The Gunman

Chapter Forty-Four: Gene

There were ten police men waiting at the bottom of the stairs, I was one of them. We awaited orders to go up the stairs, but we never got any. So we just stood there, and waited. It was a painstakingly long wait; there were kids and teachers up those stairs that needed help. There was no way I could wait any longer; I needed to help those kids.

I began to run up the stairs, and a few of the cops yelled after me, but more followed me. They knew that our job was to help people, not stand around and let them die. If we lost our jobs so be it, at least we saved people.

So I was followed by five other officers, leaving four at the bottom to complain. When we got to the top, we looked around. Unlike the first floor, there wasn't a body in sight the first step we took there. But there was a set of doors open that led to the gym. We cautiously walked towards the doors, guns raised and ready for a fight.

But when we arrived, there was no dangerous man in there. Just a bunch of scared kids, and when they scattered at the sight of us, one single dead body could be seen. I swallowed my anger, and we walked forward to help them evacuate the room.

We sent them down the stairs in an organized line, and continued down the hall. A door was busted open, and I took a shaky breath before entering. It was the opposite of the gym, it was filled with many kids, and only one was alive. I had a different officer lead him to the stairs, and help him evacuate.

I walked down the hall, and I was the leader of the group of cops. My gun was raised at all times, and my footsteps fell lightly. The cops behind me would split up every once in a while to evacuate random rooms, then they would somehow catch up to me.

After a while of tedious walking, I saw the first body in the hallway that I had seen up there. It was a girl, she had a shot right in her collar bone. She was dead, but I couldn't tell if the shot had killed her immediately, or she bled out. There was a look of acceptance on her face. Like she had accepted she was going to die the second she actually did die.

My hands brushed her brown hair out of her young face; I couldn't place an age on her. She had that face that could either be a freshman's all the way up to a senior's. A shudder racked my body, it was a horrific picture. A young woman with her life ahead of her, and she just accepted her death. She didn't even fight back.

I sighed and stood up, "Let's go, her body is warm. That means she wasn't shot all that long ago. We should get him soon." We began walking again, and occasionally I would hear one of the men behind me let out a small sob.

It reminded me of my own kids, when they cried for other people. A few days earlier they had seen something on TV about the victims of hurricane Sandy, and they had cried because they felt bad. They had said, "Don't those people have mommies and daddies who will miss them? Or brothers and sisters? Daddy, it's so sad. I feel bad for their mommies and daddies." My kids had hugged me then, and I had hugged them back.

They had sobbed softly, and I wondered where the times had gone. Not so long ago I was the one that cried when I heard awful news. But sometime in the past forty two years, I had to grow up. I had faced that horrible things happened, and I had become a cop to prevent even more from happening. But right then it seemed like I wasn't preventing anything. I wasn't even helping. I was just like a janitor, cleaning up the mess after it had already made its mark.