FESTUNG
By: Max Dempster
Tags: Fiction, Dark Humor, Gun Control, Politics, Thriller

By: Max Dempster

These are some of the words that my current employer used to convince me to transfer to his newly built high school.

State-of-the-art. Well-funded. Experimental. Beautiful. And, above all: Safe.

Had he been a more forthcoming man, he may have used some of these words instead.

Hardened. Paranoid. Brutalist.

Sometimes I think that maybe I’m being too harsh. Perhaps where I see windowless, cold, cynical, and labyrinthine he truly does see beautiful. It’s hard to meet him there though, considering that any time anyone asks me about my new job I immediately think of words like bleak or imposing.

One time I reached for sarcophagian and Taylor — eleventh grade AP literature teacher and absolute bombshell — told me that it wasn’t a word. She encouraged me to try out sarcophagus-like or charnel instead. She’s also the one who told me Festung (as in Festung High School) was a German word for fortress. She’s had me thinking about words a lot lately.

When speaking to my therapist last week because, yes, school counselors also need support when the world gets to be too much, I used the word “heavy. So heavy. With the sort of weight that comes from staring down dark, endless, uniform hallways. The kind that seems to smother its own fluorescent lighting as much as it does your spirit. It’s heavy in a way that crushes you whether you’re in the building or not, that feels like you’re just pinned to the ground waiting to be killed.”

My therapist had asked for one word, and you may have noticed that was more than one word. I didn’t care. I was strangely proud of the pretty words I had assembled. I wondered if little miss AP lit would be impressed with how much she’d been rubbing off on me. I smirked at the double meaning. She’d like that, too.

“Joanna-” my therapist sounded concerned.

My smile vanished. “Doc. If it gets bad. The classroom doors are thick and enormous. And. They won’t open from either side. For anyone.”

#

The PA system at Festung High School was designed with two alarms which only took a week or so to familiarize myself with, since both would deafeningly and frequently reverberate through the structure’s poor acoustics depending on the events of the day.

The first was a familiar sound, you’ve heard it in probably every school you’ve ever attended: a bell tone patiently repeated four times to signal the beginning and end of school periods. The second, a droning siren with steadily increasing pitch and intensity, was always punctuated by a tinny and dispassionate voice.

“WARNING. There is an active shooter on campus. A lockdown is in effect.”

I was on the toilet when the commotion had gotten underway, and had even rolled my eyes. Active Shooter Drills, my pal the principal had left out of his sales pitch, were more regular than pep rallies at Festung. I had a mountain of work waiting for me and was in no mood for ear ringing, shook students, or the hungry gaze of cops-playing-shooters.

And yet, here they were again, firing three to five gunshots (it was always three to five) to trigger the acoustically-activated lockdown, instantly deferring my student appointments to end of day, and my paperwork long into my would-be date night.

The siren began to wail.

I felt a Buzz in my pocket.

-Sounds like my students get another day to study for their Edith Hamilton quiz.

-Seriously. Another drill? This makes three this month. Send.

I wiped, tugged my pants up, and stomped my low heels loudly over to the sink. I took a deep breath. It was easy to see the frustration glowing behind my brown eyes in the mirror. That scowl was far from the happy, approachable, everything-is-totally-cool attitude I tried to curate for my students. Buzz. I ignored my phone so I could lean into the violent catharsis of thoroughly washing my hands in scalding hot water.

More shots rang out, and there was screaming. Buzz.

-Joey get to a classroom before they lock.

-Joanna?

I practically flew out of my shoes, but it wasn’t enough. The doorway across the hall hissed shut before I could reach it. I ran down the hall, checking the doors and windows to each classroom. All were locked and seemingly empty, their students and teachers already huddled behind the metal “Line Of Sight” that bisected the concrete floor of every room in Festung High.

The sound of gunshots thundered down the hallway and felt too heavy to move. It was a nervous system blackout and my brain needed a hard reboot. I screwed my leaking eyes shut and pleaded with myself.

“Move. Please.”

#

WARNING. There is an active shooter on campus. A lockdown is in effect.

When my mind was working at normal speeds again I realized I was back in the bathroom, nearly hyperventilating, with blood on my shaking knees and palms. Buzz. I crawled into a stall then strained to close and lock its floor-to-ceiling door. It took a while to regulate my breathing to something barely below the rate of “just sprinted the entirety of a marathon.”

-Babe are you okay?

My thumbs felt too palsied to bend as they began to stumble their way through a reply.

-Hey Tay. Am okay. Will te

Gunshots. Close. Screaming.

Silence.

Footsteps. Light. Whimpering.

The sound effects of someone typing wildly on their phone clicked and bounced through the bathroom.

Footsteps. Heavy. Here.

“Found you, slut.” Delighted.

A phone clattered to the ground.

“No. No please no please please please god no. I’ll.” A voice I recognize, crying that I recognize, though laced with a fear that I’d never heard from anyone before.

Onetwo shots. Threefourfivesix shots. Seven shots. Metal casings pinging lightly on concrete. Ringing in my ears.

I covered my mouth with my free hand even though my tears felt too hot to bear, hot enough to melt it away. I did my best to hold my breath.

“Any other bitches in here?” Male.

The sound of clothes burdened with heavy equipment, of metal mechanisms sliding and locking perfectly into place, of my heartbeat and the siren blaring through my skull.

“We’ll find more. Maybe some teachers.” Another male.

“Turn them into fucking mulch.”

Footsteps. Leaving.

Eightnineteneleventwelvethirteen shots roared into the bathroom and against bulletproof stall doors that dented before my eyes, the weight of the scream I was holding back added enough pressure to my head that for a moment I thought it might burst and splatter even without the bullet.

Laughter. Footsteps. Leaving.

When I finally heaved the door open my fears were confirmed. It was easy to identify her. She was slight of body, with short dark hair like mine — our hair was how I’d finally made my first breakthrough with her, first heard about her trouble at home. I recognized the purple flower pinned to her black backpack.

Jenny Tides. Grade Ten.

#

I was stooped, barefoot and sweaty, trying to remove a JanSport Tactical backpack from a dead tenth grader. One of my tenth graders. I struggled with the straps, doing my best to avoid looking at her ruined face and torso.

I couldn’t even hear myself think over the alarm but still some of the words reached up from the pit of my stomach and through all my soft sobbing.

“Why.” “Fuck.” “Impossible.” “No.” “Why.” And:

“I’m sorry Jenny. I’m so so sorry. I should have done more. I should have been there for you.”

Her corpse was willowy, and contained far less blood than it had just minutes prior, but death was a leaden thing. It seemed to make the body heavier. The right shoulder and arm thudded dully on the ground as I finally managed to wrench the second strap free.

After a bit of shaky groping I found the special-use zipper and tugged, separating the back panel and revealing the clasps that converted the bag into a vest. I clicked them into place and marveled at the effort it took to lift as I brought it above my head and slipped it on.

“How did you even carry this thing?” I whispered.

If one thing hadn’t improved between the time when I was in high school and when I worked at one, it was the weight of backpacks. Textbooks may have slimmed or otherwise become tablet-loaded PDFs, but the ceramic plates that allowed the JanSport Tactical to be marketed as bulletproof more than made up for the modern physical streamlining of study material.

-I’m okay. Need to get to my f —

My phone’s predictive texting automatically filled in the rest: fun locker.

One of the first things we learned about at School Orientation, just before it was revealed that most of our training would take place at a shooting range rather than in an auditorium, was our handgun.

Every staff member was given a firearm. To guarantee accountability, faculty weaponry was thumbprint-coded to individuals and secured in desktop gun safes. Students called these black boxes Fun Lockers in jest, and the slang had quietly caught on among the faculty. At first I thought it was too morbid, but it didn’t take long for me to realize how important such jokes were to anyone trying to survive their life with charnel Festung High hanging over their heads.

I had used the phrase in group chats, with emoji and GIF accompaniment, enough for my phone to learn it. I let the auto-complete remain.

-I’m okay. Need to get to my fun locker. Send.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

-Oh my god Joanna.

-i’ve been so worried

-where are you?

-Stay put it’s safer that way.

-Police have got to be coming.

-They killed Jenny. Send.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

I pocketed my phone then opened the bag’s main compartment, now my chest piece, and found a binder, iPad, and composition notebook. I opted to leave them.

“Looks like you left more stuff to block a bullet. Thank — sorry, Jenny.”

#

Just around the corner was the lobby, with the School Resource Officer checkpoint, and beyond that, my office and Fun Locker. I fastened the overwhelming backpack vest tight to reduce whatever noise it might make, then took a few deep breaths.

One. Two. Three.

I peeked around the corner, and what I saw looked something occult.

“Oh Buck. Why the fuck did you get out of the booth? Jesus.”

School Resource Officer Buck Tanner hadn’t died far from his gun. It had landed mere inches from his outstretched hand, and its grip cast a muted red glow on the ashen concrete beneath it.

What remained of the charmingly portly SRO’s neck and face drooped and dripped at strange angles, producing a slow-spreading pool of dark scarlet that reminded me of spilled red wine. The mess eventually tidied itself into neat, ordered rivulets as it reached the metal inlays spiderwebbing the floor. It reeked like shit.

Behind his splayed corpse, the SRO booth stood altar-like and illuminated in a furious red.

I padded my way over, taking care not to step in any blood, and tried to keep my gaze fixed on Buck’s discarded gun so as to avoid seeing in focus the shredded remnants of his face.

I picked it up and immediately felt the burden, the weight of its potential for violence.

Weeks of school orientation kicked in as my hands, almost-but-not-quite steady, moved to check the gun’s safety and remaining ammunition. I pulled the slide and was stopped in my tracks by the firearm’s locked frame.

I focused and saw the faint red glow of the grip against my palm. My face clenched somewhere between a grin and a grimace — a constipated version of my everything-is-totally-cool face for students.

WARNING. There is an active shooter on campus. A lockdown is in effect.

Footsteps. Heavy. Near.

I couldn’t move. I thought of Jenny. I moved.

I squatted down and forced the pistol into Buck’s hand, crunched the stiff fingers tight around it, making sure to press the thumb against the gun’s body, and moved my own finger to the trigger. The grip glowed green.

When he rounded the corner my body felt too tense to move. My brain was shutting down from the overwhelming and sudden weight of fight or flight misfire, stopped working in full sentences, struggled to process his appearance and the rifle slung around his chest.

Hardened. Paranoid. Brutal.

Lanky. Young. Sad. So. Sad. Reaching. Aiming. Buzz.

Act. Now. Pull. Trigger. Buzz. Pull. Pull. Pull. Pull. Pull. Pull.

Onetwothreefourfivesix shots rumbled forth from my hand, some impacting teenage boy and others devastating concrete. My vision darkened as he fell with a clatter and finally I heard myself screaming and convulsively weeping over the ear ringing and the siren. I tried to stand, breathe even, but couldn’t. It felt like Jenny and Buck and this boy and Taylor and the whole of Festung were pinning me and all I could do was sob into the cold bloody floor. Buzz.

I didn’t read, just typed. My tears blurred the screen, made it less responsive. I didn’t have pretty words for her.

-babe i had to hurt someone. i neverdone that before Send.

An immediate Buzz. Then, from the hall behind me.

Footsteps. Heavy. Here.