“I don’t know what happened. They just fell. There’s no blood, no … allergies —” She looked up. “Everyone along the wall!” She pointed to the children who stood around them. The children all ran away to where all the other children were lining up against the wall and going into the school. Another body fell into Jacob with a shriek. He caught the girl and laid her down, frowning at the multiple red marks on her upper chest and shoulders. He looked back over the parking lot toward the houses that surrounded the school.
That’s when it hit him. Sniper. He scanned the houses, the windows and rooftops. “Get these children inside. All of them,” he ordered the teacher and ran toward the houses, focusing on the one where the glint of a scope reflected sunlight. He pulled out his cell phone as he ran, punching in the codes for an active shooter and activated his personal GPS.
He’s gotta be using fakes or plastic. None of the children had bullet wounds. No blood.
Jacob darted through the parking lot, staying low, knowing whoever was up there could see him, so he made himself look like just another panicked parent running across the street. He ducked and weaved through the cars on the street and driveways until he slammed backward against the house. He crept around the house until he found an open window and climbed inside, immediately hearing a woman’s muffled cries and a man’s sharp voice, as he made his way to the highest point in the house.
***
“Shut the fuck up!” A man’s voice roared.
Jacob did a microsecond peek around a bedroom corner. Sniper at the window. Woman tied to a chair facing the window. Mouth gagged. Crying.
“You want to fucking leave? You won’t be going alone! We’re all going together, bitch!” The man yelled this as he slid another bullet into the rifle’s chamber. “Is this the one? Real or fake, honey? Can you tell? Come on, you’re a sniper’s wife. You should be able to.” He finished loading, then took aim again out of the window. “Watch me now. You’re seeing some of my best fucking shots since Iraq. Are you watching? FUCKING WATCH!” he leaned over and dragged her head toward the window.
“Whoa, buddy.” Jacob came around the corner, hands up. “You need to lay down that weapon.”
Both the sniper and the woman turned. The sniper rolling off the bed to come up with the rifle pointed at Jacob. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Jacob.” Jacob looked at the woman. Face red from crying. Eyes swollen above black circles. Shaking. She was wrecked. And completely unable to move. Rope was strung from neck to ankles. “No one’s died yet, buddy. You can come back from this.”
“Fuck you. Get the fuck out.”
“Not going to happen.”
The man narrowed his eyes. “You fucking her? That what you doin’ here? You the reason she’s trying to leave me?” His eyes widened.
“No. Never saw you two before.” Jacob heard a sound outside the door.
“Who the fuck is that?” The sniper’s eyes flicked so quickly to the door and back, Jacob wasn’t sure he really saw them move. “You got skinnies out there? That what this is?” He dug into his pocket, but kept his eyes on Jacob.
“Well I got something for skinnies.” He pulled out a handful of bullets, some falling to the floor.
“Calm down,” Jacob kept his voice even. “There are no skinnies. It’s just us. Here. Now. We can resolve this. What’s your name, soldier?”
“Mike. Hey. No. What the hell? Who are you? Some kinda cop or something?” The barrel of the rifle was now pointing directly at Jacob’s heart.
“Do you mind pointing that somewhere else, Mike? My name’s Jacob. I’m here to help.”
“Help? HELP? What can you fuckin’ do? You got no idea what I’ve been through.”
Holding out his hand, palm up, Jacob took a step closer to Mike. “Just give the weapon to me and it’ll be all over. Just like that. We can get you help.”
Mike laughed. “Ya think I’m stupid or something?”
“Not in the slightest.” Keeping his eyes on Mike’s, Jacob took a step closer. “I know what you’re going through, buddy. I know.”
“How could you poss— Wait a minute. I know you, don’t I?”
“We know each other now, Mike.” Keeping his voice calm, Jacob asked, “Where do you know me from?”
Mike squeezed his eyebrows tightly together. The rifle barrel descended. “You ever deployed in Iraq? Any chance of that?”
“I’m heading out to that neck of the woods again very shortly.” Jacob was now right in front of Mike, within grabbing distance of the rifle. “At least that’s the plan.” He didn’t dare glance over at the woman but thanked fuck that she wasn’t causing any kind of fuss. All was quiet in her world right now. Jacob reached down, grasped the barrel of the rifle with one hand, pointed it toward the floor near the far wall, then placed his other hand on the stock of the rifle behind Mike’s. “Easy. Easy, Mike.”
The rifle was now under Jacob’s control and he tossed it out through the open window, heard it clatter when it bounced against the porch roof below, then again when it hit ground. He put his arms around Mike and held him close as Mike sobbed against him.
Boots in the hall then behind him told Jacob that the SWAT team had arrived. There should have been no more need for him to stick around. He could just leave and go be with his family but he couldn’t just walk away from this man. He had to let him sob it out.
One of the cops on the SWAT team slapped a strong, gloved hand on Mike’s shoulder and began to pull him away.
“Give us a minute,” said Jacob.
The SWAT guy must have seen something in Jacob’s eyes because he nodded and backed away respectfully. “You got it, man. Take all the time you need.”
***
Jacob searched the crowds of people, ambulances, police cars and other emergency vehicles that surrounded the school until he found Danika and boys huddled near her car.
Daniella was out of her car seat and in Danika's arms, a twin on each leg with Boy, Zachary and Sid at her sides. That was his family. His. And he'd almost lost them. Not only to a family break up, but to a disillusioned shooter going through the same issues as him.
Jacob jogged through the people, needing to feel Danika in his arms. He could have been that shooter. Easily. A few weeks down the road, a pending divorce, Danika gone and their children with her. Any of those things could easily make him snap, and have him with a weapon in hand completely bent on destruction.
"Thank fuck, baby," he wrapped Danika in his arms, Daniella between them, wide eyed and smiling, the boys firmly wrapped around their legs. "Thank fuck." He drew back and stared into Danika's eyes as he kissed to top of Daniella's head and brought each of the boys close.
"Don't ever do that again," Danika scolded him, her eyes filled with tears. "Run off like that—someone shooting—"she gripped his arms. "I know that's what you do but—don't ever do it again." She dung her shaking fingers into his muscles.
"It's okay. We're all okay." He held onto her to stop the shaking. "I won't leave you again. I won't. This was a wake-up call I can't ignore." He drew back and stared at her. "That was my last deployment. I'm finishing out my year and then taking the job training newbies."
"What job, what are you talking about?" Danika wiped at the tears falling down her face.
"We never got a chance to talk about it. I was coming home to figure all this out, but—I got your package of papers and everything just went off track but—" He wiped at her tears with his thumb. "I'm home to stay. No more deployments. No more maneuvers. Think you can stand to be married to a total stay home family man?"
Danika blinked then tucked herself completely into his arms. "Yes! God yes."
"What about you guys? Think you can stand to have daddy home all the time."
"Yeah!" The boys all started to jump up and down. "Daddy's home!"
Jacob held onto Danika and looked at the chaos that surrounded them and sighed. He was home. Reunited with his family. He would treasure and protect this until hi
s dying day.
THE END
Bonus Story 36/40
Taken by the SEALs
Samantha Fry knew that Jack was returning tomorrow. Jack Plainview was the boy she had known all through her childhood, the boy who had always been picking up sticks and pretending they were guns, the boy with whom she had lost her virginity, the boy with whom she had smoked her first cigarette, the boy with whom she had first stopped being a Good Girl. She didn’t know this because he had contacted her. They had stopped talking about five years ago. They had just drifted apart in that inexorable way that happens between childhood friends who choose different paths. No, she knew because Barkton was a small town and in small towns news traveled fast.
She had been in the store buying some milk and eggs when Miss Hag (her real name was Miss Hobson, but Samantha thought Hag worked better) sidled up to Samantha with a witch-like grimace and shoved a pointy stick-thin finger in her face. “That boy is coming home from the war tomorrow,” she barked. “That Jack Plainview what went off to the war some three years ago? He’s coming back. I remember you two as little kiddies, thick as thieves. You’ll be giving him quite the welcome?” The Hag licked her lips in a sickening caricature of feminine lust. “I bet you will.”
Samantha had restrained the surprisingly strong urge to punch the Miss Hag in the nose. Now, home from her exciting, exhilarating, and massively fulfilling job of waiting tables at The Spatula, she lay on her bed in her one-bedroom apartment and looked up at the ceiling. She found herself wishing her parents were here. Her father had died four years ago, when she was twenty-four, and her mother had died a year after that. That her mother had died of cancer and her father in a car crash so soon afterward was a cruel punishment which Samantha didn’t feel deserving of. But it had happened and there was no point bemoaning it.
She traced the pattern on her ceiling lazily with her eyes, wondering how changed Jack would be. She didn’t know why they had stopped talking. It had just sort of happened. He had gone off to the SEALs and she had never bothered to contact him and he had never bothered to contact her. And now most of her friends had moved out of Barkton to bigger and better things, and were so changed by their new lives that Samantha barely recognized them. The cities had taken them and warped them into pretentious cocktail-drinkers.
Only Fiona had remained, her high-school friend with big bazooka breasts. Samantha thought about calling her up and going out for a drink but she didn’t have the energy, nor the inclination. She wanted, she realized, to see Jack. It was an urge within her that she barely comprehended. She had been fine, all this time, without seeing him. She had barely thought about him, unless in passing when someone at work had mentioned him. She hadn’t even seen a picture of him since he joined the SEALs.
But he had always been strong. She remembered when, as a silly girl with dreams of being a mermaid, she had waded into the river that bordered the west side of the town. The current had been furious with her, and had whipped around her in an effort to dislodge her. She had screamed and cried and been as incapable as any eight-year-old girl caught in the grips of a natural disaster. But Jack, just as young, just as scared, had jumped into the water and, with amazing strength waded through the strong current, grabbed her, and tugged her to the shore.
She remembered looking up at his young, excited face, framed by the sun. “Sammy,” he’d said. “Are you okay, Sammy?”
She must’ve been intoxicated with excitement. She’d reached up and touched his cheek. “Thank you,” she said, and he’d blushed so fiercely she’d laughed.
As she poured herself a small glass of wine, she wondered if he ever thought of these childhood memories. She took a sip, and then she realized how selfish her thought was. He’d been at war. He’d had more important things to worry about. She sighed heavily and then tipped her head back and drained the last of her wine. Head a tad dizzy, steps a tad tipsy, she returned to bed and climbed beneath the sheets. Outside, snow fell in tiny crystals.
Samantha watched the night turn white and glittery until she fell asleep.
*
Samantha’s first thought, upon awaking to the sound of her apartment buzzer screeching through the place, was that her boss had decided to interrupt her day off. He sometimes did this, despite the fact that she always refused and had only worked a day off once, and only then for triple pay. She wasn’t overly happy with her job but the fact was she was a good waitress, one of the only ones who had stuck around, and was able to demand more than the average employee.
She was preparing a firm refusal in her mind. Mr. Adams would just have to find somebody else. Mr. Adams would just have to wait the tables himself. Mr. Adams must be more organized than this. Yes, she would say all that and more. She felt a bit mean, like when she and Jack had pushed that big fat bully Ryan Grate into the ant’s nest. Then they had watched him squirm and scream as half the school looked on. He hadn’t been such a bully the next day.
She shook her head. Why was the past so ghost-like lately? Then she pressed the apartment buzzer. Oh, how she would give it to Mr. Adams! He wouldn’t know what hit him! He would wish he had never left The Spatula to come here and try and ruin her small time of peace.
“Yes?” she said, trying to keep her voice chirpy.
“Samantha?”
She knew the voice; her hand fell away from the buzzer.
“Samantha? Are you there? It’s me. It’s Jack.”
*****
She tried to convince herself that she wasn’t dreaming, that Jack Plainview was really outside her apartment on an average Sunday morning, but it was hard. She hadn’t spoken to him in over half a decade. But what was she going to do, leave him standing down there? Maybe if she walked down there and saw the ghostly apparition she would wake up and things would go back to normal. She knew he was coming back today, but she hadn’t expected him to come to her apartment personally. They had drifted too far apart for that.
She ran into her bedroom and threw on some sweat pants and a t-shirt. Then she pressed the buzzer and took a deep breath, lest she mumbled something incoherent and absurd. “Jack?” she said, hating the note of desperation in her voice.
“Sammy,” Jack said, laughing.
“I’m coming down now,” Samantha said.
Her legs were like jelly as she descended the stairs. She gripped the railing and walked down with steady steps. She was slightly embarrassed by her reaction, but mostly she was shocked and thrilled and scared that Jack had come to her door, pushing himself into her normal, boring life. She opened the door with a smile.
It was snowing outside, and the sky was clouded over in a shield of white. The weather seemed poignant to her, as though it was more important than the very real ghost standing in the weather. Come on, Samantha, just turn from the clouds and look at the ghost. How hard can it be? She forced herself to look down. She knew she probably seemed drunk and weird, but that was okay; Jack had known her long enough to know she was drunk and strange a lot of the time.
She looked down. She gasped.
Jack had been a tall, muscular, brown-haired teenager. Now he was an even taller, even more muscular brown-haired man. His face was square and strong, and his eyes were sky-blue, almost white. They were eyes that looked through you and into you at once. He wore a green shirt and khaki pants with cream-colored boots. He stood with a soldier’s stiff back, and a light beard grew on his face, silver and brown.
And the man beside him—
He was thinner, but taller, with thick black hair and a savage handsomeness. He wore a thick checkered shirt and faded blue jeans with dark boots. He regarded her coolly with forest-green eyes.
Jack smiled at her. “Sammy,” he said. “Aren’t you happy to see me? This is Eli Smith, a fellow SEAL.”
Samantha found herself nodding like a bobble-head. Words seemed things for experts in those moments. She couldn’t grasp them, let alone use them. She looked at the two men mutely for a couple more moments and then she saw herself:
a silly, skinny, blonde girl standing there with her mouth open.
She shook her head. “Of course I am,” she said, and smiled. “I’m just shocked, is all. It’s nice to see you, Jack. It’s nice to meet you, Eli.”
*
Sitting in her living room with Jack and this Eli, Samantha felt a distinct feeling of unreality, as though she were watching all this through 3-D glasses. She tried to keep her face clear of her shock. She had regained herself after her initial silliness and had made them all some coffee. She sat on the chair and the two of them sat side by side on the couch. Samantha watched Jack with a sort of animalistic curiosity as he sipped his coffee and looked around the apartment. This man was once the boy who had waded into the river and… it was strange.
Eli picked up one of her books, a John Steinbeck, regarded it for a few moments and then set it down on the table. Samantha wasn’t a huge reader, but her father had loved John Steinbeck and recently Samantha had decided to read through all his novels as a sort of tribute.
“We’ve shocked you,” Jack said.
“Perhaps a little,” Samantha admitted. “I knew you were back to today.”
“The Hag?” Jack said.
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“She charged at us as soon as we were in town. She was the one who gave me your address. She was adamant that I come and see you. I was going to anyway and I was thankful for the address. She looks ancient. Do you remember when she was just a gray-haired old woman, when we used to sneak into her garden? Now she looks like an actual fairytale witch or something.”
Eli laughed, and Samantha laughed with him. They met eyes for a moment, this strange man sitting next to her childhood friend. “I can’t imagine that woman being young,” Eli said. It was the first thing he had said. Samantha was surprise by how deep his voice was; and it was tinged with the Deep South.
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