The sounds of the gunfire aren’t the measured, paced reports of police returning fire.

It’s the fast rat-a-tat-tat-tat of someone firing at full auto, trying to cause as many casualties as possible in a short time.

Jesus Christ, the French Quarter is turning into a war zone!

I scurry over to the nearest abandoned float and slam my back against it for cover. After catching my breath, I peek around the side and steal a glance down the street.

More shouts, more screams, more gunfire.

Clusters of people are still frantically running in every direction, and there’s a haze of gun smoke in the air. There’s lots of panic but I practically weep at pride at what else I’m seeing:

A New Orleans EMS ambulance pulled up onto the sidewalk, the rear doors wide open, the two EMS personnel—both women—frantically working on two figures stretched out on the street, ignoring the sounds of the gunfire.

An older African American, standing at the open door of her souvenir shop, waving in people running by so they can take shelter.

A husband and wife team, it looks like, performing CPR on a heavyset man clad in a T-shirt and shorts.

My Crescent City is still alive, unbowed, and standing strong.

And some of us are fighting back.

I get up from my shelter, stay close to the buildings, stop at a corner where an NOPD officer is on her knees, hat gone, peeking around the corner. I race up to her and say, “I’m on the job! What’s the situation?”

She looks up at me, Hispanic, late twenties, tear marks down her cheeks, but anger and defiance in her brown eyes.

“We’ve got a shooter down there, but I can’t see who it is,” she says.

I sneak a peek and hear the rapid automatic fire of the shooter, but I see what she means: there are still knots of people down the street, fleeing or running into the buildings. More sirens sound and I know the wise thing is to wait for backup, but whoever said I was wise?

“Hang tight,” I say. “I’m taking a run.”

She says something but I can’t hear her, and I run down Canal Street, using everything I pass for cover: a mailbox, shrubs, even the skinny palm trees lining the streetcar tracks. Anything is better than nothing.

Along the way I see a college student crumpled on the street, his Tulane T-shirt stained with blood, pass piles of beads, Solo cups, sneakers, and flip-flops, and as I near Bourbon Street, I crouch behind a bus shelter—and finally get a chilling glimpse of the shooter.

Marching through the intersection, he’s calmly moving along, spraying bullets in long bursts in every direction at the fleeing crowds, as casually as a gardener watering a bed of roses.