"Officer Schmidt, I am highly offen-"

Crack. Crack. Crack.

Startled, Officer Mike Schmidt looked toward the front door of Merston High just as the plate glass of the front door shattered into a million pieces at the same time a bullet grazed his shoulder and two more imbedded in a nearby janitor's cart.

Remembering a long-ago firefight in the Saudi city of Kafiji, Mike reached over Helen Goode's head and pulled the fire alarm after shoving her into the little office he and Officer Abbaccio shared.

Count Dracula and Frankenstein, the politically incorrect versions, stepped over the shattered glass, one of them setting off a tear gas grenade as Ms. Goode hysterically yattered something about deodorant and cultural appropriation while a billow of acrid gas rolled past them to the Dopplering of slamming classroom doors.

"Fuck me with a chainsaw!" Mike exclaimed, flattening himself as best he could to the cinderblock wall while unholstering his standard issue Glock with the modified trigger guard. With his free hand Mike grabbed the still squawking Ms. Goode, who'd wandered back into the line of fire by the shoulder and yanked her to the floor (Crack!) as a single shot sizzled past, Officer Abbaccio somewhere behind him radioing in an IS-907, active shooter.

Thank God whoever it was chose to attack during class; most of the students were now behind classroom doors and not during the day's final class change.

Eyes watering, Mike squinted through the swirling gas, two gunmen: one short and skinny, the other shaped like an overweight pear, rapidly trotted towards him armed with what might have been AR-15s, shorty swearing and slapping at his now jammed weapon, the other bulging out of a duct-taped together Kevlar vest and moving as if having second thoughts.

Jammed or not, the first occupied classroom was less than ten feet away.

Brrrrrrrttttttt!

So much for that talk I gave on school shooting procedures this morning. Shit-shit-shit!

Half blind, Mike squeezed a round and took a burst dead center in his police-issued Kevlar vest, rocking him back on his heels.

Blinking, Mike pitched over backwards, landing in front of Helen Goode, who started screaming when she realized exactly what the white liquid soaking into her Birkenstocks was.

"You biTCH!"

Sister or not, you didn't borrow Puck's old brown leather bomber just because it completed your "boyfriend look".

Not if you wanted to live

But Maggie had.

Puck dragged a protesting Maggie, who was wearing Puck's beloved jacket down the hall towards Uncle Mike's office; because stealing is against the law even when it's your sister doing the stealing,

"I was gonna give it to Josie during study hall for the ride home. She couldn't find her coat this mor—

Crack. Crack. Crack.

"Is somebody setting off fireworks… indoors?" Maggie trailed off, puzzled.

Crack!

Argument forgotten, the sisters froze in the middle of the echoing hallway, acrid mist billowing at their feet.

The fire alarm went off.

So did the lights.

Without being told to, the two girls, cat and fox, dropped to the floor the way Uncle Mike taught them, huddling together against a bank of lockers, hoping that whoever it was wouldn't see them in the stinking miasma, Maggie struggling to muffle her coughing, Puck not needing lungs.

There are things in life which if done publicly, though unsatisfying, will get you the adoration you deserve.

There are things in life which if done publicly, though satisfying, will ruin your life.

Nose picking being the latter, Cleo de Nile, claiming she had to go in the middle of French II, now had the girl's bathroom all to herself to probe to her ancient, fashionable heart's content in the solitude befitting a born royal.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

Halfway through a really big dig, there was a noise, like a car backfiring, followed by breaking glass.

Crack.

Followed by a horrible smell and the sound of the fire alarm going off.

And then the lights went out.

A nyctophobe with claustrophobia to the very bottoms of her pampered feet, Cleo struggled to hold back her panic as her throat closed up.

Crack.

There were worse things than being trapped alone in the dark.

Being shot, was one of them.

Eyes streaming, Cleo de Nile blundered through the sudden terrifying blackness, groped her way into a stall, slammed and locked the door behind her, and shuddering, took refuge on top of one of the porcelain thrones, trying not to cough and give herself away, iPhone in the toilet.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

A distant sound of breaking glass.

Slam!

"Son of a bi-"

Thud.

"...oh my God!" Josie knelt beside Fugo now who lay unconscious on the sheet music strewn floor after slamming the inner door to the panic room shut.

Crack!

A stinging, vinegary odor, tear gas, a smell she remembered from Uncle Mike's fatigues after a training exercise when she was little ("Bullshit!" said the voice in her head that sounded like Mama's.) leaked under the door beside her. Josie pulled a hoodie out of her school bag, quickly stuffing it in the crack the way Uncle Mike once told her to.

The fire alarm went off. So did the lights.

"Ohmygawdohmygawdohmygawd!" Eyes stinging, Josie lay flat on the floor and scooched herself to where Fugo lay, past where he'd knocked music stand knocked over in his rush to the door. Fugo's head felt wet and sticky in the dark; sock-footed, he'd slipped on a piece of loose sheet music on his way to closing the door, head clipping the wall on his way down.

The distant sound of Bizet's "Toreador Song" from "Carmen" wound it's way through the din of the fire alarm and gunshots.

"Bizet's "Carmen"... REALLY?" Josie felt something warm, wet and sticky. Wait, oh, shit, that's blood!" She glanced up at the little window in the door, it was unshattered, the inane thought So that's why Aunt Raina always gets mad at Uncle Mike for being messy in the garage! wandering inappropriately through her mind as the music box's gurgling song rose with every shot.

"Fugo!" Josie whispered, frantically pawing at him. Blotting her eyes on her sleeve, she got her breathing under control and moved his head to her lap, feeling his forehead in the dark. "Fugo! You okay, dude?"

Her fingers stopped, wow, what a goose egg!

Josie flinched as something outside the door went "brrrrrrrrrrrt" followed by what sounded like a handful of rocks tossed against a trash can- that was automatic gunfire like that one Family Day when Aunt Raina carefully helped her line up the sights of a heavy rifle almost as tall as Josie so that she took out the center of a paper target downrange with the two of them doing the "Happy Dance" afterward.

"Bullshit!" screamed Mama as "Toreador Song" gurgled louder and louder outside the door, "That never happened!"

"Shitshitshitshitshit...SHIT!" Josie checked Fugo's breathing and pulse to distract herself from her rising panic.

Shallow, but still there. Good.

Fugo sat up with a gasp. Josie clapped a hand over his mouth, "Shhhhhhh, shit's still goin' down!" she whispered in the darkness. She felt his head move "yes" in the dark so she released him.

"You're real!" he exclaimed, falling back against the wall beside her, sweaty hand gripping hers so tight it hurt.

"Ow, not so hard - yeah, I am!" Josie snarked, "But will you SHUSH? This ain't no drill!", inwardly screaming "Uncle Mike, help!"

Near-blinded by tear gas after a bullet punched through the network controlling his vision and in an open hallway with no cover, Officer Schmidt struggled to rise, gears in his right hip grinding as another burst slammed into him.

He caught his balance, internal gyros straining to keep him upright as still another burst zinged past, taking his beanie and part of an ear with it, releasing the synthetic ligaments and tendons which held that half of his face in place so that it sagged grotesquely before falling away, revealing his square titanium skull.

And two fluffy pink ears that looked like they belonged on a teddy bear hidden beneath his ever-present black beanie.

Straining forward, a fourth burst punched through his chest, clipping the system controlling the left side of his body as well as the tightly rolled bundle of documents he'd stashed there when he and his family fled what had once been Circus Baby's.

Another round hit Mike in the lower thorax.

Somewhere, a music box began to play.

Eyes flickering with sudden blue white light as his internal alarms signaled imminent mandatory shutdown due to breaches in structural integrity, Mike ponderously lurched forward, hoping he'd hold together long enough to make sure they didn't get past him.

What came glaring at Dakota out of the chemical smoke from the grenades he'd tossed not two seconds before through the front door of Merston High was NOT part of the plan intended to make Dakota Spenser immortal.

Dakota's finger jerked the trigger of his assault rifle.

The big cop rocked back on his heels, what was left of his ears twitching.

Dakota fired again, even more wildly this time.

The cop paused, shook his head, and continued moving towards Dakota, cheesy music box music blaring from his chest .

On the verge of shitting himself, Dakota squeezed off a third burst in the general direction of the cop who should have gone down.

The cop's fluffy right ear disappeared, leaving behind a white oozing wound, his face flopping away, revealing a shiny metal skull that grinned down at Dakota as the cop's body lumbered towards him emitting it's own sound track as the fire alarm blared rhythmnically.

"Shit. Oh shit. Oh shit-shit-shit! This ain't how it's s'posed t' go– no fair!" Dakota wailed backpedaling, before stumbling over a body hidden by the smoke with what he'd seconds before mistaken as an easy target steadily bearing down on him. "No fair!"

Tangled in the lanyard that held his AR-15 within easy reach, Dakota landed on his back, and fumbling, fired again.

The giant rocked, paused, shook its gleaming head, and camegrinned down at Dakota with razor blades where Dakota could have sworn there'd been human teeth as a woman's voice announced calmly over Bizet and the fire alarms in the background, "This unit belongs to Fazcorp and has been damaged. To avoid prosecution, please return it to the nearest authorized service provider."

He was being owned by a ChuckE Cheese ripoff?! What the HELL?!

Dakota fired once more, only the magazine was empty. He scrambled clumsily to his feet on the wet tiles, only to howl when the Glock went off and his left leg buckled. Screaming, Dakota landed on the slippery tiles clutching his AR-15, fumbling in a side pocket for a fresh clip in a blind panic.

"This unit belongs to Fazcorp and has been damaged. To avoid prosecution, please return it to the nearest authorized service provider."

Fire alarm blaring, the whimpering Dakota used the locker behind him to push himself upright, clumsily slapping the clip into place like he'd practiced over and over again in Meemaw's basement, and returned fire.

Instead of Mike's head, the light fixture directly overhead burst in a spectacular cascade of sparks and shattered plastic just as the cop's Glock went off with a roar, striking Dakota's shoulder where his cheap military surplus vest gapped, spinning him so that his Dracula disguised gas mask fell off. Dimly he heard the sound of Jimmy squeezing off another round so close he could feel the displaced air of the bullets as they whipped past him.

"This unit belongs to Fazcorp and has been damaged. To avoid prosecution, please return it to the nearest authorized service provider."

"This ain't right, goddammit!", Dakota shrieked as he fled limping, the lumbering terror behind him as it dropped the Glock, hands swinging back and forth, swiveling head with rolling glowing eyes above a mouth where the jaw flapped pointlessly open and shut, only to trip over his own dropped AR-15.

"This unit belongs to Fazcorp and has been damaged. To avoid prosecution, please return it to the nearest authorized service provider."

Rolling over, Dakota pulled himself up, grabbing the AR-15 with his one good hand, only to exclaim to the Universe in a very, very small voice, "Oh shit!"

"This unit belongs to Fazcorp and has been damaged. To avoid prosecution, please return it to the nearest authorized service provider."

The last thing Dakota experienced in his short, wasted life wasn't the triumph of having the highest body count in U.S. hstory, but the sudden impact of a body massing roughly that of a vending machine filled to capacity with Coca-Cola products.

Thud.

Jimmy, never the brightest bulb in any light fixture, had gone along with his older cousin's latest harebrained pursuit of glory as a matter of course.

But he hadn't signed up for this.

Huling aside his AR-15 along with the gas mask with the Frankenstein Halloween mask grotesquly stretched over it, Jimmy fled squealing out of theremains of the front doors, only to be dropped by a final, reflexive squeeze from his loser cousin's trigger finger.

The last thing Jimmy experienced in HIS short, wasted life, was the sight of the gum-dappled front sidewalk of Merston High rising to flatten his doughy face.

Blind and deaf, Mike lay face down in the hall, reality fading in and out fumbling at the remains of his shoulder mounted radio, internal alarms going off as his CPU frantically routed and rerouted to no avail.

"Officer down." He mumbled in the end stages of catastrophic situational shutdown, "Toreador" gurgling to a halt.

Seconds later, Mike's central processors gave up and blue-screened.

The whole incident had taken less than five minutes.