4:02 P.M.
After Miranda rolls under the metal pulldown shutter, it hits the floor with a bang. Her heart leaps in her chest like a dying fish flopping on a boat deck.
Pressing her lips together, she forces her lungs to still as she strains to hear if Parker will be shot. The bike-locked hall he ran to is just around the corner, about a hundred feet away.
She hears running footsteps and muffled shouts and screams, layered over the blare of the fire alarm, on the far side of the shutter. But no shots. What is she hearing? More victims? The bad guys? Maybe even the cops?
Finally Miranda lets herself breathe again, a series of hitching gasps. She pushes herself to a sitting position. Her body feels heavy and clumsy, a sack of flesh she can barely animate.
There are four other teens in the store. On her left is the dark-skinned girl in a turquoise headscarf, the one who just lowered the metal shutter. She works here, at Culpeppers. Her name, Miranda remembers, is Amina. Her eyes are wide enough that they are rimmed with white. “This can’t be real,” Amina says, more to herself than anyone else. “This can’t be happening.”
On her right, the guy who urged Miranda under the shutter stands with his fists clenched. His dark hair falls over his eyes, and he holds his mouth so tightly that his lips have disappeared. He’s dressed in jeans and a plain black T-shirt.
The girl whose mom just died leans against the counter, head down, sobbing wordlessly, high-pitched huh-huh-huhs. Heard just by itself, Miranda thinks, it might almost sound like laughter.
The busboy sits on the floor, his back against the counter. His eyes are closed, his face taut with pain. He’s pressing his palms on the front and back of his thigh, over the places where the bullet came and went. Miranda squints to read the name tag on his green apron. JAVIER.
Javier opens his dark eyes and looks at her. Despite his efforts, blood is already puddling on the white linoleum.
“We should try to stop that bleeding,” Miranda says to no one and everyone. Grabbing two acid-yellow sweatshirts from a stack, she scuttles forward on hands and knees.
Javier shifts his hands so she can sandwich his leg between the two sweatshirts. Then she ties the arms of the bottom sweatshirt over the top one.
“Thank you.” His bloody fingers squeeze her palm. His eyes are so dark, they don’t seem to have pupils.
Amina is staring at Miranda. Her eyes narrow. “Wait—it’s you!” Her tone is almost indignant. A month ago, Amina caught her walking out of the store with a foil-lined Culpeppers shopping bag filled with stolen cashmere sweaters. As a result, Miranda has been banned from the store.
People are out there dying, and this girl is still thinking about the rules. Miranda starts to laugh. She can’t help it. The sound flirts with hysteria. It’s too loud. What if someone out there, one of the men with guns, hears her over the fire alarm?
Putting her hand over her mouth, she tries to stifle herself. She can taste Javier’s blood, metallic and salty. She wants to throw up. She wants to scream, she wants to cry. She wants to be anyplace but here.
When Miranda finally speaks, she manages to keep her voice to a half whisper. “What are you going to do, make me go back out there again?”
“No,” Amina says. “Of course not.” She looks away, her mouth twisting.
Miranda looks away too. The rich girl is lost in her own world. She locks her fingers in her hair as she mutters, “Oh my God, Mom, please, no, no, no. Don’t be dead, Mom. You can’t be dead!”
The guy who urged Miranda to roll under the shutter steps closer. “Wait—was that your mom who got shot first?”
The wailing pauses, and the girl’s eyes flash to him. Her expression is a wordless answer.
“I am so sorry,” the guy says, wincing in sympathy. His eyes are light gray. “That’s awful.”
The girl chokes out, “But what if she’s not dead? What if she’s just hurt? I should go back out there.”
“Look—” Javier begins, then interrupts himself. “What’s your name?”
“Grace.” Her eyes dart back and forth between him and the security shutter.
“Trust me, Grace. She’s dead.” His voice is as flat as his words, with only a trace of an accent. “Your mama is dead.”
“How can you know that?”
“She’s not the first person I’ve seen die.” He closes his eyes again.
Miranda exchanges a curious glance with the other guy. What does this Javier person know, anyway? Then she realizes that she knows something too. She swallows and says, “I’m sorry to say this, but I think Javier’s right. I saw one of them come down the escalator. He was killing anyone who was still alive.”
“Even if my mom is dead, I can’t just leave her out there.” Grace’s voice is high-pitched, distorted to a quaver. “That’s my mom.”
“But that’s not your mom,” the pale-eyed guy says in an urgent whisper. “Not anymore. That’s just—just a shell.” His mouth turns down hard on the corners. “And she would want you to live.”
“Who are you and what would you know about what my mom would want?”
“I’m Cole. And that’s what any parent would want for their child.”
“Well, Cole, you don’t know what my mom would want. Maybe she wouldn’t want to be alone. You guys don’t know anything about her. Whether she’s dead, what she would want…” Grace takes a step toward the shutter.
Miranda grabs her wrist. “If you go back out there, you’ll put all of us at risk.”
“But they’ve stopped shooting.” Grace tries to pull free, but Miranda won’t let her.
“They’ve stopped because anyone left out there is dead.”
Suddenly the fire alarm cuts off.
Miranda holds up her free hand. “Shh!”
Everyone freezes. From outside, in the direction Parker ran to, comes a series of sounds. Rattling metal. Announcements made through what sounds like a megaphone. Miranda can make out some of the words. Something about the world listening. Something about giving up their phones. And then they all flinch at a sound. It’s muffled, but it sounds like a shot.
“We have to get out of here,” Miranda whispers. “If they figure out we’re in here, they’ll kill us.”
Amina points. “The metal security shutter will protect us.”
Javier opens his eyes. “That don’t mean anything. I’ve seen bullets go right through car doors.”
Miranda doesn’t want to know how Javier knows these terrible things. She points toward the rear of the store. “Where does that door go to?”
“To the service corridor.” Amina’s face lights up. “Which eventually leads to an exit.” She hurries over, pushes it open, and sticks out her head. But before anyone can think about following her, she yanks it closed again. When she turns back, she’s shaking so hard, her whole body trembles. “They’re killing people out there, too. There’s a body right there. I think it’s Linda from Pottery Barn.” She shakes her head in disbelief. “Linda!”
Everyone slumps as the strings of hope are cut. “Can they get in here from out there?” Miranda whispers.
Amina shakes her head. “Not unless they have a key for this store. And only employees have those.”
So the five of them can’t leave, but it’s not safe to stay, either. According to Javier, bullets could stitch through the metal shutter like it was tin foil.
“Everyone, turn off the ringers on your phone.” Cole slices his hand through the air. “We don’t want them to hear us.”
Miranda’s phone is already on silent. Closing her eyes, she forces herself to stop picturing how they are going to die. Forces herself to think. Three months ago, her school did a lockdown drill. She remembers sitting in the far corner of a dark classroom while someone out in the hall rattled the locked door. It was like playing hide-and-seek, holding your breath in the gloom and trying not to giggle. Fun, not frightening. Sure, you knew bad things went down in other schools, other places. But stuff like that always happened to someone else. It would never happen to you.
What had the sheriff’s deputy told them in that assembly? Now it comes back to her. To run if they could. To hide if they couldn’t. To fight back if they must.
With killers at both store exits, running is out of the question. They’re hiding now, but if Javier is right, sitting behind this metal roll-down shutter isn’t offering them much protection.
A man’s voice, just outside the shutter, makes her jump. Addressing himself to anyone hiding in the mall, he says that this is their one chance to leave. That he will let people go now and only now. And that if they stay and are found later, they will be killed. After a pause, he repeats himself, only he sounds farther away.
“Maybe we should open the shutter and go?” Grace whispers.
“No! We can’t trust them.” Cole’s voice breaks. “They’ll just kill us all.”
“But if we stay here and Javier’s right, that metal shutter isn’t enough protection,” Miranda says. “We need to get farther back from it.” She points. “Where does that other door go to?” She thinks she knows, but she’s not sure.
Amina follows her finger. “A storeroom.”
“Let’s go.” Miranda gets to her feet and looks at Cole. “Help me get Javier back there.”