Main doors.
He’s there. Elbows the shiny steel plate automatic door opener. Rifle up, alert position, gun butt by his shoulder. Just like SWAT guys on TV. Staring over the barrel. Focused. Sliding past the heap of dead men blocking his way down one ramp. Past the Army jacketed meat slumped in a wheelchair nearly blocking the stairs by the top of the second ramp where the shooter had pushed it.
Stairs are tricky while aiming over an assault rifle, so he SWAT glides down the second ramp to the heap of bodies, women on top fucking bitches.
“YOU CAN’T FUCK!”
Two quick shots at that in the parking lot sound.
The shooter lowered his rifle, the better to see.
Gunshots ringing in his ears, the ringing smoke detector back in the food court: he doesn’t hear the whirr of rubber tires on cement as coming behind him, the wheelchair bearing Army-jacketed meat rolls rushes down the ramp.
Splashing hits his left side and back, head, stings his eyes. That splash hit him from off the ground and the heap of dead women.
Stinks, what—
SMACKED in his face with an empty plastic orange bucket pumpkin.
Eyes burning, the blur of some woman swinging a pumpkin to hit him again/feint, he knew that was a feint, blocked her true attack kick with the assault rifle and knocked her down Why do I smell? His gun barrel sought the her to kill.
In the shooter’s new behind him:
Warren’s blood smeared on his forehead.
Warren’s Army jacket worn for Trick Or Treat.
Condor launched himself from the rolling wheelchair.
Yelled so the shooter whirled.
Tossed the ‘bucks cup full of wet into the shooter’s face.
Tripped with inertia from his wheelchair leap.
Condor crashed to his knees, heard the falling on concrete of that cup.
That paper cup he’d stuck into the stream spewing out of the bullet-punctured steel tank under a car that sheltered him and Malati and a child who wanted to be called Punkin and nodded all the way down into her bones that she could she would she’d do what she had to do even if she wasn’t ‘posed to.
The ‘bucks cup he’d used to bail that spewing stream into Punkin’s pumpkin bucket. Bucket full, he filled the cup to carry with him. Crouched low so the robot shooting inside the rest stop facility couldn’t see him as like in some don’t spill Fourth of July picnic contest, he frog-ran to the level concrete right outside the main doors. Purple smoke mushroomed inside the food court. Condor set the cup down. Don’t spill! He pulled the Army jacket off Warren. Got his black leather jacket on the dead vet. Smeared blood from Warren’s third eye on his own forehead. Grunted the body onto the heap of corpses blocking the other ramp. Plunked himself into the wheelchair.
Malati, careful not to spill the liquid from the pumpkin she carried, fumbled where Condor’d told her, the throat-shot bus driver’s shirt pocket—Got it!
Tossed a tumbling glint of silver to the man in the wheelchair.
Malati draped herself over the murdered teachers.
Punkin yelled like she was ‘posed to.
Death stalked down the ramp.
Got ambush doused with gasoline.
That stinking wet killer jerked Condor off his knees.
Condor pushed the bus driver’s open silver cigarette lighter against the shooter and thumbed the wheel.
WHUMP! A fountain of fire engulfed the man who’d come to kill and die BUT NOT LIKE THIS!
Screaming. A human torch blazed the morning.
Dropped between the burning man’s wobbling feet, Condor jerked the combat knife from its ankle sheath — slammed the blade up into the crease of shooter’s groin.
Blood sprayed Condor, wiped on the Army jacket as he scrambled away.
The burning man staggered.
Collapsed in a flaming heap.
Sickening sweet stench of baking crackling flesh and gasoline.
Condor, hands and knees scrambling up the ramp past the overturned wheelchair to where his black leather jacket clad the body of Warren.
Helicopters.
Chopping the air, racing in low, fast and hard to kill or capture who’s crazy.
Whoever’s crazy.
“Remember,” the soldier who’d had a gun and was named Doug had said: “We can do anything we want as long as nobody ever knows who we are.”
From his knees, Condor yelled: “Punkin!”
Trashed his way free of the bloody Army jacket.
“Punkin! All clear! FREE BIRD! FREE BIRD!”
There! Running toward the main entrance from between parked cars.
Her face not gonna cry and gonna run, run, RUN!
Condor—Vin, my name is Vin—wiped his face with Warren’s jacket, saw the smear of blood, hoped he looked close to whatever survivor’s normal was.
The seven-year-old girl with curly brown hair and red-white-and-blue clothes ran toward the silver-haired man who’d revolutionized her ’posed to’s.
Condor pulled his black leather jacket off Warren.
Maneuvered that dead vet’s arms and body enough so Warren wore the gas and blood-stained Army jacket he’d died in.
Shrugged himself into his own black leather jacket with its weight of legends.
Collided with and swept a little girl into his arms.
Swooping roar over them as helicopters flew a draw-fire pass.
Malati stumbled toward them.
The package, her responsibility, his arms wrapped tight around the don’t you dare call her a little girl, that silver-haired Condor told Malati: “You spy, you lie.”
Then he held the seven-year-old so they stared into each other’s eyes.
“Punkin, I’m so proud of you! You did it! You did everything right! You saved so many people and us, you saved you and me and Malati. You’re so great! But Punkin: there’s one more giant big ‘posed to.”
She nodded with all her heart.
“You can’t tell the whole truth. The real truth. You gotta tell the good truth. The guy who you helped, the man who saved you, the guy who got the gas from the shot-up car, rolled over there and did it, the guy who burned and stabbed the bad guy…
“It was him.” Condor nodded to Warren’s body. “The guy in the Army jacket. That’s the most anybody else probably saw. That’s all you say or tell anybody ever. He did it. Got the gas. Tossed it, lit the monster on fire. He rolled his wheelchair away to escape, that bad guy squeezed off a wild shot. Must have hit the Army jacket guy, you don’t know. You only know you made it and you did what you were ‘posed to.”
Every good lie needs a why.
“Punkin,” said the silver-haired man, “me, Malati, we’re spies. No matter what, we’ve got to be a super secret that nobody but you ever knows. You can only say that we were here with you. Just people who ran and hid and didn’t get shot. We’re all telling the same story with the true part being what you did. But with the wheelchair guy. You, her, me: we’re a cross our hearts forever secret.”
Punkin nodded her solemn vow.
Must stay secret spies in that rampage of her life made as much sense as anything else anyone ever told her.