by Lee Chambers
The horrid thud of Tremblay's boot interrupted the peace, kicking the door wide open–stopping just an inch away from Amanda's cheek. There was an almighty crack and crunch of wood on wood–her face rescued by the edge of a coat rack, blocking the door's trajectory.
Amanda bit down hard on her finger, just to stop from screaming. On the other side of the door, Tremblay's silhouette was standing fearsomely wielding the crowbar. He paused, white eyes flickering over the shadows in the office, then he turned abruptly. Gone.
nineteen
Aaron clambered around, scooping up the last of the loose bills. He stuffed them haphazardly into the backpack, but something was tucked down near the bottom, wedged in tight. Aaron wiggled his hand in deep, trying to move the obstruction. Suddenly, his eyes illuminated like a light bulb in that dull corridor.
Pulling out his arm, Aaron looked down at what he was holding–the steely grip on a Colt 45 pistol. “Whoa!” It looked exactly like the one in Tremblay's holster, Aaron thought as he lifted it into the air. Heavier than he imagined. And stinky. Like oil, dirt and smoke.
Aaron took a deep breath, glancing up and down the corridor. Time to make his next move. But what would that be?
With a tiny creak, Amanda pushed the door ajar and slipped around it. Treading carefully, she tiptoed through the office, stepping over the destruction of the switchboard. Then, reaching the doorway to the corridor, Amanda leaned over, slowly, holding her breath, scared to keep her eyes open. Nothing.
Then a sharp pull from behind caused Amanda to let out a wail. Tremblay had grabbed her hair and was yanking her out into the hallway. He pulled her up to his eyeballs, as she scratched and swung at him.
“I've had enough of your shit!” Tremblay barked.
Amanda twisted and cried, as her hair slipped from his grasp, and she dropped to the floor. A marionette after the puppet-master had released the strings. Skittering away from Tremblay on her hands and feet, Amanda was wide-eyed, terrified, and unaware that Tremblay was raising the crowbar to strike again.
He slammed the bar down, narrowly missing her ribs as Amanda rolled out of the way. “Where is he?” Tremblay screamed, interrogating her. He swung again, whacking Amanda's right thigh with the crowbar. The searing pain. She howled.
“I can do this all night, bitch, so you better tell me… ”
She whimpered. Tremblay reared back to strike Amanda again when he heard the dangerous 'click' of a cocked gun.
“Drop it, asshole!” The familiar voice of Aaron echoed as he aimed the Colt at the back of Tremblay's head.
Tremblay froze, Amanda looked up. Nobody moved.
“Are you deaf?” Aaron's voice echoed down the corridors. He stepped closer, just a few feet from Tremblay and Amanda, still sprawled on the floor.
Tremblay grimaced and dropped the crowbar. It rattled with a clang.
“Are you alright, Miss Becker?” Aaron said, moving around to be by her side, to face Tremblay's mean gaze. Amanda nodded, easing herself to her feet, rubbing her sore thigh. Her nails were chipped from the fall and clawing; her eyes bled mascara. She found the crowbar with her other hand and lifted it up with her as she stood.
Aaron didn't take his eyes off Tremblay. He kept the Colt trained on him, with a quivering hand; as he took another sidestep over to stand right next to Amanda. Then he steadied the Colt with both hands.
“You do know Daddy's not coming for you, right?” Tremblay finally said.
“Shut up!”
“He's too busy worrying about how he's going to get his 'screw you' to Pineville money back so he can--”
“What are you talking about?” Aaron interjected, his face flushed red.
“Oh, come on, don't play dumb. You know damn well he's going to shut down the mill after he sells it.”
“You're wrong. He wouldn't do that.”
Tremblay shot Aaron with an accusatory glare. “Wouldn't he?”
Meanwhile, miles away, Carl was leaning against the rear door of his cruiser, looking out across the dark fields, talking on his cell phone. “You're not answering the radio or your cell. Where are you, Jay?” his voice quivered. “Call me back. I have news.”
Carl glanced down at the cruiser window behind him, where there was Mike's scared, dirty face pressed against the glass. Scared, dirty, but alive.
Suddenly, Carl noticed the flashing icon on his phone. A little envelope. A voice message. He pressed the button and retrieved it… Not Jay; it was Amanda. “Please hurry, Carl. We're locked inside the school and Tremblay…”
“Jesus Christ!” Carl jolted into action, as if an electric shock had injected his heart. Not wasting a second, he whipped around the cruiser to the driver's side.
The engine started. Exhaust blew smoke. Dirt sprayed from the rear tires into the air.
On a mission, the cruiser sped off into the black night.
twenty
Amanda squeezed the crowbar tight in her hand. Aaron tried to look tough with the Colt. In reality, he wasn't the man he wanted to portray. He was a boy mixed up in some serious shit. Could he even handle the recoil on this gun? Would he have to? He'd only pulled a trigger once before.
His Dad's idea of a bonding exercise: hunting for a week at a lonely cabin in the woods. It smelt musty and of dead things. But one of the guys at the mill gave Derek the keys and he dragged Aaron along for some 'quality time.' Time for the boys to talk and forget about work and school. Just be a couple of guys.
It was a disaster as usual. Hardly any talk, except Derek cursing his cellphone reception, and Aaron cursing under his breath at being stuck in the middle of nowhere. Then came the day they shot the deer. Derek bossed Aaron around, telling him how to point a gun, like he's some kind of Desert Storm sniper.
Derek took the first shot and the doe went down. But she was still alive. Needed that kill shot. “Go on, Aaron. Do it. Do it!” Aaron heard his father's words, yet saw the tears in the doe's eyes. He aimed the rifle and looked away. One second, she was alive. Then–BANG!–the doe was dead.
It was very quiet for the rest of that trip. Not a word was spoken. The deer's silence spoke for the both of them.
“Why do you think I put in for a transfer?” Tremblay said, breaking Aaron's train of thought. His beady eyes turned to Amanda. “Surely, Carl must have-”
Amanda suddenly whacked Tremblay in the kneecap with the crowbar. A vicious outburst from a woman who'd had enough.
Tremblay yelped in agony and dropped to the floor, clutching his knee. He looked up, tears in his eyes, like that damn deer–Why'd she have to be walking through their neck of the woods that day?
Amanda smashed Tremblay in the temple, a brutal swing, knocking one out of the park. His head crumpled to the floor. Out like a light.
“Come on…” she shouted, grabbing Aaron by the hand.
“But what about…?”
“He's probably dead,” she said, pulling Aaron in one hand and carrying the crowbar in the other, droplets of blood on its clawed edge.
Aaron tucked the Colt into his waistband as they hustled down the corridor.
Tremblay moaned heavily as he rolled over. Not dead. Not alive. Somewhere in between. Waiting for a kill shot. Or a resurrection.
twenty one
Amanda led Aaron to the doors of the library. “Why are we coming back here?” he asked, out of breath and perturbed.
She didn't answer him but pulled him through the doors and across the dusty room to the circulation desk. Aaron looked up at the ceiling, riddled with holes, and down at the floor, covered in a fine powder.
Craning her neck, Amanda found what she was searching for. She reached down for her purse, opened it and took out her cell phone.
“I thought they don't work in here.”
“They do outside. I'm going to…”
She stopped mid-thought as something dripped onto her nose. She wiped it off quickly with the back of her hand. Red smear on her knuckle. Another droplet landed on her wrist. “What the�
��?”
Amanda looked up at one of Tremblay's bullet holes. It was bleeding. The pool of red was spreading across the ceiling tile.
Then the god-awful creak of the weight of something signaled it was time to jump out of the way. But it was too late. Chuck's hulking body came crashing through the ceiling, careening down on top of Amanda, creating a heap on the ground.
“Oh my God!” Aaron cried out, stumbling back from the fallout.
“Get him off me! Get him off me!” she wheezed, sprawling beneath Chuck–his face white behind the helmet's visor, eyes rolled back into his fat head.
Aaron started tugging at the suit of Chuck's arm. He then froze. All the blood was sloshing around inside the helmet, splashing red onto the pale skin. It started seeping from the zipper, onto Amanda's dress.
“Aaron! Come on!” Amanda screeched as she wiggled herself out from under Chuck. The front of her dress was soaked with the red-tinged stain. “Thanks,” she snipped, looking down at herself.
Shaking his head, Aaron came out of his daze. He moved to wipe the blood from her dress with his sleeve, but only smeared it worse. Amanda frowned at Aaron's technique, and his hand's proximity to her bosom. He noticed too, then looked down at his feet, and the pool of blood forming a puddle around their shoes.
Like the murky depths of Chuck's blood, the dark gloom surrounded the school as Carl idled past Tremblay's cruiser to park in front of the entrance. “What's going on?” Mike asked from the back seat.
Carl turned to look at him. “I'll just be a minute.”
Inside the maintenance room, a broken and limping man, Tremblay, was using the wall for support, after tripping over the spilled sporting equipment. A dented aluminum bat caught his eye, shiny in the dim light. He picked it up, wielding it, before studying the map on the wall again.
With a snort, he felt rejuvenated enough to raise some hell. Staggering from the room, he bashed the bat off a locker door, and started strutting down the hallway, stiff-legged from his knee wound.
“You can't hide in here forever!” he laughed. Some endorphins were kicking in. A manic, menacing grin swept over his crooked face.
Tremblay stopped at the first classroom and poked his head inside for a quick look before continuing on to the next one. “Don't make this worse than it already is!”
The echoing boom of Tremblay's yells resonated inside the library. Aaron and Amanda looked at each other in horror. Immediately, they both turned and started running in the opposite direction, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the giant who had awoken from his slumber.
Outside the school, Carl dropped a Kevlar vest on the ground, then reached into the open trunk of the cruiser, taking out a 12-gauge short-barrel shotgun. He snagged a few shells out of a box and shoved them in his pocket.
Slamming the trunk closed, Mike watched with a quizzical stare as Carl suited up, in battle armor and weaponry. This was going to be a longer and more serious pit stop than he was led to believe.
Aaron and Amanda rushed past the classrooms, toward the main doors. “What about the money?!” he gasped. “He thinks we still have it. That's why he's chasing us.”
Amanda and Aaron slowed to a trot, glancing up the hallway for any sign of movement.
“Where is it?”
“It's in the stairwell.”
She nodded. “Okay then, come on…” They continued to the main doors and turned into an adjoining hallway. At the hall, Aaron turned left and Amanda went right. Within a moment, both noticed the other was gone and returned to each other.
“Where are you going?” asked Aaron.
“We need to hide,” said Amanda, pulling Aaron to the right with her.
Aaron fought for a moment, digging his heels into the slippery, newly waxed floor. “But we need to get the money first…” Aaron protested weakly before he gave in and followed Amanda.
Not far behind, back at the library, Tremblay squatted beside Chuck's body and pulled a piece of ceiling tile off him.
“Goddamnit, Chuck… ”
As Tremblay straightened again, he grimaced at his aching knee pain. Then he noticed something amongst the debris and Chuck's tools. Metallic. Powdered with dust. It was his Colt.
“Son of a bitch.” Tremblay picked up the gun, holstered it, and made for the door. Bashing it open with the butt of the baseball bat.
twenty two
Carl slid a shell into the shotgun, walked up to the doors, and then rattled them with all his might. Tremblay heard it, twisted his head round like an owl, wide-eyed and ready to hunt.
Looking down at his cellphone, Carl pressed redial. No answer, just voicemail again. “Jay, what are you doing? Don't do this. I'm at the school. Come outside and we'll talk this over, okay?”
On the other side of the building, Aaron and Amanda wandered into the cafeteria. “But, there's no way out in here. Wouldn't the theatre be better?”
“We can hide in the kitchen and wait for Carl,” she said. “There's knives and stuff.”
Aaron shook his head, but followed all the same. Still that teacher-student dynamic. Follow Miss Becker, regardless of whether it's a dumb plan.
They hurried past empty tables on the way to the kitchen. It looked like a spooky old ghost town without any children, sitting and eating. Instead of the clatter of cutlery, there was only the sound of their footsteps.
Aaron walked into the serving area and started scouting for weapons.
“I can't believe this is happening,” Amanda said, turning to stand guard at the kitchen door, gripping the crowbar so tightly that her knuckles were turning shades of snow.
Looking over, Aaron could see Amanda shaking into a sob. “I'm sorry, Miss Becker.”
“Amanda.”
“I'm scared too… Amanda.”
“What are we going to do?” she asked, as she lay the crowbar down on a stainless steel counter and rubbed her weary eyes.
“I don't know… But I'm sure not going down without a fight.”
Aaron ripped open a cupboard then a drawer, looking for anything that could stab, clobber or maim. A plastic tub in the drawer marked 'Eating Utensils.' He dumped it out on the counter. Knives and forks. All plastic.
Bending the knife between his finger and thumb, he knew they were screwed. “I'm sorry about all this, Miss Beck… Amanda.”
“It's not your fault,” she said, straining to sound convincing.
“It kind of is though. If I hadn't taken the money, we wouldn't have ended up in this mess.”
“You were just doing the right thing though. For your father.” Amanda moved to put an arm around Aaron. Partly to comfort him, and partly because she needed a hug, too.
“Yeah, my father. He's an asshole, Amanda,” Aaron said, shrugging away from her. “All he cares about is money. Do you know he's not even coming to the play Monday night? After all that bullshit he told me about 'finally seeing me in my element.' He'd rather have another of his stupid meetings. Can you believe it?”
Amanda separated her lips, but had nothing to say. She happened to look up at the glass panels, separating the cafeteria from the hallway; Tremblay was standing there! His hand cupped to the glass, trying to peek inside.
Quickly, she flattened her body against the kitchen wall. “He's here!”
“Oh my God…” Aaron whispered, snatching the crowbar from the counter. “Maybe he didn't see you?”
Then came the sickly sweet tones of Tremblay in, finally, a good mood. “Alright, folks. It's time we wrap this up.”
He saw her.
twenty three
Standing by the doors to the gym, Carl pumped the shotgun. With a pair of headlights sweeping behind him, Principal Parker had returned, but was oblivious to Carl, or any other shenanigans inside the school. His school.
Ready, aim, fire. BLAM! Carl dispensed the shell and then kicked the blown apart door open and entered. He racked another shell into the chamber and moved down the shadowy hallway.
Amand
a slid down the wall, grabbing tightly onto Aaron's arm. They both huddled down near the ground, as Tremblay's vengeful words hovered over the abandoned cafeteria. “If I have to go in there… it's gonna get messy. So, get your asses out here right now!”
“He's going to kill us,” Amanda hissed at Aaron. He looked into her face. Her eyes were beautiful when they were frightened.
“I have an idea,” Aaron suddenly said, slicing through the ominous tension.
Tremblay clunked the bat to the floor beside his leg and wiped away the blood caking his left ear. “I'm going to count to…”
“No need.” Aaron exited the kitchen holding the crowbar, with Amanda right behind him.
Eyes slitted with suspicion, eyebrows raised with shock; Tremblay looked around the glass partition to see Aaron and Amanda coming out. “Lose the crowbar.”
“No.”
Tremblay raised the bat up into both of his hands and took a large step in their direction. Amanda and Aaron stopped in their tracks. Aaron was dying to swallow, but knew the rise and fall of his Adam's apple would tell Tremblay everything he needed to know: Aaron was nervous.
“I don't suppose you have the money with you?” Tremblay said, scanning them for any bags or perceivable bulges.
Aaron shook his head.
“Of course you don't. Well, let's go get it then.”
Aaron looked to Amanda, with an invisible wink. “Ready?” he mumbled.
She sniffed, still fighting back tears. “Don't do this, Aaron. Maybe he'll let us go after…”
Frowning, Aaron looked sternly at Amanda. In a harsh whisper: “We're witnesses, Amanda. He's not going to let us go. This is our only chance.”
Tremblay took another large step. It was now or never.
twenty four
“Hey, let me out!”
Principal Parker heard the muffled yell, as he passed by Carl's cruiser outside the school. Then came the soft thud of a thumping fist against glass. Greasy fingerprints smeared together.
