"This Is Not A Drill"

The classroom was silent. Gone were the grating scrapes of the chairs and desks, the soft chatter of twenty or so teens. Now, they were huddled in a corner, squeezed as tightly as they could out of sight of the door. The lights were off, the shades down, and the door locked. Breathing was unsteady and fear hung in the air, as if it were the humid and heavy air of mid-summer. Twenty-four pairs of eyes stared at the door as if it was the Gate of Hell itself. Which, perhaps, it was.
The teacher was sitting in front of the huddled group, mouth set in a grim line. There was a single thought running through each person’s head, one simple line from the loudspeaker. “This is not a drill.”
At first, a few nervous laughs had broken out at the silliness of the abused phrase, but they died quickly with the first gunshot. Panic replaced anxiety, and recklessness took the place of common sense. The worst of humanity was showing through when some of the teens eyed each other, clearly thinking “I hope he dies instead of me.”
No one spoke. No one moved. The class was one in their fear and cowardice. Except for three sixteen-year-olds. Three teens who were struggling to keep it together, to stay strong for the sake of their peers. Whatever animosity had been built had shattered when the desperation of the situation came upon them. The three teens, a boy and two girls, could be the reason one of the students survived. The immensity of this responsibility was evident; their shoulders were slouched, holding the weight of twenty-three lives.
One of the girls, Anna, was leaning on the boy. Isaac had his arm wrapped around her, his affections for her quite obvious. Bridget was sitting on the other side of Anna, arms crossed and eyes looking deliberately at anything but her friends. She could not believe that she could feel so angry at the two people next to her when they were faced with a near certainty of death. But, I suppose that is human nature, she thought, petty and fickle to the end.
And she tried to comfort herself, repeating over and over that she didn’t care. But the tightening of her heart proved that she did. Perhaps even too much. Bridget was a coward, and she knew it. But she couldn’t help thinking that if her friends were in danger, she would do something. As she stared at the door, she thought ‘Maybe dying won’t be so bad. I have little to live for.’
A second gunshot ripped apart the silence, and the class jumped.
Closer, this time.
Isaac looked at the girl in his arms, his heart warming. ‘Her life is worth mine,’ he thought, ‘but I would rather live.’ He scowled at the selfish thought, but only because he knew it was true. He glanced over Anna’s head at his best friend. Bridget looked alone and cold. Isaac’s heart gave a painful throb as guilt clawed at him.
‘What must she think of me? Does she believe I’ve chosen between them? I’ve loved Anna since grade school, but Bridget has been my friend forever. I love her, as well. This isn’t fair. Why should I have to decide?’ Bridget looked up and caught his gaze. Isaac began to motion for her to move closer to him, but before he could lift his hand, he had received a curt nod and her attention shifted back to the door.
‘Could I choose?’ he wondered.
A third gunshot, ever closer, had caused a whimper to escape the lips of a terrified classmate.
Anna felt, somewhat irrationally, safe. She adored Isaac, and, as she looked at Bridget, she knew she cherished her best friend. ‘But, could I die for them?’ She was afraid of the answer. ‘No. I don’t think I could.’ Anna shivered at that horrible thought. ‘I love them! I do! But I have so much to live for.’
She felt Isaac’s grip tighten and she buried her face into his shoulder. She, like her male companion, was also wracked with guilt, understanding that she was not deserving of the protection she knew he felt he had to provide. Anna could not die, but neither could she carry the weight of the dead.
Faintly, the sound of shoes meeting tile permeated the room. The slow, steady walked unnerved the students. Was Death really so apathetic? Wild thoughts flew through their heads; a tall, skeletal man in a trench coat, a demon with glowing red eyes and a long, clubbed tail, a freshly rotting corpse, was strolling down the bare and proletariat hallway
Louder and louder the steps grew, until the entire class was holding its breath. The glass pane in the door was smashed with the butt of a gun. One girl, huddled in the very back corner, began to cry. A hand reached in and tested the doorknob. Upon discovering it was locked, the stranger replaced his hand with the pistol, and shot off the lock. Anna, Isaac and Bridget tensed. This was it. Their own, personal Judgment Day.
As the door glided open, Bridget swore under her breath. A man stepped into the room and stopped. Not a beast or a demon, but a fairly normal looking, blue collar man. In fact, with his white dress shirt, khaki slacks, and tacky red tie, he could have been the man you met in the deli that very morning. But the gun and the blood stains ruined this everyman’s appearance. There was no sentience in his eyes, no comprehension. His humanity had fled when he walked into a school to murder without a reason.
Sneering, he trained his gun on the teacher and put a bullet between her eyes. There was a collective scream as the body fell on a few students. Most of the teenagers were crying now, some looking at the windows, wondering if they could survive the fall. Others were scrambling to duck behind a classmate, using each other as shields.
Bridget snorted in disgust, desperately trying to quell her own fears. The intruder turned on her. Isaac’s heart stopped, then resumed at a rapid tattoo. The man leveled the pistol at Bridget’s chest.
‘No!’ Isaac screamed in his mind. He pushed Anna down as he moved to shove Bridget out of the way.
Bridget stared at the barrel of the gun a few yards in front of her. Even if she had wanted to move, she couldn’t have. She didn’t have much of a choice but to resign herself to her fate. Her life, and now death, would be just another number, another statistic. And suddenly, she was moving. Bridget’s head snapped around and she saw Isaac pushing Anna down behind her. He was also pulling Bridget in front of her. ‘He’s using me as a shield,’ she thought. Her heart broke, and her soul cried out in torment. ‘I suppose death is a reasonable choice, now, if even to him I am only a number.’
Her thoughts were cut short as she registered the sound of a gunshot and a burning pain in her right shoulder. Bridget slowly looked down, so dazed that she could barely grasp that there was a hole right under her collarbone. Isaac stared down in abject horror at her. Anna winced as Bridget’s blood splashed onto her bare arm. The rest of the class fell silent.
Bridget was feeling nothing, blissful nothing.
And then, anger.
The will to survive.
Her eyes fell on her attacker and an almost inhuman growl left her throat. Her mind was screaming at her ‘Destroy the threat! Live! Only the weak die. You are not weak.’ Her base instincts had surfaced while her conscious was dealing with the excruciating pain she was feeling.
Bridget pushed Isaac aside and stood up slowly, shaking in rage and pain. She grasped the back of the closest chair until her knuckles turned white. The man let loose a laugh, a terrifying, maniacal laugh. His deranged smile was by far the most petrifying sight on Earth; the sight of a human lost to blood and violence, to his own, God-like actions.
Bridget, now half-crazed from the pain, picked up the chair, and the man, still chuckling, raised his gun again. Blood poured from her wound from the new stress on the area, creating a red stream running down her arm, and onto the green-tiled floor. Isaac and Anna suddenly realized exactly what idea Bridget’s pain-fogged mind had formed. As they reached forward, Bridget charged the intruder, chair raised like a bludgeon.
Isaac’s hand grasped only air.
The man squeezed the trigger, and the girl collapsed a few feet in front of him, chair clattering across the room into a wall, body spasming in pain. Anna sobbed into Isaac’s side. He, on the other hand, was sitting listlessly on the cold floor. He had to save Bridget. But that last shot might have killed her.
Her blood was pooling on the floor, from both the wound in her right shoulder and her left ribcage. The wounds were pockmarks on her otherwise whole body, blaspheming life itself. And then, miraculously, she was moving again, crawling weakly, yet determinedly, towards her murderer. Her approach was slow, her body experiencing such an enormous amount pain, she was nearly unconscious. Slowly, with obvious pleasure, the man took aim at her head. As she reached his feet, her good arm reached out and grabbed his ankle. Instead of firing, he blinked down at the girl in surprise, the human contact stopping him.
“You fucking bastard,” she hissed loudly.
With all of her remaining strength, she yanked the man’s leg out from under him. Caught unprepared, the intruder went down, his head crashing into the classroom door. Bridget winced and moaned in agony as she rolled onto her wound. Her eyes rolled back and her body went still.
The entire class was pale and shaking. Nothing could have prepared them for this. Gently, Isaac pushed Anna away, and stood up, shuddering at the sight of Bridget’s motionless body. The man was unmoving, his limbs sprawled out, his gun now under a nearby chair. Isaac walked unsteadily over to Bridget, shivering uncontrollably, his vision blurring. He felt a tear roll down his cheek as he collapsed next to her. Isaac rolled her onto her back carefully. Bridget’s eyes flew opened and she cried out in pain. He choked as he saw the anguish in her eyes.
“Oh God,” she pleaded weakly, “just make it stop. Make the pain stop.”
Tears were now streaming down her face as she stared at the ceiling, immobile.
“Bridget?” he called softly, his own voice wavering.
Her head fell to the side, eyes now observing the torn flesh on her right shoulder. Isaac watched her mouth form noiseless words, the pain so overwhelming that she couldn’t bring herself to move any part of her body. Bridget’s eyes were then moving, searching for something, her gaze roving wildly about the group of teens only a few yards away.
When her sight came to rest on Anna, who was watching in abject horror, her entire body shook, her eyes bulging from the fresh wave of pain. Looking back at her shoulder, her breathing becoming more and more irregular, Isaac finally understood.
He understood.
It felt like the floor had dropped out from under him, like the entire world had melted away, leaving him adrift in a painful, terrifying land of awareness.
This was his fault.
He was the one that had pushed Bridget, the one who had pushed her in the path of the bullet.
But I was trying to save her, he thought frantically, He was going to shoot her point blank, and I was only trying to get her and Anna out of the way…Oh God.
Isaac stopped breathing, his eyes growing wide. From his position on the floor he couldn’t see Anna, but he knew she was there, watching him. What if…what if he had been subconsciously only been trying to save Anna. What if…
Staring at Bridget’s glazed eyes, he sat up slowly, hands moving to clutch his head. Stuttering, he stared at the dying girl.
“No…no…it’s not…no, I…it’s-it’s not MY FAULT!” he screamed, despairingly. The guilt was overwhelming, he couldn’t feel anything else but this sense of betrayal towards this girl, the girl that he loved.
He loved?
He gagged, eyes locked on Bridget’s face, and turned away. He didn’t deserve to love her, she who had sacrificed herself to save them. Isaac could feel the bile burning his throat. He did this.
It was his fault.
In her last lucid moment, Bridget’s eyes snapped up to Isaac’s back, and again, her mouth worked as she tried desperately to tell him. He had to know that she loved him, even if to him, she was only a shield. Using the absolute last bit of strength, she moved her hand the few inches left to touch Isaac’s. He whirled around in time to hear her murmur “Love…y-you…” as she coughed up more of her blood.
Isaac’s brain momentarily shut down. He watched impassively as Bridget’s body convulsed one final time, and felt her hand fall limply away from his own. She was dead.
Then, his body was spurred back into life, his heart beating wildly, his chest heaving with each breath. He looked away, and his gaze came to rest on Anna.
Anna was crying, her hand outstretched towards Isaac, wanting to feel him, wanting him to comfort her. Shaking his head frantically, Isaac tried to back away from her.
He had to leave, had to get out of that room, the room filled with all those innocent lives that had seen his sin.
This was his fault.
He had killed Bridget.
His arm brushed Bridget’s leg and his gaze fell on the body. Yes, body, that’s all that Bridget was now; a cold body that would be buried in the cold earth, that would decay and…and…
Isaac fell onto all fours and vomited. His body heaved until there was nothing left. He slipped down onto his elbows, coughing violently, tears now streaming down his cheeks. He was the one that deserved to die, the one that should join the corpses and the maggots that resided in a lifeless ground.
This was his fault.
His fault.
Bridget.
His hand curled into a fist. His face set in a resolute expression, his eyes adapted the look of a condemned sinner. Gently, he reached out and stroked Bridget’s cold cheek with a tenderness he had never been able to show the girl while she was alive. Isaac pushed himself off the ground, scanning the room slowly, deliberately.
Reverently, he stepped around Bridget’s lifeless body, and knelt down again next to a chair a few feet away.
Realizing Isaac’s intentions, Anna pushed herself upright. Before she could even move to her feet, Isaac turned his head to the left, and looked straight into the girl’s eyes out of the corner of his own as he lifted his right arm. Anna again reached out a hand to him, and could only watch in sick fascination as the last round left the chamber with a loud shot.
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