The Men's Room

Three gunshots. Two close together, a pause of maybe three seconds, and then the third shot. 

Vern Abair dropped to the hard, cold floor wondering if this was it. He was so startled by the sounds that he just stopped thinking. Vern looked around and saw that a few more people were getting down on the ground or moving quickly away. There was screaming and some shouting but Vern couldn't tell if those were reactions or from people who'd been shot or maybe even whoever it was that was shooting. 

Some people ran a little down the mall and into open stores, some got up against the walls and storefronts and moved while crouching, away from where the sounds of the shots had come from. 

In immediate hindsight, Vern wished he'd gone a little farther down this side into the clothing store that was just ahead and to the left. It was a women's clothing store with a huge plate glass front filled with manikins and displays of blouses, dresses, hats, accessories like scarves and purses. Not much to shelter behind, but better than the nothing surrounding him here. 

The shots came from directly across the mallway, from the video and game store straight across and maybe 40 feet away. Between himself and the video store were two large potted tropical plants, a couple fancy garbage cans with stone-looking bases and some concrete benches set back to back, facing the storefronts, but that didn't feel like much cover from whoever or whatever was happening in the video store right now. 

Vern looked around to see what exactly was around him here. He was about five feet from the wall at the junction of two stores. There was a strip of commercial drywall that ran to the ceiling and on either side of the strip were frames containing the huge plate glass front walls of the stores. The frames looked like they were extruded aluminum. The floor beneath him was a polished and sealed concrete with some inlays of painted designs. He had a bag in his left hand with a shirt in it that he'd just bought at the The Men's Room store 200 feet back. 

He looked back in the direction he'd come and unbelievably, he could see people still milling about like it was a regular Saturday at the mall. The music was still playing, "Lady Madonna" by the Beatles. He could see people hurrying away from him down there and some people staring down toward him, pointing, puzzled as to what was going on.

Vern quickly turned his head to look farther up the mall, in the direction he had been moving, and saw the same scene reversed. People moving away past people pointing. But right here where he was, nothing was moving, at least not right now.

It had only been about 10 or 15 seconds since he'd heard the gunshots but it felt like he was wasting time. He started slowly crawling forward toward the women's clothing store to his left and then he heard.

"FREEZE, GET DOWN, GET DOWN!" Someone shouting, in a panicked, out-of-breath, voice. Vern dropped flat and tried to sink his bulky stomach beneath the surface of the floor and then he slowly looked up ahead, unsure. There were two policemen, at least he hoped they were policemen and not mall security, running down the sides of the walkway in his direction, guns out in front of them, 80 feet or so away. The cop on his side of the mallway, got to about 40 feet away and slammed on his brakes, skidding to a stop and kneeling between a potted plant and the wall. Vern couldn't see the policeman that had been coming down the other side because of the plants and kiosks in the way.

It was then that Vern heard the crackle of their portable radios as they muttered quickly into them and the staticky, unintelligible bursts of noise that responded. Thank God he was able to make out the "Roger" reply, that was helpful.

He should never have stopped crawling, he needed to get out of this position. He began a slow crawl again for the relative safety of the women's store and he was another two feet along before he stopped once again and held his breath.

"Fuckers! I said, shut up!" This was screamed in a man's voice from the video store. "Shut up!" 

"Please, please! Just let us go! We can't hurt you! We don't know you," a woman's voice pleaded. 

"Shut the fuck up! Now! Just shut up and let me think," the man's voice again, not quite so panicked this time.

Vern kept his face looking straight ahead at the floor. The voices sounded as though they were right at the large opening at the front of the store. He did not want to look at what was happening there for fear that the moment he looked up, that would be the moment when the guy would shoot somebody. Right in front of his eyes. Vern didn't want to see that. He didn't want to see somebody die in front of him. 

This wasn't like a movie. This was too close to him. 

"Let us call the paramedics for that man. Please! He's bleeding a lot. He's gonna die. You don't want that." It was the woman's voice again. Right on the other side of the benches. They must be in front, by the check-out counters. Vern had been in that video store plenty of times. It was called "VidStop," they had movies, video games and DVD players and even TV's. 

"Shut up. Let me think," the man said again, in a lower, calmer voice. 

Vern swiveled his head to see if he could see what was going on in the store. The bench was still in his way. He could see a part of the store front but not where the opening was and he couldn't see any people, but it was close.

Movement caught his eye and he looked ahead to see the policeman moving up to the next plant arrangement. Vern could hear sirens in the distance, and suddenly, like pheasants breaking cover from high grass, a man and woman in their 20's just appeared from amidst the potted plants in front of him and sprinted up the center of the mall toward where the police were hunkered down. Apparently the gunman was startled as well because there was another gunshot, this one deafening, from the front of the video store. Vern watched as the pair made it past the police and disappeared into a store. 

From farther up the mall, he could see additional police moving down the sides of the open space. Some of them were wearing black tactical vests, gloves, helmets and sunglasses and carrying short machine guns held up to their shoulders.

"Oh, Jesus!" Vern thought to himself. He really didn't want to be in the middle of something like this. He wasn't a good runner. He was too fat to hide in a mall. He just wanted to get out of here. He didn't even want the shirt anymore. 

"This is the Hayward County Sheriff's Department. You're surrounded. Throw out your gun and come out and you won't be harmed." This came from somebody at the other end of the mall with a bullhorn. There was a large electronic buzz and the Beatles stopped lamenting the plight of the busy Madonna. 

"Oh, Jesus!" This was going too fast, Vern thought. Couldn't they give him time to get into the clothing store? He had a cell phone in his pocket. He should pull it out and call 9-1-1 and tell them to wait. Why was he just thinking about the phone now? 

"Fuck you!" came the reply from the video store. "I've got hostages. Make a move and I'll shoot ‘em."

"Ah, Jesus! Slow down,” Vern thought. Why are they doing this? He heard the phone in the video store ring. OK, now they were calling him. Why couldn't they have done that first?  

"Answer the phone! We need to talk with you. Nobody else needs to get hurt here. Answer the phone." The guy with the bullhorn again. That was better. They should have started there. 

"I'm not ready to talk. Leave me alone." The guy with the gun yelled. Wait, Vern thought, I should be counting gunshots, maybe he only has six shots or something like that. For some reason, his mind went blank. How many shots had been fired? Vern's mouth was so very dry he couldn't swallow.

He looked back up the mall to see if it looked like the police saw him lying there. Did they know he was even there? Could they see him? They'd know he was just an innocent bystander, right? The police officers that he could see were making weird hand signs and looking at each other and pointing in different directions. Who's in charge here? Vern thought.

Suddenly, there was a piercing siren from somewhere in the video store. Vern saw a picture in his mind of the shelves with video game cartridges at the back of the store. He'd seen them many times when he'd been in there. Next to the shelves on the back wall, there was a door with a red sign that said, "Emergency Exit Only, Alarm Will Sound!" Someone had opened the door. Maybe going out, maybe coming in. 

Instantly, Vern heard another gunshot from the front of the store and the woman screamed. Then more shots, with a different sound to them and a split second later, small cans blew up right in front of him with bright flashes and some kind of white smoke pouring out. Tear gas! He tried to breathe in but could only cough out. His eyes began stinging and burning. He heard running footsteps and commands shouted from both ends of the mall coming toward him and thought, this wasn't good. Should he try to get out of here or just stay here? 

The choking smoke stayed close to the ground by him and he couldn't breathe. Vern Abair had no choice.

He tried to yell but could not take in enough air to make any sound except coughing. So he stood up as quickly as he could and raised his hands high above his head. He tried to open his eyes to see what was happening around him but tears were pouring out of his eyes and snot was running out of his nose so fast he could only cough and try to catch air through his open mouth.

Men's voices shouted, "GET DOWN, GET DOWN!" 

He felt something soft bump against the left side his head as he heard several gunshots near him. He realized he still had the bag with the shirt in his hand. He tried to drop it and felt two strong punches in his chest, knocking him to the ground face first. His face hit the floor hard. 

A moment later, with all the world filled with shouting and noise and choking gas, he felt a knee with a Kevlar knee guard drop onto his upper back and rough hands pull his hands together behind his back and put handcuffs on him. 

What little breath he still had in him blew out of his mouth with mucus and a little bloody foam. 

He kept his eyes shut and thought, "Oh, Jesus! Let this be over."

And it was.

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