Run, Hide, Fight Back

by April Henry

  “Or it might just make them shoot you with their own, real gun,” Cole says.

  “Why don’t you go to the police?” Miranda asks.

  “The police?” Javier seems genuinely puzzled. “What are they gonna do?”

  “Protect you?”

  “The police are there for other people. People like you. White people. People who were born here.” Amina looks up from the computer and the two of them exchange glances. “People like me? Beaners who aren’t legal? About all they want to do to people like me is deport us.”

  “Look—we’re on TV.” Amina points at the computer’s screen. “At least, the mall is.”

  Miranda moves closer, eager for a window into the outside world.

  I BELIEVE SHE IS SAYING

  5:19 P.M.

  Everyone crowds around the monitor. The computer shows a live feed from KGW with the sound turned off. On the screen, a blond reporter’s mouth moves as she gestures with her free hand. Occasionally the picture freezes or pixelates. Miranda squints to read the closed captioning that runs across the bottom of the screen.

  “… hostages pressed up against the windows, presumably to serve as human shields. This is heartbreaking. One girl of about twelve is mouthing, I believe she is saying, ‘Help me.’”

  The image changes to the exit doors of the mall, the ones Miranda discovered were locked. At least a dozen people are pressed up against the glass doors, with their hands bound in front of them. Many of them are moving their mouths, desperately trying to communicate. If they don’t survive, will anyone know what they were trying to say?

  “The hostage dressed in a Santa costume is just a sad reminder that this tragedy is taking place at Christmastime, a season that is supposed to be about peace on earth and goodwill toward men.”

  The camera cuts back to the reporter, who is now standing with a high school–aged girl. Her long dark hair is shaved on one side.

  “I’m with Jackie, who was in the food court at Fairgate Mall when the shooting broke out.”

  The camera zooms in on her wide-eyed face. “I was standing there, I was just about to pay for a slice of pizza, and I heard gunfire. People were running and trying to hide. I ended up with a bunch of people behind this kiosk that sells remote-control toys. Then we all decided to make a break for it. I kept expecting to be shot, but we weren’t.”

  The camera pulls back to show the reporter nodding. “You were very lucky.”

  The girl’s face crumples. “But I saw people die. It was awful.”

  The camera pans to show a milling crowd, police setting up barricades well back from the mall, flashing lights cutting through the gathering darkness.

  “Police have confirmed that there are as many as eight shooters dressed in black and wearing ski masks. More than a dozen victims have been taken to area hospitals. If you have friends or family at Fairgate Mall, the authorities are advising you to stay away. Police, fire, and ambulance crews need the roads free so they can deal with this ongoing situation. They will be setting up a waiting area at Calvary Baptist about two miles from here, where they will be taking people to be reunited with their families.”

  Is that where Miranda’s dad is right now? Have the authorities made him leave? She hopes not. She hopes he is still just a few hundred yards away.

  The reporter nods decisively. “The question is: What do these killers want? When we first arrived on the scene, I was given a flash drive by a young man who claimed to have been one of the hostages. He said he was freed on the condition that he hand out these drives to the media. A few minutes later, he was taken in by the police. Barry, do you have any update on that drive?”

  The camera cuts to an unsmiling man sitting in the TV studio. “As Jessica said, we do have this flash drive. Its contents are still being analyzed, but it appears to be some sort of manifesto. We are sharing it with law enforcement, but if we get the go-ahead, we will pass it on to our viewers.”

  “Okay, Barry.”

  And then a huge blast rocks the storage room.

  5:21 p.m.

  UNIT 68: We’re making entry to Nordstrom.

  DISPATCH: Copy.

  UNIT 68: The store appears to be empty. The security gate is down. We’re gonna—wait, what’s that? [sounds of explosion]

  DISPATCH: 68. Status!

  DISPATCH: 68? Status? 14? 41? 43?

  UNIT 14: [static] … bomb … [static]

  DISPATCH: We need ambulance and backup to Nordstrom entry on south side stat!

  WAKE UP

  The video opens with a shot of an American flag flying upside down, an official signal of distress.

  The camera cuts to a man in a living room with yellow pine–paneled walls and flat tan carpeting. He sits on a brown plaid couch. His face is covered by a black balaclava. His eyes are blue. He is dressed in work boots, jeans, and an ivory-colored T-shirt. His arms are muscled and tan.

  The front of the T-shirt portrays a black, bare-branched tree with red roots. It reads THE TREE OF LIBERTY MUST BE REFRESHED FROM TIME TO TIME WITH THE BLOOD OF PATRIOTS AND TYRANTS.—THOMAS JEFFERSON.

  The man speaks.

  America, it’s time to wake up. And we’re your alarm clock.

  Until today, you’ve been like babies distracted by shiny toys. You believe what the TV tells you, that you won’t be happy until you have new cars and hot french fries and better drugs and bigger TVs. That you won’t have a good Christmas unless you buy more stuff that will just fall apart the minute it’s unwrapped. And if you don’t have the money, you buy it on credit.

  As a result, millions of Americans are living a twisted enslavement, while others waste away in prisons, are forced to fight in foreign countries, or exist on the street like animals. So many of us wake in the night worrying we’ll lose our homes.

  You think you pay for your possessions with money, but you don’t. You pay for them with blood. And today we’ve made that clear.

  The world is falling down around you while our public officials—bought and paid for by corporations—act with impunity. Aided by the government you supposedly elect, these corporations have been selling you lies. And you’ve been buying them. You have let politicians and corporations take your dignity. You’ve let them grow rich and fat at your expense. But know this: To those who really run this country, you’re no more than blades of grass under their feet. They depend on the services of an army of people who are nearly invisible to them. People who pump their gas, take away their garbage, ring up their purchases, install their cable. But if they lost their electricity, their Internet, their access to stores, you’d see how dependent they really are!

  We need to return to simpler times, where a man could support his family, where we could trust politicians not to betray us, where we could speak the truth without being ostracized, where companies didn’t poison our air and water, where jobs didn’t disappear overnight, where people who fought for this country returned home heroes.

  Instead, we pamper illegal aliens who take our jobs while our veterans sleep on cardboard in doorways. We let the puppet government dictate every aspect of our lives.

  We, the people, don’t declare war and we don’t make the peace, but we’re the ones who fight the battles, the ones who shed our blood and die on foreign soil. And for what? Wars don’t help people. They help corporations by keeping the oil flowing. But you’ve let your young men be sent to war, and then turned away when they come back broken. Well, you can’t turn away any longer.

  We’ve shown you what war is truly like. It’s death. It’s destruction. It’s random and cruel. It’s broken bodies, broken minds, broken hearts.

  It’s true that today some will have lost loved ones because of what we’ve done. But you won’t be the first mother to lose a kid, or the first grandparent to lose a grandson or granddaughter. And at least these deaths will have meaning. People will look back and say today was a turning point.

  We have been forced to shed blood to make you wake up. To show you that the cur
rent system can’t be reformed. It can only be blown up.

  People of America, rise up. You can start with small acts of defiance, like no longer amassing piles of crap. Or you can go out and sow some destruction of your own. You can help open more eyes. The only way to truly reform the current system is to shed blood.

  It’s up to you. Will you be free men? Or socialist wannabe slaves?

  And while we’ve killed, we’ve also been merciful. There are many more who still live because of our generosity. And if you want them to continue to live, you’ll meet our demands.

  First, all American troops must be withdrawn from the Middle East.

  Second, all veterans must be provided with jobs and housing and financial assistance.

  Third, the political system must be reformed so that politicians may no longer accept more than fifty dollars from any individual or corporation.

  We know it will take time to accomplish these goals.

  As an interim step, you need to do the following.

  The message needs to be broadcast nationally. In addition, our friends Eric Piercy, Isaac Mayakovsky, and Joshua Pritchard have to be released from Sheridan federal prison and taken to the Aurora airfield. And you need to provide us with a bus, so that we can take the hostages to the airfield. Once we’re there, you will give us a plane and a pilot, at which point we will give you half the hostages. And then when the plane lands, we will release the remaining hostages from the plane.

  And know this. We will not release a single hostage until our demands are met. And we will kill ten hostages for any of us who is killed.

  WE TOLD YOU WHAT WOULD HAPPEN

  5:23 P.M.

  The noise. The pressure wave that pushed the door into him. It has to have been a bomb, Parker thinks. Are the other hostages dead?

  Is Miranda?

  When his ears clear, he hears the hostages out in the hall screaming and crying. But what’s worse is that he also hears men shouting. Not in fear, but excitement. It’s the killers. Whooping. Like fans of a winning football team.

  So whatever happened was something they wanted. Miranda said a SWAT team was coming to kill the bad guys. Parker guesses that the opposite just happened.

  Lips is yelling at the hostages. “Settle down and shut up, already!”

  “Parker,” Moxie cries out from inside the cupboard. “Parker, where are you?” Her voice is muffled, but not enough.

  Parker shoves his phone in his pocket. He scuttles forward on hands and knees, repeating “Shh” as loudly as he dares.

  “Parker! Parker!”

  “I’m coming!” he whisper-shouts. “Just be quiet.”

  Behind him, the door flies open so hard, it bangs against the wall. He looks over his shoulder. It’s Lips. Lips raises his rifle.

  Parker goes still inside. This is it. His last second on earth. He doesn’t pray. He doesn’t plead. He just stares at the round empty eye of the gun.

  Lips steps forward and puts the end of the rifle against Parker’s temple. The cold circle is just millimeters from his brain. Maybe there won’t even be time to register the pain.

  But the next thing that happens isn’t Lips shooting him but candy boxes falling onto the floor as Moxie scrambles out of the cupboard. Concentrating on not even twitching, Parker watches her out of the corner of one eye. Her hair is stuck to one side of her flushed face, and her red coat is rucked up in the back.

  So much for protecting her from what’s happening. In another second, she’s going to be covered with his brains and blood.

  And that’s if she’s lucky. If she’s not lucky, she’s going to be dead herself.

  She lifts her hand and points straight at Lips. “You,” she announces, “are a bad man!” For emphasis, she stamps her foot.

  There’s no turning back now, Parker realizes. They’re both going to die. At least Moxie is on her feet, not cowering on her knees the way he is.

  “She’s just a little kid,” he babbles. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  “Oh, don’t give me that. She knows exactly what she’s saying.” To Parker’s surprise, Lips grins. “Little girl, you’ve got some mouth on you.”

  Moxie, thankfully, doesn’t argue the point. Parker has a feeling it wouldn’t take much for her to tip the balance from cute to annoying to dead.

  Lips pulls the rifle back a few inches and then uses it to prod Parker’s shoulder. “You’re not supposed to be back here. Didn’t you hear? You messed up. You had one chance to come out and you didn’t.”

  He doesn’t recognize Parker. Better that Lips think he just chose not to leave this space than have him learn about the phone, the knife, and the cut zip ties. “I’ve been hiding back here since the beginning. I just wanted to keep my sister safe.”

  Without turning his head, Parker looks for the knife. It’s lying on the floor just behind Lips, partly hidden by the open door. Can Lips see the remains of the zip ties? Are they on the worktable? Is the top edge of Parker’s phone poking from his pocket?

  “I don’t think that’s a good enough excuse,” Lips says.

  “It’s the only one I have.”

  “Get up and go back out there.” Lips prods him again. “We’ll see what they want to do with you.”

  The quicker they leave this room, the less chance that Lips will spot the knife or realize Parker hasn’t really been back here the whole time. Parker grabs Moxie’s hand.

  “He was hiding in the candy store’s back room with his little sister,” Lips calls as they walk out into the hall. They stop about twenty-five feet from the gate.

  Through the security gate, Wolf’s ice-blue eyes regard Parker. With his features obscured by the ski mask, it’s hard to know what he’s thinking. Parker forces himself to drop his gaze. There can be only one dominant male here, and it’s for sure not going to be the one without a gun.

  “You.” Wolf points at one of the college girls, the one in the Stanford sweatshirt. “Hold his sister.”

  Parker nudges Moxie to the girl. Moxie tries to tear away, so Stanford grabs both her wrists as she twists and squirms.

  “We told you what would happen if we found you.” Wolf’s voice is calm, and all the more frightening for that. “You had your one chance and you threw it away.”

  Parker stays quiet. There doesn’t seem to be much point in arguing or trying to feign abject apologies. Off to the side, he sees an older lady in the white Van Duyn uniform. Van Duyn must be worried he’ll try to save himself by ratting her out for hiding his sister.

  “Do you believe this kid?” Wolf points his rifle at Parker’s chest while he scans the rest of the hostages. His mouth stretches wide in the approximation of a smile. “He thought he could disobey me. He thought he got to choose what to do. No. You all belong to me now. To us.” His eyes fasten back on Parker’s. “Get on your knees.”

  With no place to run, no way to help himself, Parker drops to his knees and prays it will be fast.

  “But never let it be said that we aren’t merciful.” Wolf lowers his gun a few inches. “It’s going to be up to your fellow captives whether you live or die. They’re going to beat you for your disobedience, and they are going to do a thorough job. But eventually it’s going to be up to them to decide when—or if—to stop.”

  No one moves.

  “Come on, what are you waiting for?” Wolf cries. “If you’re against the doors, stay where you are, but the rest of you gather around this boy who thinks he can play with your lives.”

  People begin to shuffle closer. Parker looks up at their faces, but only a few meet his eyes. Some of them are crying, fresh tears streaking already wet faces. Others are expressionless. The guy who was wounded is in front of Parker. Someone has bandaged his arm with a scarf, the price tag still attached.

  “Now you need to show him how big of a mistake he made. Show him how angry you are for him putting all of you at risk. And show me that you really mean it. Make an example of him so I don’t have to teach the rest of you
a lesson.”

  After a long pause, the old guy wearing white puffy Velcro-fastened tennies kicks Parker in the ribs. It isn’t even really a kick that Velcro gives him. It’s more like a push.

  Businessman, his face expressionless, pulls his expensive shoe back and kicks Parker in the left hip. Hard. An electric shock zaps down his leg.

  Parker grunts and drops to his hands and knees.

  “That’s a good start,” Wolf says. “But it’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough.” He raises his gun again. “Punish him or you will be punished.”

  The lady with graying dreads makes a noise like a banshee. She looks like the kind of lady who would bake chocolate-chip cookies for her grandkids, but that was before this nightmare. Even zip tied, Dreads manages to grab Parker’s hair in both fists and then slams her knee into his nose. It feels like a cold metal spring opening inside his head. His eyes instantly fill with tears as blood splatters the white linoleum.

  Stanford is trying to push Moxie’s face into her waist, so that his sister won’t have to see this.

  Parker tells himself he won’t cry out. He won’t give Wolf and Lips and Mole the satisfaction.

  With their hands zip tied in front of them, people mostly use their feet as weapons. Tennis shoes aren’t too bad. Dress shoes, with their hard shells, are much more painful. The lady with the crazy tall heels raises one foot, and Parker braces himself to be skewered by her stiletto, but it barely brushes his waist. While he’s still trying to figure out if Heels missed him on purpose, the guy with the gauges kicks his thigh so hard, Parker topples. Gauges’s second kick just misses him.

  Trying to make himself as small as possible, he curls into a ball, his forehead tight against his knees, his fingers cupping the back of his neck. This still leaves a lot of surface area.