Three minutes.
I begin to doubt the wisdom of having each of us approach from a
different angle, unaccompanied. It’s a long walk into town, long
enough for those pesky, shoulder-perched better angels to start
making sense.
This is your
last chance to walk away…
Everyone else
will chicken out, and you’ll walk in there alone. They’re probably
not even at their marks. Then you’ll go to prison, alone.
I know that
this is what’s going on in their heads, because the exact same
thing is going on inside my own. Two minutes. It will take me
thirty seconds to get from this lamppost to the entrance of the
shop. One minute, forty-five seconds. If the others don’t leave
their marks with thirty seconds to spare, I’ll be in the shop by
myself. One minute, thirty seconds. Even with a gun in my hand, I
don’t cut an intimidating enough presence to act out the opening
phase on my own. One minute, fifteen seconds. I pull the balaclava
down. My face disappears.
With slow,
deliberate steps, I move out into the open. Having the mask on
means that people will already be gazing at me with inquisitive
eyes. This is not just paranoia; I can see the cars slowing down as
they pass by. Usually they speed up, as though getting hit at a
measly twenty-five miles-per-hour isn’t a harsh enough punishment
for jaywalking. It was for a good reason that we’d planned on
moving from the go-points to the shop at high speed; right this
second, a passenger in any one of those cars could be phoning the
authorities. Every second I add to the walk over is a second less
that we’ve got to herd out the stragglers and get the target
building - and the hostages - locked-down. The slow walk seems like
a necessary evil right now, though, as long as it spurs the others
into action.
And what if
it doesn’t?
asks the angel on my shoulder.
It’s a bit
too fucking late for that,
I think back.
I vault over
the railings, praying that the gun doesn’t get caught on my belt
and accidentally blow an extra hole in my arse. When I land, and it
doesn’t, I start praying that one of those bastards will appear in
my peripheral vision sometime soon. Then I remember that God
probably isn’t on my side right now. The giant
Marks &
Spencer
sign looms out before me. Still nothing. If I took the
balaclava off right now and walked away, it might look suspicious,
but I think I’d still get off without punishment.
Then a figure
emerges. Even out of the corner of my eye I can tell that it’s one
of us. The figure’s size tells me that it’s Freddy. Our eyes meet
for just a moment, and I cannot help but raise a smile. He doesn’t
smile back, but the hard, determined element in his eyes burns away
my own self-doubts. I never quite worked out Freddy’s motivation
for doing this. Maybe he actually believes all those things he
says. Maybe he never planned on going through with it until he saw
me striding out into the middle of the road. I guess it doesn’t
matter now. I can’t see the other two yet, but I can feel them
closing in behind me, backing me up, bolstering my resolve. I pull
the revolver out of my waistband.
The doors
swoosh
open. I raise the gun in the air. I pull the trigger.
A shattering
BAKKHOOM!!
blasts backwards into my shoulder
blade, and deafness rings into my ears. A shower of glass splashes
down over me. My shot must’ve taken out one of the lights.
Blundering forward, I can see the customers ducking and screaming
and covering their heads. Already a few of them have blood gushing
out of their scalps and down their faces. Over my shoulder I can
hear Sid shrieking incomprehensible, albeit threatening,
gibberish.
I can’t hear
the words Sid is using, thanks to the general commotion and the
fact that I’ve blown both of my eardrums clean out of my head, but
I know exactly what he’s saying. The blueprint is now branded with
searing clarity into my thoughts. I now understand why it is that
Charlie can only do essays with punk music blaring away in the
background. The chaos going on around me allows my mind to focus,
somehow. It wipes out all distractions, and I can only see the next
stage of the plan. One move at a time. The next one will appear
when it’s needed, but not until then.
With
purposeful strides, I approach the nearest cashier and press my
revolver against the side of her head. She makes no attempt to duck
or run, she just raises her hands slightly and her eyes go wide.
She’s halfway through a transaction, so all I have to do is press
the relevant button and the register pings open. A sudden jolt in
the pressure of the gun barrel into her temple convinces her to
move aside. The next cashier pings open the register before I even
reach her, and the other three follow suit as though they’re part
of some inexorable chemical chain reaction.
Leaving Sid
and Phoebe to their part of the job, I start collecting the money
from the tills. It’s small change, a few hundred a go, coming out
at about four grand in total, or a semester of university studies.
I leave the coins. When I’ve bundled all of this into my black
backpack I take up my position at the end of the middle aisle, and
put on the most menacing glare I have in my arsenal. Admittedly,
this is not all that menacing, but I’d assume that most of them
will be looking at the revolver in my hand, not the panic in my
eyes. The herd of customers is rushing towards me, obscuring Sid
and Phoebe from view, but I can hear Sid’s voice booming over the
top of them, telling them to drop their wallets and purses at the
feet of the nice gentleman by the tills. He adds that some paper,
plastic and leather is not worth being shot over - an argument that
Phoebe punctuates with a blast from her pistol. With a sound like
lightning in a James Joyce novel, a shelf’s-worth of fizzy drinks
explodes. The herd screams as one. Strangers huddle together like
shy children clinging to their mothers’ legs. I can’t help but
notice how close Phoebe’s shot must have come to the customers on
the outer edge of the crowd.
I debate
letting off a persuasion shot of my own, but my ears are still
ringing from the first time I pulled the trigger. It feels as
though my shoulder’s been twisted out of the socket.
You’re not
John McLane
, I remind myself.
Don’t fire guns
one-handed.
Before the
wallet collection begins, I sneak a quick glance at my watch. Two
minutes down already. My eyes flick towards the glass doors, behind
which the real world is still obliviously shuffling on, and the
nighttime shutters above them. We need to get this place on
lockdown, fast.
My heart is
pumping. My arteries feel as though they’ll burst. My hand grips
the gun-handle so hard that the knuckles tingle, trying to vent out
all this excess energy, but it’s not enough. I lash out at the
first person in the herd to come close, a young
professional-looking type, mid-twenties, handsome. Before I quite
work out that I’ve done it, I’ve belted him as hard as I can around
his cheekbone with the butt of the revolver. He doesn’t cry out in
pain, but instead lets out a little whimper, and his body goes
slack as I grab him by the collar and toss him to the side. His
head bounces against the till as he goes down, and he crumples to a
heap on the floor. Our first hostage is in place.
‘Wallets over
there, mother fuckers,’ Phoebe announces, in a voice low enough to
be confused with that of a man, if one’s expectations were lined-up
that way. She appears not to trust them to comprehend the
instruction, because she throws someone’s purse to my feet in order
to illustrate. The ones who came within a hair of taking a bullet
from her are the first to comply. Further swayed by the bleeding,
moaning fellow by the cash register, a few more follow suit, but I
suspect I’ll need to apply some more pressure if I want to get the
rest of them going. This doesn’t really feel like a conscious
choice – I’m just aware that it has to be done, and that I’m the
guy in the right place to do it. I know exactly where this pressure
should be applied, as well - the customer standing on the far right
of the huddle. He’s a head and shoulders taller than the rest of
the fifty-odd captives, so when they see him crumble the rest of
them will fall into line.
With soft
footsteps, taking advantage of the fact that he’s still staring at
the bloody ghoul on the floor, I sneak up beside him and jab the
gun barrel into his temple with just enough force to let him know
that I mean business. I give Phoebe a significant glance. Or maybe
it’s Sid. It’s difficult to tell underneath the balaclavas. It
doesn’t matter either way; Sid or Phoebe reads the cue instantly,
and rams his or her gun into the back of his head. The height
difference means that he or she has to aim upwards, and I get a
mental image of the shower of blood and brains that would fly up
and splatter down over everyone if he or she were to pull the
trigger.
‘Alright,
listen up!’ booms out the balaclava-wearer. I can’t even tell if
it’s Sid’s normal voice or Phoebe’s man-voice anymore. ‘We’ll give
you all a choice: which one of us do you want to blow this cunt’s
brains out?’
The crowd,
understandably, remains silent. The tall guy tries to turn around,
perhaps to plead. I sidestep to avoid his gaze.
‘Or,’
Sid/Phoebe continues, in a much lower register, so that only the
tall guy can hear, ‘you could start valuing what’s in your skull a
bit more than what’s in your pockets. It’s up to you, man. I don’t
care; I get the wallet either way.’
Big fellow
takes more time than I’d hoped in coming to a decision, but
eventually he begins to move his hand towards his pocket and slowly
plucks out his wallet. Just as slowly, and all too confidently, he
re-raises his hand back into the surrender position. It’s at this
point I realise that
Pulp Fiction
is the bane of every
would-be hostage-taker’s life. You always end up with some mother
fucker who thinks he’s Samuel L Jackson.
This
realisation is soon made insignificant, however, when the big guy
turns around and I discover that he’s Tim, my flat-mate from first
year. Tim hands the wallet to me, and our eyes lock for a moment. I
should look away in case he recognises me, but instead I find
myself staring right into his, actively searching out the very look
of recognition I’m supposed to be avoiding. Finding not that, but
rather a look of pitying magnanimity, in them, I get a sudden urge
to shoot him right through the stomach. My arm spasms, as the angel
scrabbles down from my shoulder and desperately clings to my
trigger-finger.
This sudden
lust for petty, psychopathic revenge instead finds a less murderous
outlet and I give Tim a sharp kick to the back of the knee as
Phoebe or Sid orders him to leave. His gait buckles in a goofy and
satisfying fashion, but he keeps walking and staring straight
ahead. The further away of my co-robbers does shoot me a glare,
however, as though to ask why I’m taking such pleasure in
tormenting this one particular escapee. The necessity of keeping
silent in order to cover up my southern accent prevents me from
explaining, so I turn my back.
Leaving the
other two to prune down the herd, I busy myself with sorting
through the gigantic mound of purses and wallets. The threats
worked; some people have even thrown in their house keys. I toss
aside everything except the cash, which I stuff into my backpack.
Phoebe and Sid are picking out the weakest members of the crowd and
putting them over to the side, ready to be frogmarched up to the
employee break room, and telling the braver-looking ones to get out
of the door. One of them does the selecting while the other keeps
their gun trained on the rest of them, watching out for any signs
of burgeoning heroism. We agreed to take any couples we found as
part of the hostage group, for two reasons: because heroism is more
easily doused by putting a gun on the hero’s spouse’s head than his
own, and secondly because a group composed entirely out of
strangers is more likely to band together and take us on than
people who are only concerned with getting their loved one out of
the situation alive.
I check my
watch again. We’ve been here for three minutes and twenty-six
seconds. Six minutes, thirty-four until we should be ready to
leave. Eleven minutes, thirty-four seconds until it’s Charlie’s cue
to bail out on us. I look back up at the filtering process, which
is nearing completion. A guilty sort of pride swells up in my
ribcage about how well our little strategies are blooming. Removing
a pair of hostages from the herd at a time is having the desired
effect. All of the unfortunate couples are clinging to each other,
keeping a significant distance from their neighbouring hostages. A
bearded boyfriend bends down to whisper something in his
girlfriend’s ear. Maybe he’s telling her that everything’s going to
be okay. Maybe he’s come up with a plan to overthrow us. It doesn’t
matter either way. Three bad guys with guns will always beat two
good guys without them.
‘And the final
lucky couple!’ one of my fellow bad guys announces. He or she drags
one of the pair in question - a redhead - over to the side and her
friend - a brunette - stumbles after her, drawn out of the herd by
the redhead’s terrified eyes.
The next stage
direction is mine. Every member of the two herds is focused on Sid
and Phoebe, so I’ve got all the time I need. Gripping the revolver
firmly in both hands, I aim at the rectangular fluorescent light
hanging above all of them. This time I’m braced for the
KABLOOM!!,
but the crowd isn’t braced for the second shower
of glass that comes tumbling over their heads.
‘MUSH!’ A
balaclava screeches, and the lucky half of the crowd flees for the
automatic doors. I chase after them brandishing the revolver, but
it’s not as though they need the extra persuasion. Good riddance,
too: it won’t be long before the police show up, and I’ve yet to
lock the glass doors and throw down the shutters.