Alex can't put into words how much of a relief it is when Brian agrees to surrender. They have no chance of winning the coming fight, and too many of them have already been lost to this pointless nightmare.
The steps they take towards the gate as they call out their own surrender are the first steps in the right direction that they've taken in days. The sun feels warm against his skin, the clouds above them having cleared with the clouds that had finally left Brian's judgment.
Soon this whole ordeal will be over. The school with it, perhaps, but there will be no more deaths to mourn, no more funerals on its grounds.
As more of their classmates fall in behind him and Brian, Alex wonders where each of them will end up; so many promising futures, so many opportunities. Colonel Kerby is a reasonable man; he won't let the younger students be charged with this incident.
Only a few more yards to the gate, and nearly everyone has made it from their now-obsolete stations to the procession.
Alex smiles, hopeful for the first time in days.
And then he hears the terrible sound of Shawn's prized M-60.