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Americans cower under sniper gun rampage orgy of terror

The world's streets are today deserted as Americans cower in their basements and people from other countries gather around television sets to view the amazing spectacle of an entire nation cowering in their basements, fearful of a bloody and sudden death at the hands of the US' serial sniper.

Yes, death stalks the tree-lined boulevards of this peace-loving nation — death at its most grizzly and, for most citizens, in its most unexpected form — at the point of a gun.

Americans have a word for it: fear. They also have another word for it: terror. They have several other words for it but are largely unable to give voice to their horror as to how the land of the free has overnight become the land of the gun-toting psycho sniper. One young man, who has been hiding in a Washington MacDonald's restaurant for three days, expressed it best: "Jeezus fuc*king H Christ," he told our reporter. "Get the fuc*k down, man. The guy's got a fuc*king gun!"

But they didn't get the fuc*k down, did they? Not the ten victims of this latest outrage, eight of them now decorating the mortuary slab.

Why, Americans are asking, and how, how could this happen to us? And, with the anniversary of 9/11 fast approaching, the US must reflect: "When will our suffering end?"

The shock of the events of the last few days have been most acutely felt in Middle America, a peaceful paradise of merry hoe-downs and neighbourly bonhomie. Here, many have never even seen a firearm, let alone been sniped at on a gas station forecourt. "I didn't even know what a gun was until yesterday," said one visibly-shaken resident of Hestonville, MA, who has taken refuge in a heavily-guarded shopping mall on the outskirts of town. "Where did this nut get one of these gun things anyway?"

Where indeed? Experts fear that the US is about to suffer a tsunami of gun-related violence of the kind which has ravaged Europe in recent decades. "If we don't clamp down now," said Will E. Coyote, Sherriff of Hestonville, MA, "we'll end up like Britain. You know, like Manchesterpool, where all them there niggers are packing a piece. My cousin told me that them Brits think there's nothing dandier than to drive by each others' house of a Saturday and shoot 'em up with a semi-automatic rifle. For chrissakes, they eat squirrel pie over there. For real. And hedgehog."

Meanwhile, as Americans continue to duck behind solid objects, the FBI has confirmed that the net is closing on the sniping maniac. "We're talking about someone in a white van carrying a rifle," confirmed an agent who had taken temporary refuge in an armoured filing cabinet. "That's not something you see everyday in these parts, so we're confident that we can get a result soon."

And, while the hunt goes on, President Bush has urged his fellow Americans to be "resolute". Speaking from a nuclear command bunker in Nevada which he is temporarily sharing with Hollywood heartthrob Bruce Willis, Bush declared: "I'm gonna find the people responsible for the manufacture of these weapons of mass destruction and I'm gonna nuke their asses back into the Stone Age. You have my word on that. God bless America."

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