Unfortunately, the office was in a lot more uproar than my class. There were screams and yelling, while we could hear as reports from other classes filtered through second hand. Someone was crying, and I could only hope there was someone in the office who was still in control of their senses. "Swagger here. Room secure."
Another couple shots shattered the air, and I heard a few of the students whimper in fear. This wasn't the uncontrolled shooting they'd maybe heard in a gang fight or the single spurt of someone messing around near an arroyo showing off or even practicing. It was controlled, disciplined, and repeated. I knew what it was.
"Shit," I muttered under my breath. While I couldn't know for sure, there was a chance that I'd drawn Victor Pinzetti to me, the man pushed over the edge by my use of Albertine on him. If I caused this, I don’t know if I’d ever be able to forgive myself. If it wasn't him, then things were still bad, and I couldn't stay in the room any longer. "Dwayne, Tony."
"Yeah?" both answered, looking up at me nervously. I noticed that Tony had flipped his desk over, putting the desktop between him and the door. A good idea, though pretty useless overall.
"Keep everyone in here. Lock the door behind me."
Tony didn't move, but Dwayne came up next to me, helping me move the bookshelf out of the way while still staying crouched. "You sure about this?"
I nodded. "Don't worry. After all, if I get shot, who's going to bust your ass over your homework?"
"Shit man, you're the only teacher who gives me homework that I might actually do once in a while," Dwayne whispered back.
I clapped him on the shoulder, unlocking the door. It was quiet outside, and I opened the door quickly to look out. The hallways were clear, but there was still a lot of screaming coming from what sounded like to my left, maybe on the first floor. "Here I go."
I ran out into the hallway, pausing only to listen as Dwayne closed the door and threw the deadbolt behind me. I was alone in the halls, in a surreal setting where everything looked peaceful, but only just around the corner death could be waiting for me. Saying a quick prayer to whatever deities were listening, I headed off in that direction.
Chapter 29
Cam
Making my way down the empty linoleum-tiled school hallway, I wondered exactly what the hell I was doing. Here I was, unarmed, wearing jeans and a polo shirt for Christ's sake, and I was making my way down a hallway toward an armed gunman.
If that wasn't bad enough, I knew from the sounds that this wasn't some psycho with a fucked up grudge. I had a feeling that this was an organized professional, with one purpose and one purpose only, to draw me out and to kill me. It was Pinzetti, I was sure of it. I only hoped that he was just shooting at walls to draw me out, and not at anyone else. Pinzetti was a trained government assassin, and I shouldn't have been going the direction I was going. I should have been high-tailing it for the parking lot, getting away and back to my house where the real target of his search, the Albertine laptop, was waiting. The safety of the whole world depended on that laptop. I should’ve been thinking about the big picture.
But damn it, sometimes the big picture pales in comparison to the small things. It's those small things that make us human, and separate us from the animals. We try and protect the helpless victims sometimes, even when it pisses in the face of the big picture. It was what drove me on, my eyes glancing left and right as I approached the stairwell to the first floor. I wasn't worried about the students in the other classrooms, they were following procedures and staying down. After Sandy Hook, every teacher was trained in what to do, and we drilled on it every semester. Those teachers who had a chance were keeping their classes under control.
Instead, I was looking for a weapon or at least something that I could use to distract the gunmen. From the sounds I could hear coming from the first floor, there were at least two of them. I'd been trained to handle more than that, but that was when I had at least a pistol to do something with. Passing the copy machine room, I saw something that gave me a sense of hope. Despite the huge insurance liability issues, the school had a few of the old-fashioned style paper cutters. Made in the seventies or eighties, the huge, heavy steel blade partnered with a solid aluminum handle that practically sliced through the paper for you, it was so heavy. More than once I'd seen students playing around by putting pencils under the blade and dropping the cutting arm, seeing if they could chop the pencil in half, sending one end flying for distance. I’d argued that the room should’ve been locked from student access, but thankfully that day the door was left wide open.
I worked quickly, using a mathematical compass' needle tip to pull the cotter pin on the cutting arm. From there removing the retaining nut was easy, and I had something. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. Still feeling like a man who brought a knife to a gun fight, I headed out and left the copy room, making my way down the stairs.
As I reached the first floor, I heard the first sirens coming from outside and knew the police were approaching. The sound scared the hell out of me, honestly. I knew that Pinzetti wouldn't hold back any longer, pushing his pace in order to find me before the cops could establish a presence in the building. There was also the fact that I knew the local cops, and that worried me as much. They weren't prepared for this sort of thing, and instead of having two armed gunmen in the school, we'd probably end up with the police too, most of them with itchy trigger-fingers. The death toll could be tremendous. I didn't have much time.
The hallway was clear, but I could see where the gunmen had shot, bringing gorge to my throat.
The first body I passed was face down, three holes in the back, a mass of black hair and khakis that seemed to be in the middle of a slowly spreading pool of crimson ooze. Thankfully it wasn’t a student, but still horrible nonetheless. I hadn't seen a dead body in a long time, and I could’ve gone a lot longer without it. I was thankful when the old sense of disconnect I'd developed in my intelligence days dropped over my emotions. There'd be a purging of the horror inside me later, but for the immediate future, I could operate.
Another burst of gunfire came from down the hallway, and I left the special education classroom behind. There were no other bodies, so I hoped that at least the kids were okay.
The shooting came from the area near Derek Gallegos' classroom. Derek was one of my work friends, a nice middle-aged guy who taught math and was a dedicated Denver Broncos fan. I saw the flash of gunfire from his doorway, even against the sunlight streaming through the windows, and knew I had found my targets.
"Where is Cam Swagger's room?" one of the gunmen yelled, and I flattened myself against the wall, staying out of sight. "Where is it?!"
His question created nothing but screams, and another burst of gunfire. "Someone tell me where Cam Swagger is, and I promise you, we’ll leave,” the voice said again. There was a hint of desperation in his voice. He knew he was running out of time and had to find me soon. I had to intervene. Who knows what lengths he’d go to.
"I'm out here!" I yelled, holding my makeshift sword in both hands. I had only one chance, to catch the gunmen as they were off-balance. I took off down the hallway, intentionally making as much noise as I could, trying to draw them out.
My ploy worked. They focused on trying to come after me. Just what I wanted, as it gave me my best hope. My enemy had the advantage in terms of manpower, weapons, and equipment. I, on the other hand, had the advantage in terms of terrain.
I knew the school like the back of my hand. Rounding the corner, I ducked into the stairwell that was hidden, my sword raised high.
The first gunman to come around the corner wasn't Pinzetti, but instead his unknown partner. I chopped laterally, at what I had hoped was his neck height. Instead, it caught him just under the nose. The man had been running, so the combined force of my chop with his mass going forward tore the handle from my hands while knocking him to the ground. I was able to dive over him, grabbing his AK-47 from his dying hands and rolling to my knees. Wheeling around
, I saw Pinzetti come around the corner, armed with an M-4.
"Swagger," Pinzetti said, his rifle at his shoulder, aimed at me. Mine was a mirror image, and part of me wondered what would happen if we both pulled our triggers at the same time. "Where's the goddamn laptop?"
"You really think I'd bring it to work?" I asked wryly. "Who the fuck hired you, Dubya?"
"It's not at your house," he said. "So you've got to have it with you."
I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that he was either too stupid to find it or Melina got it out of there. "You really are dumb. I guess they decided that sending someone smart didn't work, so they’d try something different.”
I was trying to get Pinzetti angry, to draw his focus away from me and to hopefully make a mistake. The odds of me surviving were still tiny, but there had to be a chance that things would be okay. I had to believe that fate hadn't brought Melina into my life just to end it so quickly.
However, Pinzetti wasn't going to be taunted so easily. Either he was too stupid or too well trained, or both. When the two cops came up behind him, he spun, the trigger finger on his right hand already tightening. His first shot took the leftmost cop in the shoulder while my first shot tore into his back. He'd worn body armor, but at ten feet, no body armor in the world is going to stop a round from an AK.
Unfortunately for me, shooting Pinzetti in the back made him pitch forward at almost the exact same time that the other cop, a county sheriff that I didn't know by face, fired with his pistol. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, that wouldn't matter, the angles and the aim would be wrong, but this was that one time when everything lined up. His round took me in the left bicep, tearing a deep furrow along the outside of my arm before disappearing into the wall. I dropped the AK, wanting to make sure that the cop didn't think I was one of the gunmen.
"I'm an English teacher!" I yelled as I sank to the floor, stepping back. "Cam Swagger!"
I had to give the cop credit, a lot of others wouldn't have listened. Hell, in New York or Cleveland I probably wouldn't have even had a chance to get a word out, I'd have been filled with ten or more bullets in a single blast. But in Dona Ana County, New Mexico, a lot of the sheriff’s deputies had still grown up on the idea of community policing, and there were even some of the older deputies who carried a six shot revolver instead of a semi-automatic. Also, a lot of them were retired military, which gave them a better sense of fire control by and large. This was one of those men, who gave me the benefit of the doubt. He kept his pistol trained on me, though. "Don't move."
"I don't plan on it," I said, still not feeling the wound. Adrenaline was coursing through me too quickly, and the shock of the gunshot still hadn't faded away. "But you don't have to keep that S&W pointed at me."
His gun still didn't move, but the cop did use his lapel microphone, calling out to someone outside. I lay against the wall, holding my right hand over the wound in my left arm, trying to slow the flow of blood. In less than a minute, a couple of paramedics were there, checking me out. "Hey, Cam."
I identified one of them, a guy who’d acted as the on-site medic during some of the high school's basketball games, and I nodded. "Hey, Bruce. Can you tell this guy that I'm not one of the gunmen, and that I work here?"
Bruce turned his head. "He does work here. He's the English teacher."
The cop lowered his pistol, relaxing for the first time since he'd shot me. Bruce checked me out, then nodded his head. "Okay, it's gotta suck, but you can walk. Here, take this and get outside."
I nodded. "Go check the others. I can take care of the rest of it myself."
Bruce helped me to my feet and handed me a wad of gauze bandage. "The truck is right outside."
I grimaced as I pressed the wad against my arm. I could hear movement in the hallways, and I saw that the cops and staff were leading evacuations. I nodded to myself, gladdened that things weren’t as bad as they could’ve been. Except for the two rooms I'd passed, I saw normal-looking groups of students, scared out of their minds, but normal-looking. Most of the rooms on the first floor didn't have anyone coming out, and I assumed that the students had done what I'd expected mine to do if we'd been on the first floor, bailing out the windows.
I was getting ready to walk out when the teacher in the room next to mine, Bonnie Roberts, came down the narrow stairway, leading her class and mine. She stopped, seeing the nearly decapitated body of the second gunman, shrieking. Dwayne, who'd been right behind her, took it more in stride. "Swag, you did that?"
I looked up at him, ignoring him and speaking to Bonnie. "Take them out the other stairwell. Everyone up and out the other side of the building."
Dwayne flashed me a thumbs up in approval, turning around. "All right, you heard Swag. Let's get our asses up the stairs and down the other fucking way."
"You don't need the fuck, Dwayne," I chided. Bonnie shook her head to clear her mind, and I had to give her credit. Not a lot of people can see a dead body for the first time and not lose it at least a little bit. She turned as well, adding her voice in helping Dwayne get the two classes up the stairs and out of the building.
"Your class, huh?" the cop said, looking at me and then up the stairs. I understood, he had to stay at the scene and secure evidence. "Interesting group."
"They're a unique bunch," I admitted. "Listen, I know you've got procedures, but can I go out to the truck and get this bandaged? I know what Bruce said, but you're the man in charge of the scene."
The cop nodded. "Just stay on school grounds. If you run into another medic or a doc who has the time, maybe get treated at the office instead of outside."
"I will," I said. I left the scene behind, trying to calm my nerves. I had to think, and I knew the first thing I had to do was get in contact with Melina. While Pinzetti may have attacked the school, the fact was there may have been more men in his group, and Albertine had to be secured.
After that, I could worry about my damn arm.
Chapter 30
Melina
I drove north, simply because the last time someone had attacked me and Cam, we were south of Truth or Consequences, and I didn't feel like pressing my luck a second time even if it was illogical superstition. I checked my gas gauge and saw that I at least had a half a tank of gas. I pressed on, heading north up I-25, wondering where I should try and hold up. I couldn't just run, there was no reason to. At the same time, I didn't feel safe staying anywhere near the Truth or Consequences area.
I wasn't a warrior, I knew that. While Cam told me he knew how to handle himself, and I'd at least seen him hold a pistol, I hadn't fired a gun bigger than a light pistol at an arcade against a bunch of zombies. Not exactly what you would call premier training for the situation I was in.
I saw a truck stop up ahead, and noticed that I was approaching the town of Belen. While it wasn't exactly huge, I figured it was public enough that I could stay relatively safe, as even in the middle of the day I could see at least a dozen big rigs parked outside a truck stop just off the Interstate.
I pulled in and filled up my tank, just out of habit. Going inside, I found that the truck stop was one of those full-service type places, having not only gas and a mini-market but even showers and a little cafe. I went over and ordered a coffee, hoping the staff wouldn't mind me crashing in one of the three booths for as long as it took for me to figure out my next move.
I sat there, nursing the coffee along, trying not to freak out. The television over the counter was turned to the news, this time, the Albuquerque ABC station. "Can you turn it up?" I asked the waitress. I really didn't want to know, I feared the worst, but I had to. "Please, I’m from T or C."
"Sure," the waitress said. "You got any kids in that school?"
I shook my head. "No."
The waitress nodded and turned up the volume, handing me the remote before going over to a trucker who wanted a grilled cheeseburger. Fearfully, I listened in, worry twisting its way through my guts like a boa constrictor.
/> "Preliminary reports say that the shooters were armed with fully automatic assault rifles," the voiceover said in that professionally concerned voice that seemed to have become a requirement of every newscaster nowadays. Currently they were showing an aerial shot of the high school, and I wondered if that was a shared shot among the various networks or if ABC had their chopper on the scene.
I missed part of what was said next, but the camera cut away from the aerial shot to show groups of crying, panicked high schoolers gathered outside the school in what looked like the parking lot, but I didn't know the school well enough to be a hundred percent sure. “A teacher, who we have been unable to confirm the name of so far, led the two gunmen through the hallways, where they were shot by the police. The teacher was wounded in the attack, but that is all we know for sure."
My heart leaped in my chest as I heard the announcer. There was only one man I knew brave enough to actually taunt a couple of gun toting psychopaths while unarmed. Cam had that sort of noble streak to him, and I knew that it was him. And the news reports were that he was alive. Wounded, but alive.
I felt a knot working itself loose in my stomach, as at least a little bit of the fear that had been coiling inside me since the first police car went by the pharmacy started to unravel. Ironically, the immediate feeling I had was not of elation, but rather an intense need to pee. Grabbing my backpack that had the Albertine laptop inside, I went into the toilet, locking the stall behind me.
Perhaps it was the relief, perhaps it was the fear, but whatever it was, I started sobbing while on the toilet, burying my face in my hands. My body convulsed, racking in deep hitches as I purged myself, letting go of as much as I could before I needed to re-establish control. I thought I was done when a fresh wave of tears came out, and I ended up having to flush three times in order to get down all of the toilet paper I used to blow my nose and wipe my eyes.
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