Zero

Carol heard the distant ratta-tat-tat both echoed and obscured by the long cold hallways of the mall. She was sitting on a bench next to an empty fountain, picking at the cold beef and broccoli she'd gotten from the Panda Express. She normally wouldn't have time for such a luxury, 15 minutes for lunch was all she was allowed, but today she'd decided to splurge. After all the mall was nearly empty, there was no major holidays that would spur the reckless spending that helped to keep the last of the stores in the now mostly vacant building in business. The weather outside was pleasant, not cold enough for people to take shelter, not hot enough for people to seek out the air conditioning. On day's like today the mall would sit on it's street corner, surrounded by swaths of empty parking lots, it's cavernous insides just home to the rare last minute shopper, the seniors meeting for their daily walking group, and those like Carol – retail workers, the last of a dieing breed, coming in to wait in a rundown store without customers, and hoping to save enough of their pay checks to hold them over when their store shuttered like all the rest.

The ratta-tat-tat sound rang out again, louder and more staccato now, and joining it Carol heard a scream. Somewhere in the back of her mind it triggered something, a training they had to do years ago when she was first hired, something... Then as if propelled by the realization she dove to the floor "ACTIVE SHOOTER!" she yelled out. Looking her eyes scanned the hallway for anyone who could help, any place to hide, but the area was deserted and sparsely furnished. The bench she'd been sitting on had a small nook underneath it, making herself small Carol tucked herself in, closing her eyes shut and hoping that it would be enough.
Ratta-tat-tat, the noise was louder now, Carol held her eyes shut as tight as she could. Then all of a sudden a violent "BANG BANG" rang out, then silence fell. Carol stayed tucked in, waiting, eyes closed for what seemed like an eternity.

"Are you OK?" the voice was accompanied by a gentle hand placed on her shoulder, when Carol looked up she saw a police office standing over her, a woman in her mid-40s by the look of her, she had sad eyes. Carol just shook her head yes and started to come to her feet. "This way" the officer said calmly gesturing Carol back towards the food court. Carol took one step and then stopped, "I left my" she started gesturing the opposite way, "You can get it later" the office said giving Carol a little push towards the empty restaurants and mall exit. Glancing back Carol saw more officers gathering on the other side of the mall, outside of the Forever 21, where she'd left Jenna and taken her way 20 minute lunch break. Numbness, a side effect of shock, stopped her from putting the pieces together, but she knew why the officers were there, why she couldn't go back to get her things.

One Hour Later

Special Agent Tricia Masters had gotten the call at about the same time as local police had. "Mass shooting, local mall" her field office was only about 30 minutes by car, less when she didn't bother with the speed limit, and when it came to something like this you generally didn't. As she raced down the interstate she listened to the chatter on the police radio, generally chaos. The police had come quickly, they weren't sure what the situation was, so they'd put out a call to a neighboring cities SWAT and were "holding position" when all of a sudden it was all over. Tricia knew what would come next: more chaos, at least holding position they were't making it worse, she thought - Too dark, there were people dead probably, she shook her head as if to shed the meer idea.

Upon arriving at the scene Tricia could begin to put together the picture. Apparently a single gunman, entered the mall via the north entrance and began shooting. He made his way past several stores that were closed before encountering a security guard. The guard hadn't noticed the small semi-automatic gun the shooter was carrying and been shoot without even taking his pistol out of it's holster. After that it was an elderly couple, then the Forever 21 cashier. Every indication was that the shooter would have kept going except for a uniformed officer who had been sent to the mall earlier to collect a statement about some petty larceny. While the rest of the police force waited outside for SWAT the officer had approached the gunman from the rear and shot him twice - killing him. When Tricia met the office that had taken down the gunman she almost laughed. The officer was a small woman, mid-forties, with long blonde hair pulled into a pony tail. "That could have been me" Tricia thought, save for a few lucky breaks. Tricia had given the woman her card, strictly speaking official communication would go through the chief of police, but Tricia had been in the business of policing long enough to know what this woman who had acted alone while all the men in the force had stood outside waiting for help was about to go through.

This wasn't Tricia's first mass shooting, heck it wasn't even her third, the pattern had become well worn in her mind at this point and by all indication this shooting wasn't anything special. She'd secured the crime scene upon arriving. Local police had done a good job of getting civilians out of the building, and much to Tricia's surprise hadn't done too much to contaminate the scene. At that point Tricia knew that she should wait for her crime scene team to arrive. Of course while Tricia wasn't a stranger to mass shootings her crime scene team would be, so while she waited she fished into the gunman's pockets. Car keys, an older model toyota by the look of it, a charging case for the earbuds the shooter still wore, and a phone – beatup with a cracked screen seemingly the result of wear and tear, not the shooting. Photographing everything in place Tricia waited anxiously drumming her fingers as her Crime scene team took their time.

It was a full 30 minutes after Tricia had arrived when the crime scene team finally arrived. They got right to work and Tricia was impressed by the speed they showed now that they were finally ready. Gesturing at one of the young technicians Tricia pointed out the car keys, the technician snapped a photo and Tricia grabbed the keys, heading for the North parking lot.

The lot was mostly empty except for a blue Toyota, as she'd expected it was a late model Camary. "Fuck!" Tricia said out loud looking at the car. It had out of state plates, Texas to be specific, and she knew what that would mean.

One Hour Before

He sat in his car, the podcast playing over his stereo. The car didn't have bluetooth, in fact it didn't have much of anything. What it did have was a reliability tested over the hundreds of thousands of miles. Everything else he had cobbled together like the blue tooth adaptor built out of bits of parts, and tutorials he'd found online.

He watched, seething like he had all day as the doors to the mall stood closed. He looked around the mostly deserted parking lot, and like he'd done before, slammed his head into the steering wheel screaming in rage. It wasn't meant to be like this, empty lot, no one coming and going. Finally he'd had enough, turning to his passenger seat he pushed aside the light blanket to reveal the sub-machine gun. It looked like the Israeli made UZI but he knew that for what he'd paid the similarities would stop at the surface.

He'd been amazed at how easy it was to buy, he'd looked for gun stores yesterday, it turns out there had been 3 stores who sold this very model on his route here, in a bit of paranoia he'd stopped at 2, buying the gun from the first and bullets from the second. As he'd driven through the night he'd realized that he should take the serial numbers off – just in case. He'd grabbed a coffee and a rasp at a small hardware store right off the highway this morning before posting up in the parking lot to watch who went in.

It had taken him a few minutes to disassemble the gun and scratch off the serial number embossed on the lower receiver. He had a slight scare as a mall security guard came up to the car and rapped on the window, but by then he'd tucked the reassembled gun under the blanket. "No overnight parking" the security guard had said, matter of factly before heading into the building. "Typical paid security" the man had said as the guard walked away oblivious to the weapon sitting meer feet away.

It had taken most of the morning listening to the pod cast, watching as the fuel in his tank ran lower and lower, psyching him self up. Finally he grabbed the charging case for his earbuds, popping them in and turning the car off. The pod cast jumped cleanly to his headphones. "...remember, you are not alone in this fight" the podcaster, Cole said and then as-if on queue the man grabbed the gun from his passenger seat and made a b line for the mall entrance.