Free No Easy Way Out by Dayna Lorentz Page A

ground in front of her. Knobs on pipes winked at her. Her hand dropped into a doorway and she staggered, falling against the metal door. She fumbled her key ring, which clattered into the black below.
    Shay knelt on trembling legs and patted the cement. The echoes were closer now. Or were they simply coming from the other direction?
    Her hand hit something soft, not keys. Shay dared to let her fingers explore the softness. It felt like jeans. Something groaned. Then claws clasped her wrist.
    Shay screamed, punched and kicked the softness, which groaned again and let go.
    “Help,” it may have said.
    Once freed, she thrust herself away, hit the opposite wall, then clambered to her feet. Running blind through the dark, Shay took whatever turns the hall presented; she just needed to be away from whatever had groaned.Visions of Nani’s blackened, gaunt, dead face, eyes glistening, flashed in the darkness. She ran from the visions, had to escape these ghosts.
Exit
. She needed an exit.
    Red signs were her only guide. EXIT. EXIT. Her hands slammed into a dead end. From the cold and the corrugation, Shay guessed it was a sealed-over freight delivery door.
    Shay banged on the metal.
Let me out!
she screamed in her mind, afraid if she spoke in real life, the echoes would materialize into people. That the ghosts would be real.
    The freight door didn’t give when she struck it. All the doors from the mall to the world must have been sealed over with concrete, permanently shut. She would die in this place. All of them were being left to die in this place.
    • • •
    Marco rolled off his cot and crawled down the narrow aisle to the far wall. He traveled light, just his card key, wallet, and iPod—no way he was getting rid of it, even though without Internet or a charger cord, once the battery died, it would be dead weight. He’d never changed into the boxers and shirt he’d been given to sleep in—like he was going to go nighty-night amidst that pack of wolves?
Hells to the no.
    He made it to the nearest stockroom door and slipped through it unnoticed. There were no lights on. The place smelled weird. Then Marco saw a lighter flash in a far corner.
So this is where the party’s starting.
Marco had wondered how people would take going from complete freedom to incarceration. Apparently, incarceration had won out for a few hours and now the natives were restless. He was glad to be getting out while the getting was good.
    The door to the service hallways was thankfully closer to him than to the lighter flame, so he escaped without incident. Alas, the halls were dark, which made everything suck that much more. Marco groped along the passage, hoping to find an exit before something found him.
    No such luck. Footsteps slapped toward him. Then arms slammed into his back.
    “Out of the way, loser!” a voice cackled, tearing past Marco.
    Okay, maybe this was worse than the Lord & Taylor. At least there were a few security guards in the Lord & Taylor.
    As Marco weighed the pros and cons of returning to the at least semi-policed chaos of the men’s Home Store, a familiar voice echoed down the passage to his right.
    “Help,” Shay whispered. “Someone? Help.”
    Marco ran through the black toward her voice. What the hell was she doing here? Shouldn’t she be in the med center? She had a serious head injury!
    He turned a corner and heard a door rattle. Marco dashed toward the noise and ran smack into Shay. She screamed and Marco jumped back.
    “Shay, it’s me! It’s Marco!”
    She burst into tears and threw her arms around him.
    He stroked her hair. “You’re okay,” he whispered. “I’m here. You’re safe.” He was not sure why he said this. Like he could protect her from anything.
    Her body went limp, as if her bones had evaporated. “I’m so scared,” she whispered.
    “Let’s get you back to the med center.”
    “Kicked me out,” Shay mumbled.
    “Then the JCPenney,” Marco said, assuming she had been thrown in