William Krueger: Red knife

Get out! Annie yells as she passes them. He has a gun! He’s shooting in the school!

She doesn’t wait to see if they respond.

Three more cracks in rapid succession echo down the empty hallway as Annie enters. She looks left, a clear view all the way to the main doors where light floods through the windows and down the polished tiles until it hits an obstruction, a dark oblong, lying crossways on the floor, that breaks the stream of light and begins a flow of its own, a dark and glistening stream. She thinks of a deer her father hit years ago when she was with him in the Bronco and she remembers how the animal lay across the road in just this way, bleeding, dying, then dead as she stood there with her father, watching helplessly as what neither of them could stop transpired.

Screams ricochet off walls at the other end of the hall.

Bam-bam. Bam-bam.

Two doors down, Iris Surma, the librarian, sticks her head out.

Darrell Gallagher has a gun! Annie cries in her mind. But does she speak it? She’s not sure.

The librarian replies, her words like wood blocks that Annie gathers in her head and slowly puts together to construct their meaning: We can’t get out. The doors are locked.

Annie points back the way she’s come. Through the kitchen. The service door is open.

Iris Surma beckons behind her. Hurry! Eight students rush out and make a beeline for the cafeteria. Ms. Surma pauses and motions frantically for Annie to come with them. To Annie, it seems like a scene from an old movie where people stand on a pier waving to a boat that has already sailed.

Annie turns away from the librarian, turns toward the body on the floor.

It’s Lyle Argus, she discovers, one of the two security people in the school. He lies on his side, his arms outstretched toward the chain on the door. He stares beyond the reach of his empty hands, and Annie, who believes absolutely in heaven, wonders, as she kneels beside him, what those sightless eyes see now.

Bam-bam. The shots sound as if they’re coming from the second floor. Bam-bam-bam-bam. The north stairwell disgorges students and several teachers, who stumble into the hallway. They rush toward the main entrance and Annie lifts her hands to stop them. It’s locked! Go through the cafeteria to the kitchen door!

Some hear and swing in that direction, but many of them continue past Annie, leaping over the body of Lyle Argus in their hurry to reach the chained entry where they bunch like driven cattle. Annie’s cell phone bleats and she realizes it’s still in her hand. The call, she sees, is coming from Cara’s phone.

Cara?

Annie, I’m shot, she says, her voice barely audible.

Where are you?

South stairwell.

I’m coming.

Behind her as she rises, those grouped at the chained entrance kick uselessly at the doors.

Her legs move as they do when she runs in the mornings with her father, without her thinking of them or even feeling them, really. She passes an open classroom where Mr. Henning, who teaches geography, sits on the floor with his back against the wall, cradling a student’s head in his lap. In the middle of Mr. Henning’s blue shirt is a huge red continent, like one of those he teaches about, but it’s a continent whose shape she doesn’t recognize. Mr. Henning looks at her as she passes, and he is crying.

A long trail of blood on the hallway floor leads to the girls’ bathroom and disappears under the door. Annie leaps over the blood and races on.

She approaches a corner and sees three black spiders crawling across the wall ahead. Nearer, she realizes they’re bullet holes that radiate cracks across the surrounding white plaster. She turns the corner and her legs carry her down another hallway, past closed gray lockers, past closed classrooms where the sound of desks scraping across floors tell her barricades are being erected. More gunshots-so many it sounds like corn being popped-and she reckons them to be coming from the direction of the main doors. She tries not to think of her classmates who’ve crowded there, desperately hoping to escape.

She rounds another corner and is at the south stairwell.

Cara lies at the bottom of the stairs, her face a bloodless white. She still clutches her cell phone in her hand. Her long legs, so graceful on the ball field and beautiful to watch, are sprawled under her, limp and twisted. She stares at Annie out of eyes that seemed to have turned into two dark tunnels. Annie glides to her and kneels.

Can’t feel, Cara whispers.

Annie lifts the bottom of Cara’s soggy sweater and sees the blood welling up. There is so much she can’t see the hole the bullet has made. The blood comes from somewhere deep inside her friend and pours out so quickly that it is dark purple. It runs onto the polished floor and begins to snake away.

Annie…

Hush.

She wipes at the mess and locates the wound, to the right of Cara’s navel. She presses her hand there, but bruise-colored blood continues to slip under her palm and feed the snake on the floor. Annie lifts her hand away, and in the next moment she has taken off the Reebok she wears on her right foot, has yanked off her white cotton sock and folded it into a compress that she lays over the wound as she presses again.

She hears the cry of many sirens outside.

Hang on, Cara. Hang on, girl. I’m right here with you. You’re going to be fine.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” comes the voice of Darrell Gallagher at her back.

His voice was ice on her fevered thinking. She felt as if she was waking from a bad dream, only to discover a worse reality. She turned her head and looked over her shoulder, keeping her hands on the compress against Cara’s wound. Gallagher stood in the hallway in his long black coat. Visible beneath it was a vest full of ammunition clips. He held a handgun pointed loosely in her direction. He looked oddly calm. On the floor of the hallway where he’d just walked, his boots had left red prints. Streaks ran down his black coat, like dark red veins. Blood, Annie realized, though not his own. She thought for an instant of pleading with him, but she understood clearly that it would be useless. She understood, too, that her own death was upon her, and in that moment, she received a blessing she could never have guessed. Serenity descended and a wonderful, peaceful acceptance filled her. She looked into Gallagher’s eyes, where there was no hint of pity, and she said, “God forgive you, Darrell.”

His reply was a lazy smile as he raised the gun and aimed at her head.

“Darrell!”

Uly’s shout came from down the hallway.

Gallagher kept his gun trained on Annie while he looked behind him. The smile became a short laugh as he watched Uly Kingbird approach. “Son of a bitch. You decided to join in the fun after all.”

Uly carried a rifle. The one he’d picked up at Gallagher’s the night before, Annie figured. He stopped a dozen yards from where Gallagher stood.

“Put the gun down, Darrell,” he said.

“But I just got started,” Darrell replied amiably. “Still a lot of people on the target list.”

“It stops now.”

“I did you a big favor, Uly. Took care of that asshole Allan Richards. You should’ve seen him. He tried to hide in the girls’ bathroom. Cried like a baby before I shot him.”

“Darrell, put the gun down.”

“We can make history together, bro. Go out with our names in lights. It’s what we planned.”

“Not my plan.”

“Come on, Uly. Don’t punk out on me now.”

“I’m not with you, Darrell.”

“Maybe not yet. But, hell, I’ll give you a choice.”

Gallagher swung his arm away from Annie and brought his gun to bear on Uly.

“I pull the trigger and you go down and I waste O’Connor anyway. Or you join me and they put our names in the history books,” Gallagher said. “With a bang or a whimper, dude. The choice is yours.”