by B D Grant
I put the kids against the brick wall of the Welcome Center and turn to cover Lanton as he joins us. Lanton’s right next to me, helping me shield the kids with our bodies as we get our bearings on what’s happening.
“It’s all coming from the front where the vehicles are located,” he informs us.
“Are there cars anywhere else close by?” Glensy asks.
Boston straightens up and grabs his gun from his back. “They need our help. We aren’t leaving yet.”
Glensy snaps his head around to Boston, “Oh yeah, and how are you going to help them?”
Boston’s pale lips form a smile, “My trigger finger works just fine.”
Lanton steps around me to look at Boston, “Is that right?”
Boston looks at Lanton, his smile slipping. “Yeah.” He doesn’t sound to sure anymore.
“Alright, then we need to get inside and find a safe place for you and the other two. You can use that trigger finger if anyone finds you before we get back.”
“What are we going to do?” I ask.
“Exactly what he said, find out what’s going on and help if possible. Then, we get a car and drive like hell.”
Another gunshot goes off. It’s more muffled than the others. Boston directs Lanton to the hidden door that opens into a classroom. He instructs me to go in after him once he clears the room.
“Clear,” he calls shortly after getting inside. I follow. He moves to the door on the other side of the room that’s open to the hallway while I get everyone else inside. When I turn around from shutting the door Lanton has his arm up with his fist in the air. “Hold still,” his hand is telling me. He hears or sees something in the hallway. Another gunshot goes off. From the sound of it it was from inside the building.
Boston shuffles the kids to a corner, as Glensy and I get to the door, with Lanton. A third, single shot is fired down the hall a good way. I hear voices. Lanton quickly peers out into the hallway. The voices suddenly stop and the sound of quick boot movement followed by silence tells me what Lanton whispers, “They saw me.”
“It’s my people,” he says relieved, but stays crouched down. He yells out the door, “Alpha squad, here!”
Someone down the hall responds, “Delta squad, here.”
Lanton gets up and moves out the door cautiously. “Five students are with me. The oldest are armed. I’m getting them to safety,” he announces down the hall. Glensy follows Lanton out the room. I turn to help Boston and the kids.
I walk out the door holding Boston as Glensy’s introducing himself to the other squadron. “We have one in bad shape and two little ones.”
One of the guys Lanton is talking to hurries over to help me with Boston so I can usher the kids up to the group who are hiding sheepishly behind me.
A young, female voice gets my attention, “I’m Taylor.”
She’s behind the other guys, shaking Glensy’s hand. Glensy politely shakes her hand and then turns back to us. I’m introduced to them in order: Dillon , the leader, Ben, Bryant, and finally Taylor.
“You’re Catherine’s daughter?” Lanton asks her.
“Yes sir.”
Lanton’s not happy with her answer. He looks to Dillon scowling, “Who gave you permission to bring her?”
Dillon doesn’t falter under Lanton’s harsh gaze, “We were instructed to bring any able bodies we could at the last minute.”
“She’s what you consider a good candidate?”
“She’s a proficient shot, and she’s saved my hide once already.”
Lanton looks at Taylor then over the other two. “This is all we had left for back-up?”
Dillon looks back at his crew becoming somber. “We lost one.”
Lanton nods, “My unit lost communication with the others after the first bomb went off. We got separated in the aftermath. I don’t know the casualty count but it’s far greater than anticipated.” He looks at Boston and the kids. “The facility is a lot bigger than we were told with triple the amount of kids too. If I wouldn’t have come upon this group I’d still be out there.” His eyes stop on me for a moment before facing Dillon again. “I leave the decision up to you if your unit stays or leaves with us, but we’re going.” He nods his head behind him at us. He looks at Taylor. “She’s leaving too,” he tells Dillon, matter-of-factly.
Taylor’s dislike of Lanton’s decision is obvious. She angrily tosses the blonde hair falling out of her helmet over her shoulder. The jacket she has on is way too big for her. She has an equally oversized bulletproof vest on under the jacket. The rest of her outfit, consisting of jeans and tennis shoes, is out of place making it easy to believe that she was a last minute addition. The frustration on her face grows when none of her guys speak up to contradict Lanton’s order. I notice her tightening her grasp on her gun. The way she holds it with such confidence is both, attractive and intimidating.
Suddenly a sticky noise goes off in the hall. It’s coming from the other squadron’s waists. Dillon pulls out his walkie.
Someone’s saying in a rush, “I need help! ..static.. The basement! static… have prisoners…static.. Now! ..static.. No ammo.” It cuts off.
Lanton, Dillon, Ben, and Bryant look at Glensy and I frantically. “Where’s the basement?”
Glensy and I look at each other in bewilderment. “We don’t have one that I know of,” I tell them.
“Me either,” Glensy agrees.
Taylor starts freaking out. “That was Jake!” I can’t tell if her high pitch announcement is from excitement or if she’s about to cry. “He’s alive!”
I wait for Boston to chime in with some help on the basement situation but he isn’t paying attention.
“Maybe he meant the old shelter that’s under the football field,” Glensy tells them.
“No, it’s got to destroyed,” I tell Glensy and the others, “The football field was blown apart. I saw it happen.”
Boston still says nothing.
“He’s got to be close or the signal wouldn’t have reached us,” Ben says getting on the walkie trying desperately to get a response but all that comes back is static.
“It’s here,” Boston says quietly behind us.
“What? Where?” Glensy and I ask him.
He says with renewed energy, “I don’t know but it’s got to be. I knew there was too much foot traffic coming from this place for it not to have something else going on.”
Lanton checks his ammunition. The rest of us do the same. Boston continues limping down the hall as Bryant passes me some ammo. Ben’s also handing some to Glensy.
Boston stops walking. He holds his hurt arm protectively saying, “When I was here serving my suspension playing janitor they would randomly clear me and any others out of the hallway for different reasons. I could hear people coming and going almost every time.” His eyes get a little bigger. “I was never asked to clean the office.”
We go straight to the office. We check every door to no avail. Taylor frantically starts moving desks around looking for any evidence of a trap door on the floor. Bryant helps her.
“They’re alive,” she keeps repeating to herself. I watch her as she moves the last desk. She all but cries when crappy carpet is the only thing revealed.
“Sorry. I thought for sure it had to be here,” Boston says weakly.
I was never allowed in here either so I would’ve thought the same thing. Boston cleaned just about everywhere while he was here the day Anne and I met him.
Then, an image pops in my head. The dirty shoe prints between the office and a classroom. Another memory follows of the men I’ve never seen around campus leaving the welcome center after coming out of that classroom. “Follow me,” I tell them, walking out of the office.
“I’ve seen them coming from here to the office.” I point to the classroom door that looks like all the others on the first floor.
“Lets do this,” Ben says bouncing from foot to foot.
Boston and Glensy are right next to him. Taylor, the
kids, and myself are pushed to the back as Lanton goes for the door. The door opens with ease. Dillon goes in first followed by Lanton and the other two.
“Clear,” Dillon calls out.
I go inside. Taylor isn’t far behind me. The classroom is decorated more than the others I’ve seen in here. We tear down every map and poster hanging on the walls. Desks are moved to examine the floor for hidden latches.
Bryant knocks on the wall that has the dry erase board on it. He knocks hard saying, “Looky here.” There’s an audible difference when he knocks on the wall to the left of the board. It sounds denser. He finds a seam following the edge of the board.
“Here’s the other side,” Ben says sticking the end of his fingernail on the corner of the wall, running it down to the floor.
“That’s a wide door,” Bryant mumbles.
“How do we get in?” Glensy asks.
Bryant looks at the hidden door taking a step backwards. “Open sesame.” He smiles at his own joke.
Lanton flips the light switch on and off but nothing happens besides the lights turning off and on. He continues to check around the front of the room while Glensy, Taylor, and I look around the sidewalls. Bryant, Ben, and Dillon search around the hidden door and board. Boston and the little ones sit in desks, waiting on us.
“Found it!” Bryant announces proudly. He turns around to us asking, “Anything else you all want me to do?”
Ben frowns, “You’re getting lucky.”
Bryant snaps back, “That’s what she said.” They both give a little laugh. “Losers,” Dillon declares, walking over to see what he’s found.
Bryant shows him the area of the board that holds markers and erasers. There’s an eraser on it that won’t move. “It’s solid,” He confirms, rapping his knuckles on it. He tries pulling it but it won’t budge.
“Here,” Dillon says taking over figuring the fake eraser out. He pushes hard to the left. It clicks. The hidden door rolls back slowly.
It opens to a wide staircase.
Guns are out but there are no sounds of movement from the staircase. Taylor gets behind Dillon to follow him down. Lanton stops her, “Just the adults this time.” She opens her mouth but he stops her from putting up a fight. “I know your mom wouldn’t want you down there and I would rather you mad at me then her.” She shuts her mouth and it forms a thin, clenched line.
Bryant gives her his walkie. Lanton looks back at Glensy and me then something behind us catches his attention. I hear something hard hit the ground. I turn to see Boston’s on the ground beside his desk, unconscious.
I look at Lanton, “I’ll stay with him. There’s a nurses office down the hall where I can get medicine for him.”
“I’ll stay with him and the kids while he gets the supplies,” Glensy says, going over to check Boston’s pulse.
“Okay.” Lanton looks at Dillon and nods. Dillon and his squad begin descending the stairs. Lanton grabs my shoulder before following them. “Be alive when I get back.”
“Got it,” I say, weirded out by his intensity.
“You want me to go to the nurses office?” Glensy asks me shortly after the door closes behind Lanton. It must have a timer or motion detector that allows it to shut on its own.
“No, I got it. Do you know CPR… you know, just in case.”
Glensy nods, “Yeah, but I think he would rather Taylor give him mouth-to-mouth.” He smiles at Taylor. She’s still fuming from not getting to go to the basement.
“Not a chance,” she says as she paces in front of the hidden door.
I don’t waste any time getting to the nurses office. The door’s unlocked. I open it to find the office a mess. Something ugly went down in here. One of the tall cabinets is on its side. Papers are scattered over the desk and floor. I go to the only cabinet still standing. I have to use the handle of my gun to break the small padlock that’s on the cabinet door. It takes two strikes to open it. I know enough from hospital visits with Gran to look for antibiotics, topical anesthetic, and anything for pain.
The topical and pain medicine are easy to find. They’re in a small locked see-through plastic box. I knock over a vial off the shelf as I’m taking the box out. It hits the floor and then rolls away from me. It stops at the corner of the nurse’s desk. Before I reach down to pick it up hoping its Penicillin I see a white shoe poking out from behind the desk. I recognize the shoe. Nurse Pauline is the only person I’ve seen wear solid white shoes at the school. Peering around the desk I find her laying on the floor. I know from the amount of blood pooled around her head that there is no need to check for a pulse. She has an envelope opener in one hand. The vial I dropped isn’t what I need so I return it to the cabinet. All I can find in the cabinet are some Amoxicillin capsules.
“Boston will wake up,” I tell myself. He’ll have to in order to swallow the capsules. I add a tiny vial of Epinephrine to my stash.
As I walk out the room, down the hall I wonder if the nurse had tried to fight her killer with the envelope opener or if she was using it at her desk when she was shot. I hope she put up some kind of fight.
I found a body and it doesn’t phase me. I think of Anne, big attitude, little girl. My stomach knots up. I shouldn’t have thought about her. I’m walking fast now passing the front door, trying to get over the sick feeling in my stomach.
“Stop right there.” A voice calls out.
I stop in my tracks. I was so busy thinking about Anne that I wasn’t paying any attention to my surroundings. Was my stomach trying to warn me? I turn towards the voice at the front door. Please God don’t let them shoot me.
“Hands up.”
All I can see is the end of a gun sticking out from around the corner of the door and the side of a helmet the person is wearing.
“Oh thank goodness,” I say recognizing the helmet as the same that Lanton and the other squad had on.
“Hands up, I said.”
I hold up the medicine I have in my hands saying, “I can’t drop this. My friend needs this. He’s been shot.”
“It’s hard to trust someone that has a gun.”
I see his point. “I’ll set this down, gently.” I carefully lower the medicine. “And put this on the ground.” I take me gun out and place it on the ground.
The man talking to me walks out with his gun still pointing at me. Four more emerge from around the corner of the door, two men and two women. One of the women is lightly sniffling. She turns her back to me to keep watch out the front entrance. They’re all dressed like Lanton and are around his age.
One guy looks me over as the others pick up my gun and medicine. “You’re a student?”
“Yes sir.”
“Is your hurt friend a student too?”
“We’re all students. One of your people, Lanton, was helping us get out of here.” Mentioning Lanton gets their attention.
“Alpha squadron? Where?” One of them asks as they begin checking the halls.
“I think Lanton is all that’s left of his squad but on our way to the cars we ran into Delta squad.”
They talk amongst themselves. One of the men says to the others, “They weren’t supposed to be here.”
“They were probably called in after the first blast,” one of the other men tells him.
I lower my hands since they don’t seem too worried about me anymore. The man closest to me keeps his eye on me. “Where are they now?” He asks me.
I point down the hall, “A guy radioed asking for help in the basement. He said something about prisoners. A chick from Delta squad, my friend, and I were left to care for the kids and my buddy that’s shot.”
The woman at the door leaves her post at the doors and raises the visor on her helmet to ask me, “You said kids. Where are they, which room?”
“Calm down, Deb,” the other woman tells her. I can now see that Deb has in fact, been crying. Her eyes are red and her cheeks are wet.
“I don’t know their names. Me and my friends got to them before the
y were… you know.”
“Bring us to them,” she insists. Her team agrees and they follow me to the room.
Taylor is talking to the kids as we walk in. Glensy’s kneeling beside Boston holding his hand. Glensy and Taylor raise their weapons when they hear more than one set of footsteps walking in.
Taylor lowers hers at the sight of them. “They’re good guys,” she tells Glensy getting him to lower his rifle. The little boy and girl turn to see who’s with me. Deb lets out a gasp as she runs in, throwing her gun on her back to pick up the boy. Taylor walks over to me to give them room.
“Aunt Debbie!” he calls out as he clings to her. He peers around her helmet to the rest of the people walking in. “Where’s Bubba?” She looks at us before setting the little boy down. She kneels down, getting eye level with him.
The leader of the squad walks up to Taylor and I, away from the reunion. “She has two nephews,” he says quietly.
She sniffles, “I don’t know baby.”
“Where’s the basement?” The squad leader asks us.
The other woman is watching Glensy carefully the same way Lanton was when he first met him. “He’s one of the good guys,” I assure her. She looks at me as if she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
“Focus, we need to get to the basement,” the guy tells me picking up his radio.
Glensy is already a step ahead of me, going to the board to pull the lever. The door opens and those close to it take aim. Again, no noise comes from the staircase to warn of a threat. Taylor lowers her weapon, checks her vest, then zips up her jacket, before returning her gun to her hands. This chick isn’t going to let another opportunity to get downstairs pass her by.
She looks at me, “What?”
“Nothing.”
The two other men have already gotten a bag of fluids ready for Boston from the pack one of them is carrying. The skinnier one is adding a syringe to the I.V. bag from a vial I got from down the hall. The other one holds the bag up in the air so it can drip slowly into the line that runs to Boston’s arm. The skinnier one checks his pulse, “He’s stabilizing.”
