Shame Of Maastricht: The Revelation of Misery by Marie N. Hallen (books to improve english .TXT) 📕

“Can someone call the police?”

“Call the police!”

“Police!”

“Call special forces!”

“Terrorists in the building!” visitor’s multiple screams begging to summon the police or other armed forces were accompanied by shots and rumble all around.

“I wish they knew the police are corrupt nowadays!” Kate said to herself as she was crawling along the wall trying to remain unnoticed. To her surprise, Maarten took a rifle and shot upwards, hitting the glass dome of the mall which subsequently collapsed, raining with thousands of glass shards on people’s heads. The voices got even louder, invoking the overall atmosphere of terror and despair. The whole department store was under siege.

“Listen here everyone!” Maarten shouted and shot in the air once again. “We are here to find just one person and make him pay for his past crimes. I won’t let anyone out. If you want to remain alive and leave this place alive, help us find Luuk van der Meer!”

“He is completely insane,” Kate thought, trying to imagine how hundreds of captives would be searching for Luuk in the crowd and in every corner, and how they would try to give him away. She realized it was a bad idea to let Luuk go separately as it seemed to be impossible to find him now.

“Luuk van der Meer! Luuk van der Meer, go out!” some visitors grabbed the idea and started calling Luuk.

“What cowards,” Stijn said to Kate as they reached a staff room, now desolated.

“We need a plan. We can’t just get out of here and run away. They will be chasing us and find us in another place. If not today, tomorrow they will.”

“What do you suggest, Kate?”

“We need to get down. I’m sure Luuk is still in the building, he wouldn’t be able to leave it.”

“And if we find him, we should break a window and just jump.”

Suddenly the voices died down after another shot. Their conversation was interrupted by Maarten’s voice, as loud as never.

“Silence! The building is mined. There is a bomb in the store. It will go off in fifteen minutes. Luuk van der Meer, you only have ten minutes to show up, and I will let these people go. Otherwise everyone will be dead.”

“That’s tough. Let’s go, Stijn. I’m not sure it’s a joke. They could really bring an explosive device.”

“Kate, you shouldn’t show up. If he still has on his mind the idea of forcing Luuk to kill you… Don’t take a risk.”

They left the room and started moving towards the escalator, crawling in the dark as the light was gone on the fourth floor. They heard someone going up the escalator and hid in the corner.

“Goddamn, someone is coming! Be quiet, Kate!”

But they failed to see the person who was approaching, as the stranger rushed back to the third floor. Instead, they heard someone screaming downstairs.

“The building is on fire!”

“We are burning!”

“Even better,” Kate thought in despair as she felt the smell of smoke that finally reached the upper floor. The fire seemed to be massive as it started spreading with lightning speed. She didn’t care about the perpetrators any more and ran down the escalator. Maarten appeared from nowhere and blocked her way.

“Go back,” he commanded. Kate saw a rifle in his hands and realized that things started getting even more serious. She froze in her place, but looked around and realized that the third floor was already empty. Perhaps, all the visitors were on the ground floor, trying to storm the door which was blocked.

At this moment a restroom door opened and her eyes caught Sterre who came out. She was getting closer and closer, moving slowly and staggering as if she was tranquilized. As Sterre got even more closer, Kate saw that her both wrists were slit and bleeding, leaving a bloody trace behind. Her mouth was also bleeding and blood was dripping on her light gray shirt. Sterre was holding a knife in one hand and a gun in another one. Suddenly the knife slipped out of her hands and fell on the floor. She bent down and tried to pick it up, but fell to her knees and failed to get up. Maarten turned around but she pulled a gun at him.

“Leave her alone. I have killed Luuk. You don’t like him? Neither do I. It’s over,” Sterre said. “I will keep cutting and slashing myself until I feel the relief. But the relief is something I will never feel.”

“What are you saying, Sterre? You’re all bleeding!” Kate began, but fell silent, feeling the meaninglessness of further dialogue.

“Does it matter if they kill me or I kill myself? My parents… They are among them… This group… They are not alone. My parents are there too. It’s them who murdered my friends and destroyed everything I used to love. When I was young and my parents killed my dog in my presence, I couldn’t even imagine this was only the beginning. The beginning of the end, as you can see now. I could tell you more but I realized that in the end my words don’t matter. We are doomed. I wanted to take their lives but.... It seems that I decided too late on this, and now I will not have time. What else do you want to hear?”

“Where is Luuk?”

“They won’t find him. Today I will kill more people than them. And I will kill them too.”

Kate was standing petrified and couldn’t neither move, nor say a word any more. She didn’t know whether she should believe Sterre’s words, or no. She might be trying to distract Maarten as the building was already on fire and time was running out. Was there a bomb as well? She wasn’t sure. Was Sterre lying or has she gone completely mad? Her eyes were empty, she was staring into nowhere while holding a gun with her shaking hand.

Maarten took one step forward and Sterre crawled back and rested against the glass partition with iron railing besides the escalators. Sterre pulled the trigger and shot Maarten in the shoulder. The gun was empty now. He shot back, missed again, revealing to be the worst shooter known to Kate, but the bullets destroyed the glass and the partition collapsed exposing Sterre to the danger of falling down. Sterre, who was leaning on the partition, lost support and fell down on the ground floor. Kate screamed, rushed back to the escalator and ran downstairs as fast as possible, jumping several steps at once. She wanted to reach Sterre before someone else found her. Maarten tried to shoot her in the back, but the rifle misfired and it turned out that it apparently ran out of ammunition.

“Get out of my way!” Kate shouted as she nearly bumped into a man running by. The angry and scared man pushed her away but she didn’t have time to fight back.

As Kate reached the ground floor, she saw that half of the hall was already on fire. The fire devoured several stores located close to the exit and it became clear that it was not possible to leave the building any more. The smell of smoke was getting stronger and stronger. Sterre was lying on the floor among the shards of glass scattered all around with her arms outstretched. Her face was covered in blood just like her clothes. She was still holding a knife in her left hand, but the gun was lost. Her both hands were bleeding as she cut her veins open. Kate stopped frozen in horror and shocked by the bloody view, although this wasn’t the first time she evidenced violence.

“Take it, take… No gun. No more guns...” Sterre said and tried to hand the knife to Kate. “I really… really…”

The knife fell on the floor with a clang. Kate failed to hear the end of the sentence as a fire extinguisher exploded in the corner due to overheating, injuring several people who were standing close to it. The rest scattered and stampede occurred.

“This is not my bomb!” Maarten yelled. He had just got down and was desperately looking for someone around. “My bomb is yet to explode!”

“Luuk, where are you?” Kate cried, trying to make her voice as loud as possible. She was surrounded by dozens of people but no one reacted to her cries.

“I need to find him anyway,” she thought and decided to check the first floor and go upstairs as long as there is no fire. Ruben, Martijn and Bram were still shooting, but they couldn’t see her in the fuss, so she got lost in the crowd and became invisible. Kate didn’t know if Sterre was dead, but she kept questioning herself about what Sterre was capable of. What if she really hated Luuk for personal reasons? This thought aroused panic in her. A friend could have become the worst enemy in these new conditions.

While running upstairs, Kate stumbled over a phone, dropped by someone of visitors. She picked it up hoping to make a call, but the phone revealed to be locked and required the owner's fingerprint which made it unusable. However she expected somebody to call sooner or later, so she put the phone in her pocket and proceeded to the rooms on the second floor. Some stores were on fire which had already reached the second floor which was completely desolated. Kate hid behind the column and looked over the shopping mall. She could still see hundreds of faces distinctly, but Luuk wasn’t there and she couldn’t see Maarten and Nienke Dijkstra either.

Kate checked every restroom and technical premises. A few people were hiding there but no one saw Luuk. She went upstairs, checking restrooms and each premise on each floor, but there was no one left.

“I need to get down and face Dijkstra,” she thought. “They won’t kill me if they haven’t caught Luuk yet, it makes no sense.”

Kate got down to the ground floor. Stumbling over dead bodies, she walked around and checked all accessible premises. The smell of smog was getting stronger and stronger. Time was running out. If they couldn’t get away, they would suffocate before the fire completely devours the whole floor. The crowd kept storming the exit unsuccessfully, no shots were heard, even three cops couldn’t be seen anymore. This ominous lull scared Kate. The perpetrators were probably working on some even more horrible plan.

“There she is!” She heard someone’s voice from above, that seemed very familiar to her.

“Go get her!”

“I’m coming!” Kate answered and ran upstairs back to the second floor. Maarten Dijkstra was standing there together with Stijn and holding a knife at his throat. Ruben was walking back and forth behind their backs. No one had guns which surprised Kate. She came closer.

“Oh, how funny. You have run out of bullets? The terrorist attack has failed?”

“She said she had killed Luuk, but we can’t find him. If you don’t help us, someone will get killed,” Maarten pointed at Stijn with a knife.

“Don’t touch him. I’m also looking for Luuk, but if you think I will let you hurt him, you are wrong. Enough.”

“Sterre killed him, Kate!” Stijn said. “She really did it. It’s just that they don’t know where his body is.”

“Luuk is dead?” Kate exclaimed trying to hold back tears. “How come? Why don’t they leave us alone?”

“Too many witnesses,” Maarten replied.

“You have more than a hundred of witnesses, Maarten!” Sterre said. “Look at those people who are storming the exit now. Everybody has seen your face and everybody knows who you are. Kill me, but you can’t kill just everyone.”

“You are wrong here. As I said, we have mined this place and once the bomb goes off, there will be no trace of this store left.”

“This place is on fire! It’s getting dangerous, everyone will suffocate before the fire spreads around!”

“It wasn’t us who set the mall on fire,” Maarten replied and stepped aside, pulling Stijn along.

“If you know that everyone will die anyway, let it be the fire