Story code: ST-001131
Part 2: The Doorstop
Julian’s shoulders slammed into a bank of metal shelving. Cold steel bit into his spine as the brutal grip on his collar finally released. He collapsed to his knees, gasping for the dusty air, his hands scrambling blindly in the absolute darkness of the tight space.
“Keep your mouth shut,” a voice hissed.
Julian froze. He knew that voice. He had spent the last six months of his life listening to it, splicing soundbites of it into attack ads, and livestreaming protests outside its owner’s office.
“Vance?” Julian whispered, his vocal cords still burning from the chokehold.
“I said shut up,” Councilman Marcus Vance rasped.
The darkness of the supply closet was suffocating, smelling of ozone, hot dust, and the sharp tang of Vance’s expensive cedar cologne. But the pitch-black was not absolute. A single, harsh sliver of light cut across the industrial carpet. The heavy oak door had not latched entirely. Wedged firmly in the threshold, acting as a rubberized doorstop, was Julian’s phone.
The device lay face up, the cracked screen glowing with the frantic, scrolling energy of the livestream. It illuminated the bottom inch of the doorframe and cast a sickly, pale light over Vance’s leather wingtip shoes. One of the shoes was smeared with something dark and wet that glistened in the LED glow.
Julian stared at the phone. Through the narrow gap, the camera was still perfectly positioned to broadcast a skewed, floor-level sliver of the rotunda and the deafening, terrifying silence that had suddenly settled over the library. The viewer count in the top corner of the screen was skyrocketing. Five thousand. Seven thousand. Ten thousand. The internet had caught wind of the gunfire. The algorithm was feeding his stream to the world.
“Help me,” Vance grunted, the command laced with uncharacteristic panic.
Julian adjusted his eyes to the gloom. Vance was pressed flat against the door, his shoulder shoved against the heavy wood to keep it from swinging open. He was trying to reach behind himself, his fingers clawing at the edge of a massive, ceiling-high AV rack loaded with heavy servers, tangled cables, and power amplifiers.
“I can’t move it alone,” Vance whispered, his breath whistling sharply through his teeth. “The wheels are locked. Grab the other side.”
Julian didn’t move. He looked from Vance down to the glowing rectangle of glass.
This was the man who had authorized the bulldozing of the community center. The man Julian had promised his viewers he would expose as a corrupt coward. Now, Vance was a terrified, bleeding old man in a ruined suit, begging for his help.
“If we don’t block this door,” Vance whispered, his voice cracking with the strain, “whoever is out there is going to walk right in. Grab the rack!”
Julian crawled a few inches forward. If he helped Vance push the rack, it would slide directly across the doorframe, barricading the entrance. But the massive steel base would also crush his phone against the jamb. The stream would die. The footage, the undeniable proof of the town hall’s failure, the massive audience he had spent years trying to build-it would all be gone in a single crunch of glass and lithium.
“Just pull the phone inside,” Julian whispered back, pointing at the crack. “Let the door latch.”
“If I move my weight off this door to reach down, it swings open!” Vance hissed, his face pale and slick with sweat in the ambient glow. “And if I kick it out, it slides out into the middle of the hallway! Leave the damn toy and help me push!”
Julian stared at the screen. The chat was a waterfall of white text on the dark interface.
*IS HE IN THE CLOSET?*
*DON’T STOP STREAMING*
*I HEAR BREATHING*
The phone’s microphone was incredibly sensitive. It was picking up their frantic whispers. It was broadcasting their exact location to anyone tuning in. And worse, it was broadcasting the sounds from outside.
Julian stopped breathing.
*Crunch. Squeak. Crunch.*
Heavy boots were stepping over the shattered plaster and broken glass in the rotunda. The footsteps were slow. Methodical. They were moving away from the main entrance, leaving the bottleneck of screaming survivors behind, and drifting toward the quiet administrative hallway. Toward the AV closet.
“Please,” Vance mouthed, his eyes wide with a primal, unmasked terror. He strained against the metal rack, the veins in his neck bulging against his starched collar, but the heavy steel frame wouldn’t budge. He needed Julian’s leverage. He needed Julian to drop the broadcast.
Julian reached his hands out, not toward the massive AV rack, but toward the crack in the door. His fingertips hovered inches from the glowing phone. If he could just hook the aluminum edge, pull it inside, he could keep streaming from the dark. He could record the audio. He could keep his leverage while still letting the door close.
*Crunch. Squeak.*
The footsteps were closer now. Ten yards away.
A long shadow moved across the sliver of light illuminating the rotunda floor. The figure from the podium was pacing. Hunting.
Julian’s heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He looked at Vance, whose face was contorted in pain and desperate exertion. Then he looked at the phone. The ‘LIVE’ icon pulsed steadily.
Suddenly, the phone’s screen flashed bright yellow. A digital bell chimed, painfully loud and piercing in the tight, acoustic space.
*DING-DING.*
A synthetic, robotic text-to-speech voice spoke casually from the device’s tiny speaker.
*”User TruthSeeker99 donated five dollars. Keep up the good work, Jules.”*
The cheerful alert echoed down the silent hallway, bouncing off the marble tile.
The footsteps outside stopped instantly.
Vance’s eyes locked onto Julian’s in absolute horror. His grip on the AV rack went totally slack.
In the narrow gap beneath the door, the shadow shifted abruptly, pivoting toward the sound. The faint sliver of ambient library light was completely blocked out as a pair of heavy, dust-covered combat boots stepped into the frame, stopping directly in front of the phone.
The glow from the cracked screen illuminated the dark, polished steel of a rifle barrel coming to rest against the stranger’s leg.
The brass doorknob inches above Julian’s head clicked, and began to slowly turn.