Several minutes had now passed in the classroom where Cody, Jan, and Laura were bending over Elise Simpkins, trying to staunch her bleeding and keep her alive. Jack, Vixen, and Nancy were looking after Darrin, Milo, and Logan, who were more lightly wounded; while they were bleeding and hurting, it seemed to Cody as if they would more than likely be all right.

The same thing couldn’t be said for Elise.

Working with no more medical equipment than literally the shirts off their backs, Cody, Jan, and Laura had reduced Elise’s external bleeding, but it was clear to Jan that much worse was going on. “She’s bleeding internally,” she reported. “I can’t tell much more than that, but her heart is racing, and she is clearly having difficulty breathing with the chest wounds. A lung just about has to be punctured.”

“There should be an ambulance here soon,” Cody reassured her. “They told me help is on the way.”

“It better be pretty damn soon,” Jan replied. “There’re several things she needs that I don’t have here.”

Cody got a hand free to push the send button on the radio. “278 at the shooting scene,” he said. “ETA Ambulance? We have one very critical.”

*   *   *

Outside the building Sergeant Claxton heard Cody’s call. He picked up his own radio and replied, “278, 141. We’re holding ambulance personnel outside the building until we’re sure there are no other shooters.”

“141, there are no more shooters, the one is down. We have a very critical patient here.”

“Roger, stand by.”

Claxton thought about it for a moment. Archer was probably right that he had a very critical patient, but there had been reports of other shooters, so it just wasn’t safe to send ambulance people into the building. If those reports were true, then he couldn’t take the risk.

*   *   *

It was slow going for the TV truck – actually a GMC Suburban – to get out of South Bend, but once the traffic thinned out the cameraman behind the wheel stepped on it, driving eighty and ninety miles an hour. “Jesus,” Kristy Baumgartner said from the passenger seat. “They’re going to have packed up and gone home by the time we get there at this rate.”

“Not far now,” the driver replied, a little sullenly. He didn’t think much of Baumgartner; he thought that she acted like the media queen of the world, something that happened all too often at small TV stations. The hell of it was that if this turned out to be what it sounded like, she was going to be getting face time on the network, and probably a lot of it before the big guns flew in from New York. But then he’d worked with some of the big guns from time to time, and now that he thought about it some of those people had an even bigger idea of their importance than this Baumgartner chick.

Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all …

*   *   *

Chief Bascomb wasn’t far from the scene now. He was driving his own sedan, which was no hot rod and didn’t have overheads or a siren – but he still had his police radio, and he heard the exchange between Archer and Claxton. The sergeant was right to keep ambulance crews out of the building, he thought, but officers ought to be clearing the building by now so it wouldn’t be long before the victim had help.

He took advantage of taking some back streets for the sake of getting there a little more quickly, running a couple of stop signs along the way, and within a couple more minutes he was coming on the scene. An officer had a patrol car blocking the street, and waved at him to stop, but then he recognized the chief’s civilian car and changed his signal to wave him on by. It took perhaps a minute more before he slid to a stop at a group of patrol cars, which now included a couple of county and state units. He threw back his seat belt – it wouldn’t do for a man in his position to be caught without it, no matter how much of a useless pain in the ass they could be at times – and peeled out of the car.

As he headed toward where Claxton was standing, hunched down behind a patrol car like he expected incoming fire every second, he noticed a number of other officers doing the same thing. “John, how’s clearing the building coming?” he asked.

“We haven’t started,” Claxton replied. “There are reports of more than one shooter, so I’m waiting for the situation to clarify before I send them in to clear the building.”

“You mean there aren’t any officers in there?” Bascomb replied incredulously.

“No, I decided the risk was too high.”

What a bunch of horseshit, Bascomb thought. He’d always thought that Claxton was something of a weenie, and this proved it. Well, more than something; maybe a downright asshole would be a better description. “You want to let that victim Archer was talking about die before you clear the building?” he asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Since I’m the incident commander I decided I don’t want to risk the lives of officers unnecessarily.”

Bascomb decided that Claxton needed a serious ass chewing over this, but he couldn’t afford the time for it right now. He picked up his radio and called, “278, 141. Have you seen any signs of multiple shooters?”

“The one down is the only one I know of,” Archer replied. “I haven’t heard any more shooting since he went down, and right now my hands are too busy trying to keep this girl alive to go looking.”

“Roger, we’ll be right there.”

“Jesus, what a bunch of shit,” Bascomb said loudly enough that a number of other officers heard it – and so did Kimball, who had been crouched behind the car, making a voice recording of the exchange on his electronic tablet. The chief raised his voice even louder and said, “Officers! Follow me!” and started walking quickly toward the building.

“Don’t you want a weapon or a vest?” Claxton said.

“Fuck it,” Bascomb replied. “You’ve dicked around with this long enough already.”

Without a weapon Bascomb hurried to the door of the building, with a number of officers trailing along behind. He jerked open the door of the building and went inside. However, once inside the door he realized he’d made a mistake – he still had on his spiked golf shoes. While they were fine for walking on grass and all right for walking on streets and sidewalks, he just about fell on his ass on the smooth, highly polished floors of the Community Services Center. After about the third near fall, he leaned up against a wall, and slipped off his shoes – he’d be better off without them.

Claxton had been trailing along behind the chief, against his better judgment, but he realized that he’d stepped in it big time, and the only way he was going to be able to maintain face – and possibly his ass as well – was to get in front of the charge. While the chief was pulling off his golf shoes, he rushed past him, his weapon in his hand, yelling to the officers behind, “Clear every room we pass.”

By the time the chief got his shoes off he was behind several of the officers, but he hurried to catch up with Claxton. He still had his radio in his hand, and now radioed to Archer, “278, say your location.”

“Room 131, near the south end of the building.”

Claxton heard Archer’s reply as well, and hurried a little faster. If he could get to the room before the chief, he might still be able to maintain a little dignity. Between Claxton and Bascomb there were several officers, who looked into every room briefly, not finding anyone and yelling, “Clear” as they saw the room was empty.

Farther up the hall, Bascomb could see several tables set up, with things scattered around that had been left behind by students in the rush – coats, papers, who knew what. The room numbers were telling him that he was getting closer to the room with Archer , the shooter, and wounded.

Claxton turned into the room, weapon at the ready. “Police!” he yelled. “Everybody, hands in the air.”

With the exception of Logan, whose hands were free but who had Nancy’s blouse wrapped around his arm, everyone kept their hands busy keeping pressure on the wounds they’d been treating.

“Hands in the air!” Claxton yelled again, acting as if he was going to shoot someone for the crime of getting him between a rock and a hard place.

“Archer!” Chief Bascomb said loudly, ignoring Claxton totally – this was a final stupidity. “What do we have?”

“This girl is on the edge,” the young officer replied, not taking his hands away from her. “Three more wounded, not as bad.”

“Archer, I told you to get your hands up,” Claxton yelled.

“John,” Chief Bascomb said. “Return to the station immediately. I mean, now. I’ll deal with you later.”

The chief raised his radio again and called, “First floor is clear. Get the ambulance crews in here now, hurry, stat! Four wounded, one critical.” Only then did he glance around at the scene in front of him, taking in the shooter’s body, the other wounded, the people trying to tend to them – hardly noticing that three of the girls were without shirts, and two of them bare-chested. It wasn’t important at the time, but, “Have someone bring some wraps or blankets with them,” he added.

*   *   *

Outside the building, Don Kimball was watching. While he wanted to keep up with what was going on, he also knew that there were limits to what he should do, and going into a building where there might be an armed shooter still on the loose was way beyond them. The command post, such as it was, behind the police car was probably the best place for him at the moment; he could hear the radio chatter on the speakers of the patrol car.

He picked up his cell phone again and called the office. “Several cops, led by Chief Bascomb, have gone in to clear the building,” he reported to Phillips.

“We’ve been monitoring the scanner here,” the editor reported. “We’re hearing four wounded, one critical.”

“Then you know as much as I do. Sounds like one may not make it. With that one kid I talked to earlier, that makes five wounded. I don’t know if there are any more.”

“Any reports of dead?”

“All I know is that the shooter is down, and I guess that means dead. It’s still not clear if there was more than one shooter or what. The incident commander was convinced there were and kept the other cops out of the building until Chief Bascomb got here. Then Bascomb got into a huff at Claxton and led a bunch of cops into the building. He was just wearing civilian clothes, no vest or anything.”

“No weapon?”

“No weapon, no nine-millimeter, not even a nine-iron,” Kimball reported. “He had golf shoes on so it looked like he came here straight from the golf course.”

“What’s the deal on this Archer guy? Is he the shooter?”

“Don’t know. The only thing I know about the shooter is that kid said it was an old bum. Might be him, might not be. Since the kid saw this Archer after the shooting started, if he was a shooter he might have been the second one the cops were worried about.”

“Are you getting any good photos?”

“Other than the ambulance guy working on that kid and photos of cops standing around trying to figure out what to do, there hasn’t been anything to take photos of.”

“Do what you can. The wire service is still on our ass, and that’ll give me a little more to work with. Let me know as soon as you know anything else.”

Phillips hung up the phone. There really wasn’t a heck of a lot new, except that the cops had finally reached the room where the shooting had taken place, at least from hearing the traffic on the scanner. He turned to his keyboard. There wasn’t much to add to the previous report he’d sent up to the wire service, but there were a few things, like the fact that the cops had finally made it to the scene. He made a few additions to the story that had already been sent, then stopped and looked at the computer screen for a moment. It was clear that this Archer guy had been involved, but he wasn’t sure how. Better not mention that yet, he thought. If he is involved it’ll be clear in a few minutes.

*   *   *

It was quite a distance from where the ambulance crews had been waiting out of the line of fire from the building, but when they heard Chief Bascomb’s order to hurry, they did so – four men and one women, all carrying medical kits raced up the hall toward the room. Several others followed on behind with more serious equipment like gurneys; they’d all heard the exchanges that there was a critical shooting victim in the room.

The first of the ambulance crews, a paramedic, turned into the room with the others right on his heels. “What have we got?” he yelled.

“This one’s the worst,” Jan replied. “Sucking chest wound, several bleeders, looks like internal bleeding. Pulse weak and fast, breathing poor.”

“You an EMT?” one of the ambulance crewmen said.

“Yes, and an RN,” Jan replied. “About all I’ve been able to do is to keep pressure on the wounds and hope you guys got here fast enough.”

“We got held up,” the man said. “Keep the pressure on until we can get set up.”

“What else do you have here?” another crewman asked.

“Three more hit,” she replied. “Not as bad from what I can tell but my attention has been on this one.”

“All right, folks,” the paramedic said. “Looks like we’ve got a lot of work to do here.”

Within a minute, Cody was more or less elbowed aside from what he’d been doing to help keep Elise alive. He reached over to where he’d left the chief’s little .38 on the floor, opened the cylinder, then carried the gun over to the chief to offer it to him, normal department protocol after a shooting incident. “Thanks,” he said in a conversational voice. “I’m glad you loaned it to me.”

“Damn glad I did,” Chief Bascomb said, keeping his voice down to avoid bothering the EMTs. He nodded in the general direction of the shooter and said, “I take it that’s the guy?”

“Yeah,” Cody said. “I pushed the gun away from him after he went down. I haven’t had a chance to look at it, but my impression was a .22 target pistol from the one quick glance I had.”

“Damn glad it was just a .22,” the chief nodded somberly. “It looks like he did enough damage with it as it was.”

“Yeah,” Cody sighed again. “Four hit in here, and I don’t know how many out in the hall.”

“One for sure from what I heard on the radio.” He nodded at Laura and asked, “What’s that she’s got on her waist?”

Cody glanced over at Laura, who was standing up now, still topless. If she was aware of the fact, she didn’t give any indication of it. “Chastity belt,” he grinned. “She’s the gal who whacked that attempted rapist the other night.”

“Boy, trouble seems to find her, doesn’t it?” the chief asked. Both he and Cody realized they were just shooting the bull, trying to relieve the tension now that the danger was past for them.

“Yeah, no shit,” Cody yawned. “And she seems to know what to do when it does.” He seemed incredibly tired all of a sudden. He knew what was happening, an adrenaline crash that he richly deserved after the last few minutes. He glanced at Laura again – something didn’t seem right. “Laura,” he said. “Come over here for a second.”

Laura took the few steps over to where Cody and the chief were standing near Reed’s body. “What is it, Cody?” she asked.

“Something seems funny,” he said, glancing at her chastity belt again. “Turn sideways a little.”

“Is anything the matter?”

“Did you have a dent in the side of your steel panties?”

“Not that I knew about,” she said.

Cody shook his head. “Make that six people the bozo hit,” Cody said. “One round glanced off your belt. If you hadn’t been wearing it, that bullet might have gone through your kidney.”

*   *   *

In a few minutes Logan’s arm had been patched up a little better than just having Nancy’s blouse wrapped around it. One of the EMTs offered to take him out to a waiting ambulance on a gurney, but he said he was fine, there was no reason he couldn’t walk. By now Nancy had a blanket wrapped around her, brought in by one of the later EMTs. Slowly, the EMT, Nancy, and Logan walked down the hall and went outside.

By now, with the danger past, there were a number of people waiting around outside, hoping to find out more. Many of them had been in the building when the shooting broke out and wanted information on the madman who’d pulled the gun out and started firing; for others, it was just something out of the ordinary on campus. Several were busy posting messages on social media sites, mostly things they’d heard from each other; the stories got wilder with each retelling.

Logan and Nancy were the first people to come outside who had been in the room through the whole incident, and there was a small round of applause as they appeared – at least some people had survived!

Don Kimball was there to greet them – he was still the only reporter on the scene, and he’d been gathering first-person accounts from people who had escaped the room early in the shooting or had been outside the room. “What happened in there?” Kimball asked.

“That old fart pulled a gun, yelled something about the dishonor SMU was doing to the Hawthorne Christian tradition, and started shooting,” Logan replied. “He shot up the people at the Wicca table pretty bad and hit a guy at the GLBT table and me. One of the gals from the Wiccan table was hurt bad. Then a cop came into the room and shot him. I wasn’t looking then and didn’t actually see him do it, but I sure heard it.”

“Are you all right?” Kimball asked – a stupid question, he realized.

“I’ve got a hole in my arm but it’s not bad,” he replied. “My girlfriend Nancy here took off her blouse and used it as a bandage.”

“We still need to get you to the ER,” the EMT told him. “Hey, people, stay back a little. There are others coming who are hurt worse.”

*   *   *

The Suburban carrying the TV crew from South Bend pulled into Hawthorne, still driving fast, hoping to get to the scene while there was still something to get good footage of. It seemed like a long shot, but they managed to find the campus with the help of the GPS unit on the dashboard of the van, and soon they found the crowd standing around the outside of the Community Services Center. They pulled up closer than they should have, and while one of the cameramen started to set up for a live broadcast back to the station, Kristy and the other cameraman went looking for a story.

The ambulance carrying Logan and Nancy had just departed, but there was still a crowd of people standing around outside. Very quickly they got quotes on a few reactions from students who had been in the hall and a couple who were even in the room when the shooting started. Kristy soon picked up several facts – that the shooter had been a ragged, dirty old guy, that several students had been hit, one critically, and that the ambulance crews were still inside working on the wounded.

She found out a few other details. At least two students mentioned that they’d seen Cody Archer running toward the shooting carrying a gun, but the fact that he was a police officer was never mentioned. Likely, neither of the two knew he was an officer. So, like so many others in the first rush of reports, she got her facts garbled.

She soon ran across Don Kimball and recognized another reporter. Kimball was able to fill her in on a few other things, like the two wounded kids who had already been taken to the ER, that there were at least three others wounded and known to be in the building, and he expected that they’d be coming out soon.

While she was talking with the crowd gathered around the door to the building she got two different phone calls from the station news director. “Network is bugging us like mad,” he said during the second call. “They want some kind of report as soon as you can.”

“Hold off a few minutes.” she pleaded. “They ought to be bringing out one of the wounded soon, and that’ll be some good footage.”

“Don’t wait too long,” he said. “They’ll take what they can get, but they want it now.”

“All right,” she said. “It’ll just have to be a stand-upper. We’ll get a feed going in a minute or two.”

Kristy found a good place back from the door – an ambulance was waiting there, and there were people standing around. Soon they were ready, and she realized she was going to have to do this report off the top of her head, with few facts and nothing in the way of planning.

The cameraman gave her the high sign, and she started, “This is Kristy Baumgartner on the scene of a mass shooting that occurred today on the campus of Southern Michigan University in Hawthorne, Michigan. We still aren’t clear on what happened, but we do know at a minimum that at least five people have been wounded, one seriously. One of those is in critical condition and is still being stabilized before they’re removed from the building. We have no reports of deaths but that is unconfirmed at this time.

“The shooting took place in the campus Community Service Center, where a student activity day was being held to promote campus organizations and activities.

“Not much is known about the shooter at this point. Several students described him as a ragged, dirty older man who had a pistol. He reportedly fired the pistol at students manning a table sponsored by a Wiccan group and at students manning a Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transsexual group table nearby. He reportedly shouted something about the university dishonoring the religious tradition of Hawthorne College, which formerly occupied the campus before closing almost twenty years ago.

“Details of what happened inside are still not clear, and there is speculation that there was more than one shooter, but this is not confirmed. Several students stated that they saw a man named Cody Archer running toward the shooting carrying a gun before the shooting stopped, but the role he played in the shooting is not clear at this time.”

Kristy could see the cameraman waving at her and pointing. She turned around and said, “It looks as if ambulance personnel are bringing out one of the victims of the shooting. We have no details on who it might be or how bad they’re injured. Once again, we have reports of several people injured, but there are no reports either way if there are any dead as the result of this shooting that occurred only minutes before here at Southern Michigan University in Hawthorne, Michigan.”

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