Tom Schreck - Out Cold

"How so?"

"Duff, you work with troubled people. You know there are no shortage of pissed off, angry people who've been kicked around for their whole lives. Is it really inconceivable with the right prompting, and maybe some pharmacological influence, a charismatic figure could get them to pull a trigger, set off a bomb or poison the forces that have treated them so badly?"

"So let me get this straight. This guy, Newstrom, finds people ready to explode, or who have the potential, and the make up to do it, and he pushes them over the edge. But it can't work on everybody he tries can it?"

"I doubt it and it probably explains why the events occur at unpredictable intervals."

"So, Jerry, I might be nuts, but not necessarily. I mean, there's a chance this shit could be true."

"Well, Duff there's a chance, but you also have to look at some other things."

"I don't understand."

"You've been subject to severe stress, some of it for years. You've had clearly diagnosable head trauma-multiple trauma, and you've been experiencing dissociative episodes-panic reactions whatever."

"So?"

"You might be right on with this shit or…"

"Or what?'"

"You might be fuckin' nuts," Jerry said.

"He's been here," Karl said. I had just walked in the door. Al wasn't even barking. His eyes just went back and forth from me to Karl.

"How do you know?" I felt a throb go to the front of my forehead.

Karl handed me a single page of paper. There was a single paragraph typed on it.

I tried to help you out after your trouble. If you had come along, you could've been better by now and had enough money in your pocket to be set for life. Instead you made your choices. The thing is, there's always going to be the military whether it's needed, sort of needed, or not needed at all. There's just too much money in it, and if it's just going to be, you should've come on board. It's too late for all that now, buddy. I'm here and it's over. You made too much noise and continue to make too much noise. You've been discredited, but now I'm afraid with your new social work friend, people may start to listen. We're working on Dombrowski and he's already being seen as an idiot. Anyway, the mission will be carried on. You used to speak of suicide and how you'd like to have at least that kind of control. You may want to give that some thought again because we're here and we're coming for you. It's up to you how you go out. In the mean time, we need to get to school — If you know what I mean. N.

"He wants you to kill yourself again? Is that what this all means?"

"He was around when I got suicidal. I used to say I'd rather go out on my own doing than have them get me. I still feel that way," he said.

"So he's in town to carry out the next part of his plan, isn't he?"

"Yeah."

"Which is a Columbine type thing?"

"That's what he wants us to believe."

"How do we know when? Where? Who?"

"We don't." Karl looked down. Al looked up, smacking his tail on the floor. It wasn't a happy wag, more like a nervous one.

"What do you want to do?" My head throbbed at a pretty steady rate now.

Karl paused. I wondered if he thought of killing himself. I had a little dose lately about what your mind can do to you. I was at the point where such decisions didn't seem illogical.

"Duff, I'd rather die fighting these bastards than giving in." Karl looked up, right in my eyes.

"You sure?"

"As sure as I've ever been at anything." I nodded and looked down at Al, formerly 'Elvis.'

"You don't have to be a part of it, Duff. There's a good chance we'll die. They're better at this than we are, have more resources, and they have the advantage of knowing all the details."

"Yeah, there's that."

It got quiet for a few seconds, except for Al's tail action.

"Well, what else is there, Duff?"

I smiled and laughed, mostly to my self.

"Karl, I don't like being sucker-punched and having someone get away with it."

"Me either," Karl said.

I called Jamal, who still worked as a hall monitor and assistant football coach, and asked him if I could come visit him at school and bring my buddy Karl. He said it would be no problem and to come around lunchtime when we could talk. We skipped the main office, even though there were signs imploring us to stop and badge up before we went any further. I figured as an alumnus I had special rights. It didn't, of course, but I kind of went through life believing I had special rights.

"You really think Newstrom would come here and not back to his alma mater?" I asked Karl as we turned down a corridor toward the cafeteria.

"Strange as it sounds. I gotta believe he's still rah-rah on all the football crap and class presidency shit," Karl said.

"I don't get it Karl. Was he straight up back in the day or crooked and looking for greedy angles even then?"

"Duff, he was truly the all-American boy, pure as the driven snow."

"What happened?"

"War, killing people, people trying to kill you, and the corruption of the military can get in you and become you."

"Yeah, I guess."

"Truly the All-American boy in that sense, too." We came up on the noise and chaos of a high school at lunch. I caught a whiff of the cafeteria smell, and my high school years came to me through my nostrils. I tried to decipher the aroma. The best I could come up with, fried frozen food and the horrible gravy that seemed to be there every day, in one form or another. Here it wasn't hard to believe Karl's theory about evil food conspiracies.

The cafeteria doubled as an auditorium. Kids ran around yelling to each other, some wore ear phones connected to IPods, while others hunched over laptops staring at their computer screens rather than doing any human interaction.

"Can I treat you to a Salisbury steak with Maybeline's famous yellow gravy," a voice said to us from behind. It was Jamal.

"Please, just the mention of it gives me the shits. 'Ol Maybeline still in charge of the kitchen?"

"Yep and still fuckin' up everything she can."

"You know, Jamal, I thought old black southern women were supposed to be able to cook."

"Ah shit, Duff, and I can tap with Sammy Fuckin' Davis Jr. You white people kill me."

"Hey, this is my buddy, Karl." Up until now Karl had been standing, turned three quarters away from us, surveying the cafeteria. He turned to shake Jamal's hand.

"What's up, man" Jamal said. "Hey, you played for VHS awhile didn't you?"

"Yeah, halfback," Karl said.

"I remember you. You had some hop."

"For the Suburban League."

"Yeah, I'm glad you said it," Jamal said. Karl went back to looking around the room.

"Yo Duff, I love you like a brother from another mother, but you mind telling me what coming here is all about?"

"Ah, well, we're kind of looking for someone or, more accurately, some thing."

"You wanna explain?"

"Uh, do I have to?"

"Hey, man, you call me to come visit the school, you bring your friend here, who's been doin' some sort of surveillance thing and I'm not supposed to know. I think not, my friend." Jamal raised his eyebrows in the impossible way that gave him one of the most expressive faces I've ever seen.

"Okay, everyone else in town thinks I'm nuts, why shouldn't you. We're looking for kids, maybe kids who are a little fucked up. Depressed, disenfranchised, angry, maybe even violent kids who might, you know, be angry with the world."

"You just about describe all of adolescence, Duff." Jamal starred at me. "What the hell are you really talking about?"

"We're looking for kids who might want to go Columbine." Jamal put his hands on his hips and starred at me. I looked back at him and kept his eyes as long as I could.

"Duff, what the f-"