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Chapter Twenty-Four: Emergence

The doorway from the gym leading to the outside was open, but no one could see beyond it considering how smoky it was. Apparently, several bombs were set off in the gym which burned up some of the old wood and the smoke poured through and out of the gym. Yet, all the students who were once crammed in the coach's office made it out and the firefighters managed to extinguish the flames. Now there was stillness. The police officers stood behind their police car doors, grasping their guns to the ready as they eyed the obstructed doorway. Firefighters and medics could only look on with grime anticipation. By now, a small group of reporters congregated behind the emergency response agents. They wiped their bows in the heat of the sun as their eyes searched for the slightest of movements as they tried to steady their cameras and recorders with determination as they swerved back and forth and side to side from the irritation of holding them in place for hours.

About twenty minutes prior, Joji was heard screaming over his transmission that a gunman had been shot as well as another student in a hall adjacent to the gym. Almost immediately, two paramedics ran into the building through the gym, even though the fires were still burning and there was still no verification that the shooter shot was the last shooter in the building. Still, they took the risk. No other word was heard from Joji, the other officers in the building, or even the paramedics. With the fires put out, the sounds of volleys and explosions ceased, and silence that befell the area (except for the hum of the hovering copter), all those presently surrounding the building could do was wait. Wait for anything.

Suddenly, a dark figure materialized behind the smoke. The officers steadily raised their guns and the reporters slowly began to back off. As the shape morphed and became more definitive, it had become the silhouette of multiple bodies. Finally, the two paramedics burst out of the haze, swiftly rolling an orange stretcher that contained a young Dalmatian wrapped in white sheets and wearing a breathing apparatus. In response, a handful of other medics came rushing over to their comrades. Then the stature of a few more bodies appeared behind the smoke, emerging as those of Liam, Jerry, Karma, Joji, and Reis.

Karma and Jerry helped to steady Joji as he walked, his arms stretched around both of them. On Joji's left arm was a piece of bloody fabric that served as a temporary bandage. He gazed at Alex, both sides of his gray cheeks darkened with lines of tears as he watched the stretcher lifted clumsily into the ambulance. Joji tried to increase his pace but he was held back by Karma.

"Easy Joji...easy..."

A couple of paramedics came over to Joji and led him over to another ambulance that was parked on the grass. Joji refused to go to the hospital and would only accept a new bandage. As he sat on the back of the ambulance, and as a medic applied the new bandage to his left arm, Reis and Karma stood to Joji's right. Joji looked up at the two of them, first at Karma whose troubled green eyes, which Joji had always thought looked sort of like his brother's, gazed on him apprehensively. Joji trembled as his tired mouth tried to make words, "K...Karma, I think that it'd be good for you to know...that...Massak is alright...I...I saw him earlier..."

Karma placed his hand on Joji's right shoulder, "You need some rest, Joji, why don't you..."

Joji did not listen to what Karma was saying; instead he looked at Reis, who only stared at back at him with unfeeling, cold, eyes. They almost went so far as to send a chill down Joji's spin.

"Reis...buddy...my friend," spoke Joji, strangely almost blissfully under his strained voice, "We'd better get back before someone else does...I mean...to the station..."