Crash and Burn

by Michael Hassan

  “Going in today?”

  “It’s a special day for me,” he said.

  OK, there was no way at that moment to decipher his hieroglyphics on this. Seeing as he had his instruments, I figured that he was doing some kind of music thing.

  “Good luck,” I told him, and I remember how he eyed me suspiciously when I said that. I meant with whatever he was planning to perform.

  “Thanks,” he finally said. “See you later.”

  “I don’t think so,” I told him matter-of-factly. It was a national kid holiday, if he didn’t already know.

  “Well, I think so, Steven. I will see you later.” OK, that was definitely weird, but to me it was just Burn being Burn and no point in arguing with him.

  The last thing that I thought of at that moment, in front of the high school, at approximately 7:29 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, was that he was about to do what he was about to do.

  The first thing I thought of was sleep and returning to it.

  I got home at 7:40.

  By 7:50 I was already under my covers again, and the world was doing just fine, thank you very much.

  At 7:53, my cell phone rang. It was Jamie.

  “Now what?” Me, yelling into the cell phone.

  “Steven,” she said, “you need to get back here. Right away.”

  OK, before I continue, you should probably be prepared to spend time with this book because you’re not going to want to put it down until it’s finished. Keep in mind that I will be revealing the secret, as in what it was that Burn whispered to me that basically ended the siege. Don’t try to skip ahead; it will ruin it for you. And if you’re, like, on a train or something, and you think you’ll just start it now and finish it later, well, you might want to stop now or make other plans.

  If this was a movie, this would be the time to put on your 3-D glasses. Also, if you want to go to the bathroom or if you want a snack, get it now.

  I’ll wait.

  Are you all set?

  Here goes. One other thing: If you have any Nine Inch Nails, maybe “You Know What You Are?” from the With Teeth disc or mostly anything from Downward Spiral, or any Rage Against the Machine, you might want to crank it up. That’s how my day got restarted. At full volume.

  “Why the hell should I go back to school, Jamie?” I asked her.

  “David Burnett locked himself in the faculty lounge with a bunch of teachers. He’s holding them hostage.” Jamie was screaming into the phone.

  “So call the police,” I told her, “and get out of there. I’ll pick you up.” I was already up, searching for my jeans. Found them in a pile of clothes.

  “I can’t,” she said. “He won’t let anyone leave. He said that if anyone tries to leave the school, he’ll kill us all.”

  “Did you call Mom? Why are you calling me?”

  “Because David Burnett told me that I had to,” she said. “He called me on my cell and told me that I had to get you to come back to school.”

  “Me? Why?” I had the feeling that there was some kind of disconnect between us.

  “Steven,” she said, trying to sound calm but not sounding calm at all, “if you don’t get here right away, he said he’s going to hurt me.” Her voice rippled with fear.

  “How?” I tried to be calm enough for both of us, keeping her on the phone, as I was stumbling into my jeans, pulling my sneakers on.

  “I don’t know, Steven!” she shouted into the phone. “All I know is he’s watching me now. He’s watching all of us.”

  “Watching you? How? Where are you?”

  “In class with Mrs. Peterson. We can’t leave. There was some kind of explosion outside. Burn said it was a warning.”

  I flew down the stairs, grabbed my keys, and was out the door in seconds, holding only my cell phone. One last look around—what should I take with me? I ran into the garage hoping for inspiration. The only thing that caught my eye was an old Little League bat. Better than nothing, I told myself, grabbing it and tossing it into my car. Then, reverse, out of the driveway full speed, pulling into drive and flying off.

  School in five minutes flat.

  A record.

  I zoomed into the parking lot, grabbed the bat, and got out.

  I was on my way up the steps to school when I noticed the sounds of sirens for the first time.

  My cell phone rang. Jamie again. “He wants you to go to the football field.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, Steven,” she screamed back. “He said drop the bat. He said you have sixty seconds. He said that you’re one dead bandicoot if you don’t make it.” Another quiver in her voice. “Why is he doing this, Steven?”

  “I don’t know.” Me, thinking, how did he know about the bat?

  “Hold on,” she said. “He’s calling again.” She switched away, then switched back to me seconds later.

  “Forty seconds,” she said in a panic. “He wants you to know.”

  The sirens were getting louder.

  I scrambled across the lawn, around to the back of the school, and made it to the football field just as the phone rang again.

  “Steven,” Jamie whispered to me. “David Burnett wants you to know that there are three people in the field house. He said you have one minute to get them out.”

  I bolted downfield toward the field house. Coach Meyers was standing by the door. I practically flew into him. “Get everyone out,” I said. “Get everyone out.”

  “Slow down” was all he said as I pushed beyond him.

  And then the two of us were in there and there was Brian, Tyler, and some other kid I didn’t know.

  “EVERYBODY OUT NOW!” I screamed.

  “Fuck you, Crash” is what Tyler said. Always Mister Prime Time, never willing to concede a thing to us Club Crew guys.

  My phone rang. Jamie. “You have ten seconds.”

  “Please,” I said. “David Burnett’s gone crazy. He’s got bombs. Trust me.”

  I repeated her information. “Please, we have ten seconds.”

  Maybe it was the way I sounded or the way I looked at them, but they moved faster than I have ever seen kids move.

  Good thing too, because no more than five seconds after they were out, there was an explosion from somewhere inside the field house that shook the ground under us, knocking us off our feet.

  We were on the ground when the police cars pulled up beside us. Two cops got out, guns drawn.

  My phone rang.

  I was not about to get up with guns pointed at me. I didn’t know whether I should answer it, not with the cops approaching. I reached for my cell superslowly, expecting Jamie.

  I looked at the display screen.

  It was David Burnett.

  “I’m going to need to answer this,” I told them, sitting up slowly and very gingerly lifting my cell phone to my face.

  “He’s OK,” said Coach Meyers. “Let him get it. He got us out of there.”

  “We know,” said one of the officers, with his gun still drawn. “We know about the kid inside the school. David Burnett.”

  “This is him, on the phone,” I motioned, cautiously flipping the phone open.

  “Hello, Crash. Let the police know that you are talking to me.”

  “David, why are you doing this?”

  “Do what I tell you!” he yelled back. “Remind them about our arrangement. Ask them if they need more proof that there are other incendiary devices placed strategically throughout the school, including all entrances and exits. Tell them that any attempt to breach the access points will trigger a chain reaction, and I will have no control over what happens once an access point is compromised.”

  I told the cops, and had one of them correct me, because I did not know exactly the pronunciation of “incendiary.” He could just have said “explosive.” Leave it to Burn to complicate things with perfect grammar. Still, we had to believe that if he was able to rig explosives to the field house, he could also do it inside the school.

  �
��What arrangement?” I asked him and the cops at the same time. “Where are you now?”

  “No questions. You have sixty seconds to get to the soccer field.” He sounded unusually calm, almost quiet.

  “Or what?” I yelled back at him.

  “Jamie” was all he said.

  Followed by: “Fifty-five seconds.” Then he hung up.

  “Gotta go. Soccer field,” I told them, flying back upfield, around the back of the school, and across the street to where the soccer fields were. Police cars were lining up along the front of the school. The groggy, hazy fog that I started the day feeling was wearing off, thanks in large part to the incredible bursts of adrenaline I was experiencing. As my mind began to clear, I tried to put myself into Burn’s head, thinking of that poker game when I was stoned enough to look into his mind.

  My cell goes off again.

  “You have fifteen seconds to get everyone off the field.”

  So I ran across the soccer field, screaming at the group of soccer players. “David Burnett’s gone crazy. Get off the field. David Burnett’s gone crazy. Get off the field.”

  I screamed this loudly enough that no one defied my orders and the group scattered, just as a blue Porta-Potty blew open, Jackass style, sending the roof skyward and liquid goo gushing upward like a geyser in a national park.

  I heard a few kids utter, “Cool.”

  Then a second explosion blew apart the sides.

  And the phone again, startling me.

  “Now, go to the back door of the cafeteria,” he said. “Someone will let you in.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” I asked him, actually understating the obvious. “No way I’m going into the building if you have bombs planted throughout the school.”

  “Of course you are,” he said. “Even if I told you to stay away, you’d find a way in. You are very protective of your sister. Besides, you’re hero material, Crash. Even if your sister wasn’t here, you’d still come if I called you. And you know why, Crash? Because you think that you’re lucky and nothing will happen to you. It’s easy to be a hero if you totally believe that, isn’t it?”

  “David, what the fuck are you talking about? Why are you doing this?”

  He ignored me and instead continued, “You have sixty seconds. Anything beyond that and the police will be there and you won’t be able to get in. If you don’t get there in time, I promise you this much: Someone will die. Maybe Jamie?”

  I was greeted at the cafeteria door by the pimpled kid who had helped Jamie with her project. Was this a coincidence, or was Burn watching her earlier that morning? The kid looked supremely nervous. I was either too adrenalized to actually feel any fear or in fear overdrive, I couldn’t tell. One part of me understood that just by entering the building, I might be sealing my fate; logic dictated that Burn was capable of virtually anything, including a massacre of mega proportions, and maybe that was what he wanted all along. Another part of me believed that whatever he was planning, I could talk him down. The cafeteria itself did not appear to be too dangerous. And Jamie was in the building.

  I didn’t have a choice, really.

  The kid opened the door for me and I stepped inside. As I did so, I held the door open so that he could leave. He looked at me, unsure what to do.

  “It’s OK. Go!” I yelled, and he ran through the door to the freedom that I had just left behind.

  The cafeteria was deserted, like it was Sunday morning, not like a school day at all.

  I took in every corner, wondering where the cameras were. I knew that the school had a security system installed some years ago, which included cameras in the hallways, so I had to believe that Burn had somehow hijacked them. He seemed to know too much about what was going on.

  The phone again.

  “OK, I’m in, now can we talk?” I asked, not wanting to talk to him at all.

  “Did I tell you that you could let Lorenzo out?”

  Lorenzo? I thought. Who names a kid Lorenzo in the twenty-first century?

  “Burn, he’s just a kid. . . .”

  He hung up, leaving me to wonder what the consequences were going to be.

  I went to the cafeteria doors and looked out. No one was in the hall.

  Phone again.

  “Stay put until I tell you otherwise.” Burn, sounding superangry.

  Gone again.

  I called Jamie. Nothing was new on her end. I told her that I let her boyfriend out. She said that Lorenzo was definitely not her boyfriend. When I told her that I was in the cafeteria, this only seemed to panic her more.

  “What does he want from us?” She started to cry. “Is he going to blow up the entire school, Steven?”

  I was about to tell my sister that there was nothing to worry about, except I had no reason to tell her something that could easily not be true.

  I waited, trying to think about what to do, wondering just how much danger was I, were we all, in?

  And Burn called back.

  “Why don’t you stop what you’re doing and let everybody go?” I started in immediately, before he could say anything.

  Quiet on the other end. “It’s too late for that, Steven.”

  More sirens now, new sounds from just beyond the cafeteria door. And beyond it, another explosion. I ran to the window. A trash bin was on fire.

  He had either timed it perfectly so that I could get into the building or he was controlling the devices—it had to be some kind of remote mechanism.

  “David?” I shouted into the phone. “Are you there?”

  “Stay where you are. Until you hear from me.”

  I suspected that he was preoccupied with some other crises in the building. I looked around, already completely exhausted.

  It was 8:35.

  The bell went off, and of course, I jumped out of my skin when I heard it, my senses preparing for a life-ending explosion. The sound continued to rip through me even after I understood what it was. I have never been able to handle classroom buzzers, one of my things.

  End of first period, minutes until the next one, or at least it would have been if this was a normal school day. I ran to the door of the cafeteria again, looked into the hall.

  No one was out there. Not a single person.

  Second period. I would have been in contemporary literature with Collins. Screw it, I thought, fuck Burn and his stupid plan. He’s not going to do anything. This is not McAllister. He’s not eight anymore.

  So after peering around and seeing absolutely no one, I slipped into the hall.

  No one.

  I had this feeling that I was missing something, I was sure of it. If the building was full, why weren’t there at least some people in the halls? What did he do to convince like a thousand people, teachers and kids, to stay in their places? Kids should be trying to escape through windows, running any way they could out of the building. Something was missing.

  And behind me, something exploded in the cafeteria, swinging the door back into me, knocking me down. Once again, I was on the floor. My cell rang.

  “Was there something about stay in the cafeteria that you did not understand?”

  “Cut it out, Burn,” I said.

  “You’re going to get people killed.”

  “Me?” I answered. “I’m going to get people killed? I’m not the one setting off bombs, dude.”

  “The last one was a consequence of your failure to follow instructions,” he said. “Everyone seems to be able to handle instructions except you. Why am I not surprised, Crash?”

  “I don’t care,” I told him. “I’m not listening to you anymore.”

  “Jamie’s in Room 211. It’s directly above where you are standing now. Do you want to hear another explosion? This one from upstairs?”

  Fuckme. I couldn’t take the risk. Apparently everyone else was feeling the same way, because no one was moving down the hallway.

  “Fine,” I spit back. “What now?”

  “Go back in the cafeteria. Use the fire extinguis
her on the north wall. Remember, I’ll be watching you.”

  I swung back through the door. There was, in fact, a small fire by the back wall. I found the fire extinguisher, unhooked it, and sprayed foam all over the remaining flames.

  He called back.

  “Now go into the kitchen,” he said. “Go over to the aluminum table. Bend down and feel underneath. There’s a rifle taped to the underside. And beside that a headset. Get the gun, put on the headset, turn it on, and wait. Did you hear me, Crash? WAIT!”

  I moved quickly into the next room. It looked like there had been a point in the morning when things must have been normal. Meals were in the process of being prepared. And between that time and now, the room had been abandoned.

  “Where is everyone?” I yelled out, stooping down.

  I found the rifle. It was like a World War I–looking weapon. Old and beat up. Taped to the corner was a headset. I yanked it free and put it on. “Hello?”

  “Did you find it?” Him, clear as a bell. I could have sworn that I heard the clatter of typing on a keyboard in the background.

  It hit me that he must have been planning this event for a long time. You couldn’t just wake up one morning and rig all these bombs in all these places, plus hijack the school security system.

  Like everything else he did in his life, he was thorough, which meant that he had to think through the consequences of what he was doing and had to know the potential outcome.

  “Yes.”

  “OK, take the weapon and go over to the front entrance of the school and wait until I call you. You have two minutes.”

  8:50.

  When I got to the front entrance of the school, it was crowded with people, at least fifty students, all looking to get out. There was a uniform gasp when they saw me carrying a rifle.

  “I’m not going to use it,” I announced. “Burn is forcing me to carry it. But I will not use it, no matter what.”

  That seemed to relax absolutely no one.

  The custodian, Mr. Ferguson, was standing in the archway, holding another antique-looking gun across his chest, looking really, really nervous. Like me, he also had a headset on. No one was even attempting to get past him. I moved through the crowd, over to where he was standing.