Angela walked on tiptoe, trying as hard as she could to be silent. Of course, she could have played a drum and remained almost unnoticed with the sounds of locker doors slamming and footsteps drowning out just about every other sound in the hallway. She knew this, but also knew that the muscular figure in front of her also had ears like a bat- and was listening for her. She had almost reached him when he whipped around, wrapped his arms around her, and lifted her off the floor.
Jeremy laughed as Angela let out a little gasp of surprise. “You almost scared me this time, Angel. You’re getting better.” She was laughing now too; it was music to his ears.
“I should have known you heard me, Superman.” Jeremy smiled at his girlfriend’s- fiancé, he told himself, for he wanted badly to marry this girl- pet name for him. They had called each other Angel and Superman for almost as long as they had been together. The nicknames were not without justification; Angela had long red hair and green eyes that almost always seemed to sparkle with happiness. She had a smile that was as contagious as a virus; it was literally impossible not to be happy when she was around. Jeremy was well muscled, thanks to three nights a week spent at the gym. He was tall, with dark hair and blue eyes.
Strangely, Jeremy didn’t play any normal sports; rather, he opted for archery. However, he used a simple recurved bow, and few other senior boys were able to pull its string back at all, let alone hold it back long enough for a straight shot.
And to everybody’s surprise, Angela liked to fence. In fact, she and Jeremy had met during tryouts for the fencing team. They had faced off for the heck of it, and Angela had soundly beaten him. Most people agreed that that was the moment when everyone, including Jeremy and Angela themselves, knew that they were made for each other. They went out for the first time that night, and now, six months later, they were around each other for as much time as they could spare.
“So what’s the news of the day?” Angela didn’t know how Jeremy could always tell when she had something special to tell him.
“I got a letter from
“And?”
“I’m in!” Jeremy came close to crushing the breath out of her as he picked her up and hugged her again, but, as always, he managed to restrain himself.
“That’s incredible! Did you get the scholarship?”
“Do you really think they wouldn’t give it to me? Jeremy, we’re going to college together!”
Jeremy scrunched his face up in mock disappointment. “Damn, I guess I won’t be doing any partying after all.”
Angela laughed again. “Oh, shut up and kiss me, you fool!”
So he did. A minute later, the bell rang. Angela pouted as they separated. “Saved by the bell? I think not. Have fun in class, Superman.” He smiled as she turned and walked away, red hair swinging behind her. She soon disappeared from view as she turned around a corner. Jeremy turned back to his locker to grab his grammar book.
Lockers slamming. Footsteps. Popping sounds. Screams.
Popping sounds? Screams? What the hell-?
Jeremy whipped around. The sounds were coming from the hallway to the left. Angela had gone down that hallway. “Oh, my God….”
He dropped his books and ran around the corner. He was almost knocked down by the people running past him. Through the spaces in the crowd, he saw Angela running toward him. There was an expression of fear on her face. Then Jeremy saw the three people behind her.
It was hard to miss them. They weren’t running, they all wore long coats, and they were all carrying guns. Their guns bucked and rattled as they fired. Shotguns, submachine guns and handguns all fired, the unseen bullets tearing into unshielded bodies.
Gunshots.
Angela turned to look back.
Gunshots.
Angela jerked as a crimson spray erupted from her shoulder.
Gunshots.
Angela jerked again as more crimson sprayed from her hip.
Gunshots.
A person plowed into Jeremy, knocking him down.
Gunshots.
Angela slowly, slowly fell to the floor.
Jeremy scrambled to his feet. He ran to Angela’s side. Her eyes were wide. Her blood spread out from her shoulder and hip. It wasn’t quite the same red as her hair. She was in shock. “Jeremy,” she whispered. Then her eyes fluttered shut as she fainted.
Jeremy didn’t waste any time. He grabbed Angela and hoisted her onto his shoulder as he stood up. He dove for a stairway to his right. He ran down them, three flights down, to the ground floor. There were already people running for the exits down here. He could only join the flood to the nearest outer doorway.
There were already paramedics coming indoors. The shooting must have been going on longer than he thought. Somebody stumbled and fell in front of him. He tripped over them and fell. He looked up as two paramedics grabbed Angela. They picked her up and carried her toward the exit. A third paramedic came up and applied pressure to her wounds. Jeremy stood up and started running after them. He wanted to make sure that Angela was all right.
More gunshots.
They were close. Two more kids with guns walked around the corner. They were between Jeremy and the exit. They were behind the paramedics, but facing indoors.
“Where ya goin’, pigs?” one of them shouted as he fired his shotgun. Jeremy turned and ran the other way. He went down the first side hallway he came to, bullets whipping by him.
This hallway was mostly empty. A few bodies lying on the floor told Jeremy that the shooters had gone through here. He kept running.
A body in a dark gray uniform caught his eye. He stopped. It was the school’s resource officer, Trooper O’Halloran. His gun was clutched in his hand. Jeremy picked it up. It was a Glock. Lightweight, simple, and it carried a lot of ammunition in the clip. There was no gunpowder smell. The trooper had been cut down before he fired a shot.
Jeremy looked at the gun. He looked at the dead officer. He looked at the gun.
Gunshots. They were close.
Angela jerked and spun, falling to the floor….
Something clicked in Jeremy’s head. These...people had no right to do what they were doing. They were killing others, just to see them run and suffer. Jeremy was through running. He was through letting them control his life. As the shooters pulled their triggers somewhere nearby, a trigger was pulled in his mind.
He worked quickly, stripping the gun belt off of the dead officer and strapping it around his own waist. He counted the clips. Four of them, not counting the one in the gun. Fifteen shots to a clip. He had 75 chances to stop the shooters.
“Turn the other cheek…..”
“Not right now,” Jeremy said as he turned toward the gunshots.
The shooters walked past the hallway and continued on, firing as they went.
Jeremy walked as quickly as he could to the end of his hallway. He hefted the gun and turned the corner.
The shooters were there. One of them was skinny, had freckles, and wore glasses. He held a shotgun that seemed too big for him. He and the other kid were reloading. The other kid was almost grossly obese and carried twin Mac 10 submachine guns.
“I guess all the pigs ran away,” said the skinny one as he finished reloading and cocked the shotgun.
“Don’t worry, pigs are easy to find. They’ll start squealing as soon as we come close.” The large one started to load a revolver.
Jeremy lifted the gun. He aimed it at the large kid.
“Drop them,” he said.
The two shooters whipped around, guns aiming at Jeremy. They obviously had no intention of surrendering. Jeremy tightened his grip around the gun, finger caressing the trigger. He pulled it as he dove to the right.
Gunshots.
The large kid took three shots in the chest.
Gunshots.
The skinny kid’s snap shot went wild, missing Jeremy by several feet.
Gunshots.
Jeremy put a single bullet in between the skinny kid’s eyes.
Gunshots.
Both shooters fell to the floor.
Jeremy got up. He was uninjured. The two kids in front of him were obviously dead.
The large kid took three shots in the chest…
The skinny kid’s head disappeared behind a crimson explosion…
Angela jerked and spun, falling to the floor…
Jeremy turned around and knelt. He began to vomit.
Afterwards, he turned and looked at the bodies again. He looked at the gun in his hand.
Jeremy got up and walked toward the nearest staircase. There were gunshots upstairs.
He stopped on the second floor.
Gunshots.
They were far away. Jeremy began to run toward them. As he got closer, he slowed down to a walk. He brought his gun up.
He saw a familiar body lying on the floor. He walked up for a closer look. It was Andrew, his neighbor and one of his childhood friends. He had been shot in the kneecap. Jeremy leaned closer, then stood up and backed up against the wall, fighting the bile back from his mouth. Somebody had slit Andrew’s throat.
Screams. Gunshots. Jeremy walked in the direction of the sounds.
As he came closer, he heard two voices.
“Oh, God, my knee, you shot my knee! Wait, what are you doing with that knife? Oh, my God, please don’t! I’ll do anything! Please! I don’t want to-“
“Nighty night, pig. Have fun in hell.”
Jeremy blinked in surprise. The other voice was female. It belonged to a quiet girl who sang in chorus and was on the chess team. Jeremy turned the corner to face her. She was about to slash another begging victim. She had cut her hair short and died it black. She held a Bowie knife in her hand.
“Stop!” he shouted before she brought the knife down.
She tossed the knife up and caught it by the blade, then turned and threw it at Jeremy. Her aim was almost perfect. If Jeremy hadn’t ducked, the knife would have buried itself in his chest. He brought the Glock up as she pulled out a handgun.
Gunshots.
She jerked backward and hit the floor hard.
Jeremy walked up. She was dead. He had hit her in the throat. He looked at the girl she had been about to kill. She was clutching her knee and moaning in pain. He picked her up and walked into a nearby room.
He put her up against an inside wall. He tore part of his shirt off and dressed her wound.
“Now, you need to be as quiet as you can be. If you make any sounds, they might hear you.” She nodded vigorously. Jeremy recognized her. She was a member of the cheerleading squad. Jeremy doubted whether she would ever participate again. Her knee was a bloody mess. Jeremy stood up and walked out.
“He who lives by the sword….”
“Lives one day longer.” Jeremy stopped and shook his head, trying to clear the images from his mind. It didn’t work.
Gunshots.
They were coming from the floor above. Jeremy went up the nearest staircase. He came out and almost ran into one of the three original shooters he had seen. This one carried a single Mac 10 and now had it pointing at Jeremy’s face.
Jeremy closed his eyes and waited for the gunshot. It didn’t come. He slowly opened his eyes and looked at the kid. The kid was wide eyed and trembling in fear. He slowly dropped his gun to his side and stepped back. Jeremy raised his own gun and pointed it at the kid.
“Please don’t shoot me! I don’t want to die! I didn’t want to go through with this, but they all called me chicken and said that this was my only chance to show that I could be powerful! I shot my gun in the air, I never shot anyone, I promise!” The kid threw his gun away and put his hands in the air. Jeremy suddenly felt massively tired. He lowered his gun and sunk to the floor. The other kid did the same.
“How many of you ARE there, anyway?” Jeremy needed information. He wanted the gun out of his hand as soon as possible, but he wasn’t going to drop it until he was sure that there was no more threat.
“There were six of us. Two on the first floor, one on the second, me on the third, and two on the fourth. I split off from the other two up there after the first couple of minutes. I’ve been shooting into the ceiling every couple of minutes so they think that I’m killing people down here.”
"What the hell are you doing this for?"
"THEY wanted power. THEY were through being ignored. THEY wanted to show that they were able to make you guys notice them."
"And what exactly did anybody do to them?"
Tears began to well up in the kid's eyes. "I don't know, all right? They're crazy, the lot of them. They forced me into it, I told you, I didn't want to do it!"
Then the kid’s eyes brightened in recognition. “You’re the guy who grabbed that girl that Derek shot!”
“Which one is Derek?”
“He was the one with the shotgun and Colt. He’s the leader of the group. You don’t know how pissed he was when you got away with that girl. He said you ruined his plans.”
"Wait a sec...plans?"
"Yeah, she was a hot girl, Derek figured he wanted to do a hot girl before this was all over. He figured, she's gonna be too scared to put up a fight, so she was the one." The kid trembled at the mask of fury covering Jeremy's face. "What's wrong? Who was she, anyway?"
“That was my girlfriend.” Jeremy was so enraged that he actually had to put down the gun so he wouldn’t be tempted to shoot the kid. When he had calmed down again, he got up and picked up the Glock.
“Where are you going?” The kid stood up too.
“After them. They need to be stopped. I don’t care how.” Jeremy reloaded the gun. He looked at the kid. “Go downstairs and go outside. Tell everything you know to the police. You’ll be arrested, but you won’t get it that bad if you’re up front and make sure they know that you didn’t actually hurt anyone.”
The kid hesitated. Jeremy looked at him. "Think of it this way. They're gonna find your fingerprints on that Mac 10. Kids are gonna say that you were one of them. Like it or not, you're going to jail anyway. If I were you, I'd at least give up quietly."
The kid nodded, then went downstairs. Jeremy watched him for a minute, then went upstairs.
The hallways were littered with bodies and painted with blood. Jeremy was almost sick again. He stopped and waited for the feeling to pass. Then he continued. He noticed someone sitting next to a window in an empty room. The person was assembling a sniper rifle. There were a shotgun and a Colt handgun sitting on a desk beside him. The room overlooked the crowd and ambulances outside. Jeremy knew immediately what the kid was about to do.
"He said you ruined his plans..."
"He has a shotgun and a Colt..."
Angela jerked and spun, falling to the floor...
He walked into the room. He didn’t stop or hesitate this time.
Gunshots.
There were screams outside.
Gunshots.
The kid jerked again and again.
Gunshots.
The kid slowly fell forward onto the floor.
Jeremy stopped firing. The bloody body on the floor in front of him had been about to fire at the crowd through the window. The sniper rifle had fallen four stories to the ground below. Jeremy stepped up to the open window. He saw a red haired form on a gurney being loaded into an ambulance. He looked at the gun. He realized how light it felt; he had emptied the clip into the kid. He reloaded and jacked the slide on the Glock.
The large one took three bullets in the chest…
He had shot her in the throat…
The kid jerked again and again…
Angela jerked and spun, falling to the floor…
Jeremy walked out of the room and continued down the hall.
One more. One more of them. And still all he could think of was Angela, lying in her own blood. He walked faster.
Footsteps. They came from around the next corner. Jeremy slowed down. He lifted the gun up. He stepped around the corner.
There he was. Blood adorned his jacket. A weird, satanic expression twisted his face into an inhuman mask. He held a shotgun. He didn’t have it in quite the right position, but neither did Jeremy. Damn, he had overestimated his opponent’s height.
The next few seconds stretched into infinity. Jeremy brought his gun down as the other kid brought his gun up. They were level.
At that moment, everything went by in a flash. The kids in long jackets. The strange expressions on their faces. Seeing them walk down the hallway, weapons drawn.
Seeing Angela jerk and spin, falling to the floor…
Carrying her, falling, the paramedics grabbing her…
The shooters coming around the corner, separating him from safety…
His discovery of the gun, using it on those who desired only to hurt and kill…
And now…the final contest, the final squeeze of the trigger….
“Thou shalt not kill”…not in this case….
He did not hesitate. His finger pulled the trigger as he moved to the left.
Gunshots.
Pain erupted in Jeremy's entire right side.
Gunshots.
The kid took shots in the hip, arm, and abdomen.
Gunshots.
Jeremy hit the floor, hard.
Gunshots.
The kid stood before him for a moment.
Gunshots.
The kid wavered, then collapsed.
Jeremy dropped the gun. He was bleeding. The right side of his shirt was well on its way to being soaked. Damn, it was his favorite shirt. He looked at the kid. He spotted slight movement in the kid's chest. He was alive. Jeremy looked at the gun. He knocked it away with a swipe of his hand. Strange. He couldn't remember ever feeling this weak. There was only one time, when he was very young, after he had broken his arm in a fall....his father had carried him back to the house....what was he going to tell his parents.....
The SWAT team found both teenagers lying unconscious on the floor. The doctors said later that if they hadn't, Jeremy wouldn't have lasted another ten minutes. The other kid only had five. They were the last two students to be airlifted to the hospital.
* * *
Jeremy woke up in a white room. Rich, one of his best friends, was standing over him. His arm was in a sling. He was grinning his head off.
"Dude, you are all OVER the news!" Rich was clearly very excited.
"What are you talking about?" Loss of blood and anesthesia had taken their toll on Jeremy's mental state.
"What you did, man. They got the story from that one punk who squealed on his buddy. They reconstructed the entire scene. EVERYONE knows what you did in that school! The news guys are calling you the hero of the century!"
"I'm no hero, Rich. What I did....I killed them, Rich. I killed them."
Rich's grin disappeared. He leaned in close. "Jeremy, what were they doing?"
"They were shooting people. They shot Angela...."
"Damn straight. Man, when they did that, they gave up every right to their life! You did the right thing, man. You stopped them. You made what they did....well, you didn't make it meaningless, but you took the punch out of it. People are talking about YOU, man, not them! What those kids wanted was power and immortality. They wanted to be feared. You denied them that! You stood up to them! You fought the power, man, you fought the POWER! They weren't counting on you. They knew the police were wusses, and they thought that everyone else would be too. They started the whole thing, but you sure as hell finished it. They still killed people, but you stopped them from killing everyone they wanted to. You know what they were gonna do? They were gonna set machine guns up and spray everyone outside once they were finished inside. You killed them, but you saved lives. You saved people, man, you took control of your life, and you stopped THEM from going through with THEIR plans to kill EVERYONE that THEY could. Deal with it, man, you're a hero. Nothing's gonna change that."
Hero....Superman....Angel ....
Angela jerked and spun, falling to the floor....
Jeremy grabbed Rich's arm. "Where's Angela?"
Rich chuckled softly. He gripped Jeremy's head and turned it to the left. Angela was lying in the bed next to his, apparently sleeping.
"How's she doing?"
"Docs say that she's gonna be out before you are." Rich looked at him. "You say you're not a hero? Look at her. You got her downstairs, away from the shooters. Docs say that if you hadn't, she would have bled to death long before you and the other kid shot each other. You saved her life. You're a bigger hero than anyone has any right to expect."
With that, Rich turned and walked out of the room, muttering something about visiting hours.
Jeremy turned back to Angela. He was overwhelmed by the desire just to touch her, to feel her warmth. He tried to get up, but was overcome by dizziness. He lay back down. He reached out with his hand. He could almost touch her...he fell back, panting a little. He had never felt so weak. He rested for a minute, then stretched out once more. He began to fall back....
A hand reached out and grasped his. Jeremy looked. Angela was looking at him, her thumb slowly moving back and forth on the back of his hand. "Superman," she said, "I didn't get to tell you....I love you, Jeremy."
"I love you too, Angel," he said in a hoarse whisper. He rested his head back on his pillows, but his hand remained in Angela's. Suddenly he felt much, much stronger.
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