Free Columbine by Dave Cullen

exploded where Anne Marie had first collapsed.
    "This is awesome!" one of the killers yelled.
    By the time Dylan rejoined Eric, they had used up all the easy targets. Everybody caught outside had run like crazy or hidden. One last pack was still in the open. These students had fled across the senior lot, climbed over the chain-link fence, and were racing across the soccer field near the base of Rebel Hill. Eric had a go at them. They were too far. Not out of range, just too hard to hit. Dylan fired at the distant targets, too, bringing his total shot count up to five. It was 11:23. The killers had enjoyed four heady minutes.
    ____
    Deputy Gardner was the first officer alerted. The custodian radioed Gardner as soon as he started the new surveillance tape and caught sight of kids near the windows. The custodian sounded scared. The first 911 call came through to Jeffco at the same time. A girl was injured in the senior parking lot. "I think she's paralyzed," the caller said. The dispatch hit the police band at 11:23, just as Gardner drove around the building to the commons and Dylan rejoined Eric at the top of the stairs. "Female down," the dispatcher said.
    Gardner saw smoke rising and kids running. He heard gunshots and explosions and a flurry of dispatches on his radio. He couldn't quite tell where the commotion was coming from.
    ____
    Four minutes into the mayhem, much of the student body was oblivious. Hundreds were running for their lives, but more sat quietly in class. Many heard the commotion; few sensed any danger. Most found it annoying. The chaos and the solitude went on side by side, often only yards apart. As Dave Sanders ushered kids to the commons staircase, part-time art teacher Patti Nielson paced above him on hall-monitor duty. Sanders herded the lunch crowd up the stairwell toward her, but then down a parallel hallway. Nearly five hundred kids charged the length of the building. Nielson never saw or heard them. She heard the racket outside, though. Some kids ran up saying they heard gunfire. Nielson was annoyed. It was a prank, obviously, or a video shoot. It had gone on far too long. She looked down the corridor to the west exit. Through the large glass panes in the doors she could see a boy with his back to her. He had a gun. He was firing it into the senior lot. She assumed it was a prop, a loud one, and totally inappropriate. Nielson stormed down the hallway to tell him to knock it off. A junior named Brian tagged along to watch.
    They approached the exit just as the shooters ran out of targets. There were two sets of doors there, separated by an air lock. Nielson and Brian passed the first set and reached for the second handles. Eric spotted them. He turned, raised the rifle to his shoulder, aimed at Nielson, and smiled. Then he fired. The glass shattered, but the bullet missed. Nielson still thought it was a BB gun. Then she saw the size of the hole.
    "Dear God!" she screamed. "Dear God! Dear God!"
    She turned to run. He fired again. Another miss, but glass and metal shards and possibly a grazing bullet tore through the back of her shoulder. It burned. Brian had turned, too. Nielson heard him grunt, saw him lurch forward. His back arched, his arms flared, and he hit the floor hard. That looked bad, but he got right up onto his hands and knees to scurry back through the first doors. It was shrapnel, just like hers.
    She got down, too, and they crawled the short distance back to the first doors. They got one partially open and squeezed through. Once they had that door behind them, they rose to their feet and ran.
    Nielson was desperate for a phone. The library seemed like an obvious destination. It was just around the corner, spanning most of the south hallway, behind a glass wall. Nielson saw dozens of kids milling about inside, plainly visible to the shooters she pictured on her heels. She never looked back to see.
    Nielson ran into the library to warn them. "There's a kid with a gun!" she yelled.
    There