The Florentine Centre isn't really what you'd call a mall. It has the monoculture feel of a mall, an area preserved for corporate outposts, but also the griminess of a decrepit suburban shopping street, open to the elements. Earth is symbolised by concrete, water by the urine stains and spittle, fire by the ubiquitous fag butts and air by the wind that, even on a still summer day, seems to be deliberately channeled under your clothing. It is, in effect, several alleys that have been given a common name and purpose. There are four main avenues and in the middle a small round courtyard with a fountain and a white stone clock tower which can be easily seen from almost anywhere. This one piece of sensible design has resulted in three successful suicides and numerous attempts.
As you enter the Centre and walk down one of the main avenues, assuming that it is not raining in which case you scuttle along under the shelter of the walkway above you, your immediate impression will be that there must be some sort of fertility drug in the water because the entire place is filled with families. Mothers and sometimes fathers pushing those who can't walk yet, dragging those who don't want to walk and yelling at those who are a bit too enthusiastic about walking. As you get closer to the clock tower, they start circling round and round, sucked in by the attraction of the benches around the base. Usually the velocity they have on entering the central courtyard means their course is just altered and they are sent off down one of the other avenues, but those moving too slowly or with a path too directly towards the centre circle it, getting closer, looking for a bench without occupants or chip wrappers, until they finally crash and sit, taking out cigarettes, chocolate and drinks for the kiddies. The children, who have a lot of Brownian motion, will sometimes spark off towards toilets or toy shops, but mostly return given the added draw of parental shouting. Eventually, the group will accumulate enough energy to get up and leave, though they may be dragged back again and again.
It is grey inside the Florentine Centre, but not uniformly, since concrete can take on some fantastic patterns over the years from the weather, the environment and poor construction standards. The ground is paved and polka-dotted with forty years' worth of chewing gum. Depending on exactly where you are inside it the smell is a mixture of different proportions of chip shop, fried chicken, Jamaican and Indian; each avenue is dominated by one of the aforementioned establishments, though the chip shop tends to win since their abandoned meals and wrappers are distributed evenly around the entire Centre.
During idle days, teenagers mill around the courtyard, half-heartedly skateboarding and smoking until what security there is kicks them out, usually taking a couple of hours, at which point they leave and go to find booze. It was now the period of the day when they are at their most irritable and know that they will be expelled in half an hour or so. I saw Petra sitting on the edge of the fountain, shoulders hunched up, scowling as one red-jacketed youth tried to jump a milk crate, fell off his board in front of her and got up without a word. His friends watched blankly, all wearing earpiece Walkmans with the green light shining that indicated that the power was on. One of them got on his own skateboard and proceeded to attempt the same, unimpressive stunt.
“Petra,” I said, walking up to her. She stared suspiciously, hands in the pockets of her unidentified ethnic coat. “It's Elboy. I've changed my hair.”
“Elboy? What have you got on your head?”
“It's a wig, Petra. It's organic. Human hair. No animals were harmed in the making of my syrup. What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Circle business.”
I shrugged. “Just trying to make a bit of conversation. I'm sure Young would tell me if it was anything important.” I tried not to grin; the fact that Young talked to me at all annoyed her immensely.
“Young wouldn't tell you anything like this. It's Circle stuff. You wouldn't get it.”
“Sure. If you say so.” I did grin this time. “So, have you, like, finished this business?”
“Yeah, it's finished. I've been waiting for you for ages. You're late. We should get moving right now.”
“Hang about, hang about... I've only just got here. I dunno, I fancy getting a Starbucks or something.” I gazed down the northern avenue absently, still grinning. A man was crossing the walkway above the Starbucks, wearing a backpack. He suddenly fell over. The woman walking behind him stopped and her mouth opened. From this distance I could see that something had appeared on her face. She wiped at it and her hands came away a different colour.
“Petra?”
“What?”
There was a cloud in the air by the woman's shoulder that appeared and disappeared quickly. She staggered and took a step away from me. Then there was another cloud, a mark appeared on the side of her head and she fell.
“Petra. Something's going on. Something... fuck.” I grabbed her arm and tugged her towards the doorway of a Body Shop on the corner, but just as I'd managed to get her moving the glass in the window shattered and a man in a denim jacket walking past toppled through it. He landed against a display of exfoliants, stunned, tried to get up, his body jerked twice and he collapsed and lay there, moving feebly and gasping. Then the right hand side of his head disappeared and a spray of red covered the sign next to him. He stopped moving.
“Shit,” I said, and tripped over, grazing my hands on the paving stones and almost dragging Petra down with me. People were starting to move – some of them were screaming, but mostly they were just running towards the exits. From the ground I saw two parents dragging a dog and one child behind them fall almost simultaneously, leaving the dog tethered to one of them. The mother tried to rise. Something made her fall back to the ground instantly. The bodies twitched and I could see more droplets of blood flying off them, painting the pavement.
“Oh holy fuck,” I said, desperately crawling away from the Body Shop, scrambling to my knees, running, ducking towards the benches. To my left I could see the bobbles hanging off Petra's coat bouncing as she kept up with me.
“They're in the tower, in the tower,” I panted, “in the fucking clock tower...”. We got to the base of the clock tower, crawled underneath one of the benches, my knee crushing a greasy chicken bone. “Fuck, they're in the tower. What the hell?”
“How many?” Petra hissed from next to me. I could smell lilac on her.
“What?”
“How many have they shot?”
“Christ, how should I know? Four, five... what the fuck does that matter?” People were running down the avenues. I saw a couple more fall, whether tripping or being hit, I couldn't tell.
“Fuck it, this is... this is... this shouldn't have happened.”
“Petra, what the fuck is going on? Did you fucking bring these people here?”
“No no no no, I never... I just left the focus here... but it should take years, years...”
“What the hell are you on about?”
“The focus. It's in the clock tower. It's supposed to collect... oh shit.” There were very few people visible now. “It's supposed to collect flows, it collects life flows and stores them.”
“What? What the fuck have you lot been doing here?”
“We haven't done anything. People jumped from the tower, right? It was a good place to put the grey focus. The focus works on disrupted life flows.”
“Petra, I haven't got time for your shite. Tell me who's fucking shooting from the fucking clock tower. I don't give a toss about your focus.”
“This is important, Elboy!” She grabbed me by the collar and shook me, and I looked at her, unsure whether to hit her or to listen. “This isn't shite! You don't understand! I was here planting the grey focus in the clock tower. I pushed it through the bars of the gate at the bottom. It collects interrupted flows, like... well, like lives. Not just deaths, wasted lives, dead lives.”
“What? Who the fuck are you to tell these people they're wasting their lives? Who the fuck are you and your Circle to say these people are dead? You bunch of fucking hippy snob bastards.”
“It's not me that decides, Elboy. It's the way it works.”
“Bollocks. It's bollocks.”
“It's real, dammit. It's all real. And that's not it, listen to me, christ, that's not it. There's a feedback effect. The more it absorbs, the more it will encourage disrupted flows. It'll get worse.”
“How could it possibly get any more bloody worse?”
“It can get worse. I don't know. But they'll... I don't know, whoever they are, they'll get better, they'll kill more people, somehow. It'll happen. And eventually there'll be an overflow. I've got to call Young.”
“You fucking call Young. I'm calling the police. Christ.” I dug my phone out of my jacket pocket and pressed 999.
“You have reached emergency services. Please say the services you require – police, ambulance or fire.”
“Police! Ambulance!” I shouted.
“You have asked for police and ambulance services. Is this correct?”
“Yes!”
“You are calling from an untraceable location. Please say the address for which you require police and ambulance services.”
“Florentine Centre, Croydon.”
“Please hold the line. A dispatcher will be with you as soon as possible.”
At least they had had the sense not to put hold music on the system. I don't think I had called 999 since I was a kid, when my brother had been tipped off his bike by a car. Bastard had got up while I was still on the phone and said he was fine. Petra was tapping something into the keypad of her Siemens.
I suddenly realised how quiet it was. There were no more screams, no more shouts as people pushed their way to the exits. There was a faint undernoise coming from all around, like subterranean bees, and I heard a few groans from the shops, where the injured and scared had taken cover. The distant sound of traffic was a faint comfort.
Petra had sent her message. I was still waiting for a dispatcher. Somewhere outside, there was a screech, some furious honking, but nothing else.
"Hello sir? Can you confirm your location please?"
"I'm in the Florentine Centre in Croydon. I'm underneath a bench at the bottom of the clock tower. There's someone shooting from the top of the clock tower."
"Okay, sir, the police are aware of this and they are on their way right now. If you are in a safe place right now, don't move unless you find yourself in immediate danger. Is there anyone else with you?"
"Yes, one other person. There may be other people around, I can't see them."
"Don't look for them, just sit tight where you are. Tell whoever's with you to do the same. Someone will be with you in just a few minutes."
Petra's phone beeped. "Shut that thing off!" I hissed. She ignored me, reading the message while biting her lip and leaving lipstick marks on her teeth.
"Sir? Are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm okay. Look, okay, I'll stay put. Hurry though." I hung up and turned to Petra. "They say sit tight and they'll be here soon."
"We don't need to do that," she said. "Young says we're safe."
"Will you keep your voice down? What would Young know about it? He's not here, is he?"
"I'm safe because I went through a shielding ritual when I was given the focus," she said, crawling out from under the bench. "You're safe as long as you're with me. I'm getting out of here. You can come with me if you want. Young did say to take you back. Or you can stay on your own and get arrested. It's up to you.”
“Stop it. Get back under here,” I said to her furry boots. “And shut up. He'll see you.”
The boots started walking away from me. “I'm not joking, I'm going. See you later, or, well, maybe not eh?”
She was twenty or thirty metres away when I heard a faint noise from above me. Tank, tank, tank. Something banging on metal, rhythmically, getting quieter and louder but gradually moving down towards me. Tank, tank, tank. Footsteps. On a metal staircase. Inside the clock tower. Getting closer. And who was the first person whoever it was would see when he got to the bottom?
“Shit,” I muttered, scrambling out, wincing as my grazed hands rubbed against the concrete. Petra wasn't even looking behind her. A wind took up and ruffled across her hair. She wasn't in a hurry, though she wasn't dawdling. I ran after her.
“Hurry up,” I said as I caught up. “He's coming down. Hurry! Dammit!”
“There's no hurry. He won't shoot us. I told you. Don't get too far away unless you want him to kill you.”
I grabbed at the shoulder of her coat and tried to pull her to move faster. “Get off me,” she told me, but started moving slightly more. We ran under a walkway, with fat splashes of red on the ground beneath us, perfect circles surrounded by drops like sunflower petals. We passed the Starbucks. I saw a young woman's head appear over the counter, look at me quizzically.
“He's coming down! Hide!” I shouted at her, and looked back over my shoulder. I heard a clank, groaning metal. “Oh fuck,” I said, and tugged harder at Petra. The exit was only maybe twenty metres away.
I looked back again and a man wearing a heavy black jacket was walking around the corner, holding a squat black rifle with what looked like an enormous telescopic sight on the top. He looked at us and hurriedly began folding it back down over the front of the weapon, and I saw it was some sort of extra barrel.
My tugging on Petra's shoulder had twisted her head around. “He can't kill us, Elboy. He can't shoot us.”
Someone was crawling out from behind an overturned table in the Starbucks. “Get back in!” I shouted. “He's out here!” The teenager, one of the skateboarders, stopped and looked at me. “Stop looking at me! Get back in!”
The man at the base of the clock tower twisted the barrel, locking it with a clunk that echoed around the avenue. I let go of Petra and started running, still looking. The man swung the rifle to his shoulder smoothly and aimed it at us, flicked a switch on the side with the thumb of his left hand. I stumbled into the double doors going to the street, banging my hip hard, and there was a loud crack – the door to my right thumped, the glass letting out a few splinters, not shattering but suddenly with a hole and crazy lines radiating out to the sides. I heard a smashing sound behind me – the skateboarder had pushed the Starbucks door open and a bullet had hit the frame. He leapt back in and the door swung towards him. There were a few more cracks and concrete chips span off the ground where his hand had been.
Petra reached the doorway and turned the corner to where I was standing, hands on knees, panting. “See? We're alive. He didn't shoot us. We're fine. Am I talking bollocks, Elboy? Is this all bollocks?”
I stared at her. I couldn't think. We had to leave.
“Come on,” she said, “we should go before the police get here.” A few pedestrians watched us, drew back as we passed, muttered to themselves and each other as she walked and I half jogged away from the Florentine Centre.
We turned another corner. I looked back and saw a large red stain on her left shoulder.
“Petra, you're bleeding.”
“I'm not bleeding. He didn't hit us. Remember?”
“You're bleeding. Look at your shoulder.”
She looked down, looked back at me, her face still just as white from the makeup as before but now her eyes wide.
“I'm okay. I'm not hurt. I didn't get shot.” And then she crumpled.