Okay, fine, Archie thought. You know where I am. Big fucking deal. What are you going to do, come up here after me?

Archie resumed his climb until he was sitting on the very top of the shelving unit, almost close enough to reach up and touch one of the hundreds of fluorescent tube fixtures that bathed the store in artificial light. No goods were stacked on this top shelf. It was like standing on a hundred-foot-long, ten-foot-wide runway. From this perch, Archie could see the tops of all the other towers of shelving. The aisles were, Archie guessed, eight to ten feet wide, allowing plenty of room for shoppers to maneuver their massive shopping carts in both directions, with room to spare. There would be no jumping from the top of one set of shelves to the next. Archie hadn’t been bad at the long jump in gym class, but you had a running start for that. This shelf was hardly wide enough to work up much speed.

But that was okay. He’d wait up here as long as he had to. And if he got hungry, he’d drop down to the shelf below and see what he could find. Maybe a chocolate bar the size of a two-by-four, or a can of Libby’s baked beans big enough to feed a platoon, assuming it had a pull-top. Archie had not thought to bring along a can opener on today’s outing.

He nearly allowed himself a chuckle. If he ate enough baked beans, he’d end up making noises a lot louder than heartbeats.

If Nick were here, he’d try to break the tension with a good old-fashioned fart joke.

But Nick is dead.

Archie would have to grieve later. Right now, he had to worry about his own situation. Find a way out of here. Get back home to his mom and Katie.

He figured Katie was safe. He’d left her at their house, and unless she was dumb enough to go looking for him, she was still there. But his mom was at the big Arrival event.

Archie felt a wave of fear wash over him. He’d had a few of those already since he’d arrived at Garrett Mall. But this was different. He wasn’t scared about what might happen to him. He was scared about what might have happened to his mom.

I can’t lose my mom . . .

Too.

He couldn’t help notice that, as best he could tell, he was the only person in the warehouse-like store. When the Arrivals had come streaming in, Discount Bonanza staff and customers must have run like hell for the back rooms. Archie seemed to remember, from trips here with his mother, that there were other access points to the store, in addition to the mall entrance. There had to be a way to the outdoors. A loading dock, maybe.