Chris Kuzneski - The Prophecy

‘Are you okay?’ Payne whispered across the courtyard.

‘Do I look okay? I think I pissed my pants.’

‘Did you see the shooter?’

The janitor’s voice trembled. ‘Some whitey in a trench coat.’

‘Young? Old? Short? Tall?’

‘I don’t know! My eyes ain’t great.’

‘Where was he?’

‘Standing on the lawn. That’s the only reason I saw him. He was standing out there like a snowman.’

‘Was he alone?’

‘What’s with all the fucking questions?’

‘I don’t know! I was too busy trying to hide.’

‘Don’t worry. My buddy will be right out. He’ll take you to safety.’

The janitor mumbled something else, but Payne was no longer listening. His focus had shifted to the man with the gun. Once he found him, everything else would take care of itself.

After flipping onto his stomach, Payne pulled himself underneath the hedge by grabbing one of its lower branches. Pine needles scratched his face and their scent filled his nose, but his sole concern was surveying the lawn from the safest place possible. If he had climbed to his knees and peered over the hedge, he would have been exposed to a headshot, just like Ashley had been. But down below was a different story. Although his sightline was restricted, his exposure was minimal — unless someone crept up behind him. If that happened, he was a dead man.

With his free hand, Payne brushed away some of the snow that blocked his view. With each additional stroke, his sightline increased until he could see halfway across the lawn. Trees, benches, and lamp posts dotted the landscape, but as far as he could see, there were no people.

Jumping to his feet, Payne hurdled the hedge and dashed into the lawn. The snow was deep but his traction was good, even better than it had been on the sidewalk. He sprinted forward until he reached the area where Jones had seen the muzzle flash. The snow had been trampled down, as if someone had lingered there for several minutes. Payne dropped to his knees and stared at the surrounding tracks. One set branched to the left; another pointed straight ahead.

The question was, which were more recent?

Payne looked closer, trying to figure out which way the shooter had gone, but the falling snow and the swirling wind hindered his progress. A fine layer of fresh powder had recently coated both sets of tracks. Coupled with a lack of light, Payne couldn’t rely on his eyes to pinpoint the escape route. Instead, he used his hand, running his fingertips from one side of the footprint to the other until he made sense of things. Like a blind man reading Braille, Payne located the ridge patterns in the compressed snow and determined which way the heel — which would be deeper in

Just like that, Payne knew which way the shooter had fled.

Now his pursuit could begin in earnest.

11

In the summertime, the Cathedral lawn was like a city park, filled with coeds in bikinis and frat boys throwing Frisbees. But on this night it resembled Siberia. The arctic wind was howling, and the snow was drifting high. In some places, it was over two feet deep. But none of that mattered to Payne, who sprinted across the flat terrain with reckless abandon.

With the Cathedral on his left, he followed the shooter’s trail for nearly 200 feet. The entire way he ran parallel to Fifth Avenue, which glowed on his right and provided just enough light to see the footprints. Cars and buses occasionally passed, as did salt trucks and snowploughs. Somewhere in the distance he heard the shrieking of metal as ice was scraped from the asphalt. Other than his breath and his pounding heart, it was the only sound he heard.

Bigelow Boulevard was straight ahead at the bottom of a small hill. The road ran left to right, just beyond a row of hedges that marked the end

Payne cursed when he realized the sidewalk and the four-lane road had been recently ploughed. From this point forward, he was on his own. No more footprints to follow. Nothing but a vague description of a man in a trench coat. Even if he spotted a possible suspect, Payne couldn’t just shoot him. On a large city campus, there was no telling how many men met that description. Payne would have to approach him and confront him, face to face.

Glancing to his left, he saw nothing but parked cars all covered in a thick blanket of snow, meaning they had been there for a while. With no exhaust fumes in sight, he knew none of the cars were running. On his right, three students were sitting inside a bus shelter, huddling together for warmth. They were dressed in jeans and ski jackets, not trench coats.

Across the street was the William Pitt Union. At one time it had been the Schenley Hotel, a

If the shooter went in there, things could get ugly.

With no suspect in sight, Payne searched for a gap in the hedges. He found one near the bus shelter and squeezed his way onto the sidewalk. Not wanting to startle the students, he tucked his gun into his pocket and approached the shelter.

‘Excuse me,’ Payne said, ‘have you seen a guy in a trench coat?’

‘Why?’ said the smartass in the middle. ‘Are you hoping to get flashed?’

Payne wasn’t in the mood for jokes. He took a step closer and stared at the kid, half-tempted to pull out his gun in order to stress the urgency of the situation. But the last thing he wanted to do was to threaten them, especially with the news he was about to share.

‘Listen very carefully,’ he said calmly. ‘There was a shooting near Heinz Chapel. The suspect is wearing a trench coat and he fled this way.’

‘Do you have a phone?’

All three nodded their heads.

‘Contact the Pitt police and tell them what I said. Have them send a warning message on the campus system. The less people outdoors, the better.’

Ever since the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, most American universities had implemented a text-message alert system that could notify students and faculty of impending danger. With the touch of a button, more than 30,000 phones would receive the warning.

‘Do you understand me?’

They nodded their heads in unison.

‘Make the call on your way to the Cathedral. Go right now and spread the word.’

‘Why the Cathedral?’ the smartass asked.

‘Because the shooter just passed the Cathedral and was headed this way. There’s no reason for him to backtrack.’

‘I think I saw him,’ said the girl on the right.

‘Where?’ Payne demanded.

‘He crossed the street towards the union a few minutes ago.’

‘Did he go inside?’

‘Did you see his face?’

‘I only saw his coat. It was long and dark brown.’

Payne thanked her, then jogged across the street towards the main entrance of the student union. Three sets of doors sat under a large portico on his left. Just beyond it was a split set of steps that led up to Schenley Quadrangle, a cluster of five residence halls that housed more than 1,000 students. On most nights, the quad would be swarming with foot traffic — students heading to class or hanging out with friends — but Payne knew the basketball game on the far side of campus would reduce those numbers, as would the cold.

He darted up the steps, hoping to find an empty quad.

Instead, he found himself in the middle of a war zone.

More than fifty students were in the midst of a massive snowball battle. Everywhere Payne looked, people were running, and throwing, and howling with laughter. Not only in the courtyard between the buildings but also in the windows above. Minutes earlier, a few devious students had dumped buckets of water on the participants

Little did they know, a killer was lurking nearby.

A female student, wearing a knit cap and matching mittens, spotted Payne in his tuxedo. She hustled over to warn him. ‘If I were you, I’d go another way. It’s not safe in here.’