by Tom Schreck
I sat around the house waiting for Karl to come back and wondering where the hell he would go to meet the elusive, ghostlike Newstrom. Karl wanted to keep this one to himself. For whatever reason-probably my looming insanity-I respected his wishes.
Around 1:30 he pulled up in the El Dorado.
"Okay, I've given it a lot of thought and it's one of two things," Karl said the second he walked through the door. It was like we were already in mid conversation and with Karl, who knows, he might have been talking to me his whole trip back. Just the same, it confused Al who got excited about a human coming through the door. He began to go into his attack-asgreeting thing, but stopped and spun around three or four times.
"I'm listening," I said.
"Either Newstrom switched plans and is sending us a message by having it in another Crawford or he's trying to confuse us."
"I thought he wanted both of us dead."
"He definitely does, or at least wants us to believe it."
"Why?"
"If nothing else, to remain unpredictable." Karl walked past Al and sat in the sparrow lookout chair. Al raised his eye brows, closed his eyes again.
"So what the hell do we do with our own little McDonough trench coat mafia?"
"We keep our surveillance up," Karl said while he thought of what to confuse me with next, the phone rang. It was Jamal. We exchanged Salam Alekums and Jamal got right to it.
"Duff, I'm probably gettin' as crazy as the paper says you are, but you know those kids your friend was sure were up to something no good?"
"Yeah?"
"All eight of them are out today."
"Is that unusual?"
"Hell yeah," Jamal said.
"Jamal, we followed them the other day and I found some serious assault rifle shell casing near their hang out."
"You what? Never mind-did you tell anyone?"
"I called Kelley and by the time he showed up the casings were gone." I waited while Jamal went silent. He was quiet in the way people are when they're pondering the sanity of the person they're talking to.
"Duff, I don't know what to make of that, but you should know about this next thing 'cause you'll probably hear something about it on the news."
"What are you talking about?"
"The school is in lockdown while it is searched. There was a message scrolled in blood in the second floor boy's bathroom. They're not taking any chances."
"What did it say?"
"You ready for this-it's a bit deep. Here goes: 'Tomorrow the blood will flow from the hypocrite warriors. The true warriors of the city will rain down from the mountain top and they will die.'"
"Jamal-what the hell does all that mean?"
"No one fuckin' knows. Maybe they just have a social studies test they didn't study for."
"Must be one hell of a test," I said.
38
The next morning Karl, Al, and I went to McDonough High at six. There were police on every corner and if you weren't a student or a parent you weren't allowed within two blocks. Police ran wands over every student as they entered the building. The closest we could get was three blocks away.
By the time the bell sounded, it seemed like everything was under control. Police remained at every door and on the four corners surrounding the school. We waited until ten and then drove to the bowling alley to check out their hangout. We parked in the empty bowling alley lot and walked around the corner. No one was there, but as we walked to the center of the area we could see something had been painted on the back wall of the bowling alley building.
The blood will spill down the warrior's mountain. Their Abercrombie and Fitch will be stained forever!
"What the hell does it mean?" Karl said. He squatted down and picked something up. "More shells."
"I'd feel a whole lot better if I knew where these punks were," I said.
"Yeah, I say they hit McDonough after lunch."
"And what do we do?"
"We wait, watch, and pray," Karl said. That was exactly what we did in the El Dorado, after we parked by McDonough. Al kept it interesting by farting a lot and Karl gave me long explanations on UFO's, Bigfoot, and the conspiracy that got Malcolm X killed. We talked about hydrogenated fat, Oreos, and the use of pesticides. We talked about social work, the military and whether or not the Yankees pitching would hold up. Al flipped over on his back, would eventually get restless, clear his intestines of gaseous build up, and flop over again. Elvis did Gospel and then the Elvis is Back album from when he returned from Germany. Nothing happened at lunch and at 1:37 p.m. Jamal spotted us as he walked to his car. I gave him a faint beep and he squinted in our direction. Once he realized it was us, he came over.
"They never came in," Jamal said.
"Everything normal in there?"
"If you call everybody being petrified, cops all over the place, lockers being searched, dogs, and metal detectors normal."
"Jamal, what's your gut tell you about these kids in black."
"I don't know, Duff. I've been doing this a long time. They're goofy white boys who banded together to do goofy white shit your people do-watch Star Trek, laugh at Seinfeld, play Dungeons and Dragons-that shit."
"Could they be killers?"
"I don't know, Duff. Hey, I read Psychology Today. They're angry, dis-en-franchised and their parents aren't around. Shit, describes most of the student body."
"What about the shit written in the bathroom?"
"Don't know. Creepy shit, but whether or not it was just stuff to get out of school or genuine warning I don't know."
"It said something about mountains, warriors and the Gap?"
"Abercrombie and Fitch. C'mon Duff, the cool white kids stopped goin' to the Gap."
"Hold it!" Karl startled us with the yell. Al sneezed and cleared his jowls from the outburst.
"What's up Karl?" I said.
"Mountain, warriors and a reference to rich clothing?"
"Yeah, so?" Jamal said.
"VHS's nickname is the Mountain Warriors. The kids all wear Abercrombie and Fitch," Karl said.
The three of us got real quiet. Al was sitting up.
"And the kids we're looking for ain't here," Karl said. I put the car in drive without saying goodbye to Jamal.
39
We flew the country back roads to get to Vorhees Park. Karl talked a mile a minute and Al had picked up on the energy level and marched back in forth on the back seat, grumbling to himself.
"We could actually stop it this time, Duff. We can make it fail. It's never failed before," Karl said. His speech had trouble catching up to his thoughts. "I can't wait. I hope Newstrom is there in person. I want to look him in the eye when we stop him."
I didn't know what to think and decided to keep my mouth shut. In this up to my eyeballs, but not for a second did I get completely comfortable with whether it was true or if I was crazy. If true, me, a crazy guy and a basset, were about to try to thwart a guy with world class weaponry and a trained group of disgruntled Dungeons and Dragoners.
"Duff, this could make it all right again, do you understand?
You gotta let me play it out. You gotta," Karl said. I could feel him staring at me while I kept my eyes on the road. I tried to deliver my body to where we went without doing a lot of thinking.
"Karl, I'm in this. I'll let you play it out," I said.
"Duff, I mean to the ultimate. I mean no matter what." I looked at Karl.
"I mean I want to die doing this if the situation calls for it." I looked at him for the first time during his rant. Our eyes locked for a moment.
"You gotta promise me, Duff, you gotta."
I looked at him for a long time.
"All right, Karl, all right," I said. We pulled into the VHS parking lot. Despite our urgency, it looked like any other suburban high school on a late summer day. A bronze statue of the Mountain Warrior greeted us at the entrance to the campus. You could tell the statue was relatively new. The warrior no longer resembled a Native American like i
t had for years. Now, a Greek type mythological character with wings on its head and feet and somewhere, some old time Greeks were offended.
"All right Karl, what the hell do we do now?"
"Let's surveil the exterior and secure the perimeter." Suddenly, he became Karl Schwartzkoff.
We parked the El Dorado in the student lot and headed out to the athletic field to surveil and seal off. Damn, people were right-I was nuts.
The place was huge. It dawned on me if we were at the freshman soccer field and the Dungeons and Dragons mafia entered from the JV girls field hockey field, there would be no way to reach them by the time they got to the gym entrance. McDonough had a patch of dirt and a pavement basketball court with one broken hoop and the other hoop had no net. We passed the freshman girls' softball field and headed toward the rock wall and obstacle course-yes, you heard me correctly-when I heard someone call to me.
"Please stop, Please stop." A smallish man with khakis and a blue button-down shirt headed toward us. He broke into a half trot and made it look like he tried to suppress a run. I was convinced he hadn't run since he got out of diapers.
"You are not allowed on school ground. This is in appropriate!" It was Mr. Teters, the hall monitor, and he got worked up at the idea someone would break a school rule.
"I must ask you to leave immediately. No one is allowed on school grounds." Teters pushed his glasses up his nose. I know it's a nerd cliche, but he really did do it.
"Hey, Teters. My name is Duffy. We met a couple a weeks ago when I picked up the donated computer." I smiled but it didn't help. Teters remained determined.
"Neither of you have a green, orange, or yellow badge. You are not to be on school grounds." He didn't acknowledge our long friendship.
"Green, I thought there was just yellow and orange," I know it didn't make much difference, but I wanted to keep him talking, and I got genuinely curious.
"We have procedures here for when we identify an intruder. I will activate the Code Black procedure if you don't leave immediately." Teters was all business.
"Look Tetes we just…" I didn't get to finish whatever bullshit I was about to say. Teters reached into his khakis and pulled out his wad of keys and hit a button on a small plastic square thing. It was the kind of the thing the guys at Seven Eleven sometimes wore.
I didn't get to think much about Seven Eleven or anything else because a bunch of air raid horns went off and red strobe lights went off at every door. Teters started to sprint to the middle doors where a set of blue lights flashed. A sign there said
"Student Emergency Gathering Area."
"Nice goin' Tetes," I said to no one in particular. Amid the horns and lights, I could hear Al's distinctive baritone in the distance. He didn't care for lots of bells and whistles. Little by little, students started to file out of the exits, gathering in the different areas marked off for such events. The kids came out laughing and goofing off and got scolded for it just like I remember at fire drills when I went to McDonough. The chance to get out of a lecture on Dickens or a discussion of the Holy Roman Empire was indeed cause for celebration. Still, this was not a fire drill, this was an emergency on the grounds, and no one took it seriously. I guess you can get used to anything.
There seemed to be a couple thousand kids gathering in about ten spots on the athletic fields. The thing that immediately struck me, the kids all, or at least mostly, looked the same in their outfits. The difference weren't so much in fashion, but in brand name and maybe they organized themselves according to the status of Old Navy, The Gap, and Abercrombie and Fitch. Don't ask me which one had the highest rank.
Sirens began to echo off the school and there were a lot of them. From the sound of them it was clear they were coming closer. I'm not exactly sure why this dawned on me, but I remembered the sound distortion had something to do with the Doppler Effect. Boy, put me in a school setting and in fifteen minutes I'm thinking old thoughts.
"Duff-focus!" Karl said. "Don't forget why we're here."
"Sorry, Karl. I guess I got mesmerized by all the activity." Karl stone-faced, his head pivoting back and forth across the landscape, systematically surveyed everything. The kids still filed out and horsing around, pushing each other and flicking each other behind the ears. Bobby, the fat kid from the nurse's office, got yelled at for making fart noises again. He desperately acted like he was unjustly accused.
"He's here," Karl said without inflection. "The son-of-a bitch is here."
I looked and saw Karl starring at a group of gym teacher types. Sure enough, there was Newstrom, the guy I met at the trophy case, and few other coaching types. They acted as bad as the kids, laughing and goofing around. One guy kept doing this forearm shiver move, gesturing about blocking or something.
"Easy, Karl, easy," I said. "He's not doing anything. He might just be visiting."
Karl didn't respond. I noticed he breathed hard and repeated 'focus' under his breath. The sirens continued and I could see red flashing lights bouncing off the school bricks. A couple of administrative types carrying clipboards went from group to group checking things off.
"Look for the Goths, Duff. They're here, I can feel it." I kept my mouth shut and looked. As my stare swept across the school land I heard a voice yell, "New York State Troopers, freeze!" There were four guys in black gear and armor holding guns on us from a distance of about 200 feet.
"Are they talking to us?"
"Duffy, those three kids," Karl pointed to some kids, by a phys-ed obstacle course, that had drifted from the pack. "They look familiar to you?"
They were a couple of hundred yards away, but they looked like every other kid in front of us. Cargo pants, fake faded Tshirt, Nike's and carefully set hair to make it look like it wasn't.
"The one closest to us, has a tattoo on his forearm. It's in the same spot as the kid we saw behind the bowling alley."
"Yes, he does," I said. One of the other kids turned away. It was clear he had a tattoo on the back of his neck. Too close to be a coincidence.
"It's them," Karl said. Before I could do anything Karl took off, sprinting across the softball field toward the kids.
"Freeze! Freeze! Freeze!" came from the SWAT guy in charge.
Karl started to run in a random zig zag pattern, every few steps he'd roll and get up. The troopers opened fire and the dirt kicked up all around him. The crowd of kids and teachers were in shock and started to scream and yell, and some started to run. Enough got in the way of Karl that the troopers had to stop firing.
I took off, saw Newstrom heading for Karl, who closed in on the kids. Newstrom yelled something and the Goths in Gap clothes headed for the woods. It was tough to tell where everyone went. Karl sprinted, closed the gap on the Goths, and Newstrom closed in on Karl.
The cops no longer focused on us. They tried to corral the panicked mass of kids and teachers, who at this point had discarded any emergency plan. I reached the woods and saw the three kids, Karl, and Newstrom all pursuing the one in front of them as fast as they could. Karl closed in on the tattooed neck kid. I saw him leap to do a flying tackle. The kid went down hard. Karl had him by the hair and he violently slammed the kid's head to the ground. Newstrom was within twenty feet of Karl and he had a gun in his hand. I had no weapon, but I gained on Newstrom who had slowed when he pulled out the gun. Karl slammed the kid again and rolled off him in a tight ball like he had done it a million times, coming up in a shooter's stance, and holding a gun he must've taken off of the kid.
"Drop it Chip. I swear to God I'll put one in your forehead if you don't drop it!" Karl yelled.
I stopped 20 feet to the right of Newstrom. The kid on the ground rolled over, his face was a bloody mess. He grabbed for his nose crying like a three-year old. The absurdness of a terrorist crying like a toddler stuck with me for some reason. His buddies kept running through the woods to who the hell knows where. So much for loyalty.
"Karl, Karl, Karl…" Newstrom said. "You're still one hell of a soldier, I'll give
you that." Newstrom kept his gun at his side while he smirked at Karl.
"Shut the fuck up," Karl said. "It's over. I got you this time. You're going to get what's coming to you." Karl paused and looked to me. "Duff, take his gun."
I walked toward Newstrom, who spied me from the corner of his eye.
"Karl, Karl, Karl, I know you're nuts, but you've never been stupid."
"Look asshole, it's over, you and your security company assholes are done. I'm going public."
I walked toward Newstrom deliberately. I was hyper aware of what went on, but it almost didn't seem real.
"Get the gun, Duffy."
"Karl, don't be a fool. You've got nothing on me. I'm an old football hero and class president here to visit the alma mater. You're the one who brought the troopers and threatened the school. You even beat up this poor high school junior."
"Poor high schooler with a gun."
"No one will ever know that part," Newstrom smiled. "In fact no one will know much about this at all. We've got too much behind us, Karl. I'm just going to drift away and no one will ever know any of this. You'll go to prison and I'll be on to the next thing."
"Not this time," Karl said.
"Oh yeah, Karl you should've killed yourself when you had a chance. You were stupid enough to let those dead towel-head kids bother you-surely this shit will have you even crazier. And when you get to prison you'll find out the kind of connections I have there."
"Get his gun Duff."
I moved closer to Newstrom.
"You're a fool Karl. You could've been living my life and you pissed it away. There's no way you can stop me. You may have stopped me here, but I'll be on to the next mission and nothing will stop me." Newstrom's tone showed no sign of stress.
"Get the gun, Duff."
I stepped to Newstrom's side and reached for the gun very carefully.
In a split second Newstrom caught me under the chin with the barrel, which forced the gun from his hand and knocked me down. I rolled over and sprang up a bit wobbly from the blow. Newstrom was in front of me. He went to kick me in the face, but I caught his foot and twisted it until he went down hard on his back. My mind went dark and something went through me. It was like a waking nightmare-a panic attack in real time.