by Rio Youers
The last words she said to him, and which he believed absolutely: “The final bullet will be your ride to Glam Moon. Wait for me there. I’ll meet you on the saffron.”
On the morning of Wednesday June 13, 2018, Nolan Thorne took Glenn across to the mainland.
He’d been away for eighteen months and it was still burning.
* * *
Martin woke to the sound of Laura’s hairdryer in the en suite bathroom. It roused him from some vaporous dream and he indulged a moment longer among the pillows, thinking nothing in particular, until the hairdryer was switched off and Laura, glossed and airy as a bubble, floated into the bedroom. “Did I wake you?” she asked without looking at him. “I’m sorry; I didn’t have time to wash my hair last night.” She then began dressing in the practical, unstimulating attire of a high school English teacher, affixing jewelry to her earlobes and a simple chain around her neck, applying color to her cheeks and a spritz of something to her throat that smelled like lavender and was called Curate.
Martin saw little of this, but after seventeen years of marriage, he knew Laura’s morning ritual as well as the slope of her neck or the dimples in her thighs. She would step into her slip left leg first. Zip her skirt at the side then swivel it to the back. Button her blouse from the bottom up. The earrings she selected would be tiny diamond studs visible only in certain lights, and the rouge with which she emphasized her cheekbones would be the color of sunburned skin. Before leaving the room, she would kiss his forehead and say, “Have a happy day,” then rally the girls into action. All this before 7 a.m. She was a marvel.
Except this morning she would only have to rally one girl; Edith was at the tail-end of some virulent bug that made her look like she could be cast in The Walking Dead. There were signs of improvement, though. A few more days and she’d be back at school—see out the last week or so before everything shut down for the summer.
“Are you alert?” Laura asked him. “Able to receive instruction?”
“Barely,” he grumbled, wiping his eyes. “What day is it?”
“Wednesday.”
“Groan.”
Her upper lip tweaked at the edges. “Firstly, it’s your mom’s birthday. Don’t send her one of those crappy e-cards. Call her. You know Jimmy will.”
“Ah, fuck Jimmy.”
Her smile lengthened. She sat on the edge of the bed. “Secondly, Edith will only eat Wolfgang Puck vegetable soup. We’re all out. They have it at Steadman’s. Aisle three. Pick up some milk while you’re there.”
“Sure.”
“Thirdly, I’ll be home late. I have a doctor’s appointment, remember? Female business.” She pronounced it bidnezz and he wanted to kiss her with his smelly morning mouth. “I should be home in time for dinner, but if I’m not there’s pizza in the freezer.”
Martin took Laura’s hand, resisting a sudden and incredibly strong urge to pull her back between the sheets. That smile still played on her lips and he compromised with a kiss, smelly morning mouth be damned.
“That was awesome,” she said.
“True love needs no mouthwash.”
Laura shook her head in an amused way, as she had, with some frequency, for the past twenty years. They’d met at the Carrier Dome, watching the Orangemen put up big numbers against Rutgers. Martin had painted his face and upper body bright orange and slapped the university U on his chest. His buddy, Mickey Hill, was supposed to be the Syracuse S, but Mickey’s old man had suffered a heart attack hours before the game so Martin was flying solo, looking somewhat ridiculous as the lonesome U. Laura came to his rescue, though, sitting in the seat behind with her girlfriends and sign-making kit. She whipped up a quick S, then leaped into Mickey’s vacant seat and spent the remainder of the game at Martin’s side. They chanted “Deeee-FENCE” and “Let’s go ’Cuse” at the top of their voices, they high-fived at the end of nearly every play and howled when the Orangemen scored (they posted seventy points that afternoon, so Martin and Laura howled a lot). As the players left the field, Martin clasped Laura by the shoulders and announced with stone-cold seriousness, “We make a great fucking team, baby,” then switched seats with her, rearranging their letters to spell US. He cocked one eyebrow. How about it? that eyebrow said, and for the first time—but by no means the last—twenty-year-old Laura Redman shook her head in an amused way.
They were married in 2001, a small, civil ceremony on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. During their first dance as a married couple (with Chicago singing “If You Leave Me Now”—a melodic, if slightly inappropriate choice), Martin whispered in Laura’s ear, “My parents were divorced after eleven years and eight months of marriage. We go beyond that, and we’re going to last forever.” Laura had smiled and whispered back that he was a hopeless romantic, and that she adored him … and they ran into the years ahead, as side-by-side and colorful as they’d been at the Carrier Dome. Laura never forgot that curious milestone, though, and on the night of their eleven-year, nine-month “anniversary,” Martin returned home from work to find Laura waiting in the living room dressed in something slight and red, a bottle of wine and two glasses in her hands. The stereo was playing Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now” and the girls were at Jimmy’s.
“What’s the occasion?” Martin had asked.
“Forever,” Laura had replied.
Now Martin looked into the same eyes he’d looked into when he declared, We make a great fucking team, baby, and yeah, they still did. It occurred to Martin—as it did most days—that the big things (love, security, trust) made a marriage work, but the small things made it great. Like reminding your husband to call his mother on her birthday, and knowing which leg your wife put into her slip first. Laura was much better at these things. She gave their marriage breadth and depth, and Martin was consistently awestruck by her.
Propped against the pillows with sleep nuggets in the corners of his eyes and smelly morning breath, he felt the need to articulate this. It was too early, though, and the right words wouldn’t come. So instead he squeezed her hand and said, “You rock. I love you.”
As last words to say to your wife go, they weren’t so bad.
Laura smiled and kissed his forehead. “Have a happy day,” she said, and left.
* * *
There had been two calls to install metal detectors at Flint Wood High in recent years. The first was following the unthinkable events at Sandy Hook. Here school administrators were quick to warn against a knee-jerk reaction from parents and other members of the community. They also expressed concern that their school not be turned into a prison-like institution. The subject fizzled out, then fell off the table altogether. It surfaced again in 2016, when a fifteen-year-old student strolled brazenly through the main doors, into the faculty lounge, and lodged an eight-inch carving knife into his English teacher’s back. It wasn’t fatal, but there was a lot of blood and screaming, certainly enough to warrant a second call for metal detectors to be installed. Again, district officials extinguished the flames, suggesting the cost was too great for a system that didn’t guarantee safety (violent crime could just as easily occur in the faculty parking lot or on a school bus). And it wasn’t only the initial setup, but the ongoing cost of maintenance, staffing, and training. They concluded that the best (and most inexpensive) way to prevent violent crime at school was through common sense, vigilance, and regular lockdown drills.
Nolan Thorne knew all this—God bless the internet—and had planned accordingly.
“So I can go through the main doors?” Glenn asked.
“No,” Nolan responded. “No metal detectors doesn’t mean no security. There are two sets of main doors, ten feet apart. Both are locked after nine o’clock, with video surveillance inside and out. The doors ahead won’t open until the doors behind are locked, and you’re not buzzing your way through unless your name is on a list at the front office. Which, by the way, it won’t be.”
“Got it,” Glenn said, and he did, although it was hard to focus on what
Nolan was saying; the voice in his head was as invasive as a power drill. He found that looking at the gym bag between his feet helped. It had a stimulating effect, like smelling salts. Inside was a loaded Colt M4 assault rifle and a spare magazine holding thirty rounds.
“There are eight more entrances around the main building, not including the fire doors, which can only be opened from inside. These other doors all have surveillance cameras and the buzz-in lock system. Most are in exposed locations.” Nolan took a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket, unfolded it, and showed Glenn a rough layout of the school grounds. He pointed to an X on the main building’s northwest side. “This is your way in. This entrance is screened from the main road by the gymnasium, and from these classrooms by a line of trees. Students exit through this door frequently, usually in ones or twos. But you know kids—they can’t just open a door, they have to blow through like Chuck fucking Norris. That’ll work for you; the door is on a pneumatic arm. From fully open it takes eight seconds to close and for the lock to engage. Now this”—he tapped a small square to the left of the X—“is a maintenance building. At a brisk walk, it’s five seconds from the door. You hide behind it. You wait for a student to exit the building. You move.”
“Got it,” Glenn said again. They were in Nolan’s truck, parked behind what used to be Bucky’s DVD Shack and was now a dank, cobwebby space with a FOR LEASE sign in the window. It was a ten-minute walk from Flint Wood High. Glenn was dressed in a baseball cap, aviator sunglasses, and workout gear. He looked, with his bag slung over one shoulder, like some dude on his way to the gym.
“Good.” Nolan nodded. “Remember, if you’re compromised or taken alive, you acted alone. Do not incriminate Mother Moon or anyone else on the island.”
“I’m not fucking stupid, Nolan.” Glenn looked at the bag once again. “And I won’t be taken alive.”
“No, you probably won’t.” Nolan took a calm breath and continued, “Expect the school to go into lockdown mode within ten seconds of you either being seen or firing your first shot. The police will be on the scene inside of three minutes. The classrooms will be locked but there will be students inside. Do what you can.”
“Yes.”
“Mother Moon wants you to make some noise.”
“I know what she wants,” Glenn said. “I can’t get her out of my head.”
* * *
Calm Dumas could have told Edith that the psychic cosmos was in constant flux, and that no set time separated the premonition from the event occurring. It could be as long as a month or as little as ten seconds. There might even be occasions when Edith witnessed the event shortly after it happened—a kind of psychic video playback. In the case of the Flint Wood High School shooting, she was ahead by twenty-one minutes.
8:42 a.m. Edith dozed with Paisley Rabbit clutched to her chest. She hadn’t slept much through the night, despite feeling that she was finally on the mend. There’d been a lot of coughing and blowing her nose. Mom came in several times to stroke her brow and sing to her, and once with a dose of NyQuil in a little plastic measuring cup. “There, baby,” Mom had said. “You sleep. Tomorrow will be a little brighter, I promise.” Edith told her mom that she loved her, and she did sleep, but not deeply. Her dreams were close to the surface, thin as lace.
By 9:10 a.m.—Dad working downstairs, Mom and Shirley at their respective high schools—the exhaustion won out and Edith went from dozing to sleeping. She entered the third stage of non-REM sleep twenty-eight minutes later. Her body and mind went into recharge mode, and given her illness and the restless night she’d had, they had some serious recharging to do.
The window opened at 10:06 a.m. It tore across Edith’s mind like a dagger through a curtain, and displayed a very familiar scene: a school hallway, but not just any school hallway. Edith recognized the gray-tiled floor, the cornflower blue lockers and red classroom doors from the few occasions she’d been there. A banner drooped from the ceiling with GO MUSTANGS printed across it in the same blue color as the lockers. The Mustangs were Flint Wood High’s football team. This was Mom’s school.
She heard the rising-falling wail of a siren followed by a sterile announcement—words she’d been taught to understand, and react to, but that didn’t fully register until she saw the blood on the walls.
“SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. TEACHERS SECURE—”
Edith sat bolt upright. A scream trembled on her lips and she reached for her garden. She glimpsed it, but couldn’t get close. Maybe it was the illness clogging her brain, or her connection to the things on the other side of the window. Whatever the reason—and for the first time since she started building it—she couldn’t reach the safe place in her mind.
Her throat swelled. Tears leaked from her eyes.
The window expanded. She saw a dead teacher slumped against the wall and his blood was everywhere, from his shoes to his beard. She saw bullet holes punched into lockers and a backpack lying in a puddle of blood.
“Burdock,” Edith croaked. The word came out of nowhere, dropping into her mind like a dead leaf. Her hands snatched at thin air and her chest boomed. She heard that rising-falling siren once again, followed by the voice over the intercom:
“SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. TEACHERS SECURE YOUR ROOMS. THE SCHOOL IS IN LOCKDOWN. REPEAT: THE SCHOOL IS IN LOCKDOWN.”
She saw a man skulking past classrooms with closed doors. He wore dark sunglasses and a Nike baseball cap and carried an ugly black rifle in his hands. Edith watched as he raised it, fired three times. The rifle jumped in his hands and the muzzle smoked.
“Burdock,” she said again. She wanted to draw him: a jagged line, like a knife wound. Something vicious.
He stepped over a dead kid and kept walking.
* * *
The faculty parking lot was bordered to the north by the Flint Wood Public Library, the two separated by a strip of trees and a chain-link fence. A subtly marked section of this fence had been snipped from the bottom to about halfway up, just as Nolan promised it would be. Glenn gave it a tug and it lifted in a neat triangular flap. He passed the gym bag through, then dropped to his knees and followed.
There were more trees on the high school side, the spaces between them heavily shadowed. Glenn walked at a crouch, then crossed a patch of grass to the back of the maintenance building. He caught his breath and waited for an alarm to sound, or for a cop to appear with his sidearm leveled. State your business, motherfucker, the cop would scream, and Glenn would tell him to go fuck himself.
He’d take the bullet instead.
That’s what the voice in his head would want.
After a slow count of sixty, with no alarm and no cop, Glenn poked his head out and studied his environment. It was exactly how Nolan had drawn it, with the northwest entrance a short distance away and good cover. The only way he’d be seen was if someone happened to be in the parking lot when he sprung from behind the maintenance building. And even then, from a distance, he’d look like a student.
The side door opened a few minutes later. A kid with headphones looped around his neck bounded out. Glenn watched the door. He wanted to make sure he had enough time to make his move. Nolan had told him it took eight seconds to close. Glenn counted six, but then the door hadn’t been fully open.
Even six seconds was long enough.
“Next time it opens,” he whispered.
He wiped sweat from his face. From nowhere, like a cool gust of wind, he realized he didn’t have to do this. He could walk away. To hell with Mother Moon and the island. He had no house, not a penny to scratch his ass with, but he had family in Pennsylvania—a sister, an aunt. He could dump the gym bag and—
The voice in his head—oh, she was deep—lashed out: NO PURPOSEFUL THING COMES WITHOUT PAIN WITHOUT SACRIFICE BE A GODDAMN MAN A DIFFERENCE MAKER NOT JUST ANOTHER BLIND PATHETIC SHEEP. At the same moment, the side door bounced open again. Two female students emerged, both absorbed in their cell phones.
NOW!
Glenn grabbed the bag
and made his move. He caught the door before it closed and stepped into a hallway with a gray-tiled floor and blue lockers. It was empty of people. A few of the classroom doors stood open but most were closed. Glenn dropped the bag at his feet and unzipped it. He pulled out the assault rifle. It was dense and black and smelled like oil. He stood up straight and tucked the spare mag into the waistband of his sweatpants. Mother Moon went from screaming to soothing. She promised her body—her roadmap of pain and sacrifice. She promised Glam Moon. Glenn marched down the hallway and found his first victim: a teacher with a holly-jolly white beard, wearing a ridiculous Hawaiian shirt and chino shorts. I bet the kids love this guy, Glenn thought, and shot him twice in the chest.
Two empty shells were flushed from the rifle. They glittered in the fluorescent light and hit the floor with diminutive tinkling sounds.
And I’ll meet you on the saffron, Mother Moon said. We’ll make love and the wind will make music—real music—and strange but tame creatures will lick our skin.
“Yes,” Glenn whispered, fighting back tears. He gathered the rifle to his chest and continued along the hallway.
Even the rain is a wonder. So warm and perfumed. Oh, and you can breathe underwater. Did I ever tell you that? For hours on end. The fish are beautiful.
* * *
Martin was drafting notes for that afternoon’s site meeting when he heard Edith scream.
The sound cut through The Who belting out “Won’t Get Fooled Again” (he usually cranked classic rock while working from home, which achieved the neat trick of making him feel both rebellious and somewhat responsible), not to mention the fog in his brain. He’d spent the past four years as part of the design team behind the new Onondaga Mall—over one hundred thousand square meters of iniquity and consumerism off the I-81 west of Flint Wood. For Martin’s part, it hadn’t been so much architectural design as reactive planning, which amounted to moderating disputes and trying to save money. This was like treading water with weights tied to his ankles. The project was four months from completion and eight million dollars over budget, with everyone pointing the finger at the person standing beside them. The focus of that day’s meeting was to kiss each other’s butts and get on the same page, at least until the grand opening in November. Then they could go back to hating and blaming each other again.
