Surviving the Apocalypse Box Set

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Shake, rattle, and roll. That was what it felt like, topped off by a boom that almost shattered Lync’s eardrums. The contents of the box of chocolate-covered raisins flew through the air while Lync went skidding off the seat to land hard on his tailbone.

“Ow.” He lurched to his feet and tried to rub the ache from his butt. The screen had gone dark, and only the emergency lights continued to cast a red glow. “s**t. We must have lost power,” he muttered to himself. “Again.”

It was probably a thunderstorm, and a lightning strike must have taken out the power lines, something that had happened before, although not as often since the James family had bought Laurel Hill Mall. Prior to that, Lync had made what repairs he could, but it was a relief Mr. James’d had all the electrical wiring brought up to code.

Lync pressed the knob on his watch that illuminated the dial and read the time. Two a.m.? Geez, he must have fallen asleep. He should have made his last rounds hours ago. Well, he’d take care of it now and write on his time card that he left at his regular time.

He limped down to the mall’s basement and through a door that led to the electrical room. He’d throw the emergency switch and get the power working again.

Only when he did, nothing happened. He’d dealt with situations like this before, and this fell into the power company’s area of expertise. He’d just have to put in a call to Laurel Hill Power and Light. He reached for the phone on the wall and started to dial, only to realize there was no dial tone.

He blew out a breath and hung up, then took out his cell phone and dialed, but once again he got nothing.

Well, shoot. Isn’t this special?

Still, this was his mall, and he had responsibilities. He checked that all the emergency exits were secured before he made his way into the mall proper.

He was startled, however, when he realized he could see through the glass doors that now closed off the entry into the mall. Why wasn’t the metal wall that came down after closing hours to shield those doors not blocking his view?

“Oh, right.” They were set up to automatically raise when they lost power. The company that had installed them had instructed him about it. In a case like this, a long, telescoping pole with a hook at the end would need to be inserted into a loop at the top and manually turned to bring it down again.

Lync skirted the fountain, which obviously wasn’t working, and approached the west side of the mall. The pole he’d need to lower the metal wall was in a narrow cabinet in a corner where the inner doors met the wall of Nick’s, the sporting goods store. He took out his keyring and found the key to the cabinet. He unlocked it, but curiosity got the better of him, and instead of reaching for the pole, he twisted the latch of one of the inner doors and stepped out into the night. All the lights were out: street lights, the traffic lights leading into the mall. Even the houses across the boulevard were in total darkness.

He tipped his head back, anticipating the vision of a star-spangled sky. Even in a city as small as Laurel Hill, there were enough lights to obscure the night sky, but now—a heavy overlay of clouds concealed it. He drew in a breath, but instead of the cool night breeze he expected to inhale, his nostrils were filled with the acrid scent of things burning, and he began coughing. He walked farther into the parking lot, and a glance to the north revealed red-tinged clouds. Could some of the homes in the subdivision just outside of town have been set on fire by a lightning strike?

The odd thing was the parking lot and the sidewalks were dry. Yeah, very odd. If not a lightning strike, what could have caused the power outage?

He was distracted by the throaty roar of a powerful engine, followed by the squeal of tires as a BMW tore into the empty parking lot, taking the turn on two wheels.

This could be a group of rich kids out joyriding, taking advantage of the loss of power. Lync had heard from other maintenance men of their malls being trashed by kids with more money than sense, and nothing like that was happening on his watch. He backed away until he stood inside the entryway and reached for the door to yank it shut.

The windows of the BMW were tinted, making it impossible to see who was in the car, and Lync backed away another step. The engine turned off, and a man shoved open the driver’s side door, almost falling out of the car. “No, wait. Please!”

Lync recognized him, recognized his voice. It was Adam James. His overcoat flapped open over a very classy tuxedo, but his bowtie hung undone and his hair was disheveled.

“What are you doing here?” According to the society section—not that Lync usually read it—well, only if Adam James was mentioned—tonight was a gala to raise money for the Laurel Hill Children’s Hospital. The gala was being held in the opera house at the state’s capital, which was some distance away, and for Mr. James to be here at this time of night was unusual.

“This was the best place I could think of.”

“What?”

“I tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen to me.”

Lync blinked in confusion. “Tell who what?”

“Everyone at the gala. They panicked and ran for their cars.” He was almost sobbing, and that shook Lync. Mr. James had always been one of the most composed men he’d ever met. “They wouldn’t listen to me,” he repeated as he rubbed a hand over his face.

Lync swallowed heavily and felt his sphincter clench. He didn’t know what was going on, but Mr. James’s panic was contagious.

“My date and his parents took off in their Rolls. I tried to follow them, but by the time I reached my BMW, there were too many cars between us.”

“They didn’t wait for you?”

He shook his head.

Well, that sucked. If Lync had a boyfriend like Mr. James, he’d never leave him behind, no matter what.

Just then, the quiet of the night was shattered by the shriek of sirens—not the wail of the volunteer fire department’s trucks on the way to the scene, but the Civil Defense sirens that were still in place—Laurel Hill was slow to move past the post-Cold War era, and even slower to enter the twenty-first century.

“What’s happening?”

“Didn’t you listen to the radio?”

“I didn’t have it on.” His hand went to the earbuds hanging from his neck. His MP3 player offered the option of tuning in to local radio stations, but Lync rarely took advantage of it.

“That maniac in North Korea is threatening to fire off his ICBMs—portions of East Asia are already decimated—and the military convinced the president to declare a national state of emergency. If those missiles are fired, they would be making landfall on this coast soon.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Precisely.” Mr. James’s laugh was almost hysterical. “We only have about half an hour to get to shelter.”

Shelter. Yeah, that made sense. When the James family had had the mall inspected before buying it, they’d discovered the movie house—the oldest building in the mall, so old it dated back to the early 1950s—had a fallout shelter below its basement. Even Lync hadn’t known about that shelter, in spite of the fact he’d worked in the strip mall for ten years and had passed the time by exploring it. Rather than get rid of the shelter, Mr. James had decided to keep it and use it for storage, and Lync would occasionally go down to make sure everything was in working order and to study the slice of early paranoia.

Not so paranoid now, as it turned out.

“Get inside,” he said.

“My car? In case we need it afterward?”

Lync nodded and set about unlatching the doors. Management had chosen this specific system in hopes that one day they’d be able to hold an antique car exhibit inside the mall. With the doors unlatched, he shoved one set of them to fold into themselves like an accordion while Mr. James got back into his car, turned on the engine, and drove it carefully toward the open space. Within less than a minute, the BMW was parked to the side of the fountain, and Mr. James turned off the ignition and rejoined him.

“Will anyone else be coming to take shelter here?” Lync asked as he dragged out the wall of doors and fastened them in place.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. The highway was packed, but everyone seemed to be heading south, away from the capital. I didn’t see anyone coming in this direction.”

“All righty, then. I’ll get cracking and button us up.” Lync had already taken the pole from its compartment. Once the security gate came down, there would be about eight inches between the inner doors and the gate, just enough room for him to do this if he sucked in his gut. He extended the pole, slid the hook into the stainless steel loop, and began turning it, lowering the metal gates that would shield the doors.

“Hurry,” Mr. James panted under his breath as he stared past the narrowing space. “Hurry. Hurry.”

Sweat was dripping down Lync’s cheekbones by the time the gates were down and locked into place. “How much time do we have, Mr. James?”

Mr. James peered at the expensive watch on his wrist. Of course the dial was illuminated. “About twenty-five minutes.”

“Okay. You know where the shelter is. Go. I’ll be along in a minute.” Lync closed and locked the inner door. He didn’t bother fumbling to replace the pole in its compartment, just propped it in the corner. “Okay,” he said again. He turned to race to Uncle Frankie’s. They’d need as much nonperishable food as he could get into a shopping cart, as well as enough cases of water to last as long as…well, however long they needed it.

He ran right into Mr. James.

“What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.”

“Why…Never mind. We can’t dawdle. It’s a good thing this mall is so small.” He unhooked the small flashlight he wore on a belt loop and led the way to Uncle Frankie’s. Shopping carts were lined up neatly to the side of the door. He unlocked the door and propped it open.

“Where’s the water? This isn’t the store in which I usually shop.”

“Check the endcaps.” Lync liked that Mr. James was thinking smart. “You can probably fit a couple of cases at the bottom of the cart as well as what you put in it. Don’t wait for me—fill up a cart, take it to the movie house, then come back for another one. We’ll need about…” He did some figuring. “About fourteen cases, but don’t worry about what fits in the cart. I’ll be grabbing cases, too. Once that’s done, hit aisle four. Here.” He handed Mr. James his flashlight. The emergency lighting didn’t reach to the inner aisles. “Don’t bother to be neat, just grab as many cans of soup as you can.” Even as Lync was telling Adam what to do—and how weird was that, him ordering around the wealthiest man in town?—he was glancing up at the aisle signs. “I’ll see about getting crackers and peanut butter and jelly. We’ll do this in about ten minutes. We can’t push it for much longer than that, since we’ll have to get the supplies down into the shelter. We’ll use the rest of the time for that.”

Mr. James wet his lips and gave a massive shudder, but he nodded.

“It’ll be okay, Mr. James.” Lync squeezed his arm. He’d take care of him.

The man gave him a lopsided smile. “I think you should call me Adam.”

“I should?”

“You saved me.” Mr. James rested his hands on Lync’s shoulders and stared into his eyes.

Lync wasn’t surprised when Mr. James shivered again. Even though the air conditioning in the mall was off and it was becoming warm, his nerves were probably getting the better of him. It was a scary situation.

“And if this is the end of the world, then yes, of course you should call me by my first name.”

“All right…Adam.” Lync didn’t think he’d done much in the way of saving anything, but if this really was the end of the world, they didn’t have time to go into that. He gave a shy smile, then bolted into action. “We’d better get busy.”

“Yes, we should.”

Adam ran to the endcap where cases of water were stacked, while Lync headed to the aisle that contained flashlights and batteries. He opened a package of batteries, put them in a flashlight that was on clearance, and turned it on. Able to see more clearly—his night vision only went so far—he put all the batteries into the cart and ran to the rear of the store. He filled the cart with all the cases of water that would fit, then raced out to the movie house. He left the cart there and pelted back to the store, where he grabbed another cart and loaded more water before he went to the aisle where not only peanut butter and jelly were stocked, but bread as well. He scooped up armful after armful of the plastic jars—creamy, chunky, honey roasted—and dropped them into the cart, then added jelly, as well as loaves of bread. Crackers were two aisles over, and he raided those shelves before he headed out of the store again.

He passed Adam running back to get another cart. “Wait!” When Adam skidded to a stop, he swapped flashlights. “You’ll get more light with this one.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“How much time?” Lync asked.

“Seven minutes.”

“Go, go, go.”

“Going.”

He parked the cart beside the other two, sprinted back to the store, and grabbed another cart. This time, after adding more cases of water to the bottom of the cart, he headed for the aisle that held canned fruits and vegetables. Most of the cans had lids that popped off, but some didn’t, and he barreled around another aisle where items such as can openers were stocked, and he tossed a few that were battery-operated into the cart. And to be on the safe side, he threw in a couple of manual openers as well.

There was one more thing: a first aid kit. Uncle Frankie’s was too small to have a pharmacy, but part of an aisle contained over-the-counter pain relievers and fever reducers, plus the actual first aid kits themselves. Lync piled in everything that would fit.

Adam came up beside him with another filled cart. “Ready?”

“Yeah.” He rushed toward the door with Adam just behind him. “Time?”

“We’ve got about two minutes.”

Shit. “Okay, we’ve got to book.” Lync kicked aside the chock, and out of habit, he pulled the door shut behind him and let the lock catch. They rushed to the movie house and hurried to get all the carts into the lobby. With that done, Lync once again pulled the door closed. It seemed that was all he did this evening—open and shut doors—and headed toward the part of the movie house where the service elevator and the stairs to the basement were.

“Hurry, Lyncoln.” Adam tried to open the elevator.

“No, no power.” Even the damned main breaker wasn’t working. “We’ll have to take the stairs.” There was no time for Lync to wonder how Adam knew his name. In spite of their occasional interactions, Adam had always addressed him as Mr. Ryland. “We’ve got about fifteen minutes to take the carts down to the basement one at a time, then get the supplies down to the shelter.”

“Sounds like a plan. Let’s just be careful we don’t fall and break our necks.”

“Now that sounds like a plan.”

They eased each cart down the stairs, Lync steadying it at the front end and Adam at the rear, tipping the cart up so only the rear wheels rolled down each step. Finally, panting and sweating, the air getting stuffier, they got the last cart into the basement, and Lync scrambled for the heavy-duty plate that was set in the floor. It covered the opening into the shelter, and it felt as if it weighed a ton. He struggled to pull it open, almost crying in desperation, and Adam rushed forward to help him. Finally the catch gave, and they pushed it back on its hinges.

Once they had the cover up, Lync jammed the flashlight between his teeth and climbed down the ladder, descending into the circle of light. That was all he could see in the otherwise pitch darkness of the fallout shelter.