by Lee Chambers
Opening the door, Parker frowned and said, “What's going on here, Michael?”
Mike–who was looking ruffled and hot under the collar after being locked in the rear of a cop-car and then losing the cop to a random 'I'll be back'–clambered out and glanced around.
“Those assholes tried to kill me and Aaron and Steve!”
Parker screwed up his face at the curse word, but let it go for the sake of expediency. “What 'assholes'? What are you talking about?”
“The bank robbers! Are Aaron and Steve okay?”
“Aaron? Yes, he's all right.”
“Oh, good, they got away,” Mike said, sighing as he followed Parker in the direction of the school.
Attempting to glean information from any source, even if it was a boy previously locked inside a car, with seemingly less wherewithal than himself.
Parker asked, “Did that have anything to do with what's going on here?”
“How the heck should I know?” Mike shrugged, his mind onto more pressing things, such as the contents of the school's vending machine.
Neither Parker nor Mike had a clue what was going on, especially at that exact second in the cafeteria.
Aaron knew this was his last chance. Summoning up every ounce of strength and courage, he took a deep breath and did the unthinkable–he charged at Tremblay with a war cry. “Arrrhhhhh!” Crowbar coiled back in his hand, ready to strike.
Although it wouldn't normally be a fair fight–a grizzled Sheriff versus high-school rich kid–it seemed better to die trying, than just die. Still, Tremblay didn't anticipate such guts; maybe they were teaching these kids something in school after all. As a result, he was caught completely by surprise as Aaron swung the bar at him.
Quickly, Tremblay reacted, raising the baseball bat, blocking the crowbar with a clang. Aaron countermoved like a swordsman and poked Tremblay in the ribs. There was a light crack, hopefully he broke a bone. Tremblay grunted and struck back at Aaron with a swipe of the bat, but Aaron was nimble, ducking out of the way. He had the upper hand.
Aaron jousted forward with a mighty thrust, disarming Tremblay. The bat clattered to the ground.
Yet, while holding his aching ribs with his left hand, Tremblay swiftly found the handle of his Colt with his right hand.
Aaron looked back, to see Amanda slinking along the far wall toward the exit. “Run, Amanda!”
Tremblay's gun was released from the holster, its mouth angry and ready to fire. Amanda was suddenly frozen against the wall. Couldn't move another inch. Then, Tremblay aimed towards Aaron.
Running. About to make it. Tremblay squeezed the trigger, blowing apart a glass panel just a few feet in front of Aaron.
Undeterred, Aaron leapt onto a table and jumped–headfirst–breaking through the remaining shards of glass, accidentally dropping the crowbar as he rolled to the floor outside the cafeteria.
The tinkling sound of broken glass continued to ring out around him. He looked up, starry eyed, still dazed, but no time to sleep now. He put down his hand and nicked his palm on a sliver. This woke him up. Pain. Don't want any more of that, thank you.
Aaron twisted his body around and rose to his feet. He hustled away from the cafeteria, slipping on the blanket of shards at his feet, before finding enough traction to run down the hallway. Empty-handed. Without the crowbar. Or, Amanda.
“Hey kid! You forgot your girlfriend,” Tremblay shouted, echoing down the hall.
Looking back, Amanda tip-toed onto the glass carpet, with a Colt fixed to her temple, Tremblay's hand followed, then his arm, then his cold stare and sneering face. Aaron slowed in front of the main doors. Head spinning. What to do? Go back into the lion's den or get out by the skin of his teeth…
Suddenly, the rattle of doors–Principal Parker with his key in the lock! “What's wrong with this thing?” he mumbled, shaking the jammed door handles. It was the best damn thing Aaron heard all night.
“Help me, help me!” Aaron cried out, rushing to the locked doors.
“Aaron?” Mike said.
“What's going on in there, Aaron? Why is the door locked?”
“The Sheriff locked it. Get help. Get Carl. Hurry!” Aaron cried, abandoning the door, as Tremblay made a beeline for him, with a clump of Amanda's hair anchored to his hand, dragging her along.
Parker scratched his head. “I don't understand. Carl's already here.”
But Aaron was gone. With Tremblay hot on his heels.
twenty five
Carl walked out of the library, his eyes struggling to make out shadows of objects and silhouettes in the dim light of the hallway. A flickering exit sign illuminating his path. He turned, hefting the shotgun in both hands, and started down the corridor. Took the next corner, and Aaron ran right into him, his forehead knocking into Carl's chin.
The shotgun fired, accidentally, BLAM! The shrapnel bit a gaping hole in a locker door. Aaron fell backwards, holding his ears, deaf from the blast. “Christ, Aaron, what the hell are you doing? I almost killed you,” Carl barked in shock, looking at the torn metal of the locker, and then back to Aaron.
“Oh my God, Carl, I'm so glad to see you,” Aaron shouted, unable to hear the true volume of his own voice. “The Sheriff's trying to kill us. He wants the money and he killed Chuck and now he has Amanda and he wants…”
Carl blinked. “He has Amanda? Where is he?”
Thumbing back in the direction from where he came, Carl ran off, as Aaron then wiggled his thumb inside his ear. The elongated tinnitus was slowly getting quieter as volumes returned back to normal.
“Sounds like the cavalry's here, so I don't have much time,” hissed Tremblay, still clutching Amanda's hair. They were hiding in her English classroom. He finally released his grip, only to grab hold of the sleeve of her dress–ripping it.
“What are you doing?!” Amanda croaked, trying to back away. Tremblay clung to the fabric, tearing a longer strip off her dress, leaving it shredded on one side–exposing a strip of pale flesh and the hint of a bra strap.
“Get on your knees,” he ordered.
Amanda shook her head, until Tremblay cocked the trigger of the Colt, its mouth poised to shoot again.
“You can go now or you can go later,” he reminded her.
She got the point, lowering herself to her bruised and scraped knees, unsure of what Tremblay had in mind for her.
“Give me your hands” was his next command. She lifted her palms into the air in front of her. Tremblay holstered his Colt, took her wrists and wrapped the torn fabric around them. He made a knot and then pulled the makeshift cuffs tight with his teeth.
“Maybe we can get Mohammed to come to the mountain,” Tremblay whispered in Amanda's ear as she quivered, turning her cheek from his repugnant breath.
Outside in the hallway came Carl's voice: “Sheriff? Where are you?”
Amanda's heart lurched in her chest. Her eyes darted to the door, then back to Tremblay standing over her. “Don't say a word, or I'll kill you now,” he whispered sharply.
With a finger to his lips, he hauled Amanda upwards onto her own feet and forced her with him across the room to the windows. Looking down at the heavy iron radiator, Tremblay smiled as he fastened Amanda to it.
“Now stay put,” he said.
Carl could feel the shotgun getting heavier and more slippery in his sweaty hands. “Don't hurt her, Jay. Please?” he called out, hoping that Tremblay was close enough to overhear. “She has nothing to do with this.”
With dramatic effect, Tremblay side-stepped out of Amanda's classroom, Colt holstered, hands outstretched in front of him, palms up in a 'don't shoot' mime. “We need to talk.”
twenty six
Outside, crickets chirping, Principal Parker swallowed a large gulp, upon finding the side entrance to the school was not only unlocked but obliterated. “I think you should wait outside,” he murmured to Mike, who wasn't about to let anyone stand in the way of his curiosity.
Mike shoved past Parker and bolt
ed into the darkness of the school.
“Michael! Get back here!” Parker called under his breath, scared he might alert any nearby intruders. Then he glanced over his shoulder, in case of attack from behind, and cautiously entered the school building, unsure of where he would be safer–in or out.
Trying a light switch, Parker made his way to the Maintenance Room, where he saw the smashed electrical boxes. “This is unbelievable… Damn vandals in my school. What is this world coming to?”
Mike knew better. He had found Chuck's bullet-riddled body in the library. This wasn't the work of intruders or vandals. The Pineville Heist was still happening, it wasn't over; the robbers were here to finish the job.
On the other side of the school, in a stairwell, Aaron was snatching the handle to the backpack and scooping up the haul from the robbery. This was the only ticket out of this nightmare, give Tremblay what he wants, in a way that somehow lets him and Amanda escape without so much as a scratch. Try to make some kind of trade that doesn't end with a bullet in each of their backs.
Amanda was thinking of similar things, while strapped to the radiator, a piece of her own dress tied around her mouth as a gag. She pulled as hard as she could, but both the dress fabric and the radiator were holding firm.
“There's nothing to talk about, Jay. Let them go,” Carl's voice trailed in from the corridor.
“I can't do that, Carl.” Tremblay's voice was direct and booming. The sound of his Colt being drawn, unbridled from the leather holster, friction-free and fast like a gunslinger, and then a single shot–BANG!
Amanda snapped straight, every vertebra in her spine on edge, as she screamed, a wet long agonizing cry into her gag.
The smell of gun smoke drifted into the classroom. It was a dizzying scent and overpowered her other senses. Nothing mattered from this point on. There was no going back. The damage was done. Amanda stopped screaming and surrendered to the gag and the radiator.
Parker heard the gunshot, too. Ran from his office, unsure which direction would guarantee his safety.
Meanwhile, a second shot was looming. Tremblay's boots squeaked as they stepped closer to Carl's body; blood oozing from a bullet hole near his chest. He ripped the shotgun, pried from Carl's cold dead hands, and aimed it. A confirmation round, shoot right to the eye. Carl was lifeless. Not even a twitch. Tremblay changed his mind at the last second, rather than soak his boots in any brain matter, and walked off towards the library.
A trembling Principal Parker practically bumped into Tremblay, right outside the library doors. “Wh-wh-what is going on, Sheriff?” he stammered, intimidated by the shotgun raised to head-level. “Why is Carl shooting up half my school?”
Tremblay nodded slickly. “That's what I'm trying to find out.”
“Where are Aaron and Miss Becker? Have you seen Mi--?”
“That little bugger was in on it the whole time,” Tremblay said, conniving and scheming with every word.
“What?” Parker said, caught completely off guard by this fresh twist of events.
“The robbery. He was trying to rip his old man off and now look what he's gotten himself into,” Tremblay explained, weaving a web of deceit, with Aaron trapped right in the middle. “That boy has been spinning a tale all day long. He's already killed at least two people, including my deputy.”
Below their feet, unbeknownst to either of them, Aaron had brought the backpack into the dark confines of the basement, which housed a musty collection of broken black boards, old lockers, filing cabinets and books. Just a single dim bulb suspended from the raftered ceiling. At the very rear, a caged-off section stood a mesh of metal, with an open swing door and a dangling open padlock, containing the majority of the hardback textbooks, stacked on shelves, in rows upon rows, as well as pens, pencils and other supplies. The school's book dispensary.
Aaron glanced at the dusty collection and wondered if Principal Parker knew that the whole lot would easily fit onto his paper-thin iPad device.
Up above him, Amanda was desperately stretching her leg out as far as she could, in an attempt to drag over a desk. Even with her calf muscle at breaking point and her baby toe at its limit, the desk was too far away.
She yelled another muffled scream into her gag in frustration and gave a few more feeble tugs at her restraints.
Amanda knew that even with the adrenaline coursing through her system, she couldn't keep this up all night.
Eventually, it would be curtains for her. She had to think smart, use her last ebbs of energy for maximum effect. Her eyes scanned a room that they had wandered a million times before, during boring show-and-tells, dumb parent-teacher meetings, and bad Shakespearean acting. What had she missed those million times that could help her now?
The window, right beside her! She thought for a second then swung her leg up. Grasping the heel of her shoe in her bound hands, Amanda slipped it off and thwacked it against the glass. Nothing happened. She smacked it again. A slight crack in the glaze. This might just work…
twenty seven
“How could those kids have come up with something like this?” Parker scratched his bulbous head like a pitcher adjusting his jock strap. It was inconceivable to him. Was it because the students at his school were completely dense, or was it because he heard a ring of untruth in the tale?
Tremblay wasn't sure either way, but kept a hawk-like eye on the Principal as he stroked his skull one more time, before giving it a well-earned break.
“I just can't believe they're involved,” Parker concluded.
Mike emerged from the library, and he caught a glimpse of Tremblay slowly leveling the shotgun behind Parker's back. His heart skipped a beat.
“Mister Parker!” Mike yelled in a panicked screech.
Spinning around, Parker caught a gut full of lead, blasting him against the library door. He groaned, holding his bleeding stomach together, as he crumpled in a heap on the floor.
With eyes the size of dinner plates, Mike gasped and then back-stepped to retreat, looking to Tremblay and the shotgun being directed at him. But this was it. No escape this time. Click!
Mike winced–but the lead never came. Tremblay had already taken his last shot.
In a flash, a brainwave pulsed down Mike's body to his legs, which burst into movement, carrying Mike off down the hallway. Seemingly possessed by an Olympic sprinter, Mike sped away from Tremblay in a dash for his life.
“Come back, you little shit!” Tremblay hollered, stepped forward, and then opted to turn back and trot in the opposite direction–where he'd left his leverage, tied to a radiator.
Mike's legs lost steam outside the Maintenance Room where he noticed the door to the roof. He pushed the door open and, in another surge, he ran up the stairs.
Entering from another stairwell, Aaron slipped back onto the main level, creeping tightly along the wall. Now it was time to make his deal, now that the cash was stashed where Tremblay wouldn't find it easily.
Aaron glanced out the window–still pitch black outside. All he wanted was to see the dawn, a ray of sunlight at the end of this darkness.
Amanda had pinned her hopes of escape on a dagger of glass that had cracked from the window pane. Bloody from her fumblings–when she had sliced her foot on the sharp glass upon picking it up from the ground and cut her hand when using the makeshift knife -- she managed to cut the fabric enough to tear it. Free at last!
She hobbled to the door on her good foot, where Tremblay had returned and was already bending over Carl's body, pulling a couple of shotgun shells out of his pocket. One fell and rolled under a locker. He loaded the other when he looked up–Amanda started moaning behind her gag, seeing Carl's body for the first time.
Tremblay sighed and raised himself to his feet. “Nice try, missy.” He reached for her arm, but she whirled around and slashed Tremblay's hand. A long gash erupted across the back of his knuckles; he dropped the shotgun, howling in pain.
She ran, limping every step of the way. Bloody footprints in
her wake. Tremblay bit his lip to suppress the pain, as he snatched the shotgun and aimed it at his fleeing prisoner. She looked back, quickly ducking into the science classroom. A blast of shotgun pellets obliterated the door frame, right where she was standing a moment before.
Aaron glanced down at Parker's body, with a charred and curdled stomach wound; he jogged past. The school was turning into a war zone. Shrapnel and bullet holes, bodies piling up.
Pulling the Colt from his waistband, Aaron thought, 'It's a good thing that I'm armed.'
twenty eight
Desks were thrown asunder as Tremblay barreled through the science classroom towards Amanda, tossing everything that got in his way.
Amanda pulled down the gag from her mouth and maneuvered behind the large lab counter. Bolted down, not going anywhere.
“Please don't! Please…”
“I'm tired of screwing around!” Tremblay growled, reloading another shell into the shotgun.
She needed to do something. Ducking down behind the counter, she flung open the built-in cabinet doors and started looking for a weapon to aid her defense.
Tremblay angled himself around the lab counter, ready to fire, when Amanda popped up–flinging a beaker of clear fluid into his face.
Stunned, Tremblay backed away, the liquid dripping down onto his uniform. He waited for some kind of hideous chemical reaction, where he would begin clawing at his face and screaming in distress as his skin melted and bubbled. Perhaps that's what would've happened if Amanda was a Science teacher and not an English teacher.
Instead Tremblay wiped the water from his nose and his eyes flickered with anger. Amanda squealed staggering backwards into a shelf of vials and beakers. Gun raised, Tremblay clambered over the lab counter, reaching for her. Just as she started throwing everything at him–an eyewash bottle, scale, test tube tray, thermometer, protective goggles–all bouncing off.
