Authors: William R. Forstchen
She got out of the car, a bit startled when Craig actually grabbed her shoulder.
“Come on!” he cried, and she started to run with him. She felt as if her heart were about to burst, for in the distance she could hear the repetitive bursts of gunfire.
Her husband, her daughter were in the deepest circle of hell.
Inside Joshua Chamberlain Middle School
The gunfire ceased in the room across the hall; Bob could hear muffled child-voiced moans and cries, heartbreaking, so many calls for “mommy” as they died. Mommy, who, when they were at the arrogant age of twelve and thirteen, was a source of embarrassment and eye rolling when an attempt was made to kiss and hug them in public, but in a moment of terror, of pain, of dying? It was a cry to a mother for comfort, to hold them and to ease the pain as they died, and it steeled Bob for what he had to do. He was so shocked by the anguish of it all that he first had to wipe tears from his eyes, silently cursing himself for his moment of frozen inaction and fear.
How could any man, any human being inflict such suffering upon children? He could hear the triumphal calls to their Allah echoing down the hallway and it filled him with rage and now the motivation to move aggressively and fight back. All the years of political correctness, all the appeals from the nation’s leaders to extend a hand of friendship to all… If really true, where was the righteous anger now? In the same way Christians by the tens of thousands rose up in anger against the evils of the Westboro Church that harassed the families of dead soldiers returning home in caskets from the Middle East, and taunted gays and anyone who was different?
He had enough of an interest in history to recall, even in these few seconds, Winston Churchill’s sarcastic response and warnings against the appeasement of his nation’s leader in 1938 and the terrible price it would eventually cost Great Britain and the free world.
And that price had now come due again, literally in the corridors of his school, his daughter’s school, and he was at the very tip of the spear of that price. And now he prayed that in the next few seconds he could do something, anything, to slow them down, to buy time and, if need be, to die, to die well doing what was right.
He checked on Patty, who was guiding her charges up and out of the shattered window, encouraging each to run the moment they hit the ground. To his horror, he saw two of them drop, caught in the gunfire raging outside the building, but the others were making it through. It did not take a trained expert to know that a moving target was infinitely harder to hit than one cowering in a corner or lying prone on the floor. If some of them were getting through, it was better than waiting here for certain death.
Patty’s gaze caught his eye as she helped the last child up to the window before climbing out herself. She was crying, staring straight at him.
“God be with you, Bob,” she mouthed the words, nearly silent, then turned to drop out the window behind the last of her children.
There were six more classrooms down the long hall beyond the one he was holed up in, plus the room across the hallway where the murderer was finishing off the last of his victims. He prayed that the teachers in those rooms had followed Patty’s lead, but knew they had not. One was Margaret Redding’s classroom. Last he had seen her, she was cowering in the faculty lounge, her teaching assistant left in charge of the classroom. That poor, harried elderly woman was afraid of her own shadow and would follow every order by Margaret, which would include ordering the children to lie down as sheep and await slaughter.
He saw no other children sprinting across the playground. There was no view to the other side of the building but he had to assume that far too many classrooms still had victims waiting for their executioner, who would call out to his alleged god as he put a 9mm bullet into the head of each child before moving on to the next room. He could hear the sirens outside, the thumping of at least one helicopter which he hoped would bring succor. He did not know that it was a news helicopter filming and transmitting the insanity rather than a SWAT team, which, in reality, was still forming up in downtown Portland and not yet in the air.
The shooting and screams in the room across the hallway stopped. The fire alarm was still wailing its incessant numbing shriek, sprinklers continuing to douse the corridor. He was down flat on the floor at the doorway, pistol raised, aimed at the open doorway across the hall. He kept going over in his head the training he had received for the concealed permit: breathe in, half exhale, aim and squeeze… breathe in, half exhale. But it did not still the hyperventilation of fear and nervousness. Three bullets, I've got three bullets. He has hundreds. Breathe, half exhale. Hail Mary, full of grace…
He started to pray, though it had been years since he last attended mass, on the day he and Kathy married.
A tall, dark shadow appeared in the doorway across the hall.
Now!
He squeezed off two rounds, aimed straight at the chest, the center of the body. The shadow staggered backwards for a moment but then just came forward toward the doorway where Bob was waiting. A flash moment of terror. What in hell was this, the “Terminator,” indestructible? The murderer’s weapon lowered, aimed straight at him. He saw the muzzle flash, a terrible shock struck him in the back. His lower body went numb.
Armor, he has body armor! Bob was in that instant inwardly amazed that he could recognize such a thing as he looked up, saw his opponent drawing closer, weapon at the shoulder, aiming down to deliver a killing shot to his head before moving on to murder more children.
Bob pointed his pistol straight up and squeezed off the last round, his bullet striking his foe just below the left eye, killing him instantly, so that the jihadist staggered backwards and collapsed into the room where he had been so gleefully slaughtering the defenseless but seconds earlier.
Bob laid in shock for long seconds, empty pistol aimed at the recumbent body across the school corridor, the legs of his enemy twitching spasmodically for several seconds before going still. He kept the pistol aimed at him, not yet registering that the slide of his pistol was fully back, indicating his weapon was empty. When he did realize it, there was a brief thought to look about on the floor for the single unfired cartridge he had ejected earlier. The floor around him was slick with blood. It was not registering yet that it was his own blood commingled with the blood of his enemy from his first shot to the jaw.
There was silence in the building except for the wailing cry of the fire alarm. Was there any way to turn that damn thing off? he wondered. Sprinklers in the hallway were still spraying out a mist of water, diluting the rivulets of blood seeping out of the scores of children, the principal, and the two teachers lying dead in the corridor.
More firing, thundering loud from down by the administrative area. He dared to peek out from the cover of the doorway. No jihadist was in sight but there was someone firing from that area, while from outside the building he heard sirens and what sounded like more gunfire.
A shadow, a dark face covered with a ski mask, appeared at the end of the hallway, shouting something that he assumed was Arabic. A query, an order? Another call. A sparkle-like effect appeared on the wall above him. Bullets fired from outside were impacting above the killer. The face disappeared and a couple of seconds later there was a sustained burst of automatic fire in reply.
Bob continued to look down the corridor. Was that the pathetic looking body of Mr. Carl in the middle of the hallway, blank eyes staring at him with warning, reproach, or orders to keep going, to keep fighting back?
He had seen three killers storming his building. Three against five hundred and thirty children and thirty-seven adults. He had without doubt dropped one of the killers, but that meant that two remained.
Chechnya. This was not some random act of madness. This was a well-planned attack by jihadists. Their mission was to kill as many defenseless innocents as possible before they themselves were taken to paradise. They were remorseless murderers. There would be no negotiating, for negotiating simply bought time to inflict more killing. He recalled a discussion on a news channel, a commentator who was bitterly denounced by various “friendship with Islam” organizations afterwards quoting their Koran, that ultimately negotiations with infidels were simply a ploy until true believers gained control and then the infidels were to submit or die. All bargaining was a sham, for each bargain would be a step backwards. The only way he could bargain now was to somehow get a weapon and continue to fight back.
Two killers still at large in his school and he had an empty gun. A complete sense of impotence overwhelmed him for a moment. At least his daughter’s class had gotten out. Wendy? He did not even know if she had made it through the kill zone or not and the thought of that filled him with rage.
Bastards. Damn cowardly bastards. Target us, the adults in the Trade Center and the Pentagon. But this was a step beneath the gutter of all of humanity. They had brought their hell to Chamberlain Middle School near Portland, Maine.
Chamberlain. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. How few knew that their school was actually named after a hero of the Civil War, a holder of the Medal of Honor for his gallantry and leadership at Gettysburg. There was supposed to be a ritual each year to honor his memory but few paid attention when it was held and many grumbled that it took time out from the pressing need to prepare the students for the next battery of mandatory testing.
Taking time to honor some dead guy of a hundred and fifty years ago? There were other things far more important.
He had a memory of reading about Chamberlain, how when his regiment was out of ammunition, facing five times their number charging up the hill that they were ordered to hold at all costs, he had come to what was the only logical conclusion. He had ordered his men to fix bayonets and charge.
The terrifying reality that the shot put into his back had paralyzed him was beginning to sink in. Charging was out. But less than twenty feet away there was at least one gun and plenty of ammunition.
He could still block this corridor against the other murderers for a few more precious minutes until help arrived.
He started to drag his body across the water-and-blood-soaked hallway. And then the pain hit, agonizing, terrifying. He could see Mr. Carl, his sightless eyes staring at him. In spite of the shrieking of the fire alarm, the spray of water cascading down, he could hear the gunfire, the sound of hot shell casings ejecting onto the checkerboard flooring by the foyer, and more distant firing coming from the other wing of the school. With his gaze fixed down the corridor, he continued to crawl, foot by agonizing foot, toward the man he had just killed, who still held in his blood-stained hands the means to salvation, for at least a few more minutes.
A distant shadowed face appeared again at the end of the corridor, staring straight at him. To Bob, his eyes looked to be the eyes of Satan incarnate on earth, remorseless and cold as a serpent’s… The killer aimed his weapon.
CHAPTER SIX
As she ran, Kathy's phone beeped yet again. Still not Bob; it was a text message from Mary Browning: “Please talk, please!”
She ignored the appeal for the moment. There was a line of flashing blue lights ahead, a crowd shouting, arguing with two police officers who were announcing over and over that no one could approach the building. And then, as if to add emphasis to their argument, there was a sustained burst of firing from within the school, which was visible only a few hundred yards farther down the road. A woman close to one of the officers staggered, clutching her stomach, that officer going down as well, and the side window of a patrol car shattered.
That set off a panicked run of a hundred or more back toward Kathy. Swept up in the crowd, she was pushed backwards. She managed to break free of the stampede of frightened parents as the road reached an intersection. A patrol car had just pulled up to the intersection, the officer got out with a bullhorn raised, shouting that an emergency waiting area had been established just up the road, and aggressively motioned the crowd to turn and get out of the line of fire. Up a side street she saw a small crowd in front of a Catholic church where someone else was announcing on a megaphone that it was a gathering place for parents. Kathy, with Craig by her side, followed the crowd. An elderly police officer was outside urging parents to get into the church which was being set up as an official waiting area. A priest stood by the open door of the church’s recreation hall.
“In here please, wait in here,” the harried priest kept repeating over and over, the double doors braced wide open. From the main approach to the school there was a constant wail of sirens, ambulances coming in from half a dozen communities, driving over lawns and then jamming up, unable to get closer.
It was a sea of confusion and terror. Two helicopters were circling the school a couple of hundred yards away, both of them with logos of their respective news stations.
Pushed along by the crowd, she entered the jammed recreation hall. A television on one wall was broadcasting a local news report, the noise in the room was so loud no one could hear. Arguments were breaking out and people were shouting for everyone to shut up.