Odd Thomas

too busy serving shoppers to notice the bulge.
        Cautiously, I opened the door barely wide enough to slip out of the security room, and closed it behind me. A man was walking away from me, in the direction I needed to go, and I followed him, wishing that he would hurry.
        He turned right, through the swinging doors to the receiving room, and I ran past elevators reserved for company employees to a door labeled stairs. I took them two at a time.
        Somewhere ahead, Simon Varner. Sweet face. Sleepy eyes. POD on his left forearm.
        At the first floor of the department store, I left the stairs and pushed through a door into a stockroom.
        A pretty redhead was busy pulling small boxes off the packed shelves. She said, "Hey," in a friendly way.
        "Hey," I said back at her, and I went out of the stockroom onto the sales floor.
        The sporting-goods department. Bustling. Men, a few women, a lot of teenagers. The kids were checking out Rollerblades, skateboards.
        Beyond the sporting goods were aisles of athletic shoes. Beyond the shoes, men's sportswear.
        People, people everywhere. Too many people too tightly bunched. An almost festive atmosphere. So vulnerable.
        If I hadn't waylaid him as he came out of the security room, Bern Eckles would have killed ten or twenty by now. Thirty.
        Simon Varner. Big guy. Beefy arms. Prince of Darkness. Simon Varner.
        Reliably guided by my supernatural gift as any bat is guided by echolocation, I crossed the first floor of the department store, heading toward the exit to the mall promenade.
        I didn't expect to see another gunman here. Eckles and Varner would have chosen widely separated killing fields, the better to sow terror and chaos. Besides, they would want to avoid accidentally straying into each other's fire patterns.
        Ten steps short of the promenade exit, I saw Viola Peabody, who was supposed to be at her sister's house on Maricopa Lane.
        

CHAPTER 60
        
        THE BIRTHDAY GIRL, LEVANNA, AND HER PINK-infatuated little sister, Nicolina, were not at their mother's side. I scanned the crowd of shoppers, but didn't see the girls.
        When I hurried to Viola and seized her by the shoulder from behind, she reacted with a start and dropped her shopping bag.
        "What're you doing here?" I demanded.
        "Odd! You scared the salt off my crackers."
        "Where are the girls?"
        "With Sharlene."
        "Why aren't you with them?"
        Picking up the shopping bag, she said, "Hadn't done birthday shopping yet. Got to have a gift. Came here just quick for these Rollerblades."
        "Your dream," I reminded her urgently. "This is your dream."
        Her eyes widened. "But I'm just in and out quick, and I'm not at the movies."
        "It's not going to be at the theater. It's happening here."
        For an instant her breath caught in her throat as terror cocked the hammers of her heart.
        "Get out of here," I said. "Get out of here now."
        She exhaled explosively, looked wildly around as if any shopper might be a killer, or all of them, and she started toward the exit to the promenade.
        "No!" I pulled her close to me. People were looking at us. What did it matter? "It's not safe that way."
        "Where?" she asked.
        I turned her around. "Go to the back of this floor, through the athletic shoes, through sporting goods. There's a stockroom not far from where you bought the Rollerblades. Go to the stockroom. Hide there."
        She started away, stopped, looked at me. "Aren't you coming?"
        "No."
        "Where are you going?"
        "Into it."
        "Don't," she pleaded.
         "Go now!"
        As she moved toward the back of the department store, I hurried out into the mall promenade.
        Here at the north end of the Green Moon Mall, the forty-foot waterfall tumbled over a cliff of man-made rocks, feeding the stream that ran the length of the public concourse. As I passed the base of the falls, the rumble and splash sounded uncannily like the roar of a crowd.
        Patterns of darkness and light. Darkness and light as in Viola's dream. The shadows were cast by palm trees that rose alongside the stream.
        Looking up into the queen palms, up toward the second floor of the promenade, I saw hundreds upon hundreds of bodachs gathered along the balustrade above, peering down into