The Silent Ones

by James Hunt

  Dennis kept his head tilted down as he maneuvered through the crowd, wearing a similar black shirt, the lanyard and badge that he’d taken off Duane the idiot swinging from his neck. He carried an instrument case, one that he’d stolen off a truck the day before and brought back to the tiny little room he’d rented from an Asian family that asked no questions after he gave them one thousand dollars.

  It was the last of his cash, but Dennis didn’t need it anymore.

  The ballcap that he wore brought a shadow down to his chin, which concealed the coy smile that he’d worn all morning. He did his best to stay out of the way of the hurried crowd, but he knocked into a few people along the way to the staging area.

  Dennis flexed his fingers over the silver handle of the case and gave it a quick glance, giggling to himself over what was inside. And no one had a clue. Not a single person had stopped him, everyone so busy with their own lives that they ignored the world around them.

  And they ignored the world because they believed that they were safe. But it was a blind faith, and blind faith was only rewarded with one thing. A painful end.

  People’s civility had betrayed their true nature, the singular truth that had propelled humanity to evolve into the dominant species on this planet. And that truth was strength. The strong survived. Too many of the weak and moronic had been allowed to live. And now Dennis was going to make his mark, a final defiant scream into the faces of the people who believed that they were untouchable.

  Dennis knew that what he would do here would force people to understand the truth of his cause. He was making society better, stronger. He was doing what no one else had the courage to do.

  The lines into the festival grounds were growing longer by the hour, expanding the crowd within the festival to the edges. A freshly-shaven Grant clumped himself to a group of couples, ballcap on with his head down.

  Between the fresh shave and the haircut, along with clean clothes, he was a far cry from the man who’d been offered money by a couple thinking they were helping out a homeless man.

  He spied the security check up ahead. In addition to the festival security in yellow shirts, he saw a pair of SWAT officers stationed behind them at the gate’s entrance. They were probably supplement ground forces to the eyes that the officers had on the roofs that surrounded the festival grounds.

  Grant knew that the guys on the roof trying to search the crowd wouldn’t have a shot of seeing Grant, it was like searching for a needle in the haystack. But his picture had no doubt been given to the officers at the gates, who were looking for him. Fortunately, Grant had gone through the same training they did, and he knew what to avoid.

  They looked for people unattached from groups, wearing bulky clothing that could conceal a weapon. There were even certain colors of clothes that could be flagged.

  So by keeping himself attached to a group and remaining smiling and chatting to the people around him, he had avoided those pitfalls as he passed through the security check performed by the yellow shirts, and smiled politely as the woman at the gate took his ticket.

  “Enjoy the show,” she said.

  “I will,” Grant replied, forcing himself to remember how people communicated with one another. “Thank you.”

  Grant passed right by the pair of SWAT officers without so much as a second glance.

  Once he was through the gates, Grant moved along the perimeter, where he had the best view of the festival. He quickly spied the three areas where he thought Dennis would be to inflict the most damage and had the potential for the highest casualty rates.

  Of the three areas, the closest was the food trucks, where there were plenty of places for Dennis to run and hide once he started shooting. It was the perfect place for cover, and Dennis could even hijack one of the trucks and drive straight through the crowd.

  During the walk over, Grant continued to scan the crowd. He spied a few more SWAT members, the rest of the crowd not seeming to notice the heightened sense of security.

  The warm scents radiating off the food trucks caused Grant’s stomach to growl, but he stayed sharp, weaving between the trucks and discreetly checking beneath them for anything that Dennis might have left behind for him to pick up once he made it onto the grounds.

  Grant knew that Dennis would most likely use some kind of fully automatic rifle that would allow him to inflict the most damage, but sneaking that kind of hardware into the festival would be difficult. Unless he stashed the weapon here somewhere beforehand, or found some way to carry—

  Grant froze, staring at the stage where event workers carried cases out onto the platform to prepare for the show. If Dennis managed to blend in as a worker, then he’d be able to sneak in that way, and the stage provided the perfect location for an ambush.

  The closer that Dennis moved toward the stage, the more security he passed. And the more security that he passed, the more eyes glazed over his badge. A badge that didn’t belong to him. A badge with a name printed on it that didn’t match up with the face that wore it.

  And the longer he walked, the longer that Dennis was exposed, the more he felt those eyes following him even after they passed. He cursed and muttered beneath his breath, hastening his pace toward the stage. He gripped the handle of the music case tighter.

  “Hey!”

  Dennis wasn’t sure if the voice was directed at him, but he kept moving toward the stage. He was nearly there. Just one more gate to step around and he’d be able to make it to the cover beneath the stage, right in plain view of all the cattle that had gathered to moo and cod.

  “Hey, stop!”

  The few beads of sweat that had formed on Dennis’s forehead had multiplied and doused his body, the sweat burning into his eyes.

  “Hey, man!” A hand clamped down on Dennis’s shoulder, spinning him around.

  Dennis stared at the man, who wore a headset over a black ballcap and clutched a clipboard in both hands. He felt himself trembling and he lost his hold of the handle, the black case smacking against the ground with a loud crack.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” The headset gestured to the case. “You going to pick that up?”

  Dennis frowned, then stared at the case. He nodded and quickly picked the case up. “Sorry,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Instruments need to be dropped off around the back,” he said, pointing toward a section of the gate around the stage that was open. “And watch the equipment, will you?” He shook his head and then walked off, his attention focused on someone else.

  Dennis exhaled, and then laughed. It was like he was a kid again, his father catching him doing something wrong, and him afraid that he would be scolded. Dennis walked over to the entrance point that the headset had pointed through.

  Still laughing as he passed another security guard, he made eye contact with the man who frowned as Dennis just shrugged and continued to head toward the front of the stage, walking around the perimeter.

  “Hey, are you supposed to be up there?” The security guard took a few steps, following Dennis, but stopped when Dennis turned around and waved.

  “It’s all right!” The chuckle had transformed into full-blown hysteria. “I’ll only be a few minutes!” He adjusted the handle of the case in his palm and veered around the corner, wiping the cold tears from his cheeks before they froze to his face.

  But the farther Dennis moved toward the front of the stage, the more the laughter started to fade. Because he started to remember.

  No one valued what he’d been able to do. Not even Grant, who he had given a true purpose. With his smile vanished, he snarled at the crowd, all of them too busy staring at their phones to even notice he was standing there right in front of them. He’d always been standing there. But he was about to make sure he was noticed. Oh, yes. He was going to make all of them wish that they’d never even been born.

  Keeping just beneath the lip of the stage, Dennis dropped the case when he’d reached the very front. He kept his back to the crowd and flipped
open the hatches and lifted the case’s lid.

  Crammed into the stuffing where a guitar should have rested were the pieces of his pride and joy, the one weapon that he’d been saving for his final act: the AK-47.

  In terms of assault weapons, there was nothing more trustworthy, reliable, and deadlier than Russia’s greatest contribution to the art of war. It was the ultimate killing machine, and in his hands, he would transform from hunter to God.

  Grant pushed his way through the crowd, which thickened toward the front of the stage, so instead he broke left, heading toward the crowd’s perimeter and to an open section of fence that separated the crowd from the stage, hoping to get a better look.

  The injured leg slowed Grant’s progress, and every step he took was a reminder of the haggard state of the flesh of his calf. But so far, the stitches had held, though he wasn’t sure how well they’d hold up once he started to run.

  Winded and wincing, Grant grabbed hold of the cold top rail of the fence and glanced down toward the stage.

  At first it was hard to see, the behind the scenes area so full of people running back and forth. But amidst the sea of black shirts, he saw one break away from the rest of the crowd, walking beneath the stage, slowly trailed by a security guard. And the longer Grant stared, the more he knew it was Dennis.

  Before he realized it, Grant had hopped over the railing, knowing that he couldn’t move quick enough through the densely-crowded, standing-room-only area that comprised the space around him.

  A shot of pain traveled up from his left calf when he landed on the other side of the fence, and he was forced to use the railing as a makeshift cane for the first few steps while he gained momentum.

  Dennis was hunched on the ground now, hovering over the open case.

  “Excuse me, sir!”

  Grant ignored the voice and the subsequent shouts that followed. Even with the pain and the debilitating nature of the injury itself, Grant still managed a steady-paced jog. He just had to get close enough to grab Dennis’s attention. “Hey!” he shouted, but his voice was drowned out by the roar of the crowd as the band walked out onto the stage. He screamed again, waving his arms, and then looked to the people in the crowd nearby, but not one paid attention to the man hopping with an alarmed expression, screaming that there was a shooter beneath the stage.

  “He’s got a gun!” Grant shouted into the crowd, his face a beet red, continuing his frantic pace toward the stage, pointing like a madman. “Gun! Gun! GUN!” But his screams evaporated, drowned out by the thumping music of the band gearing up on stage.

  A pair of security guards rushed toward Grant, and he tried to get them to look at Dennis, who was now standing, holding a rifle with his back still turned to the oblivious crowd.

  Because of Grant’s injury and the speed the security guards were moving, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to intercept Dennis in time. But as the guards closed in around him, Grant saw that one of them had a pistol at his hip.

  The moment Grant and the pair of security officers collided, Grant thrust his palm into the first guard’s neck, causing him to grab his throat and choke for breath. The sudden act of aggression caused the second guard, the one with the pistol, to draw the weapon, which Grant lunged for, kneeing the guard in the crotch and swiftly jerking the gun from his limp hand.

  Grant adjusted the weapon in his hands, spinning around, disoriented from the altercation, the music vibrating through his body with every beat of bass. He forced his hand steady and saw Dennis, rifle in hand, facing Grant.

  Time stopped, and the crowd and the music vanished, and Grant saw only Dennis. Twenty yards of open space separated them, but Grant could see the surprise and indignation spread across Dennis’s face. Unsure of how much time he had, Grant aimed the pistol and squeezed the trigger.

  The crowd shuddered and screamed, and the music stopped playing after the first shot. But Dennis was still standing beneath the stage with the rifle in his hands.

  Except now Dennis wasn’t in shock anymore, he wasn’t surprised, no, he was smiling. And he was raising the rifle to the crowd.

  “NO! GET DOWN! GET DOWN! GET DOWN!” Grant lunged forward, screaming, this time his voice able to rise above the quiet of the crowd now that the music had stopped. He raised the pistol, firing into the air again, squeezing the trigger in rapid succession until the crowd disappeared in a frenzied stampede away from the stage.

  With the crowd finally in retreat and Dennis still motionless beneath the stage, Grant only made it three more steps before a bullet drilled him in his back and forced him to the ground.

  When the first gunshot erupted, Sergeant Woolf and his team quickly located the shooter, but it wasn’t until the movement of the crowd that they were able to see the second gunman beneath the stage.

  “Two active shooters,” Woolf said, radioing the situation to Command. “I repeat, two active shooters. One beneath the stage and one on the left side.” He clicked off his radio. “Did we get him?”

  “Yes, sir! First shooter is down!”

  “Well make sure he stays down, goddammit!” Woolf clicked his radio back on. “One shooter down. I repeat, one shooter is down. We have limited visibility on second shooter, I repeat, limited visibility, we need ground forces to assist.”

  “Roger that, Sergeant, we have assets en route, please stand by.”

  “Copy that.” Woolf clapped the sniper on the back. “Good shot, son.”

  “I think it’s him.”

  Woolf frowned. “Him who?”

  “That detective, the one that shot the cop with that serial killer three months ago.”

  Woolf raised his binoculars. “Are you shitting me?” He found the body on the ground, where it remained flat on the grass, face down. “I can’t see the face.”

  “I think it was him, sir,” the officer said. “Fucking cop killer.”

  Woolf kept his eyes glued to the man who’d fallen down. He frowned, wondering if it had really been him, and then he saw the body move. “Hold on. We have movement.”

  “I got eyes,” the sniper said. “Should I put another round in him?”

  Woolf knew the protocol. Deadly force was only to be engaged on a suspect who was armed, and currently the shooter didn’t have a weapon in his hands.

  “Sir?” the sniper asked.

  Woolf had no desire to go under the microscope that he would undoubtedly find himself after the dust had settled. “Stand down. Unless he reaches for the weapon, you do not shoot.”

  “Copy that, sir.”

  “Second shooter is on the move! I repeat, second shooter—” The radio erupted in Woolf’s ear and then cut to static as he turned toward the stage.

  More gunfire erupted from beneath the stage, though nearly all of the crowd had dispersed, squeezing through the egress points as their ground forces moved in to capture.

  54

  The moment Dennis saw Grant, everything unraveled so quickly. The gunshots pushed the crowds back, sending them away from Dennis, who was now trapped beneath the stage, evading the holy hell of gunfire raining down on him from the rooftops at the festival’s perimeter.

  Enraged by Grant’s interference, Dennis raised the rifle’s stock to his shoulder, the wood planted firmly against his chest, then aimed toward the retreating crowd and squeezed the trigger.

  One burst of gunfire sent the cattle screaming and hollering. Three people collapsed, while the rest of the herd left their wounded behind.

  He fired a few more rounds but was unable to tell if he brought anyone down as he fumbled beneath the stage, evading sniper fire.

  But he knew that if he could make it out to the north end of the stage, he could sprint toward the marina where he had a boat already picked out to flee.

  “Freeze!” A pair of officers broke through the crowd, guns up and aimed at Dennis, who stepped out from beneath the stage.

  While the police hesitated, Dennis did not. He aimed at the cops and dropped both of them with a quick spray of gu
nfire.

  More screams erupted from the scrambling crowd, and Dennis sprinted past the food trucks and port-o-potties. It was a short stretch of open space between the stage and the fenced perimeter before the marina, but it was a good opportunity for snipers to get lucky.

  Above the gunfire and screams were the wailing sirens of the police cars and SWAT teams, every authority chomping at the bit for the honor of catching him.

  In mid-stride, Dennis threw the rifle over the fence, then heaved himself up and climbed over, his arms and legs uncoordinated in his frantic escape. He flung himself over the top and landed hard on his heels before rolling forward in a ball.

  Dennis grabbed the rifle off the ground and then sprinted toward the docks. He stole only one glance behind him and saw the cruisers heading toward the very area where he was going. He hopped into the boat, untied the line, and revved the engine to life.

  Dennis pressed the throttle all the way down and jettisoned the boat forward, causing a wake that rocked the rest of the boats in the harbor.

  Speeding through the space in the docks, wind whipping in his hair, Dennis smiled as he saw the police stop short of the marina, but a bullhorn pulled Dennis’s attention ahead as two marine units sped toward the small inlet to blockade the exit.

  “No.” Dennis gritted his teeth and squeezed the metal steering wheel hard. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. He was supposed to have died back there, back at the festival, in the center of the dead bodies that he’d killed only moments before.

  Dennis picked up the rifle from the floor and fired at the boats, shells cascading onto the deck, the copper casings rolling toward the outboard engine. He kept the throttle all the way down, and the marine units returned fire.

  As he drew nearer, Dennis ducked below the dash, keeping one hand on the wheel to stay on course, daring the authorities in a game of chicken, knowing that he didn’t have anything to lose.