Chapter 6: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Most of the highschool students were clinging to the windows by now trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on. Students clamored over each other while teachers struggled to regain order and control over the students who were thoroughly infatuated with the distant echoes of gunfire and explosions.
David made his way around the group of 45 or so students in Mr. Rose’s third period class. He shoved open the door along the side of the class that led outside and ran to the fence, stopping abruptly when he reached it. His brow furled and he swallowed a little. He starred out across the city towards the gunshots as a small explosion was heard and a column of smoke began to rise in the distance. He became alarmed at the familiar direction of the smoke.
“David!”Adriana screamed as she ran up to him and took a hold of his arm.
“I think that was my dads car bomb,” David said absently as Adriana tried to drag him back inside.
“David you can’t be out here right now,” Adriana pleaded, still tugging at his arm, “it’s far, but not that far, stray rounds...” she trailed off, starring at the back of David’s head which he had turned in an uncomfortable position away from her and towards the sky. She looked confused for a moment before the sound caught her ears. Students poured out the door excitedly but slowed and became alarmed at the growing scream that shattered a path across the sky.
“I did the math... count the streets. That’s our neighborhood, Adriana,” David said in a broken tone.
Adriana’s mouth hung open a little and she choked slightly, not wanting to believe him, “but...” she started, but discontinued the sentence and starred at the gray spec that streaked across the sky. A glimmer from the F22-Raptors canopy caught her eye.
“What the f**k is going ” David said, but his words hit a brick wall and ceased being uttered as he saw the monolithic and horrid explosion appeared in the distance. The churning greyish, fiery column expanded, shoving everything out of its way, including the air, creating a visible pressure wave. The wicked spectacle dwarfed the buildings around it. The scene unfolded without sound for several moments but then a sudden blast of sound a booming scream that arrived with a thunderous roar and seamed to trail a sequence of rumbling noise behind hit. Several seconds later the ground shook beneath their feet.
The students stood in awe and surprise but David took several steps back. He took a few seconds before reacting to what had just happened. He screamed and fell to his knees, clinging to the chain-link fence with his hands. David starred at the ground and pressed his forehead into the fence and let out a strained cry as tears streamed down his face. Adriana knelt beside him and wrapped her arms around his torso in an attempt to comfort him, tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes as well, but she was making an effort to contain herself and divert her attention to David. “You mother fuckers!” David screamed at the top of his lungs through his breaking and faltering voice, “you mother fuckers!” he repeated, He exhaled several strained and grunting breathes and stood up, wiping his tears and pacing. The other students starred with alarm. “I’ll kill them all...” David said quietly, sounding deranged.
“Baby...” Adriana tried to lay a hand on David’s shoulder.
“Don’t touch me,” he said, jerking his arm to push her away. He continued breathing hard before slowly retreating back to his knees as his legs grew weak and his tears returned.
There was something horrifying about seeing David this way, a man, or a nearly adult teenager, crying this way. He was broken and it was evident. Nobody could draw up anything relevant to say.
Mr. Rose approached David slowly, “David... I... I don’t know what’s going on right now but... but you’re going to be okay,” he said weakly.
David starred downward, “what?” he asked.
“I said... um...” Mr. Rose trailed off as David let out another scream. He shot to his feet with a forceful leap that removed both feet from the ground and planted both hands against Mr. Rose’s chest and hurtled him into the ground. David’s weight came down on his teacher with force and he pushed up with his arms and brought his right fist across Mr. Rose’s face. Kyle and Adriana rushed forward and began to rip David from the teach who writhed and squirmed, trying to defend himself from the rabid student.
“You don’t f**k know! You don’t f*****g know, you son of a b***h!” David screamed.
● ● ●
Caitlin and Anna stumbled over the stone wall into the Evergreen Cemetery, followed by Anthony.
“Hurry up, d****t!” Caitlin hollered at him.
Anthony stopped with one leg over the wall, the other still dangling on the other side, “Chill the f**k out god ” An ear piercing shriek muffled his voice. They looked to the sky in confusion. By the time Anthony had noticed the expanding explosion only a few blocks away that engulfed the entire area which they fled from, the pressure wave was already snapping trees that lay on the other side of the wall which Anthony still tried to clamor over. Caitlin grabbed her mother and pulled her to the ground with a scream that was inaudible of the sound of the bomb. The wall pulsed and dust and small fragments of rock where shaken and thrown off like a dog shaking off water after a swim, and it threw Anthony with it. Caitlin and Anna were mostly protected from the blast by what survived of the cemetery wall, but Anthony had been exposed. He was thrown well over dozen yards like a helpless toy, the force of acceleration forced the air out of his lungs and snapped his ribs. He landed awkwardly, feeling the vibration and pain from a racking, shattering and grinding sensation at the elbow joint of his left arm. His world shortly after went black as his head hit the ground with force and knocked him unconscious as still flying debris impacted his limp body and rained down on Caitlin and anna who shut their eyes tight and clenched each other, fighting the pain from raining bits of rock and rubble that fell on them. Her mother fainted in sheer terror and as Caitlin let out another scream for her mother, a rock struck her in the back of her head and she went limp over her mothers unconscious body.
Caitlin’s eyes opened slowly to a blurry and ashen world. Her vision peeked in and out of clarity and her sight was drifting back in forth into double and then triple and sometimes too many multiples to count. She forced her self up with her badly cut and scraped arms. She wiped blood from a bleeding cut over her right eye and reached around towards the back of her head towards the pulsing pain where the chunk of rock had struck her. She cringed when she touched it. Next she looked around for her mother and felt her heart drop a little at the lack of her presence. “Mom?” Caitlin said in a weak tone of voice, tears began to gather In her eyes, “mom!” she screamed, she was becoming horrified. She looked around and examined the area as she began to panic. She looked down and saw what looked to be a face down person, partially covered by rubble. She frantically clawed the rock and bits of tree and dirt away and turned over her mothers body. She shook Anna by the shoulders in fear, “Mom! Mom, wake up!” she cried and grasped her face before screaming louder, she beat on her moms chest and shook her, “mom!” she yelled louder and louder until it was barely recognizable as a word and more than a garbled mess of frantic cries. She felt her pulse and made a slight moaning cry of terror when she felt nothing. She began chest compressions, tears still pouring rivers from her eyes. She knelt and opened her mothers mouth and started mouth to mouth. Still no reaction. She alternated from mouth to mouth back to compressions for some time. She began screaming and her compressions and breath became more frantic until she was beating on Anna’s chest with her fist trying to get her heart to start, but she was no expert. She screamed wildly and kept bringing her fist down, each hit more and more inaccurate and less likely to revive her mother. She let out a scream of pain and horror and disgust more frightening than the burning and wrecked cemetery around her and fell backward away from her mother, “no, no, no, no, no...” she mumbled frantically, shaking her head and starring at the sky. She tried to quiet herself so she did not draw as much attention.
“Caitlin...” a muffled and injured sounding male voice said from a short distance away. Caitlin looked up, it was Anthony lying mangled on the ground. She raced over to him and stopped, her mouth gaping, when she saw him. His body was horrifically contorted. Bones jutted hideously from his limbs and his chest was malformed and crushed in. Every one of his breaths made a disgusting gargling sound deep within his lungs. His eyes seemed glazed and lacerated, blood seeped from the corners of his eyelids. “I... I can’t see, Caitlin I can’t see... f**k! I can’t see!” he began to scream, he tried to raise his right arm to his face but it only contracted and wobbled weakly and spurted blood, he cried out and began to panic as he realized how bad it really was. “Oh f**k,” he said in a shaken voice, “Caitlin how bad is it?” he said, Caitlin didn’t reply she just opened her mouth and shook her head, “god d****t Caitlin it hurts! Oh f**k it hurts,” Anthony said, his face contorted as if crying, but no tears came, “just tell me how bad it is! F*****g tell me!” he screamed and cried out for it hurt to yell but he couldn’t stop himself.
“You... you need to calm down Anthony,” she said, she knew it was the wrong thing to say, but she couldn’t think of anything better. Anthony wined a little and moaned. He raised his less injured left arm and began to feel his body and his face slowly grew more and more alarmed until he reached the bone that protruded from his right forearm and screamed. “Oh god, oh god, oh god... no, no...” he said, refusing to believe what he was feeling, “f**k...” he mumbled.
“Please, Anthony, I know it hurts but your going to get us both killed if you don’t calm down,” she whispered in an angry and pleading tone.
“F**k you, Caitlin! F**k you! F**k you!” he repeated beforecrying out again.
“God d****t, shut up!” she said, looking around with alarm.
“You shut up!” he hollered, “F**k!” He continued to scream and panic. Every scream brought more pain and more suffering and the more pain that arrived in his body, the more he screamed. His words became frenzied and incoherent and Caitlin attempted to calm him until she too was yelling at him. She jumped on him and covered his mouth but accidentally put pressure on his shattered arm and immediately threw herself off of him. The second her hand had cleared his mouth, he let out the loudest scream yet. It was horrific and if anybody had been anywhere near them, they could have heard it. The shrieking and broken wave of noise permeated the Evergreen Cemetery. Caitlin didn’t know what to do, she too began to panic and she grasped her own hair and crouched on the ground, covering her ears. His screaming continued and he began to flounder on the ground. Caitlin didn’t think about what she did next. An unstoppable force overtook her and compelled her for survival. Perhaps it was justified for her to do what she did, for he was in immeasurable pain... Perhaps. She reached out and took the handgun from Anthony’s belt and pulled the hammer down with her thumb, thus making the weapon primed for a kill. The next few seconds were a blur of frantic pleading by Anthony for his life and Caitlin’s grim decision. She pulled back the trigger and looked away as the hollow point round burrowed deep between Anthony’s eyes and forced open a cavity within his head which expanded in a minuscule space of time and thrust his skull and brain into pieces which burst forth in several directions, but the forced motion of his neck by the impact of the round tossed the base of his skull backwards and sent an arch of blood careening backward onto the rubble. Caitlin stood in shock. She covered her face for a second and began to feel a weight upon her as if from some invisible force and a building sensation in her stomach. She crumpled over and her stomach wrenched its contents onto the ground in front of her.
● ● ●
David shoved open the front gate to the school and began to run to his car, followed by Adriana and Kyle as well as another friend Jace and his girlfriend Mellony. “Where the f**k are you going, David?” Adriana screamed after him.
David stopped when he reached his car, “I’m going to Danny’s and getting some f*****g guns, and then I’m going to Evergreen Cemetery. It’s where we planned,” he stopped to catch his breath and lean on his car, “it’s where we planned to go if this sort of thing happened.”
“But you have a gun under the seat already!” she cried at him. David did not respond, he just starred into the car as he opened the door and plopped himself inside. Adriana opened the passenger side door with haste and threw herself into the car, as did Kyle, Jace and Mellony.
“What the f**k are you trying to do?” She asked.
David didn’t reply to her question, only said, “it doesn’t matter,” he reached under the seat and pulled out a p99c handgun and two clips. He shoved one into his belt and slid the other into the p99. He starred at the gun for a second and his eyebrows gave a slight twitch just before he pulled the slide of the gun back and released it. The series of pops from the inner workings of the weapon and the slid smacking back into position startled Adriana slightly. She blinked at him. “Whatever you do,” he said, “don’t get out of this car.
David sped down the street parallel to the school at nearly 70 miles per hour with a look of hate and fear spread evenly across his face. “David there was a f*****g attack, they’re going to have security at the checkpoints ramped up!” she pleaded to him, “you couldn’t get through with that gun on you during a normal day, David. Let alone this one!” She said, her eyebrows contorted and hr face forming a worried expression. She saw David’s temples flare and his jaw muscles pulse as he gnawed his teeth. He listened to distant gunshots.
“Babe, are you even listening?” he said, “there’s still gunfire everywhere even though they bombed the f**k out of the area. That means that other people are fighting,” he said looking across at Adriana who still looked confused. “Which means ”
“Which means,” Jace interrupted, “the manpower at the checkpoints wont be very heavy because they will have diverted almost every guard to suppress these people... just like they always do. It might seem like mother fuckers are everywhere but the truth is they have been trying to get funding for more forces in LA for months now, which means they don’t have enough,” he said in a hardened tone, as if he had some sort of deep faith in David’s judgment.
“Okay whatever! It doesn’t matter because this is f*****g ridiculous! You’re going to get yourself killed!” she screamed at him and then waited for a reply, but there was none. “David!”
“Okay,” David said, slowing the care, which prompted Adriana to think she had convinced him to stop, but then he continued, “There’s a checkpoint a few blocks around this corner,” he said as the car came to a complete stop, “whatever you do, keep her here,” David said to Kyle, Jace and Mellony while pointing to Adriana. David exited the car as Adriana began to protest wildly, but was restrained by the three who reached over from the back of the car and pleaded with her to calm down as David hopped over the fence to the back yard of a house just next to them.
David moved through the backyards of several homes extremely stealthily. When reaching a fence, he quietly jumped and took hold with his hands, pushing himself over and landing softly on the other side. On the other side of the 5th fence he landed in a small ally which dead-ended just behind him, at the open end sad a Civil-Guard with a SAW, and just beyond the opening of the ally ly a small checkpoint meant primarily for civilian vehicles. David could see that only three men were operating it, one of which did not have an assault rifle because he was operating the gate from behind a small plywood booth. One of the other’s who did have an HK 416 had leaned his against the both and was smoking a cigarette, while the other, still carrying his, looked wearily through the scope and down the road. In short, none of them had any idea of David’s presence. David strode forward quietly, his footsteps soft and cautious before very quickly reaching into his jacket for the p99. He inhales and felt his heart drop in anticipation for he had planned out his serious of action. He aimed the gun carefully and fired one round at the Guard who looked down the street with his scope since he was the biggest threat due to his positioning. The shot impacted the open space between his flak jacket and his helmet, just below his ear, ripping through his neck at an angle and severing his spinal chord, killing him instantly. The report of the shot had barley been heard by the other Guards when David jolted the gun to the SAW operator who sat just in front of him and fired a round into the back of his neck. As the man was falling, David shot three rounds at the gate operator who was barley un-holstering his handgun from his hip. Two of the rounds struck him in the upper chest and the third into his left eye. As the fallen gate operator was dropping his weapon, the fourth and final guard was practically leaping for his HK-416, the cigarette falling helplessly from his horrifically contorted mouth, but as his hand was about to grasp it, David shot him twice, both in the chest. The man fell to the ground in shock. His body armor had kept him from being killed, but he was unable to breath from the impact. He was barley able to try and reach up for his weapon before David was upon him, kicking the HK 416 away and stepping on the mans outreached hand. David twisted his foot and herd a popping, moist, sort of noise emitting from the Guards hand and a guttural scream of horror from his mouth before David aimed his weapon between the Guards defenselessly begging eyes and fired, extinguishing the mans life. David stuffed his weapon back into his belt and began to reach for the HK-416 when he heard a noise from behind him and violently whirled around to see the Gate operator just behind him, poking out the booth and beginning to raise his weapon. Clearly David had been mistaken about the third shot impacted the operator in the eye, but instead he must have just missed his head. The proximity of the shot to the mans ear had ruptured his eardrum and he had virtually no balance. As the Civil Guard was raising his gun, David swiftly took hold of the guns barrel and turned the weapon in his hand, forcing the Guard to drop it. At the same instant that David did this, his fist was hurtling towards the Guards unprotected face. The heavy blow was delivered with force that threw the already off balanced man into the wall of his both. The man blindly tried to grab onto David’s shirt with the same hand that had been disarmed. David acted by taking hold of the mans wrist and wrenching his arm quickly to force his elbow towards the air, which David pushed down on with his palm with great force. The man fell to his knees with a scream before the arm was broken but David retracted his hand and brutally replaced it with his foot, which he pushed down with all of his legs strength. As he heard the ripping and cracking sound of the guards elbow being shattered and ligaments being torn, he felt his stomach tweak slightly and his throat feel a slight pulse as he realized how easily he could have killed this man without causing any pain. In an instant he knew that perhaps, just perhaps, the fact that his hate for the Guards had extended to encompass them all instead of just those who’s individual action had been deserving of it, was wrong. At the same time however, he knew that what they did was wrong as a whole, and that every guard had signed up for this. If they couldn’t suffer the repercussions of the actions of one Guard... then every citizen should not have to suffer the consequences for the actions of one who was out of line. David released the mans arm and stepped back, pulling the gun from his belt and aiming it at the screaming mans wobbling head. “Did you know that when I was twelve,” David said in a loud and commanding voice, “ I had a best a friend,”
“Wh... wh... what the hell... what are you talking about?” the Guard said, grimacing and clutching his arm.
“I said that when I was twelve I had a best friend. His name was Timothy,” David said, his voice weakened a little, he licked his lips and spoke, “timothy was a year younger than me and timothy...” David hesitated, his voice weakening further and tears gathered in the corner of his eyes, “and Timothy loved.... Ti...Timothy loved,” David paused and swallowed, pain was evident in his voice, “timothy loved Peanut butter,” David said, scowling at the man.
“Wh... what... are you f*****g mad?” the man said. David noticed his
British accent. He must have been a British soldier from the UN.
“Yes,” David said, nodding in a manner that almost proved that he was. David simply starred at the man. “Yes, quite mad,” he continued, “and like I was saying... Timothy loved peanut butter and one day Timothy and I were playing in the front yard,” He said, a tear broke ranks from his eyes and slid down the side of his face, “and I f*****g convoy,” he said, elevating his voice, “came along and overreact to something, I don’t know what, and they f*****g shot Timothy and now Timothy is dead.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” the Guard said, he began to say something else but was interrupted by a promptly delivered bullet to the face.
David placed the gun bak in his belt and shook his head, letting out a sort of oddly sadistic cackle. He turned to the mans dead body with a hideous smile and spoke. “Pfft, liar.”
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