by Fiona Quinn
“Children,” Suz said with the kind of gentle authority that made the children turn and pay attention. “Today is such an exciting and happy day. We get to show each other how much we care for each other and what good friends we can be.”
Suz’s gaze took in the sweet faces of her students, and she felt a sting of tears burn her eyes. She grabbed a Kleenex from her desk. “Oh my, it looks like I’m catching cold. My face wants to drip. Four of our classmates are out sick. So today, we are going to be careful to use the hand sanitizer on my desk. We’re going to make sure that if we cough or sneeze, it will be into our elbows. And we aren’t going to share any food or drink. Understood?”
The children each gave their version of agreement, and Suz congratulated herself on having an all-day excuse for looking like an emotional mess. “Let’s gather on the reading rug for more of Velveteen Rabbit.”
There was a quick rush as her students scrambled toward the places they wanted.
“Red light,” Suz called and all of the students froze in place. All noise ceased.
“I would like you to first go to the activity center and each of you get a clipboard and some crayons. Green light!”
As the kids surged forward, Suz rounded her desk and pulled out a file folder of coloring sheets. And that’s when she heard it.
PopPop Pop. PopPop Pop. PopPop Pop.
Triple taps. Two shots to the chest and one to the head. The sound of death. Nothing else sounded like that. Suz had heard it time and again when she was on the firing range, waiting for Jack to finish up. Jack had even tried to teach her once. He thought she might like to learn to use a gun. He was wrong. Guns made her vomit.
PopPop Pop.
In Suz’s mind she was standing behind her desk, shocked to be hearing that sound here in her school. Her body, though, was already standing at the classroom door, moving with lightning speed. Her mouth had already called out, “Red light!” The children were frozen in space.
If the other teachers had heard and recognized the noise, they’d be turning off their lights, locking the doors, and herding their children into a corner. Jack said that was absolutely the wrong thing to do; if she did nothing else to defend her children, Suz needed to keep her students spread out. Suz flipped off the light switch and turned the lock on the door. Jack had told her that these doors were hung the wrong way and a gunman could easily kick them open. Jack had bought and installed industrial floor bolts, and now she stepped on them to slide the metal spikes into place as she pulled out her phone.
I’m wrong. I’m hallucinating, Suz told herself. She quick dialed the school’s secretary who sat at the front desk to sign in the tardy students. The rings ended with an out-of-service recording.
The children looked around bewildered. A few of them must have caught hold of Suz’s anxiety because she saw frightened faces and tears as she scrambled behind her desk to look out the window. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Her fingers shook as she tapped out 911, it didn’t go anywhere as if she had no bars.
“Children, come quickly we’re running a very special fire drill. This time we’re going out a different way.” Suz said as she pushed open the window that Jack had cut loose from the layers of paint and carefully oiled for ease of use and silence. Outside on the ledge rested a box painted to match the beige façade of the building; and therefore, it had gone unnoticed by the administrators and ground’s staff alike. Jack had said all she needed to do was push the box off the ledge and let it fall unencumbered, so she did. The box dropped to the ground with a resounding bang, leaving a rope ladder stretched taut.
They’re going to fire me if I do this. I must be wrong. This is so dangerous. Gunfire here? I must be wrong.
But screams and a man’s shouting flooded up the corridor and gushed under their classroom door. It was the nightmare that she had been having ever since Sandy Hook. Suz was terrified that someone would come into her class and hurt one of her kids. That she’d leap in front of a bullet for them was not in doubt, but other teachers had done that, and the kids had died anyway. Their heroic actions just upping the horrific body counts.
This escape plan was Jack’s gift to her – a plan so she had some better course of action than piling the kids into a death pack. Jack had come to the school and offered to instruct everyone, to come up with strategies and plans, to do the training for free. But the principal thought that would make the parents feel nervous for the safety of their children. He had turned down Jack’s offer. So Jack had done this for her alone.
“Tad come here, you’re my brave leader. Down the ladder then help the others. Michael you’re next.” Michael’s face was set in grim determination as he climbed out the second story window. “Come on guys fast. Move. Move. Move.” She watched her best athletes scramble down the ladder like little monkeys, showing the other kids that it could be done. “Miranda, you’re next. You’re line leader. All the way down then to the edge of the building toward the field.” Suz hefted the girl up by the waist and pushed her through the window. “Then crouch down as small as you can get next to the wall. Go. Go.” Suz watched Miranda start her climb then turned to the other thirteen. “Come on. Everyone follows. Go as fast as you can. But be safe. Watch that you have a good grip. Make sure your feet are centered on the rungs.”
Tata tat tat.
Gun fire strafed the hallway and seemed to be working its way toward them. Suz was picking up the children and thrusting them through the window as fast as she could.
She unplugged then grabbed up the backpack from its place under their exit window, threw the coil of rainbow colored rope over her shoulder, and shimmied her body through the small opening. She stood on the second rung and pulled the window back down into place. Jack said that every second that she confused the attackers meant time when they weren’t watching her running the kids across the field.
As she scrambled to the ground, she counted heads. Sixteen. They were all out of the building and farther away from the crazy person wielding the weapons. Her ears, primed to take in sound and their slightest nuances, picked up on gunning engines, and then the solid application of brakes in the parking lot. Surely, that was the good guys come to rescue them. Maybe she should run the students towards the parking lot instead of the woods. Suz looked up and took in all of the windows that they’d have to race under, and it seemed like a dangerous gauntlet.
Jack had said that once she was deploying her escape, she needed to move forward as planned. He insisted that second guessing would lead to indecision and indecision could lead to deaths.
Deaths. Shit.
Suz ran forward dropping the line beside her students whispering, “Grab hold of the rope. Don’t let go for any reason. We’re all together. Everything is going to be okay.” When she got up to Miranda, Suz pointed at the large oak across the field. “Miranda do you see the pink dot on the tree?” Jack had put a long piece of pink duct tape on the trunk at a child’s eye level. At this distance it was reduced to a speck of bright color. That it was still in place was testament to Suz that there were angels with them.
Miranda nodded.
“Sweetheart, I need you to hold the rope and run to the pink dot.”
Miranda didn’t need to be told twice. She seemed very glad to pelt in the opposite direction of the gunfire. Suz let Miranda set the pace. It was slow. These little six-year-old legs were only but so long and could only move but so fast.
Why did Jack want her to have the children run across such a broad expanse in the open? True he had told her that at this angle, they were all but invisible from any of the windows at the school, but the word that looped through her brain was “unprotected”. Suz tried to replace it with repetitive base notes of, “God will help us. Please. Help us.” It didn’t seem to dull her anxiety.
Almost immediately, Lolli fell to the ground. Lolli was their class’s fairy-child. A precious little girl who was as light as a breeze, with the air of fragility like the gossamer wings of a dragonfly. Suz scooped
her up and set her back on her feet, but Lolli reached down and touched the plastic supports on her ankles and started to cry. Without further thought, Suz swung the little one up on her hip like a toddler and continued her slow jog besides her students. “Good job,” she whisper-cheered them on. “You’re doing great. Keep going guys. I’m so proud of you.”
Slow. Their little first-grade legs made them so slow. The woods didn’t seem to be getting any nearer. Suz glanced over her shoulder at the school’s main building. Why would Jack have her make these babies run across a field like this? She asked herself for the hundredth time. This was crazy.
Another child, Greyson, went down, pulling the rope to a stop. Tad, her big boy, the one who always reminded her of Jack for his intelligence and kindness–her class’s gentle giant—looked around and saw the problem. He ran back to where Suz was bent over, lifting the second child.
“I’ve got him, Miss Molloy,” Tad said as he hefted his classmate up and pulled Greyson’s arm around his shoulder. The two hobbled together, and their slow caterpillar run continued. It was tortuous.
Suz had no idea what was happening at the school. Time played out oddly in her brain. She felt as if things were going their normal terrestrial pace and at the same time things were slowed way down. It gave her plenty of time to wonder if abandoning her classroom meant she wasn’t there to help with the other students. Wonder if there was a muzzle pointed their way right now. A sniper could pick off her little children, one after the other, right in front of her, as they trudged onward, growing slower as they fatigued. In one more step, the bullets could come flying. Nowhere to hide. They had little energy left to move. What would she do? Fall to the ground and crawl? But movement caught the eye. Fall to the ground and lay still? But the kids were all dressed in red and bright pinks – like the centers of sixteen bulls-eyes.
Suz scanned the faces of her students who all seemed to have their expressions frozen in single-minded determination. How odd that looked for their cherubic cheeks, still plump with baby fat, to suddenly be held with concentrated ferocity. They were babies. Just babies. They hadn’t had a chance at life yet. She needed to save them. Suz’s heart squeezed down so hard that she almost cried out. She sucked up a lungful of air. “You’re doing it,” she whispered along the line. “Great job. Keep going.”
Suz tossed a glance over her shoulder at the school where screaming could now be heard, seeping through the cracks in the windows, though the shooting seemed to have stopped.
The wail of sirens rose up over the hills, and Suz knew that the first responders were hurling toward them from all directions. They seemed to be gathering and holding near the off-ramp. She wondered why they weren’t coming closer to save the children.
Her class was getting closer to the tree line. Suz could see patterns in the bark. Soon they’d be safely out of view. She needed to get the kids to Jack’s cache fast. They had left, as Jack had instructed, without coats. But in this cold, they were escaping from one life-or-death situation just to find themselves in another. Soon the kids would by hypothermic.
Maggie broke off the line, sprinting back to the school, calling, “My sister! My sister’s in there.” Suz tore off after her, bouncing poor Lolli against her hip bone. Lolli hunkered down and wrapped noose-like arms around Suz’s neck, cutting off her airflow. Suz reached out a rigid hand to grab at Maggie and ran harder. As Suz got closer, she clawed at the air until she caught hold of Maggie’s ponytail. Suz yanked the hair backward like she was reining in a wild stallion. Maggie fell back on her bottom and opened her mouth to screech. Suz knew from past experience just how loud Maggie could be. Without forethought, Suz reached down and wrapped her arm around the girl’s head and mouth and pressed Maggie into her hip. In that position, Suz rose, Lolli on her right hip, and a partially dangling Maggie on her left, sprinted back into the tree line where her students waited.
4
Suz
Somewhere around 9 a.m., Monday, February 14th
The Woods Behind St. Basil’s, Bethesda, Md.
Suz took over the lead on the rope now that they were hidden by the tree line. The children were bent over catching their breath. They were damp from the exertion and that had Suz worried. Maggie had been paired with her best friend, and they were hugging each other and sobbing. If the children hadn’t been convinced that something horrible was happening before, the sight of their teacher gagging and dragging their classmate into the woods made everyone acutely aware now. Suz set the backpack on the ground and pulled out the hats stored inside. Each child yanked a camo fleece beanie over their heads with gratitude. They were still shaking in the twenty-degree weather. Suz had to get them to Jack’s hide. Fast.
She counted heads. Sixteen. Four at home sick. They were such lucky kids to be in bed sick today. She had almost called in. Gotten a substitute. The substitute wouldn’t have known Jack’s plan. Her kids would still be in the school where bullets were flying. The enormity of her decision pushed a sob out of her throat which Suz covered with a hacking cough. Her kids needed her. She had to act as if she were brave and in charge for their sakes.
A loud explosion erupted from the school and all of them froze in place with wide eyes. Suz checked to see if she could call 9-1-1 and got nowhere. She opened the compass app on her phone to follow do south, as Jack had told her to do when they had practiced. He had also written a reminder on the duct tape tacked across the plastic bag that held the hats. That was a good thing in that her mind was short wiring, and Suz was forgetting simple things, like nouns. Also taped to the bag was a hand-held compass in case she had escaped without her phone. “One is none and two is one.” It was a phrase Jack often used to explain the redundancies that he put in place. It had something to do with Murphy’s Law–she had never cared enough to really pay attention.
If for some reason she had escaped without her phone or the pack, Jack had a secondary trail laid with tiny pieces of that neon pink duct tape. But these were stuck on the roots and rocks and were purposefully easy to miss. As they hiked deeper into the woods and down the hill, Suz felt relief every time she caught sight of one. It told her she was headed in the right direction. Finally, they got to the creek bed – she turned in the direction of the water flow and knew they had two hundred steps to take – adult steps not first-grader-sized steps. But by leading her away from the original trail and markings in this way, Jack had said he hoped that any bad guys would lose their trail or at least be slowed down.
Suddenly, there it was in front of her. Like a mirage after crawling through the desert, the camo fabric that covered the top of their hide fluttered in the wind. The children huddled together for warmth and support while Suz opened up the escape backpack. She pulled out the tablet that Jack had put in the pack and pressed play just as he had instructed her to do. This was as far as his training had gone. And now that she was here, she was at a loss for how to proceed.
Jack’s face came up on the screen. “Boys and girls,” Jack grinned into the camera, and Suz held the tablet up so everyone could see. “Wow! you are the best soldiers in the world! Look what you’ve accomplished working together today. You remember me, I’m Captain Jack, I visited your class, and we talked about teamwork. Now we’re putting what we learned to the test.” Her students had loved Jack. They couldn’t get enough of him. Begged for him to come back to their class, and still sent their drawings home for him, though his visit had been months ago. Suz had teased him about getting a stint as the Pied Piper. She had thought what a wonderful dad he would be if only he could be around for his kids and not in some jungle, or desert. . . or hospital room.
“First up – we need to pee.”
The children giggled. Seeing Captain Jack’s calm face worked instant magic on the kids.
“Boys, in just a second I’m going to ask you to step up to the black line I painted on the rocks in front of the water, point toward the stream, and do your business. Girls, I made you a latrine in the back left of our little hide.
Now this is important. Everyone listen up. When we get scared our bodies don’t always do what we’d like them to do – being cold is very bad, being wet and cold is life threatening. So if you are wet. That’s okay, just let Miss Molloy know so she can get you dry and warm. Quick quick now everyone needs to pee. Green light!”
And as if they were all trained soldiers the boys stepped right up to the black line; the girls filed back to where Suz was pointing, and Suz looked down to where Jack was talking to her. “Suz, honey, you’ve got this far. You’re doing great. I’m so proud of you. You can do this.” Suz’s stomach clenched down, and she stifled a sob behind her wrist. She nodded at Jack’s image as if acknowledging what he said. “Go to the back of the hide, and you’ll see there is a mat rolled up, Use the knife I taped to the binding to cut the ropes and unroll it. Press pause.”
Suz tucked the tablet into the back of her pants and moved to accomplish her task. Her eyes scanned over the boys who were doing up their zippers and heading her way. The girls, having to go two at a time to the little white latrine buckets behind the curtain, were much slower. She sliced through the binding and the mat unrolled. It was nice- a camo-patterned, vinyl-covered thick foam rubber that would keep them off the ground. Jack had told her, somewhere along the way, that the ground would suck your body heat right out of you, so she knew she should never sit or lay directly on the earth. As the children gathered along the outside of the pad, Suz pressed play to hear what she should do next.
“Suz, there’s a pack on your left marked #1. In it you’ll find hot sacks. One per child. Now let the kids see me.” He raised his voice. “Hey guys. Great job so far. Wonderful teamwork. We’re all here to help each other and be good friends. I want you to watch me now. Miss Molloy is going to help you get warm. She’ll hand you a little packet. This is how we open our hot sack and get in.”
