“We can’t stay up here,” she said. Her tone was flat, but exacting. She’d seen enough and turned away. Emily walked back the way they came, reaching the center of the store where the aisles split. Standing there, searching for nothing in particular, she collapsed. It was too much. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the ghost image of the mother carrying her two babies. She was crying by the time Peter reached her. He pressed his hands on her shoulders, but she waved him off.
“No. Don’t,” she said.
Her father did that to them. He did that to the young mother who’d used her face to batter against the window to save her babies. Emily clutched the handle of the knife, pressing the blade into her thigh. She pressed the edge until it nearly cut into her skin. She wanted to feel a pain like the mother had. Emily tried, but then stopped. She couldn’t go any further, and her shrinking courage only made her want to cry some more.
“Emily, it’s okay,” Peter tried to console her. “It’s not your fault.”
“But it is,” she blurted. “I mean… I mean.” Her words trailed off, taken by the anguish erupting inside her. Peter said nothing else, but instead ran his hand across her shoulders and down her back, hoping it helped.
She cried heaving sobs until her insides hurt. At some point, she’d stood up and faced Peter, intending to tell him everything. But then her hands were on his face, pulling him closer until her lips touched his. Peter pulled away, but only for a second before kissing her the way she’d hoped he would. Emily fell into him, and her breathing hitched on errant sobs as they kissed. His lips were soft and wet, and she moaned when his tongue touched hers.
Peter abruptly stopped and backed away. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. Immediately, his expression was filled with surprise and embarrassment. “Emily, I didn’t mean to take advantage.” But when he tugged on the collar of his shirt, she didn’t believe it was embarrassment; it was passion. She shook her head and wiped her damp eyes. Gripping his shirt in her hands, she held him so that he couldn’t move away from her.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” she said. Her voice sounded soft, and even a bit sultry. She didn’t know where the voice came from, or that she could even sound that way. She liked it. “I should be the one who is sorry, I kissed you.”
He nodded, agreeing, but in a clumsy way that she found adorable.
“We—” he stuttered, and then cleared his throat. “—We should get what we need and then get back.” Small bulbous welts sprouted on Peter’s neck. She motioned for him to turn his head, placing her fingers on his stubbly chin. A rash of burns spread down his neck, disappearing under the collar of his shirt. Peter brought her hands in his, and carefully drew a finger around the welts on her arms.
“You’ve got the same on your neck,” she told him. “This place isn’t safe—not like the mall is, anyway.”
“It’s got to be the masonry,” he exclaimed, and then turned to inspect the rafters above like she had earlier. “Metal and wood is no match for whatever this stuff is.” A pang of guilt ticked inside her. Whatever this stuff is. She didn’t know the what, but she knew the where.
A deafening blast came from the other side of the Food-Mart, and instinctively they both squatted for safety. The floor shook, jars and boxes rattled, but unlike the earlier explosion, this one was inside. It was too loud to be a gunshot, and nothing else happened. Above them, the rafters moved, shaking like the end of a ruler after snapping it against a desk. The sound wasn’t an explosion; it was the building.
“We’ve got to get the medicine and go!” she screamed, but Peter was drawn away, curious, standing, raising a hand. “The roof! It’s the roof, and it isn’t going to stay up there!”
“How can you be—” he started to say, but another explosion interrupted him. A rafter separated from it’s support column, singing a terrible metallic song. Emily heard metal tearing from metal and shrank down. The roof stayed, but she could see a ripple of vibrations cross the ceiling. Peter dipped his head and waited for something to fall. “—Okay, let’s get back. But what about all this food?” Boxes and canned-food littered the floor as if someone had run up and down the aisles, sweeping the shelves with a broomstick. Canned goods, bottled juices and water, all of it safely preserved, waiting to be taken.
“We can’t do anything about that now,” she answered, but then saw the plastic trash bags and ripped open the box, handing a liner of black plastic to Peter. “Grab what you can, but be quick. The other rafters are going to fail soon, faster and faster, just like at my house.” Peter shook his head, staring up at the ceiling.
The run to the pharmacy was slower than she’d hoped. Her hands had begun to bleed, the blisters swelling and breaking, oozing clear liquid mixed with threads of blood. Peter suffered the same. She grabbed boxes and canned goods, fruit juices and more, until the bag was too heavy to lift. The sound of scraping plastic chased her as she kept pace to reach the pharmacy. Emily pulled up on the trash bag, dragging it behind her as if it were Santa’s sack full of holiday joy.
“Do you know where the pills are?” Another rafter ripped from its support column. She waited for the ceiling to settle. The weight of the roof proved too much, and the metal tensed. She listened to the haunted sounds of the rafters straining, groaning. “I grabbed more bags, just start filling them.” Emily threw Peter an empty trash bag and cleared the shelves of bottles. Dozens of pharmacy bottles went into the bag, but when she reached a locked cabinet, she knew that the drugs they needed were inside.
She couldn’t read the blocky label names on the bottles, but recognized them from the list. Emily opened the small knife Ms. Parks gave her, and picked at the lock. She jammed the tip of the blade in the slot, feeling the metal ridges on the inside and tried to shake the lock free. It wouldn’t move.
“Here let me try,” Peter said. Stepping up next to her, Emily handed him the small blade, but he didn’t take it. With one quick hit, Peter punched his elbow through the glass. Splintered shards fell like confetti, clinking as they hit the ground. “Just don’t cut yourself, okay?”
She cocked her head to the side, annoyed. “Seriously?”
“I’m serious,” he answered, motioning to the glass. “Stuff is sharp, be careful.” And as she went about picking out the locked medications and pain-killers, more glass shattered. The sound didn’t come from the case though—it came from the front of the store. The ceiling bowed in the front, pressing down on the large plates of glass. She thought of the mother and her two babies, and wondered if that was the section of glass to give first.
Two more rafters popped, tearing the metal welds. Something wet crept down her leg. Slippery and warm: alarming, she thought for a moment that she’d peed. She pushed her hand over her thigh, bringing up a palm of bright red. The knife! In all the rush, she’d cut open her leg on the chef’s knife after all, but had never felt the pain. But now there was a low throb, a pulse where the blade opened her leg. Blood dripped from the cuff of her pant leg, crimson splatters like rain drops appeared on the pharmacy’s white tiles. It’s not that bad, she told herself.
Emily pulled the make-shift belt, dropping the knife to the floor. The clink of steel on the tiles drew Peter’s attention. At once, he was at Emily’s side, kneeling to see how bad the cut was.
“I’m sorry,” was all she could think to say. A rafter from the other side of the Food-Mart gave, and threw a booming sound that made them both duck. “I didn’t even know I cut myself.”
“You had the blade in backwards,” he answered and then looked at her with mild contempt. This was another part of her every day too, where even the smallest of paper-cuts could mean something worse. I have to be more careful. I have to be better than this. “Doesn’t look life threatening—yet, but you’ll need a stitch or two. We better make sure we grab plenty of antibiotics… and a needle and thread too.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I didn’t mean to.” Peter picked up the leather strap, and tied it around her leg.
“My fault,” he answered, motioning to ask if the leather was too tight. Emily shook her head, and Peter checked the knot. “I should have shown you how to carry a knife, especially one that big.”
Emily pushed against the throb in her leg, adding more pharmacy bottles to the trash bag. She’d moved on to bandages and antibiotic creams when a pair of rafters broke away. The metal thumped, grinding. Welds that could never fail were being torn apart. She cupped her ringing ears, but then quickly covered her face from the debris thrown into the air. They’d stayed too long. They were going to be crushed to death by the roof when it fell in. Or worse, pinned under the steel girders, dying a slow and horrible death. Emily pulled her arms into her chest and screamed.
Peter shook her by the shoulders, a peculiar expression on his face. Emily glanced over his shoulders toward the front. The store was already changing. The roof had dropped, leaning precariously to the right as though suspended by invisible cables. Another failed rafter, and it was going to fall. She heard a mix of terror and excitement in Peter’s voice, yelling at her while he pulled up on her arm, motioning to follow him.
A large silver streak came down from the ceiling, stopping her from taking another step. Another streak, and then a thud of something heavy landed next to her. The sudden collapse pushed her hair up in a rapid waft. She cringed, fearful, and tried to move, but her legs stayed frozen in place.
“What was that?”
“Holy Shit!” Peter screamed, staring at what had fallen. She peered around to see a bell-shaped light, laying on its side, spent like a child’s toy top. “One more step and—”
“—Yeah, I know,” Emily gasped. Her voice sounded choked, and her legs felt wobbly. Emily was up and running behind Peter when another dome light crashed. The lights leaned like books on a crooked shelf, and two more of them dropped, punching the air with hollow thuds. They were all going to fall. Bells of aluminum and glass threatened to break free and drop on top of them like bombs.
“The whole place is coming down!” Peter shouted. His voice strained as he dragged two giant trash bags behind him. He tossed her a kitchen towel, motioning to her mouth. When she saw the open hatch ahead of him and the tattoo man’s feet, she knew. The terrycloth felt soft and masked some of the smell, but there was just too much rot and decay coming from the walk-in freezer. Why would someone intentionally leave it open? They wanted the fog to consume the meat. And maybe, she considered, tattoo man might have tried to fend off the vandal, protecting the walk-in and the food. Attacker or no attacker, tattoo man was already dead like Ms. Quigly, he just didn’t know it yet.
“Why does the air feel so much worse over here?” Peter asked, his words suddenly drowned in a dry heave. “This is bad!”
Could it be that the air had become more toxic from the raw meat, consuming it, producing a by-product that made the poison worse? What would happen once the burns ate away someone’s skin? She glanced over at tattoo man, finding burns around his neck that hadn’t been there before. Would all the bodies decompose so rapidly? Her thoughts spun in her mind, confusing her, sickening her, letting her father’s involvement turn into a conspiracy theory and an even deeper mystery. Just get back to Justin. She shook it off, leaving the hundreds of questions alone.
The stinging in Emily’s eyes became too much, watering them profusely, twisting the view of Peter in front of her until she only saw something gnarled and warped. She squeezed the tears out, letting her cheeks catch the wetness, soothing the itch and burn. And Peter struggled too, gagging, coughing and spitting, desperately trying to clear his view. Her nose and throat tightened, hampering her breath, cramping her face. And somewhere deep inside her lungs, a fire had started that she didn’t think could be doused.
But it was her arms and hands that were getting the worst of it: fat sacs turned white and opened during her struggle to drag the trash bag. She’d grabbed a handful of first-aid kits from aisle eight, and would be the first to use them. That is if they made it back to the mall.
Searing air and the crackling sound of lighting. A storm? She expected to see a blinding flash. She expected to hear a distant guttural rumble. But the thunder never came. Something was going to fall, and anxiety had them both looking high and low. Emily tensed her arms and legs, tightening her insides, holding her breath. They were going to be crushed by a falling light or a chunk of the roof.
Emily was the first to see what made the sound, pointing it out to Peter who stretched his neck toward the front of the store. Another of the plate glass windows had begun to fail, and she was certain it was the one with the mother and her two babies. Large cracks ran down the face of it, spidering outward like the bare branches of a tree. The leaning roof was too much weight, and what the woman had started with her head—cracking the glass—was going to end soon. The plate glass snapped, turning into a canvas of abstract art, an illusion that hid them from the poison world. A monsoon of glass shards rifled into the store like buckshot from a shotgun. The hail storm of oval-shaped pebbles rained down everywhere, and even from where they stood, she could see tiny glass rocks tumbling into the food aisles, glinting gray light like costume jewelry.
By now, they’d known what to expect and barely flinched as the window vanished from the front of the store. The fog could come in now, but like her house, and the opening of her garage door, the fog only tumbled around the opening. Knocking, but never coming in.
“Look at that,” she managed to say, coughing up hot phlegm. “Stays outside. Just rolls against the opening. I’d seen the same at my house before it imploded.” Peter nodded, and then shook his head, furrowing his brow.
“Structure?” he suggested, but gave her a look that told her that he had no idea. “Might not be coming in, but it’s getting a lot worse.” Peter dropped the trash bags and pawed at his arms, swiping at the burns.
“Cover up,” Emily motioned to her mouth and nose, tying the kitchen towel around her head. “We need to run for it.”
And, as if to stress her words, she heard more of the glass lightning, and imagined the cracks forking across the surface. But this time, she didn’t bother to look up, knowing what was next. A thunderous boom ended with the crackle of splitting glass, throwing out a hail storm of raining stones.
The entire building groaned, followed by ringing sounds of twisting metal that went through her like sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. The remaining ceiling lights shook and rocked back and forth like mute church bells. A few thudded into the aisle closest to them. But the crash was overtaken by a girder coming free of the roof and collapsing down. The weight of the steel shuddered through the ground.
Peter clapped his hands over his ears, and she heard muffled pops that sounded like gunshots. The girders were pulling apart from one another, and Emily took hold of her trash bags and ran. There was no time to hesitate or panic. Peter must have seen the alarm in her eyes. He said nothing—questioned nothing—but instead picked up his bags and ran to the hatch door.
12
Peter disappeared through the hatch door, vanishing when the first of the debris rifled past Emily. She saw his hand next, grabbing the trash bags, pulling them through the narrow hole. Tattoo man vanished from his knees to his head, a metal beam covering most of him. She expected a splatter of blood, pooling around him like the puddled remains of rainwater after a storm, but the dead don’t bleed. Not like they do when they’re alive, anyway. A ragged end of steel with large torn holes was all that remained at the end of the beam. The gunshots.
Emily felt a rush of air, on the back of her neck, lifting her up as the floor pitched briefly beneath her. One of the main roof supports collapsed, crushing a row of food aisles. The crunch of metal reverberated through her before a wave of debris came. Don’t turn around, she told herself. Don’t do it, no matter how much you want to look. And in her mind she imagined a tall brown wall shooting up into the air and coming at her like a tidal wave.
Flat cans flew past her like hockey pucks, splashing agains
t the wall with a tinny thunk, leaving behind food angels that dripped down the brick face. Peter peered up out of the hatch, but quickly ducked back down when one of the tins ricocheted, flying at him and then bounced into the service tunnel. Canned pet food, Emily thought, oddly distracted by the blurred labels she quickly recognized. Peter’s hand jutted from the black opening, reaching up, clutching the air, waiting for her to grab hold of his fingers. Another can of pet food whistled by, feathering the side of her head like a breezy kiss. One step to the right and she would have surely joined tattoo man on the ground—only it wouldn’t have been the bottom of a fire-extinguisher that squashed her skull.
Her feet were in the hatch opening, hurriedly slipping from one rung to the next, without a care or fear of falling. Her trash bags, stayed above her, getting pelted by an onslaught of shelving and tinned debris. When her fingers closed around the top steel rung, she pulled the trash bags in with her and let herself fall. Peter’s arms were around her, catching her against his body. She turned around and fell into him. His breath was hot and rapid, and she could feel his heart pounding against her breast, driven by the rush of nearly dying. She could have stayed like that—in his arms, face to face—longer, but the collapse of the Food-Mart had stolen most of the light and drove an urgency to run.
“This way,” Peter screamed. And while the light was dim, she could see the veins in his neck pop as he strained to hear his own voice. When he went to speak again, he stopped. The service tunnel shook, and blackness ate away any remaining sight.
The screeching metal and shattering glass they’d run away from were a mere symptom of what was to come next—a growling rumble started, as if the Food-Mart were inhaling and readying to squeeze out a dying breath. The sound was like a thousand freight trains, deafening and terrifying, and Emily found herself clutching onto Peter, screaming as loud as she could, pleading for it to stop. For a long time, they held on to one another, waiting for the world to collapse and squeeze them into nothingness.
The Complete Four-Book Box Set Page 11