Paradise Falls (64 page)

Jennifer got up and headed for the old antenna. There was a hatch next to it that opened onto a ladder that ran down into the upper gallery of the auditorium. Jacob touched her shoulder, stopped her, and dropped down before she could climb the ladder. He slid down it length and landed in a crouch, the motioned her in, pulling the trap door closed behind her.

The whole auditorium was dark but the stage lights were on. There was a row of people kneeling on the hardwood.

She saw Rachel. Her friend had a bruise on her cheek, huge and livid, and her eye was swollen shut, her gaze cast down at the floor.

The teachers and administrators were all lined up, kneeling and blindfolded. There were two behind them and one walking in front, all in those blue uniforms. More throughout the auditorium. People were piled up inside- students and people from the town, too. Then she realized the Fangs brought them here to die with everyone else. No loose ends.

“What do we do?”

Jacob moved to the railing and she saw his lips move as he counted.

“I count nine guards. There’s two of us. I want you to shoot the ones on the stage.”

“Jacob,” she said, “I’m not sure… there’s too many.”

“You have to, or we’re all dead.”

She nodded. Then he paused, looking into the dark. He crouched along the railing until he found a small box, with a blinking green light on top.

Jennifer looked again. The whole room was ringed with those lights. Jacob ran back over.

“No time. We gotta drop them now. I’ll take the ones in the crowd, you take the stage. I’ll count to three. Start on the left and work to the right. One, two, bang. Do not hesitate. Understand?”

“What is that box?”

“It’s the demolition explosives. Very stable, very powerful. They set those off and it will level this place. Kill everybody here.”

Jennifer nodded.

“Don’t think about that. I will count to three. Then you shoot. Then the next target. One, two, bang. They will start shooting at us. You have to drop them before they realize where we are and direct fire from below. When I say move, we move, got it?”

Jennifer nodded, but had to choke her stomach back down. Her hands were shaking badly.

“When I say move, flip the safety all the way around to full auto and get ready. We’re heading down the steps. We have to get those doors open and get the people out.”

Jacob unslung his rifle and leaned it over the rail. Jennifer did the same beside him and aimed at her first target.

Do not hesitate
.

He said three before she had time to think and by then she’d already pulled the trigger. His rifle was not suppressed, like thunder in her ears, but she swept the crosshairs to the next target and pulled the trigger without even counting, watched the man start to fall and was firing again before he hit the ground. A strange calm filled her, like a sudden dip in cool waters. In the periphery of the scope she saw people she knew. Her friends. Her children.

“Go!” Jacob roared.

Jennifer surged up, ran with him. There was gunfire from below. Jennifer aimed and fire a burst before she realized what happened. Jacob thumped back against the wall, dropped his rifle. Jennifer ducked and fired, and the auditorium was in chaos. She saw two of the football players tackle one of the Fangs. Gunshots rang out. The flashes and reports turned the auditorium into a thunderstorm, stinging her eyes.

Jacob slumped on the steps.

She grabbed his arm.

“Get up,” she shouted.

“Can’t,” he rasped, “Shot. Vest can’t take rifle.”

Oh God. The front of his vest was punched in. She could see the outline of the broken ceramic plate under the cloth. His breathing was labored. He had a broken rib, or worse. She didn’t even see it happen.

“Get up,” Jennifer bellowed, “God damn it,
get up
.”

Jacob slumped to the floor, struggling to breath, shuddering hard as he gasped for air.

“Go,” he rasped, “Run. Get everybody out.”

“Everybody!” she screamed, “Everybody out now, through the back!
Go!”

He wasn’t moving.

“Get up,” she pleaded, her eyes blurring. She dropped her rifle and pulled on his arm with both hands. He took what looked like a deep breath and shook trying to get it back out, coughed.

“Can’t walk. Go.”

She wanted to hit him, scream at him, “Get up, Jacob. Get
up.
”

Damn it.

“Look at me.”

He looked at her.

“We’re almost home.”

Jacob rasped in a deep breath, shifted, and grabbed the staircase rail. He pulled himself up, turning gray as he did, coughing. He fell against her and they faded into the panicked rush of bodies crashing into the emergency doors. Jennifer shouldered the door open, into the blinding light of the late afternoon. Afternoon. Had it only been a day
?
It felt like a week. Jacob put his arm over her shoulder, leaned on her. Suddenly an arm slipped under him from the other side. Howard, the vice-principal. Without a word, he moved the two of them forward until a
group
of students took Jacob by the arms and, somehow,
picked him up
.

She shouted at Howard as he shouted at the kids to get out.

“Howard, they’re going to blow the building-“

A streaming mass of people flooded across the open field, towards the bleachers. She heard pops behind her, more shooting maybe. The world swirled around her.

“Not far enough,” she heard Jacob say, somehow clear despite all the noise.

“Farther,” Jennifer shouted at the top of her lungs, “Past the football field, everybody
run!”

Howard repeated it, then Rachel, the teachers taking up the chant. She saw Edwards running with his old double barrel, waving everyone on with it. Jennifer wanted to run on her own legs, but she was so
tired.
Past the football field, past the bleachers, towards the hedges.

“Down,” Jacob choked out, “Everybody down.”

Jennifer repeated his words, louder.

There was an in-between, when she was on a stranger’s shoulder -or maybe he was in one of her classes- and when she was pressing into the ground beside Jacob, huddled against him, but it vanished into the space between moments. She saw a flash in the auditorium, another all in the gym, a few more in the hallways, and then the school just
blew out
, the walls folding out like a sand castle kicked by a child, spreading in all directions behind a concussive wave of force and flame that rolled out over the fields, flattening the grass. The auditorium and gym fell in, sucked down into the structure, and a monstrous fist of ash and dust and smoke rose up into the air, curling in on itself until it made a great tower and puffed out, rolling in the wind storm from the flames below. The gas line under the school went up and there was a second, thumping blast, a gout of flames that roared up into the sky, so hot she could feel it on her face and so bright it left a purple stain on her vision when she closed her eyes.

She squeezed Jacob’s hand.

His fingers were limp. He didn’t squeeze back.

13.

Jennifer’s eyes fluttered open- or tried to. She had to make a conscious effort to get them open, like her eyelids were glued together. She felt a soft cloth and a warm hand on her eyes, and finally she got them open and sat up. It felt like her brain was made of rubber and her head was three sizes too big and it was all sloshing around in there, bumping against the bone. It took her a minute to realize where she was, as the light from the windows blinded her. White sheets covered her legs. Her arms were covered in bandages. There was a cast around her left hand, holding the fingers in an un-flexed, neutral resting position. Bandages on her head, too, all over her cheek and one around her middle from an injury she didn’t remember.

Katie held her good hand.

“Hi, Jenn,” she said, her voice cracking.

“Where’s Jacob?”

“Listen to me, okay?” she said. “They did what they could for your hand. The surgeon had to cut off your wedding ring.”

“I don’t care. Where’s Jacob?”

“You’re going to lose a lot of dexterity and feeling in your hand-“

“I don’t
care
, Katie,” she snarled. “Where is he? Take me to him.”

“You can’t get out of bed.”

“The hell I can’t,” she snapped.

“Jenn, you’re on some serious painkillers. You need to-“

Jennifer yanked at the bar running along the bedside until she found the catch and dropped it out of her way. Her bare feet slapped on the floor and it was only then that she felt the wave of nausea and disorientation, and the feeling of an IV line tugging at her arm.

“Hold still,” Katie said, her voice as tight as a drum. “I’ll get you a chair. Just stand there. Can you stand?”

Jennifer nodded, but she wasn’t standing so much as sitting on the bed. Katie came in with a wheelchair, with that same look on her face she always had when she was trying to get over on her mother. Jennifer clutched her gown together and dropped in. Katie put the damn brakes on the wheels to stop her from moving until she brought the IV line around. Jennifer seized it in her good hand, gripping the post hard as Katie pushed her along, slowly. Jennifer looked around the hospital ward and realized she had no idea where she was.

“What is this place?”

“We’re in Harrisburg. The hospital back home couldn’t handle it.”

“What happened? How many people?”

“A lot. Mostly injuries. A few are in critical condition right now. A few didn’t make it,” said Katie. “The guys that were going to break into the school, the SWAT guys, they got it bad. Some of the older teachers were hurt in the explosion, they didn’t get far enough away. Same for some of the kids, they had to push the wheelchair and special ed kids out of the school…” she trailed off. “We’ve lost six so far. Four teachers, two kids.”

Jennifer’s stomach clenched, and she bit back bitter tears as they pressed at her eyes, and her head drooped.

“Katie, where is he? Why won’t you tell me?”

Katie said nothing. She wheeled Jennifer down the hall, and into a room.

She barely recognized him.

Jacob looked thinner somehow, drained. He was covered in blankets, and bandages around his chest and back. His left arm was in a sling, thick bandages all around his shoulder.

“He hasn’t woken up yet,” Katie said, dully. “He has a bunch of broken and bruised ribs and his left lung collapsed. His arm was pretty bad. The doctor said it was touch and go whether they’d have to amputate or not.”

Jacob just laid there, struggling to breath, his eyes pressed closed. The machines beeped a slow rhythm.

“I can come get you when he wakes up,” said Katie.

“No,” said Jennifer.

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” she said.

“I do a lot of things I’m not supposed to do.”

Jennifer wheeled the chair to his side and put her hand in his. Katie stood there for a minute, and Jennifer spotted the first cracks in her neutral mask. She collapsed into a visitor’s chair and began sobbing into her hands, trembling.

“I can’t do this again,” said Katie shook her head in her hands, “I can’t watch you-“

“You’re not going to. He’s going to make it.”

Katie sighed. “I got some of your stuff. Your purse.”

“Thanks,” said Jennifer.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, taking the purse from Katie to rest on her thighs. Its weight sat heavy on her lap.

“What about Faisal and Ana and the others?”

“Faisal is here,” said Katie. “He got shot in the stomach. They had to resection his bowel. It’s bad, but he’s going to make it. His sister is with him.”

Katie sighed, deeply. “Jennifer, the cops were in Jacob’s house. They took all kinds of stuff from the basement. Cleaned it out. I think you guys are gonna be in trouble.”

“Probably,” Jennifer said, softly. “I don’t care.”

Wake up
.

Katie sighed. “The girls are okay. They came with me when I came back to the hospital. I don’t know what’s going to happen to them. I’ve seen some of Jacob’s people, those guys that work for him. They’re doing stuff, I don’t know. They’re around.”

Jennifer didn’t respond. She held Jacob’s big hand on hers, rubbed the pad of her thumb over his. His hand was cold.

“He lost a lot of blood,” Katie said, absently.

They were trying to put it back. There was a bag of it hanging with the other things on the I.V. pole next to him. Jennifer continued to rub his hand.

“I’ll leave you guys alone,” she said, softly. “I’ll go check on the others.”

Jennifer nodded absently, without looking at her. Katie left and Jennifer clutched her bag to her stomach. She moved the wheelchair and leaned over and rested her head on the side of the bed, next to his hand, for a while.

Eventually she sat up, turned the chair around and backed it so she could put her head against the wall, and closed her eyes in a fitful attempt at drugged half-sleep, so drowsy the world floated along without her and she was somehow awake and tired as hell even as she slept. She woke to the soft sound of footsteps and a shadow falling across the room from the corridor. Her head shot up.

“Katie?”

“No, not Katie.”

He walked into the room with his hands in the pockets of an oversized hooded sweatshirt, pulled one out and swept the hood back. Elliot looked like death warmed over, pale as a sheet, a haunted look in his eyes. Jennifer clutched her purse, and felt the heavy weight inside. Of course it was heavy. She left her father’s gun in it.

“What do you want?”

“Do you know what they did?” he said, softly.

Jennifer said nothing.

“They let me go. After the boat. I told them who I was the lawyers came and got me out and I went home. My father has been arrested,” he snarled, his voice cracking. “Arrested, do you understand? Senator Katzenberg has been arrested. My father has been arrested, you goddamned whore. The lawyers say I’m next. I’m supposed to meet with them and turn myself in.”

He slipped his other hand free from his pocket. The nickel plating on the gun caught the moonlight, turning it pale white as it trembled in his hand.

“It’s all your fault,” Elliot snapped, “You two. If you’d stayed with me like you were supposed to, none of this would have happened,” his voice rose. “It’s all his fault!”