Story code: ST-001899
Part 2: Friendly Fire
The heavy brass handle hit the limit of its rotation with a dull, metallic clunk. The reinforced deadbolt held tight.
Marcus watched the tendon in Trey’s wrist cord tight. The Glock was aimed dead center at the fire door. If Trey squeezed that trigger, a hundred and fifteen grains of copper-jacketed lead would punch through the hollow-core door, or worse, bounce off the steel framing and ricochet back into the cramped shop. But more importantly, the noise would ring the dinner bell for whoever was hunting in the hallway.
The handle rattled, violently this time. Someone shoved their full weight against the barrier. The steel frame groaned, but the magnetic lock did not give an inch.
Trey let out a ragged, whistling breath through his teeth. “I’m gonna drop ’em,” he whispered. His voice cracked, stripping away the street-hardened gangster facade to reveal the terrified twenty-two-year-old kid beneath.
“No,” Marcus hissed, his voice barely carrying over the mechanized loop of the PA system. *Lockdown. ALICE protocol initiated.* “You shoot, they know exactly where we are. Put it down.”
Trey did not move.
The shadow beneath the door shifted. The pressure on the handle released with a sharp snap. The heavy combat boots scraped against the linoleum, turning away. One step. Two. The rhythmic thud began fading back toward the cafeteria.
Marcus let out a slow, controlled exhale, sliding his shoulders down the side of the tool cabinet. The threat had passed them by.
Then, the sound of tearing canvas echoed through the wall, followed instantly by two deafening cracks. *Pop. Pop.*
It was not the hollow boom of a movie gun. It was the sharp, flat whip of a high-caliber rifle firing indoors. The sound punched through the cinderblock walls, reverberating deep in the hollows of Marcus’s chest. Screams erupted from down the corridor-distant, panicked, and abruptly cut short.
Trey spun around, the Glock now leveled directly at Marcus’s chest. The strobe light caught the wild, white-rimmed terror in his eyes, chopping his jerky movements into a series of static, disjointed frames.
“This is you,” Trey spat, his chest heaving. “This is your play. Get me in a box, call a hitter to clean up the Heights.”
Marcus raised his hands slowly, pressing his palms flat in the air between them. “Are you out of your mind? I’m in the box with you, Trey. I don’t set up hits in a high school.”
“Bullshit!” Trey backed up, his heel catching on an air hose coiled on the concrete floor. He stumbled but kept the weapon raised, his thumb hovering dangerously close to the safety. “You old heads always talk about peace when you’re loading the clip. Tell ’em to stand down! Call ’em off!”
“I don’t know who that is out there,” Marcus said, keeping his voice strictly measured, projecting a calm he absolutely did not feel. The strobe flashed. White. Black. White. Black. “But it ain’t gang business. You hear that rifle? You hear those boots? That’s not how we do things, and you know it.”
Trey’s eyes darted toward the door, then back to Marcus. The logic was fighting through the panic, but the panic was winning.
“If you pull that trigger, Trey, three things happen,” Marcus said, taking one slow, deliberate millimeter of a step forward. “One, you kill me. Two, that shooter hears the pop and comes back to blow the lock off that door. Three, if by some miracle the cops get here first, they find a dead body and a kid holding a piece. You die today, or you do life. Put the gun down.”
“Shut up! Just shut up!” Trey waved the barrel. The gold on his teeth flashed in the strobe light. “I need out. Where’s the back door?”
“The bay door is padlocked on the outside, and the electronic motor is dead. Lockdown cuts power to non-essential exterior access.”
Trey grabbed the front of his own jacket, breathing so fast he was nearing hyperventilation. The claustrophobia of the auto-shop was pressing in on them both. The walls smelled of stale oil, rubber, and cold fear.
“There’s gotta be an override,” Trey muttered, backing away from Marcus and moving toward the small glass-enclosed office at the back of the shop. “Keys. Something.”
Marcus followed slowly, not wanting to let the armed, panicking kid out of his sight. “The school board wired this place like a prison, Trey. We sit tight, we stay quiet, we live.”
“I ain’t dying in a cage,” Trey said, ripping open the door to the office. He began tearing through the desk drawers, tossing clipboards and diagnostic tablets onto the floor in the dark.
Marcus stepped into the doorway of the office. Through the glass, he had a clear view of the entire shop. The dismantled Chevy V8. The tool cabinets. The heavy fire doors leading to the hall. And the adjoining door to the collision repair paint booth.
Suddenly, Trey froze, a heavy ring of custodial keys in his hand. He looked at Marcus, a desperate triumph in his eyes. “I found ’em.”
“Those won’t work on the magnetic locks,” Marcus warned.
“They’ll work on the padlock for the bay door chains,” Trey argued, pushing past Marcus into the main shop floor.
Before Marcus could grab his arm, Trey marched toward the massive corrugated steel bay door at the far end of the shop. He grabbed the thick steel chain that controlled the manual hoist. It was secured to a wall anchor with a heavy Master Lock.
“Trey, wait. If you open that door, the perimeter alarm triggers a breach signal to the police. They’ll swarm this room.”
“Better the cops than a hitter,” Trey said, fumbling with the keys in the flashing light. He shoved one into the lock. It didn’t turn. He tried another.
Marcus looked back toward the hallway doors. He could hear distant sirens now, a faint wailing bleeding through the brickwork. But the sirens were outside. The immediate threat was inside.
*Pop. Pop.*
The gunfire was closer this time. Much closer. Right outside the chemistry labs.
Trey swore, his hands shaking so violently he dropped the key ring. It hit the concrete with a loud, metallic clatter that echoed through the high-ceilinged shop like a dropped cymbal.
Both men froze.
The PA system clicked and looped again. *Lockdown. ALICE protocol initiated. This is not a drill.*
They waited in the flashing darkness. Ten seconds passed. Twenty.
Then, a new sound cut through the tension. It did not come from the hallway fire doors.
It came from the interior door connecting the auto-shop to the collision repair paint booth.
It was a slow, deliberate scrape. Someone was dragging a heavy piece of metal against the cinderblock wall in the next room.
Marcus felt the blood drain from his face. The paint booth didn’t have magnetic locks. It had a standard push-bar exit that connected to the back access corridor.
A flashlight beam, bright and blinding, suddenly cut through the frosted safety glass of the paint booth door. It swept back and forth, illuminating the dark interior of the booth, searching.
Trey left the keys on the floor and raised the Glock, aiming directly at the frosted glass.
“Don’t,” Marcus breathed, dropping into a crouch behind a stack of Goodyear tires.
The shadow of a man appeared against the frosted glass, a distorted, massive silhouette holding a long rifle. The flashlight beam snapped off.
The handle on the paint booth door slowly began to turn.