to the very end of the wall. “Ah, I was right. Look.”
The wall at the left end actually ended before it touched the mall’s side wall. “See? It’s a movable wall. They slide it in and out when they want to do work here. The construction workers probably had to use this entrance too. It looks like Cyrus and his men didn’t notice it or didn’t care.”
“Great, but can we move it?” Preston asked.
“Well, if the construction workers have to move it, maybe we can, too.” Carl fed his fingers through the gap and gripped the wall. “Here, give me a hand.”
Tara and Preston offered their help. The three adults pulled on the wall. “It’s moving. C’mon, harder!” Carl barked. The wall shuddered, then finally started sliding. “Not too far,” Carl quickly said. The trio then stopped. “I don’t want this to be too noticeable in case bad guys show up.”
The three of them had freed up a
space big enough for them to slip through single file. “Perfect,” Carl said as he stepped through the gap. “Follow me.”
Carl inched through the opening and was the first to discover the large frame that opened to the second floor of Kelly’s Boutique. The ceiling above was open, with hanging wires intended for new light fixtures. The glass displays already had been erected, but there were no clothes or stands inside them. The ground was littered with white dust. A thick sheet of plastic and white tarp barred the way into the store.
The rest of the group, having now joined Carl, waited as he grabbed the plastic sheet and pulled it aside, then pushed open the white tarp as he progressed. He now had opened the way to the actual interior of the store. However, Carl only had revealed a small section of the floor. The rest of it was sealed off by more drywall. The floor also was coated mostly by tarp, in preparation for a paint job that never came to be.
“Everybody should be on the other side. I don’t think this floor is much bigger,” Preston said.
As soon as Preston finished his sentence, voices sprang from the distance. Tara raised her rifle. “Wait.” Carl held up his hand. “I think these may be our friends.”
The redhead lowered her weapon. “Sorry. I guess I’m a little more jittery than I thought. God, I hope I don’t freak out.”
“Don’t worry.” Carl nodded in the direction of the drywall. “I’ll check it out first.”
He strolled up to the drywall. As expected, Carl located a gap, this one big enough for him to look through. Gently, he pushed against the wall and peered through. The scene beyond was as Preston had described, a large open floor with people sitting or standing. Only this time the crowd was more than twice the size.
Carl quickly ran back to his friends. “They’re there! Preston, it’s just as you said. And the other survivors, they’re there too. I think the first bunch from the food court is also in there. I can recognize some of the faces.”
Silent Interruption (Book 2): Braving The Risk Page 12