“Alright, Road Dogs, listen up, give me a stack, butts-to-nuts, and let’s clear this school,” the Captain said to his men. They immediately began forming up. He turned to Spud and gestured to the bag. “Stay next to me and do
exactly
what I say. If anything happens, get down and stay down. I would rather leave you here but it’s not safe.”
The MPs fanned out in a single line with five in front, five in back and the Captain and Spud in the middle. The soldiers walked heel-to-toe deliberately toward the entrance of the school, over and around the backpacks and books, jackets and shoes that littered the walkway. As they moved, each aimed their weapons at any threat that may appear suddenly from all angles.
When they entered the school, the Captain leaned forward and stuffed a hand into the gym bag Spud carried. He pulled out a handful of wooden wedges and stuffed them into his leg pockets.
With a series of hand gestures, the Captain silently directed the five MPs, both men and women, in front of the group. Two at a time at each side of the hallway, the men would slip into the rooms on the left and right. Pistols in hand and extended, ready for anything.
Quietly, the MPs in front would say, “Man in left,” or “Man in right,” and then, “Next man in,” and finally, “Coming out, all clear,” before moving to the next room. As they passed by each clear room, the Captain would kick a wooden wedge into each doorframe, sealing the room closed. Of the five MPs that brought up the rear two aimed shotguns directly down the hall and three walked backwards, keeping an eye on the group’s rear.
They soon came to an L-shaped hallway and the two leading soldiers pivoted far to the side to enable them to cover the length of the hallway blind spot at an angle. The next three MPs kneeled at the edge of the hallway.
“Move,” the Captain said quietly and the kneelers moved around the corner into the hallway with pistols out.
They continued to move down the new hallway until they came to the next closed door in the same way. When the team bounced into the first room in the hallway, a chorus of shouts of “US Army” met by “Don’t shoot!” rang out.
««—»»
“We’re friendly,” Billy shouted at the three soldiers who were pointing handguns at him, his daughter, and the police officer. His hands were up and his palms wide open. Cat mimicked his own movements.
A tall soldier walked into the room behind the three with the guns and looked at the refugees through wraparound sunglasses.
“Captain Stone,” the soldier drawled as an introduction. “Who is in charge here?” As he spoke, he motioned the three MPs with handguns to lower them.
Durham replied, “Sergeant Cam Durham, Gulf Shores PD. I found these two civilians when I got here. They seem ok.”
“Fuck you, Cam,” came a voice from behind the safety of the Captain’s back.
“Is that you Spud, are you ok?” Durham asked.
“You left me out there to be eaten alive by a bunch of whacked out kids on meth or some shit! I’m gonna sue the shit out of you and the whole damned city…”
Stone dope-slapped the scruffy little man in the quick-lube uniform to shut him up.
“This is not the time,” the Captain said collectively to the group. He then looked at Durham. “Sergeant, I’m going to turn this man back over to your custody and leave two of my MPs here with you while I move on and clear the rest of the building. As I find more survivors and the situation is safe enough to evac them, I am going to direct them here to this room. You and the MPs I leave will remain here until you are relieved. Understood?”
Durham nodded with a wry look on his face.
Billy had heard all he needed to, “My son is somewhere in this school, and I’m coming with you,” Billy said.
The Captain was already shaking his head, “I’m afraid not, sir.”
“I was a firefighter and dive medic for ten years and still have my paramedic certifications. If you find injured kids I can help them.”
It was impossible to tell what the Captain was thinking behind his sunglasses, but he seemed about as responsive as the Sphinx.
“You don’t have a medic with you, do you?” Billy gambled.
When surrounded by pumped up and armed individuals, the moment of silence between the two men lasted a lifetime. Finally, the Captain pointed a single finger at Billy, “Just you. The rest stay here. Carry the bag,” the Captain said and turned to walk out. He detailed the last MPs in the group to remain with Durham, Cat, and Spud in the classroom while Billy hefted the bag and moved out with the soldiers.
Billy hugged Cat just before he walked away. “Stay safe, no matter what,” he told her.
“You, too,” she said.
Billy fell in behind the Captain and stayed close to him. Back when he was a firefighter, Billy had gone into a meth house just after the local SWAT team had and he felt the same feeling watching the MPs move as he had back then. They seemed as if they had done this a thousand times and quickly searched the entire hallway. Billy did as he was told and kicked wedges into the doors of cleared rooms as they went.
He watched the Captain aim a Kimber .45 pistol down the hallway every time they cleared a room, ready for anything that was coming their way. Billy remembered a friend he had who had been a gun nut and all he talked about was ‘Kimber-Kimber-Kimber.’ Billy thought of the old .38 in his pocket but decided it would be better to let the MPs do their thing.
They continued into the school and saw much the same as in the first part. They cleared empty classrooms, walked past piles of abandoned backpacks and jackets, and stumbled over desks. The occasional blood spatter or discarded shoe greeted them, but refreshingly, no more students or teachers did.
They came to the end of the hallway and collected themselves. The double doors of the school’s auditorium led to the last room that was unchecked. They tried the doors only to find them solidly closed. Blood smeared scratches were gouged into the thickly varnished wooden door.
“What is that, sir?” a shotgun-wielding MP asked the Captain, pointing to a grey sliver sticking from a gouge like a miniature Plymouth Rock.
The Captain leaned forward and grunted, “Looks like a fingernail, Grimes,” he said through an impassible face. The Captain rapped on the door with his fist, “US Army, is anyone in there?”
Stone knocked again. Billy immediately thought the worst even though he kept telling himself Wyatt was ok. He just had to be. He had just seen him a few hours before. On days when he had to be on the
Fooly Involved
before dawn, Cat was responsible for getting herself and her brother up and off to school. Billy always checked on them before he left to see how they were sleeping and that they had their alarms set but he did not actually talk to them. This morning was no different. He saw his son passed out on his bed with an MP3 player falling out of his hand. He had told him a thousand times not to fall asleep with that thing but Wyatt never listened.
“Is it safe to come out?” a woman’s voice asked, muffled through the door.
“Yes, it’s safe open up!” Billy yelled at the door.
There was the sound of heavy objects moving and shuffling on the other side of the double doors. After what seemed like forever, one of the doors cracked open just far enough for a face to peak out from the inside of the auditorium.
“Show me some ID,” the elderly female’s voice said through the crack. Stone, without fail, pulled a military Geneva Conventions CAC card from his pocket and held it up for inspection.
“Is that you, Eric Stone?” the woman asked hesitantly.
Stone pulled off his sunglasses and looked at the eye peering out through the cracked door. He had a series of small white scars around his left eye. As chewed fingernails spit on a dashboard, they were out of place and ugly on the Captain’s rugged face.
“Ms. Parish?” Stone asked.
The door opened to reveal an elderly woman wearing a sweater vest and gabardine slacks. She had dishwater grey hair piled on top of her head and a pair of heavy framed glasses hanging from a chain on her neck. A diabetic medical bracelet hung from her thin wrist.
The MP Captain and the old woman hugged briefly while she mumbled something about how she read about what happened to him in the paper and felt so bad about it.
Billy looked past the woman and into the auditorium. A dozen adults, most of whom he recognized from various school functions as faculty members stood just inside the door crowding the inside of the room. Behind them were row after row of students sitting quietly in the chairs, all anxious eyes on the doorway.
Ms. Parish turned into the auditorium after her brief exchange with Stone and announced that it was ok, that it was safe now, to which the auditorium erupted in the cheers and clapping of more than a hundred students. Billy pushed his way into the room through the opening and scanned the sea of rapidly talking and gesturing children for Wyatt.
Frantically, he looked again. Some of the children were laughing, some had dried tears on their face and runny noses, others were near catatonic, but none of the faces belonged to his son.
“Wyatt, Wyatt Harris!” he called out to no response. Some of the kids looked back and forth amongst themselves and talked but none came forward.
Stone dispatched two MPs back to the classroom to collect Durham, Cat, and Spud and bring them to the auditorium while simultaneously telling his radioman to call in their situation.
“Sir, I am the School Principal, what class was your son in?” Ms. Parish asked.
“Ms. Matthew’s class, sixth grade,” Billy said.
She nodded and cleared her throat before beginning, “When the call was made to close the school today, we lined the children up in the hallways with their book bags and coats so that they could be picked up faster. The sixth grade classes were closer to the front door near the main hallway. There were two students, the Soto children, who came to school terribly sick and being kept in the school office until their parents could come get them.”
“Soto? Did they have a brother that went to the High School?” he asked.
“Yes, that was him this morning that attacked the School Resource Officer there,” she confirmed. “I was in the auditorium making sure there were no students back here when something happened to the Soto children. The school nurse called me on the radio. She said they went wild and attacked her. She locked them in my office but they were breaking out. Before I could make it back to the front of the school there was chaos in the hallways and children were running everywhere…”
The Principal began to tear up and her voice choked to a whisper. Captain Stone looked away and put his sunglasses back on.
Another one of the teachers picked up where the Principal had left off, “We were able to get these children in the rear of the school back into the auditorium before most of the worst of the rampage made it this far back. She is a hero and saved every person in this room,” the teacher said of the Principal who was now crumbling onto an upright piano with her head hidden in her crossed arms so the children would not see her cry.
“The sixth grade is not here,” Ms. Parish sobbed with her back turned, shaking her head in resignation.
The other teacher confirmed that they had taken a roll call of all the children in the auditorium while waiting for rescue. She advised they had 166 children from K-through-five, but not a single sixth grader.
— | — | —
ChapteR 8
Lieutenant Jarvis sat in the captain’s chair, just to the port side of the
USCGC Fish Hawk
as she pulled into Coast Guard Station Dauphin Island. The small SAR station sat at the western end of Mobile Bay. Eight miles behind him on the eastern side of the Bay lay Fort Morgan at the end of the Gulf Shores. Jarvis waved back at a deckhand on the Mobile Bay ferry, which ran the 45-minute trip across the bay as many as nine times a day.
“I’d much rather be headed back to Mobile, sir,” Chief Hoffman said.
“Noted and agreed with, Chief. I would have preferred to stay at the bridge,” Jarvis replied.
The Perdido Pass bridge at the far end of Mobile Point had been struck by an out of control barge earlier in the morning and a span had fallen into the pass. Jarvis and his cutter raced to the scene after an uneventful morning stopping a few fishing boats. There were no injuries and the Alabama State Police on either side had shut down traffic going each way, to prevent a Wile E. Coyote ride into the green water 80-feet below.
The
Fish Hawk
had done the initial investigation and taken names and numbers of the push boat crew responsible for the eight lashed together barges. Two of the push boat’s crew were missing: the helmsman and the captain. The remaining crew had said the helmsman had been sick all morning.
Sick or not, you cannot just ram a bridge over a navigable waterway without expecting to answer for it. The accident had left the 26-mile long Mobile Point peninsula and the town of Gulf Shores dependent on just the ICW Bridge going north from the city’s center as its sole link with the mainland until repaired.
“Still can’t get any news out of Mobile, Skipper,” the ship’s Cook said. Situated in the cutter’s small galley/mess room in the center of the boat directly under the bridge, the Cook had the benefit of having a 35” flat screen hooked up to a satellite in his workstation.