Chapter 21

“So the guards just took over?” Meagan said as she wiped off Omar’s forehead. She noticed the blood was well dry – clearly not from the security guard they had just seen. How many people had Omar killed...?

“At first it seemed like a good idea. They had weapons, keys, radios that reached actual police stations. And they were organized. But then, we ran out of food on the lookout level...”

“You RAN OUT of food? It’s only been two days! How many people were up there?” Holden asked.

“In total, we started with forty. Six guards, five staff members,” he looked at Elise then, “including Krista, whose fine, and about twenty or so tourists. Couple tour leaders too. They were the first to go.”

“To go...?” Steve said between gulps of Meagan’s water bottle. She took it back and hissed something about smoking, but he ignored her.

“They tried to escape. Tried to go down the stairs. They were the first, then slowly a couple tourists followed. I don’t know what happened to them, but if you didn’t see them on your way up then just maybe...”

"So where's Krista?” Elise asked impatiently.

“She’s on the lookout level. The guards took everyone that was left, about fifteen, and abandoned it for the restaurant upstairs last night when we ran out of food in the cafe.” Omar looked at Holden then. “There wasn’t that much food to begin with. None that anybody knew how to prepare, anyway.”

“Wait...” Steve said, rubbing his face. “You’re telling me that there’s still food, but nobody knows how to cook it?”

“I’m from Guatemala, I can cook YOU if I need to,” Omar snapped. “But not without any electricity.”

“But the Tower has its own generators...” Meagan began. Her eyes were darting across the floor as if she were reading something nobody else could see. “We just need to reroute the electricity to this grid only. Each floor has a different grid to prevent surges in case of power outages. All we’d need to do it cut off the power to level four and turn our level’s power back on!”

“Okay this is all great but I REALLY need to see Krista now.” Elise stood up from her perch, knocking a nearly-asleep Holden backwards. “You guys coming or not?”

Steve rose slowly, his mind preoccupied with just how they were going to steal a bunch of crazy mall cops’ power supply without them noticing, or him getting killed. But one thing was for certain – he was gonna be as nice as possible to this Omar kid.

Omar led them all up the glass floor stairwell, and ignored the collective groans when he announced “just one more floor”. “So,” he said to Meagan, “what the hell’s going on down there?”

“The best way to explain it is, tiny giraffes that eat you, and then when you die, you turn into more tiny giraffes.”

“That’s pretty much the ONLY way to explain it,” Elise said.

Omar sighed, and considered asking for more details, but the tiny religious part of him was too afraid to know any more details. At the moment it seemed like a freak accident at a lab gone extremely bad; but just the right details could make it sound like an apocalyptic plague, and he wasn’t sure he could deal with that.

He knocked on the door of Level 3 four times. The door flew open and out jumped a bubbly girl with brown hair, blue eye shadow, and not a single scratch on her.

“Elise!!!” she shrieked. Elise shoved forward and grabbed her sister, then held her at arms’ length.

“Why aren’t you a little more, you know, worse for wear?” She almost sounded disappointed.

Krista shrugged. “Oh I dunno, I didn’t really have to do much, at first we had guards who did the heavy lifting, now we just have Geoff.”

“Wait...” Meagan said as they all piled onto the lookout level. She watched Omar latch the door by renailing a wooden door across the handle, and smiled. “Did you say you have Geoff?”

“Yep. He took the stairs up when it all started to make sure we were okay, then refused to leave us here.”

Meagan let out the first sigh since they’d entered the stairwell. “Where is he now?”

Krista bit her lip and started playing with her rings. “He’s, um, doing some plumbing, I think...”

“He’s trying to break the plumbing on their floor so they can’t use the bathroom anymore,” Omar interjected. “He’s in the men’s room on the other side of the lookout if you want to talk to him. In fact, I’m going to head in and wash up, and tell him about our additions.” He pulled Meagan in for a great big hug. “So glad you made it.”

“So,” Holden said, clapping his hands, “how do we get rid of those guards?”

“And maybe this Geoff person...” Steve grumbled to himself.