John Birmingham - Without warning

He hopped out of the vehicle and tried to flag down somebody to ask what had happened. It had to be a problem with the food bank, but nobody would stop. A couple of young men abused him when he tried to block their path.

‘Get out of the way, you crazy old fuck! D’you wanna get killed too?’

And then he realised that the crackling, popping sound he could hear was gunfire. Shit.

Kipper jumped back into his truck, but before stomping on the gas, he redialled Barney, who answered on the second ring.

‘What’s happening, boss man?’

‘Something’s gone wrong, Barn. Very fucking wrong. I’m about two blocks from Costco and I can hear shots and there’s all sorts of people running past me. Some of them bleeding.’

A string of oaths burst out of the earpiece.

‘It sounds like the cops are coming, but get on the phone anyway. Make sure they get here before the army – those assholes should have been here already. If the army turn up now, they’re just as likely to kill anyone they see moving… Oh, and send some ambulances, too. I think we’re gonna need lots of ambulances.’

At that moment, a weeping woman ran past, holding up one hand from which a couple of fingers had clearly been removed by a gunshot. Kipper had no idea how she kept going, given the amount of blood she was losing.

Tench didn’t answer. He’d already hung up.

Kipper’s head was reeling and he felt distinctly ill. This was his fault. The food banks had been his idea, a way to ensure that the aid shipments coming in from across the Pacific were distributed in a rational, effective manner. It wasn’t the sort of thing he should have been involved with; as the city engineer, he already had a full dance card handling the utilities. But the elected councillors had frozen like rabbits on the road and they’d let him run with the program. He’d personally negotiated the use of the Costco facilities with company management, who’d assigned dozens of their own stock-control specialists to the job and cleared their warehouse space of any non-essential items. He and Barney had been expecting all sorts of teething problems on the first day, but nothing like this.

Heather. An image of his nervy intern sprang up unbidden: a big pair of Bambi eyes staring out at him from under a short blonde bob, as her hands twisted in her lap like small white otters, constantly moving over and around each other.

‘Oh fuck,’ he muttered, stamping on the accelerator and punching the horn. The F-100 leapt forward, scattering the mob immediately in front of it.

Many of the people running towards him still paid no heed to his truck, however, in their desire to flee whatever had happened at Costco, forcing him to slow down some. By the time he made South Bradford Street, the crowds were thinning out, with most people having already escaped the scene. He rolled down his window and listened for gunfire, but heard only screams and cries and the growing wail of sirens.

Kipper threw the pick-up onto the footpath and into the parking lot at the northern end of the giant wholesale warehouse. Immediately he saw bodies, a lot of them lying still, and people who were so badly wounded they could not flee. But no shooting. Costco warehouse staff were everywhere, easily identifiable by their brightly coloured vests, many of them tending to the injured. Of the army, who were supposed to have provided a security detail, there was no sign. Nor of the cops and other emergency services, although he could hear them on approach.

Kip turned off the engine and stepped down warily. His senses seemed to be unnaturally alive, and even though this part of the city was a grey industrial area, he could never recall seeing colours so vibrant as the red and blue of the giant Costco sign high up on the building. His hearing too was amped up, with every cry and moan disturbingly clear. Small stones crunched on the tarmac beneath his feet; the engine block of the F-100 ticked loudly as it cooled down. And he gagged as the smell of violent death flooded his nostrils.

Barney Tench’s car, an old mud-splattered Chevy CIO, came flying up the road and screeched to a halt under the tree at the entrance to the lot. The squeal of his tyres caused some people to jump and shy away a few steps. Barney climbed out and raised one massive hand, pointing towards the warehouse. Kipper saw Heather standing there, a small, forlorn figure in blue jeans and a Minneapolis Twins sweater. Even from a distance, Kip could see she was shaking violently. The two men hurried over to her, picking their way through the carnage.

‘Heather! Yo, Heather!’ Tench called out.

She didn’t seem to hear him at first, but her slack features became animated when she finally recognised her colleagues. She immediately burst into tears as Kipper folded the quivering young woman up in his arms.

‘It’s all right, kid. Everything’s gonna be fine. It’s all right.’

He didn’t attempt to question her for at least two minutes. Barney stood by and occasionally patted her shoulder, but obviously felt the need to be doing more.

‘Kip, I’m gonna see if I can scare up somebody from the company,’ he suggested. ‘See if they can tell me what happened.’

‘Good idea,’ agreed Kipper. ‘I’ll be here. You got the cops and the ambulance, right?’

‘Done deal.’

In fact the first squad cars were already screaming to a halt at the edge of the lot, disgorging officers who emerged with guns at the ready, but unsure of where to aim them. Barney kept his hands held up in clear view and walked carefully over towards them.

‘Can you tell me what happened, Heather? Can you do that yet, darlin’?’ asked Kip.

A small, tentative nod was all he got in reply. Her whole body was still shaking uncontrollably. As she pushed away from him, she rubbed at her arms, folded them, and started rubbing again. ‘There was m-maybe a thousand people here, when I got in at six,’ she began, unsteadily. ‘They all had transit passes and ration vouchers, just like we planned.’

Heather stared around the car park as if seeing it for the first time. Her face contorted and Kip was sure she was about to start crying again, but she got it under control. Her voice was small and seemed forever on the edge of breaking into a thousand little shards.

‘Th… they were just fine, everyone waiting their turn, until these three pick-ups arrived.’ She pointed with a shaky hand at a couple of abandoned trucks a hundred yards away. Kipper could only see two of them, but didn’t interrupt her. ‘A-about a dozen guys,’ she stammered. ‘All armed, and they like, just pushed in.’

Kipper shook his head. ‘What about the army, the cops – where were they? There was supposed to be a platoon of soldiers here to help out.’

Heather volleyed back his headshake with one of her own, throwing in a nervous, exaggerated shrug for good measure. ‘I don’t know. But these guys, like I said, they just started pushing their way to the front, and some people are yelling at them, some are just getting out of the way. And this one guy, some big guy in a lumber-jacket, a big red lumber-jacket, he just steps in front of them and puts his hand up like a traffic cop or something.’

‘Okay,’ said Kipper. ‘Go on,’ he added in a quiet voice.

‘Well, one of these jerks, from the pick-ups, he had like an axe handle or something, and he just butt-swipes this dude with it. Totally wipes him out. He goes down and then the shooting starts.’

‘The pick-up truck guys, the looters, they started shooting people?’ asked Kipper, his voice rising.

‘Nope. They got shot. Or at least the one with the axe handle did. He dropped the lumberjack dude, looked like he was about to start pounding on him with that club, next thing you know, somebody blew him away. Two or three shots – I’m not sure. But there’s blood everywhere, people screaming and then the real shooting started.’