Displaced

Chevelle - Three

"What the heck?" Wicken whispered. "This can't be happening, this can't be--"

Meanwhile, Timber hid behind a row of clearance-marked toys. He waved for Wicken to join him. "Come on! Before it sees you!"

Instead, Wicken made a dive for the counter. If the tall guy with the gun was watching, he didn't do anything. It was hard to tell if he was paying attention to us or not. His unnaturally large purple eyes continually glanced around him with what I imagined was curiosity. The more I watched him, the more I wondered if he was even human. Nobody was that tall normally, and if I squinted, I was pretty sure I noticed his skin was a slight shade of blue. From where I was, it was hard to see too many more details about him beyond his plain black Mandarin-style suit.

"Back room," Wicken mouthed to me. He waved at Timber to follow.

I gave the little girl by me a gentle tug and whispered, "This way." Then I put a finger to my lips. We could all freak out later.

Slowly and as discretely as possible, we crept back to the employees' area of the store. I let the girl go in first and then shut the door behind me. A few seconds later, the boys joined me along with a couple of middle-aged men.

"Of all the days to have a terrorist attack, it had to be the one where I'm working," Wicken moaned, covering his face with his hands. "My mom is going to kill me."

"Pretty sure those aren't terrorists," I said. "He saw you. You'd have been toast if they were terrorists."

"Ransom, duh."

"Looked like an alien to me," Timber said softly. He went over to the little girl. "Are your parents here?"

She shook her head, and I felt a heaviness in my heart. If I wanted my mom, I couldn't imagine how she was feeling. Timber put an arm around her and gave her a hug. Not something I'd have expected from a mega-superstar. The media always painted the famous as being rather self-serving or untouchable, their good deeds were grand, like buying computers for a new school or building a city in a third-world country. And yet, Timber thought of the most helpless person in the room first. He was a lot better than me, that's for sure.

I watched as he reached into his pockets and dumped some candy onto the break room table.

"Go ahead," he said with a nod at the girl. Hesitantly, she took a piece and unwrapped. My kind of girl, she liked to eat her feelings too.

I reached for the table and grabbed a piece of salt water taffy. It was red and green and smelled like watermelon, which I hated. I ate it anyway and it tasted amazing, and not just because it was warm and squishy from being in Timber's pocket. It was controllable, comforting, a small pleasure I could savor even if the world around me went to crap. Before I knew it, I was going for a second piece.

Timber also took one, and slowly unwrapped the paper. "What now?"

"We can try and escape out the back," Wicken said. "There's a door that leads into the hidden hallways where all the maintenance stuff happens. Eventually it goes to a service elevator and that goes to the basement, and that should have a way to get outside again."

"Works for me," one of the older guys with us said.

Wicken gave a slight shrug. "Pretty sure we're supposed to stay put, though. That's what protocol says."

"Screw protocol. If we can escape, we should!"

"There's a reason we're not supposed to go anywhere. It keeps us safe in case these terrorist guys are already in those hallways. The best thing we can do is stay put and wait for the S.W.A.T. team to show up," I said.