by April Henry
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For my father, Hank Henry (1923–2003)
A principled and honorable man who also made a point of telling us “I love you” every day
Within moments of Saturday’s shooting at the Melbourne Square mall, dozens of officers from surrounding agencies pulled into the parking lot, helping shoppers and locking down the commercial structure while specially trained SWAT team members prepared to do a search inside.…
Brevard Sheriff Wayne Ivey said that training and experience from other agencies shows that in such cases, citizens who find themselves confined in a building or an area with a shooter, like the dozens of shoppers and workers in the mall when the shooting happened, often have three options.
“They can run, hide or fight,” said Ivey.
—Florida Today, January 18, 2015
Even if the attacker has a gun and you do not have a weapon, the situation is not hopeless. There have been many active shooter incidents where people on the scene were able to subdue the attacker and save their own lives. We teach civilians to swarm the shooter and use other tactics, such as positioning themselves near the door but out of sight, so they can try to take the gun away from the shooter as soon as he enters.
The effectiveness of these principles was demonstrated in our analysis of the Virginia Tech active shooter event of 2007. In that incident, the shooter attacked or attempted to attack five classrooms. The people in each classroom responded in different ways. In the room that was attacked first and where no defensive actions were taken, 92 percent of the people were shot. In another room, where students had time to push a large desk against the door and hold it there, the shooter fired through the door, but no one was shot.
—Professor Pete Blair, Texas State University, from The Police Response to Active Shooter Incidents, published by the Police Executive Research Forum, March 2014
If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.
—Sun Tzu (fifth century B.C. Chinese general, military strategist, and philosopher), The Art of War
SURVIVE
When the shooting begins, among the dozens of people near Fairgate Mall’s food court are six teenagers: Miranda Nash, Cole Bond, Javier Ramirez, Parker Gray, Amina Abdi, and Grace Busby.
The only thing they have in common is that they all want to live. But not all of them will survive.
ONE HUNDRED MILES
3:37 P.M.
One hundred miles from Portland’s Fairview Mall, a tractor-trailer is traveling west on Interstate 84. The eighteen-wheeler is plain, white, and unmarked. Anonymous.
It’s safer that way. Safer for the three armed guards sitting on the truck’s bench seat. Safer for the trailer’s contents, which are rows of black buckets, filled with metal bars. Each metal bar is about the size of an ice-cube tray.
Some of the buckets hold silver bars. And some hold gold.
A single bucket of gold weighs eighty-six pounds and is worth $1.6 million.
Karl McKinley has been thinking about those buckets for years.
Once a month, this tractor-trailer makes the trip from Martin’s Metals in Boise, Idaho, to a processing plant in Vancouver, Washington. The plant serves jewelry makers from Portland to Seattle.
A few days before it left, Karl paid a worker at Martin’s Metals to add a couple of extra features to the eighteen-wheeler. Features the guards know nothing about.
The first is a GPS tracker stuck to the underside of the chassis with a magnet. The tracker means that Karl can follow the tractor-trailer virtually, without arousing the suspicion of the guards.
The second addition has been placed under the dash, in the footwell. It’s a device normally used to deter burglars in million-dollar homes. When triggered by remote control, it will fill the truck’s cab with pepper spray.
SO MANY AND SO FAST
3:37 P.M.
“There!” The Clinique saleswoman smiles at Miranda Nash as she turns the mirror toward her. “Those colors really make your eyes pop. It’s a perfect look for holiday parties.”
Miranda’s eyelids are covered with silver shadow, thickly edged with forest-green liner. She looks like an alien. A beautiful, big-eyed alien, but still.
“You don’t think it’s too much?” Ignoring the pulsing pain in her temples, Miranda tilts her head. In the mirror, the pale girl with the dark hair and eyes does the same.
“It’s a statement look, but it suits you.”
The saleswoman reminds Miranda of her mom. Older, but still pretty, and holding on to her prettiness with both hands, fingernails dug in. The saleswoman had sized her up when she approached the counter. Miranda watched the other woman’s eyes go from Miranda’s expensive shoes to the logo on her designer purse. She’s probably hoping to sell her the primer, shadow, liner, and mascara, and some skin-care products.
“Can I see that foundation?” Miranda has been watching where everything came from, and she picks the item that is located farthest away. The one that will make the saleswoman turn her back.
The drawer next to Miranda’s knee holds slender boxes of mascara. As soon as the saleswoman turns away, she leans down and opens it, ignoring how the action makes her head ache even more. She reaches in, grabs a half-dozen tubes, and slips them into the Ace bandage around her waist. It’s covered by her oversize red sweater, the one designed to slide off one shoulder. The whole thing takes five seconds.
Miranda’s made a mental map of where most of the security cameras are in this mall. The nearest one sees only her back. She’s been careful not to turn her face toward it. With luck, they won’t even notice that anything has been stolen until they take inventory. She knows not to leave empty packages behind. Better to take the whole thing and leave them wondering, than leave an empty box and no doubt.
To throw the saleswoman off the scent, Miranda spends an extra five minutes pretending to weigh the pros and cons of the various products. “I’m going to have to think about it,” she finally tells the saleswoman. “I want to see how it looks by the end of the night.”
A flash of irritation is quickly masked by a professional smile that doesn’t quite reach the saleswoman’s eyes. “Of course.”
She’s probably thinking that Miranda just wanted a free makeover so she could attend some party. And that if she even comes back to buy anything, all the products will be credited to some other salesclerk. That she has just wasted a half hour.
Guilt pinches Miranda. But she has to do this. She has to.
Because she’s sick and getting sicker.
And it’s still an hour until she is supposed to meet Matthew. How can she take the edge off? Maybe coffee will help. Down the mall’s main
hall is a Perk Me Up.
“I’ll have a sixteen-ounce latte,” she says to the barista. “With two extra shots.”
The woman makes a face. “That’s a total of four shots.”
She should try living in Miranda’s head. Someone’s in there with a hammer. “Yeah, I know. But that’s what I want.”
As the woman fires up the espresso machine, which is decorated with tinsel and fake holly, Miranda leans against a pillar. Fifty feet away, she recognizes Parker’s bright blond curls. Her stomach does a twist. After what happened a few weeks ago, she doesn’t want to have to talk to him. To see the look in his eyes. Luckily, he has his back to her. He’s with a couple of other guys from the wrestling team. They’re getting up from a table, making no attempt to clean the mess of half-eaten food they’re leaving behind.
Theatrically, Parker raises a napkin over his head, gives it a little shake, and then lets it fall to the floor. His audience is not only his buddies but a brown-skinned guy in a green apron. Parker’s friends laugh. The busboy just looks down at the floor and grips his cart. Miranda sees his jaw clench. In case Parker turns around, she moves to the other side of the pillar and leans against it, ignoring how the Ace bandage digs into her waist.
The move puts her closer to the bell ringer from Salvation Army, who is standing next to a red kettle bearing a slogan that reads like a bumper sticker: TOGETHER, WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. The old woman would certainly make a difference if she would just stop her incessant ding, ding, dinging. The noise pings around inside Miranda’s aching head.
At a table about twenty feet away, a mother and daughter are both eating apples. It’s weird to see such healthy food when everyone around them is consuming stuff that’s deep fried, covered with melted cheese, or both.
The two look like twins separated by twenty-five years: both with dark eyes and long brown hair parted in the middle. The girl’s hair is held back with a white headband, while her mother’s hangs loose. They’re even dressed alike, in jeans and button-down shirts. Miranda squints. The girl’s right hip has a long pale logo below the waistband as well as an embroidered white tab on the back pocket. Even though she’s too far away to read the logo, Miranda knows what it says: Stella McCartney. If you’re going to pay five hundred dollars for a pair of jeans, you want to make sure everyone knows it.
They lean toward each other, both of them smiling, trading words back and forth, gesturing with their long-fingered hands. What would it be like to be that close to your mom, Miranda wonders. And would she like it?
Since they’re dressed so similarly, she wonders if they wear each other’s clothes, and if so, how the girl feels about that. At home, Miranda has learned to hide anything she really likes, which annoys her mom. Not that you can tell by her expression. She’s had so much Botox that her face can’t get angry anymore. She can barely raise her eyebrows. Her happiest moments are when a stranger asks if she’s Miranda’s sister.
The rich girl’s mom is lifting her apple for another bite when a bright-red splotch about the size of a fist appears on her chest.
Miranda blinks. The red spot is growing, like a magic trick she doesn’t understand. Then she registers the sounds, nearly lost in the white noise of Christmas music and a hundred conversations.
POP, POP, POP.
A man in a blue plaid shirt two tables over clutches his arm. A skinny old woman falls, her walker and her Jamba Juice cup flying out in front of her.
The sounds are gunshots. So many and so fast, she can’t count them.
Miranda looks back at the girl’s mom. She’s tilting. Her eyes are wide and blood is bubbling between her lips. And Miranda realizes that’s what’s on the woman’s chest.
Blood.
START TO DIE
3:52 P.M.
When the boy with the mop of blond curls made a show of dropping his napkin to the floor, Javier Ramirez kept his face impassive. The kid clearly thought he was a real badass.
Like a piece of garbage and maybe a muttered slur were going to ruin Javier’s day.
Like he doesn’t have real things to worry him.
What if, despite how hard he worked this term, his grades are bad? What if the mall figures out the Social Security number he gave them is fake? What if, after Christmas, they cut his hours?
Javier is bending over to pick up the napkin when the first shot comes from behind him. Behind and above. It catches a forty-ish woman in the chest.
He recognizes the sound immediately.
Javier is already running as more people in the food court start to die.
FISH IN A BARREL
3:53 P.M.
The shots continue.
Miranda’s mind is filled with a jumble of panicked thoughts. Her body is frozen as she tries to take it all in. People falling. Some are hurt. Some dead. Dozens running. Tripping over chairs in panic. Screaming. Shouting. Stampeding away as quickly as they can.
The rich girl pushes back her chair so fast, it falls over. She runs around the table to her mom, tries to catch her as she slides off her seat. The older woman’s chest is now covered with blood, red and shiny as freshly spilled paint.
Is she dead? Miranda can’t believe it, despite how boneless the woman now looks.
The barista drops her paper cup—just lets it splash on the floor—and flees into the back of the coffee shop. Where’s Miranda supposed to go? What’s she supposed to do?
Is she going to get shot? Is she going to die?
She tries to climb over the high counter. But the front is a rounded glass display case for pastries and cookies. Her feet can’t find purchase. She slides back down to the floor.
POP, POP, POP.
A bullet shatters the glass of the display case next to her chest.
Before the next one finds her, Miranda darts away.
She and the other people in the food court are fish in a barrel, the way her dad likes to say, to note how easy something is. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
Miranda feels for those poor fish now, swimming in frantic circles with no way to escape.
BECAUSE OF THE BLOOD
3:54 P.M.
Grace Busby tries to lift her mom, but it’s like trying to pick up a rag doll that weighs a hundred and thirty pounds. Grabbing her mom’s wrists instead, Grace starts to drag her away. She curls her shoulders and tucks her head, hoping to provide less of a target.
She won’t think about how pulling her mom over the linoleum is easier than it should be. Because of the blood.
Lately, Grace has seen a lot of blood. Most of it her own, filling up test tube after test tube. The doctors made a hole in her chest, about where her mom’s is, only Grace’s has a plastic cap over it.
A guy in a green apron runs up to her. His name tag reads JAVIER. “You have to leave her.” He pulls at one of Grace’s arms. “She’s dead.”
“But she’s my mom.” The woman Grace is dragging doesn’t look like her mom, though. Not with her hair dyed dark, and her skin so pale. Her eyes and her mouth are both half-open. Neither of them moving.
“You can’t help her.”
“I can’t leave her.” Past Javier’s shoulder, she sees a middle-aged guy in a business suit fall to his knees. He’s clutching his neck with both hands, but red pulses out between his fingers.
“Your mother would not want you to die.” He grabs Grace’s wrist. “Now come!”
She stumbles after him.
CAN’T BE REAL
3:55 P.M.
As she runs from the coffee shop, Miranda tilts her head back. The shots are coming from the second floor of the mall, which is open in the middle. There are no stores up there, just office space, the two floors linked by escalators. Three men in black ski masks are leaning over the black railing and shooting long black guns, like AKs or something.
An older man shoves his wife behind him and then catches a bullet in the chest. Miranda lets out a scream as he falls to the floor. This can’t be real.
But she knows it is.
And the next person shot could easily be her. She has to get out of here. Now.
In the last few months, Miranda has come to know this mall better than most of the people who work here. In addition to knowing the location of every camera, she also knows every exit. Now she ducks underneath an escalator and runs toward the hall that leads outside.
WAITING TO DIE
3:55 P.M.
Amina ABDI was spacing the hangers one inch apart when she spotted it. A discarded Perk Me Up cup. Because the store sat near the food court, people seem to think they could wander in with a drink, or sometimes even food. Pinching the cup between her fingernails, she carried it to the trash. She ignored the look Hannah and Giselle shot each other. Instead of working, they were leaning against the counter, gossiping.
On Amina’s shifts, she never stops moving. There’s always something to do, if you look. She makes sure that everything’s in place, appearing exactly as it should. On the days she’s scheduled, you’ll never find an XS shoved in among the size Ls. She’s determined to show Culpeppers that she’s just as good as any other employee—if not better—despite her hijab. That even though the manager has hinted about Culpeppers’s “all-American vibe,” Americans can be all kinds of things. Including Muslim.
Now there’s some kind of disturbance out in the mall. Moving to the entrance, Amina tries to make sense of it. A fire alarm starts to blare. In the food court, people are screaming, stampeding in all directions. Some lie crumpled on the floor. As she watches, an old woman topples off an escalator. Just lands on the floor and lies there, unmoving. And that sound, which she knows only from movies and cop shows—are those gunshots?
Hannah and Giselle push past Amina and start running. Careening through the food court. Then a bullet hits Hannah in the back and sends her sprawling. Amina screams, without meaning to. Giselle takes one look behind her and then sprints faster.
