Rite of Passage Read online

  A young woman kneeling amid dropped shopping bags was squeezing the left hand of a trembling police officer lying on his back, bleeding from an abdominal gunshot wound. He was moaning and mumbling, eyelids fluttering.

  “Please! Help him! He’s dying! Do something please— please!”

  Untended, the cop would bleed out in minutes, and he was going into shock. Dean peered over the caboose and spotted Sam edging toward the gunman, just on the periphery of his vision. As soon as the guy noticed Sam moving in, he would panic and start shooting in his direction.

  Dean grabbed a package of three white T-shirts that had spilled out of a bag. “Listen to me,” he whispered urgently to the woman, “I need you to—”

  “Please! You have to help him!”

  “Lady, you—”

  “Hurry! Do—”

  “Lady, what’s your name—your name?”

  “What? Mimi—Mimi Gendron. But I’m not—”

  “Mimi, you can do this.”

  “I don’t know h—”

  “We need to stop the bleeding,” Dean said as he ripped open the pack of T-shirts. He folded two on top of each other and pressed them against the wound.

  “Press your hands against this. Now!” Mimi nodded and put her hands against the T-shirts, which were already soaking up blood. “Apply pressure. Don’t let up. Paramedics will be here in a couple minutes. Just hold tight. Can you do that?”

  “Yes—yes!”

  “Good,” Dean said. “He’s going into shock, so we need to keep him warm.”

  Dean grabbed a sweater dress and two pairs of jeans and wrapped the extra clothing around the trembling cop.

  His gun must have flown out of his hand when he was shot. Dean glanced around and spotted the automatic twenty feet back, on the floor under the information counter. After he had lost the gun, the cop must have reached for another weapon from his belt—a black cylinder was slipping from his weak grip. Dean grabbed the extendable baton and snapped it open.

  He looked at Mimi, who continued to hold the reddening T-shirts firmly against the cop’s blood-soaked abdomen. “You good?”

  Lips pressed together nervously, she nodded.

  Dean turned away. He lifted his head high enough to peer over the train’s red caboose.

  “Stop right there!” the gunman shouted. “Or I’ll blow your brains out!”

  Dean froze.

  But the man was facing Sam, who stood ten feet away from him, beside a mirrored support column, hands up, palms out.

  “Easy, buddy,” Sam said calmly. “Nobody else needs to get hurt here.”

  “She does,” the man shouted, briefly pointing the gun at the saleswoman. “Wouldn’t give me a refund for the engagement ring because I didn’t have a receipt!”

  “Take the money,” the woman said. “Take everything you want!”

  “I want what’s mine,” the gunman insisted. “That’s all! But you had to be a bitch about it, didn’t you? Just like my girlfriend.”

  “She wouldn’t want you to do this,” Sam said, taking half a step closer.

  “Lousy bitch! Says I have ‘anger management issues!’ The hell does she know?”

  Sam edged another half step closer.

  The man lunged forward and shoved his gun toward Sam’s head. “One more step and I ventilate your face!”

  “Hey, douchebag,” Dean called from behind the gunman.

  With the counter on his right, the man spun counter-clockwise, bringing the gun across his body toward the new threat. But before he could complete the 180-degree turn, Dean whipped the extended baton down on his wrist. He roared in pain, the revolver falling from his numb fingers, and clutched the injured wrist to his chest. Sam immediately stomped on the back of his right knee and the man collapsed, face first, with Sam following him to the ground. Sam pressed his knee to the gunman’s back to subdue him and Dean tossed his brother the pair of handcuffs he had removed from the injured cop’s belt.

  While the gunman wailed in protest at Sam cuffing his injured wrist behind his back, Dean checked the unconscious security guard. The man was bleeding from a lacerated scalp, but his pulse and breathing were regular. It was probably a concussion, nothing worse.

  Shoppers who hadn’t fled the mall after the initial gunshot raised their heads slowly from behind displays or came out of stores where they had been hiding, taking in the scene, determining if the situation was safe and, if so, who had neutralized the threat.

  Too many eyes, Dean thought, and cell phones with cameras and internet connections. We cannot be here. Might as well hang out a “come get me” sign for the Big Mouths.

  The sound of approaching sirens only increased Dean’s concerns.

  Then an explosion roared in the parking lot, followed by shouting and screams.

  With this new threat, the cautious shoppers ran for the exit.

  Dean looked at Sam in disbelief.

  From the north end of the mall, several cops, each with a hand on the butt of their holstered automatic, sprinted toward Sparkles Jewelry. Two EMTs with medical kits followed close behind.

  Sam stood and backed away from the moaning shooter.

  With his foot, Dean swept the revolver across the floor into the jewelry store.

  “Keep that away from crazy-eyes,” he instructed the saleswoman, now accompanied by other store employees who had, until moments before, been keeping a healthy distance from the shooter and his intended victim.

  Without waiting for a response, Dean and Sam joined the last shoppers fleeing outside.

  Evidently a lot had happened since they’d entered the mall. Police at their end of the parking lot had their hands full. Several fender benders clogged the exit lanes. A speeding police car had smashed into the car of a shopper who had tried to race out of the mall lot in the wrong lane. Another car had flipped over the embankment and blown up—the source of the explosion they had heard. Gasoline spilled from several of the accident scenes, running down one of the exit ramps toward the parking lot gridlock.

  As Dean scanned the area for any sign of someone wearing a bowler hat or carrying a cane, he spotted a pacing man, nervously puffing on a cigarette, which was already down to a nub. With his middle finger, the man flicked the burning stub away from his thumb. It arced through the air—

  Landing in a gleaming puddle of gasoline.

  “Oh, crap,” Dean said.

  Flame roared like an angry serpent across the asphalt and under the row of cars attempting without success to exit the parking lot. Thick smoke from burning tires billowed in the air. More screams sounded as men and woman piled out of cars engulfed from below by the spreading fire.

  “Move away from the cars!” Sam shouted at a few gawkers standing around as if watching a fireworks display on the Fourth of July.

  A police car rolled slowly along the west face of the mall, lights flashing. The officer inside the cruiser spoke over his loudspeaker, urging people to exit the parking lot via the south-side walkway over Route 38.

  One of the cars trapped in the exit lane exploded, the force of the blast raising it in the air and blowing out the windows. When a second car exploded, people dropped any remaining bags they had managed to hold onto and sprinted across the lot as if chased by wolves. A mass of humanity funneled in one direction.

  Dean couldn’t find fault with the direction of the mass exodus—away from the gasoline fire and exploding cars— but something about it, beyond the potential for trampling, troubled him. A bad situation had become progressively worse with no clear end in sight. Now it seemed like they were waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “This feel … off to you, Sam?”

  “Yup. Can’t put my finger on why.”

  “Feels deliberate,” Dean said. “Like somebody’s pulling the strings.”

  Together, they trailed behind the crowd massing toward the pedestrian overpass. Everyone slowed as they entered the caged switchback stairs that climbed high enough to pass over the traffic on Route
38. The overpass was encased in cyclone fencing, like a human Habitrail tunnel, to prevent vandals from tossing objects down on the speeding vehicles below.

  Before Dean reached the base of the stairs, he glimpsed a tall man in a dark suit standing at the top of the stairs on the opposite side of the tunnel, the Hillcrest Shopping Plaza side, as if waiting for the rush of people to come to him. Though Dean stood one hundred feet and an obstructed view away from the man, he had no doubt about one detail.

  He wore a bowler hat.

  Nine

  Tora’s opening gambit—inciting the gun-toting man to violence inside the shopping complex—had begun the wave of panic. But minutes after he pulled back his attention to focus on the larger plan, something or someone prematurely neutralized the enraged man. The restoration of order in the middle of the brewing chaos struck Tora like a psychic hammer blow. His extended awareness had stayed with the man long enough to see immediate law enforcement foiled. Now he paused to reach out with his mind again, and detected a pair of interlopers, wearing business suits, not uniforms. Civilians—or what humans referred to as Good Samaritans. He blamed himself. His attention had wandered. But his plan was in motion and his current situation had greater import.

  Even now, the interlopers approached, but they were only two humans among many and as powerless to stop him as all the rest. Let them witness what they could not stop.

  After triggering vehicle accidents, gasoline fires, and explosions, all designed to direct the masses to him across the pedestrian bridge, he prepared to receive them.

  He had already studied the myriad cracks in the concrete walkway. With his third eye open, he could trace every tiny fissure, the position and condition of every piece of rebar and, beneath the concrete, he detected every spot of rust and hint of metal fatigue within the supporting framework.

  With a sure hand and clear purpose, he brought the ironbound tip of his cane down on the junction of two of the deepest cracks in the concrete. The entire pedestrian overpass shuddered from the targeted impact and, an instant later, the decay accelerated at a phenomenal rate. The cracks spread, deepened and multiplied. Chunks of freed concrete became brittle and crumbled to the consistency of sand. Concrete dust drifted down onto passing cars. Blissfully unaware of the impending danger, motorists flicked on their wipers for a few passes to clear the dust and continued on their way.

  The packed crowd fleeing the mall chaos reached the top of the stairs and hurried across the overpass. Those in front soon realized something was wrong. The crumbling concrete gave way beneath their feet, tripping some and frightening others. A wide-eyed woman in a beige business suit stumbled and fell when her high heel slipped into a fissure and snapped off. A man wearing Timberland boots cursed in pain when one of his feet sank through the decking up to his knee. As the struggling vanguard slowed, those further back yelled and pushed, encouraging those in the lead to keep moving.

  From that point, the complete collapse of the pedestrian walkway happened in a matter of seconds. Jammed together and unable to retreat, the scores of people on the bridge had to ride it out, while the motorists passing underneath, preoccupied with jockeying for position in their evening commute, noticed the collapse too late to avoid compounding the tragedy.

  Supporting cables buried within the concrete lost tension and began to sag. The sudden increase in weight caused the overpass to buckle, and each sagging movement added additional strain to the decaying metal framework. The whole overpass listed to the west, slowly but inexorably rolling over, like an ocean liner capsizing. With a series of loud pops, the west side of the cyclone fencing broke free from the disintegrating concrete. Those trapped in the middle of the bridge crowd pushed and kicked those in front or behind, desperate to escape in either direction. Men yelled, women screamed and several children wailed in terror.

  Realizing retreat was not an option, some men in the lead rushed toward his side of the overpass. As the angle of the bridge became increasingly severe, they struggled to maintain their footing and forward momentum. The few that reached him fell before his cane as he swung it side to side like a club. His powerful blows crushed skulls and broke limbs. Some pedestrians he upended, sweeping their legs out from under them, but the treacherous footing accomplished the rest.

  As the deck of the overpass reached a ninety-degree angle, perpendicular to the highway below, strained metal supports screeched and crumpled. People fell against the cyclone fencing, only to have it give way under their weight and drop them to the speeding traffic below. A few managed to slip fingers through the openings in the fencing, only to have others slam into them from above and knock them loose.

  Several who fell were instantly killed by speeding cars and trucks. Others hit the roadway below, breaking limbs, splitting their skulls open, or landing relatively intact a second or two before a car smashed into them.

  Seventeen died in the few seconds it took for the motorists to react. But flooring their brake pedals in panicked attempts to halt their vehicles inevitably led to a series of multi-car crashes. A teenaged girl in the passenger seat of a sports car wasn’t wearing her seatbelt and crashed through the windshield, crumpling against the side door of a black minivan twenty feet away. A portly man in distressed black leather with a wild gray beard wiped out on his Harley-Davidson, skidded across two lanes of traffic and was crushed under the wheels of a semi that had swung onto the shoulder to avoid a collision with a cement truck.

  In the middle of the chaos, Tora noticed the Good Samaritans again, close to the overpass but too far away from the havoc to interfere. Nevertheless, he flicked a tendril of his power in their direction to hobble their efforts further.

  People continued to fall from the bridge, slipping through the fencing and dropping violently on the hoods and roofs of cars and trucks. Wails and moans of pain and screams of fear rose like a chaotic symphony over the rush-hour traffic. The moment everyone seemed poised and safe, clinging to twisted sections of rebar or supporting cables or twisted fencing, the whole overpass finally collapsed to the highway below, crushing cars across four lanes of traffic, pinning pedestrians beneath tons of concrete and steel, puncturing arteries, severing limbs, decapitating people. The huge sections of falling steel smashed through the fuel tanks of two cars, one each in the southbound and northbound lanes. The scraping of metal against metal created showers of sparks, which ignited spilt fuel and led to more explosions. Pools of flaming gasoline spread across multiple lanes of traffic, burning pedestrians and drivers trapped in their vehicles.

  With each accident, he sought to maximize the level of death and destruction. Flesh wounds became broken bones and impalements, severed limbs and decapitations. Similarly, fuel spills became fires and explosions. The radius of death and destruction spread outward like ripples from one dropped stone.

  But every symphony reaches a crescendo and he felt he had wrung as much enjoyment from this opportunity as possible. While the energy he expended to create the havoc had exhausted his resources, the resulting pain, misery and grief replenished him and more.

  The devastation gave him enough energy to reach out across the bustling town of Laurel Hill and claim it, his vibrations thrumming to the core of it. Those ripples would produce the desired effect. A call to violence and destruction.

  The switchback stairs on his end of the overpass remained relatively intact, held together by his will to facilitate his exit. Ignoring the cries behind him, he descended the stairs with a buoyancy in his step he hadn’t experienced in a long time. He crossed the parking lot of the Hillcrest Shopping Plaza, climbed into the plumber’s van and navigated several back streets to avoid the gridlock he’d created.

  Sam pushed his way through the frightened crowd, Dean at his side, as the pedestrian overpass crumbled and collapsed. Then Dean vanished, replaced by Lucifer, who cheered and clapped as pedestrians fell to their deaths.

  “Hell of a party you got here, Sam,” Lucifer said. “I should know. Right?”

  Sam
edged forward, but Lucifer caught his arm.

  “Watch this one, big guy.”

  In the middle of the highway, a man in a tan blazer, face bleeding, fell to his knees a moment before the grill of a white Ford pickup crushed his head against the rear bumper of a Mazda Tribute.

  “Woo, boy! That skull burst like a ripe melon!”

  Shut up, Sam thought intently. Shut up!

  “Little help here, Bunky,” Lucifer said as he grabbed an elderly woman by the nape of her neck. “Let’s make pancakes together.”

  Lucifer pushed the woman forward, ignoring her hysterical screams, and shoved her under the wheels of a speeding commercial van.

  Sam squeezed his eyes shut, flinched when he heard the wet thud, and speared his right thumbnail into the scar on his left palm.

  Through the press of rushing, shoving bodies, Dean saw the tall man in the bowler hat slam something downward. Instantly, the overpass shuddered, as if in the throes of an earthquake. Many people had crammed into the caged switchback staircase, with those in the lead already nearing the top. Nervous shouting followed. Several people yelled, “Hurry!” or “Move!”

  As another car explosion sounded from the parking lot behind them, the crowd pushed forward with renewed urgency. Dean wanted to reach the guy in the bowler, but the mass of humanity flowing up the staircase blocked him. With the nearest traffic light a couple of hundred yards away, dodging cars across four lanes of speeding traffic was the next best option.

  “Sam! It’s Frogger time.”

  When he got no response, he turned and discovered his brother had fallen several steps behind. Sam stood motionless, staring off into space, his left hand gripped in his right.

  “Sam!”

  Dean ran back and shook Sam’s shoulder. “Sammy!”