CHAPTER 24

.....Mike grabbed onto the tire of the monster truck and started to pull himself up, barked at the sharp flare of pain in his side. His world pulsed red and he fought against the rise of bile in his throat.
.....He was a mess. His scalp was sweating but he felt cold, goosebumps skittering across his bare forearms.
.....Slowly, carefully he tottered the rest of the way up. Dragged Scot T’s jacket from the hood, used it to wipe the blood from his face.
.....He eyed the empty quad, a limp sheet of newspaper flapping along the grass.
..... “Daaaaamn, man...” a voice exclaimed behind him.
.....Mike creaked his head around as Wolfe broke from the sidewalk. The man approached him and paused, pulling back with a sympathetic look as he whistled at the damage that had been inflicted on Mike’s face.
.....“Looks like someone did a number on you. You should get that looked at.”
.....“Screw it.” Mike spit blood. “I’m okay.”
.....Wolfe looked down at the patch of blood on the pavement.
.....“You are definitely not okay...”
.....“Got a Band-aid?”
.....Wolfe didn’t like the look in the kid’s eyes, and he felt a chill creep up his spine. “I’ll tell you what... I’ll go get someone to take care of that for you.”
.....Wolfe headed off across the parking lot towards the high school. He disappeared inside.
.....Mike turned, hands on the hood for support. Breathing raggedly, he winced against the pain in his side.
....When he opened his eyes, he stared across the hood at the backyard assault rifle cradled in Pierce’s rear window gun rack. It was one of those pimped-out plinkers designed to make even a man with a thickening waistline and the skinniest legs feel like Rambo. Despite the promise of its Dogs of War packaging, only capable of delivering one round per trigger pull. Even so, still the perfect tool for plugging coyotes and other kinds of varmints.
.....Mike pulled on the letterman jacket, the H smeared with blood, then knelt gingerly by the side of the truck to pick up his skateboard.
.....He stepped back, took a deep breath and swung. No one else was around to hear the glass of the truck’s side window shatter.

.....Wolfe reached a branch in the hallway, and then hung a left at an indicator arrow reading the Main Desk. The recruiter from the arcade was leaning over the desk, flirting with the receptionist. She was a young lady on the verge of losing that distinction, her Paris Hilton knock-off wardrobe beginning to wear silly on her thickening frame.
.....Hutchins was in full charmer mode, flashing his expensive caps at the woman. “...it’s not as if anyone is going to notice that a couple of D’s and an F suddenly, somehow turn into a few C’s...”
....The receptionist was eating it up, a pleasant diversion from the day-to-day routine of the parade of snot-nosed teenagers and their occasional asshole parents. Not to mention the holier-than-thou staff that walked by her everyday as if she were something that they were afraid of stepping in.
.....Wolfe leaned in on the desk, interrupting the conversation. “Is there a school nurse here?”
.....Irked at the cockblock, the receptionist eyed him coldly. “Who the hell are you?”

.....The teacher clapped his hands, and the rag-tag assembly of summer school students fell quiet.
.....Relatively.
.....THE ORIGIN OF LIFE was scrawled on the chalkboard behind him.
.....Larry Marsh wasn’t happy to be there, but it was summer and in between seasons; the coach had to justify his teaching credential somehow. The whistle that hung from the lanyard around his neck swept briskly across the front of his Harding Broncos sweatshirt as he turned back to his desk.
.....“Look, folks... I don’t want to be here anymore than you do.”
.....Someone snickered, the "At least you're getting paid" left unsaid.
.....“Be that as it may,” Marsh sighed as he picked up the class roster and parked on the edge of the desk . “I can think of a few better ways to blow my summer than in a classroom, so let’s just get to work and make this as painless as possible. Okay?”
.....There was scattered muttering from the ranks.
.....Marsh nodded. “Thank you.”
.....He referred to his clipboard without looking up:
.....“Amberson?”
.....“Here.”
.....“Bucholder?
.....“Yo.”
.....“Crawford?”
.....No response. Marsh looked up.
.....“Crawford? Pierce Crawford?”
.....“He’s not here,” one of the students offered, stating the obvious.
.....“Thank you.” Marsh went back to the clipboard and made a note.
.....“Caymon?”

.....PHSST!
.....Foamed spewed from the mouth of the Coors Lighting as the bottle cap flew off. Parked on the commode within an open stall, Pierce took a healthy swig and offered it to Debbie.
.....Lolita stood sentinel at the door as Scot T pissed into the urinal. He sighed in pleasure as the stream went on... and on...
........ and on...
.....“Why do you bother to even zip your fly?” she observed, shaking her head in disgust as the smell of restructured beer filled the small room.
........ and on...
.....Debbie looked doubtfully at the beer. “Dude, we’re already late.”
.....“The key word there is 'already'.” Pierce waggled the bottle. “Drink up.”
.....She grabbed the beer, took a pull, and made a face. The shit tasted bad enough when it was cold. Warm, it tasted like monkey piss. She passed it on to Lolita.
.....Lolita was a little more thirsty, draining the bottle without a pause. She burped daintily and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, stepping from the door as she looked for a place to deposit the empty. Finally, she buried it beneath the soiled paper towels in the trashcan and returned to her post, cracking the door to see if the hallway was still clear. It was.
.....Pierce flexed his fingers and there was a distinct pop. “That fucker better not have broken my hand.”
.....“He broke your hand?” Debbie took injured hand and kissed the knuckles. Pierce winced and pulled it free.
.....“If he did and I can’t do basic training, I’m gonna sue his ass," Pierce muttered. He batted a cigarette from his deck and fired it up, his eyes narrowing through the smoke. "What's left of it."
.....Debbie contained an eye roll. “I suppose he broke your foot, too?”
.....“Of course not.” Pierce considered his boots and looked back up at her. “Why?”
........ as Scot T continued to piss an endless stream.

.....Mike mounted the stairs to the front entrance, rifle at port arms. He chambered a round, slid his finger through the trigger guard and pushed the door open with his foot...
.....In the foyer of the high school, the security camera paused in its rounds, swiveled back to consider Mike...

.....The camera’s lens zooms in, spins around the video version of Mike... his face remains unclear.
.....Beneath the image of his rifle is displayed text detailing the nomenclature of the Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic...
........ collapsible stock....
........ thirty-six round banana clip...
........ full... with .223 copper-jacketed rounds, one chambered.

.....Boo-yah.

.....Back at the Dispatch Desk, Julia glanced away from the jewelry being hawked on the Samsung, her attention caught by an unsettling image being displayed on one of the side monitors; the figure of someone walking down the hallway of the high school. Someone carrying what was unmistakenly an assault rifle. She threw down her half-finished Egg McMuffin and hit a button. The image of the high school hallway switched to the main screen.
.....“Holy shit!”
.....She swivelled in her chair and slapped the Panic Button.

.....Along the hallways of Harding High School, red lights began to spin within their cages as a siren commenced to honking.

.....In Mike’s mind, the interior of the school takes on the pixelated hyper-reality of a video game.
.....His health bar reads full red.
.....He continues on, hangs a right turn at the branch in the hallway moves on down the avenue...
........ listening...

.....Coach Marsh paused in the middle of his discourse, the sound of the siren muted behind the closed door. The students looked back at him, wide-eyed.
.....Even the hard cases looked uneasy.
.....A cold chill slithering down his spine like a bead of ice water, Marsh broke from his chair and pulled down the shade over the mesh-laced window of the door. He paused, putting on his face of authority.
.....In an urgent, hushed voice he turned to the students. “Everyone down, and get up against the wall away from the line of sight of the door.”
.....As they complied, the teacher snapped the lock shut, hunkered down beneath the window of the door.
.....Waiting. Listening. Sweating.

.....Having taken cover beneath the counter of the Main Desk, Wolfe, Hutchins, and the receptionist hunched as the siren honked on.
.....“What the hell is going on?” Wolfe asked the receptionist, sotto voce. “Is this one of those tests or something?”
.....“It’s called a drill,” the receptionist snapped.
.....“I know what the fuck it’s called,” Wolfe snapped back at her. “I’m... I was a teacher.”
.....The receptionist’s eyes narrowed. She knew there was a reason she disliked the dude on first sight, and then her eyes continued darting about to see if any terrorists were breaching the defenses.
.....“Well, this ain’t, and there ain’t any scheduled for today.”
.....“So what is it?” he demanded.
.....“It’s a Code Red,” she sighed in exasperation. “We don’t do Code Red drills.”
.....“Well, damn,” Wolfe muttered as if he knew what the woman was talking about. He didn’t, and gave up trying to fake it. “And what’s that mean?”
.....A starched crease sliced through the air as the recruiter put an arm around the young woman... protectively, of course.
.....“It means we keep doing what we’re doing until we get an All Clear,” she clarified, making herself more comfortable under the arm.
.....Hutchins winced as a hairspray-stiffened tuft poked him in the eye. He wondered distractedly if he would be eligible for a Purple Heart if his eye was poked out by a stray strand of hair wielded by a chunky receptionist, and how dashing he’d look in full dress uniform with an eye patch as a styling accessory.
.....Pretty damned dashing he acknowledged, as his hand stole down to cup a breast.
.....His aim was only a little off, but the receptionist helpfully corrected it.