Jean-Patrick Manchette - The Mad and the Bad

“Murderer!” yelled Julie again, heightening the skepticism of the housewives.

She kept running, zigzagging among the shelves. As she proceeded she grabbed products and threw them on the floor. A store employee with a badge on his white cashier’s smock suddenly posted himself in her way, legs and arms spread like a goalie.

“Stop right there!” he commanded in a measured tone.

Julie delivered a head blow to his face. The girl’s hard skull struck the man’s chin, snapping his head back and causing him to collapse into a heap on the tiled floor. Julie leapt over him. He grabbed Peter and held on. Julie grabbed a stainless steel paring knife from a display and stabbed at the air above the head of the department manager. He immediately let go of Peter and curled into a ball, using his elbows to protect his eyes and his knees to protect his genitals.

“Police!” he cried in a falsetto voice.

“About time too!” said Julie, and a bullet passed through her right arm.

Thompson had decided that he could wait no longer. With stunning speed the store was transformed into a madhouse. More and more people began to run. A wake of detritus marked Julie’s trajectory through the aisles. Women were screaming. Several shopgirls had started ringing the little handbells they usually rang to attract a supervisor when they needed change or to check the identity of a customer wishing to pay by check. Above the hullabaloo, by way of background, floated the sweet yet cannonading tones of an old Joan Baez hit, piped in through speakers. The place was a bear garden.

Thompson stretched out his arm to fire, his stomach hurting so badly he felt as though he was being torn apart, and the figure of Julie wobbled in the SIG’s sights. The girl dropped to the ground. Thompson immediately revised his aim for a second shot through the delirious crowd. The round (a 9mm Parabellum) exploded the head of a frantic customer. The man was running. He put his hands out in front of him like a diver and executed a noisy belly flop on the floor of the store. Thompson shuddered. His stomach was a raging furnace. His nostrils dilated at the scent of gunpowder. He had paid no mind to the detonations, but all around him the crowd was going utterly crazy. People went on running and screaming in the line of fire between Julie sitting on the ground and the automatic still searching for her. Thompson could no longer see either Julie or Peter. He bounded down an aisle, knocking over an old woman who began to wail in terror. He trotted by Boys Apparel, his mouth full of bile. He heard a deafening explosion and assumed that Coco had decided to open up. Fragments of plastic flew from a display. The store was filled by an immense tumult. This is exciting, I am enjoying this, Thompson told himself as he spat gastric juice onto the ground. More and more people were getting down on the floor, huddling against the bottom shelves. Mothers were shielding their children by covering them with their bodies. The whole mass was shrieking. Thompson was doubled over with laughter.

Coco watched fragments of plastic toys spraying into the air along the path of his bullet. He was trembling. In his hand was an old Colt revolver, solid, crude, and with a tendency to shoot to the right. For a split second he caught sight of Julie and Peter down an aisle and he fired again, winging a carton of laundry detergent.

Coco was expecting people to tackle him. Instead, they got away from him as fast as they could, squawking and falling over one another. A granny lay three meters from him, her arms cradling her head and her legs beating a hysterical tattoo. She had varicose veins. Coco turned away and looked behind him towards the glass doors that gave on to the esplanade. People were going out, some of them on all fours. Others were running in. Coco fired twice into the doors and large segments of glass tumbled down and shattered. The crowd drew back and dispersed in an uproar.

“Thompson!” cried the thug. “Let’s blow.”

No reply could be heard above the hubbub. The Muzak stopped abruptly with a horrible screech. Someone had seriously jolted the turntable. Then a tremulous voice resounded from one end of the store to the other.

“Nobody move! Everyone lay on the floor! We are being robbed!”

Coco looked up in irritation and saw the rattled announcer, wearing a white overshirt, perched in a glassed-in compartment above the food section. He directed a round to the top of the man’s cubicle. The hero of the hour, cursing, dropped swiftly from his chair and disappeared from view.

“Moron,” observed Coco.

It is amazing how much can happen in twenty-five seconds. Coco heard Thompson firing, once, twice, three times. The screaming continued. The blond giant, now quite furious, circumvented Sports Gear and slipped down through Wines and Spirits.

“Thompson!” he called.

Julie popped into his line of sight, just by Cleaning Products. Her right arm was covered in blood. It looked as if she was wearing a high glove. With her left hand she lobbed a flaming bottle of denatured alcohol at Coco. The thug pressed the trigger of his big Colt and the round buried itself in the ceiling. Coco fell over backwards, uttering a shocked exclamation when his skull struck the floor. Close by him there was a sound like a lightbulb giving up the ghost and he found himself in the middle of a slick of blazing liquid. Little blue flames licked at his pants. Coco felt the hairs on his legs igniting. He put his Colt down on the floor and swatted his thighs in desperation. Julie had vanished. Bottles came whirling over from behind the liquor shelves, shattering around Coco and unleashing a veritable sea of fire. The hired man wrenched off his pants, jumped about frenziedly in the blaze, and burned himself as he retrieved his Colt. In his underwear he ran towards the exit. His legs were frying and he caught the smell of bacon emanating from his burnt skin.

“Run ahead! Run ahead!” cried Julie to Peter.

She was holding another liter bottle of alcohol, its neck flaming like a soldering iron. As she followed Peter, she doused a display of sweaters with fire. Eventually she turned and tossed the half-empty bottle randomly, as far away from her as she could, into the swirling smoke. It exploded. Screaming redoubled. Pushing Peter ahead of her, the young woman leapt over a patch of blue flames. A housewife crossed their path. Her skirt was on fire, as was the grocery cart she was pushing. The woman rammed into a stand with books and fell down along with it. The books caught fire. Weeping, the woman rolled into a ball.

On every side the cries grew hoarser. People were coughing. Indistinct figures stumbled over the wreckage or bent double amid the swirling smoke. Far behind her, Julie heard the doors through which she had entered shatter under the pressure of people in flight. A great gust of wind blew through the store from one end to the other. The flames shot up to the ceiling. The girl passed a squad of heroic department managers manning fire extinguishers. Another, ax in hand, was desperately hewing at a display rack.

All of a sudden Julie and Peter were outside, treading on broken glass. A crowd was gathering at a respectful distance. Escapees were streaming out of the store on either side of the girl. Women were breaking down. Some were being carried out in men’s arms, screaming and wriggling. The sidewalk was strewn with shoes and commodities. Julie and Peter dashed into the crowd, only to be greeted by helping hands.

“Are you hurt? And the lad?”

“It’s okay, we’re all right, thank you. .”

Julie strove to extricate them. Fortunately other victims came tumbling out, bemoaning their singed perms, and the pair pushed their way even deeper into the human maelstrom. They were out of the spotlight now. Concealing her bleeding arm as best she could, the girl threaded their way forward. The firehouse alarm wailed in the distance.