A screaming Goth girl ran over to Croft, randomly it seemed, and tried to liberate his gun from its holster. When he pushed her hand away from the leather clasp, she yelled, “Help me!” and clung to his arm. Two young men appeared from the direction she had come.
“Kitty, come on,” one of them said as they approached, “We just want to keep you safe.”
The Goth girl screamed again, and the uniformed cop who had joined their group swiveled and pointed his gun at the two other men. Jon could see that he was sweating profusely and the veins were standing out on his forehead.
“Come on, man,” one of the young men said, also noticeably sweating. As he did, he very unwisely moved toward the overwrought policeman.
“Guys!” Croft yelled. “Settle down!”
A big dog, with a leash trailing behind it, ran straight through the uneasy gathering, and in the confusion, the young man accidentally veered even closer to the cop, and the cop shot him. The Goth girl screamed even louder than before, and Croft finally did unclasp his holster.
As a large group of freaked-out people migrated into the space where Hegde and Dixon were standing, and his captors became preoccupied with them, Jon took off running to the west, in the direction of Mallory’s bar. He half-expected to be shot in the back for the first twenty seconds or so of his flight, and regretted that he couldn’t swing his arms freely to run faster. He heard several gunshots from various directions, but didn’t feel anything hit him and kept moving as rapidly as he could.
He slowed when he realized he was near the big bronze sculptures where Sturm had attacked him with a knife. He ran behind one of them and risked a look back. The Goth girl had managed to get Croft’s sidearm, or someone else’s, and was waving it wildly around her, fending off a small group of people that no longer included Hegde or Dixon, as far as he could tell. It was hard to see because people kept running by between him and that spot, but he wondered if the Chaos Crimes cops were fleeing the scene, too.
He took a moment to scan the park and its vicinity, and noticed other seemingly random scenes of bedlam and mayhem. He noticed how the largest groups of people were crowding into the buildings around the Square, or at least attempting to. Whether or not the sunlight was actually having a physical or psychological effect on them, they definitely wanted to get out of it.
One particular mob scene was taking place at the Gotham Security headquarters at Eleven Madison, on the east side of the park. Jon could see police and civilians, who were in the sun, shouting at the security guards who had formed a ragged line in the shade at the entrance to the building. Some of the civilians were throwing various objects in their direction. There hadn’t been any gunfire yet, probably because the GS sentries were ready to engage in it if needed.
Knowing that no such security existed at The Office, and that no one was currently pursuing him, Jon pushed himself off the statue and headed toward Mallory’s bar.
When he reached Fifth Avenue, on the west side of the park, he stopped to figure out the best way to get to her. The street was jammed both ways with cars and taxis, some of them occupied because people thought they would be safer inside of them, and some of them unoccupied because people thought they would be safer in a building. Horns were blaring, creating a cacophony of noise that almost drowned out the one created by screams of panic and shouts of rage. While studying the street, Jon could see some of the fearful citizens climbing into unoccupied cars, and even some trying to get into ones that were occupied, causing more chaos and violence.
To his left, the traffic jam at the intersection of Fifth and Broadway had spilled over into the large pedestrian patio called Flatiron Plaza. Motorists trying to bypass the jam had driven up onto the cement there, smashing into tables and chairs and umbrellas, and at least one pedestrian. Jon could see the victim’s body lying on the left side of the Plaza, since the cars were giving it space and jostling for other paths through the intersection. As Jon instinctively moved forward to help, one of the cars in the jam decided it didn’t want to wait any longer. It swerved out of the crowd of cars and ran right over the body, just to gain fifty feet or so on the others.
To Jon’s right there were several different-sized mobs fighting to get into the stores and restaurants to the north on Fifth Avenue, so it seemed that going straight across the street from where he was, and passing through General Worth Square, was the easiest way to get up Broadway to the bar. He took a deep breath and waded into the river of cars, jumping back at the sudden movements some of them made when space opened up ahead, and trying to steer clear of the altercations happening at others.
Jon made it through to the other side without incident, but then looked back across the street to see a greater danger approaching. Coming from inside the park, and moving in his general direction, was a group of about seven or eight uniformed cops who had banded together to restore order, or whatever passed as order in their strained psyches. They had formed a phalanx of sorts in order to be able to protect themselves from all directions, but also to do more than just protect themselves. One of the cops shouted into a small megaphone that “anyone perpetrating acts of violence will be shot on sight,” but they were shooting more than just violent people. As Jon watched, a woman in a Gotham Security uniform approached them peacefully from the left, as if she just wanted to talk to them, and two of the cops on that side fired about five rounds into her, without any hesitation.
Jon wasn’t sure where the cops were heading, but it occurred to him that they might be making a wide circle around the Flatiron in an attempt to restore some degree of control to the area. Whatever their intent, which was probably capricious because of the effects Dayfall was having on them, Jon knew that he didn’t want them to see his handcuffs or recognize him, because he doubted he would survive the encounter. So he looked around for a hiding place, and ducked behind a big umbrella that had provided cover for one of the tables in the little square and had fallen on its side.
As he crouched behind the umbrella, and tried over the din to hear signs of which direction the cops might be moving, he starting noticing for the first time that the wound beneath his chin was throbbing, and it seemed now to become more and more painful as he thought about it. He reached up and touched it gingerly, finding that it wasn’t bleeding out, but was decidedly moist and sticky. It hurt even more when he touched it, and especially when his head jerked down involuntarily because a series of gunshots split the air not far from him. He peered out carefully from the side of the umbrella and saw that the vigilante cops were now in the middle of Fifth Avenue, and were shooting anybody who was jostling to get into a car, or trying to move theirs in an aggressive fashion.
Jon turned away from the carnage on the street and thought about making a run for it from behind the umbrella, toward Mallory’s bar. He looked for other cover in that direction and saw the big monument to General Worth, from whom the little square had gotten its name. It was a fifty-foot high granite obelisk with a thick base that had two bronze reliefs, one of a man on a horse and one of something else that Jon couldn’t identify. The monument was surrounded by a little patch of grass with a small cast-iron fence around the outside of it. And right in front of the fence sat a young woman who was sobbing and cradling the body of an older man.
Jon tensed his body and readied to leave his crouch and hiding place, planning to run to the other side of the monument as fast as he could. But then he looked back at the young woman on the ground at the foot of the monument.
It was Mallory.