Pearce Hansen - Stagger Bay

A tall kid with big ears hopped out the van with a revolver in one hand and a grenade in the other. He trotted back to the overturned black-and-white, staring in a hungry fashion at the crushed pulp of cop extending rag-doll-like from beneath the car.

He aimed his pistol at the driver, who strained to free herself from her seat belt. The woman stopped struggling and looked at him as she became fully aware of her fate.

I saw her face clearly for eternal endless moments before Big Ears grinned and fired three times like it meant nothing, starring the safety glass into whiteness and obscuring her face forever from my sight. Her dimmed silhouette sagged all slow motion boneless in her harness as the gunman yanked the pin from the grenade with his teeth and dropped it in her open window.

Gild the lily why don’t you, motherfucker?

Big Ears was loping back to the van even as the grenade went off, shattering every window in the black-and-white with a roar. The roof of the car bulged as if the Hulk had tried to punch his way out, and a cloud of safety glass chunks expanded in all directions to shower the ground like a short lived hailstorm, or like the geyser of water splashing back down after a diver did a cannonball. The siren finally shut the fuck up.

Three other men stooped out the open van door, whooping and laughing as they leaned from the dark interior to admire their friend’s handiwork. They all had heavy weapons in their hands; they all appeared high as kites.

A good-looking black kid high-fived Big Ears as he clambered back inside. “Way to go, Slash. Next level, bro,” the kid said in a squeaky voice.

Rage filled me to trembling but I didn’t move other than the shaking. They’d shot her in the face and laughed. Laughed!

The patch of grass I lay in was too far away for me to have helped, and I know there wasn’t a thing I could have done for her anyway. But the shame still welled up.

Something died within my breast like a slug dissolving in salt as I just lay there like a coward in the tall grass and said and did nothing. I hid in weeping fury and waited for them to drive their van anywhere but here, out of my life.

The van’s engine got louder as the driver tried to take off and be gone, but the transmission only stuttered and clashed as he wrenched the gearshift into drive. Maybe the dead passenger cop’s rounds had hit something vital after all.

The van abruptly died with a prehistoric gargle, and the other sirens were much closer now. The van’s occupants had a short, loud, lively argument, and then they piled out to stand for a moment in the street. All four gunmen ran through the schoolyard gate and toward the nearest exit.

A man stepped out the door to confront them as they approached. One of the gunmen shot him without even breaking stride. The man went down and the gunmen went into the building.

Every hair on my body stood on end, like I was being pierced by a million porcupine quills. My mind was blank as I bounded to my feet, huffed to the schoolyard gate, and paused in a frenzy of indecision. I rocked back and forth, from side to side like an ADD case; my dangling empty hands kneaded the air like creatures separate from me.

They had uncontested access to the children and they were proven mad-dog killers who laughed as they did it. The cops were too far away.

Somebody had to do something. Somebody had to do something right now.

And I was the only one there.

I heard men’s voices inside, raised in anger, followed by another gunshot. Like I was fired from the same gun, I found myself trundling toward the school, faster than I’d moved in years.

As I approached I saw children’s faces pressed against the multi-paned windows, their silent mouths moving excitedly. A gaggle of office staff stood outside the double doors of the main entrance at the far end of the building, staring past me at what was left of the cop car.

My mind raced like a redlining hotrod engine as I ran, but the head gasket wouldn’t quite blow. The morning sun was bright but the cold blue sky stared down uncaring at the foolish, balding ex-convict scurrying across the playground, just one more nonentity in his cheap prison-issue release clothing. It seemed an eternity that I ran and planned (and prayed, I’ll confess to you and you only), but I finally reached the exit.

The man slumped against the wall wore a wrinkled white shirt and loosened tie, with the harried, haunted look of school principals everywhere. He held what little was left of his right bicep, trying to put direct pressure where the bullet had torn a fist-sized hunk of brachial artery out of him. His life’s blood was spewing down off his fingertips to pool on the ground next to where he sat splay-legged – he was gone and he knew it.

“Please,” he said to me, eyes aflutter.

His bloody hand gently stroked my trembling leg as I surveyed the closed door. The exit was at one end of the school’s long central hall, opening into an inset vestibule. This was as close to Thermopylae as I was ever going to get.

Inside, all the classrooms opened off the hallway – but each room also had its own separate exit to the outside. Through the door and from around the corners of the building, I heard a couple doors slam, some raised voices both childish and adult.

I sucked in a deep breath and bellowed at the top of my lungs, “Get the children outside right now. There are men with guns in the hall. Get the children outside right now. There are men with guns in the hall-”

I continued shouting the alarm even as, after a few seconds delay, pandemonium erupted within the building. More and more classroom doors slammed open around both corners of the building; the children’s yells become clear as more and more of them streamed out the side exits and into the open.

I heard angry shouts on the other side of the door, getting nearer. Someone kicked the door open from inside, hard, and I shut right up. I took an involuntary step back and froze as the door slammed against the vestibule wall, revealing two of the gunmen: Slash and the handsome black kid. Part of me took satisfaction in successfully making them divide their forces, but the pleasure was short lived: now I was unarmed at gun point with the two, and they did not look happy at all.

Slash was in front, brandishing his revolver. The black kid with the squeaky voice stood slightly behind him and to my left, holding the exit door open with his foot, a sawed-off shotgun in his hands.

Slash's face was flushed and his slitted eyes were dancing. Both of them were so high, their eyes was glazed over to the point I couldn’t even tell you what color they were.

I was paralyzed in place. I knew I should initiate and close the gap. But I’ll tell you what: When a murder weapon’s already smoking muzzle is parked inches away from your nose, that gaping train-tunnel-sized black hole is strangely fascinating.

I pretty much figured I was a dead man here, but I clenched my fists at my sides so they wouldn't see them shake – if she could be brave about it, so could I. I started to turn my head away even as Slash stuck his.38 snub-nose up to my head and squeezed the trigger.

That pistol shot crashed like thunder. The round blew through the edge of my face, spewing my left eye right out the socket.

My head snapped around as the round entered and exited, and I grunted at that sledgehammer impact. There was a roaring in my head as if a heavenly choir of warrior angels shouted all at once in a sustained bass howl of fury. The left half of my vision went black, throbbing and threaded with strands of agony.

I looked at the vestibule wall with my blurred teary mono-vision: red goo dripped down it. Little splinters of white bone were sticking out the stucco, and I thought: those are pieces of my skull. I wondered if the goo was my brains for just a second before immediately chiding myself: how could I even be thinking if such was the case?