No Easy Way Out by Dayna Lorentz

notebook, nestled amid the sheets. Did she even need it? She felt so clean inside.
Take it,
whispered the sadness. Shay slipped it into her bag.
    • • •
    Ryan tapped the pill bottle against his legs as he padded through the service halls back toward the Grill’n’Shake. At least he thought he was heading back to the Grill’n’Shake. Ryan tried to stick to the path Marco had taken, but all the halls looked alike and, without Marco’s card, most doors were closed to him. He was beginning to consider the possibility that he was lost.
    There were store names printed in block letters on some of the doors, but that information was of little use to Ryan. It’s not like knowing he was outside the Candy Hut gave him a clue about where he was relative to the Grease’n’Suck. He wasn’t a big mall person, not like other people. Funny, to go to the mall maybe five times in a year and end up getting quarantined on one of those visits.
Typical Murphy Luck.
    Ryan’s older brother, Thad, had a theory about Murphy Luck. Murphy Luck was always to blame for an interception. Murphy Luck explained why Thad could drink a twelve-pack of light beer and not even get buzzed. Murphy Luck was why Dad was such a dick. The man couldn’t even keep a one-day construction job without pissing someone off. Crap like getting lost in the service halls of a mall qualified as undeniable Murphy Luck.
    Voices echoed from around the corner. Not wanting to find out if they belonged to security, Ryan pushed open the nearest exit door. It opened into the second-floor hallway next to the Sports Authority. Feeling like perhaps Murphy Luck had taken a time-out, and that he should not be in the hall, Ryan decided to upgrade from his crusty climbing clothes.
    The store was empty—no salespeople, no shoppers, and most importantly, no insane looters with guns. Things seemed normal, like there had never been a riot. Were people really following the mall leader’s orders?
    Not that it mattered to Ryan. Mike had made the call that they were staying under the radar. Ryan was not going to rock the very small boat of protection he’d found in this hellhole, even if it meant also staying under the thumb of Marco. Mike had watched his back from minute one of this nightmare. Ryan owed it to him to stick with his plans. They were teammates, and a team was a powerful thing. He would find some way around the Marco-Shay situation.
    He grabbed a pair of basketball shorts and a T-shirt, then decided, why stop there? They were obviously taking up residence in the place and might want a change of clothes. He grabbed a duffel and packed it with some T-shirts in his size, then a bunch larger for Mike and Drew, shorts, socks, and boxers. He went into the back to look for some sneakers.
    As he rounded the corner of one floor-to-ceiling shelf, he discovered a person who’d not been as lucky with the flu. It was a man. Old. His dad’s age. His face was bluish and blood had dried in thin trails from his nostrils. Puddles Ryan did not want to know the origins of pooled around his legs. He smelled terrible.
    Ryan scrambled back to the other side of the shelf. His second dead body in as many days. Why was this happening to him? To any of them?
    Forget about it.
There was nothing he could do to help that guy or Mike or himself, any of them. Best to just forget about it. Move on. Find the sneakers and get the hell out of there.
    He found a pair of sneakers in his size. The things cost two hundred dollars. In the real world, he couldn’t have ever hoped to buy them.
Screw the Shops at Stonecliff.
The place owed him some freaking nice sneakers for all the crap he’d been through.
    The coast was clear outside the store. Ryan heard voices down below, but just regular talking. He checked over the railing and saw people sitting on the floor with paper plates. There were dead bodies lying around and these people were at a goddamn block party. It was like bizarre-o-world.
    The ground