3:58 P.M.
It’s like a video game. That’s what Cole Bond tells himself as he runs along the edge of the food court, sheltered by the overhang, past the bodies that lie crumpled on the linoleum floor.
That lady in the blouse who got shot first, she wasn’t real. None of this is real. It’s just an excellent animation. Maybe on one of these 3-D TV sets they have now. If he wanted, he could press the pause button. And if he turned around, his own couch would be at his back. He could get up and go to the fridge in the garage and get another beer.
He tries to tell himself that these bodies never existed outside the game. They never had real lives that got cut short. The coppery smell hanging in the air, that’s just his imagination.
When Cole’s feet slip in blood, it becomes harder to deny reality.
But he has to. Because if he acknowledges that all this is here and now and real, if he acknowledges what just happened with his two older brothers, then something inside Cole will break.
Ahead of him, a girl in one of those Muslim headscarves is trying to pull down Culpeppers’s metal security shutter. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.
Cole can’t do anything for the lifeless bodies on the floor, but maybe he can stop this surreal horror from happening to more people.