Page 63 of A Bloom in Winter

At which point, Trucker Hat at the other end started waving his nine millimeter around. “Fuck you! Let him the fuck up! I’ll fucking kill you right now!”

“You shoot me, you shoot him,” Mayhem yelled as he got control of the robber under him. “You want to kill your buddy?”

With a quick shift, Mayhem looked over his shoulder and locked eyes with the guy who was still on his feet. Burrowing into that scattered mind, he had a sudden concern that the brain running things was going to be too compromised by drugs to get into and control.

“I’ll kill you!” the man shouted.

“No, you won’t. You’re not going to do anything—”

“You’re going to die—”

“—but lower your gun to the floor—”

“—I’ll fucking—”

“—and kick it to me. Right—”

“Fuck . . . you . . .”

“—now.”

The man started to breathe heavily. Then he winced like someone had poked him in both eye sockets. His next move was to look at his hands and the gun in them with a kind of shocked horror. Sure enough, that muzzle started to go down. Meanwhile his whole body was shaking, like he was fighting some invisible force—because he was.

He was in conflict with his own neuropathways.

And he lost.

When the nine millimeter made contact with the floor, he gave it a push in Mayhem’s direction. Then he straightened up and stayed where he was, shaking in his Timberlands.

Mayhem took a deep breath. Keeping the other aggressor down didn’t require a lot of effort, but he wasn’t moving. He had the bastard pinned, and he wasn’t taking any chances—

“Who are you?”

He glanced up again. Over at the drop-off counter, the pharmacist had poked her head around the jamb, and she didn’t seem to know what to look at.

“The police are coming,” he said to the woman. “But I want you to lock yourself in there, okay? In case there are others in the store right now.”

She nodded with such vigor, her dangly earrings danced. “I’ve never seen anybody do that—”

“Lock yourself in. You’ll be safer there. When the cops arrive, that’s when you can come out. Go on, now.”

She nodded and disappeared. Then there was a click and the shift of a dead bolt.

“Can you get off me, man,” the assailant under him groused.

“Nope, I’m quite comfortable right where I am. Thanks for asking, though.”

Mahrci left the supermarket, but she didn’t make it out to the SUV. She stopped in the slush as soon as she got to the handicapped spaces. Turning back around, she stared at the front of the Hannaford, all the lights glowing like the moon had crashed to earth. As she closed her eyes, she saw Hemmy telling her to leave.

She headed back for the entrance before she was aware of deciding to change direction.

As the glass door slid to the side for her, all the carts were still lined up in their chutes, and the mats were where they’d been on the floor, and through the next set of doors, everything was just as it had appeared.

Including all the bags of food she’d been about to pay for.

The Muzak was still playing softly overhead, and there was a man approaching one of the scanners with a basket full of canned vegetables—

The shouting came from deeper in the store, to the left.

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