Free Soft Target by Stephen Hunter Page B

space free of dangerous implements.
    Then she saw the daily schedule notebook, a three-ring binder volume. She opened it, realized that a steel or at least metal slat ran up its spine. She pulled apart the three rings, and dumped the papers out, then used her strength to rip the slat from the spine of the book. It tore messily, taking some cardboard binding with it, but it was eleven inches of sharp steel, albeit flawed by three rings, which she snapped shut. She slipped it into her jeans, in the small of her back. Then she turned back to the boys.
    CHARLES 3-5 was standing and pointing.
    “I see a monster,” he said.
    She turned, and through the glass block wall that divided the center from the pedestrian corridor, she saw the shadow of a gunman.
    There were six of them, but the manager, Mrs. Renfels, had broken down: all women, all terrified, except for Molly, who was more concerned for her mother and her sister Sally than she was for herself. Even tough little Rose, the assistant manager, had quieted down as apprehension gripped her.
    “You won’t find out soon,” Ray told Molly. “You have to worry about Molly first. You have to commit yourself to staying put, locking down, waiting them out. That is how you win.” There was no privacy,as all of them were jammed in the rear storeroom, under racks of bustiers and negligees and all the scanties of the male imagination that now seemed quite alien to their world.
    “I have to know,” she said, trying to quell the anxiety. Sally was impossibly cute at fifteen, with smart, vivid eyes, a thin girl’s body, and grace just easing into a woman’s radiance, and Mom was still feisty even if she had never quite adjusted to American ways. It sickened Molly that the two most vulnerable members of her family were in the greatest danger. The last she’d spoken to them on her cell, they had in fact been on the first floor where the roundup had taken place. But if they’d been luckily in the outer ring, they might have made it to an exit. She wanted to call, but she was terrified that if they were in the mob of hostages Ray had described, the ringing cell might have attracted attention.
    “I wish they’d turn that goddamn music off,” Milt’s wife said. “If I hear ‘Jingle Bells’ one more time I will puke.”
    “Not on me, please,” said the blonde, the one who clearly considered herself a hot number.
    “Why is this happening?” Mrs. Renfels asked, her first words since the crisis had begun.
    “It’s because we should have used the atom bomb on them after nine-eleven,” said the hot blonde, obviously the sort used to issuing opinions and by her beauty banishing responses. “If we’d have burned them all, this wouldn’t be going on.”
    “You can’t kill a billion people because, what, thirteen men are crazy assholes,” responded Milt’s wife.
    “Oh yes you can. You push a button and they are in flames.”
    “That is the craziest—”
    “All right, all right,” said Ray. “I am not trying to be a boss or take over or anything, but it’s better if you don’t get in squabbles until this thing is over. You may have to work together and you have to see the person beside you as a family member. You can fight all you want when you’re advising on the set of the TV movie or something.”
    “He’s right,” said Rose. “Just keep a cork in it, it’s better for all of us.”
    “It’s easy for you to say,” said Mrs. Renfels. “You’re young, you’re in this for yourself. I have three kids. If something happens to me—oh, why is this happening?”
    “Ma’am,” said Ray, “I don’t mean to tell you how to think, but I am a former marine and I have been in some fights. If you’ll allow me, I would advise you never to use the W-word today. The W-word is
why
. Sometimes there is no why, and if you get hung up on why, you lose your effectiveness. I’ve seen it happen. The men who die are the men who can’t believe they’re in a fight and