William Krueger - Red knife

Cork grabbed the telephone in the hall and dialed Annie’s cell phone. The phone rang and rang and finally went to voice mail. He tried not to panic. Annie always turned her phone off before she went into school. It was a rule.

He hurried to the kitchen and grabbed the keys to his Bronco. He shouted to LeDuc and Meloux as he headed out the side door, “I’m going to the high school.” He didn’t wait for an answer.

He backed out of the drive in his Bronco and shot down Gooseberry Lane. He thought briefly of calling the sheriff’s office, but he had no proof that anything was going to happen, today or any other, just the vision of an old man. Besides, it would take him only five minutes to get to the high school. And what could possibly happen in five minutes?

Annie had just turned off her cell phone and was coming into the school parking lot with Cara when Uly Kingbird called to her. He was standing beside the red Saturn his mother usually drove.

“Annie, can I talk to you?”

“Go on,” Cara said. “I’ll see you inside.” She headed toward the school entrance where a late-arriving bus had parked and its student riders were spilling from the door.

Annie put her cell phone in her purse and crossed the parking lot to Uly. He looked terrible, disheveled, red eyed, as if he hadn’t slept at all. “Uly, what’s wrong?” she asked.

“Could we talk? Please? In private, in the car?”

“Sure. We need to make it fast, though. We don’t want to be late our first day back after suspension.”

Uly got in the driver’s side. Annie went around to the passenger door and slid in. Uly grabbed the steering wheel and squeezed, as if he were choking a snake. The tension in his body and the pain that twisted his face frightened Annie.

“What is it, Uly?”

“I don’t know what to do, Annie.”

“About what?”

“Last night I went over to Darrell’s house. I had to get one of my dad’s rifles.”

“What was it doing over there?”

“Long story. I’ve got it in the trunk. I’m taking it back to the shop after school.”

“Sorry. Go ahead.”

“Darrell was all pissed off when I got there. His granddad and him had been fighting, I don’t know what about. Darrell said he was going to add him to the target list.”

“Target list?”

“It’s this list we keep. Whenever somebody’s really been an asshole, we put him on the list. Then we shoot him.”

“What?”

“Darrell’s granddad keeps a lot of firearms around: pistols, rifles. We go out and set up bottles somewhere and shoot the hell out of them. Each bottle is somebody on the list. It’s just a way to, you know, deal with stuff. It’s not serious. At least I never thought it was. Last night, Darrell starts saying things that scared me. He said it was time to take care of the target list. He said he had a plan all worked out. He wanted us to do it together.”

From the school came the ring of the final bell, calling students to homeroom.

“He said what we’d do is lock the doors, chain them from the inside so nobody could get out. He has them, the chains. He showed them to me. And the locks. Then we’d sweep through, taking down anybody we wanted to.”

“What doors, Uly?”

He stared at the school and nodded in its direction.

“Oh my God.”

“I told him it was crazy, Annie. He’s like, ‘Dude, the whole fucking world is crazy. In the end, you’ve got only one choice. Do you go out with a bang or a whimper?’ It’s something he got off the Internet. He says it all the time.”

“We’ve got to tell somebody.”

“Who?”

Annie thought a moment. “Let’s start with Ms. Sherburne.” The school psychologist, who was also Annie’s softball coach.

Uly’s face went sour. “I don’t know. I’ve talked to her about stuff before. We don’t, you know, connect. And what if I’m wrong? Darrell already takes a lot of crap. If this got out, Jesus, he’d like have to move or something.”

“What if you’re not wrong?”

“I don’t know, Annie. I thought about it all night long and I just don’t know.”

“Look, if he’s talking this way, he needs help even if he’s not really thinking of doing anything.”

“Why? I mean sometimes I’ve thought how great it would be just to shoot all the assholes. That’s why we had the target list.”

“But would you, Uly? Would you really shoot them?”

He stared at the school building and finally shook his head. “No.”

“Would Darrell?”

Uly thought it over. “All right,” he said at last, though he didn’t sound totally convinced.

They got out of the car. The parking lot was empty and quiet. Annie knew they were already late for class, but they needed to talk to Ms. Sherburne and would be even later. They walked silently to the front entrance. Annie reached out and pulled the door handle. The door opened just a little then stopped. Annie yanked and heard the metallic rattle of a chain on the other side and in the last moment of her mind working clearly, she thought, Oh God. Darrell Gallagher.

Once when she was much younger, she’d been trapped under a diving raft on Otter Lake, the back of her swimsuit strap snagged on something she couldn’t see, couldn’t reach back to release herself from. She’d struggled desperately. Seconds seemed too few and at the same time endless. Her mind took in everything, including the useless details of her situation-the soft green light of the water; the bubbles gathered along the bottom of the raft, like frog eggs; the velvet algae on the raft chain-but understood almost nothing in a useful way. The lake pressed around her, against her, isolated her, entombed her.

That’s how she feels now, as if she’s underwater, struggling to fight her way out of an airless tomb, moving too slowly, unable to think clearly, to breathe, to release herself from the terror that has gripped her.

She’s alone. Uly’s no longer beside her. Where he’s gone, she cannot say. Her cell phone is in her hand-how did it get there? — and her thumb is pressing the power button.

She stumbles away from the chained front entrance, out of the shadow of the portico, and into sunlight. Without really thinking, she turns and sprints for the doors at the south end of the building. Her feet seem mired in mud, dragging like dead things. Through the windows of the classrooms, she sees students milling about, settling gradually into their desks for homeroom, oblivious. The south doors appear suddenly in front of her. She grasps the handles and yanks. These, too, are chained and locked.

Gallagher, she understands, has trapped everyone inside.

Think, Annie, she tells herself. Think.

She remembers the entrance for the school kitchen, where deliveries are made, which is never used by the students or faculty. She spins and heads north.

The cell phone plays a twinkling tune to let her know it’s powered on now and she punches in 911 as she races along.

Tamarack County Emergency Services.

Annie knows that voice, a woman’s voice, but a face doesn’t come to her.

This is Annie O’Connor, she cries into the phone. I’m at the high school. Darrell Gallagher has a gun. He’s going to kill people.

Have you seen the gun, Annie?

No, but I know he has it. He’s locked the doors and trapped everybody inside.

Officers are on their way, Annie. Are you in the school?

No, I’m outside.

Stay there and don’t go in.

But she’s already at the kitchen service entry and she pushes inside, snapping her phone closed as she goes.

The moment she enters she hears from somewhere in the distant interior four rapid cracks- bam bam bam bam — like a fist smacking against lockers in the hallways. She runs through the kitchen. Morning sunlight glances off stainless-steel countertops and sinks and commercial-size stoves. Two women in hairnets are frozen in the act of pulling big mixing bowls from the cabinets. They stand as if posed, heavy women with arms uplifted, glittering silver bowls cupped in their fleshy hands. It reminds her of a painting, some Renaissance thing about a pagan offering she should know because she studied it-didn’t she? — in her humanities class.