Run Come Rally

How they had got there was a blur. But now they were here, a large wood-panelled lecture room. People sprawled on tables along the walls of the room, while the centre, where hundreds of chairs were laid out in rows, was left alone.

He began shooting infiltrators. “You can tell who they are,” he announced to the room, “you just look into their eyes,” and it was true. The securitars had a sly, wicked look, their eyes had this dull sparkle which was quite obvious once you knew what to look for. A lot of them had these studded sleeves as well. He circled the room, looking in everyone’s eyes and shooting all the infiltrators. There was no protest. He shot them quick and gave them no time to react.

At one point he looked at four kids sat on a table, one with red hair, dressed like a devil, the others in green boiler suits, clown masks pushed up on the top of their heads. He whispered to the priest behind him, “what do you think?” The priest looked and said under his breath, “red hair.” Mendy quickly walked up and shot them all. As he did so the priest started to protest. “No, only the…” he said, but his voice drifted off.

Mendy had a TV handset in his pocket and suddenly thought of turning on the news. It seemed the thing to do. He had wondered what they were going to make of it. The pictures were from helicopters, showing the building’s brutal, concrete exterior. Words sat at the bottom of the screen. HOSTAGE CRISIS, they read. MANY HOSTAGES SHOT. He could see battalions of black-armed agents advancing towards the tower, like spilled coffee spreading across a carpet. Won’t be long, he thought.

Now, with all the infiltrators shot, slumped haplessly against the walls, the rest of the group began to patrol, waiting for it to happen. They shuffled around the room in a big circle. As they walked they passed bullets along the line, the bullets they had filched from the infiltrators. As he took a few from the person behind him, Mendy thought to himself, “we’re going to need a lot of bullets if we’re going to get out of here.”