Something ought to be done about that, he thought, without in any way volunteering for the role. Instead, he picked the rifle up again, and tested its heft, as if he knew what he was doing. Some hundred yards behind him, someone was wailing: only word for it. It was strange to note that the weather was still fine; the sky above still blue. Rifle in his hands, Coe walked towards the van.
This was wrong, he thought. He should be crouching, hiding, taking cover. But whoever was shooting was round the corner. Bullets, thought Coe, didn’t handle angles well. As long as he stayed on the main road, he was safe.
He reached the corner, and paused. Was this psychopathic behaviour? It certainly wasn’t sensible. He wondered where Shirley Dander had got to, and whether she was about to appear, gun blazing, or whether she was dead. He had spent a lot of time, these past years, hoping nothing would happen, or that if it did, he was nowhere near. So what was he doing now? He wasn’t built for this. Last time he’d killed someone – fair play: last time he’d killed someone deliberately – they’d been unarmed and handcuffed to a radiator. It had been low risk. And even then, the recoil had sprained his thumb.
The nearest news crew was filming him now. They didn’t have guns; perhaps he should just shoot them.
Instead, he stepped around the corner.
Across the road, the policeman behind the low church wall stood and loosed two quick bursts of ammunition, which stitched a neat line of holes into a row of parked cars, one of them Roderick Ho’s. And it was behind Ho’s car that a gunman was sheltering: on the pavement, legs outstretched, his back against the driver’s door. He was fitting a new magazine into his weapon, an action he completed even as Coe watched. And then he half rolled onto his knees, levelled the gun on the car’s bonnet and issued a volley in the vague direction of the police officer. The stained-glass windows along the side of the church shattered. Why wasn’t this man looking his way, Coe wondered. Coe had a perfect sighting on him, but it was like the man hadn’t even seen him. Maybe fifty yards away. A tin duck in a gallery. Better safe than sorry, though. The gunman’s weapon was semi-automatic; he could loose off a lot more bullets than Coe in a hurry. If Coe fired and missed now, he’d get more than a sprained thumb for his pains.
So he moved nearer, slowly but steadily, sighting down the barrel as he walked.
The singing had started to falter before glass began to rain.
Shirley saw it as a series of explosions: the church’s side windows disintegrating into coloured hailstones that blew halfway across the vaulted spaces before scattering onto the congregation. It sounded like wind chimes, sounded like ice. And then the harmonies, too, disintegrated and scattered, and the hymn gave way to hysteria. The organ stopped, and screaming began. People ducked and covered, sheltering themselves and their loved ones from the kaleidoscopic downpour, and those at the ends of the pews broke ranks and ran for the door, in front of which Shirley stood.
They can’t go out, she thought. That’s where the guns are.
There was a large, old-fashioned key in the lock; she turned it, removed it, then stood facing the crowd with arms flung wide. ‘No!’ she shouted, or thought she did; everything had broken down so abruptly, she couldn’t be sure her voice still worked. The glass had stopped falling, but the alteration in the light, the swift exchange of harsh daylight for colour, was like a punch in the face. How quickly the congregation became a mob; how quickly screaming swallowed the air. A young man tripped while clambering from a bench, and the man behind trampled him in his fury to escape. She shouted ‘No!’ again, but the crowd was upon her now; she was being pressed against the door, and the breath squeezed out of her. Prayer had become panic, another unifying force, but one with no thought, no time, for its components. Someone’s foot came down on hers, and she jerked free, but it was like fighting a herd. Those caught at the front, like Shirley, were jammed fast, while those behind, still programmed for flight, pushed and shoved as if this would make a difference. She thought she heard more gunfire outside. But that was a distant problem, for on this side of the door, in this dense press of bodies, her vision clouded, and fear swallowed rationality. If this kept up, people would die. She’d be one of them. Someone was on her foot again, someone’s elbow jammed in her face. Someone’s head struck her nose, and then there was blood.
A man at the back of the crowd was tearing at the people in front of him. He hooked an arm around a woman’s throat, and threw her to the floor.
Shirley closed her eyes, and felt the door groan. If it gave way now, she’d be crushed beneath this zombie onslaught.
She should have let them take their chances with the gunmen. The screaming grew louder; the panic soared. Something pressed into her stomach, part of someone else’s body, and she couldn’t tell what it was, but it would be among her final sensations. The slow unlearning of how to breathe. This was what being buried alive was like. Buried alive by people. She swallowed blood: her final meal. If she could reach her gun she would shoot herself. In the moment of arriving at this decision, it felt like a prayer, or as much of one as she’d made in adulthood. Let me reach my gun. I won’t hurt anybody else.
Then there was a bell.
People were still screaming, still pushing; Shirley was still fighting for breath, but there was a bell behind the noise now: behind it, below it, alongside it; at last above it; the ringing of a bell. It was clear and musical, and the more insistent it became, the more the screaming subsided. The elbow was removed from Shirley’s face, and whatever had been pressed against her stomach relaxed, and she breathed again: bad air, full of sweat and fear and the stink of interrupted death, but air. She realised she was clutching something – an arm – and let it go. The press of people pulled back, some still lying on the floor, and there was crying and whimpering and other scared noises, but the screaming had stopped, and the bell was still ringing.
Shirley could see now, all the way to the altar, where the vicar stood swinging a handbell high and low. Even as she watched, he slowed and stopped. Behind him, the rose window remained intact. But along the right-hand wall the tall narrow windows had been shattered, and whatever stories they had told lay in fragments on the floor and the pews, and caught in people’s hair. Outside the church, another story had ended too: the gunfire had ceased. In its place came static and chatter, and bellowed oaths and distant sirens.
And now, at the far end of the aisle, appeared a young man holding a short-barrelled machine gun.
The press of people fell away from Shirley, and she stepped over those who remained on the floor. Gradually, everyone was becoming aware of the gunman, but instead of renewed panic a desperate calm fell. Those still on the pews bowed their heads, as if a refusal to watch what he planned to do would negate its effect, and those who had scrambled towards the door scuttled for what cover they could find.
Some remained standing, however, staring him down.
How had he got there? Shirley wondered.
And then: back door. There was always a back door.
Almost without realising she’d done so, she had drawn her own weapon, Marcus’s gun, and held it in front of her in a two-handed grip.
Half a dozen paces, and she was in the aisle herself.
‘Put the gun down,’ she called.
The man stared at her. Glanced down at his weapon, then stared at her again.
She should shoot him without warning. He was armed, he was dangerous. He had been here before. There were dozens of people all around, every one of them an innocent target, and he could cut them to ribbons within seconds. Even dying, his finger could shred their lives. She should shoot him now: put a bullet in his head. She was a good shot. She could kill him from here.