School's Out by Dead-Man-Dan

Winston stepped through the door to his bedroom and quietly closed it behind him. He cast his eyes about the room. Nothing had been disturbed; it was just as he had left it. The books on his shelf had not been touched. The box of action figures, still in their original packaging, remained in the corner of the room. They were his silent, plastic sentinels, standing their post.

            He drew the chair out from his desk and sat down. He held up his hand before his eyes and watched it tremble. Killing them had been far easier than he had imagined it would be. But now he was coming down off of the adrenaline. He felt tired, overwhelmed, like he needed to puke and like he wanted to cry all at once. His stomach settled the debate for him. He grabbed his plastic trash basket and barfed up the muffin and cola that he had had for breakfast. When his stomach was finished convulsing, he spat into the trash basket to purge his mouth of the bile and muffin taste. He pulled a tissue from the box and wiped any residue from his lips.

            Winston had never killed anyone before although he had thought about a lot. In truth, he had done more than just think about it. He had planned to kill people. No, he had meticulously planned to kill people; seventeen of them in fact. He put down the waste paper basket and pivoted his chair to face the bookshelf. A full quarter of the shelf was taken up by trade paperback editions of his favorite comic books. The rest were books that he had either read for fun before he developed the plan or books that he read while developing his plan. He scanned the titles. In the preplanning category were fantasy books by Tolkein, Eddings and others. These were the books he had read in junior high; back in the good old days; back before Ritchie and Brett and Ariel. Winston didn’t notice the scowl creep onto his face as he thought about his three tormentors. He loved the escape provided by these fantasy worlds. But they weren’t the kinds of things that you could read in senior high and not get your ass kicked. When he became a man, he had had to put away his childish things.

In senior high school his reading tastes had changed. Here were books by Ann Rule, Ressler and John Douglas. They were true crime books; books about criminals and criminal profiling; about how they got caught and how they got away with their crimes. Next to them was a well-read, dog-eared copy of Nietzsche. And next to the Nietzsche sat the Art of War by Sun Tzu. These two books had seen better days.  Two more books, the Anarchist’s Cookbook and Steal This Book, along with the Nietzsche and the Sun Tzu made up his four gospels. He knew them backward and forward and could quote chapter and verse.    

Next to these four books, the four books that had mapped out his high school experience, the four books that stood like the cardinal points of the compass for his master plan, sat the plan itself. It was a thin book with nothing on its spine. He had had the book professionally bound by uploading the document to an online publishing site. He ordered one copy of the book and then took the document down off the site. He pulled the book from its spot on the shelf. Winston held the book reverently. It represented hundreds of hours of work; hours of research, hours of pondering, hours of planning, hours of checking and hours of rechecking.

Like its spine, the cover of the book was blank. He leafed forward until he came to the first page. “This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity or resemblance between the characters named within this work and any real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.” Winston smiled and carefully tore the page from the book. He was careful not to damage the binding of the book as he did so. Every name in the book was genuine. His name, his parent’s names, the names of his teachers, the name of the school and the names of the students at the school were all, one hundred percent real.

As the legal warning page was torn from its binding the page behind it was revealed. This page was titled “My Hit List.” The list was comprised of seventeen names. It had once been as large as twenty-six names. But twenty-six names seemed a bit over the top, almost self-indulgent. Add to that, the difficulty in getting all twenty-six people on the list. Logistically it was a nightmare. Winston had spent the better part of six weeks winnowing the list down to its current size. He was quite methodical. First he divided the list up into sections; “Must be on the List,” “Should be on the List” and “Could be removed from the List.” Then he created a rating scale with a number of variables and rated each person in the “Could be removed from the List” category on each of the variables. He even went as far as to engage in social interactions with individuals on the list in cases where they were tied after his methodical assessment. The results of the social interaction were used as the tiebreaker. One girl, Cheryl Printer, got her self removed from the list in this way. Winston had approached her in the hall at school during a spare period that they both had and had told her that his cell was out of minutes, but that he really needed to call home. This was the test. Both Cheryl and another competitor Barry Green would be asked to lend him their phone for less than a minute and the results would determine who remained on the list and who got a free pass. Cheryl surprised him. She had actually acted like a decent human being. Winston made his faux call, thanked her and left. Barry on the other hand, upon being approached in the same way that Cheryl had, had told Winston to “Take your lame ass phone and shove it up your faggoty ass, you loser.” Barry stayed on the list. In fact, after that performance Bryce had considered moving him up from number seventeen up to number twelve. But, he reasoned, the list wasn’t about rankings. It was more of a pass/fail kind of thing; either you were on the list, or you were not.           

Winston stared at the list, examining each name and remembering the reasons and the arguments for each person having their place on the list. The first person on the list was his father Howard Blake. Howard was a businessman. He owned a laundry-mat, a touchless car wash and an auto supply store. He had a seat on the town council and sat on the local fire and ambulance authority boards. Howard held a position of some esteem in the local church congregation and he was the captain of his golf team in the summer and of his bowling team in the winter. Everyone thought that Howard was a swell guy. Winston thought that he was an asshole. Or he did, until he realized one day that he really didn’t know who his father was at all. The two of them had never spent enough time together for either of them to really know the other. Winston was sure that his father just didn’t give a fuck who his son was. Winston always called his father “father” and not “dad.” “Father” was the person who impregnated your mother. “Dad” was that cool guy who flew kites with you and who took you fishing and gave you your first taste of beer. Winston didn’t have a dad. He had a father. Everyone knew his father; he was well thought of around town. But people only see the façade. You can’t look at a person and tell if he was a “dad” or “father.” So people just assume if you are the latter, you must be the former.

It wasn’t like Howard didn’t give parenting a shot every now and then. Every once in a while, when he had stayed home from work with the flu and seen an after-school special or maybe he caught a few minutes of Dr. Phil while he was changing from work clothes into his “golf attire,” Howard would feel moved to be a better parent. Case in point: one of the talking heads had done special on the evils of methamphetamine. Howard had witnessed this and felt moved to save his son from the dangers of drug pushers. For seventy-two minutes and thirty-three seconds, Winston knew because he had timed it, Howard stood in the doorway of Winston’s room and had bared his soul to his son about the dangers of drugs and the dangers of this new drug in particular. Winston didn’t bother to share with is father the fact that he knew kids that took meth and that if he really wanted to, he could mix up a batch of meth in the shed out back from ingredients that he found there and in the kitchen. No, Winston kept his mouth shut and watched the clock. When his father was finished he said “and remember Winston, your dad loves you.” Winston just smiled and thought about how disingenuous his father sounded; partly because of the “dad” vs. “father” issue and partly because his father had to resort to the third person to tell his son that he loved him. A “dad” would have said it in the first person. Winston was surprised that his dad has spoken to him for that long. Seventy-two minutes and thirty-three seconds is longer than the original television program went, especially if you factor in commercials. Moreover, Winston was certain that his dad hadn’t spent a total of seventy-two minutes talking to him in the last month; or in any month this year for that matter. That’s why Howard was on the list.       

Next on Winston’s list was Betty-Jean Blake. Betty-Jean was Howard’s high school sweet heart. She loved to tell the stories of how she and Howard had met; how Howard had asked her out to the junior prom; how they had courted and how wonderful their wedding was. Over the years Winston had heard these same stories told and retold. One year he began to keep track of how many times his mother told the same stories. He chose the wedding story as the specific story that he would track. In four months, his mother had told him the story three times. She had told it to Howard twice and to their daughter, Denise, Winston’s sister, seven times. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Betty-Jean told the same story two times at parent-teacher night, twice to friends in the grocery store and twice to her sister in Saskatchewan over the telephone. Winston wondered how many more times she had regaled people at church, at the doctor’s office and at the bank. He knew she told her stories to passers by on the street when the paused to comment on her flower garden. Winston sighed to himself. Don’t even get me started on her flower garden. Betty-Jean’s flower garden routinely won prizes during the town beautification week. Just then Winston realized that he resented his mother’s stories and her garden. Before, he had just hated them, but now he realized that what he really felt was resentment. His mother told stories rather than relating with people as people. She told her stories rather than relating to him as a son. And she nurtured her gardens in the way that she had never nurtured him. Perhaps that was why he used to piss in her flowerbeds so often. Yes, Betty-Jean had earned her spot on the list.

The third person on Winston’s hit list was his sister Denise. This was the one person on the entire list that he felt bad about. Denise had never tried to hurt him. As far as sisters went she was pretty decent. But Winston knew that he resented his sister. He resented the time and the attention that both Betty-Jean and Howard had for her. He resented that they supported her activities, cheerleading and figure skating, because they were “good, positive, social activities” while they had turned up their noses when he wanted an ant-farm in grade four, or a chemistry set in grade five or when he had wanted to join the Medieval Anachronism Society in grade seven. These apparently weren’t “good,” “positive” or “social” enough for Howard and Betty-Jean. But that wasn’t why Denise was on the list. Those were things that counted against Howie and B-J. No, Denise was on the list, because he didn’t think that it would be right for her to lose her mother, her father and her brother all on the same day; because he didn’t want her to feel the shame of having come from a family that was so screwed up that it had birthed a mass murderer. The loss compounded by the stigma was more than Denise should have to endure. So he would make sure that she would not ever know the pains of that loss or the stings of that stigma. It only seemed fair.

The next three on the list were Ricky, Ritchie and Robbie Wayne. Of course they hated to be called Ricky, Ritchie and Robbie. Now it was Rick, Richard and Rob. But Ricky, Ritchie and Robbie were the names Winston had know them by when they were all friends. Ricky and Ritchie were twins and they were in his grade. Robbie was two years younger. They had all been great friends from the time that they moved to town in the third grade. In the summer they would go swimming and build forts together, they would camp out together and have all sorts of fun. Ricky and Ritchie used to play role-playing games with Winston in this very room. God those were good times. Things changed in grade seven or eight. Ricky and Ritchie started to grow. Their father had played some college football at the linebacker position and it looked like his boys were going to be linebackers as well. They joined the football team and that meant a new circle of friends; a circle of friends who thought that skinny kids were geeks or ‘tards; a circle of friends who thought that role playing games were for fags; a circle of friends who liked to bully and ridicule skinny kids who liked role playing games. Once, after four of the guys on the football team had knocked him down and sent his books flying, Winston looked up to see shame in Ritchie’s eyes. Winston was never sure if it was shame for not having helped an old friend or shame at having once been his friend. Either way, Winston knew that things would never be the same as they once were. From that time forward any time he ran into any of the Wayne brothers, Winston could expect to be ridiculed, tripped or punched in the shoulder, and not in the friendly way. Ritchie was always the instigator and Ricky and Robbie followed like sheep, huge, cruel sheep.

Patrick Brooks was the next miscreant on the list. Patrick reminded Winston of Damien from the Omen movies, the perfect storm of wealth, power and evil. Patrick was born with a silver spoon up his ass and he had his servants pull it out every day, polish it and reinsert it. Patrick didn’t take enjoyment from owning things; he took enjoyment of owing more of it than anyone else. He was the prototypical old money snob. Why his family lived in this dump of a town no one knew. Once in sixth grade Winston had bought a rose for a girl. Later that same day, Patrick bought the girl eighteen roses. When you are an adult a single red rose might be more romantic than a whole bouquet, but when you’re in grade six, a single rose seems lame when compared to Patrick’s sumptuous bouquet. That was Patrick’s way, see what someone else has done and do it with a bigger price tag. The rich puke had done this to a few people over the years, but he seemed to take special pleasure in one upping Winston. Things seemed to change in their sophomore year. Patrick started to take an interest in Winston; he invited him to a couple of parties, offered him a ride in his sports car and such. His true motive was revealed two weeks later. Patrick didn’t want to be bothered to write term papers for his English literature class and knew that Winston consistently got A’s in the class. Patrick asked Winston to “ghost write” his papers for him. He didn’t call it plagiarism; it was ghost writing. Winston had already begun work on his plan at that point but he needed money to obtain some of the equipment that he would need. So Winston negotiated the price up and accepted Patrick’s offer. The sap never realized that he was financing his own demise. Winston made one alteration to his plan because of Patrick’s “help.” The first thing that he purchased with Patrick’s money was a silver spoon. When they police made their way through the school, they would find Patrick’s body, with his pants at his knees and a silver spoon firmly inserted in the prick’s rectum.   

Ariel Jamison, Danielle Chambers and Monica Patrick were the next three names on Winston’s list of people the world would be better off without. Think “Regina George” from Mean Girls, but with looser morals and fewer redeeming qualities. Think “Nurse Ratched” from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but with pom-poms, condoms and a bad attitude. Think of a black-widow spider in a mini-skirt with bubblegum flavored lip-gloss and a raging case of PMS. These three took pleasure in the discomfort and the humiliation of others. Winston was sure that they took their cues from the Marquis De Sade’s playbook, but he was also sure that none of the three could read the Marquis De Sade. Winston wasn’t sure which of the three he hated most. Certainly, Ariel had hurt him the worst. Ariel had been his girlfriend back in sixth grade. It ended o.k. The two just drifted apart over the summer. During grade seven, eight and nine, they weren’t close but they weren’t enemies. It was during grade ten that it became cool to hack on Winston and Ariel took her place mocking him for his clothes or his hair or for whatever suited her that day. Late one night as Winston was driving home, he passed Ariel walking. It was raining and she had had a fight with her jock boyfriend Brett Morris. He had kicked her out of the car leaving her stranded as it began to rain. Winston stopped and picked her up. He offered her his jacket and the two talked about all the good times that they had shared in elementary school. It was a fun evening, a happy time full of laughter. The next day at school, Winston had said “hello” to the cheerleader along with some comment about the rain the night before. Ariel stonewalled him. She didn’t say a word to him. Instead, she turned to her boyfriend Brett, who she must have reconciled with, and whispered something to him. After the next class, Winston was in the washroom. Brett came in with three of his knuckle dragging jock cronies. Winston left the bathroom with a broken nose and clothes that reeked of urine. Brett Morris and his three David Sanderson, Russell Connors and Mark Mayberry had earned their spots on Winston’s hit list. Winston left the bathroom in shame, hoping to go straight home. But Danielle and Monica couldn’t leave him alone. They had videoed his disgrace. Winston’s urine soaked walk of shame circulated the school like a viral video. For weeks and weeks he was the brunt of piss jokes. Ariel, Danielle and Monica were the worst, holding their noses whenever he walked by and spraying him with perfume to “cover his stench.”

Principal Grossman was an ass-hat of the first degree. He was also number fifteen on Winston’s hit parade. There should be a law that anyone who has ever been a coach of any kind cannot ever become a principal. An ex-coach as principal means one thing: the jocks rule the school. Cheerleaders come second and everyone else is a worthless peon. Winston was sure that Grossman slept with the school trophies. He probably masturbated over them. The jocks could get away with anything; with any behavior, they could abuse anyone. They could be total shit-heels and complete fuck-‘tards to whomever they wanted without an ounce of reprisal or justice. Winston was going to teach Principal Grossman about fair play. He was going to make sure that fat, balding, whistle and clipboard-loving turd understood that the climate that he set in this school was not acceptable, was not right and was not human…before Winston shot the dumb-fuck.

Discussion of Principal Grossman must, of course, lead to consideration of Coach Kreutz, or Coach Crotch as he was known when he wasn’t around. Coach Crotch would have been on Winston’s list anyway. Just for having his head so far up Grossman’s wide ass that you couldn’t shoot Grossman without hitting Kreutz. But there was more to it than that. Coach Crotch looked at the girls wrong. Winston had seen him look at Denise wrong, and that was enough. There were rumors that Coach had “accidentally” found his way into the girl’s locker room once or twice in years past, but nothing had come of it. He was still here, still coaching and still ogling young girls, including Winston’s sister. It might have been different if he wasn’t winning and if Grossman didn’t get hard looking at the school’s championship banners. He had always wondered what kind of porn you would find on Crotch's home computer. Would it be eighteen year olds that looked fifteen? Or would it be fifteen year olds that looked eighteen? Winston’s plan included shooting Coach Crotch right where it would hurt him the most… 

The last person that Winston had marked for assassination, the person who had been given the opportunity to earn his way off of Winston’s list was Barry Green.  Barry was fat, really, really fat. Barry had been picked for as long as Winston had known him. In some ways Winston felt a kind of camaraderie with Barry. They both knew what it was like to suffer the abuses hurled at them by their peers and former friends, they both had been mocked, teased and ridiculed and they both had been ostracized by both the social elite and by the ‘regulars’ of the school. The difference is that Barry became mean. Barry was the kid on the playground who in grade five would beat you up for your lunch money. As Barry grew older and grew bigger he changed. Violence wasn’t a means to an end, violence became an end in itself; something he did because he liked it. But Barry was a coward; he always fought people smaller than himself. Often Barry would hit an underclassman for no reason at all. Winston had suffered more than one fat lip from Barry’s random abuse. Random wasn’t the best word to describe Barry’s attacks. Barry wasn’t stupid; he always made sure no one in authority was watching when he decided to smack someone. Either that or the teachers were afraid of him and chose not to see his violence. In their senior year, the rumor went out that Barry was intimidating freshman girls for sexual favors. Winston wasn’t sure of this though; it could just be malicious bull-shit.

Winston turned the page. The next thirty-seven pages in the plan were an in depth discussion of each person on the list and why they were on his list. It wouldn’t do any good to just kill them. Well…actually it would do a lot of good to just kill them. But it would be much more profitable if the world knew why they had been killed. So when their grief stricken parents were paraded out in front of the cameras, crying “Why?? Why??” someone would be able to say “Why?? You want to know why? It was because your kid was a morally bankrupt, sadistic douche-bag. That’s why. It’s because you sucked as a parent. You abdicated your position as parent because it was too time consuming; because you needed to further your careers or because you just didn’t give a flying fuck.” Let the talking heads on the networks suck on that. Let this school’s dirty laundry be aired in public. Each and every one of the dead would have their inhumanity known, catalogued, debated and discussed. Their douche-baggery would become part of the public record. Their private sins would become their public shame.      

The next fourteen pages in Winston’s plan, no in his manifesto, were devoted to the people who had almost made the list, to the people that had been on his original list but who had been spared his final list. Each would become a lesson in the minimum standards of human decency; each coming within a hair’s breadth of being removed from the gene pool. Maybe somewhere, some ass-clown would reflect on these fortunate few and amend his own behavior. Maybe somewhere some fat kid or some skinny kid or some geeky kid would be spared the humiliation of a swirly in a toilet full of his peer’s piss or not have to endure soul crushing taunts day after day after endless mother fucking day. Maybe a little good can come out of this.  

Winston smiled. He wondered how many of the people on his list would survive the next twenty hours. He turned the page. As important as the list was, and as necessary as the rationale for the each of the names on the list was, this was the fun part; the equipment. Winston knew that his parents had not discovered his weapons cache. How did he know? Well he wasn’t in jail for starters. And more importantly, everything in his room was just as he left it.

Winston changed clothes. His everyday attire would not do today. He chose a pair of new, black combat pants, a black long sleeved t-shirt with no logo. Today was not about logos. It was about getting things done. He put on his size black, size 10 ½, 10” high, water resistant, flame resistant, shock absorbing combat boots. They looked good. He snaked his belt through his jeans and slung the combat webbing over his shirt. His parents had believed that the webbing was for paintball. Lying dead on the floor in the entrance-way to the home, they would never be aware of his deception. Only twice before had he worn all of his gear. Getting caught was too much of a risk. Today would be the third time and there was no risk at all.

He bent down and removed the box of figurines from the corner of his room, tossing them unceremoniously into the corner of his closet. He reached down and grabbed the forest green faux shag carpet in the corner of his room and pulled it back, revealing the hardwood floor beneath. Winston took his multi-tool from its belt sheath and popped out a flat head screwdriver. Without the cautious regard that he had always previously to the floorboards, he forced the screwdriver in, found purchase and pried. The floorboard eased up and out. He tossed the board under his bed. Soon four other floorboards joined it. Once again Winston smiled. He hefted the first black duffle from its repository and placed it on his bed. The removal of the duffle revealed two lengths of cord lying in the hole in his bedroom floor. Winston pulled the first cord and slowly a second duffle followed. He added this, heavier duffle to the first. A third duffle followed in much the same manner.

Here it was, his treasure and his hope. Winston had worked, bartered, schemed and stolen for the better part of two years in order to acquire the contents of these three bags. Winston removed three holsters from the first duffle and attached them to his combat webbing; one under his left arm and one on each hip. Next he withdrew his Ka-Bar knife with its seven-inch, clip point blade and its synthetic, non-slip, polymer handle. He slipped the weapon into its sheath that he attached to the outside of his right calf, protruding from his combat boot. He had become reasonably adept with the knife; as adept as one can become without formal training. He had initially spent two weeks scouring the net and the library for practical information on knife fighting. Then he spent three hours a day, every day for a month working on his skills in the woods. He had supplemented this with two hours a week training to maintain his skills. He still had some doubts about his effectiveness with the knife in hand-to-hand combat, but he knew that his skills throwing the weapon were sound. Once he had set his mind to the task, Winston had practiced throwing at varying ranges, throwing at moving targets, throwing while moving and throwing at moving targets while moving himself. He had become very good with a knife. One of the skills that he had learned was how to take care of his knife. It had a razor sharp edge and a well oiled blade. Winston’s planning had taught him to be meticulous.

Despite all the time and practice with his ka-bar knife, Winston was not a sadist. He didn’t fantasize about torturing his torturers. He didn’t want to see people bleed and hear them suffer. He hoped that he wouldn’t have to use the knife at all. What Winston wanted was the “Oh Shit!” moment. Everyone has had one of them, especially if you’ve been in a car accident. The “Oh Shit!” moment is that moment when you look up and see that you are going to get hit or run into something and you know that there is nothing that you can do to stop it. In the “Oh Shit!” moment, or OSM, your mind works incredibly clearly. You realize the threat; you assess your options; you realize your powerlessness to avoid the problem and, and this is key, you realize what caused the problem. Drivers have this happen all the time. Usually they realize that they were driving too fast or that they shouldn’t have been worried about the ketchup that dripped from the burger that they were stuffing into their gob while the car in front of them was slowing to let someone cross. You look up, say “Oh Shit!” and then it happens, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. Winston was planning on helping seventeen people have their own personal OSM’s; “Oh Shit! I really shouldn’t have been such an evil prick!” Then BANG!  

Winston next drew out from the duffle an item wrapped in an oiled cloth. He opened the bundle to reveal a Glock-21 pistol. These weapons were very rare in Canada. After 1995 it was not possible to legally obtain handguns in Canada, the only legal hand guns were those that had been grandfathered in. Handguns required special licensing and they had to be kept in a locked box at all times. The only time they could be removed from the box was at a licensed shooting range. The weapons could be kept at your home and transported to the shooting range and only to the shooting range. You couldn’t stop any where else while transporting the weapon; not for a cup of coffee, not even for gasoline. Of course, Winston had stolen this one, and being an illegal hand gun the owner hadn’t reported it missing.

When Winston had gone to the Brooks home to steal the weapon, he thought that he was going to steal Mr. Brooks’ legally obtained and registered M1911, but the illegal Glock-21 with its promise of no police report changed his mind. He had first seen Patrick’s father’s .45 back in the seventh grade. Patrick had some friends over and, being a braggart even at that age, felt that he had to show the gun to his friends. Patrick had shown the group of boys the cabinet hidden in his father’s closet and had, wanting to display his craftiness, shown his friends where he had discovered that his father had hidden the cabinet key; in the pocket of his tuxedo jacket. Winston had wagered that even after four years, the gun would be in the same cabinet and the key would be hidden in the same place. He had been right on both accounts. What he had been wrong about was the number of guns that he would find. Not being ungrateful, Winston had only taken the Glock and the two boxes of .45 ACP shells, of course. Getting into the home had been a bit of a chore, but nothing unmanageable. The first step had been to borrow Patrick’s keys from his jacket pocket one particularly cold day. Skipping the next class, Winston had gone down to the hardware store and had a duplicate of ‘his’ house key made. The keys were easy enough to return; he bumped into Patrick in the hall at the same time that he dropped the keys on the floor. Patrick retrieved them, thinking that they had fallen out of his own pocket. Winston recalled that Patrick had said “Watch yourself piss-boy!” Winston had smiled at that. He then bided his time until the following summer when Patrick’s parents were away and Patrick was in out back in the pool with friends. Winston had let himself in, liberated the weapon and the ammunition and left, undetected. Winston planned on using the Glock on Patrick before he brought out the silver spoon. Irony joined with poetry.  

In all fairness, Winston had Patrick to thank for the next two items he removed from the black duffle bag as well. Three years of writing Patrick’s term papers had allowed Winston to purchase these two items. In his senior year, just after he had turned eighteen, Winston had borrowed the family car, ostensibly for a trip north to Calgary to visit the various gaming and comic book shops. In truth, he had taken his driver’s license and his birth certificate and had driven south across the border into Montana. Once in Montana, he met with a friend who had agreed to sell him two pistols. Winston had begun frequenting certain gun enthusiast websites via a proxy server. His friend believed he lived in Bozeman, Montana. Winston paid in American cash and no questions were asked. Both weapons were .22 calibers. Twenty-twos are under rated weapons, particularly for the kind of work that Winston was planning on doing. More important is the fact that .22 ammunition is plentiful and easy to obtain; even in Canada. Both guns were Ruger Mk II’s. The Mk II’s had ceased production in 2005, but they were some of the most popular guns ever made; over three million of them had been produced and Winston had two of them. He had also purchased a dozen magazines, five for each of his Rugers and two additional magazines for his Glock.  He enjoyed the fact that his new guns were highly reliable and came with built in sound suppression. These guns were almost silent. After completing the transaction, Winston broke down his two weapons, divided the pieces up into a number of small packages and mailed them from a U.S. post office to a post office box that he had set up without his parent’s knowledge. The customs slips on packages were marked “Plastic Figurines” with a dollar value of $12 to $19. Who wants to pay import duties?

In due time, the packages arrived. Winston cancelled the post office box and assembled his new weapons. He had for some time been acquiring a supply of .22 caliber ammunition. Winston bought ammunition the way other kids bought beer; he loitered outside the sporting goods store and waited for a likely candidate. When he found one, he offered the person a twenty to buy him a box of 100 for “shooting gophers.” The helper could keep the changed. He almost got caught once when someone reported him to the store management and he had two people take his money and leave without getting him anything at all. But for the most part, people were helpful. He usually approached people that looked like farmers or ranchers. He had never met a farmer or a rancher that had anything good to say about gophers. Using this method, Winston had stockpiled over 6000 rounds before he had even obtained the guns. As he had done with his knife, Winston researched proper shooting technique extensively before retreating to the woods to practice and to practice and to practice. He became very good with his right hand and reasonably accurate with his left. He learned to lead a moving target and to compensate for his own movement. And just as he had done with his knife, Winston took very good care of his guns. 

In his bedroom, Winston loaded, checked and holstered his three weapons. Their weight felt reassuring. From the heavier duffle, he drew forth his magazines and boxes of ammunition. Then loaded each of his remaining magazines and secured them in their appropriate pouches and pockets.

The last weapon that he removed from the duffle bags was his grandfather’s Remington 870 shotgun. Winston’s parent’s still thought the gun was secured in the storage unit that they rented, or at least they thought that before he killed them. The weapon was a 12-gauge with a nineteen-inch barrel and held 5 rounds. Once he knew the path that he was on, Winston had removed the gun’s stock and replaced it with a pistol grip. While that was fine in the States, it made the gun too short to be legal in Canada. He was pretty sure that it was a moot point now. He had a small circular strap attached to the weapon so that it would hang beside him from his shoulder “Clyde Barrow” style. His father had a supply of double-aught buckshot shells that Winston had “requisitioned.” Winston loaded the weapon and fit extra shells into the elastic holders on his webbing. The rest of his father’s shells, along with the box that he stole from a friend’s father and the specialty shells that he had purchased in Montana and mailed to himself, were tossed into the mid sized duffle bag. They joined the remaining ammunition for the glock and the .22’s. Winston had more ammunition that anyone would need for a school shooting. For that matter he had more guns than someone would need for a school shooting. During his planning, he had reasoned that it would be better to have too many guns than not enough. “A job worth doing was worth doing well” was one of his father’s favorite sayings.

            From the last duffle, the smallest duffle, Winston removed a dozen pipe bombs. It had taken very little effort on the internet to learn how to make pipe bombs. There were instructions and demonstrations on dozens and dozens of sites. Obtaining the materials to build the bombs had been equally easy. Winston had experimented with metal pipes and pvc pipes. He had tried using black powder that he had made himself, black powder that he had smuggled in from Montana, bombs made from match heads, bombs made from crushed sparklers and bombs made from potassium permanganate and icing sugar. Eventually Winston had set upon his favorite design. For the smaller bombs he used iron pipes. For the larger ones he used PVC. It was a weight management issue. Winston had for the final two years of his school career been carrying lead weights in his book bag and his jacket pockets. He had also taken up running in the mornings and hiking on weekends. When he went hiking he always wore a heavy pack; heavier each month. It wouldn’t do for a scrawny-assed white boy to try carrying all this equipment and end up exhausted before he even made it to the school. No, Winston had to be used to carrying a significant amount of weight. He had to and he was. The problem remained that large pipe bombs were too heavy given the weapons and ammunition that he planned on carrying. Winston preferred the metal pipe bombs, but had settled on pvc for his two largest explosives. All of Winston’s pipe bombs, from the smallest to the largest, had dozens of four-penny nails taped around them. This ensured that the explosions would throw lots and lots of shrapnel. He eschewed the addition of rat poison, a practice favored by terrorists, as unseemly and unnecessary. Winston had also experimented with various types of fuses. He eventually settled on sparklers. They went well into the device and were glued where they exited the device. Winston carried three zippo type lighters. All were fueled and had fresh flints. After he moved all of his explosive devices to the same duffel as his extra ammunition and had closed the duffel, he tested each of his three lighters. Each worked flawlessly.    

            When the duffle was properly packed Winston went to his closet and took out his overcoat. Winston wasn’t a Trench Coat Mafia wannabe, he just knew that walking down the street armed to the teeth would probably cause a few problems. So he had searched the Sally Ann until he found a coat that seemed right. It wasn’t a Columbine black trench coat and it wasn’t the clichéd tan detective’s trench coat ala Sam Spade. His jacket was dark brown and was non descript; the kind of jacket you wouldn’t think twice about. Now that he had his jacket on, Winston lifted the duffel over his head and left arm. This way it wouldn’t hamper his access to either his Glock or his Remington.   

Winston stood ready, as ready as he had ever been. All of his gear was in place and all of his weapons had been checked and rechecked. He looked in the mirror. He looked impressive. He looked down at his copy of the plan where it lay discarded on the floor. A scrap of paper was visible sticking out from between the book's last page and it's back page. Curious, he bent down and retrieved the book. Winston pulled the scrap of paper out and examined it. Instantly he knew what it was. The scrap of paper was all that remained of his senior yearbook. Winston had torn this portion of one page of his yearbook out to save it before he had tossed the yearbook, with all that it represented, into a campfire he had lit. Winston slipped the torn and folded page into the inside vest pocket of his jacket. This picture was still worth saving. His plan however was another matter. Winston looked down at the plan and sighed. He tossed the book into the puke filled trash basket.

He turned and walked toward the door of his room aware that just outside the door lay his parents and his little sister and the baseball bat that he had used to kill each of them. He paused with his hand on the door. The picture in his breast pocket was a picture of his English Lit teacher, Mr. Walker. Mr. Walker had come to town during the summer between Winston’s tenth and eleventh grades. If it weren’t for Mr. Walker seeing that something was wrong with one of his students and caring enough to be persistent, Denise, Betty Jean and Howard would have been murdered three years ago. Unlike his parents, who were oblivious to the pain and the anger their son harbored, or the other teachers at the school who couldn’t be bothered to take an interest in anything beyond their own petty squabbles, Mr. Walker had been perceptive, patient and persistent. Eventually Winston had given in and had, degree by degree, shared his feelings of loneliness, frustration, isolation and anger with the teacher. Mr. Walker gave little advice, but he listened and he gave shit. The English Lit teacher knew nothing about plan, but he knew Winston was in pain. He helped his student focus on life beyond school. With his help, Winston was accepted to University. Winston ceased to focus all his energy and attention on past wrongs and current hurts and instead focus on future possibilities. Because of Mr. Walker’s intervention, Winston had, in his final year of school, set aside his plan for vengeance.

With his hand on the doorknob and all of his guns, explosives and ammunition in place, Winston knew that he was ready to do what had to be done. There was no backing away from this day of judgment as he had once backed away from enforcing his judgment on his schoolmates. Winston opened the door. His nose was assaulted by the smell of blood and released bowels. He bent down and took up his bloody bat. It would still be useful. He looked down at his sister’s face, or what remained of it. Winston had swung his bat with full force and had caught her in the side of her head, just in the spot between her temple and her ear. Her brother’s blow had caved in the side of her face, crushing her cheekbone and her orbital bone, forcefully driving shards of shattered bone into her brain. Denise never knew what hit her; she had died instantly. Winston felt that he owed her that much. He owed her a quick death after what his parents had done to her. Denise’s forearms were covered with bites; clearly she had tried to fight them off. The flesh that had been excised from her throat, her shoulder and her breast witnessed that she had been unsuccessful.

Winston’s parents lay nearby. He couldn’t tell who had turned first, probably his father. Like his sister, and as with his mother, Howard had had his skull staved in by Winston’s bat. Winston missed his dad and his mom. Fucking zombies. Winston turned toward the door of his home. He had work to do.   

This story is property of Dan Bishop, all rights reserved.