The Knowing Box Set EXTENDED EDITION: Exclusive New Material

by Ninie Hammon

  CHAPTER 3

  Jack led his team at a dead run from the parking lot to the school. He knew the general layout of the building. All the officers did. They were required to tour every school in their jurisdiction. Beyond the front door was an entry hall with offices on both sides. The entry hall opened into the main hallway, where the north and south wings of the school opened out at either end.

  When he got to the set of double doors—both open—Jack crouched low, moved from one bit of cover to the next and the other officers followed suit.

  Behind the column separating the double doors. To the wall on the right side of the entry hall, hunkered down beside a trash can. The trooper mirrored his action on the left wall, crouching down behind a display table of firefighting equipment from the local fire department—hats, hoses, boots. Jack’s eyes swept the main hallway as far as he could see around the corner in front of the trooper, back and forth, taking in every detail. The trooper did the same for the hallway behind Jack.

  The adrenaline rush had summoned flash images of Somalia. Always did. They popped up and down in Jack’s mind like targets in a cheap video game.

  The skinny who’d come running at him, right out in the open, screaming wildly and brandishing a machete. They called the Somali militia fighters “skinnies” because they were emaciated, their teeth blackened from chewing khat, an amphetamine-like plant that kept them jacked up and juiced out of their minds all the time. Jack shot him, watched the blood spurt out the hole in his chest, but as the man fell he managed to throw the machete. Jack had a three-inch scar on his calf where the weapon had sliced through his pant leg. Had suffered through a massive infection, too, because the blade had been smeared with feces. But it could have been worse. Skinnies rubbed their own blood on their blades sometimes because eighty percent of the population was HIV positive.

  Jack held up a closed fist, and the officers behind him froze in place. Then he stood, flattened himself against the wall, and edged to the entryway corner. He was broad-shouldered and tall, six-feet four-inches, with skin more coffee-colored than black, and he moved with athletic grace. Through the windows into the office behind him, he could see secretaries and teachers crouched behind the front counter and he heard them crying.

  He peered cautiously around the corner into the main hallway. It was empty except for a lone gym shoe that had fallen out of the partially-closed locker above it.

  The distinctive rat-tat-tat of an automatic weapon, along with the crash of shattering glass and a high, keening laughter sounded in the hallway that opened off the main hallway to the right. More gunfire, more breaking glass and laughter.

  “Active shooter, north hallway,” Jack said in a quiet voice into the microphone clipped to the shoulder of his uniform.

  “Copy that. North hallway,” came back instantly.

  There were big windows in every classroom. A sniper positioned across from the north hall might get lucky if the shooter were in one of the classrooms on that side of the building. Jack knew the captain would get one in place there as soon as he could. Corporal Roberts was the best shot in their department, but he was working the east end of the county today. With the gridlock of the instant traffic jam that by now had surely formed outside the perimeter officers were setting up around the school, he wouldn’t be able to get within a mile of it. Maybe there was a sheriff’s deputy, highway patrolman or state trooper on site who was a qualified sniper.

  Not likely, though. Jack and his team were on the hook for this one.

  There was a sudden boom from the north hallway. Shotgun.

  Jack made eye contact with the trooper—his silver nametag said Purvis—and nodded. The trooper nodded back, lifted his M4 and aimed at the intersection of the north and main hallways. Then Jack raced across the main hallway to the far side, running Groucho Marx style, so named for its forward crouch. He flattened his back against the wall and began to work his way to the north hallway opening.

  He heard another boom some distance down the hallway, and a third before he got to the corner. Then he peeked down the hall, his cheek against the cool brownish tile that lined the walls up to five feet or so—easy to wash. The hallway looked like a fifty-millimeter mortar shell had detonated there. The big trophy case on the left side of the hallway, probably fifteen feet wide, was a pile of rubble on the floor. Pieces of trophies, ribbons, and huge shards of glass lay in front of it. Obviously the shooter had repeatedly strafed it with automatic gunfire. It had sounded like an AK 47. Though the acoustics in an empty hallway couldn’t be trusted, the size of the bullet holes in the walls could. The shooter was obviously firing 7.62 X 39 mm rounds. Equally obvious was that he had chosen to take out every past principal of the school, dating back to 1955. Pictures of each one had hung in glass-front frames between the classrooms on both sides of the hallway. Now they lay in shattered ruins on the floor.

  A kind of haze hung in the air—dust, sawdust—but the hallway was empty. The shooter was in one of the classrooms.

  Jack saw something else, too, and spoke softly into his microphone. “North hall exit doors chained shut.”

  “Copy that. Chained shut.”

  * * * * * * *

  Cold flowed into the classroom, along with the man in the Cincinnati Reds hat who entered, an automatic rifle of some kind slung over his shoulder on a strap and a shotgun with a sawed-off barrel in his hands. Felt like the door’d been opened to an Arctic breeze that only Bishop could feel. The man himself looked as harmless as the driver of one of them ice cream trucks that played music so loud the kids could hear it coming a couple of blocks away and had time to pester their mamas for a dollar. Or would have, if not for his eyes, open so wide no eye lids showed at all, wild, crazed eyes. He had wispy blond hair sticking out from under the cap, fat cheeks—rosy cheeks—and a puckery little mouth where the top lip came to an owl’s beak point and the pendulous bottom lip stuck out and down, like he was pouting.

  The lip. A memory elbowed its way past Bishop’s fear and stood defiant in the forefront of his mind. Bishop Washington never forgot a face.

  The scrawny kid who’d played second base on the Little League All Star team Bishop coached years ago had had a lip like that. What was his name? Jake. Jacob. Jacob Dumas. Bishop stared into the placid face of the shooter, looking for the little boy he might once have been. Like the reverse of age-enhanced pictures of kidnapped children on milk cartons, the little boy’s face appeared as an overlay on the man’s. It was Jacob Dumas all right.

  And that meant… No, Bishop shoved the thought away before he even had a chance to think it. No! It couldn’t possibly be…

  Dumas was smiling. The thing that materialized on his shoulders was not. As Bishop watched in revulsion, the black fog around the man’s head transformed into a swarm of yellow-jacket wasps with elongated stingers like syringes. He could hear the hum of them, the sound of thousands of black flies with green bellies, the fat kind that made a big splat mark on the wall when you swatted them. The buzzing put him in mind of the time when he was eight that he’d come accidental upon the carcass of a recently dead deer in the woods and the stench’d made him chuck up his breakfast.

  Then the swarm of wasps began to morph into a shape crouched on the man’s shoulders. The shape became more and more solid until a thing emerged from the black swirling mass of wasps, a hideous creature with skin as alive as squirming maggots. It was roughly the shape of a deformed rat, with a long, spiked tail that hung halfway down the man’s back—twitching restlessly back and forth—and claws as sharp as filleting knives. Jagged fangs that looked like shards of broken glass protruded from the maw at the bottom of a nose-less face. They dripped sticky strands of green drool down the side of Dumas’s cap, where it clotted into a single stream that began to ooze down his cheek. The mouth at the bottom of the writhing-wasp face had too many teeth, blackened spikes curved inward so if it bit you, there’d be no hope of ever pulling free. It had eyes, too, pale yellow, the color of pus, with bright r
ed centers.

  Recognition slammed into Bishop’s chest with the force of a wrecking ball. He’d seen those eyes before, too.

  The eyes slowly surveyed the room until they landed on Bishop and locked there. The creature studied him, leaning its head to the side as it confirmed his identity. When it spoke, the voice was the sound of old, rusty chains dragged over a metal floor.

  “The three who stood with the light,” the voice growled, “I want them.” The motion of speaking disturbed some of the wasps that formed its shape and for a moment the top of its hoary head disintegrated. Then, just as quickly, it reformed. “You know who they are. Where’s Becca?”

  Understanding dropped with the weight of a bowling ball deep into the pit of Bishop’s belly.

  It’s come back. After all these years, it’s got loose somehow and come back!

  Bishop would have sworn it was impossible to be any more afraid than he already was. But now that he knew what the creature was, why it had come, what it wanted, a new terror clamped his heart in a vise. Then the monster laughed, the single, most horrible sound Bishop had ever heard. Like the roar of an avalanche that tapered off into the high-pitched wail of a hyena.

  “Tell me, or the children die,” the creature said through its laughter. “One by one, they all die.”

  “You there, old man,” Dumas said to Bishop, “pull down the shades. Don’t want peeping Toms prying into our business.”

  Bishop had recognized Dumas, but apparently the shooter hadn’t recognized Bishop, though that crazy fool didn’t look like he could recognize his own mother right now. Bishop did as he was told, got up from where he was kneeling and went from one window to the next, lowering the shades. He moved the piece of green construction paper out of the way, knew that the lowered shades and no colored paper would tell police the folks inside were in real trouble.

  “So kiddies,” said the man, his voice cheery, “who wants to be the first one to die? Any volunteers?”

  Some of the children were crying softly, but most were merely whimpering, far too frightened to cry.

  “Come on out of there, all of you.” He reached out with his free hand and picked up one of the overturned desks and pitched it over his shoulder as effortlessly as tossing away an apple peel. It banged heavily against the wall beneath the windows.

  “Bunch up here in front of me.”

  He spoke in a matter-of-fact voice, not threatening, more like the basketball coach telling the kids to line up so he could pick out who had to do laps around the gym.

  “I won’t shoot all of you, Scouts’ honor. I want some of you to live the rest of your lives remembering our special day together.” He made the high-pitched sound he’d made out in the hallway, a sound too corrupted to be called laughter.

  Then he casually swung the barrel of the shotgun around toward Erika Lund, who was trying unsuccessfully to position herself between him and the children as they crawled out of the tumble of desks in the back corner. He wiggled his finger at her. She looked quizzical. He wiggled it again and she tentatively approached him.

  “On your knees,” he said. She hesitated for a beat, then straightened her back and dropped to her knees on his left, between him and the back of the room. He held out the rifle an inch in front of her nose.

  The creature on Dumas’s shoulders fixed its swarming eyes on Bishop.

  “Tell me where to find the one who stood with The Light!” the creature rumbled.

  “’Fraid I can’t do that.” Bishop’s voice didn’t have no volume, was so soft maybe only the creature heard. He had to suck in another breath to continue, to tell the creature he didn’t have no idea where Becca was. He didn’t have a chance to say nothing, though, before the creature on the gunman’s shoulder lifted a paw where a vicious claw longer than the others extended from the middle finger. In a slow, lazy motion, it began to shove the claw downward into Jacob Dumas’s skull.

  Bishop watched Dumas tense. The creature paused, looked a question at Bishop without speaking. The young, blonde teacher who had signed on the loan for her first house only two days ago, who had a mother with Alzheimer’s in Omaha, papers to grade in her desk, and the only key to this room safe and snug in her purse was seconds away from instant death.

  But Bishop didn’t know where Becca was. What could he do if he didn’t know?

  The impact of the shotgun blast propelled Erika Lund backward and she hit the floor with a thunk and slid a few feet, leaving a bloody snail trail behind until her limp body was still.

  The children shrieked in total hysteria, Bishop fell backward against the window sill in shock, his eyes riveted on the now unrecognizable young woman crumpled on the floor on the other side of the room. Mrs. Waznuski grabbed a little girl who hadn’t wormed her way into the pile yet and hugged her fiercely, turning her head away from the sight.

  “Like I promised, kiddies,” the gunman said, his voice still pleasant, “not everybody in this room is going to die today, but some of you definitely are. Correction, most of you are.

  CHAPTER 4

  Daniel wasn’t even aware at first that he was pacing, didn’t realize it until he passed the door leading to the deck and the smell of his own vomit coming through the screen gagged him. He reached out, pulled the sliding door shut and kept walking. Fit and trim, an even six feet tall, his stride was long as he passed through the family room to the kitchen, out the archway to the dining room and through the second arch to the living room. Emily’d re-covered the couch, love seat and overstuffed chairs there with bright floral fabric—yellows and greens that made the room cheery and bright. She’d done it herself, made her fingers raw and sore, stapling the heavy fabric—

  Then he was crying, sitting in the overstuffed chair and sobbing. He couldn’t seem to stop, to pull himself together. He ought to call someone to come over and—

  And what? You called someone to come sit with you when you got sudden bad news, like a death in the family.

  Hi Joe, this is Pastor Burke. If you’re not too busy right now, could you come by my house. My wife’s having an affair.

  Who could he tell? How could he tell anybody? The wife of the senior pastor of a mega-church did not do such things. And he’d worked nights and weekends for years to be prepared when a big break like this church came along.

  …nights and weekends for years …

  Was that it? Was that why?

  But she never said anything, never complained, never seemed to mind that he was gone.

  He shoved his hand into his pocket, drew out his phone, and hit redial. He’d told himself he wouldn’t call her again because the sound of the phone ringing over and over was a terrible, desolate, hopeless sound. And because when she didn’t pick up, his mind pictured why she didn’t pick up. What she was doing that she couldn’t answer the phone.

  Her voice mail came on. He didn’t leave a message. Merely put the phone back in his pocket, got up from the chair and continued pacing. He had to keep moving, the emotion that shall not be named threatened to kill him if he was still.

  Somewhere in the distance, he heard the sound of sirens—police, ambulance, fire truck? He couldn’t tell. And didn’t care.

  * * * * * * *

  Jack considered a moment, then took the team down the middle of the North Hall in the standard diamond-shaped formation, crouched low, rifles ready. The North Hall was lined on both sides with student lockers, eight to a bank, four upper and four lower. The locker banks were about fifteen feet apart, stuck out from the wall about eighteen inches, and each locker was probably two feet wide, with shelves on one side of a partition and hooks for jackets or book bags on the other. There were two sets of locker units between each classroom. Between the sets of locker units were four-inch-thick cinderblock partitions that stuck out about two feet, forming alcoves at the end of each unit.

  Bent at the waist, Jack scuttled across the hallway to the alcove on the east side to the first bank of lockers and flattened himself against the wall there. Then
he opened the bottom locker door and crouched behind it, shielded by the lockers and the open door. The locker door only shielded him from sight, of course. A bullet would go right through it. He made a hand motion and Ramirez did the same along the west wall. After that, they alternated, each ran from one bank of lockers to the next, while the others provided cover, passing closed and Jack was sure locked classrooms on the way. The windows in all the doors they passed were covered with green construction paper.

  He and his men were less than a quarter of the way down the hallway when Jack heard the shotgun boom a fifth time in a classroom on the west side between him and the chained-shut outside entrance. The shot was followed by the screams of hysterical children. He did not respond in any way to the sounds except for a tightening around his mouth. One shooter located. There could be more than one.

  “Active shooter, fourth classroom, west side,” he said into his mic.

  “Copy that.”

  Then Jack and Trooper Purvis continued in a shuffling crouch from cover to cover down the east side of the hallway; the two officers from his department mirrored them on the west until Jack lifted his fist and the others froze in place. He was now across the hall from the classroom where the shot had been fired and from his position crouched by the locker unit, could see that the door was standing about a third of the way open, the knob and lock shattered by a shotgun blast. It appeared that the door on the next classroom down from it was shattered and ajar, too. A second shooter could be in that room, though no sound came from it. The door across from Jack opened inward, so he could see into the room, but could see nothing but the teacher’s desk. Neither the shooter nor any children was visible.