Neely Tucker - Only the Hunted Run

“Clarifying. You were going toward the gunfire?”

“-it, what, yes, what? For all I knew it was firecrackers. Didn’t see a body till I got downstairs. Shooter ran upstairs after I went down.”

“So, wait, did you come in through that east entrance to the building, same as the shooter?”

“Yes. Peaches and cream at the time. But that was a couple hours ago. Look, I can’t hear shit in here. I got to move.”

“Sullivan. Sit tight. The SWAT team, the Navy Seals, the fucking cavalry, is coming. We’ll get eyewitnesses, survivors, from outside. What you-”

“Did you see the video from Columbine?”

“-gave me just, wait, what?”

“The video. Columbine. You mentioned it. Did you see it?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should know I’m not going to sit under a desk and hope the douche bag with a gun doesn’t come find me. I’m going to do my job, with a reasonable share of prudence and concern, and report in. What did you think I was doing abroad all that time? We need the scenery from when they take this guy down, the-”

“I am telling-”

“-visuals of that. Do me a solid though, hey? My nephew, Josh? He’s staying with me for the summer? Call the house, tell him not to freak about the news. There’s stuff in the freezer he can microwave for dinner or-”

“Sullivan!”

“-just get whatever. Gotta run, brother. Turning this thing off. Keep 1-A open. I’m coming back to you, and it’s gonna be a freight train.”

HE OPENED THEdoor to the conference room a few inches. Nothing but the endless, bell-clanging alarm. His head was really thumping now. It was jabbing at his vision, shards of light. You’d think somebody would shut that fucking thing off. Down he went to his good knee, to bend and-“Ay!”-he staggered, his good leg bent beneath him and the other, gimpy, suddenly splayed out. His head clipped the edge of the door. Beads of sweat burst out on his forehead. He wiped them away with a shirtsleeve. His scars itched.

His fingers found the edge of the door. He pulled it open an inch, then another. He peered out, looking far to the right and to the left. Empty. A deep breath. In through the nose and out through the mouth. Calm. He was calm as fucking little white clouds above a flat blue ocean.

Exhaling, he shoved off and was sprinting to the Speaker’s chamber, completely exposed, nowhere to hide-and then the door to the chamber burst open. A herd of humanity shot out of it, ten or fifteen or twenty of them, struggling to get through the doorway all at once, arms here and legs there, women in skirts, men in suits, nobody in charge, faces tight and drawn, everybody coming at him so hard he couldn’t register what anyone looked like. They swept past him helter-skelter, churning hard, no one speaking, just grunts and gasps, the last guy through in his sixties but a hard-ass, had to be former military, you could tell, that gait. Sully reached out from the wall to take his arm.

“Where is he? How many?”

The man snatched his arm back. Never slowed, but half turned in his retreat. Hissed, pointing: “Down that hall! White. White male.” And he was gone, the herd stampeding ahead of him, out of sight down the corridor.

Sully waited a beat, then two, to see if there were footsteps coming in pursuit of the herd. None. He shuffled forward, now almost flat against the wall.

The corridor made a ninety-degree turn to the right up ahead, a hard L. Across the hall was the entrance to the Speaker’s office. The left side was a dead end. To go down the hallway to the right, he’d have to make a full turn, blind, and gamble the gunman was not waiting in the hallway.

This seemed reasonable-the man hadn’t opened fire on the group that just ran past, nor had he pursued them. The problem for Sully, if he made the turn, would be finding a safe spot in the next hallway. No idea what it looked like, no idea of where to look for a safe haven.

R.J. was right. The troops were coming. The last group down, they would tell them where to find the gunman. It was no longer a blind search through the massive building with its Brumidi corridors of gold and stone, the marble stairs, the open chambers, the Old Supreme Court and Statuary Hall, the tucked-aside meeting rooms and back stairwells.

There was a target, there was a destination. He could just sit tight and wait.

Gunfire and an echoing scream jolted the air just then, coming from around the corner and down the hall. Scream after scream now, long and gurgling. Goddammit goddammit goddammit. The gunman was not in the hallway. He was in a room, an office, down the hall, and some poor bastard was paying for it.

There wasn’t any more time to think. Sully rounded the corner, bending at the knees, coming on the run, staying next to the wall. Down the hall in front of him-maybe forty, fifty feet ahead-there was a thump and another scream. Far behind him, Sully heard the hoofbeats of boots on stone. A door, a door, he needed a door… There was a small one, on the right.

Hit it with his shoulder, his full weight behind it. It gave and he was falling, stumbling inside. He regained his balance and pulled a pen from his jacket pocket. He came back and wedged it between the door and the frame, keeping it open just that much. Turning back, disoriented, what the-he was in the women’s bathroom-how do you figure… He took two steps toward the nearest stall, making himself count by Mississippis now, because it wouldn’t be long and it was hard to keep track of time.

Then the lights went off and the world went black.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three … it was absolute, crystalline, total darkness. Little purple motes popped into view, dancing away from his eyes in the void, the retinas trying to adjust. He blinked, like that was going to help, and then turned to look back at the door, to see if light was streaming in from the crack. None.

The lights in the corridor, if not the building, had been cut. The SWAT team was coming hard and soon now. Lights out had to mean they were coming with night goggles. He was in the process of kneeling down on the floor, getting low, when he heard a door open, somewhere down the hallway. He froze. Over the fire alarm he could hear grunting, cursing, dragging. A disembodied voice, from out there in the darkness, said, “Well ain’t this some shit.”

The voice gave him a locator beam. The noise was coming from down the hall, to his right. He waited until he heard more dragging before he moved again. Easing down onto his hands and knees, then bringing a knee forward, setting it down gently, an arm and hand extended in front of him, waving gently, like a blind man in a crystal shop. Then a touch of cold tile, the front wall of the bathroom. He swept the hand toward the left and hit an outcropping. There was a small gap between the two. The door, wedged open by his pen.

He waited, listening for any sound over the fire alarm. Nothing. Slowly turning, sitting, he pulled himself up to the edge of the door.

There was something-shuffling, rattling, things being moved-but nothing he could make out. There was no flicker of a flashlight. The shooter, or whoever was at the end of the hall, was as blind as he was.

A heavy settling and then, “C’mon, c’mon, answer.” Sully sat very still, closed his eyes, concentrating.

“Hey, um, 911?” a man’s voice warbled. Sully missed the next string of words, the man mumbling. He held his breath to hear better. “No, no, not a prank. Um. It’s, uh, me. Terry Waters. From Oklahoma. The guy with the gun in the Capitol.”

Terry Waters Terry Waters Terry Waters Oklahoma Oklahoma Oklahoma -the words shot through Sully’s mind like quicksilver, turning this way and that, seeping down into the well of memory, repeating silently over and over. No way he could write anything down. Not now, maybe not for hours.