“Touch anything else and you’re dead,” he said.

The robbers ordered the other tellers to march around and join the patrons on the floor, but because I was at the end of the row-or maybe I looked friendly and cooperative, heaven knows I was planning to be-they gave me the job of cleaning out the drawers and putting money into a bag under the watchful and piercing green eyes of a green-faced zombie. Any one of us would’ve loved to see his bank implode or explode or just crumble into the river, hopefully taking Hank Vernon and his predatory kin with it, though I was the queen of the Bring-Down-Hank-Vernon Brigade, being that I had more Vernon-inflicted wounds than all of my co-workers put together. What they didn’t know was every single one of us tellers First City National Bank of Baylortown, Wisconsin, FCN for short, hated bank owner Hank Vernon with a passion-a seething, lava-like passion churning deep in our bank teller hearts. They commanded all seven of us tellers to put up our hands-so we wouldn’t push any silent alarm or panic buttons, no doubt. Somebody was attacking the bank I so deeply hated! The institution behind the ruination of my family. I was startled, and frightened for my teller pals and the handful of customers in there-I didn’t want anybody to be hurt-but this tiny little buried part of me felt a kind of dark glee. There were only three of them, but it seemed like they were everywhere. In addition to the masks, they wore business suits and leather gloves, and they moved with military precision. The robbers perpetrating all this violence wore zombie masks-mottled skin, sunken eyes, the whole zombie nine yards. One moment the bank was quiet, even sort of sleepy the next moment, it was an explosion of mayhem with people yelling, screaming, and crying guns flashed, things got smashed and tipped over. I was looking busy behind the teller window at First City National Bank one Sunday, a delicate operation that involved doodling a frame of stars around the very edge of a piece of scratch paper, when three bank robbers burst in.Īnd I really do mean burst.

The Hostage Bargain by Annika Martin