by Jacob Rayne
The rest of the customers took the hint and stayed out of the way.
The three men disappeared into the staff room.
Mark saw his chance and started towards the stairs, but his path was blocked by a fat woman. She wouldn’t get out of his way and he lacked the strength to shift her bulk.
In the end this turned out to be for the best; a pair of gas-masked men appeared at the top of the stairs and began firing down into the mass of customers.
A third gas-masked man came from the staff room, wielding a huge machine gun. Bullets thudded into customers and clothing alike.
A man who had started running towards the staircase was trapped in two lines of fire. He twitched like a puppet with an epileptic master, blood spewing from his many wounds.
He danced for an age then fell to the floor.
The gunmen were merciless; gunning down anyone in their path without hesitation.
Mark saw the top of a little boy’s head erupt in a cloud of blood. Then his world was spinning and he realised he was falling.
As he hit the ground, he realised he hadn’t been shot but a crushing weight pinned him to the floor.
It took him another few seconds to realise that the obese woman had fallen upon him.
A quick glance revealed this to be the case. Her glassy stare seemed to bore into him.
Blood poured out of her mouth and the bullet wounds in her chest, spreading across the floor towards him in a gleaming pool. In a second it would be touching him.
He had cringed at the thought of it, but the warm, sticky feel of the blood was even worse than he’d imagined. Something fell onto his face, mercifully hiding her dead stare.
He panicked and fought back the urge to scream.
Play dead and we might make it out of here, he thought.
He realised that the old woman had pulled down one of the racks of clothing as she fell. The clothes were covering him and most of her.
He tried to move as carefully as he could, but decided it didn’t matter; the maelstrom of bullets and screams was still raging around the store.
Pulling the tracksuit bottoms away from his face, he scanned for Rick, spotting him on the other side of the fat woman. He was on his back, unmoving, his legs trapped by the heavy metal clothes rack.
The gunfire cut off so suddenly that Mark thought he had gone deaf, but then there was a piercing scream that proved this belief to be folly.
A gunshot came a split-second later, silencing the cry.
From his limited field of vision he saw one of the soldiers coming down the stairs. Maybe it was the effects of terror-induced adrenaline, but the barrels of the shotgun he held looked just about big enough for Mark to crawl into.
The gunman strolled round the store, kicking the bodies. He continued on when the first two didn’t move.
Not so the third body, that of a middle-aged man, who, when kicked, rolled over, his hands clasped to a gushing wound in his leg.
The gunman roughly shoved the gun into the man’s face and pulled the trigger.
The blast seemed to echo round the shop.
As the man continued his macabre patrol, Mark prayed that he would just leave their corner alone. After all, his fat neighbour and Rick were both as still as corpses. With any luck he’d pass them by.
Mark watched the man blast two more survivors at close range, raising plumes of blood as the shells punched holes in their terrified faces. Mercifully, the clothing draped over his face hid his anguish from the killers.
The gunman glanced round in Mark’s direction, but then turned back towards the staff room and kicked a few more bodies, none of which moved.
Mark started to feel like he might be alright, but then he saw Rick’s eyes open. He watched his friend look down at his legs, then his mouth opened in a scream as he saw the dead fat woman lying mere inches away in a dark lake of blood.
He watched, helpless, as the gas-masked executioner’s head snapped round and glanced in Rick’s direction…
Want to know what happens next?
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About Jacob
Repeated viewings of The Shining as a child have left Jacob with a love of the dark and the disturbing that really comes to life in his writing.
He works to a soundtrack of blisteringly heavy music, and, like his beloved metal, his writing is brutal, uncompromising and intense.
You can find Jacob on Facebook (Jacob Rayne)
Twitter (@jacob_rayne)
E-mail [email protected]
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