I wrote this story, "RESCUE" as part of the "violence against woman" challenge given by Kaytori to remember the fourteen women that lost their lives to a homicidal fellow engineering student who proclaimed his hatred of women he considered to be "feminists". He injured an additional thirteen men and women in the Massacre at École Polytechnique de Montreal, an engineering school in Canada on December 6, 1989.

Additional information about this horrific event and its aftermath can be found on Wikapedia and .

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RESCUE

There were five of us in the storage closet in the kitchen.

It was the only place that we could think to hide away from the dangerous monster stalking the halls of the NYSW—the New York Schools for Women—an old five-story building in the older part of town. It housed several educational schools designed to retrain women long out of the job market, a modern abuse counseling center, and beds and rooms for up to 25 single women and 10 families of women and children. The School took in homeless as well as abused; they provided two meals a day as well as day-care for the children of those looking for work or going to classes. Those needing more help were directed to other, better-funded facilities in the city. Single women could stay for two weeks; families for a month—all the adults, even the ones out job hunting or attending classes were expected to pitch in and help keep their areas clean and tidy.

Some are assigned to help prepare the morning and evening meals, which is why Martini (an Jamaican woman whose fondness of the drink lead her to the streets), Harriet Blackwood (an elderly woman whose body was still recovering from the ravages of the drugs she has been too long addicted to), JaqTwo (a young African American woman who volunteered at the School; she was one of the local street performers in the area), Harriet's oldest daughter, Pamela Stryght

(she also volunteered at the School as a way to "connect" with her mother), and myself were just starting the preparations for dinner—Martini was heating up water in a large kettle, Pamela was chopping up vegetables and dicing meat for turkey noodle soup, I was peeling potatoes for potatoes au gratin at the small sink nearest the dining room, and Harriet and JaqTwo were putting half a dozen roasts into the large ovens (around here we needed to get started after lunch) when we heard what sounded like a couple of loud pops echoed through the halls of the first floor.

All of our heads came up in tandem. JaqTwo slipped out the kitchen door, and checked the dining room. "Not out here—sounds like it came from the front," she said, and I saw her open one of the dining room double doors through the small cafeteria serving window, stepping halfway into the hallway to look.

With JaqTwo holding the door open, we heard someone cursing at the end of the hallway, the voice loud and harsh-sounding. Then another loud pop exploded in the hallway. JaqTwo shrieked, and spun back into the dining room, holding her right hand against her left shoulder. Harriet ran out of the kitchen, still wearing her oven mitts, half-carrying her back inside. JaqTwo was babbling as Harriet had her sit down on one of the kitchen chairs, "Some guy's out there, dressed like Rambo—he shot whoever was at the desk." She said as Harriet carefully peeled back her hand from her wounded flesh. "Saw me, and shot me with an Uzi." "Anyone we know?" Pamela asked. "No, never saw him before… JaqTwo replied.

"I have."

We turned to look at Martini. Her musical voice was calm and cold. "There was a new man hired to rewire the classrooms on the second floor a couple of months ago. The managers nicknamed him 'Rambo' because he was always bragging how he used his training in special techniques of killing in Afghanistan for the security company he was fired from." I shook my head. "Marge must not have liked that." Marge, the evening manager for the School, was an ex-Marine and tough as nails. A former Drill Sergeant, she ran her section with military precision and suffered no fools or fakers gladly. Rumor had it that Marge had called some electrician on his bragging, to "put his money where his mouth was" and took him on during one of the self-defense classes.

Naturally, she won—she's that good.

Martini had also slipped out of the kitchen as I spoke, and checked the dining room doors. There was no way to lock them from the inside. She carefully touched the closed doors, snatching them back as if the doors burned them. She quickly took off her head wrap, weaving the long, colorful scarf through their handles in a seemingly flimsy attempt to hold them closed, muttering something under her breath as she wove. Afterward she moved swiftly back into the kitchen, her short dark hair sticking out in all directions. Martini hissed in a low voice as she joined us watching Harriet treat JaqTwo, "He is coming toward the dining room; he will check the other rooms before he gets here." Oh, God—He's looking for Marge in the main offices, I thought. "We need to be hidden when he comes into the dining room." I looked at the scarf-wrapped double-door handles. That won't hold this guy back…

Then we heard more loud bangs, and screaming came from the main office down the hallway, and there was no more time to consider anything except survival…..

Martini led the way to the storage closet. Harriet and Pamela helped carry JaqTwo inside. I grabbed the First Aid Kit off the kitchen wall before I joined them.

And we waited. Forever, it seemed. Hearing nothing, but feeling the vibrations of pounding coming closer and closer….

As we crouched inside the small room, Harriet and Pamela continued to treat JaqTwo's wound with the First Aid kit as they sat of huge sacks of flour. Martini pulled a little steel eagle from a small pocket of her pants and muttered to it, urgently as she balanced on a couple of cases of fruit cocktail. Strange, she seemed to be asking it for help…My mind wandered, looking for an escape from the fear as I crouched on two huge bags of potatoes. I thought of family and friends, and how I really, really wanted to be at home, safe, listening to my mother's voice over the phone.

I just wanted all of us to be safe… Today, I thought, today there were only two classes scheduled—English as a Second Language and Computer Tech; both evening classes…the daycare center on the second floor was empty; but there were two new families bedding down in their "apartments" on the fourth floor…I closed my eyes in prayer for everyone in the school as the vibrations came closer, the screams echoing through the walls from the main office…

Suddenly, the air outside the kitchen was both hot and cold for a moment; then became almost calm. Silence reigned outside the storage door. The water kettle began to whistle—softly at first, then growing louder. All of us looked at the door way in horror. The sound would attract the rampaging man destroying the main office area. It had to be turned off before he noticed…

I started to move toward the storage room door, but Martini was already moving off her perch.

She moved past me, motioning me to be silent and still. We all watched as she listened at the door. Surprisingly, we all heard a quiet hum, and the whistling water kettle died down as though the flame underneath had been turned off. Martini gave a satisfied grunt. To our shock, she opened the storage room door and stepped out into the kitchen.

I caught a glimpse of a tallish man, with unkempt dark hair dangling down to cover his neck under a black leather floppy hat, standing in our kitchen. I noticed that he wore a matching leather long jacket over his clothes as he looked inquiringly at Martini as she approached him. His rich voice sounded amused as he asked her, "I don't suppose that this is a social call, is it?"

Martini looked at him, shaking her head. "No time for tea, I am afraid. Balthazar, I have called you because I need your help. We" she indicated our group huddled in the storage area, "need your help. A man wanders these halls killing innocent people to sooth his frail ego." He looked at her, nonplused. "And you called me—why? Is this man supposed to be Morganian? If not, you're on your own; you know that." Martini sighed. "He has been influenced, yes, but by what or who, I am not sure." She frowned. "I ask for your help to protect these innocents here, and those above us." The man she called Balthazar looked at her, grimacing as he noticed the four of us in the storage area staring at him in wonder and shock. He turned to her and said firmly, "If he's not Morganian, he's your problem, as I've said. I'll see myself out."

He had turned away, when Harriet asked, "Can you get past Rambo?" Balthazar stopped, and turned to look at her. Harriet continued. "If you can, you are morally obligated to take our young friend with you and get her to a hospital. I can't do anything else for her under these conditions."

Martini did not say anything as Harriet added, "Of course, if you could do something about that man who is going about shooting and killing people, we could get her there without your help."

JaqTwo looked up at him, wincing as Pamela neatly bandaged her damaged shoulder, and grunted," I dunno, he doesn't look all like he's all that t'me.

I commented softly, "No, he's doesn't want to get involved. He doesn't want to care."

The man turned back and glared at us individually. "I do care," he stated coolly. "Perhaps you do; perhaps you do not, Balthazar." Martini said quietly. "He is coming closer. When he finishes with us here in the kitchen, he will go to the second floor, then the third, then the fourth."

"The School's day-care center is on the second floor; no one is scheduled to be there today." I added, moving out into the kitchen. "But there are a couple of families moving into a couple of the fourth floor apartments. Families made up of abused mothers with kids who are staying here to escape being hurt or killed."

Pamela continued with my line of thought as she began to pick-up bloody cotton balls from the floor. "If you do not care for us, here, we can and do accept that you are unwilling to help us. But if you have a decent bone in your body, you're going to help protect those families."

Balthazar raised an eyebrow at Pamela's statement—very Vulcan, I thought with a half-smile. Before he could give her a rebuttal to her statement, fate decided to force his hand.

We hadn't heard anything while we had been talking to this Balthazar guy—no vibrations, no screams, no nothing. 'Rambo' had arrived at the dining room door, and was frustrated that he could not get the doors open. He heard us talking to this guy, and wanted to make sure that no one was left alive to identify him. He thought that he would sneak up on the dinner crew—easy prey, right? Bunch of women cooking? No sweat for a man with his type of training.

Only the damn doors wouldn't move…so, he moved to his Plan B—if you can't open it, obliterate it.

We all heard the sharp clack-clack outside the double doors, and everyone stopped talking.

Then the doors were shot into shards as he unloaded his Uzi into the dining room. In terror, everyone dropped, taking whatever cover was available. Harriet drove back into the storage closet and slammed the door. Martini huddled next to Balthazar, behind some steel cabinets. I went flat of the floor, and crawled under the sink next to the dining room. As soon as the doorway was clear, the shooting stopped. Then, something bounced into the dining room.

Then the world exploded.

All I remembered was thinking, Boy, this was a stupid place to hide; right next to the dining room, when I was battered into unconsciousness as the thin plywood wall was destroyed by bits and pieces of that same room.

When I woke up, I was in the hospital, sharing a room with JaqTwo. The damage from the blast was surprisingly minimal; I thought that I should have died from it. But JaqTwo told me one hellva story after lights out a couple of nights later:

She, Harriet, and Pamela huddled inside the storage closet, hugging the floor through the gunfire and the explosion. They heard a familiar voice speaking, a sizzling and a crackling, then another man's voice shrieking in pure terror. Then, finally, they heard the fire alarm going off.

The door was opened by a couple of cute firemen a little while later. Those handsome men helped them get out of there. Me, she said, the fireman said they had found behind some steel cabinets being held by Martini. When they looked at me there, in Martini's arms, they swore that I was in critical condition. They took me away from Martini (JaqTwo said she refused treatment) and hustled both me and JaqTwo to the hospital. But after a couple of hours of treatment, like magic, she and I were okay.

No sign of that Balthazar guy, anywhere. But in the aftermath of cops, firemen, and body counts, nobody seemed to care anything about him, or even asked questions about him.

The School, they said, had been lucky. Only six people had been killed out of the total 19 persons who had been on the first floor of the School: the two women manning the lobby area (Sherri and Diane); Tracy, Junior, and Polly were working in the main office when 'Rambo' came in looking for Marge (luckily, 'Rambo' came in looking for her on her only day off). A couple of people managed to get out a side door when they saw 'Rambo' coming into the School; they kept other people out of the building until the police and the fireman came. The rest of the main office staff had various scratches and non-fatal injures.

'Rambo', whose real name was Herbert Roger Jamison, was the sixth person killed. He never made it to the second or fourth floors. The Police reported that he died of injuries and burns as a result of the bomb he set off in the dining room area.

Pamela, I'm told, had Harriet move in with her and her family; apparently, this was one Big Bonding Experience. JaqTwo got pick up by her boyfriend, Harry; they were talking about Florida and committing Marriage (and starting a new street dance team). Martini disappeared back into the streets after the School moved to another building (donated by an anonymous person) near an old electronics shop near Bowling Green Park.

Ironically, this helped me make up my mind about staying in the big city of New York. My Mom was so freaked out about what happened, she nearly jumped thru the phone to drag me back home with her (I recovered enough to fly out instead). So I'm now living back home, safe, just like I wanted to be when I was inside the storage closet. Still have nightmares about it sometimes, but then I remember that we stayed alive against a lot of odds.

Maybe it was magic.