The Last Handful of Clover - Book 3: The Stone in the Stream

3.37 Down the Rabbit Hole

June 16, 2:20 pm

At that exact moment, as Richard and Justin were disappearing into Howard Gunderson, a spray of automatic gunfire mowed down a dozen people on South Temple.

Pil, Keith, and Billy were working their way east with the crowd, and they were less than three blocks from the hospital when Pil heard the shots. At first, he thought it sounded unreal, like a string of firecrackers had been lit a block ahead. The surrounding crowd, which had been surging steadily east, all froze in their tracks as if the sounds had turned them to stone. Only their heads moved, swiveling desperately from side to side, looking for the source of the gunfire, which echoed from the buildings as if it came from everywhere, all at once.

And then the screaming started.

Dropping to a crouch, and instinctively raising his tire iron, Pil looked back and saw Billy standing behind them, searching the crowd in every direction. They had just passed the Wasatch Elementary School on their right, but Pil couldn't see any sign of gunfire coming from that direction. The playground was mostly deserted, since the crowd around them was walking up South Temple itself. But any one of a dozen of abandoned vehicles could be shielding the gunman, so that meant the shots could be coming from almost anywhere.

At that moment, a second round of gunfire went off, and this time Pil got a clearer bead on the direction. It was from directly ahead of them, and less than a block up. And even as he whirled in the sound's direction, he saw people falling.

As that distant row of people dropped like bags of flour, and the rest ducked and scattered, what Pil saw terrified him.

Two elderly women were advancing toward them, both carrying what looked like automatic weapons, and both walking quickly and steadily forward. Once again, shots rang out, and this time Pil could see that both women were firing at once, like two knights on the back of a chessboard, mowing down the pawns in their way. The two women looked like they could have been school teachers or social workers, and Pil had an instant to wonder where they had found such enormous fire power. But they were marching rapidly toward the crowd and already stepping over the first of the dead bodies in the street. Barely three seconds had passed, and already the crowd had fallen into a panic. Almost as one, hundreds of people turned and started bolting back down South Temple, in the direction from which they had come. Mothers were pulling or carrying small children. Fathers were trying to shield their sons and daughters with their own bodies. And others, still unaware of the location of the shooters, were actually running directly toward them.

Pil grabbed Keith by the belt and pulled him toward the playground, fifty yards behind them, thinking at the very least they could get clear of the crowd, when Billy yelled.

"No, Pil! Not that way! Stay with the crowd. They're picking off the ones on the edge!"

Billy was right. The woman on the left swung suddenly toward the sidewalk and took out a half-dozen people who had made a dash for a side street. The other was already picking off some of the crowd that had surged into the parking lot, in the direction Pil had been ready to run. The possessed women were herding the panicked crowd back toward downtown. There were easily still a couple hundred people between them and the shooters, but already the crowd was so packed that people were tripping and smashing against each other in their desperation.

If someone stumbles, we're all dead, Pil thought, tightening his grip on Keith's belt. Nothing's going to stop this crowd. They'll run right over us...

They were right across from the playground, when the thing Pil had most feared happened to a couple with three small children in front of them. The father stumbled, and he went down with a two-year-old in his arms. He didn't release his wife's hand, and he pulled her down with him. The crowd swept away the two older children as the first of the panicked boots and sneakers trampled the three on the ground. In seconds, others fell as well, causing an instantaneous pileup of bodies. The screams of those being crushed were the only sounds that seemed louder than the automatic gunfire, which was growing quickly closer.