章節 33: Shots fired
Anna awoke from her slumber when someone shook her by the shoulder. For a second, she wanted to turn on the other side and keep sleeping, but a sting of pain cured her of the drowsiness.
Her left shoulder and elbow were slightly bruised from when she fell on the floor. As she tried to remember why she fell in the first place, a loud cry drew her attention.
"Michael!"
"What's wrong with him?"
"Shit! Is he dead?"
"Carina! Goddamn it, Carina, stop crying, tell us what happened!"
'Dead?' Anna looked towards the crowd that surrounded her best friend's body. When his image became clear in her field of vision, she had to cover her mouth not to scream.
Michael was in a half-sitting position and looked like he was injured all over. His left leg was bent at an angle human body couldn't bend normally. His fingers twitched and spasmed, indicating nerve damage. There was a crust of dried blood on his mouth and lower, on the jaws and neck. His eye whites couldn't be called that any longer, the redness in them overwhelming.
Michael's face displayed a content smile.
"Carina! What happened!?" someone slapped her lightly to break the girl's trance.
"Ah!" she noticed the people around her as for the first time, "Help! He, he saved my life! He is dying because of me!"
After Carina told her story in short, one-breath sentences interspersed with sobbing, everyone took note of the obese man. He was still lying on the floor, and his belly served as a pillow to Michael's upper body. One of the adults checked his pulse and shook his head.
"Most likely a heart attack. Whose father is he?"
None of the children came forward. They only stared at the obese man. For most of them, this was the first time they saw a human corpse. The man's face was a tad paler, but his lips were still red, so the sight wasn't too traumatic.
"I think he was with the school," said one of the parents, "He didn't mingle before, just stood in the corner and smiled."
"Ah, I remember he told me he worked here."
Two shouts broke the fragile quiet in the hall, one from Carina's mother who just woke up, and one from Anna, stupefied by everyone's inaction.
"Carina! Sweetie, are you all right!?"
"What are you doing? Quickly do something, Michael will die without help!"
The Italian girl's mother ran to her child, cuddled her and, after checking her out carefully, tried to pry her away from the boy. Carina refused, still holding Michael's hand.
"Lass, don't worry. We called fer a medic some minutes ago. Yer friend won't get better if we move him without a professional present. More so with his condition," someone's father nodded at Michael.
Anna approached, ignoring Carina's mother trying to take the girl away. Looking closer, she saw her friend's shirt had been unbuttoned by someone who knew what he was doing.
Michael's shoulders, chest and abdomen were full of hematomas and bruises. There were blotches of red clotted mist on his skin, indicating severe internal bleeding. Yet, with so much blood in all the wrong places in and out of his body, his smile had a calming effect on those present.
"Does he have a pulse?" Anna asked.
"Aye, he does. A right miracle, it is. Doesn't breathe but his heart still works."
"Step away! Step away from the boy! Give him some air!" shouted the school doctor. He was a war medic, an old acquaintance of the principal. When Graves heard about the comet, he immediately asked the doctor to call some of his friends and colleagues in case of emergency. There were a full three dozen of health care professionals in the school at the moment. It was just Michael's luck to get the one on the staff.
"No use, ser. The boy doesn't breathe, it's a fact," smiled the chatty father.
The doctor calmly shoved the parent away and crouched beside Michael, already checking his vitals. It took him a minute to display the shock those present had already fought through.
"No breathing. Irregular heartbeat. So many internal wounds, it's like he's been shredded and spit out. How is he…"
At this point, hearing the man's apt but artistic description, mothers remembered to huddle their children away to escape the images. They shuddered at the mention of the boy being between life and death, unwilling to let their children see any more horrors on this day.
"What are you going to do?" asked Anna. Her cold demeanor and stony expression made the chatty father wince.
"Lass, yer friend is…"
"This is one of the strangest cases I've ever seen," interrupted him the doctor, "and I'll ask you not to confuse your layman opinions with medical expertise, sir. Contrary to everything I know and believe, this young man is still alive. This, coupled with the phenomenon we've seen today, means he still has a fighting chance."
The man had gone through war and saw men survive on sheer willpower for hours. None of them were as severely hurt as this boy, but if one miracle happened that day, who said there couldn't be two?
He took out his phone to call for an ambulance, but the device wasn't working.
"Does anyone have a phone I can use?"
"Mine's fried," shrugged the father, still sticking around.
"Mine too."
"Here. Let me turn it on. Eh, no connection."
Suddenly, everyone realized their mobiles were unusable. That could mean anything, from local comm towers down to physically damaged antennas.
"No one?" the doctor frowned.
"Do we have a facility here at school we can use?" questioned Anna.
"That's right. We should take a car though. It's the better option at the moment. Our medical unit is not as good as a hospital. You, you and you," he pointed out three men in decent shape, "will help me load him on a stretcher."
The doctor nodded at his assistant who arrived later with some extra supplies, and they prepared a small carrying bed. The doctor instructed everyone how to transfer Michael from a sitting to a lying position and the men carefully moved the boy's limbs one by one. During the final pull, something cracked.
"Shit!"
"Doctor?"
"I think that was a vertebra or a rib. With his condition, that's the worst thing that could've happened," he checked the vitals once again and sighed, "Unbelievable. Nothing changed. No breath, heartbeat weaker than a comatose patient, but the blood flow is unobstructed by the mess of organs inside him. He's alive."
Anna paled further when she heard the man's rough manner of speech.
"Hey," someone elbowed him, "children here."
The doctor coughed in embarrassment and directed his helpers to lift the body up and put it on the stretcher. They carried Michael out of the hall. Anna followed, together with everyone who wanted to break free of the four walls where they experienced the episode.
As they exited the building, they came upon a crowd in distress. Many had bruises or were dragging a limb. It looked like every group suffered the same fate of losing their consciousness for a time. Without instructions, everyone decided to gather in the square to get the latest news.
Principal Graves appeared out of nowhere and took in the 9th-graders' situation. Apart from one body on a stretcher, they seemed to be in tip-top shape, relatively. As Graves inspected the injured boy, his eyes widened. Was that the one Jones appreciated?
Everything about Mikhail Severniy, alias Michael North, was unusual. From his circumstances of enrollment to his combat abilities and academic success. His side project, a mobile game, something about birds, was the only childish thing he did. And now this boy was the only one hurt in the tragedy. In Graves's experience, such people led lives others were envious of, but they rarely saw their fortieth birthday.
"Fill me in," he walked with the staff doctor towards the school gates.
"One word, sir – miracle. The boy…"
"Michael."
"Michael has ruptured organs, messed-up bones, barely any pulse and no breathing. And he's alive."
"What?"
"That's not all. I have no idea where these injuries are from. He was completely fine before and, far as I can tell, during the comet's effect."
"Don't talk about that with anyone, by the way. Continue."
"Yes, sir. Apparently, he was not in contact with anyone when it began. A female student was pinned down by one of our cooks who chose the hall to look at the comet. The cook is deceased, heart attack. The female student describes that Michael crawled to her, visibly in pain, crying and bleeding internally. In that condition, he managed to push off a 310-pound corpse off of her and stopped moving."
Graves stopped and looked the doctor in the eye.
"Yes, sir. Everything in my power."
Graves nodded and indicated the man was free to go. He approached the school guards and inquired, "What's happening? What's the holdup?"
"Senior agent," a man in his fifties, with a long rugged scar on the side of his face, greeted with a smile, "Just a bit of trouble. Nothing to worry about."
"Details."
"Matthews was the first to wake up. Matthews!" another man saluted, "Don't salute, you dumbass, agent Graves is not a soldier. Tell him what happened in the first three minutes."
"Yes, sir. I woke up, assessed everyone's condition as stable. Tried communications – down. Seems like most electrical devices that were turned on, suffered a malfunction. Since then, some started working but we still can't contact the town authorities."
"Tell him about the shooting."
"Sir. Soon after, two men approached, clearly drunk. Both were carrying guns, shouting insults and intending to rape the 'classy chicks'. I warned them they were trespassing and threatened armed response. They fired the first shot. Then, I took care of them."
"How?" Graves raised an eyebrow.
"Martial law, sir, as you instructed. Their bodies are in the utility room."
"Good. Still, what's happening outside? We have people in need of medical attention."
"Yeah, no," stretched his words the scarred commander, gesturing Matthews to leave, "There are some militants outside, made use of the chaos to launch an assault on the school. Kidnappers or something, I'm sure. I didn't ask. We're having fun, trading bullets. Considering our tactical and numerical advantage, give us a couple hours and we'll clear them out."
Graves's frown deepened, "Unacceptable. My people need evac now. Can we counter?"
"Damn! With you, senior agent, we don't mind leaving the Kevlar at home!"
創作者的想法 
BlackInk
BlackInk Cutoff: “Damn! With you, senior agent, we don’t mind leaving the Kevlar at home!”
What, you guys thought Michael would wake up right away? Mmm... maybe in next chapter. We'll see.
Meanwhile, thank you for your votes! As I'm writing this, LCiAW is 29th, and it was in top20 for hours. It really warms my heart. Please keep it up! I'm counting on your votes this week!
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