Lockdown (3 page)

Natalie wails, “You're leaving us out here to die!”

If they don't open the door for Natalie, they'll never open it for me. I hit the door again and again. Zoe puts her hands on my shoulders. I am so panicked I can barely feel her touch. She says, “Adam, we have to move.”

Where? The classrooms are locked down and we're locked out. And it's my fault because I wanted to leave the school. Instead of getting in a classroom when we had the chance, I wasted our time trying to leave.

Zoe takes my hand. Suddenly, I can feel her touch again, feel that she's still here.

“Now, Adam.”

We look down at Natalie. She's slipped to her knees, rocking, her hands over her ears. Zoe reaches for one of Natalie's hands and I grab the other. We yank her to her feet and start to run just as we hear the first shots.

The shots sound at a distance, on the main floor, maybe at the office. Between Zoe and me, Natalie stumbles. I yank on her hand. “Get up!”

Zoe throws me a look. She speaks gently to Natalie. “We have to get out of the hall. Can you keep up with us?”

Natalie nods.

We take off down the hall. The classroom doors are closed, all of them. Behind the doors, I can hear people's frightened
voices. Try being out in the hall, I think to myself.

At the boy's washroom, we push against the door and it opens. If we can get in, so can the shooter, but it's better than being in the open hallway. We jam into the washroom.

A guy I know, Baker, is sitting on the sink. As we burst in, his eyes get really wide and he drops a smoldering butt into the sink. Exhaling, he says, “You scared me, man. I thought you were Connor, going to bust me.”

Natalie stops blubbering. Zoe blinks. Didn't he hear the alarm? I wave away the cloud of smoke and say, “Uh, Baker, you know there's a lockdown, right?”

With his eyes narrowed against the smoke, he looks at Zoe and Natalie. “What are you two doing in here? This is the boys' can, isn't it?” He looks around as if he isn't sure.

I say, “Baker, it's a real lockdown. It's not a drill.”

Baker's eyebrows lift. He reaches into the sink to retrieve his smoke.

“Baker, there's a shooter in the school.”

As if on cue, we hear the sound of gunshots, closer than before.

Baker swears under his breath. He launches himself off the sink and into the toilet cubicle.

Zoe pulls Natalie farther away from the door. There's no lock on the washroom door, no surprise. One cubicle. Three urinals. A partition between the door and the urinals.

More gunshots, and now there is no denying it—the shots are very close.

I push Zoe and Natalie into the cubicle. “Get up on the toilet. If the shooter just looks under the door, maybe he'll think no one is in here.”

It's lame and we all know it. Natalie starts to cry again.

I say, “Of course, if he hears us, he'll blast us all.”

Natalie shuts up.

Baker crouches with his feet on the toilet seat. He must have size thirteen feet, and there is no way we're all going to fit up there with him, not unless one of us stands in the toilet, which I'm prepared to do right about now.

More gunfire and it's close. Even in the washroom, I can hear screaming voices from the classrooms. The shooter can't get into the classrooms, not with the lockdown. I guess he could blow a classroom door lock, but from the way he's moved through the school, it appears more random. He doesn't seem to be spending much time in any one place.

Natalie and Zoe fold themselves around Baker on the toilet seat. Natalie pulls out her phone.

Everyone with a cell phone must have phoned 911 by now. Where the hell are the cops?

Zoe says, “Natalie, you're not actually calling someone, are you?”

Natalie gives Zoe a “yeah, duh” look.

Zoe says, “Because you can't make a sound.”

Natalie says, “Oh. Right.” And she closes the phone.

More shots and they're so close that I don't stop to think about it. I jump up onto the toilet seat. If I face the door of the cubicle
and perch with only my heels on the seat, I can just fit.

The gunshots stop. I want to reach for Zoe, I want to hear her voice. As if Baker can read my mind, he whispers, “Easy, man.”

For a long time it's quiet. Then I hear two things. First, the classroom noise filtering into the hallway gets louder. That means someone has opened the washroom door. I feel Baker tense. I'd like to scream except I can't even breathe. The second sound I hear is the chirpy ringtone of Natalie's cell phone.

Thank you, Natalie. We might as well hang a sign on the door,
Here we are
.

She silences the phone.

Sweat runs into my eyes but I don't dare move to wipe it away. Baker is weirdly still. The hallway sound recedes and I hear the washroom door close. Is he gone? Did he leave?

Footsteps. Heavy footsteps. He's here.

My knees go liquid and it's all I can do to keep my balance.

The footsteps pause outside the cubicle.
I hear him laugh, softly at first, then more loudly. Then the cubicle door opens.

He's wearing a blue shirt with buttons and a pocket. He's got a gun in his hand. Our eyes lock. He stops laughing.

The shooter is Josh.

The gun comes up.

Maybe I'll stop the bullets. Maybe Baker won't get hit. Maybe Josh will shoot me and leave the others.

I feel suddenly ice cold.

I watch Josh close his finger over the trigger.

Did I feed the dog this morning? I can't remember if I fed the dog.

I smell piss.

The sound of the gun rockets inside my head, and I clamp my eyes closed and scream. Everyone is screaming, even Josh, and then he shoots again and it's totally dark inside the washroom.

Somewhere it registers that I'm not dead, but it takes Baker stepping into the toilet bowl to convince me. Baker shakes off his foot, cursing. I feel drops of toilet water spray my face. Okay, I'm not dead.

I stumble off the toilet seat, my legs barely able to take my weight. “Zoe?” Broken glass crunches under my feet. “Zoe!”

“I'm fine.” I feel her hands on my chest. “Are you hurt?”

“No.” My voice is a croak.

I hear the snap of a lighter, and Baker's face appears in the small circle of flame. “He shot out the light,” Baker says. He shovels the broken glass out of the way with his shoe.

In the pale pool of light, the four of us stand, stunned. When I look at Natalie, I gasp. Blood is running from under her hair. Baker must see it too. He says to her, “You better sit down.”

Natalie touches her fingers against her chin. When she sees the blood, her eyes get big.

I grab Natalie and lower her to the floor. Zoe rips out a sheaf of paper towel and presses it to the side of Natalie's head.

Natalie starts to howl.

I'm no doctor, but based on her volume, she doesn't seem to be badly hurt. I say to Baker, “Hold the lighter up.”

Baker says, “You want me to open the door, get the light from the hall?”

Zoe and I reply at once. “No!”

Baker shrugs. He holds the lighter close to Natalie's head. Zoe eases away the wad of paper towel. The blood seems to be oozing
from just over Natalie's right ear. Gently, I run my hand over her scalp. Except for the blood, her skull feels like it should. I say to her, “A bullet must have grazed your head.”

Grazed her head. As in, barely missed shattering her skull. As in, barely missed splattering her brain. I replace Zoe's hand against the wound, pressing her hand for a moment.

Baker whips off his shirt and wraps it around Natalie. “Gotta keep her warm.” He gathers Natalie against his chest. “Here. Lean back. I've got you.”

Baker must be the most unlikely Boy Scout, but Natalie settles against him. Her howling subsides to hiccupping sobs. It's clear now that the smell of pee was Natalie's. If Baker notices, he ignores it. Natalie opens her cell phone and starts punching the keys.

“The bleeding seems to have stopped.” Zoe peers under the paper towel. She grabs a clean stack and hands them to Baker. He holds them to Natalie's head. Zoe straightens up.

I pull her into a hug and burrow my nose
in her hair. “Are you crying?” I hold her so that I can see her face. “You are.” I offer her my sleeve to wipe her face. “He won't be back, Zoe. If he meant to kill us, he would have.”

“He got Natalie.”

“I think a bullet ricocheted and got Natalie.”

“He still got her. He could have killed her.”

“But he didn't.”

Baker looks up at us. “Weird. I wonder why he didn't kill us.”

I think of the way Josh looked when he found us in the stall. Gleeful. I shudder thinking about it. Then he recognized me. He was surprised at first, and then, I don't know, the look in his eyes changed. He was disappointed maybe. Maybe pissed. Pissed that the kid he finds is the one kid in the entire school he might have been able to call a friend.

I say, “His name is Josh. He won't be back here, but I don't think he's done.”

I feel everyone looking at me. I'm sweating again. Big fat pellets of sweat run down my face. Zoe breaks free of my hug. “It was Josh? Josh with the hamster?”

Natalie gets very quiet.

Baker says, “Who is Josh?”

Baker is in my grade along with Josh. I say, “You know Josh. Glasses. Kind of big. Always wears a blue shirt.”

Baker casts his eyes up and furrows his brow. Finally, he says, “Nope. I've never seen him before.”

Baker must attend class even less than I do. I say, “Anyway, it's Josh. He's just a guy.”

Zoe plants her hands on her hips. “Just a guy with a gun.”

Baker nods. “My uncle has a gun just like he had. Snub-nosed revolver. My uncle hides it in the garage.”

Not much of a hiding place if Baker knows where to find it.

Baker continues, “My uncle was supposed to turn it in, but he said he forgot. He uses a half-moon clip dealie, loads six rounds at a time.”

Zoe says, “Nice. He can kill six people without reloading.”

Baker shrugs. “It's a small gun. It's not exactly an assault weapon.”

Zoe turns to me. “How long has Josh been planning this?”

“You're talking as if I knew something about this. I didn't know he was going to shoot up the school.”

But I remember how Josh looked at us in science, how he seemed to record our faces. My mouth goes dry.

Maybe Natalie is thinking the same thing. She says, “Chase is an ass. He went too far with the hamster.”

Chase is an ass, but I'm surprised to hear Natalie say so. Natalie and Chase are in the alliance of Science 10 idiots. Natalie seems to have forgotten her role in the hamster-eating drama. I say, “It's not like anyone stepped in to stop Chase.”

Natalie detects the barb in my statement. “So this is my fault? No way,” she says. “Josh is crazy, everyone knows that. He was crazy before the hamster thing.”

I say, “I didn't mean it's your fault. I mean, no one stepped in. So maybe it's everyone's fault. And anyway, Josh isn't crazy. He's just different.”

Baker nods. “Totally. Normal to the extreme.”

Zoe looks at him in disbelief. “You're saying Josh is normal?”

Baker says, “It's not like I'd ever do it, but you've never thought about offing someone?”

Zoe says, “No!”

Natalie shrugs. “Whatever.”

I say, “We could try to stop him.”

Zoe snorts. “How?”

Zoe's right, I know she is. What are we going to do against a guy with a gun? All the time you hear about shooters and you think, How could he shoot so many people? Why didn't someone just take him down?

Zoe says, “We can't go out there, Adam. We'll get shot. We were lucky once but we won't be lucky again. We'll get caught and we'll get killed.”

I look at her. She looks different, but I guess no one looks normal when they're scared. I say to her, “If we don't stop Josh, he'll either get shot by the police or he'll shoot himself.”

“So?” Zoe retorts. “Let's hope he blows his brains out before he finds someone else to shoot.”

Zoe's mad, and who could blame her? Nothing makes it right, what Josh is doing. But I think about all those times I've seen people push him around. There must be a hundred more incidents I don't know about.
Maybe Josh has lived his whole life being pushed around.

I say, “You don't know Josh.”

“I don't need to know him.”

“He's not like us.”

“No? Really? Like, we don't take a gun to school to settle our differences?”

Baker and Natalie watch the exchange as if they're watching a tennis match.

I say, “He didn't shoot me. He didn't shoot us. Maybe I can talk to him. Maybe I can stop this whole thing.”

Zoe is quiet for a long moment. Then she says, “Whose side are you on?”

I swallow. “It's not about sides.”

She says, “Of course it's about sides. What else is this about? Either you're on his side or you're on our side.”

Our side. Not her side. I reach out my hands but she bats them away. She says, “Think about this, Adam. The guy has a gun and he's probably killed people. He's out there now trying to kill more people.”

As if to punctuate her statement, we hear distant shots.

“There.” Her mouth tightens. “Maybe he's found someone else cowering in a can. Or maybe he's pinned them against the chained exit door. Maybe he's picking them off one by one.”

The sound of the shots makes my stomach flip. “Zoe, I have to try.”

Zoe jabs me in the chest. “I know he's friggin' crazy, and if you go out there after him, then you're crazy too. If you go out there, you're an idiot and a loser, just like him.”