Other imperial cavalrymen, meanwhile, had been slamming shoulders and boots into the wide doors on the northeast side of the vestibule which led into the gymnasium. They could see through the cracks of the doors, and knew that their prey awaited them beyond. But the doors were too solid to push through.
Again, the cry went up: “Find a battering ram!”
Julie spotted the motion of the oncoming new cavalry at the same time as she heard them shouting. Something about those battle cries seemed familiar to her—quite unlike the screeching of the Croats.
But her mind was entirely on her shooting. She had a fresh magazine in the rifle. Julie brought the iron sights to bear on the huge man leading the charge, and started to squeeze the trigger.
Stopped. There was something—
She lifted her head and peered. Julie’s eyesight, as might be expected in a sharpshooter, was phenomenal—considerably better than 20/20.
“Jesus Christ,” she whispered. “I don’t fucking believe it.”
The corner of her eye caught motion. A band of Croats—perhaps ten in all—had also spotted the new threat and were charging to meet it.
Julie swung the rifle.
Crackcrackcrackcrack.
“Switch!” she squealed. James had the other .30-06 in her hands within seconds. The angel of death went back to the field, reaping with a fresh scythe.
Desperately, Anders tried to drive his horse ahead of Captain Gars, in order to shield him from the oncoming Croats.
No use. The captain always rode the finest horses in Europe.
The madman!
cursed Jönsson.
Captain Gars raised his saber, ready to strike.
“Gott mit uns!”
The first rank of charging Croats was suddenly hammered aside, falling from their saddles like so many dolls. Neither the captain nor Jönsson understood what had happened. They had heard a sound, like a great tearing of cloth, but did not recognize it as rifle fire.
No matter. Other Croats were upon them. Captain Gars matched saber against saber in his usual style. Sheer strength and fury smashed aside his opponent’s weapon and then, in the backstroke, took the imperial cavalryman’s arm off at the shoulder. The arm fell one way, the Croat was flung off the saddle to the other. He would bleed to death soon enough, never recovering from the shock.
Anders, as always, began with his wheel locks. Four of them he possessed; one in each hand, two in their saddle-holsters. He used them all in the first few seconds, desperately trying to protect Captain Gars from the Croats encircling him.
The wheel locks now fired, Anders dropped them and took up his saber. There was no time, in this furious cavalry melee, to reload and crank the firing mechanism on the clumsy weapons.
Captain Gars struck down another Croat, then another. His powerful blows fell like the strikes of an ax. But he was almost surrounded now.
The great tearing sound ripped through the sky again. And, again, Croats were smashed off their saddles. Anders could see the blood erupting from their chests, and suddenly understood that they had been shot in the back.
From above, somewhere. His eyes ranged up, and immediately spotted the window. The window, and the figure standing in it.
Anders, unlike the captain, had good eyesight. When he understood what he was seeing, he lapsed into blasphemy.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “I don’t fucking believe it.”
Next to him, in the sudden pause in the action, Captain Gars grinned savagely. His eyes swept the scene, taking in what he could. Which was not much, given his myopia.
“It goes good, eh?” he demanded.
A broad smile spread across the face of Anders Jönsson. “
Very
good, Captain Gars. I believe an angel is watching over us.”
Upstairs, Julie squealed again.
“Switch!”
In the years to come, the Västgöta would speak with awe of Captain Gars’ final charge against the Croats. Like a Titan, he was, smashing aside the savages like so many toys. The Finns, more superstitious, would claim that his saber had become a magic sword—striking down enemies long before they were within range.
The Lapps kept their opinion to themselves. They were only nominally Christians, and had found that it was unwise in the presence of devout Lutherans to speak too freely of their tribal spirits. One of which, quite obviously, had ridden the captain’s shoulders that bloody day.
Only Anders Jönsson and the captain himself understood the truth. Anders, because he had seen the angel for himself; the pious captain, because he recognized her handiwork.
“Gott mit uns!”
he bellowed again, resuming the charge. And, indeed, God went before him. Slaying every Croat who stood in the captain’s way, as if a mighty hand shielded him from harm.
The vestibule was so jammed with cavalrymen that it took a full minute to haul the awning support into position. Then, shrieking curses and commands, another full minute to clear a space for the impromptu battering ram.
Finally, the ram went to work.
Boom. Boom.
The doors began splintering.
When the bus was a hundred yards from the driveway leading up to the school, Croat cavalry began pouring down the slope.
Away
from the school. As if they were panicked.
Dan leaned forward. “What the hell—?”
An instant later, he was shouting new orders. Gretchen saw to it they were carried out. Police recruits were again perched in the windows, their shotguns and revolvers in hand. Screaming with unprofessional rage, they began their new slaughter.
When they reached the driveway, Hans almost overturned the bus making the turn. But he never lost his good cheer. “Hallooooo!” he shrieked, driving the bus straight through the horde of imperial cavalry pouring away from the school. He crushed several Croats under the wheels and almost overturned the bus again, driving over the corpse of a horse. But the recruits were back at the windows in seconds, blasting away on both sides, wreaking havoc and carnage. Gretchen, in a fury, slammed open the rear window and started firing her automatic at the Croats fleeing toward Route 250 and Buffalo Creek. She only missed twice.
Once he reached the parking lot on top of the slope, Hans slammed on the brakes. Dumbfounded, he stared at the scene.
Equally dumbfounded, Dan stared with him. The entire area in front of the school was a cavalry battle. Bands of Croats were engaged in a desperate struggle with bands of other soldiers. Saber against saber; wheel lock against wheel lock.
The police chief had no idea who the other soldiers were. But he didn’t care. He could recognize an ally when he saw one—and his allies were winning.
“Shoot the Croats!” he roared.
As if his voice were a signal, all of the Croats still on horseback in front of school suddenly broke. As it happened, they still outnumbered their Swedish and Finnish opponents—by a considerable margin—but it mattered not at all. Captain Gars’ hammer blow from the rear, coming on top of their own frustration, had broken their spirit. Within a minute, leaving hundreds of dead and wounded behind, the imperial cavalry was in full rout. Many more men died or were crippled, spilling from horses driven too recklessly down the slope.
They were sped on their way by gunfire from the bus, but not for long. With Dan leading from the front, and Gretchen driving from the rear, the police recruits stumbled out of the bus and began racing for the school entrance. It was obvious enough, just from the sounds of shouting, that there were still enemies within.
Captain Gars and Anders, with dismounted Västgöta and Finns following, moved down the narrow space between the line of buses and the side of the school. There were still dozens of Croats in the cafeteria, but none of them were looking at the broken windows. They were all piled against the door to the vestibule, eagerly awaiting their chance to join the charge into the gymnasium. From the splintering sounds accompanying the booming battering ram, the slaughter was finally about to begin.
Inside the gymnasium, Jeff stood alone in the middle of the floor. He hefted the shotgun in his hands, staring at the big double doors. The doors were starting to splinter, and he didn’t think the lock was going to last more than a few seconds.
Len Trout was still finishing the task of shepherding the students onto the upper rows of the tiers of benches. Only one set of benches had been lowered: the one against the north wall of the gym, farthest from the doors. The principal had crammed as many students as possible onto the top rows. A line of the oldest boys was standing guard on the lower benches, armed with nothing better than baseball bats.
“All we can do,” muttered Trout. He turned and strode to the center of the gym, taking position next to Jeff. He levered the slide on the automatic and checked quickly to make sure the safety was off.
“All we can do,” he repeated.
Jeff said nothing. He couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound melodramatic and corny. So he decided to spend these last moments of his life simply thinking about his wife, and hoping that their unborn child would enjoy the world as much as he had.
The lock on the door gave way and the doors slammed open. Murder poured into the room, shrieking death and destruction.
“
Gott mit uns!
”
Captain Gars’ battle cry signaled the attack. With the captain and Anders leading the way, the Västgöta and Finns surged through the windows into the cafeteria.
The Croats still in the cafeteria were caught completely by surprise. By the time they spun around, Captain Gars was upon them, like a grizzly bear savaging his prey, with another roaring at his side. Between them, the captain and Anders cleared a path to the door. The Croats who fell away from that berserk saber charge were swarmed under by the captain’s soldiers.
“
Gott mit uns! Haakaa päälle!
”
“That’s it, Julie,” said Nichols, handing her the rifle. “You’ve got a fresh magazine. The rest of the ammunition is gone.”
Julie leaned the empty .30-06 against the wall, seized the other, and charged for the door. By the time she got to the corridor, she was already shrieking her own battle cry.
“Make way! Make way!
Goddamittohell—clear a path!”
In her frenzied drive through the mob of students and teachers in the corridor, Julie did not actually use the gun butt to hammer herself a path—though the claim would be made afterward, by students knocked down by her charge. But the truth was quite otherwise. A hundred-and-forty-pound cheerleader was simply doing an excellent imitation of a fullback twice her size.
James followed. For all his concern—he knew the damned girl was heading back into action—he couldn’t restrain a smile. Then, as he neared the end of the corridor where Julie was frantically clambering over the barricade at the stairwell, he caught sight of Melissa’s pale face and the smile vanished.
She saw him at the same time. “Oh Jesus, James—
hurry.
Ed’s been shot!”
“Get those fucking buses out of the way!” bellowed Dan Frost. When he saw Hans squirrel into the lead bus through a broken window, he cursed under his breath. That bus was the one which Jeff had planted directly in front of the school’s main entrance.
“Not
that
one, Hans! It’s blocked by the others.”
He started toward the bus, pointing with his finger to the ones further down the line. “You gotta move those others first before you can—”
Hans had his own ideas about how to move a bus. His theory leaned very heavily on kinetic energy, and gave short shrift—
no
shrift, actually—to repair costs. Half a minute and much wreckage later, the bus pulled away. The entrance to the school was open.
Croats began pouring out, desperate to escape the furious charge of the Swedes coming through the cafeteria. But by the time they emerged, Dan and Gretchen had already formed the police recruits into a new line, standing to one side, shotguns reloaded and ready, leaving an apparent path to freedom and safety.
It was a firing squad, for all practical purposes. Of the hundred or so imperial cavalrymen who managed to get out of the school building before the Swedes and Finns cut them down, less than half ever made it out of the parking lot.
When the firing ceased, Dan and Gretchen led the police recruits into the school. Tried to, at least. But there was no way to force themselves past the men who now filled the vestibule. Captain Gars’ Västgöta, those were, still following the madman.
Coming down the stairs, Julie met four Croats coming up. The Croats were not even looking at her. They were coming up the stairs backward, frantically trying to fend off twice their number of Finns.
The scythe swung—
crackcrackcrackcrack—
and her way was clear. The Finns at the bottom of the stairs, gaping, simply moved aside. There was something inexorable about the way the young woman came down the stairs, trampling over the bodies she had put there. Christianity was more than nominal, among Finns, but they still retained memories of their pagan traditions.
No man in his right mind will stand in the way of Loviatar, Goddess of Hurt, Maiden of Pain.
Jeff blew the front rank of Croats into bloody shreds.
Rate of fire.
At that range—less than fifteen yards—the heavy shotgun slugs punched through the light armor of the imperial cavalrymen as if it were tissue paper.
Frantically, he started reloading the shotgun. Len Trout stepped in front of him and leveled the automatic. Again, the Croats charging into the gymnasium encountered that incredible rate of fire.
