Florida Won Gun Day, So Nobody Believes the Only Kid Who Can Level Up novel · Chapter 17 of 32
Chapter 17: The Mall
The Westland Mall Walkers' Club has a T-shirt, and the T-shirt says 6 A.M. OR BUST.
They have worn it every Saturday since 1994.
On November 14, forty-one of them were wearing it in the dark mall, an hour before dawn.
The stores were shuttered, the escalators were off, and the only light was the emergency strip along the floor.
The club walked the lower concourse in pairs, and the average age was seventy-one.
I stood on the cold tile of the food court with my backpack, my Taurus and eleven Deputies, and I tried to move them.
I had come before dawn in Yosi's truck, with Joelle in the back seat, off duty and in a gray sweatshirt.
The mall guard had let us in only because Yosi had sixty thousand followers.
The seep sat by the Cuban sandwich counter, a black pinprick the size of a dime in the air.
It had been weeping a thread of salt for a day, and the guard had put a traffic cone over it.
"The gate opens at six," I said to the club president, who was seventy-eight and wore a visor.
"The floor you're standing on is going to be inside it."
"I've walked this floor for thirty years," said the president.
"Not after six."
"After six I have three laps left," he said, and the whole club nodded.
I got nine of them out the door, the ones who had kids, and thirty-two stayed.
Several of them were carrying.
One woman had a Glock 19 in a fanny pack with her water bottle.
Joelle looked at me across the food court.
"They're not going to leave," she said.
"No."
"Then we're going to be in the gate with them," she said, "and I want you to count out loud."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of Florida Won Gun Day, So Nobody Believes the Only Kid Who Can Level Up are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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