Day of Wrath

by William R. Forstchen

  “He’s an incredible hero,” it was Roberts, "and to hell with what that damn woman said about the law! He had a pocket Ruger. A lousy pocket-sized gun with maybe six bullets in it against all their firepower and he dropped one of them cold and mortally wounded another. If not for him, we’d have a hundred more dead children in there. In there, my God.”

  Robert’s attention drifted, overwhelmed by the memory of what he had seen inside the building.

  “Don’t go in there, no one should see what is in there…” he whispered, going into shock.

  The camera remained focused on Bob, the cameraman snapping on a light above the lens. Though it was mid-afternoon, it was hard to see Bob’s face due to the shadows of the two EMTs leaning over him.

  The bright light in his eyes startled him. Bob winced and tried to turn his head away. Someone with warm hands was holding his neck, preventing him from moving, and whispering to him not to move.

  It was difficult to comprehend where he was. The front lawn of the school? He looked up at an EMT leaning over him, a young woman, blood smeared on her face, a wisp of red hair peeking out from under her baseball cap.

  “My daughter, her name is Wendy Petersen, do you know where she is?”

  “We’re sorting it out sir, just remain still as I get this neck brace on you.”

  “I pushed her out the window by the playground. Can you find her, tell me she’s okay?”

  “We’re taking care of it now sir, trust me. She’s okay. If you got her out, the children that ran, they all made it.”

  He knew that her words were not all true. He had seen too many bodies collapsed on the playground.

  “She's wearing a pink scarf.”

  “I promise I’ll look for her as soon as we get you on your way. Now please lie still and don’t talk. We’re trying to help you. You want to get through this for your daughter, don’t you? You've got to work with me for your daughter’s sake.”

  He could see that the young woman was trembling even as she secured the brace around his neck.

  She leaned back from her patient, signaling that the neck brace was secured. They already knew he had a bullet hole in his back, it looked like just below his sixth vertebrae. His spinal column was almost certainly shattered. There was a second wound in his shoulder, a bullet or bullets having entered from the top, smashing his rotator cup and shoulder blade. It was so badly mangled it might be a fight to save his arm.

  There were no exit wounds, so the bullets were still inside him. No blood frothing up in the mouth, so lungs were intact. She double-checked the straps securing him to the back board. If there was a remote chance that his spinal column was not completely destroyed, there might be a hope of saving some ability to walk. No exit wound was in his lower abdomen so the round had, without doubt, driven bone fragments into his lower abdomen. Chances were that there were multiple punctures of his intestine; it was going to require hours of major surgery to clear him out to prevent the onset of sepsis. He was still alive after more than two hours, so definitely no major artery or vein was hit; otherwise he’d have bled out by now.

  She was in awe of him as she and her teammate ran their checks. The wounds were horrific. She had seen over and over while deployed as a National Guard nurse in Iraq that, many times, it was the sheer force of will that had kept a wounded soldier alive. Others just surrendered to the quietness of death. Keep them focused on their loved ones at home, tell them to hang on for them. This man had been motivated to stay alive to protect the kids. She had to keep him motivated, now that his task was complete.

  “Tell me your daughter’s name again?” she asked.

  “Wendy Petersen.”

  “And you are?”

  “Bob Petersen.”

  “Bob, for your daughter, I need you to fight along with me. Keep with me. You got that?”

  He looked up at her, his gaze drifting. Every hospital from Lewiston-Auburn, across Portland, and down clear to New Hampshire would be flooded with hundreds of casualties and the terrible task of triage would have to be applied to more than one. He needed hours of surgery, not tomorrow but now, today.

  She used a Sharpie pen to make a few marks on his forehead, indicating that he had received an injection of painkiller. She jotted a couple of coded numbers on a tag that she clipped to his shirt with the same information: time of injections and readings of vitals. Her prognosis, though she was no doctor, and her observations in the field would help the doctors in emergency rooms with their decision-making as to how to prioritize those coming in, and initialed it.

  She stood up, tearing off her latex gloves, fetching a fresh pair from her pants pocket but not yet putting them on.

  “Get him out of here now!”

  “Wendy…”

  “Bob, you've got to hang in there. I’ll find your girl and personally bring her to you. I swear to God I will.”

  Her voice was beginning to break. It was a promise she was not sure she could keep, but felt she had to make, and inwardly she prayed that she could return to his side with his daughter… alive.

  The four taking care of Bob Petersen’s backboard gently started to lift it as she prepared to go back into hell.

  “Wait!”

  He struggled as if trying to sit up. She looked back at him.

  “Don’t move, Bob, just relax, we've got you taken care of.”

  “Wait, oh please wait.”

  He tried to raise his arm to point and she went back to his side. She had been trained that often the wounded bonded to their first caregiver and were frightened when taken from their side. But he had to be moved up the next step of care while she had to go back to the next victim, then the next and the next. She leaned over and kissed him gently on the brow to offer reassurance.

  “Calm, Bob, just chill. Okay?” she whispered soothingly.

  “That’s my wife. My wife!”

  He was trying to gesture to a prone body lying limp and broken on the blood-slick lawn only feet away from where he had been set down for treatment.

  “Stop! Oh God, please check her,” he begged.

  It came out as a strangled cry. He was unaware that the television camera was still focused on him.

  The medic who had been preparing to go back in to face the carnage within the corridors of Joshua Chamberlain Middle School, stood up, turned from Bob’s stretcher and walked over to the collapsed body on the lawn. She already knew the answer. In that first minute of taking back the building, even before the shooting had stopped, medics, herself included, had gone rushing in to check the fallen outside the building.

  They did so heedlessly. They did so knowing that, unlike the traditions that had existed in western civilized society for well over a century or more, those wearing the red cross on helmet or sleeve were not exempt here. On other battlefields, in other wars, to deliberate shoot a medic on the enemy side was an act beneath contempt, an actual crime. But with this enemy, those bringing aid, compassion, a final soothing word and injection to still the last moments of pain, drew fire and were defined as the most tempting of targets to kill. Jihadists were trained to kill them even when far more deadly opponents were attempting to kill in reply. To kill a medic was an act to be praised, for it would help to break the enemy's morale or, even better, trigger an act of angry reprisal that could be used against them in the world’s media.

  The body that Bob was trying to point out had already been checked and left where she had fallen, to be cared for later after those still living could be saved, or those whose dying could be eased, were tended to first. Nevertheless, the medic made the effort to kneel down by the woman’s side. The dead woman’s eyes were wide open and sightless, the ground beneath her soaked, the blood which had poured from her shattered heart and abdomen beginning to congeal.

  The medic made a gesture of putting two fingers to the woman’s neck, looked back at Bob and nodded.

  “Bob, she’s alive, she’s alive, we’ll get help for her now.” Her gaze told the stretcher be
arers not to wait around, to get him the hell out of sight of the body of his wife. They lifted him high and started off, Bob trying to crane his head back to look, but the neck brace kept him locked in place.

  And Bob knew his young guardian angel was lying, a final glimpse showed the medic lowering her head and placing her hand over Kathy’s eyes to close them.

  The camera crew focused on that, the reporter stood in numbed silence, those in the studio watching were unable to speak. A nation watched as the medic stood up, hands sticky with yet more blood.

  “There are still hundreds of children in there, maybe I can at least find his daughter alive," was all the medic could choke out and then she turned and started for the door, her walk jerky, slow, and swaying. A police officer, crouched low by the door, yelled to her to get through the entryway quickly, there was a hot IED but feet away. She did not pay him the remotest heed and just went on in.

  Even as the attacks continued, the killing continued, and the rage built, it was the beginning of a nation in mourning.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Over the next hour, the four other schools under siege were freed of their nightmares, if freedom could ever really be achieved after what so many young hearts and souls had witnessed and endured. A nation had seen, on their wide flat-screen TVs and on their hand-held phones, images of the carnage.

  Every school in America was in terrified shutdown. The nearly 98,000 public schools in America, along with tens of thousands of private and parochial schools, tens of thousands of day care centers, thousands of universities, colleges, and community colleges, all were in lockdown. The universal sound of that day would be the wailing of sirens. Every local police officer, whether on duty or off, had raced to the schools in their town. For almost all, there was a school with their own children or those of friends and neighbors. County sheriffs raced to protect schools as well, until called to go to nearby interstates where an even greater mass murder was unfolding.

  State police raced to the interstates. Their years of looking for drunk drivers, or, in quiet moments, pulling over those going eleven miles over the speed limit, or their being first on the scene of a deadly crash, none of that had prepared them for chasing gunmen armed with AK-47s, joyful in their killing and with no intent of being taken alive.

  Across the nation every National Guard unit had been called to mobilize by the second hour, but it would take hours more before the first vehicle rolled out, the first aircraft took to the air. Though some of the first black hawks, armed with 20mm and air-to-ground weaponry, were lifting off.

  As for the Air Force units within the continental United States: the half dozen jets that were actually armed and up on routine patrols or practice drills had, when the extent of the attack was realized, been vectored to respond as if it were another 9/11. They closed in on New York, Washington, and other major cities, circled and remained ready to engage.

  As on 9/11, an hour and a half into the attack, the FAA informed all air traffic controllers to order every plane in America to land, warning that any that deviated from a flight controller's orders would be shot down without warning. At this time of day, upwards of three thousand commercial aircraft and thousands of general aviation planes were in the air over the United States. It would take time to jockey each plane into position, to redirect planes bound for O’Hare and order them to LaGuardia, to order any aircraft approach from the Atlantic, the Pacific or the Gulf of Mexico that if it had sufficient fuel, to return back to its place of origin or seek emergency landings in Heathrow, Seoul, and Tokyo.

  The ripple effects of fewer than one hundred and fifty jihadists were now echoing around the world, as promised by ISIS and their caliph months earlier. As with so many previous threats by other terrorists, this threat had been received with just a ripple of notice.

  Unlike 9/11, this time, aircraft were indeed shot down. A commercial flight, a “puddle jumper,” missed its approach to Austin, and a new copilot, still in training, when requested by ground control to switch its transponder code and to swing out southwest of the city until things were sorted out, punched in the wrong code. He entered the 7700 number, indicating that they were no longer in control of the plane, that a terrorist had seized it.

  A Texas National Guard A-10 warthog was tracked to the plane with the hapless copilot, his error compounded when the plane appeared to be circling toward the middle school that was still under siege. The pilot of the warthog was ordered to release his weapons and to drop the plane, no matter its location. He did as ordered. Twenty-seven innocent people on the plane and eight unlucky people on the ground died.

  Thousands of small general aviation planes were up and about on that autumn afternoon; in the northeast it was exceptional flying weather after more than a week of autumn rains and winds. Though it would seem hard to believe for some, more than a few of these pilots were not yet aware the nation was under attack, flying in airspace where radios were not mandated. Three were shot down by civilians on the ground, who assumed they had to be terrorists if they were still up.

  All of this chaos was applauded and greeted with joyful laughter in Raqqa, one of the planners crying out that his prediction was right, that the cowardly infidels would now turn about as rabid dogs, and begin to slaughter each other in their fear and insanity.

  The shutdown of the American airspace, within minutes, resulted in the announcement of the closings of British, Dutch and German airports to all international flights going to or coming from the United States. The same occurred along the Pacific rim. In another half hour, the ripple effect was indeed global, nearly every nation announcing that all but internal domestic flights were to land at the nearest airport and hold. News sources around the world were reporting their own woes as tens of millions of nonbelievers lamented how their lives had now become inconvenienced, vacations ruined, business meetings delayed, funerals missed, and family reunions cancelled.

  The effect even spread to that new hub of world travel, the wealthy sheikdom of Dubai, which would one day very soon acknowledge the caliphate. This global cascade of events was even better than they had hoped for and revealed yet again the weakness and cowardice of their enemies.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The attacks along the interstates had hit their climax and the end game was on, the personal end game which every holy jihadist on this mission knew would be the final result. All knew that they would not outlive this day. But oh, how they were praised by their clerics (who were staying safely at home even as they extolled others who died) to the rewards that awaited them in paradise. All that had been denied to them on earth was now moments away in the gardens of paradise. In the brief interludes of killing, they braced each other’s courage by boasting to each other of all that would be given to them: the praise they would receive, the slender boys with angelic faces who would serve them and the virginal pure women who would await them. Not like the sluts of America with which more than a few jihadists had entertained themselves for a meager price in the days before this holy day of martyrdom. More than one began to chant sura 52, speaking of promises of dark-eyed virgins, of wine and young boys, laughing with joy even as they died. Everything denied on earth would be theirs for eternity in just a few more minutes.

  In the car racing along Interstate 76 northeast of Denver, one jihadist considered the banal and earthly concerns and stupidity of the Nazi SS. Kill enough Jews and you got a trifling medal and promotion to some unpronounceable rank. But in his reality, if you kill enough infidels, if you are a believer in the prophet, you gained the most beautiful virgins of paradise. There was even a laughing argument among the three in the car, one of them dying of wounds, as to whose virgins would be the most beautiful and willing to submit and not cry with pain to their lusts. They spotted a somewhat slow Volkswagen van of the 1960s, occupied by an elderly couple traveling across country who were recreating the honeymoon travels of their 50th wedding anniversary and slaughtered them both while trading accounts of whose virgins would be the
most beautiful and willing to accept their desires, no matter what was demanded of them.

  It was finally an F-18 out of the Air Force Academy that had been stalking the murderers for over ten minutes, desperately waiting for an open space where no other cars would be hit, until finally under direct orders to shoot regardless of further damage, that placed a round into the black sedan, vaporizing the three within and ending their musings about beautiful virgins and young boys. The shot tragically killed half a dozen innocent people in nearby vehicles as well. After he landed, the base doctor and commanding officer reassured the pilot that if he had not fired, far more would have died. He would never fly combat aircraft again, diagnosed with severe trauma.

  The team sweeping Interstate 96 between Grand Rapids and Lansing, Michigan, had enjoyed similar success, slaughtering several hundred until all rifle ammunition was depleted. With the final loads for their 9mm semi autos, they had driven up an exit ramp on the outskirts of Grand Rapids, killed two police officers and seized their patrol car. Their pad map showed a Catholic school only half a dozen blocks away, a target that would be an exceptional finish to it all. With siren wailing, they managed to dodge the confusion of hundreds of parents who had blocked the approaches to the school. Leaping out of the patrol car, they attempted to storm the building. Though they killed several dozen, armed parents and police held the entrance to the school.

  The report of this attempt on a school, delivered from a police car, created yet more panic. The murderers on the interstate highways, as a final gasp of hate, were now attempting to reach schools close to interstates, especially Catholic schools, disguised as police, and kill all within. Parents, in a renewed frenzy of fear, moved cars to block all approaches to any school while police begged them to keep some lanes open for emergency traffic with several officers shot by panic stricken civilians.

  Reports swept the news outlets of lone gunmen being spotted who were waiting to carjack vehicles and set up a hostage situation. Half a dozen people died and several score were wounded that afternoon, as drivers shot at each other, believing the other was “one of them.”