CHAPTER 25

.....The neighbors who had no other plans than to be home on a Monday set up their lawn chairs and were gabbing away on their portable phones. They settled in comfortably to watch the Comanche hover over Doc’s house like an angry black wasp. Cracked their choice of cool beverages.
.....It was a slow day for television, the laundry could wait, and it wasn’t every day that set up an episode of C*O*P*S across from your own front yard. This would be a yarn that could be played out over fences or drinks for days. Months. Years maybe, if something really interesting happened.
.....Caught up in acting oblivious to his audience, Team Leader Clyde Kehoe almost didn’t hear the call on his walkie-talkie over the pounding of the rotors.
.....Finally, one of the men ransacking the house stepped out and pointed at him to catch his attention, then mimed talking on the radio.
.....Clyde pulled the walkie-talkie from his utility belt and put it to his ear. Officially it was called a Personal Combat Communications Device, and had dinged the department budget twelve large. A unit. He jerked the speaker away as Julia’s squawking almost took his head off.
.....He looked up at the chopper as he took the call, then swallowed as he finally made out what she was yelling about.
.....“You gotta be fucking...”
.....He slapped the antenna down, then grabbed his bullhorn from hip and strode towards the house:
.....“Abort mission, rally Point One!” he bellowed. “Move it, move it, move it!”
.....SWAT members boiled from the house and stumbled about blinking at the change in routine. This wasn't the way it went as practiced.
....."Move it, god damn it!"
.....The troopers grabbed onto the lines that still hung down from the helicopter, and were sucked up into its belly.
..... “What about the Doc?” one of the remaining deputies who was poised over the old man asked.
.....Kehoe looked down at the Doc. Doc looked back up at him. Their gazes locked. Backwash from the rotors of the Commanche ruffled the old man's hair, and finally he blinked. Shoulders slumping as he looked down at the torn sod of his lawn.
.....Kehoe nodded. “Uncuff him.”
.....The men looked down at their trophy, looked back to their team leader.
.....He sighed. “We may just need him down at the high school.”

.....As Mike continues down the hallways, the sounds of doors locking proceeds him.

.....Pierce jumped at the sound of the first whoop of the alarm, coughing in the middle of a drag.
.....“What the...?”
.....He threw the cigarette into the toilet and flushed, waving the smoke aside.
.....“Shit.” Scot T struggled to cut off his stream of piss.
.....They looked to Lolita, who cracked open the door.
.....“Everything’s gone all Code Red,” she announced in her best baby doll voice.
.....Debbie grabbed Pierce’s arm. “Honey...”
.....“Lock the door.”
.....Lolita gave him a disgusted look.
.....“It’s a bathroom door.” She demonstrated, opening it in and out. “It don’t lock.”
.....“Fuck me.” Pierce turned and considered his options.
.....“What are we...?” Debbie keened, her blue eyes wide and unblinking.
.....He shrugged her hand off of his arm as he began to pace. The windows were reinforced with chicken wire, so that left the way they had came in as the only way out. “We get the fuck out of here until we can figure out what’s going down.”
.....He shouldered Lolita aside, looked out through the cracked door.
.....The coast seemed clear. Pierce turned back to his friends, his best action hero look in place.
.....“Let’s roll.”

.....As the coach maintained his post, the sound of carefully placed footsteps neared the door. A backlit silhouette paused by the window. Breathing in the room stopped, held. Finally the form moved on. The footsteps faded.
.....Held breaths were released.
.....Marsh quietly -- slowly -- unlocked the door. A girl moaned behind him and he turned, finger to lips. Her name was Shannon, he recalled.
.....“Shannon...?”
.....“Molly,” she corrected.
.....“Molly, lock this behind me...”
.....The girl nodded, eyes wide. Mascara ran like claw marks down her face.
.....“...and don’t open it for anyone unless we get an All Clear, alright?”
.....The girl nodded again, more enthusiastically this time.
.....He eased the door open and stepped quietly into the hall. Molly eased the door shut and twisted the lock.
.....With the coach gone, cellphones came out. Absent of adult supervision, roles were cast aside. The girls became proactive, speed dialing and text messaging away on their cellphones.
.....“Hello? 911?” Molly whispered into her phone. “There’s a psycho here with a gun...”
.....“CNN?” murmured the real Shannon into her Nokia. “We’re being attacked by a bunch of terrorists...”
.....“...I think it’s that creep, Charlie Bierce...”
.....“...they’re all running around going, ‘Allah is Cool! Fuck the Great Satan!’”
.....“...y’know, that Goth guy...”
.....“Bierce ain’t here,” another girl corrected. “His folks sent him to one of those church camps for reeducation...”
.....“Maybe he broke out, and he’s off his meds...”
.....The guys were getting ready in their own way: each had pulled a piece, and were checking their ammo.
.....“I bet it’s those damn Mexicans.” one snarled.
.....Dave McShane snapped the chamber of his hawgleg shut, just like he saw on TV.
.....They all waited...

.....Marsh frowned at the sudden hushed murmurs from behind the door, then began to tread lightly down the hall.
.....Although from all outward appearances, it would appear that Marsh was all steely resolve and Action Movie Star heroics. Appearances aside, the man was literally about to piss himself. He knew he should have relieved himself of those three cups of bad teacher’s lounge coffee before heading off to class. Of course, no one ever expected to go to homeroom and have it interrupted by some psycho teenager going all Columbine before lunch.
.....It also didn’t help that he was scared spitless.
....He couldn’t recall ever being so scared in his life. The thought that his life might come to a complete and random end at the age of thirty-eight would have been incomprehensible to him as he had driven on his way to the high school to go through the motions of what seemed to be shaping up as just another day.
.....Oddly enough, if he hadn’t have slowed down to allow a Coor’s truck to merge into traffic from out front of The Larkspur on his way to work, his route would have been bumped up by less than a minute. With the cosmic clock set ahead less than one minute, he would have been t-boned two intersections down by a battered white Ford van that was anticipating a green light. To his fortune, although he had no way of knowing it, the courtesy extended to the beer guy saved him from having two tons of tweaker-fueled vehicle slam into his driver’s side door at forty-miles-an-hour. He wouldn’t have even had time to have considered his impending death.
.....But in the hallway of the high school, he could hear that cosmic clock ticking.
.....Jesus God, he didn’t want to die, and he almost pissed himself thinking it. But there was no way he was going to allow one of his kids to die because of his inaction, and there was also no way in hell he was going to allow some god damned punk to diss his authority, as the kids said these days.
.....That didn’t make him any less frightened silly, however. He moved further down the hall. Occasionally he paused, listening.
.....Below the clicking of the lights turning in their cages and the steady honk of the alarm, there was no sign of movement in his line of vision.
.....He moved on, easing his way along the wall silently, alert. He paused at a branch in the hall and looked down. He inhaled sharply at the sight of waiting feet. He looked up: the descending butt of the rifle caught him just above the left eye.
.....THUD!
.....Marsh crumpled to the floor, unmoving.

.....Mike glances down as he steps over the still form. Marsh's eyes are open, expression locked halfway to horror. He looks almost silly, one eye knocked awry. A thread of blood winds its way down across his face, to the floor. He doesn't blink.
.....Mike looks back up and continues down the corridor. Moves to hang a left...
........ pauses at the slapping of running feet on linoleum floor, from the hall branch ahead.
.....Backs up against the first sentry in a bank of soft drink machines. Eases down and crosses the rifle across his lap, settling down on his heels. His silhouette just another pattern against the red, white and blue fluorescent glow of the Pepsi dispenser.
.....A halo reading "Generation Next" flickers above his head.