Read Online The Blue Light Project by Timothy Taylor - Free Book Online

jackass up there, with no authorization to do what he’d done, if he didn’t, this second, this fucking instant . . .
    So the shots began again, with an almost lazy, painterly quality. A flourishing spray over their heads, chips flying, electrical complaints from the production booth. Gerry saw it all. A final spray of bullets that struck the senior producer in a cluster at the center of his chest and dropped him where he stood. A few more bullets pocked the floor around him, skipping and whining towards the rear where there was a final shattering of glass.
    And here the sound fell to near nothing. A terrible falling, a loss of hope. These were what some would later remember as the first moments of the affair. When the man fell and the sound failed. The first moment at which everybody understood new events to be in motion, launched in their uncertain, irreversible sequence.
    The producer continued to breathe while Gerry watched, tears and whimpers spreading through audience members around him. The producer breathed through holes in his chest, in shallower and shallower breaths until these stopped and Gerry understood that he was dead. He saw combat boots running rearward, the final actor exiting. And then the noise reduced to a shifting, seething mixture of repeated words. Some people repeated the word no. Others repeated the words
oh God. Others the word please. Just breaths really, throat singing in the crumpled air. No. Oh God. Please.
    The seventh man came down from the stage and circled the theater, weapon loosely trained over the crowd as he worked his way to the rear. Gerry watched what he could see of him from the floor. At the rear doors, he set down his weapon but not the briefcase. And using his free hand, he locked the handles of the doors together with a black bike lock he removed from a pocket. Then, retrieving his weapon, he returned to the front of the theater and did the same to the door at the right of the stage, the one that led to the storage and technical areas. Leaving the final door unlocked, the one that led out into the side lobby and from there into the plaza, he remounted the stage and disappeared for a moment into the wings.
    Nobody moved. And when, seconds later, the houselights began to fade, every remaining child and adult wondered with the slow pixelation of light what new type of show had begun.
    The man re-emerged and set his weapon down again. Then he pulled his balaclava free and showed his face. It was by now in shadow, and the light was withdrawing fast from the room. But here he was briefly revealed, neither happy nor sad, not frightened or madly emboldened by what he’d done. He seemed merely placed in the moment, more or less content as he pulled on a pair of night-vision goggles. No evil genius in it. No accented arch-villain. No edge of insanity that could be seen.
    And that detail was the one remembered by the final person to escape the theater in those opening moments of the crisis. A woman in the very front row, in the seat all the way over and against the left wall nearest the exit that had remained unlocked. She was unconnected to any of the children, unconnected to the show in any way except that she was the maid of one of the line producers, and after she had cleaned up the mess following a party he’d thrown the week before, he’d given her tickets to the taping.

    “Bring your children,” he told her.
    “My children are in the Philippines, sir.” And with the rest of her life to think about it, she’d never be able to explain what made her get to her feet at that moment, as the light in the theater failed.
    Gilda was her name, and she believed in enormous mysteries. Strength that rose from the deep, lurking energies of the soul. To be feared certainly, because while they rose from within, they did not belong to the person in whose depths they lived.
    Up to her feet, across the maroon carpet. She saw the man’s chin move an inch to square with her, saw him shift on