exorcizemymind.
Though his mind is still reeling and his body is frozen with a mixture of anticipation and fear, Warren catalogs the entrances, exits, windows, and staff members almost on reflex. He’s never been in a firefight like this, but he knows how to survive, and right now survival means cooperating and waiting. A city like this knows how to handle burglaries, and no one needs to get shot.
The woman who’d pulled him down dials 911 while a man on her other side starts to cry. Everyone else on the floor is somewhere in between, clutching one another, too scared to move, to speak. All but one, who had not noticed the cacophony past the blaring of her earbuds apparently, because the second shooter, the one not yelling at them to stay down, now towered over her with his gun pressed to her hip.
A reflexive shift forward has the woman next to him getting a firmer grasp on his pant leg, hissing “no!” at him with wide eyes. Beating down the self-preservation that told him to stay down, out of sight was surprisingly easy in comparison to watching a girl get gunned down.
Hands up on either side of his head, he takes a knee; he’s quickly mobile, but not taking a stand (figurative or literal). “If you’re looking for money, you’re not gonna get it pointing guns at people.”
The other gunman wasn’t as distracted by the events playing out with Meri. He cocked the shotgun and pointed it at the woman on the floor. “Drop the phone!” The woman did, and so did Meri, some detached part of her screaming out to catch it before the screen shattered. She made an aborted movement but quickly caught herself and stood stock still. Nothing seemed real at the moment, and she was remarkably calm for someone who was a trigger pull away from a shattered pelvis and an early grave. If she just got on the floor with everyone else, she would be able to make it out of this.
And then someone decided to try and be a hero. Meri cast a wild-eyed glance toward the man, shaking her head so faintly that it could have gone unseen, but it was too late. The shotgun barrel wasn’t at her hip now, it was tapping the side of her chin and the metal was warmer than she thought it would be. “You, stay where you are. You,” he added, turning toward Warren and leveling the shotgun in his direction, “Get back on the ground. You either keep your mouth shut, or I open the back of your head.”
Meri must have made a noise, because she caught the robber’s attention again, and he turned the gun on her. “I want you to dump all the shit out of your purse. Do it!” he barked when she hesitated. Tampons, time slips, gum and pills and candy wrappers spilled across the countertop. “Now go around the lobby and fill that purse with wallets, phones, and car keys, starting with your savior over there. And if any of you try anything, someone is getting shot.”
She was moving before he’d finished speaking, and she stopped in front of Warren, holding the purse out to him as she collected the phone from the woman next to him. “Thanks,” she muttered under her breath. “But I think we’d all appreciate it if you didn’t do that again.”
