Next Day of the Condor Read Online Free PDF

he’s damaged.
    The shooter tossed something like a rock toward the FIRE EXIT side of the facility.
    Pop!
Purple smoke grenade,
rescue me
surplus, that store off the Interstate.
    “The grenade’s to scare us,” said Condor. “Keep the people inside.”
    Death’s robot faced the stairs and ramps up to the main doors.
    Malati stared at the huddled-beside-her silver-haired man in the black jacket who knew, who had to know: “What are we going to do?”
    “Be crazier.”
    “’Easy for you to say.”
    The robot of death. At the bottom of the ramp where the bus driver sprawled over another smoker’s corpse.
    Marching out of the main doors: Two women. Teachers. Marching down the ramp straight toward the shooter. Commanding: “Stop! Stop this!”
    Behind them, running down the other concrete ramp:
    Kids
, scared, crying, stumbling down to the parking lot as the young man from Teach For America and some other citizen urge the twenty-one children forward, go, run,
run!
    The main doors whir open.
    Out rolls Warren.
    Wheelchair. Army jacket.
Fuck you
face.
    Ready to charge. Ready to be
diversion
. Ready to take it to you, motherfucker.
    Keep going kids! Run, run!
    The shooter’s stopped. Standing still. Assault rifle hanging on its sling.
    Two teachers close on him, the
maybe maybe
prayer on their faces.
    The robot drew his handgun
Bam! Bam-Bam!
    Schoolteachers collapsed in a heap atop a bus driver.
    Tidy
you want me to be
tidy
you want
tidy
I give you
tidy
!
    Warren yelled and spun himself
charge
onto the ramp.
    Bam!
A third eye blasted into Warren.
    The shooter aimed two-handed toward the main doors where Teach For America and some other guy lined up in the V front sight of a 15-shots semi-automatic pistol.
    Count five blasted rounds into those two bodies, dropped them in a pile,
tidy
.
    Wheelchair, carrying dead Warren, obeying inertia, rolling down the ramp—
    Stopped
as the shooter slammed his gun bore on the ribs under the Army jacket.
    Why waste a bullet on this Army jacket guy with a red mush forehead?
    He shoved the wheelchair. His force sent it freewheeling up to the flat landing outside the main doors. The burdened wheelchair spun sideways, stopped.
    As twenty-one children stampede amidst parked cars.
    The assault rifle sprayed zinging lead toward them.
    But kids are short.
    Bullets crashed through cars’ windows, punched into steel chassis.
    The shooter dropped to the ground.
    Stared under rows of parked cars. Undercarriages of mufflers and pipes. Tires propped the cars at least six inches off the pavement and made a slit of scenery.
    There, ‘few rows away
: running children’s legs and feet.
    The assault rifle fired a long sweep of bullets under the cars.
    Zing
ripped out from the under the metal that hid Condor and Malati, cut right between where they were crouched, right past the knocked-over ‘bucks cup she’d
only God knows why
just let go of. Slugs slammed into another parked car, punched a hole in one door and out the other. A tire blew. Bullets ricocheted off parking lot asphalt.
    Is that smell
—
    Two kids. Frozen in the lane between parked cars. Bullets zinged past their legs—one wore brown cords his mom picked out, one wore her favorite blue jeans.
    The girl pushed her classmate away from the shooter: “Split up!”
    She turned to run the other way than the boy so the bad guy couldn’t—
    Saw two crouching-down adults waving their hands.
    Ran between the cars, into the arms of the Grampa guy.
    “Got you!” he said as she burrowed her face into his leather jacket.
    No wet no red she’s not shot
. Condor saw a Halloween pumpkin bucket looped through the belt on her blue jeans, a red jacket, white blouse. “
It’s not a dorky costume!
” she’d insisted that morning as she did what she was ‘posed to and ate her scrambled eggies: “
It’s the idea of the flag and it’s ’posed to make you think!
” But that glitter on her seven-year-old face?
That,
she said, “
that’s me.
”