Lexicon

had been the strangest thing he’d ever seen.
    “Jess?” said the kid. He wasn’t calling. It was a question for the group. The cop car drew closer.
    “
Run
,” Harry said, and shoved the schoolteacher. He pulled the other girl, the dark-haired one, by her wrist. There was another flat retort. He was tempted to see who that was, the father or possibly Derek Knochhouse, but it made no difference. The girl screamed and twisted in his grip in a way that meant it could have been either, and then he did turn, and saw the cop with one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting his service revolver on the crook of his arm, his eyes moving between the road and the people he was shooting.
    The grocery store woman trilled like a bird and sat heavily. The father was already spread out, arms folded, as if he’d carefully lain down. One of the kids had fled but the other was dragging Derek, the one who’d said
he plays footy
, and Harry shouted at him to run but of course the kid didn’t. Harry tripped on the curb, which was a handy reminder to keep an eye on where the fuck he was going, losing his grip on the dark-haired girl. She began to walk back toward the cop car, her arms out, in order to accomplish what, Harry didn’t know. He spat a curse and went back for her. Then he saw Emily.
    She was walking down the center of the road. He couldn’t see her face because the streetlight was behind her. There was an appeal in her posture, which he first thought was directed at him, then realized wasn’t, because she was angling toward the police cruiser.
    The dark-haired girl spun in a half circle. Harry ran by her falling body. He leaped onto the hood of the police cruiser, skid across, and hit the tarmac on the other side. He reached Emily and threw her over his shoulder. He heard the whine of the cop’s power window behind him. The closest shelter was a bakery, a squat weatherboard much too far away. He jagged, to put a degree of difficulty into it for the cop.
    “Put me down,” said Emily.
    Ten feet from the bakery door, something bit his ear. The glass door shattered. He kept going and crashed through it, tripping and sprawling onto the tiled floor, feeling bullets everywhere, losing Emily. The interior was lit by a refrigerated drinks cabinet. “Em.” He crawled toward her in the corpse light. “Emily.” He found her hand and got to his feet and hauled her up.
    “I want to die.”
    “No,” he said. He dragged her into the back room. His hip clipped a table; a stack of baking trays clattered to the ground. He found the rear door and discovered it was bolted in several different ways, some of which required keys. He released Emily and shook it. “Fuck,” he said. He abandoned the door for a smaller, metallic one, with a horizontal handle like a refrigerator’s. Chill air spilled around his ankles. He pulled Emily inside and closed the door and groped in darkness for a lock. But there wasn’t one, of course. You didn’t put a lock on the inside of a cool room. The door didn’t even open the right way—that is, in a way he could block. He gripped the handle and planted his feet and cursed. Maybe the cop wouldn’t chase them. There were plenty of other targets. He listened, straining for sound. The door was so thick, the cop could be right outside. He relaxed his muscles, for the moment when he’d need them. There was a snuffling. Emily was crying. “Em,” he said. “Be quiet.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Quiet.”
    She kept crying. “I did something really bad.”
    “I know. Shut up.” He thought he heard something outside. But it could be anything. It was incredibly cold. Too cold for a permanent hiding place.
    “I should have been able to stop it.”
    The handle turned in his hands. He resisted. After a moment, the opposing force vanished. He waited in the dark. Something hit the door, hard and sharp. A bullet. Then two more. He held the handle with one hand and flailed in the dark with the other, trying to push Emily down. A sizzling smell reached him. Light bled through three holes in the door. He hadn’t thought a steel-lined refrigerator door would be bulletproof, but the confirmation was still disappointing. He found Emily’s hair and yanked it. She squawked but then he had her wrapped in one arm while he held the handle with the other, hoping the cop would please not shoot off his hand. For a while there was only their breathing. He heard the cop moving around, doing who knew