Читать книгу: «Acoustic Shadows»

ONE

Erica Weisz strode up the sidewalk to the Travis Hanks Elementary School in the tiny town of Frosthaven, Florida, a bounce in her step. It was a sunny autumn morning, and Erica loved the weather and this rural area she’d moved to only six weeks ago.

Frosthaven was a rural town of less than 3,000 full-time citizens, surrounded by freshwater lakes and a diminishing citrus business that was losing ground to imported fruit. The groves stretched out over small hills that rolled on for as far as the locals wanted to see. The scent of orange blossom wafted in the air as Erica squinted at the surrounding citrus groves. From far away they looked green and lush. But, like the ‘FOR LEASE’ signs on the downtown buildings, the diminishing groves echoed the slow decline of a dying place. Most people living here were firmly ensconced in the federal poverty level. The only exceptions were the remaining citrus and cattle processing plants and fertilizer manufacturers, who employed nine-tenths of the town’s population.

Though Erica was not completely comfortable with her new job, she enjoyed working with the children at the town’s solitary elementary school. She felt she’d gone back in a time machine to an era when people were simple and friendly and communications not so obscure. She had been working per diem as a substitute for the past three weeks, coming in last minute when they’d call her in the morning. Then, just yesterday morning, Dr Linda Montessi, the principal, pulled her aside in the hallway.

‘Good morning, Erica,’ she said, her tone professional, as was her appearance; blunt cut hair that brushed her shoulders and framed an oval face that showed kindness weathered with caution. ‘Got a minute?’

‘Uh, sure, Dr Montessi,’ said Erica, her mind on other, more personal matters, as usual.

‘I recently got a budget item approved, one that allows me to hire a permanent substitute. I was hoping you might take the job?’

‘I…well…are you sure? I mean, I’d love to but…’

‘And we’d love to have you. So, you’ll accept the offer?’

‘Well, to be honest, I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying in Frosthaven.’

‘Oh?’ replied Dr Montessi, her eyebrows arching, as if searching for an explanation.

Dodging the unspoken enquiry, Erica said, ‘Gosh, I’m sorry. May I think about it and let you know tomorrow?’

Dr Montessi smiled warmly. ‘Yes, of course. That’s fine. Sleep on it, and let me know.’ She walked away and back to her hectic schedule.

Erica thought about the offer now, as she neared the school gates. She knew she should consider accepting it. The school was a nice place to work, and the best part was that it was within walking distance to her boxy, hibiscus pink, cinder-block home on Barney Avenue. It might be a poor community, but the people seemed genuine and welcoming, and this offer was just another example of that. For the first time in a long time, she had begun to feel comfortable with where she was. But, there was a persistent, creeping worry that loomed over every decision she made. If she stayed longer, her background check would come up clean, but how long could she keep her secrets from these people?

Dr Montessi was a warm, motivated educator who often dressed up in funny costumes to amuse the students, whilst making significant learning points. For Halloween, she had dressed up as a witch and shared the cautionary tale of the unfortunate Salem Witch Trials. She turned the story into a parable about people bullying others who held beliefs different from their own. The children adored her. She and Erica had hit it off right away. They both had backgrounds in science, and enjoyed similar pastimes such as cycling and CrossFit. Erica decided she wouldn’t allow her usual dark thoughts to trouble her this day. She would focus on the positive offer instead.

Like all schools in Florida, Travis Hanks Elementary had experienced budgetary problems. The facilities definitely showed years of use, but everyone worked together to keep it clean and tidy. Colourful banners were hung promoting positive affirmations and anti-bullying campaigns.

Striding through the main office, Erica said hello to the school nurse, Nora, who cared for children with sniffles or scraped knees or tummy aches. And to Sally Ravich, the front office lady with the purple, horn-rimmed glasses, who commented on Erica’s blue, flowered dress and matching, oversized purse.

‘That blue matches your eyes,’ she said in her lyrical, southern drawl. Then, noting Erica’s running shoes, added, ‘I saw some nice flats that would match your purse at Payless yesterday.’

‘Thanks, Sally,’ said Erica. ‘I’ll stick to my running shoes.’

When Sally asked what she kept in a purse that big, Erica replied with wide, exaggerated eyes, ‘Everything.’

Lynn LaForge, the assistant principal, another excellent educator, who doubled as soccer mom and cheerleader coach for her daughter’s middle school team, also greeted Erica.

‘You have Mrs Miller’s class again, today, Erica,’ said Lynn. ‘Still has the flu. Did you perm your hair?’

‘No,’ said Erica, absently putting her hand in her shimmering, black hair. ‘I left the house with it damp, and it curls if I don’t blow it out.’

‘Is that your natural colour?’ asked the inquisitive administrator.

Erica’s cheeks turned red. Her hair was as dark as a coal bucket and though she was a brunette, with natural sun-kissed highlights, she dyed her hair the lustrous black it was now. When she was a child, she’d been hit in the head by a swing and had to get sutures. It healed fine, but the hair over the scar turned white. Such an anomaly was too distinct, too memorable, and she couldn’t risk standing out.

Lynn smiled. ‘I’m sorry, hon. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. You look great,’ she said, then cautiously added, ‘Still haven’t met any locals?’

Erica turned the corners of her mouth down. ‘If you mean men…no. But, I can’t say I’ve really been looking.’

‘I’ve got a brother-in-law…’

Erica smiled benignly and shook her head. ‘I’ll let you know.’ Changing the subject, she asked, ‘Do you know if Mrs Miller left me any new lesson plans?’

‘Sure,’ said Lynn. ‘She emailed them to me, and I ran off a hard copy for you.’

‘Thanks,’ said Erica.

‘I think she’ll be out the rest of the week,’ Lynn added. ‘She’s pretty sick.’

‘Oh, okay,’ said Erica, sorting through the plans Mrs Miller had sent her. ‘Thank you, Miss LaForge.’ First names were fine at this school, but Erica did not need, or want, people to know her that well, so maintained a friendly, but slightly aloof manner.

The janitor, Mr Swan, was ambling down the hall, his gait slightly hitched from the prosthetic leg he’d earned in Vietnam. He was carrying some fluorescent replacement bulbs, wearing a worn leather tool belt around his waist, as he dodged children running for their classes.

‘Slow down,’ he admonished, ‘or someone’s gonna get hurt.’

‘Hey, Mr Swan,’ said Erica. ‘How are you today?’

‘Oh, hi, Erica,’ replied the old handyman, beaming. ‘Couldn’t be better. And how are you?’

‘I’m very well,’ she said.

‘Good, good, good. Well, have a great day, young lady,’ he said, grinning, a tooth missing from his smile.

Erica continued to class. She had about eight minutes to prepare for the day – not nearly enough time – before the children started pouring in. Many of them were children of Guatemalan field workers, or welfare kids, their tattered second-hand clothes hanging from their thin frames like battle flags. She welcomed the third graders, and told them Mrs Miller was still sick. They were going to make jack-o’-lanterns today, with construction paper and paste. But, first, there was a reading lesson they needed to finish: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

‘You’ll like it,’ Erica promised. ‘It’s scary.’

After a few moans and groans and shuffling of papers and books, pencils being sharpened and whispers hushed, the children fell silent and began reading to themselves.

Erica was in the back of the room, looking for the orange construction paper that was supposed to be in the closet, when she heard the first popping sounds. Firecrackers? Inside the school, or from the nearby woods? It was 8:20 a.m.

One of the little boys in the class asked, ‘is that fireworks?’

More popping sounds.

Erica knew, now, they weren’t firecrackers. Acoustic shadows, she thought. That’s what he had called them. She went to the window near her desk and looked out through the blinds, sweat breaking out on her neck. The school was in the shape of a giant ‘U’, so the view from any window yielded a view of the other side of the building. She caught a glimpse of a man dressed in black, suited up like a SWAT team member, carrying an assault rifle, bands of ammo wrapped around his torso, pistols on his belt. A late model van was parked in the pick-up lane in the parking lot, its doors left open, puffs of oily smoke coming from the tailpipe.

‘No,’ Erica said to no one, her heart now in her throat. ‘Not again.’

‘What do you see, Ms. Weisz?’ asked Rachel, a little girl with an almost comical mop of blonde curls.

Suddenly, there was a sound of shattering glass, more popping sounds getting louder. And screams. Erica froze, considering her options; her training had never taught her how to protect anyone other than herself. Now, she wasn’t sure she could even do that.

The PA system came on. The class stared at the old box speaker on the wall as it brought them terrifying noises. There was a humming, then the sounds of things banging and shuffling. A rough voice, indistinguishable, then Dr Montessi’s voice, pleading. ‘Please don’t hurt the children.’

‘We’re not going to hurt them,’ declared a high-pitched, male voice that ended with hysterical laughter. ‘We’re going to kill them!’

‘Just kill them,’ said another voice, calmer, in control, and the shooting resumed. Rapid and, loud, blam, blam, blam. The firecracker sounds replaced by unmistakable, up close, booming gun blasts.

Then silence. A groan. The meaty sound of a body hitting the floor, hard. And the gun blasts started again. A door slammed. Steps growing fainter. Silence.

They’re coming here, Erica thought, fear briefly immobilizing her. Inside her chest, her heart beat so fast she thought it might burst. The children stared at her, quietly expecting something, but Erica’s eyes locked on Rachel’s. The little girl’s lips began to quiver, and a tear sneaked down her cheek. More kids began to sob. ‘I’m scared,’ said one of them. One little girl urinated as she sat at her desk, crying silently, a puddle forming at her feet. None of the other children noticed.

Gunshots echoed in the hall. Pa-tow, tow, tow. Pa-tow-tow-tow. ‘You sons of…’ came Mr Swan’s voice, then more gunshots, louder and closer.

Erica couldn’t breathe as she listened, adrenaline sharpening her senses.

Silence again. The giant clock above the teacher’s desk clicked as it turned to ‘8:23’.

Footsteps coming down the hall; now closer.

More screams. More gunshots.

Finally, Erica found the courage to move. She ran to the door and locked it.

‘Quick, class. Everyone to the back of the room. Now!’ she ordered.

The children scurried to the back like bait fish fleeing a predator. Erica heard a thud and glanced at the window in the door to the hall. Suddenly, Lynn LaForge appeared in the frame, her face a mask of horror. She peered in the window for an instant, her eyes wide and wet with terror. Her hand rattled the door urgently. She opened her mouth when a bullet ripped through her face, blood spattering the window, and she was gone. That fast. Alive one second, gone the next.

‘Inside the closet,’ Erica ordered, trying to calm her voice.

The kids began pushing and shoving to get inside the small space. It would not hold them all. Erica packed in as many as she could and closed the door, her mind racing, her breath ragged. She sprinted to the front of the class again, grabbed her purse, then hurried back. She began frantically piling desks into a barricade.

The doorknob rattled, then violently shook. A masked face appeared in the bloodied window. The gunman banged his rifle butt against the door handle, once, twice. Erica turned to the kids who couldn’t fit into the closet; they were huddled behind the overturned desks, whimpering, fear transforming their faces. She put a finger to her mouth to shush them. She clutched her purse and tried to squeeze in with them behind the makeshift barricade, but couldn’t quite conceal herself.

An abrupt burst of gunfire sent parts of the door flying, glass spraying. The smell of sulphur crept into the room as the barrel of a rifle came into view where the door had been, slowly revealing a black, gloved hand on its grip. Then, the man was in the room. A ski mask covered his face but his eyes were wide and wild through the openings. The weapon he wielded was an Armalite AR-15, semi-automatic. With a thirty-round clip, it weighed only 8.8 lb. It was light, manoeuvrable. Deadly.

Erica could see his eyes hone in on the pile of desks where she and the children were hiding, and realized her leg was sticking out.

‘C’mon outta there,’ he commanded. She reached for her purse, her heart now in her mouth. She stuck her head up.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘I…I sent the kids out to the playground…’

‘SHUT THE FUCK UP!’ he screamed, wincing, as if he were in pain. He stared at her and pulled his mask up, sweat running down his face, his breathing hard, laboured. He was in his forties maybe, with a blunted, street-worn face: twisted nose, cauliflower ears, scarred brows. He squinted at Erica. ‘What’s your name?’ he hissed, sweat dripping off his nose.

She stared back at him over the top of the overturned desks ‘Wh…what?’ she asked.

A whimper issued from the closet, followed by some rustling. The door began to creep open. The gunman swung the rifle in the direction of the noises, aimed high, and pulled the trigger. Flames spat out the barrel as bullets sprayed across the room, splintering wood from the closet door and bursting the windows, sending glass flying through the air like thrown diamonds. The noise was deafening. Now hysterical, the kids screamed.

Erica stood up. ‘It’s Mil…Millie,’ she said, realizing now with a paralyzing fear, he isn’t here for the students. ‘Please,’ she added, ‘don’t shoot the children.’

The gunman nodded his grisly head as he removed the empty clip, plucked a new one off his belt, and shoved it into the rifle.

Rachel stepped out of the closet, her face pale, blood pouring down her arm, her mouth hanging slack.

Erica ran to the bleeding girl. A bullet had nicked her upper arm. Only a flesh wound, but she was in shock: her colour blanched; her skin cold and sweaty. Erica’s emotions morphed from paralyzing fear to unequivocal rage.

The gunman grinned after reloading the bullet clip and looked up at Erica, whose back was to him.

‘Turn around,’ he said, pulling the bolt back on the rifle, chambering a round.

‘She’s bleeding,’ she said, her voice trembling with rage. ‘Let me help her. I just want to stop the bleeding. I…have a scarf in my purse.’

The gunman coughed and spat on the floor.

Erica retrieved her purse and came back to Rachel. She pulled out her scarf, tied it around the wound, and brought her over to the pile of desks.

‘Stay down,’ she whispered to the little girl. Their eyes locked and Rachel robotically obeyed the command.

Erica reached into her purse again, her hands shaking. This time she came up with a small, almost toyish-looking Bersa Thunder .380 automatic pistol, with matt nickel finish. She had taken a deep breath and now let it ease out, exhaling slowly, her hands locked together, steadying them as she stood and swivelled back to the gunman – who stood transfixed – and squeezed the trigger.

There was a bang, amplified in the small room, and a red vapour puffed out the back of the gunman’s head. A small, dark hole appeared in his forehead, then blood began to flow from the hole and poured over his still open eyes. He blinked once and fell to the ground as if he was a marionette and someone had cut the strings.

Erica sat down with the children, her legs shaking, trying to swallow, but her throat was too dry. She settled for a deep breath and closed her eyes, her ears ringing from the gun blasts.

The children behind the desks stared at her with their mouths open. One by one, the other kids began to slip from the closet. No one said anything. Some began to sniffle, some cried, some were ominously silent. Several of them came over and hugged her.

She took another deep breath, trying to calm herself.

‘Everyone, please…sit down,’ she pleaded.

She stood, extricating herself from the swarm of children. Holding her gun pointed at the fallen man, she approached cautiously. She noticed he was still breathing, just as she heard more gunshots coming from down the hall. Then more screams. She looked back at the children.

‘Get in the closet,’ she whispered, harshly. ‘There’s another one out there.’

They pushed inside, silently but quickly. Erica looked over at the kids behind the desk pile. ‘Close your eyes,’ she told them, calmly. ‘It’s going to be okay.’

She stood for a moment, her mind racing, but she could not arrive at a different conclusion. She aimed her gun at the gunman and put another bullet into his head. The shot took off a section of his skull and stopped the breathing.

One of the boys jumped up from behind the desk pile, trembling, his mouth an ‘O’.

She recognized the boy from another class and felt the need to try to reassure him.

‘I’ll be back, Ricky. Please stay down until then.’

The boy slumped as if deflated, his white, spiked hair giving him the appearance of having seen the devil himself.

Erica pushed past the remnants of the door and peered into the hall. It was dark and there were huge holes in the ceiling and walls; evidently, the other gunman had shot out the lights. Oily smoke hung in the air like pale spectres raised from the recently slain. She saw poor Mr Swan lying at one end of the hall, sprawled out, his prosthesis angled, blood spilling from his body. She wanted to go check for a pulse, but stopping the other gunman before he killed anyone else was her first priority. She stepped over Mrs LaForge, trying not to look at her face. Holding up her gun, she kept both hands on it, just as she’d seen actors do in police dramas, just as she practised between rounds at the gun range. She had just a killed a man for the first time in her life. There was no time to reflect on it. She could – no, would – do it again. There were no other choices.

She eased down the hall toward where she could still hear occasional pops of gunfire, staying close to the wall, making herself a smaller target.

She came to the part of the building that was the bottom of the ‘U’ shape and peeked around the corner. Another blast, this one a cavernous, exploding sound, and the other gunman emerged from one of the classrooms carrying a seven-round, Remington 870 Express, pump shotgun. He stopped and began pushing more shells into the gun. Like the first man, he had removed his mask. She could see he was younger than his accomplice, with long, curly, unnaturally red hair. His face was pale and covered with inflamed acne.

Erica stepped away from the wall. She was maybe fifty feet from the shooter in a wide-legged stance, one eye closed as she aimed the gun at him.

He was quick. He pulled the shotgun up and fired at her from hip level. The blast took a row of lockers off the wall, but some of the buckshot found her, striking her left hip and abdomen. She fired as she fell; the round hit his chest. He stumbled, surprised, and pulled open his shirt. Erica saw he was wearing a bullet proof vest and was unhurt. It slowed him temporarily, but he grabbed the Remington and pumped another round into the chamber.

Erica was lying on her back, her side on fire, blood soaking her blue-flowered dress as she craned her neck and again squinted one eye. When she tried to lift it, the pistol seemed to weigh as much as a sledgehammer. It wavered in the air. She wasn’t sure she had the strength to pull the trigger.

The gunman took a step closer, levelled the rifle, a crazed, loopy smile on his face.

Her breath was ragged, but she held it again as she aimed and fired the gun once more. This time, the round caught him in the neck and his head dropped to one side. The shotgun clattered to the floor as the ginger-haired gunman crumpled.

Erica lay still, listening, her ears ringing from the gun blasts, the usually noisy school utterly quiet. The eerie silence was almost as frightening as the gunfire. Her eyes drifted toward the ceiling and it began to spin, go out of focus. She tried to get up, and slipped in her own blood. She vomited as she tried to pull herself back to the room, back to the children. Make sure they were safe.

A whining siren echoed in the distance, growing slowly louder. A door opened. Sounds of children whispering, crying, their tiny feet hardly making any sounds as they came to her like cherubs from heaven.