Active Shooter

We interrupt our regular programming at this time to bring you this special bulletin. We have breaking news this hour involving an ongoing situation at Four Points Mall. As of this moment we are still getting very patchy information, a lot of unconfirmed reports, but what authorities have been able to tell us is that there has been a shooting at Four Points Mall. Again, details are sketchy, but there are reports that multiple gunmen opened fire in the mall’s food court. We do not know as of yet the number of casualties. Some of our sources are putting the fatalities at as few as seven, but we have also heard as many as twenty-two. The number and condition of those wounded are unknown right now, but we believe there to be upward of forty. From what we are hearing right now it appears that multiple assailants opened fire on the crowd at approximately 4:45. Several witnesses are apparently claiming to have heard automatic gunfire, possibly coming from a maintenance catwalk overlooking the area. Word right now is that as people attempted to flee the area additional gunmen began to open fire. Police arrived within minutes, and we are told that two or more of the gunmen may have been killed. At this time it is unclear whether any arrests have been made, though we are hearing rumors, again this is unconfirmed, that several suspects may have been taken into custody. Stay tuned for more updates as we break in when we have additional information to report. We now return you to ‘Fantasy Flings: Hawaiian Heat.’

***

When gunfire commenced, he had huddled around the corner of the building in the alley with two of his buddies. The shots sounded distant at first, then suddenly closer, the sound coming first from one direction, then another, at a pace too rapid for the mind to process into a meaningful map, a precise picture of the death potential of all the vectors currently in play. What was a gunshot and what merely its echo? Was there even really a firefight going on? If so, where was the enemy? Where were the good guys? Several hours later, his entire unit would collapse in exhaustion in the same place they had woken up that morning. He had never fired his weapon because he could not figure out where he should be aiming. After his discharge he never carried a firearm again. Even so, he was trained for this. Duck and cover. Locate the source. Neutralize the shooter. But there were shooters everywhere. Only later would the anger surface. He was trained for this. They were not.

***

The letter size security envelope was sitting on her desk when she arrived that morning. No one could tell how it had gotten to the mailroom, only that Chet had found it with the rest of the incoming mail, nothing written on the outside except her name. The only item inside the envelope was a thumb drive. Curious, she put the drive in her laptop. There was only one file on it, a video. For the first few seconds she was not sure what she was looking at. Then it hit her. This was a video of the mall shooting, taken by the shooter. Sometimes forgetting to breathe, she again looked in the envelope, definitely nothing there, then again at the outside. Nothing written there but her name. Cherry Winters? What had she been thinking? What had been so wrong about being Sharon Warner? Much as she would like to blame the white patriarchy, she would have to admit, if only to herself, that she had always known exactly what she was doing. She recognized early on the twin axes of guilt and lust that drove every decision a man in a superior position might make concerning her. As an undergraduate, a rare degree of self-awareness led her to the recognition of all those points of light being formed within her that would one day constellate into the image of her fate. That television journalism was her calling had never been in doubt. She possessed the talent of an investigative reporter combined with an ease in front of the camera that could not be taught. However, it was this very precocity that could at times lead her astray. She was ready for major market prime time before she was old enough to drink, so why not play to the barely legal coed fantasy if it got her foot in the door and her face on the air? Her miscalculation had been that she would now be taken seriously only up to the point of being moderately talented eye candy. No shot at producing or reporting her own stories, digging into city hall corruption or bringing tales of corporate malfeasance to the public. It was all literal dog and pony shows, the journalistic equivalent of being typecast. Had the shooter somehow intuited this? Did he believe that they could help one another’s cause? 

***

In the first flush of panic he forgets entirely that he is carrying. He sees, through the mass of flesh and flight a young black man, shouting and waving his arms. Gun. Shots begin before he even raises his hand to aim. How many shots? How many screams? The assailant is down, but the shots continue. He squeezes the trigger until the gun no longer bucks in his hand. Where all those bullets finally came to a stop is a question he will never entertain except when posed in the foreign language of his most impenetrable dreams.

***

So where’s Legal at with this?

Legal says we’re in the clear. The original, anything else of forensic interest has already been turned over. The police questioned Cherry for about four hours last night. Chet, too. We’ve done our due diligence. I think we can run with this.

Are we concerned about any other blowback here?

You mean like what, politically, morally? I don’t think we can say one way or another what this guy’s agenda is. To me, I mean, it’s just news. It’s a piece of history, you know? Whatever the intent, it’s a document, it documents this moment, whatever proportions this moment might swell to for some people. But in the end, it’s a record. Just because it might not be just a record shouldn’t enter into it at all. We’re just putting it out there as information, you know, just information.

So you’re saying it’s justifiable?

Gerald Stearnman, eyes alight with surreptitious mischief, glanced rightward just long enough to see if Cherry had caught the wordplay in his question. She quickly looked away from him, her momentary grin and bitten lower lip sure signs of suppressed laughter. Every bit as quick on the uptake as he had imagined. She had passed the test, childish though it may have been.

***

How many home-grown sickos are in here, turning the whole food court into a slaughterhouse? Every initiation of eye contact is a tacit invitation to be targeted as far as she is concerned. Bodies are dropping faster than she thought possible. Step into the kill zone and be counted motherfucker. Towel-heads on the ground at two o’clock. Children kneel and cry over what she assumes are the blood-soaked corpses of terrorists. What the hell is going on here? No time to worry about that. Shouts behind her, sudden motion in the periphery. She spins and fires. Death first, ideology and pathology of these assholes later. Is that cop really drawing down on her?

***

When the time comes for editorial decisions the newsroom is packed. Even the pizza delivery man has a view from the back when the screen flickers into life. Some count five guns, some as many as eight. Obviously there is no consensus yet on who actually fired and how many times. Bodies spasm and collapse in ways that suggest multiple possibilities for a bullet’s point of origin. Gunmen target other gunmen, yet almost all seem to be trying to gun down unarmed civilians in flight as well. 

“Fucking idiots,” one of the engineers says. No one responds to this. There seems to be something too simple, and too soon, about passing judgment. They all feel oddly implicated at this point, not merely because they will be active participants in whatever the shooter’s agenda is, but because unlike the people in the unfolding spectacle on screen, they are going to do so willingly. Agency feels uncomfortably like culpability. Even so, conversation and debate revolve around subjects like acceptable levels of graphic violence and trigger warnings. 

***

Reflection will not occur until much later, and even then will be only the irritating adjunct to unwanted recollection. But the insights, dull and obvious though they may be to those who were not there, will come nonetheless. His first dull and obvious thought will be how this was nothing like the movies. Events did not suddenly begin happening in slow motion, in discrete and well-timed segments, victims did not cry out and twirl around in a grand choreography ending in the exquisite artistry of an elegantly posed death. No majestic soundtrack synchronized with blood spray and the spatter of tissue. There were no aesthetic pleasures to be gained from the sight of a screaming woman clutching the corpse of an infant, half its head blown away, brains dripping into the remains of a falafel wrap smeared across the floor. Sometimes the image still causes him to vomit. Like many who were there, high daily dosages of bourbon guide him away from his waking nightmares and usher him toward the nightmare of sleep.

***

Cherry, I want you to take the lead on this one.

The reaction of senior members of the on-air talent, producers, and editors was everything he expected: aghast, venomous, insinuating, bitter--the entire spectrum of workplace resentment.

Look, fellas, this guy sent the damn thing directly to her. Seems only fair she get a shot at putting this together.

Well, sure Gerald, but come on. Think about this for a second. I mean, I know you’re the news director...

That’s right, I am.

Stearnman dropped his pen down on the legal pad sitting in front of him. The gesture had all the finality of a judge banging his gavel. 

All right, Winters, you’re up. Get your team together, anyone you need. We go live with this video at six. And I want you at the mall for a live spot when we do. 

Stearnman had always been aware of her ambition, having seen the symptoms in a thousand others. He had practically made a study of the subject and come to a taxonomic understanding of it. There was ambition without talent, there was ambition with talent. Then there was what she had, the ambition that was the talent, the blessed condition of unconscious driveness, a secular form of destiny. He was tempted to use the phrase ‘force of nature’. As far as Gerald Stearnman was concerned, Cherry Winters was a self-fulfilling prophecy, and he had the veteran newsman’s good sense to know that if she nailed this story, and he had no doubt she would, there would be casualties in the wake of her ascent, and if he hindered her he would be one of them. Watching the feed later in the control room, the last thing he saw her do before going live was fasten two more buttons at the top of her blouse. Without realizing it, he was witnessing the return of Sharon Warner.

***

Slugs from the AR-15 are found all around the food court, casings on the overlooking catwalk. It would not be until after the video aired that authorities would announce that none of the victims was shot by an AR-15.

***

One by one, each television set above and around the bar switches from its assigned sporting event to the perspective of the shooter, one spectacle substituted for all others. Badly transliterated closed captioning crawls along the bottom of some of the screens; watching others will require the ability to read lips whenever the commentators make their inevitable appearance. Meanwhile, the music that has been playing over the sound system throughout the day continues unabated, privileging the ear with the comfort of routine, the security of sonic insulation. Now, where there had been the optic clarity and organized, planned violence of a football game, there was this chaotic dance, disordered terror within an indistinct found theater. Viewing engenders a feeling of participation, visceral despite the distance between here and there. A sense of shared responsibility for the public tragedy settles in, as if without viewers none of this could have ever happened. Every face is confronted by one of the dozen screens. The video has the quality of the unreality of real life caught on camera, a hypnotic inexactness. The narrative remains a bare outline subject to elaboration and analysis, elegant sophistry and unintended irony. The breeding ground of confirmation bias and conspiracy.

***

The opening of a door. Transition from darkness to light. It suddenly becomes obvious that we are on the catwalk above the food court. Equally obvious, that is the barrel of a gun. The motion of the camera is unhurried yet swift. Precision and economy of movement. There is a slight pause, no more than a second or two, before a sudden, short burst of gunfire is directed to one end of the food court. The camera takes a step back, direct vision of the scene below blocked out. We can hear some shouts and the first few screams. The sound of human flight and the tremendous keening of tables and chairs scraping against tile flooring. The camera steps back out and there is another burst of gunfire, this time toward the other end of the food court. It is immediately apparent that there is something odd going on, though it takes a moment, or perhaps a re-viewing or two, to see what it is, given the unfamiliar angles of constituent parts in relation to one another. The camera, of course, despite the illusion, is not our eyes. But once seen there is no mistaking the fact: the barrel of the gun is not pointed down far enough to fire into the crowd. If we look carefully, we can see bullets striking the facade between the upper and lower levels of the mall. The camera retreats once more, and for a few seconds there is only the rising volume of the sound of terror, a thunderous updraft of uncontainable fear. As the camera steps back out for a final, extended view of the tumult below we hear the first gunshots issuing from the ground floor.