Mitchell rehearsed where he needed to go and walked across the parking lot to the entrance. He used an earbud to listen to the scanner in his back pocket under his jacket. The paintball gun was tucked into his waistband along with a can of pepper spray. He was in full-on Mitch mode.
He reached the last row of cars before crossing the road in front of the store. Through the glass doors he could see a man about his height with a stocky build acting as the greeter. Mitch began to bring his hand toward the can of pepper spray. As the doors whisked open, he shot a glance into the police car. It was empty. That wasn’t good.
The doors opened and the greeter looked at him. Mitch gave him a nod. The greeter was halfway into returning the nod when his face changed. Mitch pulled the pepper spray out with his right hand and shot him in the face with a blast. “Sorry, bud.”
The greeter screamed and then wiped instinctively at his eyes. His arms lashed out trying to find him. Mitch ducked under his grasp and ran past him into the store.
A young man in his teens with a shaved head and a pierced lip looked out from the checkout counter and came toward him. Mitch switched the pepper spray into his left hand and pulled out the paintball gun. He fired two balls into the young man’s face, covering his eyes with paint.
The cashier, a thin woman with a long ponytail, jumped up on the counter and snarled. Mitch shot her once in the face before she leaped at him. The paintball didn’t faze her. He shot her in the eyes with the pepper spray and continued running into the store. She fell on her side, knocking over a candy rack, and screamed.
Where was the police officer? This had Mitchell worried. If the cop saw him from far enough away and told him to freeze, he could drop him with one bullet if Mitchell tried to run. While the rage made people more deadly with their own bodies at short range, they seemed to lose all mechanical aptitude for things like door handles and guns.
Mitch ran toward the hardware department. As he ran past rows of shelves, he shot a quick glance for other shoppers and to look for the cop. Not that he wanted to run into him, he just needed to know where he was.
Mitch reached the hardware section and grabbed a bucket to throw stuff into. The paint he needed was behind glass. Mitch placed the pepper spray and paintball gun into the bucket and picked up a ladder. He smashed the front of the case, sending sharp glass shards everywhere. He grabbed a few different colors, including the one he needed. He ran down another aisle and found an angle grinder. Mitchell impulsively reached for the cheapest one before Mitch reminded himself that price really wasn’t an option at that point in time.
He ran to another aisle and grabbed an extension cord. He poked his head into the main aisle and saw the greeter, the pierced teenager and the cashier running in his direction. It was clear that they couldn’t see where they were going but something else, most likely Mitchell’s scent, was driving them forward.
Mitch ran back the opposite way and took the aisle farthest from them. He was about to go into the boating section to grab letters for the power boat he was going to steal and then froze. He cursed himself for being stupid. If he grabbed boat letters, they’d know that night what he was up to. There would be police swarming every marina as soon as they saw the surveillance video and looked at what he stole.
He needed to think of something else to use that wouldn’t be obvious. He ran back down the aisle he just came from and ran face first into the stocky greeter. The man’s thick fingers grabbed him by the neck. Mitch kicked him in the balls as hard as he could. The greeter didn’t flinch.
The teenager with the piercing lunged at Mitchell, grabbing him around the waist. The three of them fell to the ground. Mitch managed to knee the teenager in the chin and kicked him in the chest, sending him backward.
The greeter was still choking Mitchell and bringing his teeth in to bite him. Mitch’s hands grabbed at the shelves, trying to find something to use as a weapon. He felt a heavy box and grabbed it. He slammed it into the side of the greeter’s face as hard as he could. The greeter didn’t relent. Mitch hit him again just above his eye, splitting it open. Blood poured down his face, but he didn’t stop.
Mitch brought his knees up to his chest and kicked out at the man. He kept his legs pressed against the other man and kept shoving. He finally slipped out of his grasp.
Mitch scrambled backward on the floor on his backside and looked for something else to use as a weapon. The teenager crawled toward Mitchell’s foot. Mitch kicked him in the face.
The greeter jumped at Mitchell again. This time Mitch pulled himself to the side by grabbing the edge of a shelf. The man hit the tile next to him. Mitch used his free hand on the shelf to pull himself up. As he leaned on it, the shelf came loose and fell on top of the greeter, sending a pile of toolboxes on him.
That wasn’t going to stop him. Mitch looked at the box in his hand; it was for a kitchen fire extinguisher. Mitch pulled it out of the box and yanked the safety free. He sprayed the other men directly in their faces, covering them in a cloud of white powder.
Mitch found his bucket of stolen merchandise and ran to another section. He found some rolls of black electrical tape and shoved them into his bucket. He stepped out into the aisle and saw the ponytailed cashier approaching. Mitch pulled out the paintball gun and shot her twice in the face and ran back to the automotive section. Five more people were coming from the other side of the store. They were 30 yards away and gaining.
Mitch looked around for another weapon. There was a stack of motor oil to his left. He set down his bucket and pulled the fish knife from his waistband. He started stabbing holes in cans and throwing them between himself and the people running at him. A heavy man wearing a football jersey ran over one of the cans and his heel slipped on the oil. He lost his balance and pulled down a display of 2-liter soda bottles with him. A tall stock clerk jumped over the oil spill and came charging at Mitchell.
Mitch grabbed a can from the display and just hurled it at his head. The can hit the man in the cheek, but he kept running. Mitch threw another can at his head and missed. Desperate, Mitch slid the whole display of motor oil onto the ground, covering the closing gap between them. The man’s foot slipped on one of the cans and his face slammed into the pile with so much force a can popped open, spewing oil like blood splatter.
Mitch could see other people getting closer. He wouldn’t be able to fight them all off. He ran toward a pair of double doors in the back of the store.
He entered a long storeroom. He felt a shudder as he remembered what happened in the department store. Mitch wanted to block the doors but didn’t see anything to use, so he ran down the aisle, pulling large boxes onto the floor behind him.
Halfway to the exit, he could hear the double doors open behind him. His pursuers struggled through the boxes. To Mitch’s right he saw a fire ax and a fire hose. He reached for the ax and then noticed an electrical power box. Mitch set down his bucket and used two hands to slam the ax into the cable above the power box.
The lights went off. He could hear footsteps and snarling getting closer. Fuck. Mitchell realized that they didn’t need sound to find him. They could still follow his scent. He was blind. They weren’t.
Mitchell held the ax ready to slam it into anything that came close.
Damn it! He knew hitting someone with the blade would kill them. Self-defense or not, that would be murder. Mitchell turned the ax around so the blade was under his hand. He’d use it like a club but not a bladed weapon. Concussions were fair game.