Night Beyond The Night (30 page)

It took him a moment, a few moments, actually, to recognize that Valley Way was a shopping mall. Then he noticed the array of letters still attached to the building:

VAL
Y W Y M LL. Yep, it had once been a way for women to inflict torture on their loved ones.

He glanced at Jade, who’d never be able to experience the feminine pleasure of dragging her man from store to store.

“So, is this a settlement where people live? Like Greenside?”

Jade shook her head and shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’ve never been here, and Theo has only been here once that I know of. It wasn’t part of his regular Running route—it’s farther west than we usually go. And we never go west.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s where the
gangas
go. They travel west, every night when the sun starts to come up.”

Elliott hadn’t noticed that. Of course, he and the others had pretty much avoided the orange-eyed monsters after a few meetings. “They’re like vampires and can’t be in the sun?”

“They don’t come out in the sun. I don’t know if it’s because they sleep all day so they can move around at night, or because the sun is dangerous to them. I . . . haven’t asked.” She flashed him an amused look from behind her blowsy hair, then her face sobered. “Elliott, before we go in . . . I want to say something.”

“Go on.” He wasn’t sure whether to brace himself more against the rough ground, or what she was going to say. Things had moved very quickly since they’d disentangled themselves at Rogan’s knock . . . and though he had a few things to say to her, he didn’t like doing it while navigating this terrain. He wanted his full attention on her, and hers on him.

“About what you said last night . . . about pushing your way through the crowd. . . .” Her voice trailed off and he looked at her. She shrugged. “Elliott, there is no crowd. There’s no one. Else.”

“What about Luke? He had his hands all over you.” Elliott couldn’t quite contain the accusation in his voice, and was relieved when he had to focus on avoiding a large, rusted-out Dumpster and a deep rut at the same time.

“That’s the thing,” she said. “I should have told you before, when you asked about him. He was being a jerk, and nothing happened. Though he’d like something to.”

“I’d be happy to have a word with him,” Elliott said, realizing he sounded like a thug. Did he care? Nope.

He would have preferred to have this conversation somewhere soft and private, preferably naked, since it seemed as if it was going his way, but here they were. There’d be time later to follow up on things. He hoped.

Elliott looked over at Jade and a wave of . . . softness . . . slid over him. Like his Tía Sarita’s thick quilt, covering him during a blustery winter night. Comfortable. Secure. Warm.

Was this what he needed? This woman? Was it she who would help him find his place in this strange world, with her easy ways and pragmatism . . . and her amazing rodeo queen riding combined with her determination to save the world?

He couldn’t hold back a smile at the memory of the way she swung wildly at the snake during their battle, missing him by a mile. Not funny at the time, not really funny at all . . . but proof that this woman wasn’t perfect.

He couldn’t live with perfect. He wanted
real
.

He wanted her.

“I can handle Luke,” she said.

“What about me?” he asked, looking at her. Laying it all out there, naked as a baby.

She just smiled that curly-edged smile that made his heart funnel all the way to his toes. “I’m not sure, but I’m going to try.”

“Let’s find Theo,” he said, his voice rough.
And then let’s get the hell back to Envy so I can see just how you handle me. All night long. And then some
.

Elliott drove the humvee into the old parking structure, deciding that would be a good way to hide it from sight. He felt a definite uneasiness about this place, just as he had about that tunnel. Right before those sleek scales showed up.

“Theo’s message said Mac . . .
M-A-C
,” Jade said as they drove into the overgrown structure. “I don’t know if he couldn’t type the rest or if that’s all he meant.”

“M-A-C? McDonald’s,” Elliott suggested, navigating into the narrow entrance. “There’s always a McDonald’s in or near every mall.”

A variety of cars, overgrown and rusted, were scattered throughout the structure. None of them looked as if they’d been driven in the half century since the Change. Elliott had a weird sense of déjà vu driving in, past the ticket booths, looking for a parking place. He found one big enough between a 7 series
BMW
and a Focus. Some bonehead had taken up one-and-a-half spaces for his Beamer fifty years ago to keep it from getting scratched. Too bad it hadn’t worked.

“I’m going to leave the keys here,” he said, turning off the engine. “Just in case . . . well, in case we get separated. And you need them.”

“I can’t drive,” she protested.

“Theo can.” Elliott had a really bad feeling about this place. He was going to be prepared for all eventualities. “And this is an automatic transmission.” Ignoring her wide-eyed look, he continued to explain, slowly and clearly, “All you have to do is turn the key like this and move this shift into R for reverse and D for drive—to go forward. . . .” He gave her a quick lesson in accelerator versus brake, and then looked at her. “I hope you won’t need to know, but just in case. It’s best to be prepared.”

She nodded. “You’re right. But I’m not going to leave without you, Elliott.”

He almost leaned forward to kiss her right then, but thought better of it. There would, God willing, be time for that later. Now he—they both—needed to be focused on finding Theo.

He tucked the keys, not under the floor mat, but into the pocket behind the driver’s seat, and quietly closed the door. “Mac?” he asked. “What else did he say?”

“Not much.” She pulled out a paper and read. “Hurt. Can’t move.
Gangas
. At Mac.”

Great. She hadn’t mentioned the fact that there were
gangas
in there—although why it should be a surprise to him, he didn’t know. If it wasn’t
gangas
, it was Strangers. Or rabid lions. Or blackout storms.

“Why don’t you stay here and let me go in and try to find him . . . that way both of us won’t get caught by the
gangas
,” he suggested.

Jade shot him a glare, just as he’d expected she would. “I’ve been dealing with
gangas
longer than you have,” she pointed out, not inaccurately. “And you know how to drive that thing. If one of us is going to stay here, it should be you.”

Check and mate.
Damn
.

Moving right along. “We could try and get in on this side—there’re going to be entrances all over,” he said. “The problem will be finding a McDonald’s. Or whatever Mac means.” The problem was, Elliott hadn’t paid much attention to mall stores, so he couldn’t think of the name of any shop that had Mac in it. There was Abercrombie. PacSun. Had it been a typo, and Mac was really meant to be Pac?

Possible, but not likely. The keys weren’t all that close together. A computer geek would be a good typist.

How the hell were they going to find him in this huge place? And avoid the
gangas
? Yeah, they were dumb, but still. . . .

One step at a time.

Jade followed him as he walked out of the parking structure and scanned the building. There was no sign of life, no sign of
living
anywhere. A jungle had begun to overtake the south side of the building, growing thick and full on those walls and beginning to spread around to the east side, where they’d approached. What had once been a glass entry near the far end of the structure had shattered long ago and it appeared that someone had attempted to board up the hole.

But whoever it was had left a door, and that was the entrance he and Jade started toward. Knife in hand, and ears sharp, he waited, then carefully eased through the door.

Silence. Stillness. Not a sign of orange eyes.

Gray shadowed the mall’s interior. The only illumination came from the bit of sun that was able to filter through the dust and grime covered skylights, most of which were still intact. A musty, peaty smell told Elliott that the lack of sunlight had encouraged the growth of moss, fungus, and mildew rather than trees and bushes. The soft skitter of nails and a slithering, rustling on what had been a marble floor, had Jade shuddering behind him, but to give her credit, she didn’t grab at him. Or draw back.

It took a moment for Elliott’s eyes to get used to the dimness, and although he had a lighter, something warned him not to use it. He reached back and closed his fingers around her arm and drew her forward so that she could see his warning not to speak. Their eyes met and she lifted a finger to her lips, as if to shush him. He smiled. Of course. She was in charge.

The area through which they’d come was not through one of the large anchor department stores, but a main mall entrance. Thus, there were storefronts lined up on either side of the wide thoroughfare. Elliott edged up next to the nearest one, glancing at the shattered plate glass windows.

The sign was a
Wheel of Fortune
clue: PR S D NT T X DO.

If he were Quent, he’d drop in and see if there was anything left to salvage, but as it was, Elliott merely moved past. The last time he’d needed a tux was when Janelle, one of his middle cousins, got married in a Big Fat Hispanic Wedding.

A new pang swept over him. Sitting around on a Saturday night folding whatever they could find into Tía Sarita’s fresh corn tortillas and drinking
cerveza
.
Christ Almighty
. He prayed they’d gone easily and quickly.

Unlike many of the other buildings he’d been in recently, this one hadn’t been completely remodeled by Mother Nature. There were remnants of her tenacity—moss, some patches of grass, even a few trees that had likely already been growing in the place. The floor was covered with dirt, and leaves had piled into corners and around kiosks, benches, and storefront corners, presumably providing comfortable accommodations for a variety of rodents.

Knife in hand, Jade close behind him, Elliott started off through the eerie mall, looking at the store signs, trying to figure out what Theo had meant by Mac.

The dank, swampy smell became stronger as they moved past The Gap—whose plastic sign was dingy, but still intact except for a crack through the P (he’d like to check in there for some shirts to replenish his stock consisting now of one), BA H & OD W
RKS
, and a jewelry store on the corner as the thoroughfare opened into the main part of the mall.

Elliott glanced at the broken glass cases overrun by the shadow of mildew and realized that Jade seemed not to notice. And why would she? What use would she have for a diamond—if they hadn’t already been foraged—when she’d probably rather have cotton panties? Or silk ones.

That thought nearly veered him off into territories best left unexplored, but Elliott did not succumb to the temptation. Now that they’d reached the main part of the mall, he saw that a second level yawned above them. At one time, it would have been accessible by the four escalators and single glass elevator. What had been a glass or plastic railing on the upper level had cracked and now sagged in a useless wave around the opening.

So far they’d heard nothing to indicate that there was any other living creature in this building, yet he still felt uneasy.

He watched closely for any shift in the shadows, any glow of orange, and paused regularly to listen. But the only sounds were the same faint rustles and skittering, and, once, the flap of a bird’s wings as it soared through the air above them.

No, that wasn’t a bird. That had been a bat. Elliott glanced at Jade, but she had no reaction. They’d passed
F-Y-E
and
POT
RY B RN but nothing like Mac. If they didn’t find something soon, they were going to have to start looking in each dark store.

Then he heard it. Faint but distinctive.

Ruuuuthhh. Ruu-uuuthhh
.

He looked at Jade as her gaze flashed to his.
Shit
, she mouthed.
Let’s get going
.

Elliott yanked them into the deepest of shadows and pressed her against the wall as he looked around for those orange eyes. If the
gangas
were upstairs, then that was a good thing; it would take time for them to make their way down those escalators. And if they were down here with him and Jade, they simply had to go back up to evade them more easily.

With a single jab of his finger, he pointed to the stairs and looked at Jade. She followed his gesture and nodded, understanding his plan.

The
ganga
moans became a bit clearer as they moved faster but stuck to the shadows more closely. Elliott felt a severe rise of frustration. How in the fucking world were they going to find Theo in this place? It was like finding a needle in a haystack. Couldn’t he have given them better information? There wasn’t a golden arch in sight, or even a PacSun. Nothing that even related to Mac.

And then suddenly he saw it: The Apple Store—where they sold Macs (Of course. Where else would a geek be?)—and the sounds of the
gangas
clearly emanating from a different wing of the building. But moving closer.

Elliott pulled Jade behind him as he rushed toward the back of the store. It was dark and after he nearly tripped over one of the display cases—for the second time—he thought,
fuck it
, and pulled out the lighter.

The flame gave off a small glow, exposing the computer hardware littering the floor and the dust stirred up by his movement. Holding the beacon aloft, Elliott hurried to the back, navigating through the debris and display cases, heading to where the stockroom must have been.

Theo had been foraging for electronics. A geek was a geek was a geek.

What had been a door to the stockroom sat on sagging hinges, and moved when Elliott pushed it gingerly. The door opened a bit, but stopped at thirty degrees as if something blocked it. “Hello?” he called softly, slipping through the narrow expanse, pushing his hand behind him in a
wait
motion. “Theo, are you here?”