Chapter One Hundred and Forty

Havermouth, Present Time

“You’re not going out there!” The receptionist exclaimed in horror, the phone at her ear. “Yes! Yes! Havermouth High School. There’s a shooter. We heard gunshots!”

“He’s going for the library,” Aislen said with absolute certainty. “It’s raining. The library will be jammed packed, and there will be a bottle nose at the rear door if they try to flee…” She saw it so clearly, as she had in the library on a similar rainy day five years before. “They’re sitting ducks.”

She ran out of the office and into the rain, along the walkways towards the library building, the school grounds so familiar, and yet with small changes – a new mural on a wall, different posters on another, fresh paint on the outside tables near the grassy hill where the Triquetra, the jocks, and the cheerleaders liked to sit…

There was a boy on the ground in front of her, trying to drag himself off the pavement, a trail of blood showing his passage. “Help!” He was wide-eyed and panicked. “Help me! He shot me!”

She crouched by him. It was a leg wound, and the blood poured thickly, staining the pavement with a rich red that seemed too bright and thick to be real. She stripped off her shirt and wadded it into a ball. “Press tightly. Help is on the way. I have to go… distract him.” How? She wondered. What could one woman do against a boy armed with a gun?

She spotted two junior high school girls crouched in the bushes, their eyes wide with fright and their faces pale. “Here!” She gestured for them to come over. “Help him into cover! All of you hide!”

The girls shook their heads, not willing to leave their safe haven.

“For fuck sake,” Aislen cursed. Where was a muscle-bound man like one of the Triquetra when she needed them, she asked herself as she managed to get the boy to his feet and half dragged him, crying out in pain, over to the bushes. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she told him.

“Thank you,” he replied with gratitude. “Thank you.”

“You’re only wearing a bra,” one of the girls commented. “And it’s see through.”

“Can’t be helped,” Aislen grimaced. She’d forgotten about the bra she’d put on that morning. It wasn’t the choice she would have made had she known she’d be running around wearing just it and trying to stop a school shooter. Life rarely matched the movies, she thought grimly, and apparently, she was going to face down a shooter with her nipples on display.

She left the trio and hurried towards the library, spotting the shooter ahead. He was dressed in a school uniform, but wore a holster over it, with two handguns and the rifle that he held as he kicked the library door. Someone had locked it from the inside, perhaps had wedged something against it, but he was determined, and his next kick shattered the lock and jolted the door open slightly.

A senior student, she realized. They might have been at school together five years before, his junior year and her senior one... Perhaps he had been sitting in the library the day that she had seen the premonition of this moment and had been fantasizing about shooting his bullies. Now he’d finally snapped and come armed to school, intending to do precisely that.

“Hey,” she said, her hands up in surrender. “Great weather, isn’t it?”

He whirled to face her, the rifle lifting and aiming at her chest. Fuck, she thought. On second thought, though, she was glad that none of her men were there, or they’d be in the same danger as she was. “Are you fucking stupid?” He demanded in confusion, taking in the fact that she wore nothing but the sheer lace bra and her skirt.

“It’s possible,” she agreed as his eyes found focus. “Stupid or insane. Definitely cold,” she added looking down at her chest. Yep. Her nipple rings showed clearly through the lace. “I don’t suppose you would loan a girl your top?”

“I’m…” He gestured with his free hand in exasperation. “Look, you are kind of hot, but you are totally nuts, lady. I’m in the middle of something. If you don’t fuck off, I will shoot you.”

“You don’t recognize me, do you?”

“I’ve never seen you before…”

“Yes, you have, we were in school together five years ago. I’m the Triquetra’s whore.” She saw the recognition of the name cross his face. “Yeah,” she said. “That was me. Is me, I guess.”

The PA activated: “Shooter on the premise. I repeat, shooter on the premise. Active Shooter Protocol. Active Shooter Protocol!” The fire alarm began to ring, and the announcement continued on repetition, the receptionist sounding breathless and flustered.

Unlike a fire alarm, the students did not spill out of the buildings and head towards the evacuation points. Instead, the yard around them remained empty. She saw him look around for targets before returning his eyes to the library door, giving it another kick, widening the way enough that it might be possible for him to squeeze through.

(Don’t do this) Aislen pushed her gift at him. (Put down the guns.) She saw him waiver. (Put down the guns.) She felt a sharp pain behind her eye, like the point of a needle piercing the socket.

His gun lifted, aiming at her. “Why shouldn’t I shoot you?” His voice was almost stolen by the alarm and announcement. (Same as me… Not who I am after.)

“Because we are the same,” she yelled back at him, trying to be heard above the noise. “I am not who you are after.” (Lower the gun. Put it down.)

“You don’t know,” he sobbed the words, tears streaming down his face. “The torment they have put me through. They deserve to die. They all deserve to die.”

“I do know what it’s like, better than most. Triquetra’s whore, remember?” She replied. “There are better ways of getting revenge.”

“How?” He demanded.

She heard the sounds of sirens rising over the fire alarm and saw that he did too. For a moment they stared at each other, both realizing that their time was up. “Don’t do it,” she whispered, as she saw in his eyes what his intention was. Behind him, she saw the police move cautiously around the edges of the library building, their guns held ready.

“Son,” the Senior Sergeant said into the speaker that he held at his mouth. “Lower the gun.”

Aislen began to shake her head, holding the boy’s eyes. “You don’t have to…” She flinched as he put a handgun to his temple and pulled the trigger in one fluid motion, in an explosion of blood and brain matter. She turned, gagging, to vomit into the garden bed.

It was only when she straightened from vomiting that she realized that the wet warmth that spread from her stomach was blood. “Who the fuck shot me?” She wondered in disbelief, collapsing to her knees. As she lifted her eyes, the police came running towards her.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, ambulances are coming. Fuck,” the female police office said, kneeling next to Aislen and pulling Aislen’s hands away. They both watched as an impossible amount of blood poured out of the small hole in her abdomen.

“Fuck,” Aislen complained, sagging to the ground, seeing stars and patches of black. The pain was beginning to surface from behind the shock. “Hey,” she said to the policewoman who was using her hands to apply pressure over Aislen’s stomach. “I know you. It’s me. Aislen, Aislen Carter. Do you remember? I found Penny James. You told me off for drinking at the graveyard and didn’t tell my parents…”

“I remember you,” the woman agreed. “Hang in there, Aislen. Friendly fire,” she said to someone. “Find out who the fuck discharged their weapon and bag and tag it.”

“The police shot me,” Aislen realized. “Ah, fuck, it hurts. That poor boy,” her vision was clouding, the black dominating. “Poor, stupid boy.” She fell into the darkness.