4
Suz
The Woods Behind St. Basil’s, Bethesda, Md.
Suz took over the lead on the rope now that they were hidden by the tree line. The children were bent over catching their breath. They were damp from the exertion and that had Suz worried. Maggie had been paired with her best friend, and they were hugging each other and sobbing. If the children hadn’t been convinced that something horrible was happening before, the sight of their teacher gagging and dragging their classmate into the woods made everyone acutely aware now. Suz set the backpack on the ground and pulled out the hats stored inside. Each child yanked a camo fleece beanie over their heads with gratitude. They were still shaking in the twenty-degree weather. Suz had to get them to Jack’s hide. Fast.
She counted heads. Sixteen. Four at home sick. They were such lucky kids to be in bed sick today. She had almost called in. Gotten a substitute. The substitute wouldn’t have known Jack’s plan. Her kids would still be in the school where bullets were flying. The enormity of her decision pushed a sob out of her throat which Suz covered with a hacking cough. Her kids needed her. She had to act as if she were brave and in charge for their sakes.
A loud explosion erupted from the school and all of them froze in place with wide eyes. Suz checked to see if she could call 9-1-1 and got nowhere. She opened the compass app on her phone to follow do south, as Jack had told her to do when they had practiced. He had also written a reminder on the duct tape tacked across the plastic bag that held the hats. That was a good thing in that her mind was short wiring, and Suz was forgetting simple things, like nouns. Also taped to the bag was a hand-held compass in case she had escaped without her phone. “One is none and two is one.” It was a phrase Jack often used to explain the redundancies that he put in place. It had something to do with Murphy’s Law–she had never cared enough to really pay attention.
If for some reason she had escaped without her phone or the pack, Jack had a secondary trail laid with tiny pieces of that neon pink duct tape. But these were stuck on the roots and rocks and were purposefully easy to miss. As they hiked deeper into the woods and down the hill, Suz felt relief every time she caught sight of one. It told her she was headed in the right direction. Finally, they got to the creek bed – she turned in the direction of the water flow and knew they had two hundred steps to take – adult steps not first-grader-sized steps. But by leading her away from the original trail and markings in this way, Jack had said he hoped that any bad guys would lose their trail or at least be slowed down.
Suddenly, there it was in front of her. Like a mirage after crawling through the desert, the camo fabric that covered the top of their hide fluttered in the wind. The children huddled together for warmth and support while Suz opened up the escape backpack. She pulled out the tablet that Jack had put in the pack and pressed play just as he had instructed her to do. This was as far as his training had gone. And now that she was here, she was at a loss for how to proceed.
Jack’s face came up on the screen. “Boys and girls,” Jack grinned into the camera, and Suz held the tablet up so everyone could see. “Wow! you are the best soldiers in the world! Look what you’ve accomplished working together today. You remember me, I’m Captain Jack, I visited your class, and we talked about teamwork. Now we’re putting what we learned to the test.” Her students had loved Jack. They couldn’t get enough of him. Begged for him to come back to their class, and still sent their drawings home for him, though his visit had been months ago. Suz had teased him about getting a stint as the Pied Piper. She had thought what a wonderful dad he would be if only he could be around for his kids and not in some jungle, or desert. . . or hospital room.
“First up – we need to pee.”
The children giggled. Seeing Captain Jack’s calm face worked instant magic on the kids.
“Boys, in just a second I’m going to ask you to step up to the black line I painted on the rocks in front of the water, point toward the stream, and do your business. Girls, I made you a latrine in the back left of our little hide. Now this is important. Everyone listen up. When we get scared our bodies don’t always do what we’d like them to do – being cold is very bad, being wet and cold is life threatening. So if you are wet. That’s okay, just let Miss Molloy know so she can get you dry and warm. Quick quick now everyone needs to pee. Green light!”
And as if they were all trained soldiers the boys stepped right up to the black line; the girls filed back to where Suz was pointing, and Suz looked down to where Jack was talking to her. “Suz, honey, you’ve got this far. You’re doing great. I’m so proud of you. You can do this.” Suz’s stomach clenched down, and she stifled a sob behind her wrist. She nodded at Jack’s image as if acknowledging what he said. “Go to the back of the hide, and you’ll see there is a mat rolled up, Use the knife I taped to the binding to cut the ropes and unroll it. Press pause.”
Suz tucked the tablet into the back of her pants and moved to accomplish her task. Her eyes scanned over the boys who were doing up their zippers and heading her way. The girls, having to go two at a time to the little white latrine buckets behind the curtain, were much slower. She sliced through the binding and the mat unrolled. It was nice- a camo-patterned, vinyl-covered thick foam rubber that would keep them off the ground. Jack had told her, somewhere along the way, that the ground would suck your body heat right out of you, so she knew she should never sit or lay directly on the earth. As the children gathered along the outside of the pad, Suz pressed play to hear what she should do next.
“Suz, there’s a pack on your left marked #1. In it you’ll find hot sacks. One per child. Now let the kids see me.” He raised his voice. “Hey guys. Great job so far. Wonderful teamwork. We’re all here to help each other and be good friends. I want you to watch me now. Miss Molloy is going to help you get warm. She’ll hand you a little packet. This is how we open our hot sack and get in.”
Suz held the video up, and Jack opened his sack and got in, pulling it right up over his head. He was demonstrating this exactly where they stood, and curled up on the pad that was now in front of them. Suz vaguely wondered who had helped him tape this tutorial. “Watch again while Miss Molloy hands out your hot sack.” As the demonstration repeated, Suz handed the tablet to Tad and had him hold it up over his head for all to see.
At the top of the pack #1 was a sub-zero hooded ski jacket and a pair of fingerless gloves with a note, “You first.”
After she pulled on the blissful warmth of the down jacket, Suz distributed the Mylar-lined emergency sacks. Though the gloves were a relief, her hands hadn’t warmed yet. They were blue and stiff with cold, and the kids needed a lot of help, having lost much of their dexterity from rigid, shaking fingers. At the bottom of the bag, Suz found hand warmers.
The video example repeated three times before he said, “Suz, I need to talk to you for a minute.”
Suz reached for the tablet and stepped away from the students. Jack lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “Open and place one hand warmer per student at the bottom of the sacks near their feet. They’ll last for 8 hours. I’ve included enough that you can last 2 days if need be.”
If need be? What? Suz thought they might be out here for an hour maybe two – not two days. That took her to a whole different level of fear and stress. She stared wide-eyed down at Jack’s smiling face. So calm. Always so gentle and calm.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Jack said with a chuckle. “But don’t worry. It’s just an overabundance of caution. I love you and need to keep you and those kids safe. Okay? Now, if everyone is settled down, I want you to get warm too. Remember they need you functioning. Your health and safety means their health and safety. I have videos loaded onto the tablet for the kids to watch, very very quietly. Let them be distracted. You need to listen to the radio in pack #3, so you know what’s going on. Click this video back on when you all are hungry, and I’ll walk you through heating an MRE,” He pointed and said, “I need to talk to the kids again.” Suz nodded and turned the tablet toward the class, wondering how he knew her so well that he could choreograph this video so precisely that she felt like they were Skyping. It was uncanny.
His voice had been his Jack-and-Suz voice — intimate, loving, protective, a solid team. Now he lifted his volume and sounded more like the lead on a fun-day mission. This was just a great adventure. “Class. I’m really proud of you. But this isn’t over yet. To stay safe, we need to stay quiet. Miss Molloy is going to put down the sides of the tent, so it will be a little dark. Take a nap if you’d like. Watch a video but no noise at all. Everyone seal you lips tight now. Zip them up like you have a secret.”
Suz watched as the kids followed the zipping motion Jack made on the screen.
“Thank you,” Jack said, confident that they had followed through. “I’m with you guys in spirit. Help will be with you soon. Be good for Miss Molloy and most of all be safe.”
It was getting dim behind the flaps of the camouflaged hide. The sun set early in February, and the trees were already masking the last of the what little sunlight glowed through the dove-colored cloud cover. The kids had eaten lunch in the company of Captain Jack. He talked Suz through heating the meals, then told the kids stories about being a boy in Montana, and all of the fun he had going camping. Meanwhile, she got everything together and passed out the meals. It felt to Suz like there were two responsible adults in the hide – it wasn’t just her and sixteen six-year-olds.
Now it was time to get dinner together before it got too much later, and she’d end up groping around in the dark. Jack hadn’t said anything about lighting, but Suz was pretty sure it wouldn’t be allowed.
As the children’s video came to an end, Suz picked up the tablet to get her next instructions to the moans of the children.
“How about we all take a bathroom break while we can still see what we’re doing.”
They had heard sirens every once in a while; but now, things seemed peaceful. Again, Suz had to talk herself out of thinking she had hallucinated the whole thing. The children had heard what she had. They talked amongst themselves speculating about what was happening back at the school. The children all thought it was over. Whatever “it” was. If that were true, why were they still out here?
Suz checked her phone for the millionth time. She had plenty of bars but no reception. Tad said they must be jamming the airwaves in the area. Tad’s father was an executive with Lockheed Marten, so Suz assumed that, even if he was six, he knew what he was talking about. It was possible. Suz worked to convince herself that scenario was unlikely because a) that would mean this wasn’t a freak occurrence where someone lost their mind but an actual strategized, planned, equipment purchased and implemented attack. And b) Suz thought that the police would probably have some way to unjam them, otherwise how would they effect communications?
Suz felt herself getting a little nuts as the night loomed closer. Her mind whirled about all of the things that could be happening and why no one had shown up yet the way Jack had assured her they would. Sixteen little sets of eyes were on her. Sixteen little kids were depending on her. Her decisions would make all the difference in the world. Sixteen human beings would always remember this day, and her, and how she handled things.
At what point did hunkering in this this hide with her students make no sense? The radio station said that there was an active shooter event at a local Bethesda school, rescue was on scene. But that was all that she could pick up. She thought if Jack was there, he’d rig something that allowed her to access the police scanners, and she’d know moment to moment what was happening. But Jack wasn’t here. He was laid up in the hospital. Sedated. In a leg brace. He wouldn’t be riding to her rescue. She was here on her own. She tapped at her phone again, trying to reach Iniquus headquarters. She was met with dead air.
“If you’re getting ready to prep meal number two Suz, I know you’re getting worried. Believe me, no one is going to leave you out here any longer than is necessary. Once they see a whole class is missing, they’ll have Search and Rescue out with the dogs and their trackers. It’s not going to be hard for them to follow a line of twenty students marching through the woods. Stay put. Stay strong. You’re safe. Trust me, if it comes to the end of your supplies, I have a plan for that too. Okay? You trust me?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Good,” Jack continued as if they were having an actual conversation. “Now, this tablet is probably losing battery life, but I rigged up a solar back-up in the tree. It’s recharging a replacement battery. It’s in the bag marked #4. Now, in there you’ll also find an airtight canister filled with chocolate. That’s for you. I bet you could use some right about now, sorry it can’t be Bailey’s – not yet, anyway.” He stopped to give her a grin. “I have a treat for the kids in the pack with meal two. You’re doing great. I’m so proud of you. I love you so much.”
Suz nodded to the screen as his image disappeared. “I love you too, Jack,” she whispered.
Just then, a black nose shoved under the hide flap, making Suz jump. Another nose joined beside the first, both were snuffling hard. The kids scrambled back, some of them giggling others had been wound too tightly all day to have any other reaction than fear.
A whistle went up. “Beetle, Bella heel to me,” a female voice called. “Suz, it’s Lynx. I’m going to lift your flaps up now. Okay?”
Suz supposed Lynx was being cautious lest Jack had provided her with some kind of weapon. Jack hadn’t. He said that she’d never use it, so giving her a weapon was like arming the bad guys. He was right. She could never conjure a situation where she would harm another human being. Stand in the way of someone being hurt? Yes. Wield a blade or pull a trigger? No. Never.
Suz lifted the flap herself. The temperature had dropped; the fallen leaves looked like they were dusted with powdered sugar. She turned to her students. “I need you guys to sit still for a minute while I talk to Capt. Jack’s partner okay? I’ll let you know what’s going on in just a minute.”
The two women stepped away from blind and Suz reached out to wrap Lynx in a hug. Lynx’s two Dobermans pushed their heads against her thigh for their greeting, too.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see anyone in my life,” Suz gasped out.
“Ditto. Are the kids okay?”
“They’re hanging in there. What’s happening up at the school? How is everyone?”
“They have four deceased adults. The principal, a teacher, the secretary, and an unidentified male, we think he was a chauffeur/bodyguard. Definitely not one of the bad guys. He was shot in the back.”
Suz’s body braced for the worst. “And the children?”
“The kids are all safe and accounted for except for your class. I already radioed that I had you in sight. Sixteen?”
“Yes, I have sixteen. Four were absent.” Suz shuffled her feet. Maybe it was a mistake for her to have brought her students out this way.
As if reading her mind, Lynx squeezed Suz’s shoulder. “You did the right thing. Absolutely. No doubt in anyone’s mind.” She leaned down and whispered in Suz’s ear. “They think one of your students had been targeted. Your door was blown in with C-4.”
“One of my student’s?” Suz’s brow pulled in tightly. “But why? Who?” She glanced quickly back to the hide to make sure her kids hadn’t lifted the cover to watch them.
Lynx stepped forward. “We’d better get moving. We need to get these kids to the trailer. Hot chocolate, and some hugs from their families are waiting for them.” Lynx said, looking up at the sky. “Dark is coming, and an ice storm is moving in fast.”