Free Day of Wrath by William R. Forstchen Page B

must be a helicopter. Maybe that was help at last, a SWAT team or something?
    Wendy? He couldn’t see her.
    Don’t lose focus. Your death is on the other side of that open doorway. He actually had a reflective thought, amazed with how many thoughts struck him, that he knew what they meant about one’s life flashing before them in their final seconds. That realization was a warning. He fell to the floor and as he did so, the wall space where he had been standing a second earlier was stitched by half a dozen bullets, plasterboard exploding across the room. He caught Patty's gaze, her surviving children clustered in the corner of the room around her. He motioned for them to stay down on the floor. They were all pinned, their unseen killer obviously injured, recoiling, and deciding on his next course of action.
    Down low on the floor Bob waited, pistol aimed to shoot upward if the murderer made a dash through the doorway. There was no gunfire for more than half a minute, and then a new eruption of staccato bursts. But not aimed toward the room he was in. He heard the doorway to the faculty lounge being shot open, a few shots from within that small room, a pause, then more shots, this time apparently from the classroom across the hall next to the faculty lounge.  
    The bastard was pushing on with his killing, not coming back for him. Bastard! He had faced someone armed but now retreated to kill in other rooms.
    “Come on you pig eater. Come on!” he screamed, trying to lure him away from his mission.  
    Then there was a sudden change to the sound. A shotgun? Half a dozen explosive shots rang out, children screaming, trapped in the corners of the room across the hall, and dying.
    God, what do I do? he silently prayed. Hold here, at least I've got this room secure, or try and get the bastard and finish him? If he gets me these kids die. What do I do? he begged God as the sound of weapons shifted yet again. They were pistol shots and someone, he recognized the voice of Olivia Wilson, a mild bespectacled reading teacher, begged for mercy for her kids. Her cries were suddenly cut off.
    God, do I hold here or try and stop him?
    The answer finally came from within: get these kids out, then try and take the killer on again.  
    “Get the kids out now,” he hissed to Patty, who finally nodded acknowledgement as he pointed to the shattered windows. Cop cars, half a dozen, were racing down the approach road to the school. He could see one of the vehicles being hit by fire, but at least that meant one of the murderer's attention was diverted.
    “Patty, get the kids out now! I can’t go after him until you’re out of this room. I’ll hold the door here while you get them out!"

CHAPTER FIVE

    As they had so adroitly planned, so clearly understanding their enemy far better than the enemy understood themselves, the highways were now flooding with traffic. There were over seventy million children, attending nearly one hundred thousand public schools in America. Millions more were in private, church, and parochial schools. The targets had been carefully chosen: to hit outside of major cities and in geographical locations so that no part of the country felt safe. All of the targets were very close to interstate highways, the route that so many parents would flock to within minutes to speed to the schools their children were in, whether that school was under attack or not.  
    The fear of school shootings had been a running nightmare in the heart of every parent since Columbine. Endless rounds of arguments and debates swirled around the scenario. It was those lone, sick killers in American schools across the previous two decades that had inspired the caliph with his plan. Nearly all had been psychotic American males from teens to early twenties. All were loners. Nearly all had fantasized online and obsessively spent hundreds of hours with the endless outpouring of America’s entertainment media of shooter games and mass murder movies.