Mercy

by J L Aarne

  Muffled by the wall and the closed door, he heard Mercy’s voice in the microphone. “Hello class,” she said.

  Isaac smiled.

  “You were going to have an assembly today to discuss bullying and, according to Dr. Hunter, ‘open a dialog,’” Mercy said. There was a murmur of conversation, which quickly died when she said, “Clearly, plans have changed.”

  Isaac selected a metal bat, flipped it in his hand to test the weight of it, then went into the janitor’s closet to get a couple of big heavy-duty garbage bags. He returned to the gym with the bags and the bat and everything was tense and silent again. Mercy was dragging it out and they would all think it was because she was trying to scare them, which she was, but it seemed to Isaac more like she was trying to organize her thoughts.

  Isaac stopped beside her and put his hand over the microphone. “I’m gonna take their phones,” he told her. He glanced at Molina and offered her the other bag. “Here, you get the ones on the left and I’ll get the right, okay?”

  Molina took the bag. “Sure.”

  “Tell them?” Isaac asked Mercy.

  When he took his hand off the microphone, Mercy did. “Isaac and Lina are coming around with trash bags. You will empty your pockets and dump your cell phones. If you refuse, you will be shot. If you try to grab or attack them, you will be shot.”

  There was anxious muttering all around.

  “Why are you doing this?” Molina asked Isaac as they crossed the gym.

  He shrugged. “Why are you doing it?” he asked.

  They separated and went up the rows. Cell phones were reluctantly dropped into the bags. One girl, a pretty brunette Isaac didn’t know, smashed hers with the ice pick sharp heel of her shoe before she would let him have it. He caught John Rehbein, the mayor’s son, trying to hide his under the seat in front of him. He flashed his Colgate perfect teeth in a sheepish smile and held up his hands in mock surrender when Isaac demanded it; wordlessly, with a guttural sound of negation like he would use to correct the bad behavior of a dog.

  Kittens, he thought. Kittens with their eyes closed making tiny meeping sounds like the chirping of birds.

  As John Rehbein put his phone in Isaac’s hand, his sweaty fingers squeaked obscenely on the leather of Isaac’s gloved fingertips and Isaac briefly thought about how much he wouldn’t mind knocking some of John’s nice white teeth out with his baseball bat. There were actually a few people, some of them sitting near John, that Isaac would have liked to hit with a baseball bat. He couldn’t though. Not yet.

  So he thought about kittens. Tiny whiskers, tiny feet, tiny milk teeth…

  Down in front, Robby Whittaker stood up, saying, “I can’t let you kids do this.”

  Mercy glanced at him. “You can’t stop it.”

  “This is crazy, girl,” Robby said. “This isn’t gonna end well for you, you know that, right? So just let these people go.”

  Yeah, because that made total sense. Hostage negotiator material he was not.

  “What do you think your dad’s gonna say when they get this call down at the sheriff’s station?” Robby asked Mercy. “Hasn’t he been through enough hell lately, you gotta go and do something stupid and insane like this, too? And Corey. Man, what are you doing?”

  “Shut up,” Mercy said.

  “You just don’t want to hear the truth,” Robby said. “You have to, though. Someone’s gotta say it. You’re not—”

  Ezra stepped forward and pointed the big rifle at Robby. “You got a kid sister or something up there on the bleachers?” he asked.

  Robby backed away from him a step. “No.”

  “You got anybody up there?”

  Robby licked his lips nervously. “No.”

  “You’re just doing your job, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. It’s my job to protect—”

  “Then you don’t have a dog in this fight, Robby. You should probably sit down, don’t you think?”

  Robby thought about it, his throat working and his eyes walling anxiously around. He seemed to abruptly realize that he was standing alone, the single voice of objection and reason in the crowd, and that he had the barrel of a very frightening gun pointed at his head. He nodded, backed up another couple of steps and sat back down with Principal McGuinn and Dr. Hunter.

  Token resistance had been given; mission accomplished.

  Isaac had gathered all the cell phones on his side and started back down the steps.

  Mercy was waiting for all the phones to be collected before she started to explain what was going to happen, which was smart. A video or sound recording of that wasn’t something they wanted anyone to have for later. They weren’t like those stupid Columbine kids or that Elliot Rodger guy, gagging for posthumous attention. For one thing, dying was not on their agenda.

  “Miss Hartwell, you can stop this now,” Dr. Hunter said to Mercy, breaking the restless silence. “You don’t have to do this. This is a bad idea and not the way we handle problems. You can still stop this. No one has been hurt yet, but if you don’t stop, someone will be. It’ll be much harder to go back from this if you hurt someone.”

  Isaac had the trash bag with the phones in it in one hand and was carrying the bat loosely in his other as he stepped off the last riser. Molina came down the stairs on the other side with her bag and he headed that way to meet her and take them.

  They had all the phones, so Mercy lifted the mic and started to speak.

  “What we’re going to have here is a sentencing hearing,” she said. There was a rise in volume around the gym; frightened voices, excited and nervous whispering. “First, I want to make sure everyone’s clear about what that means.”

  There was some laughter and more muttering, but no one raised their voice to ask or explain.

  Mercy pointed at Dr. Hunter. “Why don’t you tell everyone what a sentencing hearing is, Ned?”

  Dr. Hunter sat there on the spot for a few beats, then he stood and cleared his throat. He was used to raising his voice to get the attention of a lot of distracted students. It carried through the big room.

  “Well, it means after an examination of accused persons… when a sentence is pronounced. To hear evidence or provide the accused with a chance to be heard… um… and then a judge passes sentence. Erm… punishment, that is.” He gave Mercy a tentative, insincere smile. “I’m sorry, Miss Hartwell, but I did not study law. I know only what I’ve seen on Law & Order myself.”

  “It’s fine. You can sit down, Dr. Hunter,” Mercy said. She waited for the rush of muttering voices to quiet down again, then raised her own voice to get everyone’s attention. As she spoke, they went utterly still. “Here is what we’re going to do today. Someone will be accused and that person can argue in their own defense while you… you all may defend them or condemn them as they deserve. Then it will be decided whether they live or die. This is not a trial; there is no prison sentence here, rehabilitation is not the goal. There is only execution.”

  Dr. Hunter and Mr. McGuinn paled and Mr. McGuinn looked like he might faint or throw up. Robby started shouting, “You can’t do this! You can’t fucking do this!” over and over, but he was mostly drowned out by the rising panic that ran through the whole room. Miss Tolstad screamed and Joan Freeman started to sob again. She wasn’t alone this time. Other girls and a few boys started to cry and wail. Jesse Gleason yelled at Mercy that she was, “Insane! You’re all fucking insane! You can’t do this!”

  Henry Hutton was the only one Isaac noticed who didn’t seem very worried, though his hands shook a little when he took out his cigarettes and lit one and he glanced around at all of them with sharp, afraid eyes. He got most of his mellow from all the weed he smoked anyway and it was probably wearing off.

  It was almost 10 a.m.

  Isaac wondered if Sally had told the cops what was happening yet.

  “I bet those guns ain’t even fucking real!” someone screamed in the back.

  Picking up on this idea immediately, everyon
e who wasn’t too busy weeping and cringing in a corner started screaming at them that no way were their guns real, and even if they were, there were five of them and a lot more of everyone else. They couldn’t shoot everybody.

  It was true, they couldn’t shoot everybody, but the AR-15 had a 30 round clip, Ezra and Isaac’s Glocks had 12 rounds each, the Browning Mercy was holding, the one she had given to Molina and Corey’s Springfield all held between 12 and 14 rounds. Isaac did the addition in his head quickly. Even if they couldn’t shoot everybody, they could still shoot about ninety people before they had to reload, and all the doors were locked so the rest couldn’t even escape in the meantime. Which meant that, theoretically, they might actually be able to shoot everybody, it would just take them a little time to reload.

  Whiskers on kittens, Isaac thought, keeping his cool.

  For all the shouting about the guns not being real, no one yet was brave enough to test theory and find out.

  Corey was still sitting on the steps outside the coach’s office. He picked at a hangnail and didn’t seem to even be paying attention to the rising hostility of their hostages. Isaac wondered what his secret was. From the look of him, he could have been reciting a Zen koan in his head, but it was more likely that he was still in shock and not thinking much of anything.

  “You’ll go to prison if you do this, you know,” Mr. Stills said over the noise.

  Mr. Stills taught English. He had a stupid, bubble-headed daughter named Kinsey who was there somewhere, and his bitchy wife owned a gift shop in town, but he was a good teacher. He kept a foghorn on his desk and used it on students who fell asleep during his lectures. He gave extra credit for reading outside of class and sometimes let them watch movies on Friday.

  “If you kids do this, you’ll have to live with it for the rest of your lives and the rest of your lives will be spent in prison,” Mr. Stills said. Students started to quiet a little as he spoke. He sounded strong, authoritative. He might get them out of this alive. “Mr. Banks, you’re eighteen. Legally an adult,” he said to Ezra. “The rest of you, you can be tried as adults. They don’t forgive the ones who do this sort of thing. The school shooters. If they don’t end up dead, they get life sentences. Several life sentences sometimes. You will never live long enough to get out. You need to really think about what you’re doing and ask yourselves if it’s worth it.”

  Mercy considered him thoughtfully for several minutes. She looked like she was thinking about replying and actually engaging him in a discussion about it. Or an argument.

  Before she could say anything to Mr. Stills, Coach Kapinski launched himself from the second step of the bleachers and tackled Isaac. He had been sitting there all along in brooding silence, so still and quiet that they had hardly noticed him. He leaped over the shoulders of the kids in front of him and landed on Isaac, taking him to the floor under his far superior weight. Isaac let out a surprised squawk as all the air was knocked out of him

  Molina was closest to them when it happened. She almost dropped her gun as she brought it up to point it. “Get off of him,” she told Coach Kapinski. She tried to make it sound like an order, but her voice shook almost as badly as her hands.

  “Don’t shoot!” Ezra shouted, running toward them. “You’ll hit my brother. Don’t shoot.”

  Isaac tried to catch his breath, but the Coach was a big guy—one of those middle-aged types who lifted weights every day—and he landed on top of all the phones he had been carrying. The baseball bat was also digging into his hip. The coach lifted up enough that Isaac could suck in a breath and he felt the coach pawing at his clothes. Isaac realized what the coach was doing and panicked.

  “The gun!” he managed.

  No one moved. No one moved. He could feel the sight of the gun stabbing into his lower back close to where the coach was feeling around. It seemed to all be happening in weird, dreamy slow-motion. In a second, the coach was going to have the gun, and if that happened, everything was going to go to shit.

  Coach Kapinski hooked an arm under Isaac’s neck and put him in a chokehold as he finally got his hand on the gun under Isaac’s belt. A shot rang out, echoing like a blast of thunder in the gym. The coach screamed and automatically let Isaac go.

  Gasping, Isaac crawled away from the coach and flopped down on his back, staring up at the ceiling while he tried to catch his breath. His throat burned and he could hear himself making soft whooping sounds as he dragged in air.

  “You all right?” Corey asked him. He was standing over him with his gun out. He had shot Coach Kapinski.

  “You shot Coach Kapinski,” Isaac croaked.

  Corey wasn’t looking at him, his eyes were still on the coach, but he smiled a little. “Just in the leg,” he said.

  “He get my gun?” Isaac asked.

  “It’s on the floor,” Corey said. He walked over to it and slid it back to Isaac with his heel.

  Coach Kapinski cursed and shouted about needing a doctor. Mr. Seaver, who taught seventh grade earth science, knelt beside him and tried to tie his handkerchief around the wound. Coach Kapinski tried to kick him for his trouble.

  “I’m so sorry, Isaac,” Molina said. She looked like she was about to burst into tears. Of course, she looked like that most of the time lately, so Isaac didn’t take it personally.

  Ezra walked over and held a hand down to help him up. Isaac picked up his gun and let his brother haul him to his feet.

  As he was standing, the collective paralysis that had fallen over everyone at the coach’s sudden attack and the deafening shot that followed suddenly broke. They all started to move for the doors, teachers and students alike. Most went to the doors immediately to their right that led into the school, but a few bolted for the doors at the back of the gym that went out onto the field and the girls’ locker room where they probably thought they could hide. They didn’t try to attack, they just wanted to escape, and the panic spread through the crowd like mustard gas, turning them into crazed, stupid animals.

  It happened quickly and Isaac felt a stab of his own fear as he realized that it could all end like this. It could end right now under the blind terror of the mob. It would all be for nothing.

  “Shoot them,” he said, voice a barely audible rasp buried under all the distressed, echoing voices. He shoved his brother’s arm to get his attention and raised his voice, though it hurt, “We have to stop them! Shoot them!”

  Ezra hesitated, but behind him Corey raised his gun again, took aim and fired. The gunshot was nearly drowned out by the screams that followed it. Mercy dropped the microphone to fire her gun and it made a whistle as it hit the floor, almost instantly drowned out by the blast of both guns firing.

  People were stacked up three and four deep at the doors going into the school, pushing on the handles, fighting the bike locks and banging desperately on the tiny blackened windows. They screamed for help, screamed for God, screamed for their mothers, screamed to be saved and prayed. Every one of them was praying.

  Ezra finally opened fire with the AR-15 and seemed a little surprised when two girls went down, their ponytails blown away. Mrs. Millay, the librarian, took a bullet in the left leg and fell to the floor in a pool of blood and started shrieking.

  Isaac shot one of the boys who had run to the back door and hit him in the throat. The boy fell to the floor, scratching at his neck as it sprayed the others in hot blood. It looked like something that would have come out of a squirt gun a kid had loaded with cherry Kool-Aid. It smelled like sulfur and a billion sweaty pennies. He lay there on the floor in a spreading puddle, jerking and kicking, fingers scrabbling at his throat like if he could only dig the bullet out he would be okay.

  The other boys cowered from Isaac as he approached and one of them, a fat older boy named Paul Flockoi, crouched down on the floor in a fetal position and started to cry. Isaac stopped in front of them and stared. He didn’t want to kill them. He didn’t have any particular interest in them as people, but this was not supposed to all be abou
t just killing a lot of people before they got caught.

  “Go,” he said. He pointed back to the bleachers with his gun. “Go back over there.”

  “We’ll get shot,” one boy protested.

  Isaac glanced back, saw Ezra still firing, but Corey had stopped and Mercy was picking up the microphone again. Things were winding back down; under control. Molina was hiding out of the way. Isaac didn’t think she had fired a single time, but that was all right. She had never seemed the type to him anyway.

  “I think they’re done,” Isaac said. When the boys still didn’t move, he pointed the gun at them. “Go. Now.”

  They went.

  The girls’ locker room was on the farthest end of the gym. Isaac went inside as Ezra stopped shooting. People were hysterical and weeping, but it was still like the world had had the volume turned down on it after the gunshots stopped.

  Isaac thought he might name one of his kittens Allen Ginsberg.

  There were two girls hiding in the showers in the girls’ locker room. They were hugging each other and crying. Their crying became bleating when they saw him, the noises escaping through their clenched teeth like they were trying to swallow them. They actually thanked him when he told them he wasn’t going to shoot them, but they couldn’t stay in the shower. He followed them back out into the gym.

  “Now that everyone’s gotten that out of their system and we’ve established that these are, in fact, real fucking guns,” Mercy said into the mic, “let’s get down to business.”

  Corey

  The Law of the Jungle

  The first person Corey killed was Tessa Greenhalgh. It would always be Tessa Greenhalgh. He would remember the way her head snapped back when the bullet entered her back between her shoulder blades, the red spackle on her pink skirt, the way it fell when she landed on the floor, bleeding out, her panties pale blue cotton exposed to world. The thousand yard stare in her dead eyes and the stench when her bladder released mingling with the cordite smell of gunpowder and the metallic, butcher shop reek of too much blood in an enclosed space. She wore a silver Pandora bracelet on her left wrist below a cheap watch and her fingernails sparkled.