Target 84 (25 page)

“That little girl was dead and in her place stood a cold-blooded killer.
”―
Reyna Pryde
Moving down the hall towards the lounge sets my mind back. Vicious memories bombard me.

Starving, freezing, torture.

I try to blink them away. Moving quietly, I screw my silencer into place. I twist the knob to the lounge door.

It’s yanked open before I have a chance to push it open. I step back. Mac, one of my former teachers, fills the doorway.
Shit.
I aim and fire. He drops. I step over him. The other teachers have been alerted to something being out of order. I can see them reaching for their weapons of choice. The silencer dulls my experience as it lets off a soft popping sound.

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

Four lie unmoving. Head shots. But two wiggle slightly still. A light blinks in the corner of the room.
Silent alarm.
I hear a cacophony of footsteps coming down the hall. Where are the other three? The first student enters, her knife poised to throw, and upon sight launches it at me. I lean right. It catches my shirt. Pop. The bullet from the child
behind
her blows through my arm. I scream on impact, bumping into a table. Books and reports scatter. White-hot pain rips through me. Raising my gun, I fire off three rounds.

The knife wielder hits the floor. I reach for my other pistol at my thigh. The boy with the gun leans around the door frame. Pop. Headshot. As I move to exit the room, I’m caught with an elbow to the nose. The blow knocks me backwards. My gun hits the floor. The boy follows me into the room. Grabbing the wooden chair to my right, I lift and swing with my good arm. The contact sends the boy stumbling into the microwave on the counter. Regaining his composure, a sick smile spreads across his face. He grabs a can of beans from the countertop and tosses it into the microwave before punching a button. The microwave comes to life, plate spinning the metal can round and round inside as he lunges for me.

With one arm useless, I turn my good side towards him. He reaches for the collar of my shirt. I sidestep and kick my leg out. He grabs a chair as he stumbles. As I turn to face him, the chair cracks across my thigh with the force of a wrecking ball. I howl with pain. Temporarily blinded by stars in my vision, I push my good arm out in front of me. He pushes me backwards. My hip hits something solid. My voice no longer sounds like my own as painful grunts and whines leave my mouth. He shoves my face down. The hum of the microwave going in my ear. The glass front shatters into my face. Hot beans sear the glass-lacerated skin.

I scream.

“I don't want to die without any scars.
”―
Chuck Palahniuk
His screams worsen. I slide the handgun into the improvised leg holster strapped to my thigh, opting for my knife instead.

I open the door to reveal a scene of utter devastation. The scale of destruction created in such a short time defies imagination. Mangled binders, eviscerated books, and reports lay thick on the concrete floor. Pieces of a chair are strewn all around me. The cabinets and drain board have been ripped away from the wall and lay in a jumbled pile in the corner, splintered and flattened. The microwave is smoking. I turn to check my six, scanning around and behind me. Nothing moves. Most people, when they see something like this, their immediate reaction is to ask how could somebody do this and why.

In movies, the bad guys always explain. Always have a reason. But in reality they find no need to justify what they do. They just do it. Explanations are simply to give people the illusion of safety. Because if it can't be explained, then it's just meaningless chaos. It could touch any one of us at any moment. Which is exactly what it is. Bentley. His voice has a strange, hollow timbre. His eyes are eerie blue marbles. His face is burned and cut.

“Bird.”

For an instant I'm airborne before I hit the floor, face first, busting my bottom lip on a piece of shattered chair. I spit out a mixture of splinters and blood and try to get to my feet. A foot on my ribs shoves me back down. I twist, locking an elbow around his knee and yank hard. He comes down heavily on top of me, knocking the breath from me. I roll left to attempt to get out from under him. He swings a fist and misses, giving me enough time to maneuver myself on top of him. Using my knees to pin down his arms, I grab his shirt, twist the material, and yank him up, growling into his face, "You clearly would have
never
graduated."

He snarls at me, raw and savage. In the depths of his rage, I can also see his pain. Pain and rage lives in the hearts of all the children here. It’s heartbreaking yet there is nothing I can do to change it. He will kill me if I let him. I grapple with him until I manage to get my hands to his throat, and then bang his head against the floor twice, in quick succession. He lays unconscious between my thighs.

Moving to Bentley, I push my hands under his armpits and haul him into a seated position. He howls with pain. I run my hands over his chest, checking for wounds, his arms. He groans. His arm has a hole in it. A bullet hole.

“We need to get you out.”

“It’s just a flesh wound,” he grunts, teeth gritted. I continue checking his body. Torso, clean, right leg, clean, left leg, clean break at the thigh. Holstering my gun I ask, “Can you walk if I help?” His eyes glaze over, unfocused, then come back. He nods.

Smoke and cries ripple through the building now. Standing, I see kids running across the yard, scaling the wall, weapons in tow, and fighting each other from my second-floor vantage point. It’s chaos. Bentley makes a gurgling sound from his seated position. I turn back to him.

The boy. The unconscious boy from the floor is very awake and very angry. His fists feel like cinder blocks. Where did he come from? His punches rain down hard and fast. My nose shatters with a sharp crack. The room goes white for a moment. I squirm out of the way and feel his next blow graze against my temple. His fist pounds into the floor. Bones crunch next to my ear. He rears backward, cradling his hand. Swinging my legs up, I wrap them around his neck, and yank. His body follows his head as he goes tumbling backward. I twist and roll with the momentum, tightening my leg-lock around his throat, squeezing my thighs together, choking him. He flails and kicks, hammering on my legs with weakening fists. I clench tighter, waiting until no more strength remains in his punches. Unwinding myself from him, I push away and back to Bentley.

I haul him up as gently as I can. Hobbling at a slow pace, he grunts with every step we take. I look to him, worried.

“I’m okay,” he grits. Stopping in the explosives classroom, I lean Bentley against a student desk. He clutches his arm to his chest and bares his weight on one leg.

“What’re you doing?”

“I’m going to make a C-4 bomb with a timer.” I want, no, need to leave nothing behind. A simple fire won’t do. I want every last shred of Ravenbrook erased. Grabbing a one-pound block of C-4, I form it into a ball.

“Going big, huh?” Bentley wheezes. I snort. Mostly C-4 is molded into rectangles or squares, but a ball-like charge guarantees the highest detonation momentum and we need large-scale destruction. I nod to him while forming second and third balls, each smaller than the previous. Stacking them largest to smallest on each other, the C-4 snowman will cause an utterly devastating effect. A snowman that decimates. Cute.

I glance at Bentley. He’s growing paler by the minute. The burns on his face are weeping, the bullet hole is bleeding, and his leg is cocked at an awkward angle. I’m running out of time. I grab one of the alarm clock innards from the shelf. Taking some Nichrome wire, and threading it through a safety fuse, I connect the wire to the relay and set the alarm for ten minutes.

“We need to go,” I say.

“Turn your wounds into wisdom.
”―
Oprah Winfrey
I’m going to black out. Gray clouds blur the edges of my vision.

“Come on,” Greta huffs. Survival trumps pain. I keep moving. It takes entirely too long to get out of the building. She can’t shoulder my weight for much longer.

“Bird.”

“Shh.”

“Bird!” I croak.

“What, Bent?”

She stops to look at me. Her calculating eyes rake over me, head to toe, taking stalk of my abilities or lack thereof. Fear flickers only for an instant.

“We’ll never make it far enough away like this,” I say. She shakes her head at me.

“We’re fine. Keep moving.” Readjusting her grip on my good arm, we move forward at a snail’s pace. After another thirty feet from the front entrance she stops. The cold helps numb some of the pain.

“Bentley, I’m going to have to carry you. We only have a minute.” Groaning my protest, I let my
woman
carry me in a fireman’s hold. Take my balls and throw them away. I won't ever need them again at this point. I jostle with every quick step she takes, pain radiating and expanding each time. Finally she stops and sets me down.

It’s snowing lightly. She sits next to me. A few kids scramble around the campus, but most have fled. She stares at the building. I stare at her. Bloody, small lacerations mar her beautiful face. Bruises are already developing on her milky skin along with a broken nose. She seems impervious to it.

A flash, followed by a giant boom, shatters the air around us. The concussion blows me backwards, flat on my back. A fireball flattens before becoming an egg-shaped cloud that dominates the skyline. Greta helps me sit up. Smoke rings rise, writhing from the center of the school. Fists of orange flames smash their way from windows, no doubt as the rest of the explosives housed in the school detonate. The noise of glass shattering and the hoarse howls of students crackle in the air. Thousands of pieces of glass and brick, a deadly snowfall, shower down around us. It’s epic. Cathartic. The building settles into a large-scale bonfire. Flames lick everything in its path.

“They say if you look into the flames of fire you can see your future,” I pant through pain.

“Who says?” Greta asks, watching the flames caress and singe Ravenbrook.

“Unimportant. What do you see Greta?”

“Unimportant huh?” she huffs, but cocks her head and watches the burning building quietly. I let my own eyes settle into a trance-like gaze.

“I see you,” she murmurs.

If my leg wasn’t broken and my face didn’t feel like it was falling off, I’d jump to my feet and kiss her wildly. I don’t. My leg hurts like a bitch and I’ll probably pass out from shock soon. I’m barely holding it together as it is.

“Greta Billings, I think you love me,” I taunt weakly.

“I want my life to mean something,” she says, hoisting me up. Her eyes hold steadily to mine as she adds, “You’re something.”

I pant through the searing pain in my thigh and arm. My vision blurs. She shakes her head at me and sets me back down. She says something but it’s warbled, as if we’re underwater. I blink once. Twice. She’s moving away from me.
No
, I think,
don’t leave me here
.

Blackness rolls in like a heavy fog off the ocean until nothing else exists.

“But hurry, let's entwine ourselves as one, our mouth broken, our soul bitten by love, so time discovers us safely destroyed.
”―
Federico García Lorca
Hauling Bentley into the back of one of the school vans is harder than I thought. He’s nothing but dead weight now. Carrying him earlier tuckered me out. His pulse is weak, breathing faint. It unnerves me. I can’t lose him now, not after everything we’ve lived through. Once he’s securely inside, I cover him with my jacket, close the back door, and move to the front to hot-wire it. She purrs to life. Speeding down the long drive, I rack my brain for the nearest hospital. I fight the urge to let fear and panic take root in me. I can’t afford to panic now.

Glancing in the rearview, smoke billows in tall stacks and flames kiss the sky. Five miles out, the first responder screams by. Red, blue, and white lights flash and sirens blare. I ditch the van and move Bentley to his truck for the rest of the drive. Adrenaline fuels me, keeping me alert and focused.

Tearing into the Emergency Room drive, I toss the truck in park, sending us both jerking forward with a harsh motion. Screaming, I draw attention to myself while trying to haul Bentley from the truck. Two nurses rush out, aiding me. They take over. One tries to attend to me but I push her away, promising that I am just fine. I’m thrusted paperwork to fill out and left in a waiting room alone.

The forms irritate me. I don’t know his birth date. I don’t know his insurance information. I don’t know medications or allergies. None of those things are important in falling in love with someone. Those trivial details aren’t necessary for one heart to harbor another’s. I toss the clipboard, forms partially filled in, on the floor and pace.

Four hours later a doctor arrives.

“He’s stable. Sedated, but will make a full recovery. He lost a lot of blood. We were able to clean up fragmented bone and set his leg and arm.”

“Okay. Can I see him?”

“I’d like to speak with you in private first,” the doctor answers. I don’t like this. My gut screams something is off. I nod and follow him anyways. He escorts me to a private room, shutting the door softly behind us. There is a security guard in the corner.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“You found Mr. James, yes?”

“I was with him,” I answer.

“The local police will be contacted due to the nature of his wounds.” He flicks his gaze to the security guard.

“The nature of his wounds?” My fingers clench into fists, making my palms ache.

“Gunshot wound, gunshot residue on his hands.”

I cross my arms over my chest.

“We will need you to be thoroughly examined as well. And detained until the police can question you both.”

Inhaling a steadying breath, I nod while uncrossing my arms. The knives sheathed on either side of my breasts are my only option. Pulling them from their perches, I fluidly unleash one from my hand directly into the security guard’s face. The other I keep on me while approaching the doctor.

“Here’s the deal,” I begin. “You don’t call the police and you don’t document the gunshot wound or residue and you live.” He stands, shocked, pale and trembling. “Otherwise, you die. Choose,” I spit.

He says nothing. I lift the blade to his throat. “I said, choose.”

“Live,” he squeaks. I flick the blade, nicking his skin enough to draw a drop of blood. He flinches. Depositing the knife back into its holster, I stride to the door.

Over my shoulder I say, “Take care of that body,” before leaving the doctor alone.

“Bentley James,” I say to the nurse behind the desk. She looks tired and bored. A few clicks of the keyboard and I’m given a room number. A different nurse leads me down the corridor to the room where Bentley is being held. It is a basic affair: a plastic-framed bed, a chair, a bathroom. I step through the threshold of his room. His leg has been soft-casted, his arm also in a cast despite his claim that the wound was superficial. His handsome face is wrapped in gauze. The burns will scar, I’m sure of it.

He is sleeping, heavily sedated. His chest rises and falls succinctly. I climb onto the white hospital bed, negotiating wires and tape and tubes until I can wrap my arms around him. His head lolls against my shoulder. I press him against my body and hold him as close as I can.