Chapter 13
At the Bottom
(Tina Cohen-Chang)
"Tina!"
The first conscious thought to actually drift across the foggy surface of her brain was a silent inquiry towards how it was exactly that she could have actually blacked out while still remaining standing firmly upright… She had no idea, yet somehow, it had happened.
The last thing that she remembered, she had been pressed up, stiff as a board against the underside of an overturned lunch table, her hands clutching Artie's upper arms so firmly that you could still see the half moon indentations against his skin made by her fingernails…
"Tina!"
She had come to, surfaced back into the realm of conscious thought only to find an entire ten minutes of her life mysteriously erased from the very depths of her memory; conscious visualizations fogged out, replaced with nothing but blackness…
And now… well now she'd found herself standing in the center of the cafeteria, her body so stiff that her muscles had literally begun to burn in protest; but still, she had absolutely no idea how it was that she had gotten there.
"Tina!"
The only feeling that she could possibly bring herself to register was that of her knees trembling painfully against one another.
The only picture that she could possibly bring herself to see was that of a blinding whiteness.
The only sound that she could possibly bring herself to hear was that of her own name being called… but she just couldn't seem to be able to distinguish with exactly who it was that that voice belonged to…
That is, until from across the school, the distant echoes of an overwhelming force penetrated through her already over-sensitized eardrums, so that the sound struck her with a blinding sense of sheer white light, forcing the previously regressed memories from their untold regions, trapped deep within the very center of her brain…
BANG!
Jacob Ben-Israel had looked nothing short of defiant as his slug plunged directly into the center of Noah Puckerman's chest.
He watched the scene progress onwards without a hint of concern as the mohawked boy stumbled backwards only briefly, clutching onto his chest as he toppled to the floor, mere inches away from the spot in which Quinn Fabray had fallen herself only moments before.
Jacob's eyes lingered only briefly, a soft smirk of satisfaction spreading across his features as he turned away from Puck and Quinn, casually wiping the barrel of his gun with his shirt, cleaning off the stray specks of blood that had been progressively littering it since this rampage had begun no more than twenty minutes ago now.
He paused in the midst of his polishing; eyes focusing so pointedly against his position of interest that Tina could literally see his eyeballs dilating and constricting in their concentration as if she had been staring into the pupil of a machine the entire time.
In a slow, simultaneous movement, all eyes turned to follow Jacob's, all breaths hitched in a stony anticipation to find out who it was that Jacob Ben-Israel's next victim would be…
Tina herself had been so far away, that she couldn't help but wonder how it was that Jacob – standing several paces behind her – had even managed to see it from so far away… After all, even with her 20/20 vision, Tina had to squint in order to just make it out…
The image of a single foot, trembling violently as it stuck outwards from beyond the edge of its hiding place, behind the back of the corner vending machine.
BANG!
Jacob hadn't even had to pause to aim; he knew that he would be able to strike his target easily regardless; and as it was, he did just that – with a painfully accuracy that removed Dorothy Kollo's protruding foot from the rest of her body in its entirety.
With a shrill screech that emitted in a register nearly higher than what the human ear was actually capable of transmitting, Dorothy toppled sideways from beyond the cramped space between the soda machine and the wall, exposing herself from beyond the safety of what truly had been a remarkable hiding space…
Had she just managed to fit her entire body behind it…
Jacob barreled slowly; hunched in his demeanor, yet spacious in his pacing… He knew that Dorothy Kollo wasn't about to be running away anytime soon; they all knew that now.
In a silent understanding, he chose not to address her and she in turn, chose not to fight back; instead, she simply stared at Jacob, wide eyes so full of shock and fear that they couldn't even manage to produce tears.
His finger had just been flexing against the trigger, his mind prepared to finish exactly what it was that it had started, when they heard it; a dull thud emitted from the table adjacent, followed immediately by an involuntary grunt of pain that was emitted in a short staccato before it stopped, as if the owner of the voice had realized, just a split second too late, exactly what it was that it had done.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Edward Everest had not always been the brightest crayon in the box, but this time, he had really outdone even himself…
He'd been trying to readjust his body; legs hopelessly asleep and turned into jelly from being cramped beneath a tiny lunch table so long… But he had underestimated his own height, overestimated how tall the table that he was currently sitting beneath actually was…
When he'd hit his head harshly against the table's underside, the entire room had heard it… including Jacob.
His body had exploded into a stream of blood as if it were coming from every surface of his body, as if it had previously existed inside of him in infinite amounts.
"If only…" Tina could remember that one distinct thought crossing her mind as she watched the boy writhing on the ground, while meanwhile, behind the table directly next to Edward; Renee Williams had begun eying her bleeding boyfriend with excessive worry evident behind her eyes.
Tina had become aware of the girl's intentions the second she had watched her vision begin to dart back and forth rapidly between Edward and the shooters; she was trying to find the right moment, trying to decide which precise second would least likely end in her death when she'd jump from her hiding spot in an effort to get to her boyfriend.
Jacob's back had been fully turned when that moment came… It was as if Renee had been presented with a golden ticket. It shouldn't have taken her more than five seconds to rush to her boyfriend's side, five seconds until she could hold onto him, until she could comfort him, until she could falsely assure him that everything was going to be okay…
Five seconds…
In retrospect, it was stupid for her to think that Jacob wouldn't see her… He would see her, he always saw.
They all understood that now.
BANG!
A single bullet fired half hazard from across the room had taken Renee Williams' tiny frame down its entirety; and despite the fact that Edward Everest and Dorothy Kollo had been left wounded, well, at least they were still moving…
Renee Williams wasn't moving, and from all that Tina could tell, she wasn't breathing either…
No, it seemed at first glance that Jacob Ben-Israel had killed Renee Williams with a clear cut blow to the back of the head that had rendered her unconscious, and completely motionless against the ground; mere inches from her boyfriend's side.
BANG!
He fired a single, random shot; a warning to encourage the imitation that these students sure as hell didn't need any more of right now… But the result was nothing more than a distant, empty clicking echoing from inside of the chamber.
Jacob Ben-Israel's weapon was finally no longer loaded…
But it hadn't made a difference; the students of William McKinley High School were beyond the point of seeing this as a symbol of hope, of an approaching end…
They had all been beyond the point of shell-shocked by now, they had all been done teasing themselves with the false hope that there was actually a possibility that they would escape.
At this point, the only that they could truly do was wish that when the time came that Jacob Ben-Israel decided to kill them, he would at least do so quickly.
Jacob toyed with the empty pistol briefly, spinning the weapon animatedly around his index finger by the trigger before placing it mockingly against his temple, pulling the trigger in rapid fire although the motion was met with nothing more than continuously rapid, empty clicking…
Unlike the rest of them, Jacob would actually have the opportunity to decide whether or not he would become one of the lucky ones to achieve escape today.
"Hey, let's get out of here." He spoke suddenly to Suzy, a nonchalant tone behind his voice that made it sound as if he could have been asking her to simply skip class with him or something. "We'll see if we can find anybody in the hallways… I think that we're done here."
BANG!
There was not a single person still alive inside of this room who wasn't holding their breaths; a collective inhale gathering across the length of the cafeteria, all waiting in stony anticipation for Suzy's response, waiting to see if there was actually a possibility after all, that they would be making it out of this school alive.
"Yeah…" Suzy nodded her head in her agreement, and across the length of the room, you could literally feel the collective feeling of pure relief filtering across everybody's mind…
But none of them ever actually made a sound… they didn't dare to.
"TINA!"
Tina's mind sweltered slowly back into consciousness with a rapid force that almost knocked her straight down and onto the ground below her feet…
She stumbled backwards in a series of uncoordinated steps, pausing only upon being met with a solid force; the cool metal behind her back telling her that she had just come into direct contact with Artie's wheelchair…
But she couldn't bring herself to turn to face him; she couldn't bring herself to turn to face anybody that was still here, that was somehow still alive within these walls…
No, ironically enough, the only people that she could actually bring herself to meet eye-to-eye was the dead; and despite the fact that before this day, she had found herself met with an irrational obsession with death and all things darkness, today, she didn't want anything to do with it; not now, not ever again…
How was it that she had become one of the lucky ones?
"Tina?"
With the exception of Artie shouting for her attention across deafened ears, the room had fallen remarkably silent in comparison to the animated chaos that she had previously remembered…
There wasn't a single motion about the entirety of the room, not a single sound… In fact, the more that Tina looked about, the more she realized that her and Artie seemed to be just about the only two people left alive in here…
Across the length of the cafeteria, a handful of desperately injured students had begun to claw their way across the room in a bid for freedom that they knew they could never manage to achieve… Behind her, aligning the windows, a handful of stragglers were just now finding their way through the shattered panes, scurrying frantically towards the outside world, not caring, or even so much as noticing the jarring gashes that the shattered material had left against their skin…
In fact, with all of the living now gone, and their dead and injured counterparts left behind in their wake, William McKinley High School's cafeteria was beginning to resemble less of a classroom, and more of a mass grave with each passing second.
"They're all dead…" She muttered under her breath, her lips barely moving as she spoke to herself so that the words were emitted as nothing more than a low, barely audible growl…
"Tina, please!" Artie had now gone beyond the point of begging, desperation frantic behind his voice as he reached out to grab onto Tina's arm in order to tug her towards the remainder of her fleeing classmates by the windows… but it was no use.
Artie might as well have been clutching onto a three ton pile of cement… Tina wasn't budging, not an inch.
"They're all dead."
"Tina, please!" Artie's voice was growing steadily more desperate. Tina could physically hear the tears lacing underneath her boyfriend's voice, but still, she couldn't bring herself to follow him… she couldn't bring herself to move at all… even if it was for the sake of her own life. "They're going to come back here, let's go, please!"
"Did you see all of those cops out there?" Tina felt the muscles of Artie's hand tense firmly around her arm before she'd actually processed the distinct voice turning the corner inwards from beyond the depths of the hall…
But even if she hadn't, the vice grip that Artie currently held against her right wrist, so impossibly strong that it probably would have pained her had she actually been able to feel anything, would have told her exactly who that voice belonged to anyway…
"Yeah, I saw him…" Artie's previous prediction of the shooters' imminent return became spot on in a matter of mere moments, Jacob and Suzy's voices lingering and lacing together towards them, their bodies following mere seconds later.
She could feel Artie tugging at her in more exponentially frantic motions than even before, his intentions no longer revolving around their achieving escape, but now, to simply hide them, get them out of the open…
And in utilizing his super human strength, he had almost gotten her to budge… almost.
But Jacob had taken one step towards them… two steps, and all at once, Artie was just as frozen as Tina had found herself; a sitting duck, rendered motionless by fear and paralysis directly in the center of the world, for all to see…
They both knew that had Jacob and Suzy wanted to kill them right now, they could have done so without so much as blinking first…
And the thing that scared Tina the most was the idea that she wasn't sure whether or not she actually cared…
"Hey," Jacob spoke suddenly, the excitement evident behind his voice as he believed himself struck with a sense of brilliance. "We should shot at some of them."
"No, Jacob…" Suzy sighed in her negative confirmation, her head shaking slightly as she spoke with an impossibly low tone that, for the briefest of seconds forced Tina to wonder whether or not Suzy had actually been met with a sense of a conscious during her brief, mysterious journey throughout the hallways of William McKinley High School. "No, I'm done here."
Her words were final as she conveyed her message, so final in her tone that it had even caught Jacob off guard; the surprise evident in his eyes as him and Suzy strode briskly past Artie and Tine as if they hadn't even seen their two terrified classmates…
But they had to have seen them; there was no way that they couldn't of… After all, Suzy's shoulder had practically brushed up against her own; there was no way in hell that they hadn't noticed her standing there… no way at all.
Tina Cohen-Chang was officially confused.
"What do you mean you're done?" Jacob turned towards Suzy, facing her with the same icy malice behind his eyes that he had shown to all of those that he had killed right before he had shot them…
"I mean I'm done." She repeated, emphasizing her final words so that Jacob would understand exactly what she meant when she used the word done. "We're done, Jacob. We did everything, we got everyone… There's no one left, Jacob."
"What are you talking about?" Jacob was practically yelling now. "There's plenty of people left!" Tina could practically feel his eyes baring a hole straight through her as he spoke.
"Do you hear that, Jacob? Do you hear them?" Suzy motioned outwards with her arm, pointing towards the windows as she signaled towards the outside world; the growing sound of sirens blaring painfully inside of all of their ears. "Do you want to get killed by the cops, or do you want to have a say in how it happens? Think of our plan, Jacob… this isn't how it's supposed to be."
There was a moment of silence as Jacob paused, considering Suzy's words as his eyes softened slowly with the realization that she was correct in saying that much…
"You're right," Jacob nodded in his agreement, his voice more soft; more defeated than what Tina had heard it all day; and suddenly, she saw that there was actually an end in sight, that this could actually be ending, unlike what they had all previously believed…
They weren't going to be stuck here in this hell for the rest of eternity…
The floor shuddered slightly below Tina's feet as Jacob emphasized his agreement with Suzy by dropping down to his knees, his baggy cargo pants drenching in the blood that he himself had spilled as he ensured the shotgun between his hands to be loaded before positioning it securely beneath his chin, holding it stable between his knees as his fingers grazed upwards and against the trigger.
He waited chivalrously for Suzy to join him, but the girl was taking her time, hands trembling as she loaded her final rounds of ammunition into the 9mm handgun that Tina hadn't even known she'd had on her person until this moment…
Unlike Jacob, Suzy was moving in careful slow, coordinated movements, her eyes scanning across the length of the room one last time, lingering particularly long against the outside world just beyond the windows; the outside world that she would never again have the opportunity to see before she too, dropped to her knees besides Jacob.
"We'll do it on three, okay?" Jacob's voice trembled, Suzy not even able to verbally respond as she merely nodded her head, squeezing her eyes shut tightly as she pulled back against the hammer of her weapon and pressed it firmly against her right temple.
"One…"
Tina could see the tears lingering behind Suzy's eyes so that she couldn't help but wonder whether or not the girl would actually be able to carry through with this action, whether or not by the time Jacob reached three, Suzy would still find herself able to pull the trigger.
"Two…"
She felt almost a sense of sympathy towards the girl as she wondered what series of events had actually gotten her to this point in her life… Had she simply just been in the wrong place or the time? Or, by some sort of grandiose misfortune, had her and Jacob Ben-Israel just so happened to have met up with each other while both were having particularly bad days?
"Three."
The bang was silencing, but no way near as much so as the resultant quiet…
A cascade of blood erupted simultaneously from the heads of Jacob Ben-Israel and Suzy Pepper as, for a split second, they wobbled where they stood before tipping sideways and away from each other, limp and sprawled poetically outwards against the ground, guns scattering from their hands and across the floor.
For the briefest of seconds, Tina found herself trembling where she stood; her knees chattering against each other as her eyes remained firmly glued to the scene in front of her; wanting nothing more than to turn away, yet finding herself mysteriously unable to actually do so…
In retrospect, she should have known that it would only be a matter of time before the forces of motion swarming all around her carried her straight down to her very knees…
She wasn't sure exactly how long that it was that she was standing there for… It could have been minutes, hours… days for all she knew.
The only thing that she knew for certain was that when she finally reentered into a fleeting world of consciousness for the second time in the past several minutes alone, she was no longer alone…
"Honey, are you okay? Are you injured?" Her eyes focused slowly against the image of a strong, male face; its unfamiliarity more and more prominent the clearer, it got. "Can you hear me?"
She made the motion to force her lips to move, made the motion to respond to the man's worried inquiries, but her throat was suddenly feeling as if it had been singed by pure fire, robbing her voice from it entirely.
"No, wait!" The presence of an outside tone attracted her attention instantly based on its familiarity; the only sense of such amidst such a deranged confusion. "Tina, wait… Tina!"
Through a flash that had appeared suddenly before her through the corner of her eyes, she could see Artie flailing frantically from within his hair, straggling against a man dressed similar to the one directly in front of her as he guided Artie's wheelchair, devoid of the boy's voluntary control towards the cafeteria's entrance and outside into the hallway.
"No, Artie, no, don't take him!" Her scream so abrupt, so astonishingly high in pitch that the man before her leapt slightly back in his surprise…
Tina sprang to her feet in an instant, barely aware of the fact that she had blood dripping down her front as she launched herself forwards towards Artie… There was a lot of things about the scene before her that she wasn't sure of, but if there was one thing for certain, she couldn't let this man, this stranger take him…
"No, wait," The man standing before her stopped her in her tracks, enveloping her into a tight bear hug where he restrained her easily against his significantly larger frame so that her knees collapsed out from underneath her in an instant, solely due to the sheer unexpectedness of his attack, sending her sprawling outwards and against the ground once more.
"Artie!" She cried in a deafeningly shrieking manner towards him as he was brought straight out of the door and around the corner; out of view in a manner of seconds so that Tina could immediately feel the tears stinging at the corners of her eyes, could feel her breathing growing painfully quicker, her heart increasing in its pace until she felt as if it would positively explode straight out of her chest.
"It's okay, sweetheart," The man tried to calm her down, smothering her in terms of endearment so that she couldn't help but cringe. "My guys will take good care of him. They will get him out of here safe."
Tina paused suddenly in her bid to escape, her captor's words striking her as odd as she turned to face him once more, eyes focusing, for the first time, on the official demeanor that she simply hadn't noticed about him on first glance.
Against the thick, bullet proof armor fastened securely to his chest, she could suddenly make out the blinding white lettering; the initials S.W.A.T. emblazoned almost painfully against the black fabric so that in an instant, she felt foolish towards the idea that she had missed something so strikingly obvious the first time…
Her eyes scanned across the remaining length of the room; in fact, now that she looked, she realized that he wasn't even the only officer inside of the room… No, there had to be at least a dozen of them; men all of similar statue and dress, scouring the remnants of their cafeteria as they analyzed the bodies that littered the ground and held onto the wounded for dear life.
And suddenly, she found her body finally allowing itself to relax inside of these unfamiliar arms; the mental exhaustion, the physical toll striking her full swing…
She was safe; she was finally safe.
"Are you hurt honey?" She could feel his eyes scanning up and down the length of her body, but she knew that it would be impossible for him to assess the fact that she wasn't actually injured; after all, she had been doused down the full length of her front in blood… how was he supposed to know that none of it was actually hers? "Have you been shot?"
She didn't respond to his questioning immediately; instead, she embraced this allusion of safety, allowing herself to get lost inside of it as she simply fell limp inside of his arms, relaxing the entirety of her body for the first time in what seemed like hours; growing instantly catatonic inside of this embrace.
"I need a paramedic over here!" She could feel the reverberations of the shouting that originated straight from his chest against her back… And she knew that she should have told him that none of that would actually be necessary, she knew that she should have told him to focus on those actually dying as opposed to those like her, those too weak to save their own souls, but she just couldn't…
And as if on a perfect cue, an assembly line of paramedics suddenly bombarded into the room, rushing forwards like a fast-paced parade in a rush of overwhelming colors and loud noises so that in an instant, the room had grown from near silence, to a chaos that rivaled that by which it was even met with when Jacob and Suzy were still enacting their dutifully planned rampage inside of it.
"Hon, can you hear me?" She felt suddenly overwhelmed by the multitude of people surrounding her, boxing her into the center of a cramped circle so that the sense of claustrophobia that accompanied the motions made it difficult to breathe. "Can you tell me your name?"
Tina's lips moved in a motion of distinct speech however, she could allow no sound to actually come out of her mouth.
"Tina." The man still holding her firmly from behind answered the emergency crew's accurately. "Her friend… her friend was yelling to her before. Her name is Tina."
Tina's eyes glanced quickly upwards towards the man; a silent response towards her appreciation of his attention to detail.
"I couldn't find any physical wounds, but I only looked quickly." He relayed Tina's information off towards the paramedics, frantically scribbling, taking in every minute detail to make up for the little they actually knew. "It has to be somewhere… She's… she's got blood all over her but I couldn't get her to talk to me… She's probably in shock."
Shock; well that was the understatement of the century, Tina couldn't help but think.
"Okay, triage her quickly!" The older of the set of paramedics shouted to his young partner before rushing off, headed towards the next body in an effort to assess the severity of their injuries. "And find an entry wound! See if you can get her to talk!"
Triage… Tina had Tivo'd enough television shows depicting acts of mass trauma to know what that meant… What, with so many kids injured and dying all around, and only a limited supply of emergency workers to respond to them, the paramedics would now be left with the difficult task of prioritizing their patients for transport; those that could wait to be taken to the hospital, those that couldn't… and those that they shouldn't even bother with.
"I'm gonna give her a yellow tag, Larry." The younger man shouted quickly back to his partner, simultaneously fastening a neon yellow tag to Tina's wrist before scribbling quickly, what little information that he actually knew about her against the designated slots.
Yellow… She had been classified a delayed priority victim; although with her lack of injuries, she knew that she shouldn't have been designated a priority at all… She was taking away from the help that somebody else needed; so why the hell couldn't she open her mouth and say something?
"I've got a green over here; GSW to the upper right shoulder." Through the corners of her eyes, Tina spotted two individuals; one man and one woman, busying themselves over Kurt as they sat him upright; his eyes open, yet dazed with pain as the female paramedic pressed a 4x4 bandage firmly against his still prominently bleeding shoulder.
Green… Kurt had been shot; he had actually sustained a physical, life threatening injury, yet still, he had been designated with a mere minor priority level… He would be one of the last living victims to leave this cafeteria alive to be taken to the hospital; and here she was, assigned to be taken before her, and she wasn't even injured.
"I can't find an entry wound!" The paramedic at her side spoke aloud to the officer still holding firmly onto her; his hands scouring intrusively over her body as he searched for an injury that simply wasn't there. "Are you sure she's been shot?"
"She's got blood all over her." The officer stated in a matter-of-fact motion.
There was a response by the paramedic, the man making an attempt to address Tina once more, but this time, she truly hadn't even heard him; his voice suddenly overridden by another shout from overhead.
"I've got a red over here!" The voice was devoid of any sense of a professional mannerism; frantic, and rightfully so… A red tag; a top priority victim… Whoever this man was currently standing over, was mortally wounded. "Wait, I know this kid; he's on the football team, he's a friend of my son's… Noah, Noah can you hear me?"
In a sudden rush of wind, somebody pushed a gurney directly past her and towards Puck as the boy continued to bleed out against the cafeteria floor, left continuously unresponsive from the penetrating wound that had blasted a hole directly through his sternum.
The tears rapidly started dripping downwards from Tina's eyes as she squeezed them shut firmly in response to the progression of the paramedic's initial assessments of the various victims… She knew what was coming next, she knew that it was inevitable; but that didn't mean that she was ready to hear it.
"Black," The voice was instinctively sympathetic; an echo of sadness that made it even harder for Tina to hear than it already had to be as she opened her eyes just in time to watch a young police officer remove his hat from his head out of sheer respect; fastening a pure black tag around Quinn Fabray's limp wrist before sliding a pure white sheet over her body, covering it in its entirety…
"Black," From just beyond Quinn's body, a second voice echoed so quickly following the first that the two meshed together making the second sound like a mere echo of the first… But Tina wasn't dumb enough to believe that to be the case; not when she could blatantly see the second officer directly in front of her as he hovered over Mercedes' body; the young girl's eyes wide in response to the latest accessory being added to the bracelets adorning her wrist; a black tag.
"Black," The paramedics had barely even bothered to so much as brush over Santana's form before harshly classifying her with a black tag…
"Black," Matt… He had been so close to freedom, so close to achieving freedom and getting the help that he needed… But Jacob and Suzy had lingered for five minutes too long, emergency crews were just five minutes too late… Five minutes that separated him from the hopeless survivors, to those that had simply just run out of luck.
"Two potential suspects are confirmed down." A single man spoke pointedly into the walkie-talkie attached to his vest; his gun drawn just in case said two potential suspects were merely feigning death as he silently appointed a team of five to gather information to overtake the two deceased teenagers.
"Two suspects; one male, one female, each approximately fifteen to seventeen years in age; both suspects are armed, there is one Remington .12 shotgun and one Glock 17 handgun currently visible on site." All six walked on the balls of their feet, moving slowly so that each step seemed to Tina, to take an hour.
"Each appears to have one self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head; assessing the suspects now." The leader of the pack took a final step towards Jacob's body, one leg on either side of the motionless boy as he kept his right hand clenched firmly around his gun, finger grazed against the trigger the entire time as he reached downwards with his free hand to check for a pulse in the boy's neck.
"Male suspect is confirmed deceased." He relayed Jacob Ben-Israel's status to the entirety of the outside world waiting tensely around him as he subconsciously loosened the grip around his weapon before stepping towards Suzy Pepper in a similar manner as he had done so with Jacob, pressing two fingers firmly against her prominent carotid artery.
He paused briefly as he waited to distinguish a familiar thump beneath his fingertips before his sharp blue eyes contorted into a distinct look of concentration, slowly softening away from their professional tone, expressing nothing but pure shock as he darted sharply upwards from his squatting position and shouted over all of the head surrounding him towards the groups of paramedics standing idly by the cafeteria doors.
"I have a pulse on the female suspect!" He shouted so loudly that his words echoed off of the very walls around him, entering every ear of every person still capable of conscious thought inside of the room so that a collective silence overcame even the most chaotic of scenes. "Get me a gurney in here, now!"
From inside of the very depths of her chest, Tina could feel her heart physically stop as a small group of paramedics rushed past her – gurney in tow – and towards Suzy Pepper.
She was alive… How was it that Suzy Pepper had managed to survive a bullet to the head when so many of her victims before her had been much less lucky with much lesser wounds?
She could physically feel it as first; her limps began to shake; the motion progressing rapidly so that before she knew it, it had travelled upwards through the remainder of the length of her body; from her toes, straight up through her very head…
The paramedics rushing towards Suzy didn't linger for so much as a heartbeat; instead, they lifted Suzy into the air straightaway, throwing her on top of the stretcher so that she was rushed from the room and towards the bay of awaiting ambulances, no doubt already filled to the brim with her very victims with her ammunition still attached heavily to her belt; adorning it to the extent of decorations on a Christmas tree and a pistol still holstered inside of the left pocket of her cargo pants.
Standing her ground firmly, a still-trembling Tina watched without so much as blinking as the gurney was shuffled directly past her; the resultant gust of wind brushing across her body in a manner that chilled her straight down to her very bones sparking the switch that she hadn't even known existed before this instant, so that without so much as a transition from her silence, she opened her mouth and began to scream; the noise emitted as so loud, so shrill, so extended that it held the capacity to awake even the black tagged victims layered all around her…
The emergency crews busying themselves with Tina's well being jumped back briefly in their surprise, cringing through the pain her continuous shouts were bringing to their eardrums as they attempted to calm her, attempted to silence her…
But for the life of her, Tina couldn't bring herself to stop; and in that moment, she was struck with the realization that there was a strong possibility that, for the rest of her life, she never would.