Slide by Gerald A Browne

Seaside Supermarket life and death played turnabout. More than ten thousand items were animated into what seemed a retributive frenzy, as though they took this opportunity to spend their wrath on creatures who normally swallowed them and used them and took them for granted.
    At the end of the drop, on impact, all the floor-to-ceiling windows along the front of the store shattered. Hunks of heavy-gauge glass burst out. Shards of it shot through the air like shrapnel.
    The drop and its consequences killed sixty-two.
    One was the check-out girl Felicia Artez, who had taken a break and was in the employees’ toilet with Warren Stevens’ younger sister, Lois. In that privacy Felicia has passed over the speed to Lois — twenty Ambars, yellow-coated ten-milligram tablets. Sixty dollars’ worth. That much because they were, as Felicia explained, long-ball hitters. Meaning they took her up, leveled off after a while and then came on strong again, distributing their effect over six to eight hours.
    Lois transferred the Ambars from the plastic vial into a small cotton pouch. She undid her jeans and placed the pouch inside her bikini panties. She patted, flattened it so it didn’t show.
    Meanwhile, Felicia had gone into the toilet booth and was using a foot to work the flushing lever when it happened.
    Water belched up six feet from the bowl. Felicia had no chance to grab on to anything. She slid against the smooth inside wall of the booth, went up and hit the low ceiling.
    Lois, who had been using the wash basin, clutched its under edge. She was shaken but unhurt. She called to Felicia. No reply. The booth door was bolted from inside. Lois retrieved an overturned paper towel receptacle. She stood on it to look over the top of the booth.
    Felicia was bent front up over the toilet bowl, legs and arms at awkward angles, like a tossed rag doll. Her head hung limp by its own deadweight in an impossible position, twisted completely around.
    Frank Brydon, who had stopped in at the market only for some Mexican beer, was reaching into an upright beverage cooler when it happened. He used the cooler, with both hands got a good grip on one of its permanent wire shelves, managed to shove his legs with pressure against the thick frame of its opening and hunched his head as much as possible. Bottles banged around inside the cooler, striking his arms and shoulders and grazing the top of his head. The full-length cooler door slammed at his back and side. But he managed to hang on.
    For a moment Marsha Hilbert was weightless and then let down hard. The beautiful motion picture star slid unbecomingly about thirty feet to the facade of a check-out stand, probably would have been hurt but for some packaged loaves of spongy white bread that cushioned the impact.
    Elliot Janick was flipped end-over-end into a refrigerated case. Inelegantly, the famous filmmaker replaced ham, bologna and other cold cuts. The uncomfortable frosty confines of the case protected him.
    When Warren Stevens, the bear killer, was thrown down, he doubled up, knees tight to chest, making as small a target as possible. He was pelted by, among other things, jars of baby food.
    Gloria Rand, the fifty year old who looked thirty, was in the fresh produce section. She put her hands tight over her face. Heads of cabbage and cauliflower, eggplant and honeydews whirled around her like taunting satellites. She ended up wedged against the base of a large bin that had contained a special on early, tasteless strawberries.
    Ex-convict, box boy, Spider Leaks was almost killed for the second time in less than three minutes when the front windows shattered. A chunk of glass came down like a guillotine within inches of his head, and another smaller piece sliced some skin from the round of his shoulder.
    Judith Ward and Marion Mercer had just chosen identical things they might claim they had cooked from scratch. Packages of frozen noodles Romanoff, asparagus soufflés, and an