The campus seemed quiet in the overcast of the morning. The drizzle had stopped on Reed’s way into town, but the place seemed empty, with only a handful of people here and there. He remembered what the place had been like on a football Saturday, with lots of people, lots of excitement, with fans and students filing into the football field, now only a memory. It was all gone now; like respect for God, the loss of football was another tradition Hawthorne College had lost and defiled. It was a sacrilege!

Be that as it may have been, God had sent him here on a Mission, to lead this place away from its sinful ways and back to honor in His sight. Reed had endured much in order to follow God’s Leading, and now it was time to do His Will by preaching to the sinners and leading them back to the Way of God.

Reed walked the familiar walkways feeling ten feet tall. He was a Man on a Mission, and the time had come. He was unaware that the few who noticed him saw only a homeless bum, dirty and worn, mumbling strange and psychotic-sounding ravings; some of those who got close to him shied away, not wanting to get near such an obvious maniac.

Those actions didn’t matter to him, if he even noticed them. He was looking for people he could preach to – one, two, a dozen, the more the better – but he was willing to start with one person so long as they would listen, hoping that God would open their ears and lead them to the light. It would be a first step, and with God’s help more and more would listen.

Partway across the campus he noticed a poster taped to a wall, announcing something called “Activities Day” to be held in front of Tottenhaven Hall, and realized it must be today. The perfect place to start his Mission! There would be sinners there, and hopefully they would listen to the Truth of God. At least he knew where Tottenhaven Hall was among all the new and strange buildings around campus, and he started to walk in that direction, remembering the dignity of the place.

But now, Tottenhaven Hall seemed sad and in disrepair, no longer the second pride of the college, next to the beautiful church on the corner of the campus that he remembered had also been defiled by sinners. Once this place had had real dignity, respect for God, and it made him sad to feel the loss. He stood in front of the building for a moment, but noticed that there was no one there – the place was empty. Perhaps the poster he’d seen a few minutes before was wrong, or he had the day wrong.

He walked up to the door of the building and noticed another poster, one that said the Activities Day tables had been moved to the Community Service Center, whatever that was. That was another thing that was new and unfamiliar to him. However, a nearby campus directory told him it was located where Utley Hall once stood, another memory of the honored past of Hawthorne College now lost and forgotten. But still, if that was where people were gathering, perhaps he could find a place there to preach the Word!

It was not far across campus to the Community Services Center, and he saw a few people heading that way, a few more people coming out of the building. This heartened him, and he pressed onward.

Yes, there were people inside. It was not overly crowded, with nothing of the excitement of the day Reverend Roberts came to the college to preach His Message. What a joyful day that was to remember – the place had been alive with the Glory of the Lord. Now, it was just a handful of quiet, pasty students, not saying much of anything, perhaps trying to avoid him and the Truth he would speak.

Still, he thought it best to not just stand up and start to preach His Word; perhaps it would be better to take a little time to find the best spot in order to carry out God’s Will. There were tables set up in the halls of the unfamiliar building, but more in the classrooms on each side. He wandered up the hall, glancing into each one until he saw a sign that brought his heart to a stop: SMU WICCA SIG.

Wicca? They had Wiccans here? If anything, that was the ultimate insult to the religious tradition of Hawthorne College! Devil worshipers, the ultimate sinners! How could God allow such a thing in a place dedicated to Him? Why hadn’t flames and locusts descended upon this place for allowing such a heresy?

With his heart pounding heavily, Reed turned away from the abomination – but not before he noticed the sign on the next table: SMU GLBT SIG. GLBT! He knew what that meant! Sodomites! He’d learned well in San Francisco what that meant. This place had turned into a veritable Gomorrah! Why had God not already shown his displeasure?

For the first time since he’d left San Francisco, Reed began to doubt his Mission. His understanding of his leading was that he was to come here and lead the Revival in this place, once a place of God … but now he remembered the gun in his backpack. Perhaps that wasn’t His Mission at all! Perhaps God had led him to the gun so He could show His displeasure at the disrespect shown to the Christian tradition of this place!

Confused, Reed realized he needed to pray – but not right here in front of this snake’s-nest of sinners. He glanced across the hall from the room where the evil ones were located, where the devil himself walked, and discovered a restroom. Without a moment’s hesitation, he went in, entered a toilet stall, latched the door, and got on his knees and began to pray softly. “Dear God,” he prayed. “Show me what You would have me do in Your Name.” There was more than that, of course, but it was still the same thing – but as he prayed, he felt the weight of the gun in his pack more and more. Yes, he thought as he prayed, this is what God wants me to do.

By the time he finished with his, “Thank You, Dear God, for Your Leading,” Reed knew what he had to do. He peeled the pack off his back, pulled out the gun, stuffed one of the magazines he’d filled into the butt of it, and racked a round into the chamber. There were three more full ones, plus some loose ammunition. He put two of the magazines into his pocket, plus the rest of the bullets, then stuffed the gun into his waistband under the jacket that had protected him from the drizzle as he’d walked into town. Now was the time for the despoilers of Hawthorne College to hear and feel God’s Wrath!

There was no time for anything else now. God would protect him as he carried out what he now understood to be His Mission. Leaving his backpack and the plastic sack behind, Reed got to his feet and strode out the door and across the hall into the room where the Devil walked. He walked up close to the Wiccan table, where a long-haired blonde she-devil sat in a chair behind it, with a dark-haired male devil looking over her shoulder.

“Hear the Word of God!” he yelled. “The time has come to cleanse this evil place for the sin it has committed against the memory of Hawthorne College!”

Then he pulled the gun out of his waistband, pointed it at the blonde she-devil, and pulled the trigger.

*   *   *

It all happened so quickly that Elise Simpkins had no time to react. She heard the yell, saw the motion of Reed pulling the gun in her peripheral vision, but before she could say anything or move, the gun was pointed at her, giving a short, sharp crack as it fired – not loud. She felt a pain in her chest, then another, but she still wasn’t comprehending what was happening.

She didn’t know at the time but Reed’s first bullet had penetrated her chest, breaking a rib along the way, and then punctured her lung. It was a small bullet – the gun was a .22 caliber, the smallest commonly available caliber pistol – and the bullet didn’t have much mass, so it didn’t have enough punch to go through her. It lodged in a rib in her back after exiting her lung. That was bad enough, but a second bullet landed a couple of inches away, and this one nicked an artery, which immediately started leaking blood into her chest cavity.

Darrin Wallace, who had been looking over Elise’s shoulder, had a second or so to realize what was happening. Almost automatically he grabbed Elise by the shoulder and dived for the floor, taking her with him, trying to get her out of the line of fire and under the sturdy classroom table they’d been sitting at. Reed’s third shot hit him as he went down, first cutting through the edge of his chest, then through his arm. The chest wound was not serious, thanks to the grazing trajectory, but it was painful. However, the bullet continued on its way, hitting his upper arm and lodging in the bone.

At that, Wallace was lucky. Knowing absolutely nothing about guns except what he’d watched on TV, Reed was firing from the hip, rather than over sights. Anyone who knows anything about actually firing a pistol knows that, except possibly those from some trick-shot artists, most shots from the hip are usually wildly inaccurate; actually hitting an intended target is a matter of pure luck. So Reed’s fourth shot, aimed at Darrin, missed. It didn’t miss him by much, but that was all that was needed. The bullet sped onward, hit the cinder-block wall at the far side of the room, bounced off and flew partway back across the room, a small pellet now robbed of its force, skidding across the floor before coming to rest against one wall.

By now, perhaps five seconds had passed since the first shot, and people in the room were beginning to react. Since the two at the Wiccan table were down, Reed changed his attention to the GLBT table next to it and snapped off a shot at Milo White, the group leader, who was also reacting to the outbreak of gunfire. The distance was twice as far as to people at the Wiccan table, so Reed didn’t have as much luck – but then White’s luck left something to be desired, too; the shot grazed one side of his back as he dived for the floor. Fortunately, the shot was nearly a glancing hit and didn’t damage much before emerging from under his skin; it would prove to be a painful but non-debilitating wound.

Reed fired again at a couple standing at the GLBT table – or at least, who had been standing near it. He could not have known that Logan and Nancy had only stopped by the table to tell Milo that they weren’t planning on being active in the GLBT SIG after all. Logan reacted to the first gunfire about as quickly as White – but he had the clear presence of mind to grab Nancy as he dropped to the floor as well. Reed’s sixth shot hit Logan, tearing through the fleshy part of the arm, not seriously injuring him, but causing a lot of bleeding.

In the maybe eight or ten seconds at most that Reed had been firing the .22 pistol, he’d made six hits on four people and had been lucky to do that well, but his first two hits, both on Elise, had done by far the most damage. She didn’t know it yet, but she had been critically injured. A .22 bullet is small and relatively low-powered, but it can kill if the shot is well-directed to hit in a critical place, or if the shooter happens to be lucky. Skill, in this case, had nothing to do with it.

By now it had registered on everyone in the room that a maniac was shooting at people. Fortunately Reed was well away from the door, and a number of people dashed for the safety of the hall. That got Reed’s attention, and he swung around taking quick random shots at the people rushing out of the room.

The first two of his shots at those people missed, but the second of those shots missed Summer’s head by only the literal width of a hair. The third shot fired at a fleeing student hit Alan right on the side of the forehead, but only as a grazing shot. The bullet never got below his skin, but tore a furrow through it, doing relatively little damage, though causing profuse bleeding. All three shots sailed across the hall, miraculously hitting no one else in their flights – all three penetrated the outer skin of the metal restroom door across the hall, but didn’t make it through the far side.

Reed’s final shot from the first magazine was a little different. This bullet missed the door, but hit the solid metal of the door frame and ricocheted back into the room, breaking into fragments in the process. One of those fragments hit Jack in the back at relatively low velocity as he tried to cover Vixen from the shooter, but it did little damage; indeed, he wouldn’t know he’d been hit at all until some minutes later when Vixen noticed the back of his shirt was showing a small bloody spot.

No more than fifteen seconds had passed since the shooting began, and probably less, and Reed had exhausted the magazine in this short time. In his fiddling around with the gun the day before, he’d discovered the trick to ejecting the magazine; now he did, and it fell to the floor. It was barely out of the pistol before he was ramming the second magazine home and racking the first round into the chamber, probably only taking a couple more seconds – at the most, three, before beginning to fire again.

Reed’s first three shots from the second magazine also went out the door at the last of the fleeing students. All three of them missed, though one of them smashed into a student’s notebook computer, wrecking it. The other two shots again buried themselves in the restroom door on the far side of the hall.

Now that he was out of targets in the doorway, Reed directed his attention back into the room. There were many fewer people in the room now, and most were under the tables, hard to see and hard to shoot at. However, Jack was still covering Vixen, and relatively out in the open, so Reed directed his next shot toward him. It was halfway across the room, and shooting from the hip betrayed him; the shot at Jack was slightly high, and smashed into a wastebasket, going through the thin metal on both sides before coming to a stop against the cinder-block wall behind it. Reed glanced around looking for another target, taking most of a second before he decided on one – a tall, dark girl who was crawling toward a laptop computer someone had dropped in the fracas.

In the last few seconds Laura had been desperately looking for something she could use to hit him with. The computer was a very poor choice compared to the sock with three pounds of change in it she’d used during the rape attempt ten days before, but it was all that she could see. Maybe, she thought, if she could get close enough while his attention was diverted, she could hit him with the computer. It was a forlorn hope, but Laura was not a girl who shied away from long shots when action was needed.

In any case, someone out in the open and moving made her the best target Reed had at that moment, so he fired a shot at her, again with very poor aim. It was a hit, at least sort of – the bullet almost went below her at her waist, but didn’t, instead glancing off the stainless steel of her chastity belt, putting a small dent in it. The bullet went on past her, bounced off the floor, and came to rest in a cabinet door behind her.

Reed almost fired another shot at her, but didn’t. He was still close to the Wicca table, and he somehow realized that he hadn’t done the damage there he’d hoped to. He squatted down, pointed the gun under the table and fired it in the general direction of Darrin, who was still trying to shelter Elise who he realized now had been badly wounded; that shot missed and penetrated a cabinet behind Darrin. Reed fired again, this time hitting Elise in a fleshy part of the hip, then looked around for another target.

Twenty seconds or so had passed – at the most, twenty-five. Seven people had been hit, some more than once.

*   *   *

Cody and Jan were a couple of classrooms down the hall talking with a fellow pre-law student when the shooting started. Cody’s first reaction was that the noise was fireworks, or perhaps some sort of demonstration gone wrong, but when he glanced up and saw the people running in the hall he realized things were much more serious than that.

He wasn’t in uniform – there was no excuse he could think of to justify wearing it to Dr. Thompson on Activities Day – but he was in the plainclothes/undercover outfit he wore around campus when he considered himself to be on duty. It wasn’t very different from his normal school clothes, in this case a flannel shirt for this damp, chilly day and cargo pants. However, all was not what it seemed – he had the tiny tactical radio in the pocket of the shirt, connected to what appeared to be a Bluetooth headset behind his ear. As on the night of the attempted rape ten days before, he again had a flex-cuff taped lightly inside his belt where he could get at it easily if needed.

Most importantly, inside the voluminous pocket of his cargo pants was a small, thin plastic box. One end of it had been removed, and it was just right to stuff Chief Bascomb’s .38 so it would look and feel to someone brushing up against him as if he was just carrying a small book or case of some sort. But the butt of the little automatic stuck out of the box enough that Cody could easily get his fingers on it.

As the sounds of Reed’s shots continued to echo down the hall, Cody recognized them for what they were – a small caliber gun, perhaps a .22. It took him no more than a second or two for his hand to go to his pocket and come up with the Chief’s little revolver as he ran toward the sound of the gunfire.

Jan was a little slower on the uptake, but only slightly so. She realized when Cody took off at a dead run that something was wrong, so ran after him, ten or twenty feet behind. If what she was hearing were gunshots, she realized, someone was likely to be hurt.

Halfway to the door of the room people were streaming from, Cody heard the shooting stop for a moment, then start up again at a somewhat slower pace. He couldn’t make a sprinter’s time going up the hall since frantic people were coming at him, and a couple times he had to shove people to the side to work his way against the flow. He was still a few feet away from the door when the last of Reed’s shots in that direction impacted the men’s room door on the other side of the hall. In a moment, he heard more shooting from inside the room, and then he was right next to the door.

Going through a door, even an open one, is dangerous business when a known shooter is inside the room. Cody knew that he had no backup, no one coming to his assistance for at least a few minutes. But at the same time, he knew that if there was shooting going on in the room it meant that there were still people in there being shot at, and with any kind of luck the shooter’s attention would be on them. So, rather than stopping in the safety of the door frame, Cody charged right through the door, hands in front of him, holding the little .38 in the standard police grip, high and ready to fire over open sights.

There, near a table, was the obvious shooter, a large pistol in his hand, starting to stand back upright after having bent over for some reason. “Police!” Cody yelled at the top of his lungs. “Drop the gun!”

It only took an instant. The shooter didn’t drop the pistol; instead, he started to turn his body and the gun toward Cody. Without a moment’s thinking about it, without the slightest hesitation, Cody’s training took over, and he squeezed the trigger of the .38.

Unlike the shooter, Cody was one of the best pistol shots in the state – three times state champion in various classes, and he’d never once been out-shot in any police qualification tests, winning every one of them by a wide margin. While the little revolver may not have been the most accurate weapon in the world, in Cody’s hands it didn’t matter. He was shooting over the sights, not from the hip, and the first shot went right through the heart of the shooter as if it had been painted on his shirt, and in a fraction of a second a second round followed.

The shooter continued his spin towards Cody on pure momentum, still holding the gun as if by habit, so Cody shifted his aim upwards, sending his third and final shot right through the closest eye and into the brain of the man who had shot up the room. He crumpled to the floor as Cody kept his aim right on him, if by some unlikely happenstance he’d need to fire again. But it was clear it wasn’t needed; in an instant the lifeless body was on the floor, in a small pool of the blood that was still oozing out of it.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.