Soft Target Read Online Free PDF Page A

Manhood was in flower down there on the killing floor and so was womanhood,and fellowhood, until there was nothing to be done but to sit down under the guns of the attackers and hope that they had grown bored with slaughter.
    But in all this motion, there was one figure of motionlessness. He was a gangly young man of an age perhaps between eighteen and twenty-five, more or less lounging against the fourth-floor railing of the balcony overlooking the amusement park area from the terminus of the corridor called Colorado.
    He wore jeans over New Balance hiking boots, a hoodie that actually said HARVA-D, the
R
having flaked off after numerous washings, and an old Vikings cap backward on his head. From his coloring and the perfect shape of his nose, most would have assumed a shock of blond hair lay under his cap, and they would have assumed rightly. His legs were crossed and he slouched against the railing, his arms crossed as he supported himself upon it. He looked like he was watching a baseball game or a parade or something. No tension showed in the muscles of his body under the clothes, no shock, no fear, nothing except the utmost in relaxed viewing.
    He was recognizing patterns. It was interesting to him that the Rio Grande team had been the most aggressive, and so they forced their flock into the center of the mall the soonest; meanwhile, the Colorado and Hudson driven reached almost simultaneously, and both mobs crushed together with much bumping and shoving. Finally, the laggards at Mississippi produced, and those folks were the most unfortunate, as all the prime real estate had been seized and they were left to the margins, which put them closest to the gunmen, the most apt to incur the whimsical displeasure and hair-trigger temper of the shooters, and therefore most at risk.
    Then he switched his attention to the throne in the center, where Santa had been whacked. From four stories, he could just barely make out the man’s ruined face and the pattern of blood spray across the satin plush of the throne. He was struck, nonetheless, by the considerable if de trop amusement factor in seeing the familiar icon socompletely, comprehensively dead. It seemed to make up for a lot. He hoped someone got a good picture of it, because as an image of his ambition, it seemed to say it all. It was one of those casual artifacts that nonetheless are freighted with communication, a piece of spontaneous art.
    He saw the image on the cover of a box: “
Dead Santa,
the Christmas Mall Carnage Game, for Microsoft Xbox Only.” It was pretty damn funny.
    The game had begun.

3:20 P.M.–4:00 P.M.
     
    T he shooting had stopped. Ray lay with Molly and several other women in the rear of a Frederick’s of Hollywood store on the second floor. Generic women’s bodies, truncated at neck and thigh, stood around in bikinis, leather corsets, underpants, pasties, but nobody thought there was anything remotely funny about it. Outside, the pedestrian traffic had disappeared.
    “Oh God,” said a girl, “Oh God, oh God, oh God, I can’t believe this is happening.”
    “I don’t want to die,” said another woman. “I have children. I can’t die. It’s not right.”
    “Please, ladies,” Ray said, “I’m no expert but you’ll be better off if you hold it down and get a grip. You can worry about how unfair it is later.”
    “He’s right, Phyllis,” someone said. “Shut up. Just be glad Milt and the kids aren’t here.”
    “I’m here to buy something to wear for his goddamn birthday! He
should
be here.”
    “It’s probably some freak with a gun,” said another. “The cops will get him. Don’t you think they’ll get him, mister?”
    “I heard more than one gun,” said Ray. “That’s what bothers me.”
    “I can’t get through. I have to call my husband. The phones are—”
    “It’s all jammed up,” Ray said. “Everyone in this mall who isn’t dead is trying to call home. Please, you’d be much better off not to worry about