Chapter 0.1

9-2-13, 6:30 A.M.

As per usual, Jeremy got up at exactly 6:30 A.M., rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he swung over his bed and tiptoed out of his messy room. The top of his head was freezing – he had just gotten a haircut so that the messy copper-brown curls didn’t obstruct his glasses. His milky blue eyes searched the room for a suitable outfit; finding nothing especially ironic to wear today, he simply threw on any old thing, finally settling for jeans and his old high school fleece, its bright green coloration hurting his eyes. It was a Monday, the first day of school in fact, and he was looking forward to hanging out with his old crew again, not to mention sarcastically wearing some “school spirit”. The reprieve from high school had been brief, but it had been worth it to enjoy the summer sun for once – he had gone out to a Boy Scout camp and trained the kids in the art of metalworking, as well as enjoying the beach and gun ranges for himself. Looking in the mirror, the bags under his eyes were as prominent as ever – Jeremy fervently hoped they’d be less noticeable by the time he actually drove to school.

Nobody else was up, which was once again normal – they’d all be asleep or already out to work by now, in Dad’s case. He made a sandwich, and smiled as the memory of his Scouting coworkers hit him – he’d gotten the nickname ‘Hephaestus the Sandwich Maker’ for his meticulously crafted sandwiches and position as assistant metalworking instructor. Finishing with a satisfied smack of the lips, he went back upstairs to grab his backpack, which was giving off an air of unfamiliarity due to its long absence from his tired shoulders. Sighing once as he put it on once more, he struggled to get his car keys out of his pocket, and stepped out into the garage, pressing the button to open the garage door to the outside and wincing at the loud noise – he always hoped nobody woke up from that.

His car wasn’t in here, as there was no room – rather, it was kept outside, in the already wintry September morning air. He quickly checked his home chemistry lab before he left – finding that nothing new had happened to any of his experiments, he grimaced in frustration and grumpily got into his freezing black car. It was an old model, 1997 if the number on the back was to be trusted, and it wasn’t very good in Jeremy’s opinion. Nonetheless, it got the job done. Wrenching open the frozen-over door handle, he got the car started, shivering at the cold feel of the interior.

Jeremy headed off into the still-dark Seattle-area suburbs, escaping the darkness of his neighborhood to find the surrounding area almost as dark. However, the relatively small city of Woodinville was by no means quiet at this hour, as he wasn’t the only one with early appointments. Jeremy drove towards the underpass, and took the right turn into the school grounds. Oh, here came the roundabout – he hated this part. Taking it slow, he was pleasantly surprised to find that he had managed to navigate the awful circular design successfully, and headed off to the back parking lot, noting the plethora of cars. Being a sophomore, he was entitled to arrive up to an hour late on the first day – something about ‘school privileges’. He had planned to get here early anyway, but at the last moment decided not to, favoring sleeping in instead – and now there was nowhere to park. Son of a dick. He finally decided to park in an unused corner space, carefully fitting his car into the narrow gap. Struggling, he managed to extricate himself and his backpack from his car without setting off the next car’s alarm, and headed towards the main building.

9-2-13, 6:47 A.M.

Jeremy walked forward, car locked and backpack slung over his shoulder as he fumbled for his MP3. He was planning to always get here way before the other crowds of students, mainly so he didn’t have to worry about parking – and so far, it was working beautifully. Just as he was about to take the player out of his pocket, a resounding thump jarred him out of his morning reverie, and he felt a sharp pain in his upper back. What the shit?!

Jeremy whirled around in surprise, to find that he was facing a fully grown adult, steel pipe in hand and balaclava on his face. The pipe had a curved part screwed onto the end, and it was this that he had felt. Curiously, he wasn’t feeling too bad, Jeremy reflected in the split second it took for adrenaline to surge through his veins. Maybe the guy just didn’t know how to hit? He had hit the backpack, after all, so he couldn’t know that much about seriously hurting people. Jeremy decided he would teach him, and delivered an uppercut to the man’s jaw. Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to do much other than infuriate the other person, and Jeremy decided more drastic methods were needed.

Reaching over while the other man was distracted, he grabbed the steel pipe, and ripped it out of the man’s hands. As Jeremy raised it over his head, he strangely recalled the blacksmithing lessons he’d been taught about bending and denting metal with a hammer. “Hold it at the end, and put some torque into it,” his boss had said. Jeremy had spent the rest of the week practicing his swing – by the time the kids walked in, he could hit what he aimed at, and hit hard. Well, he supposed skulls weren’t so hard as metal. Bringing the curved end down, he hit the man’s skull with a hollow thwack!

The guy dropped to the floor, whether knocked out or actually dead Jeremy didn’t know. As he stood over the body, it occurred to him what he had just done – he’d just attacked someone, maybe even killed them! Holy shit, this was bad – it was the first day of school! What had he done to deserve this?! “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god…” he repeated, hyperventilating slightly and curling up in a ball as tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. Okay, he could probably claim it was self-defense, but still. “This is freaking me out,” he whined to the open air, aware that he was talking to himself but far too shocked to care.

Jeremy thought he should probably take the guy’s weapons, in case he woke up or something. Frisking the body, he was shocked to find a 9mm pistol and ammunition rounds. Holy fuck, he might have just stopped a school shooter. That… changed things. Either way, he’d better get these weapons and rounds to the office posthaste so he could get to class on time.

While he walked down the frigid stone steps to the front entrance of the high school, he took a moment to examine the gun he was now carrying, mainly out of curiosity. It was made of sleek, dark steel, and looked like maybe a Glock or something – Jeremy didn’t know anything about guns outside of what video games and Boy Scouts had taught him. Clicking the safety on and shifting his grip so that it wouldn’t look like he was intending to use it, he nervously entered the huge building that housed the vast majority of the school.

The school itself, to his surprise, was empty even of students, let alone the faculty. What the hell? He was about to step into the main office to his left, when something caught his eye. There were people in the office, and one of them looked like the other guy – black outfit, balaclava, and the guy was holding a pistol. Office workers, most of whom Jeremy recognized, were cowering as the man shouted something at them. Oh, hell no. He shifted his grip once more on the pistol, clicking the safety off and seeing that it was loaded with a full magazine. Wisely, he decided to fire through the window of the door – it was one of those glass doors that permitted a full view inside, and he didn’t feel like alerting the new attacker to his presence by opening it.

He fired a single shot, and was both pleased and horrified to see that he had caught the man in the neck, blood spurting from what he assumed was the jugular vein in a wide arc as the man slumped to the floor, clutching his neck and convulsing. The glass door shattered loudly, and he winced at the noise – what if there were more of them around? Jeremy tentatively opened the door, and thought of what to say – he had just legitimately shot a person to death, right in front of a group of people that were essentially his superiors. No question about it, either, as the man stopped twitching and lay still – he was definitely very dead. Wow. This escalated quickly, Jeremy thought. He approached the still-cowering office workers.

“I…” he began.

What was he going to say? What even could he say to something like this? It all seemed like a bad dream – hopefully he’d wake up soon, if that was the case. For all his idolization of figures like Chell, Gordon Freeman, Solid Snake and plenty more, Jeremy frankly didn’t think he was cut out to do stuff like this – did that make him a coward?

“Please tell me this is some sort of joke or something,” he finally begged the staff.

One hesitantly spoke up. “It’s… it’s not,” they answered, and Jeremy felt his heart plummet to his shoes.

“Then… what do I do?” he asked, holding up the pistol he had recovered and the steel pipe and feeling slightly faint.

“Lay low and wait until the police arrive?” one staff suggested. Jeremy shook his head.

“They’ll just kill people in the meantime. So… to make sure nobody else dies…” he sighed, hating the words he knew he had to say.

“I have to go back out there.”

The faculty members, to his surprise, didn’t object – perhaps they agreed, or were too scared to argue. Jeremy searched his second unmoving body of the day, coming up with more pistol rounds and a second pistol. Having a thought, he dumped the former contents of his backpack – books, papers and all – onto a nearby chair, and placed the ammo boxes and extra pistol inside.

“Where are the other kids?” he asked, still nervous – he knew he was supposed to be the super-serious action hero at this point, if he was going to save people, but he was still too scared out of his mind to acknowledge this.

“Most are at the school spirit assembly,” a staff member faintly answered. “We think they’re planning to kill them off one by one, but they haven’t started yet – apparently they were waiting for the seniors to show up.”

Jeremy looked at him. “Alright, at least they’re still alive. Now… just to make really, really sure, for legal reasons and whatever. It’s perfectly okay with everyone if I start shooting back at these people?” he asked, feeling as though he were about to drop already.

“Wha - yes, you idiot! What do you think?!” a woman answered, apparently finally getting over the atmosphere of fear that had permeated the room.

Jeremy looked her dead in the eyes, his inner teenager on auto-respond to such snark. “Well, I think this is all a terrible dream or hallucination, and I just don’t want to be held responsible. But excuse me for questioning my reality,” he sarcastically answered, and sauntered out of the room.

He was about to start when a loud squeaking sound came from one of his shoes – Jeremy realized with some embarrassment that he had scuffed it against the tile floor. That was going to be problematic… wait! He had an idea. Jeremy grinned delightedly as he slipped off his shoes, carefully depositing them by the door to the office. Taking a few steps, he was dismayed to learn that now his jacket was making noise. True, it was cold even inside, but he didn’t want to die just because of his jacket. Shrugging, he took that off too, and this time was pleased to note that he was utterly silent when moving. Excellent. He started off down the nearest corridor on this floor, walking past the balcony that overlooked the huge cafeteria and noting that there was no activity down there.

Gripping the pistol tightly, he took it slow, taking care to search every corner of the school with his eyes. To his dismay, he found in the corner of one of the tile corridors a black, curved object. Picking it up, his suspicions were confirmed – it was a magazine for an automatic rifle. He was going up against people with machine guns. With a pistol.

He was so fucked.

A moment later, he heard noise further down the corridor. Silently creeping up, Jeremy discerned the noise to be a girl crying and pleading for help as a man threatened her with a magnum. She appeared to be the first of several in a line, each unmoving due to fright. The man shouted something at her in a language neither she nor Jeremy understood, and when she couldn’t respond, slapped her across the face. Jeremy leaned around the corner, aiming down the sights. Just as he was about to fire, the girl’s glance shifted over to him, and the man looked around as well. Hurriedly, Jeremy emptied a few chambers into his head, any thought of silenced killing gone as he wildly opened fire. The man slumped to the floor covered in spatters of blood, gurgling before giving a rattling sigh and going still. Jeremy lowered the pistol, and strode over, approaching the girl.

“You okay?” he asked quietly.

Her tearstained eyes moved to look at him, and she nodded. Jeremy held out an arm, and she tentatively took it as he led her back to her classroom, stealing the guard’s magnum along the way.

Inside was a teacher he recognized – this guy had been his English teacher last year. Hell of a guy, too – he always told the funniest stories. Unfortunately, the look on the teacher’s face was all serious. “Sup,” Jeremy greeted as he escorted the girl inside, locking the classroom door. There were several more students there, who regarded him with a mixture of fear and admiration. He turned to face the freshman class, feeling oddly as though he were giving a presentation.

“Okay, here’s what you guys are gonna do. Lock the doors, close the windows, and lay low. I’m going to need a phone number so I can text you guys when it’s safe to come out. In the meantime,” he continued, rifling through his backpack before pulling out his second, empty pistol, and handing it to the English teacher. “Do you know how to use this?” he asked. The teacher nodded fearfully. “If I don’t text you in a day, and you need to get food, do so. If someone tries to enter, and I haven’t texted you? Shoot them,” he concluded. He placed a box of ammunition on the desk, and made his way back towards the door. “Go Falcons,” he drily concluded as he walked out, and he could’ve sworn he heard someone snort with laughter.

As he left, it occurred to Jeremy that he should probably rescue the kids in the gym – that was where the assembly was, and there was bound to be a few hundred trapped in there. Casually swinging his steel pipe in one hand and holding the magnum in the other, he was unpleasantly surprised by a pair of the odd black soldiers rounding the corner. Faster than either could react, he shot the first in the head with the magnum with an echoing crack, and reached out with the pipe to slam the hand of the second against the wall, causing them to drop their pistol. As the first slumped to the floor in a pool of blood, Jeremy noticed the first trying to take a knife out of its hidden sheath, and attempted to quickly shoot him too. Unfortunately, he got a knife in the side for his efforts. Giving out a small cry of pain, Jeremy brought the gun forward through a haze of tears and clicked the trigger once more. Another crack sounded, and the man fell forward. Jeremy looked down at the knife sticking out of him, noticing the blood trickling. How the fuck was he still alive? He vaguely wondered. Well, at any rate, he needed to get patched up before doing anything else.

He wandered down the corridor, blood dripping from his stomach as he clutched it in pain. Next Chapter: Chapter 0.2 Estimated time remaining: 14 Hours, 28 Minutes