Though about the size of a prison cell, he believes he’ll be able to fit the thirteen remedial Social Studies students inside.
As the frightened kids rush into the small office, he runs over to the classroom door to lock it.
Reaching his beefy hands and hairy forearms through as narrow an opening as will accommodate them, he fumbles with his keys, trying to fit the right one in the lock, as the Pottersville Pirate on his lanyard appears to be dancing down below.
The first round pierces the pinky of his right hand and rips more than a third of it off, bone and all.
The second round penetrates his left hand, leaving a black and bloody hole not unlike a Renaissance painting of the crucified Christ’s nail-pierced palm.
He screams in pain. Drops the keys. Falls back into the classroom.
Lying on the floor just a few feet from the office door where the last few screaming students are running, he rolls over and begins to crawl on his knees and elbows, holding his shot-up hands aloft as he does.
Two of his football players push past the students running into the office and step out to help him, but step back as the gunman appears at the classroom door and starts firing.
Stumbling into the office, they slam the door as rounds pierce and pock it.
The bigger of the two then motions to a huge, old metal filing cabinet and they each drag a side of it and half-carry, half-slide it over in front of the door.
It means, of course, they’re leaving Coach Bowman on his own on the other side, but somehow they both know, though they haven’t had time to even think it, that it’s what he would want them to do.
“Everybody get down low and push on the filing cabinet,” the kid most everyone calls Big Cup says.
Though the old filing cabinet is tall, it’s not as tall as the door or the narrow pane of glass that runs nearly to the top. They’ve got to stay down.
They could still get shot, but it would require the gunman dragging over a chair, climbing up on it, and shooting down at an angle through the small strip of glass at the top not blocked by the cabinet.
“Somebody get the lights,” Rester Stokes says.
Someone does.
Now they are thirteen students piled on top of each other in the dark on the floor of a small office that smells like socks and cheap cologne, pressing a rusting old filing cabinet against a wooden door as if their lives depend on it.
They only hear what happens next and later they won’t all remember hearing it the same way, but most will report the gunman saying some form of the phrase, “Any last words?”
Some of the students think they hear Coach Bowman say, “Tell—” while others think they hear “hell,” but whether he’s about to leave a message for a loved one or telling the shooter to Go to hell, there is no disagreement on the sound of rapid gunfire that comes next and the cries and screams of Coach Bowman. Nor of the rounds then shot at them through the office door, the shatters of glass, the pings of the bullets striking the filing cabinet.
Several of the kids huddled in the dark office are injured, but the only fatality is that of Coach Ace Bowman, whose long, big-hipped body lies bloody and bullet-riddled on the thin, industrial carpet of the classroom floor.
291
A text I thought I’d never send: Someone is shooting people at my school.
When all the shooting starts, Josh Stewart is in the boys’ restroom on the east side of the school. At first he’s not sure what he’s hearing, but then he hears someone scream and guesses it’s gunfire.
Today is Josh’s fifteenth birthday.
To celebrate, his mom had gotten up early and made him a big birthday breakfast for him, which included his favorite—breakfast burritos.
His mom’s efforts made him feel loved and celebrated, but also a little nauseated, and by the time he walked into his first-period class—Biology with Mrs. Abanes—he had to walk right back out again, and by the time he rounded the final curve before the boys’ bathroom he was running.
A school shooting at Potter High and he’s caught with his fuckin’ pants down.
Finishing as fast as he can, doing only a decent at best job wiping, and not bothering to wash his hands, he decides to make a run for it.
He decides this in the split second he has to decide and he does so because he thinks that the gunfire sounds far away and that he’ll be far safer in the classroom with Mrs. Abanes, who seems far too solid and stern to get shot or let any of her students get shot, than he would out here by himself.
Picturing himself as a vulnerable, young gazelle separated from the herd, Josh runs as fast as he ever has around the empty hallway toward Mrs. Abanes’s classroom.
Explosions rocking the school.
Smoke beginning to fill the hallway.
Obnoxious alarm bleating.
And the gunfire sounding closer now.
Am I actually running toward the shots? he wonders.
It’s hard to tell.
So many sounds. All of them ricocheting around the hard surfaces of the circular hallway.
For the briefest of moments, he thinks of turning back, but figures he can still make it.
Long, skinny teen legs stretched out, arms and heart pumping, little gazelle running for his life.
As he rounds the final curve before Mrs. Abanes’s room, flailing as if death itself is chasing him, something out of a horror movie is standing there in the smoke.
Long black leather duster. White expressionless face. Rifle rising. Firing.
The first round shatters his ankle and brings him down hard, head first into the cinderblock wall, knocking him unconscious so that he’s unaware of what the subsequent rounds do.
292
Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Guns just make it easier and quicker for people to kill people.
Frannie Schultz cowers in the back corner of the science lab between a bookshelf and a discarded chemistry table surrounded by people she would not have chosen to die with.
Beyond the classroom door out in the hallway, gunfire continues to ring out at a rapid rate, punctuated by explosions that rattle the specimen jars on the shelves along the far wall and trays of glass beakers on the tables beneath them.
For all the noise outside, inside the room is eerily silent.
No one is talking or even whispering. No one is moving.
Beyond the barrier of the classroom door, there are only the shocking sounds of gunfire and explosions, alarms and screams, and the occasional intercom instruction. Inside the science lab, inside Frannie’s own head, there is only the mental dissonance involved in trying to reconcile the sights and sounds of school with those of war.
Frannie is seventeen, neither a goody-goody nor a popular party girl. When she is thought of at all by her classmates, it is as a nice girl, sort of quiet, sort of plain.
She’s aware of this on some level, and wonders if she’s going to die today and only ever have been a plain, quiet, nice enough girl.
She doesn’t want that to have been her life.
She doesn’t want to die like this, hiding in the dark.
She doesn’t want to die surrounded by so many virtual strangers.
But most of all she doesn’t want to die a virgin.
She wants to have been a different sort of girl. Not radically different. Just different enough.
And as the gunshots get closer and the glass from the library doors begins to shatter, she decides to start being a different sort of girl right now.
Pushing herself up and pressing through the other kids huddled around her on her hands and knees, she crawls over to where Derek Burrell, her secret crush and the most decent guy in their class, is leaning against the wall behind a desk looking out the window.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” he says, his large pale face blushing crimson beneath his blond curls.
He makes room for her behind the desk, though to do so exposes him more. Of course, given his enormous size, one desk a
lone was never going to be enough to shield him.
“You mind if I stay over here with you?” she asks.
“No,” he says, his voice rising in surprise. “Not at all, but . . .”
Here we go, she thinks.
“I think I’m about to break this window open and go get my gun out of my truck,” he says. “It’s just right there. I can be back inside of two minutes. Maybe less.”
Once he’s free, will he really come back? she wonders. Should he? Would I?
“That way if those whack jobs come in here tryin’ to shoot us,” he continues, “I’ll be able to shoot back. See how they like that.”
He’s big and a bit goofy and whack job sounds funny coming out of his mouth, but he’s charming and evidently heroic.
“What if one of them’s outside?” she asks.
“I been watching. Haven’t seen anyone so far.”
“It’s so cool of you to even want to.”
“You mind watching for me?” he says. “Yell if you see anyone.”
She shakes her head. “No, not at all. But would you do something for me?”
“’Course. What’s that?”
“Will you take me out if we survive this?”
“Really?” he asks. “I’ll survive this just so I can.”
293
It was just like any other Monday morning. Until it wasn’t. It made me want a gun. Maybe we all should just start carrying a gun. Go back to the Wild West and just shoot the shit out of each other. You think you don’t want a gun until someone has one shooting at you.
Janna Todd’s first-period study hall is the only class she has inside the main building. All her other classes, her art classes, take place in the art building.
If the shooting had happened during any other period she wouldn’t even be up here for it. She’d be safely tucked away in the art building where she should be.
She’s an art teacher for fuck sake, not a study hall monitor. The only reason she has to cover a study hall is that she’s teaching at Podunk High. Ironically, the only reason she’s teaching at Podunk High is she thought it would be safe.
When the first shots were fired, there was some debate about what exactly they were, with a couple of the boys who hunt swearing they weren’t gunshots. But she knew. Knew instantly that the day she had dreaded had arrived.
Fuckin’ Monday mornings, man, she thinks.
At first she tells the students to get under their desks, but soon realizes how little good that’s going to do.
Think. Whatta we do?
With only six students she has more options than most teachers, but what does that mean?
It means you can either hide or move them more easily. Fight or flight? Hide or run?
She wants to grab them and run to Ace’s room and hide in there with him. He’ll know what to do. But she can’t do that. He’s half a school away and it sounds like some of the shooting and screaming is coming from that direction.
Lock the outside door. Put everyone in the office and barricade both doors.
When the bombs begin to explode something inside her shifts, and she knows she’s got to get out of here.
Got to get the kids out of here and into the art building.
The exit door leading to the covered walkway out to the art building is only thirty feet from the study hall classroom door.
We make a break. Run for it. We do it now before it gets any worse in here. Before these fuckin’ bombs bring down this building on top of us.
“Okay, listen up everybody,” she says. “We’re going to go to the art building. I can lock us inside there. We’ll be safe. Okay?”
None of the scared students respond.
“We need to get out of here before the shooters get down here or before one of their bombs brings down the school. Okay?”
They nod.
She holds up her keys. “Line up. When I open the door, run as fast as you can around to the exit closest to the art building. Careful not to trip each other. Don’t run faster than the person in front of you. But run as fast as you can. Got it?”
They nod again and line up.
As they do she tries to decide if it’s best for her to be in the front or the back of the line. In the front, she can lead them. She can take the risk that a shooter is already out there in this side of the hallway and will start shooting as soon as they step out. But what if she goes first and they don’t follow? In the rear, she can make sure they all go and can direct them from the back.
She decides to do both.
She’ll be the first to step out, but as soon as she does, assuming she doesn’t get shot, she’ll stand to the side and let the students out and then follow them.
She explains what she’s going to do.
“Ready?”
Another bomb explodes. This one far closer.
“Let’s go. Come on. Now. We have to go now.”
She shoves open the door and steps out. Quickly glances around. Is tempted to run to the right, toward Ace’s room, but makes herself stand firm.
“Go. Go. Go.”
The students do as she says, filing out of the classroom, running as fast as they can.
She follows.
So far so good.
More explosions. More gunfire. And that fuckin’ deafenin’ fire alarm.
They reach the alcove that leads to the exit.
As they round the corner, she thinks We made it. We’re safe.
Just fifteen feet from the double glass doors that lead out of the danger and chaos of this apocalypse.
She feels such relief. She made the right decision.
But when they reach the doors, and push on them, they only give a little.
Looking down she sees that the bars to the door have been zip-tied together.
Several large, thick zip ties have the two doors strapped together.
“Shit! Who’s got a knife?” she asks.
Everyone shakes their heads.
“None of you rednecks have a pocket knife on you? Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me?”
Some of the kids continue to shove on the door, but it’s no use. The ties aren’t going to give, the doors aren’t going to open.
“We could try to break the glass,” one of the kids says.
“With what? Your hard head? Back to the classroom. Now. Hurry.”
They begin to run back in the direction of all the explosions and alarms and screams and gunfire.
But as they’re about halfway down the alcove, a figure appears out of the smoke in the main hallway. Looking like something out of a comic book, he’s in all black, including a long black leather duster, fatigues, and gloves, and has on a white mask beneath a black military-style hat.
Raising his rifle, he begins to fire, spraying bullets like windswept hail throughout the alcove.
Within seconds all seven people—six students and one teacher—are sprawled across the floor, their life’s blood leaking out of them.
294
People say he just went crazy like it could happen to anyone or it’s as random as getting struck by lightning, but I don’t think so. He didn’t just go crazy. There were signs to see if anyone was looking.
I arrive at Potter High School around a quarter after—just eight minutes into the attack.
As I run through the main entrance, I can hear sirens in the distance. Backup is on the way.
Inside, Tyrese and LeAnn quickly tell me what they know and toss me a radio.
“Hurry, John,” LeAnn says. “Kim is up there by herself.”
“Radio her,” I say. “Let her know I’m coming up. Not to shoot me. Find out her position. I’ll be monitoring. And be sure to tell the Potter County deputies that we’re up there.”
Tyrese says, “We think Kim has been shot. We don’t know how bad. Want me to come with you?”
I shake my head as I’m running away.
Withdrawing my weapon, I make my way up the hallway that leads to the main, circular one beyond.
The acrid air is thick with smoke and the smell of burned gunpowder. Visibility is very low.
Through the fog, I can hear the dissonant sounds of disembodied screams, the arrhythmic bursts of semi-automatic gunfire, the intermittent explosions of bombs, and the incessant blare of the fire alarm.
As I reach the main hallway, it gets worse—the smoke thicker, the racket louder, the terrified screams more piercing.
Unable to determine where exactly the shots are coming from, I take a right and head south in the main hallway.
Even if it wasn’t dim and filled with smoke, the circularness of the hallway would make it difficult to see very far in either direction, its hard surfaces bouncing noises around, making it impossible to isolate or pin down the direction of any single sound.
“Any word on Kim’s position yet?” I ask into the radio.
“Not yet. Where are you?”
“You can’t see me,” I say, looking up, searching for security cameras.
“Most of them are out because of the explosions.”
“Have somebody cut the fire alarm,” I say. “It’s handicapping us.”
“I’ll go do it now,” Tyrese says.
Reaching the first set of library doors, I see that they are shot up and shattered, large shards of glass hanging precariously over the jagged opening.
I pause and glance in. There is no movement, and though I’m sure there are students hiding inside, no one is visible.
As I round the first arching curve of the hallway, I can hear the live gunfire better and believe I’m getting close.
Another loud explosion close by, though I can’t be certain exactly where, leaves my ears ringing.
Up ahead I hear shots being fired, and as I get closer, I can see Kim sitting on the floor in a pool of blood, leaning against the wall of a small alcove that leads to a dark, empty classroom, returning fire. On the floor a few feet away is her shot-up radio.
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