Chapter 0.2

9-2-13, 7:47 A.M.

Jeremy stumbled against the medic’s office door, only to find that it too was locked. Shit, he swore under his breath. He falteringly knocked, leaning against the door and barely caring when it opened. The last thing he heard before he blacked out was a stifled cry of surprise.

9-3-13, 5:07 P.M.

Jeremy mumbled something unintelligible even to him as he came to. He was in the nurse’s office, in a bed that was too small for him. Looking at the clock, he couldn’t quite comprehend what he was seeing, and thus stared at it, lost in a daze. He felt… sleepy. No pain, definitely not in pain, but sleep… Sleepy. What was he doing again? He wondered vaguely. The nurse came in, and he gave her a shaky smile.

“Hey… doc… what’s up? Hehe,” he burbled.

The nurse surveyed him. “You’re alive… somehow,” she muttered. “Right now you’re high on morphine sulfate, it was the strongest thing I had for your stab wound,” she continued briskly.

Stab wound? Jeremy barely remembered getting stabbed. He certainly didn’t feel like he had been… wait. What was that around his waist? All… white… and fabric-y. Wait, that’s not a word! He thought, laughing a bit.

The nurse sighed and shook her head. “The office staff said you’re actually managing to kill these people, so they think that makes it okay to send you out on suicide missions. Dumbasses. Now you stay right here, and don’t move, you hear?”

Finally, this struck a chord within Jeremy’s brain. “No… no! Gotta save… the others…” he managed to get out, looking at her with a pleading expression.

The nurse crossed her arms. “Yeah? Right now you can barely talk, let alone fight,” she answered matter-of-factly, and Jeremy winced at her sudden increase in volume – they had been whispering. What if there was a soldier outside the door?

True to form, he heard steps outside, coming towards them. The nurse paled, and seized up in fright. Jeremy, meanwhile, scrambled around before finding the magnum, and waited behind the door. He didn’t have long to wait as another soldier burst through, leveling a pistol at the nurse. Jeremy brought up the magnum and fired once, and the soldier was flung forward by the force of the shot, spattering the bed Jeremy had just been in with a fresh paint of cherry-red. The pistol clattered to the floor, and Jeremy reached down and picked it up, before looking at nurse, who appeared shocked at the speed of the confrontation. The man groaned, clutching his chest as he attempted to sit up, and Jeremy attempted to put another shot into him. Unfortunately, the magnum clicked – it had run out of bullets! He pointed the pistol at the man instead, and ended his life with a few more rounds to the head.

The nurse looked at him, finally bringing a hand to her temple.

"Just… If there were any other option, I wouldn’t even be considering this. But… the phone and Internet are out, and they’ve barricaded off the school, nobody can get through either way. So… you know what, fine. You want to die a hero? Go right ahead,” she sighed.

She unlocked a drawer, and pulled his backpack out from under a shelf. From inside the drawer, she took out a bunch of medical supplies – Jeremy spied gauze, more morphine syringes, and a few other things. These she put into his backpack, before setting it down before him in a huff. “If you get shot, take a shot of morphine and bandage the wound – but don’t take anything more than two per day, or you’ll overdose. As long as you can’t feel the pain, you should be fine. And… take care of yourself out there.”

Before he left, Jeremy looked at her. “You, uh… wouldn’t know how to use this, would you?” he asked, pointing at the magnum. The nurse sighed, and to his surprise took the gun from him, easily flicking out the cylinder and pulling the right-sized rounds from his backpack, inserting each one with a practiced skill.

Jeremy looked at her with surprise written all over his face, and the nurse smiled. “I watch a lot of action movies,” she explained, and Jeremy gave her a confused smile.

“…Thanks,” he mumbled as he headed out the door.

9-3-13, 8:08 P.M.

Holy hell, he was hungry. Jeremy had been clearing out the corridors for hours now, somehow managing to get the drop on everyone else just by virtue of not wearing any shoes or loud clothes. Unfortunately, he didn’t always leave the confrontations unscathed – the bullet wounds in his chest attested to that. On the other hand, he had plenty of morphine, though he tried not to use it too liberally – that kind of thing wasn’t good for him. Dammit, he had always sworn he’d be the last of his friends to get addicted to the heavy shit like morphine, yet here he was. Speaking of which, he hadn’t managed to find any of his friends yet, though he had been avoiding the gym until he was sure the area was clear. Finding no soldiers in sight, he sprinted across the cafeteria to find that it was still locked – dammit. He had tried shooting the lock on the staff entrance, only to find that that didn’t actually work. He desperately looked around, feeling as though he were about to drop, and figured he’d give it another go with the steel pipe, maybe break the door down. Taking said pipe out of its chosen place in a belt loop on his pants, he raised it over his shoulder like a batter about to knock one out of the park. His first hit wasn’t too successful, but the second one made a dent in the door – Jeremy hoped it was plaster, or even wood.

To his surprise, the fifth hit went right through the door. He reached a fist through, and unlocked the door from the other side, swinging it open with barely contained glee. He hadn’t eaten for over a day, and holy shit he was starving.

A minute later, he was lost in the joy of prepackaged sandwiches and other assorted goodies, sugar cookies prominent. For a moment, he spaced out, watching the door he had made his way through in case anyone tried to get through. There was plenty of food here, enough to feed the entire school in his opinion.

9-3-13, 9:13 P.M.

Jeremy peeked through the doors to the gym, made of steel and firmly locked. To his shock, he saw so many more of the black soldiers watching the other doors, milling around, and generally terrorizing the huge group of kids and teachers that was in there with them. How many were there – twenty? Fifty?! Too many. Oh my god, how was he going to do this? How could he kill that many at once? Oh shit, one was coming this way – and this one had a machine gun in hand. Jeremy ducked around behind the door, hoping the guy didn’t come outside. He heard the door click, and elected to sprint around the corner. Unfortunately, the man saw him, and he heard footsteps as they gave chase. He whirled around, magnum in hand, and just as the man came around the corner, he unloosed as many shots as he could, hating the firing speed of the magnum. Most caught on the man’s jacket, but no blood was visible – did this guy have a bulletproof vest? To Jeremy’s surprise, the second one caught the man in the neck, and he actually spun around as he died. The last expression the man had was one of utmost surprise, and Jeremy weirdly felt that he was mirroring that exact same expression. After a moment, he snapped back to reality – he had no time to lose. He grabbed the machine gun, noting how heavy it was – this thing weighed much more than the .22 rifles he was used to. Examining the man’s vest, he noticed “Kevlar” written on the tag and grinned – this was going to be helpful.

A moment later, he came back to the door, outfitted completely in the other guy’s outfit – there was so much black Kevlar clothing he’d be surprised if anyone at all could recognize him. So, he was here. All the other kids were in there. What was he going to do about it? Uh… Well, he was dressed like one of them… Maybe he could just walk in and pretend he was one of them. And then… shoot them while their backs were turned? God no, that was so stupid. They’d be running around everywhere. The only way that would work is if they were all in a corridor… and their backs were turned, so the vests wouldn’t work… and he was currently standing in just such a corridor. So… what to do? He had hoped that the man might have carried something flashy and obvious, like a grenade, but he was flat out of luck on that front.

He decided, after some consideration, to walk into the gym – at least to size up the situation. To be fair, it was a stupid idea, but he was out of options and in way over his head. In fact, Jeremy thought, the only reason he wasn’t blacking out right now out of panic was due to the morphine coursing through his veins. Okay, confident. You own the fucking place. Lights, camera action. Oh dear God, they can see me. Almost as soon as he walked in, one of them walked up and asked him a question he couldn’t understand – right, shit, these guys were foreign. Jeremy gave a noncommittal grunt in response, hoping his voice was similar enough, and after a moment’s pause the other man turned away. Looking around, Jeremy saw that most of the kids were on the bleachers, huddled together and crying. They looked starving, too – had nobody been feeding them? Damn, now he felt bad about pigging out earlier. He strode across the gym floor, the other guy's too-small shoes squeaking and hurting something fierce as he scuffed them along. He could feel the fear singing through his stomach, and tried his best to ignore it – he suspected it’d be a whole lot worse if he were sober right now, and concentrated on that thought in an effort to escape the terror.

Finally, he came to the back, where a massive stash of weapons was – if he hadn’t been in the middle of a veritable army of hostile, armed, trigger-happy gunmen, he’d have started shedding manly man-tears at the sight of so many guns and so much ammunition. Holy shit, was that a chain gun? It looked heavy – Jeremy was beyond tempted to pick it up, but he didn’t think the others would approve. A small part of him whined that he might never have the chance again, and he managed to actually crack a smile, despite his fearful misgivings on what he was doing. So far, nobody had even so much as looked at him awry, which Jeremy was thanking each and every god that existed for – he must have the luck of the Freeman to pull something as spectacularly stupid as this. Maybe they thought he was dropping off the machine gun – speaking of which, he’d better grab some ammo for that. Jeremy rooted around until he found a stack of clips, already loaded, and grabbed as many as he could carry. Oh hey, more Kevlar vests. Jeremy took one and moved into a corner to replace his, which featured his own bullet holes – another thing he was glad nobody had spotted.

Moving along towards the west end of the gym, he spied something else – what he had thought at first glance was simply more ammunition piles was actually a crate of small, fanny-pack like packages. Jeremy picked one up curiously, noting the remote duct-taped to the side. Then, a devious grin came to him. He recognized these. Carefully stuffing a few into the backpack the man had been carrying, he once again traversed the gym, this time heading in the opposite direction. Once again, nobody even gave him a second glance, except for a few students he passed close to – they looked at him in fear, and it was all Jeremy could do not to give them some signal that he was friendly.

Before he stepped back into the gym, he took a moment to stack all the explosive packs from earlier on top of each other, right next to the door. With that, he opened the door and made a show of checking around the corridor, pretending that there might be someone else. He was tempted to fire off a few rounds for effect, but that might startle the others prematurely. Ah well. With that, he stationed himself just behind the vast majority of the terrorists in the gym, but then had a better idea. Quickly, he hurried to the back and dropped his M16 in favor of the chain gun he’d seen earlier. Hoooly fuck, this thing was heavy – he could barely lift it! Shit, this was gonna be hard – but at least he wouldn’t have to worry about the other guys’ bulletproof vests – this thing was a .50-cal, after all. Fuck yes.

Finally, he was ready to begin. He ducked behind the bleachers, just out of sight of the others, and rifled through his backpack for the remote detonators. They seemed pretty simple – even had the big red button and everything. How could he turn them on? Oh, there was a switch on the side. The screens lit up green as soon as he flipped it, and he laid them on the floor carefully until all five remotes were on. Jeremy grinned maniacally as he readied the chain gun by his side, and with only a moment of hesitation, quickly pressed all five buttons. There was a resounding explosion at the other end of the gym, and without waiting for their reactions, Jeremy sprang out from behind the bleachers. “SURPRISE, MOTHERFUCKERS!” he screamed, the chain gun quickly drowning out all other sounds. He didn’t know how much ammo this thing had, and it was getting hard to hold – fortunately, his insane plan was working. Blood quickly spattered the walls as the terrorists, who had all turned around at the explosions, fled in panic and surprise from his sudden onslaught. The students were screaming in shock and horror, and Jeremy ignored this as he continued firing. Those who had machine guns were firing back in the moments before they were ripped to pieces by the massive lead slugs, and Jeremy felt impacts in his lower sternum that felt like hammer blows – wasn’t he supposed to be too high to feel that?!

Finally, the last one went down, and Jeremy dropped the massive chain gun in a huff, walking over and picking up his M16. Kids everywhere were staring at him in open shock, and he gave them a tired acknowledgement before taking a seat in the middle of the gym. Something shifted painfully in his abdominals, and he removed the shredded Kevlar vest in consternation. The sight he revealed made bile rise to the front of his throat – his chest was a mass of bruises, and was bleeding freely in several places. His legs had fared only a little better – genius that he was, he’d completely forgotten to move around when he was killing people – he’d probably been an easy target. Then again, he was alive. And they weren’t. And that was really all that mattered.

Jeremy managed to gather enough strength to go out and retrieve his backpack, which he had hidden in the empty auxiliary gym along with his clothes. Pulling out the morphine ampoules and medkits, he found a pair of tweezers and began poking around for bullets, noting with satisfaction that he could only barely feel the tweezers as they poked and prodded. Once he was sure most of the bullets had been extricated, he gave himself another shot of morphine to the leg and closed up the rest of the kits, dumping them back into the backpack and laying down numbly on the floor. Some students approached – not any that he recognized – and he gave them a tired smile.

“I cannot fucking believe what you just did!” one exclaimed, and Jeremy gave a shaky laugh.

“To be honest, neither can I,” he replied, and moved over to lean against a bleacher, assisted by the group of students. “Thanks,” he muttered.

He wasn’t planning to rest long – just long enough for the morphine to take full effect…

Next Chapter: Chapter 0.3 Estimated time remaining: 14 Hours, 17 Minutes