Conquering, Everest.

Ch. 1

BOOM. The girl next to me flinches. Everyone turns their heads to the closed door. Slowly, I place my hand on top of my laptop, closing it.
BANG. The sound rings through the halls, screams almost as loud. My heart sinks into my stomach. Hurriedly, we scramble from our desks, some of the guys pushing theirs against the door, barricading it. I hide with two others behind a half wall in the back. The lights go out and everyone's panicked mumbling falls into a hushed silence.
BANG. One girl next to me starts to cry while the guy tries to comfort her. I grab my phone from my pocket and text my parents. Once I sent the text, I pocket my phone and regulate my breathing to keep from being to loud. The room is dead quiet, so quiet you could hear a mouse nibbling on crumbs. It's so quiet, we can hear footsteps, slow and uneven, moving closer and closer.
My heart stops when the door handle rattles and eventually, the door clicks. I hear it open only slightly before I hear the desks move that were pushed up against it. The desks are keeping it from opening anymore that it is. Looking up at the guy I'm hiding with, he's gotten the girl to quit crying, I notice sweat beaded on his forehead. He looks panicked as he peers over the edge of the half wall. Almost immediately, he falls back down and shelters his head. I hear the screeching of desks being forcefully pushed coming from the front of the room where the door is. It stops, then starts again, as if someone is banging into them. Suddenly, I hear a loud crash and I can only assume it's the desks coming down in a madden tumble. Milliseconds of pure, horrific, silence float by before screams erupt, consisting of pleas, before the gun goes off.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Elev— I lose count when a bullet flies by my head. What feels like hundreds of shots were fired before they stopped. Hundreds of bullets were fired before the police had taken down the shooter. Hundreds were fired and not one hit me.
I could hear the yells of policemen and women, telling the shooter to stay down. Once they had removed the gunmen from the seen, the paramedics rushed into the room, searching for and aiding the victims. I kept my head down, my hands over me, tears slowly running down my cheeks. I don't want to move. I don't think I can move. I turn my head to peak over at my peers through my hands.
What I find makes me almost puke. The guy that had peaked over was sitting up against the wall behind us, a bullet hole dead center in his forehead, blood dripping down his face and his eyes still open, staring directly at me. Disturbed, I shift my eyes towards the girl that had been in between us. She's curled up in a ball in a pool of blood. Her clothes are soaked. I try to pull my eyes away from her body, but I can't. Not until a paramedic makes his way to us, checking on the guy against the wall, dipping his head after feeling for a pulse, and shutting the eyes that were locked on me. The paramedic then rolled over the girl next to me, only to reveal her body was riddled with bullet holes. I tried counting them, getting up to about 8 before someone grabbed my arms, turning me towards them. Another paramedic. She, started speaking to me, asking me questions. She assessed me and found that I was unharmed. She called over more paramedics and soon I was swarmed with paramedics and officers, becoming the center of attention.
I wasn't sure why I was everybody's main concern, I was unharmed. I was sure my classmates needed more help than me. I was pulled up from behind the half wall and walked to the front of the room. I tried to look at the room, to find my classmates, but my view was blocked by the swarm of people. I tripped over my own feet and landed in a slippery, warm substance. I pushed myself up onto my knees looking down onto what I slipped into. It was the blood of my professor. He was laying only two steps away, the blood seeping from his neck. Horror filled me. I struggled to get to my feet, panicking. The officers helped me up and for a moment I could see the entirety of the room. The blood shed room that was once my classroom, a supposed safe-space, was riddled with bloodied bodies. White sheets were spread over a few and more were to come.