by L T Vargus
The crowd chanted the numbers along with the MCs, counting down from ten while the big screen at the back of the stage flashed the numbers.
He slipped one hand inside his jacket, found the waffle-patterned grip of the assault rifle. Warm from his body heat. Through his hand, it felt like the weapon was pulsing with power and anticipation. Almost like it knew what was about to happen, could sense it like a tiger prowling around inside a cage, sensing that there were only three seconds until the door would burst open and it would be unleashed on its keepers.
Two seconds.
He pulled the rifle free.
One.
The screen flashed crazily as it blinked “Happy New Year!” in bright block letters. All along the waterfront, fountains of fireworks started going off, and people screamed and cheered and blew noisemakers.
He leveled the AR-15 at the flailing mob. His forearm flexed. Hand twitched. Trigger squeezed. Again. Again. Again.
The rifle jerked in his hands. Bucked. A living thing spitting flame out of its muzzle, lighting up this little patch of the night.
And that red tide of rage surged in his skull. Hatred so pure it flushed his face with heat. Cascaded sweat down his forehead and over his cheekbones.
At first, the crowd didn’t hear him over the boom of the fireworks and rumbling bass of the music blaring over the P.A.
It looked incredible. Gunfire ripping into a crowd too dumb to even respond.
Puffy winter coats perforated. Wounded. Little wisps of insulating fill leaking out.
The bodies along the perimeter started dropping. Crumpling. Buckling. Falling into heaps along the sawhorse barrier that penned in the crowd.
Something about that got through to the dimwits. The herd showed the telltale signs of panic, hilariously delayed. They screamed. Bolted. The stampede slid away from him, all of the lemmings crashing into each other in their haste and confusion.
He swept the gunfire along the perimeter, watched the bodies topple in slow motion. They almost looked like some version of a crowd doing the wave at Wrigley, except sinking in a line one by one instead of jumping up.
The fireworks boomed and crackled overhead. Lit the scene in brilliant colors that swelled and faded over everything. The dying crowd glowed blue, then red, then orange.
His sweeping fire kept mowing across the crowd, then slid past them, pelting the building beyond. Glass exploded at the edge of his turn. Big picture windows all along the sides of the Grand Ballroom, shattering and splintering. Even better than fireworks. He dragged his gun up the side of the building just for fun, grinning at the way the spiderwebs marred the glass before it came raining down.
Glorious. Just fucking glorious.
Chapter 40
One second, Emery was batting Ellen over the head with one of those annoying plastic noisemakers and grinning while she yelled, “Take that and that and that!” in appletini-scented puffs of white steam. The next, her sister was slumped onto her shoulder, dead weight. Could Emery have passed out? Ellen didn’t think she’d had that much to drink.
Then all around them, people were falling. Just slapping down limp on the cold ground. It looked like one of those tobacco company protest flash mobs where everybody pretended to die. Except…
Except they weren’t pretending, Ellen realized. Colorful flashes from overhead lit up blood pumping from holes in heavy winter coats, people crawling and screaming and clutching at themselves with bloody hands.
Suddenly unable to hold her sister’s weight, Ellen eased her to the ground. Emery’s eyes stared up at the sky in slightly different directions, and a ragged hole gaped over her right eyebrow.
Ellen sucked in a breath, the horror of what she was seeing swelling in her chest like an expanding balloon. And then, just like that, it was as if the balloon popped. There was an instant release of tension, and the din of screaming voices and the thunder of the fireworks seemed to die back. She felt calm. Detached. Her analytical mind taking over in the moment of crisis.
She’d always been like this, flashing back to the time she’d fallen out of the tree when she was nine and fractured the tibia and fibula of her right leg. She’d stared down at the bone protruding from her shin and then turned to Emery and said, “I think you’d better go get dad.”
She tried to remember what you were supposed to do for head trauma. Apply pressure? No. You had to keep them awake. She needed to get Emery talking.
“Emery, can you hear me?” She patted her sister’s cheek with her fingertips, scared to hit her any harder in case she destabilized the spine. That was important in emergencies, too.
Ellen called out to the people scurrying and scuttling around her.
“Someone call 911!” When she saw that they were too far gone into panic to hear her, she refocused on her sister. “Emery! Emery, hey, your phone went off. Wake up, you need to answer it. It might be Brian, Emery. What if he screwed up the formula?”
Fireworks reflected in Emery’s misaligned eyes. Sparkling explosions of gold, green, and blue. The sclera of her right eye had turned red, like it was full of blood.
Ellen sat back on her heels and looked around. People were running and dying, plastic cups of alcohol splashing and foaming on the concrete. Nobody was calling for an ambulance. No one was coming to save her sister.
Tears blurred her vision and turned icy cold as they ran down her cheeks. She blinked and wiped them away with the back of her sleeve, and that was when she saw him.
The shooter. Standing in a swirl of falling snow, black trenchcoat flowing in the wind as he swept a rifle back and forth, cutting them down.
Ellen didn’t remember standing up, didn’t consciously think about what she was doing at all as she sprinted after the man who had done this to her sister.
Chapter 41
Something deep in his brain, some ancient form of predator’s self-preservation tingled along the back of his neck. He spun back around to face the crowd full on.
One of the sheep was charging him. Just a couple yards away. A face so twisted with fury that he couldn’t tell whether it belonged to a man or woman.
That wasn’t how it was supposed to work. Wasn’t how it had happened before. They were meant to be afraid, so terror-stricken it never occurred to them to fight back. A churning flock of fear and hysteria.
He panicked for a split-second, finger spasming on the trigger.
A thin line of red sprayed. The runner crumbled, sliding a little with leftover momentum as she hit the concrete.
He stared down at the body for a stuttering heartbeat. Then the rage came back, swelling to twice what it had been. That was what prey got when it turned on its attacker. A quick death.
Let it be a lesson to all of them.
He leveled the rifle at the herd again and opened up.
Chapter 42
Loshak’s phone buzzed in his pocket. The two-beat notification that signaled a text. He leaned back in his chair and scrubbed at his eyes as he dug the phone out. It was Jan.
Happy New Year, Vick.
He smiled and started typing out a reply. It was strange how something as ordinary as a stock holiday greeting could give you such an endorphin rush when it came from somebody you cared about.
For the last hour, he’d been running through the first half of the list of licensed pharmacists that the DEA had faxed over, searching for them in the DMV, then adding the names of registered vehicle owners and their plate numbers to the database they were setting up. His eyes felt like they’d been flushed with coffee grounds.
All his moving around had drawn Spinks’ attention away from his terminal, where the reporter had been going through the second half of the pharmacist list. He groaned and cracked his neck, first one way, then the other, then leaned over the arm of his chair toward Loshak.
“Anything interesting, partner?” he asked. “Something to liven up the night a little?”
Loshak shook his head. “Just New Year salutations from Jan.”
&nb
sp; “Hey, yeah, it’s tomorrow already,” Spinks said, stretching and staring up at the clock. “We’re three minutes into next year, guys. Better get going on those resolutions.”
It was the first anyone had said in a while, and it seemed to wake up the room, almost make the lights seem a little brighter. Everyone had been so focused on the tasks in front of them, chugging coffee, speeding up and slowing down footage, entering numbers, checking names, that the conversation had died out pretty fast. On the opposite side of the room, Deluca and Brunhauser looked up from their security and traffic cam footage.
“Happy New Year, guys,” Deluca said.
Brunhauser paused his footage and sang, “May all acquaintance be forgot and never brought to light…”
“I don’t think those are the words.” Deluca plucked the last donut out of the box and toasted her partner with it before taking a bite. “And unless I’m mistaken, that carb-free diet Carmen wanted you to start kicks in right about now. New year, new Brunhauser.”
“Ah, take it,” he muttered. “I hope you get diabetes and drunk-bang Wilford Brimley.”
“Me, too. I bet he’d be all soft and warm.”
“You’re sick, Deluca.”
Spinks took a sip of old coffee, then scowled down at it like the cup had betrayed him.
“That tears it, I’m going on a coffee run. There’s got to be a Starbucks or something open somewhere. What do you people have up here?”
“Scooters,” Deluca said at the same time that Brunhauser said, “Caribou.”
“I’ll try both. Hopefully one will be open.” Spinks stood up, then nodded at Loshak. “Want to come with me, partner? Stretch your legs?”
“Nah, I think I’ll keep going on this.” Loshak gestured at his screen with his phone.
It was tedious as hell, but he wanted it done. When they were finished compiling the database, they could start running the plates the detectives had found in the footage near the shootings and hopefully get a hit. And if nothing came up, then they would be that much sooner recasting the net at the doctor and lawyer pools.
“Suit yourself,” Spinks said, hucking his old coffee cup in the trash. “Tell Jan I said ‘Happy New Year.’”
Loshak nodded and started another text with that addendum. He’d barely gotten the first word out when a phone shrieked. Not his. Then another went off.
Deluca got to hers while Brunhauser was still digging his out of his pack pocket.
“Deluca.” The detective’s mouth flattened into a hard line. “Where?”
Brunhauser answered his phone as Loshak’s started buzzing in his hand. The number was Millhouse’s.
Stopped in the doorway, Spinks raised one eyebrow. “What the hell is going on?”
Loshak’s stomach sank as he realized he could hear the landlines out in the desk pool ringing like crazy.
“Nothing good.” It took Loshak a couple tries to swipe the answer icon. His fingers were shaking from too much coffee. He brought the phone to his ear.
“We have an active shooter at the Pier,” Millhouse said. “SWAT units on the way right now, with EMTs on hold until they’ve cleared the scene. This is it. It’s our guy.”
Loshak let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“We’re heading over now,” he said.
Chapter 43
The herd struggled to flee, their path congested by more and more people packed into a smaller space. Everyone screaming. Scrambling in all directions. Trampling each other.
A stampede of humanity retreating in all directions at once, some farther down the pier, some back toward the city, all wild with panic like spooked cattle.
He turned on the spot, firing after the ones running inland. Picking off stragglers, a few as far away as the Crabhouse. From that distance, he couldn’t see the blood spray. It was like watching an old western or one of those Civil War reenactments, where the actors heard the shot, then buckled at the waist and fell. Woundless death, right on cue.
The music had cut out, but the fireworks went on and on. Detached. Unknowing. Maybe on a timer or controlled remotely. The technicians in charge of them had no idea what was happening to their viewing audience, no concept of the slaughter and predation taking place.
He didn’t see where the officer came from — maybe in the Beer Garden sneaking a drink, maybe just out patrolling the pier in case of shenanigans — but the cop and Ben saw one another in the same second.
Orange fireworks boomed, then crackled behind Ben. In the flaring light, the cop’s hands darted toward his gun. They didn’t even get close before Ben pulled the trigger on the rifle. A three-shot burst ripped into the cop’s throat and face. His legs folded, and he dropped to his knees, blood gushing from his head. In slow motion, he slumped flat on his face on the ground. His left arm was pinned beneath his corpse, his right still reaching for the gun.
Elation tingled across Ben’s skin. Nothing could stop him. Not even the men and women who were trained to neutralize threats to the herd.
He was untouchable. Above them all. Powerful. Invulnerable. Focused.
Every trace of the feelings from his apartment were gone. Forgotten. He could call back the memories of the tent, of peeling his face off in the mirror, even the fleshy wall trapping him in his bathroom, but none of them could touch him. Just some figments of a distant drug trip, something back there in the mists. Not real.
The bodies were real. The rifle in his hands was real. More than anything, he was real.
Slowly, the panicked screaming and shouting of the crowd faded, growing smaller and smaller until it disappeared completely.
He was alone.
Alone on his little stretch of pier. Just him and the bodies and the bright flashes of color in the sky. Without the screaming and gunfire, it almost felt peaceful out in the falling snow.
He walked out among the dead. Crunching over the snow. Stepping over tangled limbs and torsos.
Between the booming explosions, he could hear the choppy waves slapping against the concrete of the pier, the soothing sound of distant traffic, the cars that drove up and down the streets at all hours in this place.
The fireworks were building to a frenzy now, approaching the big finale. He walked out under their glow. The only one left.
Orange.
Red.
Green.
Blue.
Each flare of bright coming just after a bomb burst overhead. The beauty of violence, lighting his path as he left the bloodbath behind.
Chapter 44
Loshak stood with Millhouse at the edge of the police barricade, staring silently down the pier. A few hundred yards beyond them, the SRT van was parked, its lights flashing. Loshak couldn’t see the SWAT team, but they were down there somewhere as well, clearing the scene, searching for the shooter.
He was already gone. Loshak felt sure of it. The mayhem was over. With the spectacle on the water complete, it would hold no further interest for their unsub.
Nearby, uniformed officers guarded their backs and kept the press at bay. Someone had found out that Spinks was an investigative journalist and Millhouse had immediately barred him from coming in this close to the active scene in spite of his FBI credentials. The reporter had protested, but not very hard, a sick look like the one he’d had while they were digging up the mass grave in Kansas City frozen on his face. Loshak could understand the feeling.
Millhouse’s radio beeped out an electronic tune, then crackled with static.
“Cleared for EMT,” a deep voice relayed.
Millhouse confirmed, then waved at the line of ambulances waiting behind them. Together, she, Loshak, and a couple uniforms moved blue CPD sawhorses out of the way and let the emergency vehicles through to search for survivors.
The Deputy Chief of Detectives turned to Loshak. Her eyes looked sunken and tired, and her makeup looked caked on. Starting to crack.
“Ready?” She sighed the word more than asked it.
Loshak nodded.
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br /> They headed down the pier together, staying clear of the ambulances slowly rolling forward like a funeral procession. From the slumped forms Loshak could see in the glare of the streetlights ahead, that wasn’t going to be far from reality.
He shuddered as they passed the bright lights decorating the Children’s Museum and glanced over at Millhouse. The Deputy Chief was staring fixedly ahead, expression blank. The closer they got to the litter of corpses, the more Loshak became sure his own face was reflecting hers.
Members of the SWAT Team made their way back to their carrier, heads and weapons down, breath steaming from balaclavas like the one Spinks had tried on earlier.
They reached the first bodies out in front of the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. All shot from behind while running away. Blood smears showed that one had managed to crawl a few feet toward the building before finally expiring. Maybe she’d thought she could get to safety inside.
The carnage grew thicker the farther they went. In places, the bodies lay in piles. Tangled limbs. Heaps of lifeless humanity. Pools of blood congealed in the cold. Thick puddles of red on the snow-blown concrete, going oddly murky, opaque, as it thickened. Cloudy.
EMTs ran through the aftermath, checking pulses, searching for someone, anyone they could save.
So far, they hadn’t found many.
When they found the slaughtered beat cop slumped over his own arms, Millhouse stopped and didn’t start again. She crouched beside him and prodded his bloody throat for a pulse. Loshak had seen the EMTs check the man already, but he kept his mouth shut. The Deputy Chief probably wouldn’t hear him even if he spoke up. She was in shock. Maybe she’d never seen anything this extensive before. He had to give her credit for making it this far.
And he had to keep going. Whether he wanted to see the rest or not, his feet kept him moving.
Walking the perimeter of the scene, he followed the direction of the shooter’s rampage. The spray of bullets had come from over there, near that empty planter. Eventually, he’d stepped away from his spot, chasing his targets a little. Starting to really enjoy himself. Shooting windows out of the closest buildings. The litter of shattered glass underfoot reminded Loshak of the carpet flecked with similar debris at the movie theater.
