Erica stood up. ‘It’s Mil…Millie,’ she said, realizing now with a paralyzing fear, he isn’t here for the students. ‘Please,’ she added, ‘don’t shoot the children.’
The gunman nodded his grisly head as he removed the empty clip, plucked a new one off his belt, and shoved it into the rifle.
Rachel stepped out of the closet, her face pale, blood pouring down her arm, her mouth hanging slack.
Erica ran to the bleeding girl. A bullet had nicked her upper arm. Only a flesh wound, but she was in shock: her colour blanched; her skin cold and sweaty. Erica’s emotions morphed from paralyzing fear to unequivocal rage.
The gunman grinned after reloading the bullet clip and looked up at Erica, whose back was to him.
‘Turn around,’ he said, pulling the bolt back on the rifle, chambering a round.
‘She’s bleeding,’ she said, her voice trembling with rage. ‘Let me help her. I just want to stop the bleeding. I…have a scarf in my purse.’
The gunman coughed and spat on the floor.
Erica retrieved her purse and came back to Rachel. She pulled out her scarf, tied it around the wound, and brought her over to the pile of desks.
‘Stay down,’ she whispered to the little girl. Their eyes locked and Rachel robotically obeyed the command.
Erica reached into her purse again, her hands shaking. This time she came up with a small, almost toyish-looking Bersa Thunder .380 automatic pistol, with matt nickel finish. She had taken a deep breath and now let it ease out, exhaling slowly, her hands locked together, steadying them as she stood and swivelled back to the gunman – who stood transfixed – and squeezed the trigger.
There was a bang, amplified in the small room, and a red vapour puffed out the back of the gunman’s head. A small, dark hole appeared in his forehead, then blood began to flow from the hole and poured over his still open eyes. He blinked once and fell to the ground as if he was a marionette and someone had cut the strings.
Erica sat down with the children, her legs shaking, trying to swallow, but her throat was too dry. She settled for a deep breath and closed her eyes, her ears ringing from the gun blasts.
The children behind the desks stared at her with their mouths open. One by one, the other kids began to slip from the closet. No one said anything. Some began to sniffle, some cried, some were ominously silent. Several of them came over and hugged her.
She took another deep breath, trying to calm herself.
‘Everyone, please…sit down,’ she pleaded.
She stood, extricating herself from the swarm of children. Holding her gun pointed at the fallen man, she approached cautiously. She noticed he was still breathing, just as she heard more gunshots coming from down the hall. Then more screams. She looked back at the children.
‘Get in the closet,’ she whispered, harshly. ‘There’s another one out there.’
They pushed inside, silently but quickly. Erica looked over at the kids behind the desk pile. ‘Close your eyes,’ she told them, calmly. ‘It’s going to be okay.’
She stood for a moment, her mind racing, but she could not arrive at a different conclusion. She aimed her gun at the gunman and put another bullet into his head. The shot took off a section of his skull and stopped the breathing.
One of the boys jumped up from behind the desk pile, trembling, his mouth an ‘O’.
She recognized the boy from another class and felt the need to try to reassure him.
‘I’ll be back, Ricky. Please stay down until then.’
The boy slumped as if deflated, his white, spiked hair giving him the appearance of having seen the devil himself.
Erica pushed past the remnants of the door and peered into the hall. It was dark and there were huge holes in the ceiling and walls; evidently, the other gunman had shot out the lights. Oily smoke hung in the air like pale spectres raised from the recently slain. She saw poor Mr Swan lying at one end of the hall, sprawled out, his prosthesis angled, blood spilling from his body. She wanted to go check for a pulse, but stopping the other gunman before he killed anyone else was her first priority. She stepped over Mrs LaForge, trying not to look at her face. Holding up her gun, she kept both hands on it, just as she’d seen actors do in police dramas, just as she practised between rounds at the gun range. She had just a killed a man for the first time in her life. There was no time to reflect on it. She could – no, would – do it again. There were no other choices.
She eased down the hall toward where she could still hear occasional pops of gunfire, staying close to the wall, making herself a smaller target.
She came to the part of the building that was the bottom of the ‘U’ shape and peeked around the corner. Another blast, this one a cavernous, exploding sound, and the other gunman emerged from one of the classrooms carrying a seven-round, Remington 870 Express, pump shotgun. He stopped and began pushing more shells into the gun. Like the first man, he had removed his mask. She could see he was younger than his accomplice, with long, curly, unnaturally red hair. His face was pale and covered with inflamed acne.
Erica stepped away from the wall. She was maybe fifty feet from the shooter in a wide-legged stance, one eye closed as she aimed the gun at him.
He was quick. He pulled the shotgun up and fired at her from hip level. The blast took a row of lockers off the wall, but some of the buckshot found her, striking her left hip and abdomen. She fired as she fell; the round hit his chest. He stumbled, surprised, and pulled open his shirt. Erica saw he was wearing a bullet proof vest and was unhurt. It slowed him temporarily, but he grabbed the Remington and pumped another round into the chamber.
Erica was lying on her back, her side on fire, blood soaking her blue-flowered dress as she craned her neck and again squinted one eye. When she tried to lift it, the pistol seemed to weigh as much as a sledgehammer. It wavered in the air. She wasn’t sure she had the strength to pull the trigger.
The gunman took a step closer, levelled the rifle, a crazed, loopy smile on his face.
Her breath was ragged, but she held it again as she aimed and fired the gun once more. This time, the round caught him in the neck and his head dropped to one side. The shotgun clattered to the floor as the ginger-haired gunman crumpled.
Erica lay still, listening, her ears ringing from the gun blasts, the usually noisy school utterly quiet. The eerie silence was almost as frightening as the gunfire. Her eyes drifted toward the ceiling and it began to spin, go out of focus. She tried to get up, and slipped in her own blood. She vomited as she tried to pull herself back to the room, back to the children. Make sure they were safe.
A whining siren echoed in the distance, growing slowly louder. A door opened. Sounds of children whispering, crying, their tiny feet hardly making any sounds as they came to her like cherubs from heaven.
The on-scene reporter was a bottled-blond man, with an actor’s angular jawline, and a steady, dramatic voice. He held the microphone to his mouth as the camera showed glimpses of the elementary school over his shoulder.
‘Details are still coming in,’ he advised, ‘but we are providing exclusive coverage right now of yet another school shooting; this one, in the small town of Frosthaven, Florida, where, once again, a close-knit community has been ravaged by gun violence. These people are friends, co-workers, and fellow worshippers at the nearby ’Tween Lakes Baptist Church.’
The