The Mad and the Bad

23

Thompson had decided that he could wait no longer. With stunning speed the store was transformed into a madhouse. More and more people began to run. A wake of detritus marked Julie’s trajectory through the aisles. Women were screaming. Several shopgirls had started ringing the little handbells they usually rang to attract a supervisor when they needed change or to check the identity of a customer wishing to pay by check. Above the hullabaloo, by way of background, floated the sweet yet cannonading tones of an old Joan Baez hit, piped in through speakers. The place was a bear garden.

Thompson stretched out his arm to fire, his stomach hurting so badly he felt as though he was being torn apart, and the figure of Julie wobbled in the SIG’s sights. The girl dropped to the ground. Thompson immediately revised his aim for a second shot through the delirious crowd. The round (a 9mm Parabellum) exploded the head of a frantic customer. The man was running. He put his hands out in front of him like a diver and executed a noisy belly flop on the floor of the store. Thompson shuddered. His stomach was a raging furnace. His nostrils dilated at the scent of gunpowder. He had paid no mind to the detonations, but all around him the crowd was going utterly crazy. People went on running and screaming in the line of fire between Julie sitting on the ground and the automatic still searching for her. Thompson could no longer see either Julie or Peter. He bounded down an aisle, knocking over an old woman who began to wail in terror. He trotted by Boys Apparel, his mouth full of bile. He heard a deafening explosion and assumed that Coco had decided to open up. Fragments of plastic flew from a display. The store was filled by an immense tumult. This is exciting, I am enjoying this, Thompson told himself as he spat gastric juice onto the ground. More and more people were getting down on the floor, huddling against the bottom shelves. Mothers were shielding their children by covering them with their bodies. The whole mass was shrieking. Thompson was doubled over with laughter.