"Anonymous Shooting" - Temp. Title. EDIT

[ArmasTermin]

I changed a few things around, mostly names. Actually I don't know if any of this chapter is changed...



Chapter 1
The one called “Richter” woke at five and put the thirty-round Kalashnikov magazines in his backpack at six. At seven he was on the bus to Roosevelt High School, four hours before his actions would be carried out. At school he waited, keeping his backpack close and closed at all times. And at eleven AM, Monday, Richter put on the mask, clicked a magazine into the AK-47 assault rifle, and walked forward into the school courtyard, chambering a round and pulling the folding stock into place as he did. The students didn’t take notice until the first deafening blast and muzzle flash.

* * *
Principal Dimitri Harman stood at the edge of the courtyard as police walked back and forth, standing around the EMTs as they loaded up the bodies onto stretchers and carried them off to waiting vehicles. A man in a cheap suit with a badge walked up to Harman with defeat and concern etched into his features. But he stood, waiting for the principal to speak first.

“So… how many?”
“Seven fatalities, three injured...”
Harman looked around the courtyard, unable to focus on anything. Three pools of blood were plainly obvious on the cement sidewalk surrounding the inside circumference of the courtyard. A single, high-standing tree broke up the openness of the land, being right in the middle of the grassy area.

Harman nodded to the detective and walked along a cement pathway towards the front lobby. The lobby stretched on into hallways on both sides where classrooms resided and police officers were still knocking on doors to tell the inhabitants to remain where they were.
“Mr. Harman!” he heard from behind him. Turning he saw a young blonde woman with a thick folder clutched to her chest. “What’s happening? What is all this? I heard shooting and they told everyone to go to rooms and—”
“There was a person with a gun. Came into the courtyard and… shot a bunch of people.”
“Well who was it? What happened? Did someone stop him?”
Harman shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment, finding it hard to look into Miss Raleigh’s as he spoke.
“He stopped on his own. Miss Raleigh, six students and a teacher were killed. Three were injured. No one saw his face because he wore a mask. He ran off.”

Harman opened his eyes and watched Miss Raleigh’s expression turn from scared to wondering.
“But… why?”
“I don’t know…”
“What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to wait. Find a place and stay there, they don’t want anyone wandering around right now. Wait until they’ve given the all clear.”

Miss Raleigh nodded eventually and left in a slow jog. The same detective from earlier came through the lobby doors.
“What did you tell her?”
“Everything I know, which is nothing. Hell of a first week of teaching, don’t you think?”
“I’ll say. The news reporters are here and want a statement.”
“They can wait. I don’t have anything to say yet, anyway.”

* * *
Richter sat in a desk, feigning worry for the sake of his image to the students locked in the room with him. His mask was off, the gun was dumped in a trash can along with the magazines, and the security cameras stationed around the school hadn’t caught a bit of his merging in with the frightened masses of students.

“What do you think’s happening?” a girl behind him said.
But no one said a word in return. The television was on and set to a news station talking about the shooting, but they had less information than the students in the room. Richter shifted in his seat and glanced around at the students, then the teacher. Everyone looked shocked or unsure. Some were talking on cell phones to people in the outside world.

* * *
Police Chief William Basset approached the podium stationed in front of Roosevelt High School and glared into the camera.
“At this time we’re deeming the area secure. Parents may pick up their students whenever they desire to and busses will be here within the hour. School will be closed indefinitely following this savage attack, but more details cannot be given at this time. Witnesses have described the shooter in generally the same ways, but there is a problem with identifying him. Roosevelt High School’s strict dress code of uniforms ensured that all students look similar by their clothing, and the shooter wore a mask. We have yet to be able to identify him or her or even tell if he or she is a student or not.

“The victims of the attack have been identified but their identities will not be released for privacy reasons until further notice. Right now the death toll stands at seven with three injured and in medical treatment right now. Their condition will be released as it becomes available. Here is Principal Dimitri Harman for more information.”
The police chief stepped down and waited as Harman walked across the small, green expanse in front of the school. Harman stood at an even six feet, wearing a brown suit with no tie. His hair was graying but he didn’t look to be over forty.

“The students are being released now but the school will remain under police watch until it is completely cleared. A full-scale investigation will begin shortly, but for now the students’ safety is our top priority.”  

[Stoic Socialist]

Sounds pretty good.
If you didn't want me to post here, I'll just delete this post, or a mod probably can.

A question:

Where'd he get the AK from? The paragraph didn't say it was from his backpack, did he have it dissassebled and then reassembled in the bathroom? Did it have a folding stock and he just hid it in his bathroom?
Did he pull it out of his bum?


But other than that, it appeared to be smoothly written, and held my attention, which must be a great feat before I even have breakfast. smile  

[Freak_090]

So, did the students in the room, know it was him?  

[ArmasTermin]

@Stoic - Thank you, and actually I myself was wondering where he kept it. I will change it to be describd as a folding stock model and say it came from the backpack.

And yeah, you can post about it here. I put it here because it wouldn't be appropriate in any other section and anything's fair game in the Chatterbox, so I thought I'd slip it in and see what people thought.

@Freak - No, they don't know it's him. Should I make that more apparent?  

[Freak_090]

ArmasTermin

@Stoic - Thank you, and actually I myself was wondering where he kept it. I will change it to be describd as a folding stock model and say it came from the backpack.

And yeah, you can post about it here. I put it here because it wouldn't be appropriate in any other section and anything's fair game in the Chatterbox, so I thought I'd slip it in and see what people thought.

@Freak - No, they don't know it's him. Should I make that more apparent?

I just find it odd, that a kid would be able to shoot 10 people, and go into a classroom unquestioned. But, then again I over analyze way too much. sweatdrop I would add more into what happened during the shooting, and how he managed to get away.

If I were the kid, I would have shot someone in the face, put the mask on them. Then I would have told the police that I was hiding, and the gunman musn't have seen me.  

[ArmasTermin]

Freak_090

ArmasTermin

@Stoic - Thank you, and actually I myself was wondering where he kept it. I will change it to be describd as a folding stock model and say it came from the backpack.

And yeah, you can post about it here. I put it here because it wouldn't be appropriate in any other section and anything's fair game in the Chatterbox, so I thought I'd slip it in and see what people thought.

@Freak - No, they don't know it's him. Should I make that more apparent?

I just find it odd, that a kid would be able to shoot 10 people, and go into a classroom unquestioned. But, then again I over analyze way too much. sweatdrop I would add more into what happened during the shooting, and how he managed to get away.

If I were the kid, I would have shot someone in the face, put the mask on them. Then I would have told the police that I was hiding, and the gunman musn't have seen me.

I actually thought of having him shoot someone and put the mask on them to make people think he'd committed suicide, but why would someone wear a mask to kill a bunch of people if they'd just find out who he was anyway?

He just pretended he was running away and as scared as everyone else. So no one questioned him. I did want to describe it more in detail, but I thoght that way I would give too many things away too early. And in chapter 2 the chief of police reviews the security tapes of the event, so that's where most of it is "seen".  

[ArmasTermin]

Chapter 2
Chief William Basset paced around the inside of the courtyard and looked at the map in his hand, showing the layout of the school. The circular lobby in the North had two hallways breaking off to the West and East. South of the ends of the halls were long, rectangular buildings on each side. And bridging the gap between the ends of the rectangular buildings were a series of small, square ones, further South of which was the football filed encircled by a running track.

Basset crossed the courtyard to the North-Eastern corner of the large square made by the buildings onto the sidewalk along the inside. The inner walls were lined with red brick, somewhat weathered but still holding strong. Basset pulled the sunglasses from his face and took a deep breath, still feeling the fear and death as if it had happened five minutes before. A light wind swept the courtyard grass, but only slightly as it was cut very short. The mass of green leaves on the central tree were billowing as if the trunk was breathing, using the canopy as a pair of lungs. But with winter on the way they wouldn’t remain there long.

Basset walked along the Eastern building, passing the metal trash bin and stopped in his tracks. He took a few steps back and glanced inside it to see the stock of a rifle jutting an inch under the rim. Basset pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and gingerly lifted the object out. It was easily put as an AK-47-type rifle, but with Chinese markings and a skeletonized polymer stock, capable of folding over to the side to make it more portable. Basset looked at the selector switch and it was indeed an automatic weapon. The switch had three positions—Safe, Semi, and Auto. The thin, metal bar was still in the Auto position. Basset pushed the bar up to Safe and it clicked loudly. He removed the magazine and found no more bullets remained in it.

“So this is what he used.”
Basset looked into the trash can and saw four more AK magazines on a pile of trash. He called over a crime scene investigator who quickly bagged the items after taking pictures. Basset continued wandering around the school, but no other evidence was found. As evening began to set in, he temporarily resigned the search and walked thorough the front lobby, then out to the parking lot where his gray sedan waited for him.

“There’s no more to find here,” he said to himself. He slipped into the familiar seat and looked at the visor’s mirror for a moment. His hair was straight black, fading around the edges to gray and his face was long and almost rectangular, marked with age and the stress of his job. He flipped the visor back up and steered the car out toward the road. The town of Tall Brook was arranged in a sort of spider web pattern with the main road, Brook Street, running almost due North-South through the whole area. Where the various roads met in the center stood, off to the sides, the small courthouse, police station, post office, and federal buildings. Although it was a small, out of the way town that could barely be found on the map, it was self-contained and its residents generally happy. And its Missouri location ensured a healthy amount of natural greenery and trees and ample rain.

Basset turned into the parking lot of the police station and was quickly met with an officer with a boxful of tapes.
“Sir, we got the security tapes from the cameras in the school. The ones from today are on the top, but we got the last month’s just in case.”
Basset took the cardboard box and nodded his appreciation.
“Good work, thank you. I’ll look over them now.”
Basset avoided the other officers and locked the door behind him in his dark office. A small television perched on his desk was quickly clicked on and he loaded the tape marked “7AM-12PM” first. There were a few seconds of static, then a black and white view of the courtyard flashed onscreen. By what it showed, Basset assumed it was mounted to the Eastern hallway breaking off from the inner courtyard wall of the lobby. A few students walked along the sidewalks or across the grass. Some were gathered in a group by the large tree until a few of them looked up as if noticing something and began filtering off in different directions.
“Must be the bell ringing,” Basset said.

Five minutes passed and then the time-stamp in the bottom-right corner of the screen jumped ahead to about an hour later.
“They must be set to only record when students move between classes or are in the courtyard to save tape.”
The students milled about, all going in different directions to different classes. Basset fast-forwarded the tape to ten minutes before eleven, then watched intently, his face five inches from the screen. It appeared to be lunchtime as students stopped and talked, some sitting on the pavement sidewalk or leaning against the tree or inner walls. They all wore pleated pants of black, navy blue, or khaki and polo shirts of white, green, or gray, with long sleeves or short, though the video footage only showed different hues of black and white.

The seconds clicked by into minutes and suddenly it happened. A figure in a mask came from the bottom-left of the screen opposite the timestamp. He wore a black ski mask and carried a rifle. He didn’t look side to side or behind him, just stared forward like a man on a mission. He threw the gun’s stock to his shoulder, then fired off a blast diagonally across the camera’s view at something off screen. Students ran off or took cover behind things, some frozen in place only long enough for someone near them to pull them away as they ran. Basset watched the shocked expressions and couldn’t help feeling sick. It was one thing to figure out what happened, but it was another to watch it occur right in front of him.

As the figure went off-screen, Basset removed the tape and entered another showing a view as if it was mounted on one of the smaller buildings south of the courtyard. Its field of view almost intersected the first camera’s, but from the opposite side. Basset fast-forwarded to eleven and saw the figure walk diagonally toward the camera. He shot more and struck two students along the western walkway as they stood, oblivious to his intent. Students ran for cover and the figure blasted one more as he ran North up the walkway toward the lobby doors. Then he ran South, chasing after another student running for the gaps between the southern buildings. He was also dropped with five bullets streaming from the gun’s barrel as brazen cartridges rained out from the ejection port of the AK.

Basset watched the rest of the tapes, taking notes as he did so. Then he took some medicine for his stomach and sat at his desk for a long time, thinking. There was a knock on the door and Basset took his head from his hands.
“Yes?”
The door opened without a word and an officer holding a large plastic bag zipped up with brazen cartridges walked in.
“These were already analyzed—thought you might want to look at them. They were shipped off to a crime lab in St. Louis earlier. Here’s the file.”

The officer handed over a manila folder and Basset leafed it open.
“Standard full-metal jacket, seven point six two by thirty nine millimeter. Manufactured in Russia and imported five years ago. Lot 1AV488. A total of sixty shots fired.”
“Yeah. It was in a huge lot and you know how with big amounts of things stuff is misplaced. Well about a thousand rounds were misplaced. Bought, stolen, thrown away, who knows? But those were the ones used in this. No way to track them back to anywhere that would help. The magazines you found in the trash were all fully loaded—an additional ninety rounds. He could have kept going. As for fingerprints, there wasn’t a single one on any of the bullets, shell casings, magazines, or the gun itself.”

“Thanks, Jim. What about the gun?”
“Oh, next page.”
Basset flipped to the next page, which was a glossy 8x10 photograph of the gun in question. He flipped to the next one and saw the report of it.
“Made in China like the markings suggested,” the officer said. “The serial number tied it to a lot made there like ten years ago. They were smuggled here and sold on the black market. The other fourteen made with it have been confiscated from drug-runners over the years, except for one other. The ATF almost has the whole set.”
“You’d think he’d file off the serial number so we couldn’t link it to anything. I wonder why he didn’t…”

“Beats me. Find anything on the tapes, sir?”
“I saw most of it, but there’s no way to tell who did it right now. The whole damn school is going to have to be interviewed. Every student, teacher, and administrator is going to have to report who they were with during the shooting for alibis. And we’ll have to identify all the people shown on camera. This whole thing’s on a huge scale. And this is all with the assumption that someone that goes to the school did it. It could be some random nut that put on the uniform and a mask, ran in, and shot up the place.”
“Don’t worry about it, chief, it’s hard on everyone. What you’re feeling isn’t half of what the victims’ parents are.”
Basset nodded and looked on apologetically.
“Yes. Very true.  

[Fresnel]

I like it. I'd offer to beta read it, but I'm no good at continuity errors, only spelling and grammar, and I don't think I'd have the time anyhow.  

[ArmasTermin]

One more chapter.




Chapter 3
Jake Marlin wrapped his arms around the stout tree branch with an iron grip as he peeked across the roads with the zoomed-in camera view. The man in his back yard was heaving a large axe high in the air, then sending it down to cut small logs into halves. Jake snapped a picture with the axe at its height, then as it broke the wood into pieces.

“Mr. Hawkins,” Jake said to himself, “you’re on worker’s comp. because you hurt your shoulder.” He snapped another picture as the man wiped his forehead, then tightened his grip around the axe handle and chopped again. “I’ve got to say, your shoulder looks fine to me.”
Jake let the camera hang by its strap as he pulled the new cell phone from his jacket. He glanced at the number on the display screen, then flicked it open and put it to his ear.

“Mr. Johansen, I was going to call you. Hawkins is chopping wood in his backyard. You can be the judge when you see the pictures, but I think he’s more than fit for work. Looks like he’s screwing you over for money like you thought. Yeah… Yeah… Exactly. I can do this for a few more days, but the pictures say it all… Okay, talk to you on Thursday then.”

Jake flipped the phone shut and stuck it in his pocket, then got one more picture. Climbing down was a pain. Jake grappled with the tree limbs, trying to work his way down without smacking the five hundred dollar lens into a dense tree section. He jumped the rest of the way to the ground, then took in a deep breath of the recently chilled air.

Jake looked all around at the familiar surroundings. The rolling mountains to the north beyond the tree-dotted raise were cast with snow for the coming winter. And just beyond the road to the south was the line of homes breeched every few houses by another road, cutting the small town into a long, grid-like pattern. Jake nestled his camera into the passenger seat of the black sedan, then walked around to the driver’s side and got in. He turned off of the raised plain onto Virginia Street, then south onto 10th Avenue, and finally west on Miner Street to the two-story red-brick home. A horribly orange pick-up truck sat idly in the driveway. Jake got out after parking, bringing the camera along with him. He turned the brazen key into the home and was hit by the familiar scent of old books, warm air, and cigar smoke.

The walls were of a cherry-wood color, nicely stained and tightly held together. The carpet was soft, in a dark-purple color that was bordering on black. A gray sofa sat across from the door against the wall with a television to the right of the door and a coffee table between. There was a bookshelf beside the sofa, packed with different volumes and all in alphabetical order. Jake set the camera on the table and walked to the left of the door into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator door and poured water from a glass pitcher into a cup, then dropped onto the couch and clicked on the television.

“Sitcoms… sports… soap operas… cartoons… nothing on.”
Jake took a sip of water and turned to the news. A man and woman were sitting behind a newsroom desk with a box superimposed on the light blue painted wall behind them, showing footage of what looked like a school. A bar of scrolling text under the man and woman said “Terror in Missouri”.

The woman chimed in. “For those just joining us, a school shooting erupted in the small town of Tall Brook in Northern Missouri this morning. Seven are reported dead with three injured. The shooting began at just after eleven AM this morning and lasted only fifteen minutes. But the short time still allowed the peaceful Monday morning of Roosevelt High School to become absolute terror for the students.”
Jake stood up, nearly spilling the glass of water. “What? No way!”

The screen cut to a playing of black and white footage showing the courtyard of Roosevelt High School. A figure wearing a black ski mask walked into view at the bottom-left hand corner holding a rifle, then raised its stock to his shoulder and fired at something off-camera, presumably people.

“As the footage shows,” the woman said as the playing repeated, “the shooter was wearing a mask and the same uniform required of students. So identifying him has proven difficult. Police say they found the weapon discarded in a trash can. It is a Chinese production of the Russian AK-47 assault rifle. It was found to have been smuggled to America illegally around nine years ago with a stock of fourteen others that had already been confiscated from various drug-runners.”

Jake set the glass upon the coffee table, half full or half empty.
“Jeez, not another one. But that’s strange, usually the kind of people that do those things aren’t mentally sound enough to think of getting away. Something’s off here.”
Jake took another drink of water, watching the news for the next thirty minutes, but the same things were said over and over. Occasionally a local Tall Brook police officer or official would speak, as did one of the parents of a student that went to the school.
“All right,” Jake said, “if it’s not solved in thirty days I’m going to feel obligated to figure it out myself.”

Jake stood up and went to the calendar mounted on the wall to his left. He pulled up the top page and date near the end of October.

* * *
October
Principal Dimitri Harman sat behind his desk and glanced between the people standing around it. Vice-principal Robert Andrews, Chief William Basset, and new teacher Marie Raleigh.
“Principal Harman, I must request that the school remains closed until the shooter has been identified and arrested. The students’ safety cannot be assured until then.”
“I agree with you, Chief, but we have no idea how long that could take. Are the students supposed to be without school for what could be months? Or even years? We will greatly step up security measures but the students must return to school. We need to get things back to normal and regain some sense of normalcy. The only thing I’m waiting for now is a substitute.”

Harman bowed his head for a moment. “Richard Marley was a close personal friend of mine. It was terrible that he was taken by the sick criminal. But… we need a substitute for his history class. Until we have one the school wouldn’t be able to run smoothly.”
As if it had been rehearsed, there was a knock at the door. Harman looked up and glanced at the three others in the room.

“Come in.”
The door open and a man poked his head inside, then stepped in, clicking the door shut behind him. He wore khaki pants and a white, long-sleeve button-up shirt with rectangular-framed eyeglasses and hiking boots that looked out of place with the rest of his attire. His hair was neatly and recently cut into an intellectual style that made him appear slightly older than his twenty-five years.

“Oh, hello, I am Joseph Schreiber. I called you about the job as substitute?”
“Yes, Mister Marlin,” Harman said, standing. “This is police Chief Basset, Vice-principal Andrews, and Miss Raleigh, a new science teacher here.”
Jake shook hands with each of them in tern. “Nice to meet you all, but am I interrupting something? I can come back later.”
“No, we were actually discussing the open position. You arrived just on time, though I admit with all that’s going on I forgot about your call.”
“No worries, sir, I completely understand. It’s been very hard on everyone.”
“Please take a seat.”
Jake pulled out the last chair along the row in front of the aged, wooden desk Harman sat behind. Raleigh sat in the chair by the right wall, then Basset next to her, then Andrews. Jake took the seat to Andrews’ left.

“It’s good of you to come forward for the position after so much has happened.”
Jake shook his head as if refuting the idea. “No, sir, it would have been good if there were people lining up the day after the shooting to help as soon as school resumed.”
“Very true, but I think many were afraid to push as if wanting things to go back to normal too quickly.”
“But how else can we keep moving forward? We must remember those that lost their lives, but that can’t stop us from forging the waters.”

Chief Basset had been trying to hold back the snarl on his face for the last few minutes, but the lines of age in it betrayed his true feelings to the others before he even spoke up.
“I still say I don’t condone this. It is not safe yet. The shooter has not been identified. You could be inviting him back into the school with open arms.”
Harman folded his hands on the desk that very well could have been older than himself, then looked at Basset.

“I plan to have metal detectors put in immediately and we’ll have three police officers on watch. More cameras should be added soon as well. I plan to take every precaution available. But like Mister Marlin says, we must forge the waters.”
Basset nodded without feeling, then stood.
“Then I will step up the investigation.”
He left quickly without another word, partially slamming the door behind him.

“When do you think we should reopen the school, then?” Andrews said.
“I believe the rest of the faculty will agree that tomorrow isn’t too much of a stretch. It is a Monday after all.”
“Then I’ll set up a few meetings. Excuse me.”
Andrews stood to leave just as quickly as Basset had, leaving only Jake, Harman, and Miss Raleigh.
“Miss Raleigh,” Harman said, “if you wouldn’t mind giving us a few minutes? We still need to speak about his possible employment.”
“Of course sir.”

Jake turned in his chair as Miss Raleigh exited, then back towards Principal Harman, who pulled a few sheets of paper and donned a pair of eyeglasses to look at them.
“Your resume looks impressive enough, though I must admit that as much as we need a substitute right now it could say just about anything as long as you’re reliable and the students will be safe around you.”
That’s what I was counting on, Jake thought as he smiled and nodded.

“Yes, we’d be glad to have you. Come by tomorrow at six thirty and I’ll see that you’re settled in well.”
“Thank you sir, you won’t be disappointed.”
Jake and Harman stood to shake hands, then Jake made a clean and quick exit and walked across the Roosevelt High lobby to the front doors.