Honey Grove, Texas, United States
July 18th | 9:48 PM | 27 degrees

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Ryan had never seen so much blood before.

Terri hauled Franklin in through the front doors of the school, snowflakes and cold wind swirling into the hall behind them until the door swung shut. Both of them were covered with splotches of blood, each step leaving a trail of scarlet shoeprints as they walked, but it wasn’t hard to tell which of them it had come from.

Franklin’s face was pale and gaunt, his half-closed eyes sunk back into their waxy sockets. He clung limply to Terri with one arm as if he were drunk. The other arm hung down by his side and dripped blood onto the floor from his fingertips.

When Ryan was in high school, one of the basketball players had taken an elbow to the nose in the middle of a game. The kid had fallen backward from the pain, eyes watering and both hands pressed against his face. In the few quiet seconds following the crowd’s collective gasp, there wasn’t any blood. And then there was. Like someone had turned on a faucet. A red streak grew down the middle of his white jersey and fat droplets struck the court and quickly collected into a small puddle. The coaches rushed out and helped stop the bleeding, and after a minute or two they walked him off the court and cleaned up the mess and the game continued. The kid had been alright, just a broken nose, but Ryan had never forgotten the image of bloody footprints crisscrossing the court, or just how much blood an elbow to the face could produce.

Franklin’s injury made that broken nose look like a paper cut.

“What happened?” Howell demanded, sliding his arm under Franklin’s armpit to help support his weight. Franklin groaned, his head lolling around on his shoulders.

“I need to stop the bleeding,” Terri said through gritted teeth. She was shivering, either from the blizzard or the act of holding up a man twice her size for almost a mile.

“Are they following you?” Howell asked. “Terri. Are they coming here?”

“I don’t know.”

Ryan held open the office door and they carried Franklin inside and hefted him up onto the front desk just as Carlos came running in with a first aid kit.

“I got a nurse on his–” He hesitated in the doorway, his gaze moving over the trail of blood. “On his way.”

“Hurry up,” Howell ordered, his tone snapping Carlos out of his daze.

Carlos swallowed and handed Ryan the kit. He looked about as bad as Franklin did. “I don’t . . . do blood.”

Terri yanked open the bloody coat and cut through the layers of clothes with her knife until Franklin’s chest was exposed. A jagged hole had been punched through his left shoulder. Blood bubbled over the rim of the wound like some kind of slow moving spring, producing a scarlet teardrop fed by the rapid beating of his heart that traced a line along his collarbone toward the center of his chest. It paused there as if it had a mind of its own, considering which way to go next, then abruptly raced downward. Pooled in the center of his sternum. Made a thin stream around the top of his stomach that rolled down his side and disappeared beneath his clothes.

“Jesus,” Howell whispered.

Carlos turned away and stepped into the hall.

“Gauze,” Terri said. “Hey! I need gauze!”

Ryan shook himself and began rifling through the kit. He ripped through several packets and handed her all the gauze he could find. She pressed them against the wound and Franklin gasped and opened his eyes.

“Hey soldier,” Terri said, grinning down at him. “You’re alright, we just gotta put some pressure here for a little while and get the bleeding stopped.”

He licked his lips and tried to say something but the words came out slurred. All Ryan caught was “Darren.”

Terri shook her head. “Don’t worry about him right now. Just stay still and let us get you patched up.”

His eyes found hers and he whispered, “Is she OK?”

Terri paused, just for a second, then pressed harder against the gauze. “You can’t think about that. OK? Worry about getting better first.”

“I didn’t mean–I didn’t want–” Franklin’s voice hitched and fresh tears cut a line down his face.

“Hey, hey, hey. Just rest,” she told him. “It’s going to be alright.”

The nurse Carlos had found came in with a red trauma kit and gently but firmly pushed Terri and Howell out of the way. He put on a pair of blue gloves with the speed of one who had done it many times before and then wordlessly began replacing the blood-soaked gauze with some kind of special gauze from his bag. The old gauze was soaked completely red. Ryan thought about basketball.

“The bullet’s still in there,” Terri told him.

“We have to stop the bleeding first,” the nurse calmly said. “He’s already in shock and can’t afford to lose any more blood. Can everyone step out into the hall? I’ll yell if I need anything.”

They obeyed and left him to his work. Carlos was sitting on the floor with his back to the wall. He raised his head. “How is he?”

“I think that guy knows what he’s doing.” Ryan stood against the wall and looked down at him. “You alright?”

“I’m fine,” Carlos said, shaking his head. “Blood just makes me a little woozy. OK, a lot woozy. I cut my finger trying to open a can of green beans once, not even that deep, and Kit found me blacked out on the kitchen floor ten minutes later. Never seen her laugh so hard.”

Howell took out his walkie. “Any updates?”

The response crackled through from the roof’s second shift that had replaced Ryan and Carlos not long earlier. “We can’t even see the parking lot any more. Storm’s getting worse by the minute.”

“Keep your eyes open. We might be expecting company.” He replaced the walkie and looked at Terri. “Did they act like they were headed this way next?”

She rubbed her face, unaware of the streak of blood this left on her cheek. “I don’t know. It was . . . It was chaos.”

“What happened?”

She stared down at her blood-stained hands and took a moment to steady herself. “They surrounded the place, maybe twelve or thirteen cars. Darren got out then the others followed him. They walked toward us and he called out with his hands up. Said they were taking over the gas station and for us to leave. There were probably fifty of them, and they all had guns.

“Me and Franklin were up top. I told Darren he couldn’t have the place and he said we were more than outnumbered, that we had one chance to walk away before things got ugly.” She shook her head. “I thought he was bluffing.”

“So he just started shooting?” Howell asked.

She shook her head. “No. I don’t know what happened. It was dead quiet for a few seconds, then I heard a shot from somewhere. I don’t even know if it was from us or them. But a second later the whole place was a war zone. They were shooting at us and we were shooting right back at them. I think we got maybe ten of them altogether.” Her gaze shifted toward the wall and she lowered her voice. “I took out four. Franklin shot a woman while she was putting a new mag in her rifle. Killed her instantly. I think that was when he lost it.”

Howell sighed and slowly shook his head. “You both did what you had to. It’s not your fault Darren decided to start shooting people.”

She nodded, but it was clear from the look in her eyes that she didn’t buy it.

Carlos let his head fall back against the wall. “You’d think Darren would have learned to be a little more careful around gas pumps by now.”

“That’s the thing,” Terri said. “I don’t think a shootout was his plan. I could hear someone shouting ‘Stop!’ over the shots and I’m about 90% sure it was him. It doesn’t make sense. Why show up with an army, say things are going to escalate, and then try to stop it when it does?”

“It makes perfect sense,” Howell said. “Darren might be calling himself their leader, but I don’t think he’s figured out that he’s not actually in control. You don’t control a mob like that. You can’t.” A moment passed between them, then he softly asked, “What about the others? Did anyone else get away?”

Terri’s jaw tightened and she shook her head. “They didn’t last long. Once the shooting started, I could hear every time one of us got hit. I could feel it. It took maybe a minute before all the bullets were coming at me and Franklin, then I knew they were dead. I knew we had lost.” Her eyes flashed. “But I wasn’t ready to just give up, not after that. We had a good position up there on the canopy. I was shooting back at them with all I had, ready to fire off every round I had before they took me down. But I looked over at Franklin and,” her voice broke, “he was . . . he was just crying. Hands over his ears, eyes wide. Like a kid. I knew I had to get him out of there. He didn’t deserve to die so scared like that.

“I got him up onto his feet and we jumped from the canopy onto the roof of the gas station. After that it was a straight shot to the back of the building and down onto the dumpster. Then we ran. Some of them chased us on foot but we went between houses and lost them. At some point Franklin got shot but I don’t know when it happened.”

Silence filled the hall as Terri’s story came to an end.

“If you had to guess,” Howell said, “do you think Darren plans to come for the school?”

She thought for a moment and shook her head. “No. But I think his people do.”

“Wait, right now?” Carlos asked, rising to his feet.

She shrugged. “Don’t see why not. They know we have food and supplies here. They know we’re not well armed. Why wouldn’t they take advantage of that?”

“In that case, we need guns at every door not boarded up,” Howell said.

“You don’t understand,” Terri said. “We can’t win this. They have more guns, more fighters, and they’re pissed off. If they come for us, we have to run.”

The mayor’s eyes blazed and his voice grew loud. “I won’t be chased out of my own damn town by some rednecks throwing a temper tantrum. This ain’t Russia, it’s by God Honey Grove and I won’t just stand by and wait for Darren to turn it into his little dictatorship.” He took a breath and lowered his voice. “If they get this place, we’re done. There’s a hundred people here who are either children or over seventy. Send them out into this storm without shelter and they’re as good as dead.”

“If they stay here they’re as good as dead!” she argued. “Either way this thing goes, they’re out in the storm. At the very least we need an escape plan so they can all get out if this gets bad.”

“Escape to where?” Howell demanded. “Where would they go?”

“I don’t know! But at least they would have the option of figuring that out with some supplies to get them there.” She took a breath. “Look, I’m with you all the way on this. I’ll be right here at the front door waiting for the bastards to show up. All I’m saying is this isn’t a fight we walk away from. But they,” she pointed down the hall, “they can. The auditorium has a back door that leads outside. If we get everyone in there, they’ll have a way out if they need one.”

Before Howell could respond, the office door opened and the nurse stepped out into the hall. Terri immediately turned toward the office and started to walk in, but the nurse stopped her. He couldn’t meet her eyes, only shook his head a single time.

She stepped back as if he’d slapped her. “What–“

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said, eyes gleaming with tears. “He . . . lost too much blood.” He looked from her to Howell, bowed his head, and walked away.

Terri held on to the doorframe and squeezed her eyes shut, her knuckles growing white.

Ryan’s gaze drifted to the floor as the nurse passed him. Red footprints trailed behind him on the linoleum as he left.