Chapter 0.5

9-6-13, 7:07 A.M.

Jeremy finally sat up, deciding to start his day as he shook himself from his semi-conscious stupor. From the looks of things, most of the other kids were still asleep, and he quietly stepped around them as he walked over to the teachers who had been taking the night shift.

“How’s it going?” he quietly asked.

They gave him weary smiles, and he gave them an equally tired thumbs-up before grabbing some breakfast. He didn’t really feel all that hungry just yet, so he grabbed a prepackaged PB&J sandwich and a single, large carrot. Jeremy reflected on the odd thing that was his diet as he munched on the carrot, trying and failing to eat quietly and hating himself for it. The events of yesterday felt like a dream, as though he’d imagined them – then again, this whole week had that same surreal quality to it. He was fighting a bunch of Middle-Eastern terrorists, who’d arrived here to do who-knows-what because who-knows-why, and so far he was winning. Somehow.

He finished his sandwich and walked over to his newly made Kevlar suit, slipping it on. It was a little uncomfortably tight in some places, but all in all Jeremy thought Jackie and the teacher had done an excellent job – the only problem was that he was back to being loud as hell when he moved around, the fabric shuffling and rubbing against itself. The ‘feet’ areas weren’t too helpful either, being made of the same material – while they didn’t produce the annoying squeak of regular shoes against the tiled floors, they still made a rather noticeable dry, shuffling sound.

Finally, he walked over to one of the several weapons caches, and grabbed a M16 rifle and some ammo for it. Stashing the ammo in as many pockets as he could find, Jeremy sauntered past the night crew and entered the rest of the school building, wanting to get a head-start on the mass murder that was his new routine.

9-6-13, 12:02 P.M.

Jeremy knocked on the doors once, using his own ‘special knock’ and calling out “Hey, it’s me!” The doors quickly opened, and Jeremy slipped through, tracking viscous red bloodstains onto the gym floor.

“How many?” a day guard called out, and Jeremy thought for a while.

“…Three,” he finally responded, and the day guard looked at him suspiciously.

“All that blood from just three people?” he asked.

“One of them got too close” was Jeremy’s only response, and he struggled his way out of his suit, dumping it in a bloody pile at the door entrance. He traipsed over to Jackie and Sam, who were among Sam’s several other friends having a quiet conversation. This stopped momentarily when Jeremy walked over, and he gave Jackie a grin as he took a seat nearby.

“That suit of yours is a lifesaver, really. Something like sixteen bullets, completely stopped – I didn’t even have to give myself a shot this time.” Jackie smiled appreciatively, but frowned at the last comment.

“Doesn’t it hurt, though?” she asked.

Jeremy waved his hand in a so-so motion. “Bruises, yeah, but still a damn sight better than how I was on the first few days.” Jackie winced – she’d heard the stories from the nurse. Just about everyone had.

As Jeremy took a moment to relax, he watched idly as a student walked out of the gym with a teacher, heading downstairs to use the bathrooms. In order to leave the gym, the admin staff had decided that any student must have a heavily armed escort in order to prevent surprise attacks. This had led to some complaining among the remaining teachers, due to the sheer volume of students needing to go every day, but it had slowly become routine, and all the doors in the gym area were closed and locked anyway.

Some time later, a student walked over to him. This happened to Jeremy occasionally, now that he was in the “hero” business: Students would come up and ask him stuff. Jeremy took this in stride – answering questions was actually the least stressful part of his day. To his concern, though, this student didn’t look curious.

“Hey, so, um, some of us in the Radio Club overheard part of a message from the hostiles, and we thought you might want to listen.”

Now curious himself, Jeremy got up and followed him over to where the rest of the Radio Club were apparently waiting. He sat down next to them, and motioned for them to continue. One held up his phone, and tapped a button – a recording of a Middle Eastern accent began playing.

“We then ran that through some translating apps, with the help of some of the transfer students, and came up with this,” one of the students said, and held up a crudely written note with several words crossed out, rewritten, and crossed out again.

“Army to me – meet? In room 309 at 2, send…” Jeremy trailed off – all the words at the end of the sentence were crossed off.

“We think that’s a few names, or something,” the student clarified. Jeremy checked his phone – it was 2:12.

“Well, shit, I want to be in on this. Thanks for the heads-up!” he yelled over his shoulder as he rushed back to the door to put his suit on. He had no idea how a few kids hacked what was presumably a high-security radio, but he wasn’t about to question it.

Before he could rush off, however, Sam approached him. “Hey. Just an idea? Take a grenade or two, trap the door.”

Jeremy looked at him shrewdly. “You, sir, have been playing far too much Demoman,” he joked in response, obediently grabbing a cylindrical grenade from their pile nearby the door. Having never used one of these, he looked it over. There was the pin, and if he remembered right, he just had to pull it and throw it. With that, M16 in hand, he ran off to room 309.

Normally, Jeremy didn’t visit the 3rd floor all that much. Nobody liked to hang out there, even back when the school wasn’t a turf warzone – it was just too tedious, and all that was up there was the Math department anyway. The meeting had already started, so he didn’t expect to see much in the way of terrorist activity – though he still kept an eye out. Room 309 itself was a business conference room, with windows for walls – although it appeared the shades were drawn, so Jeremy wouldn’t have to worry about being seen so easily. Approaching room 309 from the left, he was surprised to see that the door was open, blocking him from being seen if he crouched. Grinning, Jeremy bent down into a squatting position and slowly began making his way forward.

As he neared the door, he heard voices – this time, American accents. “What we’re offering is this: We go get the kid, bring him up here, and give him to you, and in exchange you get the fuck out of here scot-free. Nobody else has to die, it’s all quite clean.”

There was a moment of silence, and Jeremy processed this. What kid could they be talking about? Maybe one of the students here was the son of some governor - that might explain their school being targeted.

“What makes you think he trust you?” a gruff, accented voice demanded.

“We’re the military, we can claim just about any bullshit we want. Besides, even if he figures it out, he’s one of those hero types. He’ll probably do it anyway.”

Jeremy paled – they were talking about him. The military had finally arrived, only apparently not to save the kids – at least, not in the conventional manner.

“What if we do not accept?” the gruff voice replied sternly, and the American laughed.

“Then we bomb the school, of course. You think you don’t have missiles pointed at you as we speak? The only thing stopping this place from being exploded is the fact that there’s living kids in there, and… we can always just claim we found them like that.”

Jeremy’s eyes widened. What the fuck? This guy was pure evil, from the sounds of things. He had thought the military was on their side! Instead, it seemed like the army just wanted to coverup the whole debacle while making themselves look good. Jeremy had already held a profound disrespect for the military before this whole trainwreck of a week, but now he was seething with rage. He made to get up, to get in there and start busting heads, but stopped. And grinned. He had a better idea.

He would do this quietly, Jeremy decided. No shouts, no screams of rage or announcing his presence, just the quiet roll of a grenade into the room. He unhooked it from his pouch, the plastic making a loud ‘click’, and had his hand on the pin just as one of the Americans asked “Did you hear something?” Jeremy paled, and hurriedly pulled the pin and rolled the grenade inside, slamming the door shut and running for his life down the end of the corridor. There was a muffled cry of “SHIT!”, an ear-destroying explosion, ringing… and then nothing.

Jeremy trained his rifle on the door, just waiting for some asshole to pop out so he could gun them down. Five minutes passed, and he cautiously crept forward, keeping his gun on the door the whole time. He waited outside the door for another solid minute, not daring to go in and pressing an ear to the wood expectantly. Not a sound came, apart from something falling over – this made Jeremy jump, but he didn’t say anything. He’d probably already attracted enough attention as it was – any minute now, others would be rushing up to discern the cause of the explosion, guns in hand, and he didn’t want to be there when they showed up. Jeremy swallowed once, steeling himself, and entered the room.

What he saw next, only years of gory video games could have prepared him for. There weren’t even recognizable corpses anymore, just strewn body parts. The table they’d been conversing around was broken in half, and judging from the fracture marks Jeremy presumed the grenade had rolled right under it. Several of the soldiers were groaning with pain, so Jeremy casually put them out of their misery with a few shots to the head, putting much more venom into his expression than was really necessary – even if they had bargained his sacrifice. As he finished, an insignia on their uniforms caught his eye. “Squad 15” was emblazoned on the front, with each of their names below it.

The only things in the room that had survived the explosions relatively unscathed were the weapons: They were behind each corpse, probably having been strapped to the adults’ backs. Jeremy gingerly stepped around a pool of blood and ravaged intestines, and picked up the only different weapon he saw in the room. Unlike the thinner, slightly rounder shape of an assault rifle, this one was heavy, and blocky, with a pump on the end and a space for bullets on the underside of the pump handle. This was an auto-shotgun, Jeremy realized with a sense of delighted surprise. It had been under the corpse of a soldier, judging by the helmet, so Jeremy assumed the terrorists didn’t have any shotguns of their own. Why was that?

He picked up the shotgun, surprised at how lightweight it was for its bulk – it was about as heavy as the M16, despite the thicker metal profile. Unfortunately, the weight of the two combined was too much for him even with the M16 strapped to his back, so he reluctantly discarded it – they had more back at the gym, so he wasn’t too concerned about using it. Having an idea, he carefully wedged the M16 into the space where the shotgun had been, so that it looked like he hadn’t stolen a weapon – as long as no one looked too closely, that was. That done, he turned his attention back to the sleek, black shotgun. It looked like it had been modified somewhat crudely – the bottom tube part at the front looked as though it had been repurposed by hand into another barrel, and a second trigger was added to the handle. So, maybe this thing does double-blasts? Jeremy wondered, appraising the new weapon with a by-now practiced eye. But why would a soldier carry a modified shotgun? Jeremy shrugged – maybe the guy was a gun enthusiast. It wouldn’t surprise him, if said adult white male was in the military.

The soldier was also wearing two bandoliers filled with shotgun shells, but some at the front looked a little… melted. Jeremy discarded these, strapping the bandoliers around his uniform and loading a few shells into the chamber. To his surprise, it fit more than one, indicating the shotgun could be used multiple times in succession. Checking the side of the gun just above the trigger, he found a tiny, unlabeled switch. Jeremy flipped it, and it did nothing, so he shrugged, exiting the room cautiously.

Just as he was about to take the stairs, he heard a voice shouting as it ran up the stairs, the sounds echoing loudly. Jeremy ducked around the door, pulling out the shotgun and pumping the handle once. Just as the man sprinted through the door, Jeremy unleashed a blast to his chest, in his haste pressing both triggers instead of just the main one. The gun jerked back and nearly hit him in the face, and the terrorist was blown apart, a visible hole in his chest as he went down and blood began pooling around Jeremy’s shoes. Jeremy stared for a moment, awed by the raw power of the weapon in his hands. He pumped the trigger again, and two shells ejected from the chamber. Now he knew what the modifications were for: This shotgun could fire two shells at once. Holy shit, this was overpowered – if he’d been on the other end of this gun, he’d have been fifty shades of fucked. Listening at the top of the stairs, he didn’t hear any other voices – but just in case, he kept the gun close.

Despite a few mishaps and ambushes along the way, Jeremy managed to make it back to the gym – and by now, he was both excited and absolutely terrified at the power this weapon possessed. Its only drawback was the constant reloading and pumping of shells. Once again, he knocked on the door, calling out his presence. The door jerked open, and he quickly slipped inside before the woman inside slammed it shut again. Jeremy wiped the sweat from his brow, taking off his hood as he started to make his way out of his suit.

“New gun?” the woman asked, noticing the bandoliers and shotgun as Jeremy cast them to the side.

“Yeah… looks modified. And very, very overpowered,” Jeremy joked.

Once it was off, the woman moved his suit on top of a towel so it wouldn’t bloody the floor. “Well, go talk to Mr. Reichgott, he’s an expert with guns,” the woman counseled, and Jeremy thanked her.

Just as he was about to leave, he turned back around, and the teacher looked at him expectantly. “…Which one is Mr. Reichgott?” he asked, and the woman sighed slightly and pointed to a middle-aged, German man over in the far corner. Thanking her again, Jeremy walked over.

He found Mr. Reichgott with the other teachers, evidently instructing one on how to put on a Kevlar vest. As Jeremy approached, Mr. Reichgott looked up with a frown.

“Hello. Do you need something?” he asked, and Jeremy nodded, holding out the now-unloaded gun.

“I was wondering if you could tell me what this is,” he asked, and Mr. Reichgott nodded.

“This... is a Franchi SPAS-12, manufactured sometime around the 80’s by the French. Looks like it’s been modded, too – there’s a second barrel here, or something, and another trigger too.”

Jeremy nodded. “Yeah, it does double blasts – I saw two shells eject from the chamber every time I pressed both triggers.” Mr. Reichgott appraised the gun with an appreciative grin on his face, and Jeremy got the feeling Mr. Reichgott did some gunsmithing in his spare time.

“All in all, you’re lucky to have this – one of a kind, probably, and very powerful. I’d advise saving whatever ammunition you have for tight scrapes,” Mr. Reichgott concluded, and Jeremy thanked him before putting the gun by his suit, with a hastily-written, large note that read “DO NOT USE – Modified weapon, limited ammo” by the side.

He finally took a seat back by Jackie and Sam, and told them what had happened, leaving out the particularly gory bits. Sam laughed at his description of the new gun, and Jeremy shared a smile with the other two as Sam reminisced on how similar it sounded to a “higher-level weapon” from an FPS video game.

“Well, one thing’s for certain – this is gonna go a lot quicker now that I have that thing,” Jeremy asserted, and Jackie clapped him on the back.

“That’s the spirit, Wonderboy,” she complimented, and Jeremy blushed as only a compliment could make him blush. He lightly slugged her on the shoulder, and Jackie laughed it off.

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