Silent Interruption (Book 2): Braving The Risk Page 10

  “I am,” Preston said.

  “You know where I am, Carl. All the way,” Tara said.

  Carl nodded. “Then it’s settled.”

  “Wait!” Preston leaned close to Carl’s face. “What about Shyanne? What do we do with her?”

  Carl bristled. Shyanne reclined in the back, sound asleep. He had been dreading this decision. As he saw it, they had two options. One was to hide her in this SUV or another vehicle. The other was to cart her along with them into the mall. He would not place her in the fray, though. He would find somewhere to hide her while they took out Cyrus and his men.

  As much as he loathed to admit it, the second option seemed the most appealing. At least inside the mall he had a modicum of control over the environment. He could not say that about the parking lot. He would have no idea what was going on out here until he finished off Cyrus’s horde and stepped back out through the doors. A group of new survivors already had shown up out of the blue. What if another mob approached? What if they torched the vehicles, with Shyanne inside one of them? Even one or two marauders would give Carl cause for worry.

  “I’ll invite Shyanne to come with us,” Carl finally said.

  “Wait! Carl! You can’t be serious?” Preston said.

  “Yeah, are you sure?” Tara leaned closer. “We can’t put our little girl at risk like that.”

  “Risk?” Carl shook his head. “Just look around. The risk is everywhere. It lives all around us. When the EMP nailed us, the sentence was passed down to everybody under this sky. Us, and those poor people hiding in that mall.” He pointed past Tara’s face to the mall beyond the window. “I’ve got to give her the choice. Preston, you said there were children hiding in there, too. We’ve got to go to the limit for them.”

  Tara slunk back. Carl’s words seemed to mitigate her own apprehension for Shyanne. “Guess I can’t complain. I didn’t go back for Michael the first time.”

  “But what are you going to tell Shyanne?” Preston looked back at the sleeping girl. “What if she’s too afraid to go with us?”

  “Like I said, I’ve got to give her the choice,” Carl said.

  The first warm rays of the morning sun peeked over the horizon. At around the same time, Shyanne awoke from her sleep. Preston and Tara gave her some more of the snacks they had salvaged from the SUV, but it was up to Carl to talk to her about what they were about to do, and the choice Shyanne faced.

  “It’s comfy in here, isn’t it?” Carl asked as Shyanne reclined in the back seat, wiping away the last crumbs from her breakfast.

  “It is.” Shyanne patted the cushion of the seat. “I wish it could go again.”

  “No kidding. We could drive away from here, find someplace safe. No hiking, no danger.” Carl sighed. “But we can’t do that. In fact, we can’t leave here just yet.”

  “Because Miss Tara’s boyfriend is here?”

  Carl nodded. “That’s part of it.” Shyanne had slept through Tara’s tale, but the girl had been awake to hear Tara discover Michael in the procession that had headed to the mall.

  “But there’s more. You remember those people you met with Preston, right?” Carl asked. Shyanne nodded. Carl continued, “Well, they and those other people with Michael, they’re all in there with those bad people we escaped from. If we leave, those bad people are going to hurt all those innocent people.”

  “And kill them,” Shyanne added.

  Carl grimaced. Shyanne’s comment was frank, but completely on point. “Yeah. And that’s why we need to go in there and stop them. But if we do, that would mean putting you in danger. Tara, Preston and I don’t want to do that. But we also think leaving you out here would be dangerous, too.”

  “Leaving me?” Shyanne huddled up onto the seat. “But I don’t want to be alone!”

  “Yeah.” Carl smiled. “We didn’t want to leave you here either. But you should be able to choose what you want. We’re risking our lives going back in there, and you would too if you went with us. But even with that, do you want to come with us?”

  Shyanne glanced at the mall beyond the window as if facing her own fears about Carl’s proposal. Carl waited. He wouldn’t rush her.

  “I…I want to come!” she finally said. “Let me go with you!”

  “Like I said, it’s dangerous.”

  “It’s okay. I’m brave! I can help! I know I can! I can run fast if the bad people try to catch me!”

  Carl chuckled softly. “I have no doubt you can. You’ll leave those sons of…” He quickly caught himself as he didn’t want to swear around Shyanne if he could help it, though he imagined she had heard a good dose of profanity already in the past few days. “…those suckers in the dust,” he hastily finished.

  As Carl wrapped up his sentence, Tara poked her head through the open door. “Hey,” she said, “I overheard someone’s going to join the party.”

  Shyanne grinned. “Yeah! I hope you find your boyfriend, Miss Tara.”

  Tara smiled. “Me too. Actually, I have a present for you.” She pulled out the letter opener Carl had given her. “A little something in case you have to fight off one of the bad men.”

  Carl quickly took it from Tara. “Good idea, but only use this if you have to. This is not a toy. This is a weapon, and it’s only for defending yourself when a bad man tries to hurt you. Do you understand?”

  Shyanne looked at the letter opener. Her face twitched as if she was a little nervous, but she quickly recovered and took the letter opener. “Yes, Mister Carl.”

  As the little girl studied the letter opener, Carl turned to Tara. “Thanks,” he said. “I’d feel better if I could give you my knife.”

  “Naah. Look, I got serious ammo now. You need some kind of weapon in case you run into Cyrus again.” Tara backed out of the doorway, into the path of the sunbeams shining behind her.

  “Cyrus.” Carl sighed. “I hate to think what that monster’s up to now.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  They had pushed through the glass doors of the mall. To them, this place would be their refuge. They had trekked across a devastated city to get here. The band of weary survivors was composed of all kinds of people, from individuals who had left their homes when the power went out, to motorists stranded when their cars stopped working, to shop owners who fled their stores when looters approached on the horizon to, in a few cases, children who had been in the middle of school but now found themselves without their parents. Almost all of them were on the run from a grimmer fate, a mob, a band of looters, or just the elements themselves. Even if they felt they were no longer in physical danger, food and water always loomed as a problem.

  They streamed into the building, walking down a small hall into the large mall corridor. No one was around to greet them at first. The men, those who were not sick or starving, investigated the nearby stores. A quiet mall could still hold hidden dangers. But for the first half hour, no such danger reared its head. Perhaps they had discovered their deliverance after all.

  Then, a newcomer entered their midst. His name was Chad Bosworth, and he urged the tired group to come with him. In spite of what the newcomers may have thought of their new shelter, this mall was not safe at all. If they wanted shelter, they would have to accompany him to a hiding place where more survivors were holed up. While some in the band favored retreating from the mall, the prospect of finding provisions was too good to pass up.

  So they followed Chad, and soon the mall corridor was empty once more. The new band of survivors seemingly had made their escape.

  However, both their entry and their exit had been monitored by prying eyes. Up above on the second floor, the sinister figure of Jason Maltesta watched them silently from a hidden spot beside a mall display. He drank the whole scene in. Only when the mall below fell dark did he turn and leave.

  That’s because he knew the mall now was teeming with prey. And this time, he wouldn’t let a single one escape.

  Cyrus massaged his right cheek. Damn, it still hurts, he thought.
The mace from that pencil-necked geek who sprayed him still stung his flesh, although it managed to hurt less than it had hours ago. Ordinarily, he would be outside hunting down the little shit who did this to him, or at least stewing in his own rage, but the presence of Jason Maltesta’s two right-hand men kept him chilled. He figured Jason would want to go hunting for that Marine and his friends, but Jason instead had confined them up here for the time being. As it turned out, Jason had spotted a procession of survivors approaching, and he wanted all his men to remain hidden in this store. Ironically, it was the same place where Cyrus and his men had been ambushed by the Marine and that redhead.

  Nearby, Ron and Drake sat on the floor, playing a game of cards, although from the sound of it, neither of them understood what they were doing. Cyrus never had met Ron until today, but he was acquainted with Drake, and Cyrus knew the man was an imbecile when it came to card playing. A few rounds of poker cleaned him out, causing the older man to swear off gambling, at least with cards. Drake’s apartment was the most rundown place a man could afford, and Cyrus figured the man probably pissed away a lot of money. The advent of the EMP, however, had set him free. Now he could indulge himself however he liked, including with women.

  The women. Cyrus smiled as he thought back to their opening day. After lighting some fires around the city, they were able to score some women with the help of Whitney. It was a pleasurable night indeed, though one of the women met with a tragic end. Not that Cyrus cared. He had used them and now wanted to move on to fresher stock.

  For Cyrus, that stock lay in the suburbs. For one thing, the city was beginning to stink badly. The dead bodies and growing pestilence soon would make the city unlivable. A lot of the survivors thought so too, for Cyrus had noticed trails of people flowing out toward the suburbs beyond the city. Cyrus also relished the idea of kicking in the doors of houses. There wouldn’t be any cops around to help, all of them having fled their posts or at least been rendered helpless to act without their police cruisers, or radios, or phones to contact each other.

  Which made it all the more irritating that he was stuck here, but under the watchful eye of Kronish and Mayfield, Jason’s right-hand men. He couldn’t do anything but wait for Jason to declare their next move. He was the true leader of this band, as much as it pained Cyrus. Jason had pulled them all together.

  Cyrus’s wait soon was over when Jason pulled back the tarp that covered the storefront. Kronish and Mayfield quickly stepped back, parting as if a king had entered their midst. Jason simply strolled past them without looking at them. Instead, to Cyrus’s discomfort, Jason directly approached him.

  “We have lambs waiting for us,” he said, calmly. “The pen has opened, and the sheep have walked inside. Now it’s time for the wolves to have their day.”

  Cyrus bristled. Was Jason talking about the survivors he had spotted? Had that band entered the mall? “They’re still downstairs?” It was a lame question. After all, where else could they be? But he still wanted to pull more information out of Jason without sounding too much like a moron or that he was questioning Jason.

  “They’ve moved on, somewhere in this mall,” Jason replied. “I saw them headed in the direction of Kelly’s Boutique. It’s a big clothing store. I imagine there’s plenty of places for about thirty people to hide. A man had approached them. I suspect he’s taken refuge in this mall and was guiding these newbies to his hiding spot. And, I did not spot any weapons. This didn’t look like a group who would pose much trouble.”

  Cyrus nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

  “Thirty people’s still a lot,” Ron said. “I mean, what if they all decide to get medieval on our asses?”

  Jason glanced at Ron. Drake scooted away, as far as he could get, up against the wall. Ron, the youngest of the group, also was the most prone to saying things out of line, especially around Jason. Even Cyrus shrank back a little.

  Jason strolled up to him. “Medieval on our asses?” He asked it as if Ron had told a bad joke. “That flock of sheep includes women and children. Do you think a seven-year-old is going to pose a threat?”

  “Hey, you should have seen my sister when she was eight. She used to whip my ass in a flat second,” Ron said with a laugh.

  Jason did not appear amused. Instead, he pulled back his shirt sleeve, revealing a forearm covered with a circular tattoo. Cyrus wanted to look away, but it was difficult. It was as though the tattoo was a magnet. In reality, it was an occult symbol of some kind, a ring with a hexagram inside it. Cyrus hated it. Jason always has had a strange aura about him, and Cyrus, not a man given to superstitions anyway, did not like looking at anything that lent credibility to that aura.

  “Numbers are an illusion,” Jason said. “What good is a mass if many of its components are weak? Those people are not strong. They are beaten, weary, fatigued, and with little hope of surviving for much longer. Such lambs are not equipped to fight back. When presented with predators, all they will do is flee. They will flee until they run into a wall, and then the wolves will feast.”

  Jason then pulled back his other sleeve, uncovering a different tattoo —this one shaped like a pentagram. “Are you a wolf?” he asked.

  Ron’s cockiness melted away the whole time Jason spoke. “Uh…wolf! Wolf!” He didn’t even dress his words up with a quip.

  “When your fangs tear into a lamb, only then will I know if you’re a wolf.” Jason let the words hang there, then turned back to his two men by the tarp. Then he nodded. Kronish and Mayfield understood the silent message and dug into their jackets.

  “The sheep are in their pen. They feel safe.” Jason paced around Cyrus as he spoke toward the ceiling. “They will stay there until they feel the wolves have left. But pens are nothing more than spaces marked by boundaries. If you change the boundaries, you change the pen.”

  Kronish and Mayfield then pulled out handfuls of industrial-sized zip ties. Jason plucked one of them from Kronish and gripped it from one hand to the other. “What once was a sanctuary turns into a prison. What used to be salvation turns into damnation.” Then he handed the zip tie back to Kronish. “Go to all the exits and put these on. Tie the doors.” Then he turned back to Cyrus. “Now it doesn’t matter if the lambs hide or not. They cannot escape. They are trapped with the wolves.”

  “Trapped with the wolves,” Cyrus muttered, “Yeah, so am I.” He kept his voice quiet, even though Jason was no longer within earshot. Clutching his share of the zip ties, he walked down the second floor path toward the stairwell. There was a fire exit nearby, but, of course, without electricity the alarm would not sound if opened. It was no better than any other exit, and Jason wanted it closed off like all the others.

  As soon as he entered the stairwell, he stopped. Ilario was leaning against the wall, his eyes staring off into space. His mouth hung open in a smile.

  “Ilario!” Cyrus rushed up to him. “Where the hell have you been?”

  Ilario chuckled. “Just blowing off steam. I feel much better now.” Then he slowly grinned. “Much better.”

  Cyrus frowned. “What the hell are you talking about? What did you do, blow weed or something?”

  “Funny you should say ‘blow.’” Ilario cackled. “Whitney—I took her to the limit. She was fine under those clothes. Should have seen it. Should have seen all of it.” Then he patted the inner sides of his thighs close to his crotch. “You may have noticed I’m still a little chubby there.”

  Cyrus understood what Ilario was getting at. Figured. Whitney had been playing with fire for too long and Ilario was the one to scorch her. Cyrus just figured Whitney would end up with a bullet in the head. “So where is she now?”

  “Downstairs, somewhere. Probably hasn’t moved. Woman had her mind blown, along with everything else.” Ilario let out a contented sigh. “You pissed?”

  “About her? Shit, no. Neither will Jason.”

  Ilario’s smile faded. “So, he’s here?” He looked over Cyrus’s shoulder.

  “Yeah, and yo
u better be careful. I don’t know what he’ll do with you if he sees you, but so far he hasn’t been too pissed that we lost that Marine boy and his friends. But you know how Jason is. Out of nowhere, he’ll just…” Cyrus then punched the stairwell wall.

  “Yeah,” Ilario replied, looking at the wall where Cyrus had struck it. “I get how Jason is. You want me to stay out of sight?”

  “For now. But when we find the other survivors in this mall, that’d be a good time to show up and start having some fun with them. Jason’s looking for wolves. Show him that you’re a nasty son of a bitch. That’ll probably cool his jets if he is pissed at you.”

  Ilario chuckled. “You always look out for me.”

  “And don’t forget it. Now get going. I got to seal up the fire exit downstairs.”

  Ilario looked down the steps. “I wonder if Miss Whitney’s in the mood for seconds. I’m spent, but I would be cool disciplining her a little more for her bad behavior.” Giggling, he turned and dashed down the stairs.

  Cyrus rolled his eyes. Ilario could do as he pleased. Whitney was hardly Cyrus’s type anyway, and besides, Cyrus could go for a long time without the company of a woman. He had been satiated back in the grassy field beyond the mall. Now he wanted blood.

  Preferably, the blood of that Marine boy.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Carl finished tracing the shape into the dirt. Then he raised his stick. “Not exactly a work of art, but I think it’ll do.”

  Shyanne giggled. “I like it.”

  “I think you missed a few stores. Wasn’t there an Eagleton’s Furniture right here?” Preston pointed to the end of Carl’s drawing. “Okay, there wasn’t. I’m just joking.” He cleared his throat.