Columbine (54 page)

Bomb scares at Columbine spiked. The school was evacuated a few days later. Moms felt their muscles clench, bracing for the terrifying news. Some had almost forgotten Columbine, but their bodies remembered. In an instant, it was April 20 again. The danger passed in a few hours--it was only a prank. The anxiety lingered.

In the ten years after Columbine, more than eighty school shootings took place in the United States. The principals who survived--many were targeted--invariably found themselves in over their heads. Mr. D made himself available to all of them. Many accepted his offer. He spent hours every semester sharing what he had learned.

Those calls were hard. An e-mail he received that fall was worse. "Dear Principal," it said. "In a few hours you will probably hear about a school shooting in North Carolina. I am responsible for it. I remember Columbine. It is time the world remembered it. I am sorry. Goodbye."

It had been sent in the morning, but Mr. D didn't check e-mail for several hours. He called the cops immediately, and they sent word to the boy's high school. Too late. The nineteen-year-old had driven past his school and fired eight shots, injuring two superficially. Then police raided his home and found his father dead.

The shooter was apprehended and taken into court. He was asked why he was obsessed with Columbine. He said he didn't know.

School shooters were starting to feel like a threat again. But the real shocker came the following spring, at Virginia Tech. Seung-Hui Cho killed thirty-two people, plus himself, and injured seventeen. The press proclaimed it a new American record. They shuddered at the idea of turning school shootings into a competition, then awarded Cho the title.

Cho left a manifesto explaining his attack. It cited Eric and Dylan at least twice as inspiration. He'd looked up to them. He did not resemble them. Cho did not appear to enjoy his rampage. He did not expect to. He emptied his guns with a blank expression. He shared none of Eric or Dylan's bloodlust. The videos Cho left described
himself
as raped, crucified, impaled, and slashed ear to ear. Cho appears to have been severely mentally ill, fighting a powerful psychosis, possibly schizophrenia. Unlike the Columbine killers, he did not seem to be in touch with reality or comprehend what he was doing. He understood only that Eric and Dylan left an impression.

52. Quiet

T
he morning of the attack, Eric and Dylan shot a brief farewell video in Eric's basement. Eric directed. "Say it now," he said.

"Hey, Mom," Dylan said. "I gotta go. It's about a half an hour till Judgment Day. I just wanted to apologize to you guys for any crap this might instigate. Just know I'm going to a better place. I didn't like life too much, and I know I'll be happy wherever the fuck I go. So I'm gone. Good-bye. Reb..."

Eric handed him the camera. "Yeah.... Everyone I love, I'm really sorry about all this," Eric said. "I know my mom and dad will be just like... just fucking shocked beyond belief. I'm sorry, all right. I can't help it."

Dylan interrupted him from behind the camera. "It's what we had to do," he said.

Eric had one more thought, for the girl from prom night. "Susan, sorry. Under different circumstances it would've been a lot different. I want you to have that fly CD." Dylan got restless and snapped his fingers. Eric flashed an angry look. That shut him up. Eric had something profound to deliver. Dylan couldn't care less. Eric lost his big moment. "That's it," he said. "Sorry. Good-bye."

Dylan turned the camera to face himself. "Good-bye."

____

Eric and Dylan spent just five minutes firing outside. They killed two people and advanced into the school. For five minutes, they fended off deputies, shot Dave Sanders, and roamed the halls looking for targets. They began tossing pipe bombs over the railing, down into the commons, which appeared deserted. It was not. Several students hiding under tables made a run for it and fled out the cafeteria doors. They all made it out safely. Others stayed put.

Along the way, the boys passed the library windows, and ignored all the kids huddled there. Then they circled back. That room offered the highest concentration of fodder they had seen. They found fifty-six people inside. They killed ten, injured twelve. The remaining thirty-four were easy pickings. But Eric and Dylan got bored. They walked out seven and a half minutes later, at 11:36, seventeen minutes into the attack. Aside from themselves and the cops, they would not shoot another human again.

The boys wandered into the science wing. They walked past Science Room 3, where the Eagle Scouts were just getting started on Dave Sanders. They looked through the windowpanes in several classroom doors. Kids were inside most of them. At least two or three hundred kids remained in the school. The killers knew they were there. Many witnesses made eye contact. Eric and Dylan walked by. They chose empty classrooms to open fire.

They roamed aimlessly upstairs. To civilians, it seems odd that they stopped shooting and entered this "quiet period." It's actually pretty normal for a psychopath. They enjoy their exploits, but murder gets boring, too. Even serial killers lose interest for a few days. Eric was likely proud and inflated, but tired of it already. Dylan was less predictable, but probably resembled a bipolar experiencing a mixed episode: depressed and manic at once--indifferent to his actions; remorseless but not sadistic. He was ready to die, fused with Eric and following his lead.

Eric had a few thrills left to savor. Killing had turned tedious, but he was still up for an explosion. The biggest explosion of his life. He could still perform his primary feat: blow up the school and burn down the rubble.

He headed down the staircase into the commons at 11:44. Dylan followed closely behind. Eric stopped on the landing halfway down. He knelt and placed his rifle barrel on the railing to improve his accuracy. Backpacks were scattered everywhere, but Eric knew which duffel bag was his. He fired. The boys were easily within the blast area, and they were well aware of that fact. Twenty-five minutes into the massacre, Eric made his second attempt to initiate the main event, and his first attempt at suicide. He failed again.

Eric gave up. He walked directly to the bomb, with Dylan behind him. Dylan tried to fiddle with it. That failed, too. Kids were visible under some of the tables. The killers ignored them. Lots of drinks had been left on the tables, and the killers tipped back a few. "Today the world's going to come to an end," one of them said. "Today's the day we die."

The surveillance cameras picked up their movements in the commons. Their body language was vastly different than what witnesses in the library described. Their shoulders drooped, and they walked slowly. The excitement had drained out of them; the bravado was gone. Eric had also broken his nose. He was in severe pain.

They left the cafeteria after two and a half minutes. On the way out, Dylan tossed a Molotov cocktail at the big bombs--one last attempt to set them off. Another failure. Several kids felt the blast and ran.

The boys drifted about the school: upstairs and down again. They surveyed the damage in the commons. It was pathetic. The Molotov started a small fire that burned the duffel bag off one of the bombs and ignited some of the fuel strapped to it, but the propane tank was impervious. The fire set off the sprinkler system across the room. The boys had been going for an inferno; they caused a flood.

The killers were apparently out of ideas. They'd expected to be dead by now, but never planned how. The cops were supposed to take care of that. Eric predicted he'd be shot in the head. No one had obliged.

They had two essential choices: suicide or surrender. Eric would sooner die. He idolized Medea for going down in flames, but couldn't ignite his fire.

A cornered psychopath will often attempt "suicide by cop": an aggressive provocation to force the police to shoot. Eric and Dylan could have ended it dramatically by charging the perimeter. It would have been glorious. But it would take tremendous courage.

Eric craved self-determination. Dylan just wanted a way out. Alone, he might well have been talked down. He had been promising suicide for two years and never brought himself near it. He never had a partner to guide him out.

At noon, they returned to the library. Why end it there? Act III was about to commence. The car bombs were set to blow. Ambulances had massed around Dylan's BMW as planned. A triage unit was busy nearby. Limbs would fill the air, just like Eric's drawings. The library windows were set up like skyboxes. Eric and Dylan most likely chose the library, not just because of the carnage there already, but for a better view.

They found the room quite different than they'd left it twenty-four minutes before. Human decay begins rapidly. The first thing to assault them was probably smell. Blood is rich in iron, so large volumes emit a strong metallic smell. The average body contains five quarts. Several gallons had pooled on the carpet, coagulating into a reddish brown gelatin, with irregular black speckles. Aerosolized droplets dry quickly, so the spatters were black and crusty. Stray globs of brain matter would soon be solid as concrete. They would be scraped off with putty knives and the stubborn chunks melted down with steam-injection machines.

The killers had left the library in turmoil: shots, screams, explosions, and forty-two teens moaning, gasping, and praying. The commotion had ceased, replaced by the piercing fire alarm. The smoke cleared; a warm breeze floated through the blown-out windows. Twelve bodies shared the room with them. Two were breathing: Patrick Ireland and Lisa Kreutz had been fading in and out of consciousness, unable to move. Four staff hid in rooms farther back. Ten corpses had passed through pallor mortis, and livor mortis was setting in. The skin had gone white and purplish splotches were now appearing as the remaining blood settled.

The boys may have been oblivious. Mass murderers often shift into an altered state, dissociated and indifferent to the horror. Some barely notice, others take a clinical curiosity in variations like eyes either bulging or retracting, the whites clouding up or mottling with red clumps. If Eric or Dylan touched their victims, they would have found the bodies cooling noticeably, but still warm and pliable.

They walked on. Eric advanced toward a center window, among the heaviest carnage. He walked past the worst of it to get there. Dylan broke away and chose a spot closer to the entrance, half a dozen window panels down. If he took a direct route, he followed one of the cleanest pathways left.

The boys inspected the army surrounding them outside. Paramedics were just then breaching the perimeter to rescue Sean, Lance, and Anne Marie. Eric opened fire. Dylan did the same. Two deputies shot back, mostly suppressive fire. The medics gave up, the boys quit. This was their only fire on humans during the thirty-two-minute quiet period. It was a classic attempt at suicide by cop: heroically dying in battle, but at a time, place, and manner of their own choosing. That failed, too.

A minute or two later, at 12:06, the first SWAT team finally entered Columbine High School, on the opposite end of the building. Eric and Dylan could not have known. They apparently waited for their cars to explode, weathered a final disappointment, and then called it a day.

Eric turned his back on the mess. He retreated to the southwest corner, one of the few unspoiled areas in the room. Dylan joined him there. It was a cozy spot near the windows, nestled between walls and bookshelves on three sides, with a mountain view. One body lay nearby. It was Patrick Ireland, gently breathing, unconscious. The boys sat down on the floor facing out at the windows. They seemed to be staying low to avoid police fire. That may seem odd given their intentions, but it's all about control. Eric propped himself against a bookshelf, just a shoulder-width to the right of Dylan and a few feet behind, watching his back.

One of them lit the rag used as a fuse on a Molotov cocktail. He set it on the table right above Patrick. Eric raised the shotgun barrel to his mouth, like the antihero of
The Downward Spiral.
Dylan pointed the TEC-9 at his left temple. The Molotov rag burned down.

Eric fired through the roof of his mouth, causing "evacuation of the brain." He collapsed against the books, and his torso slumped to the side. He ended that way, with his arms curled forward, as if hugging an invisible pillow. Dylan's blast knocked him flat on his back and strewed brain matter across Eric's left knee. Dylan's head came to rest just beside it.

A lot of blood spilled, but less than their victims'. Eric and Dylan blew out their medullas, the brain center that controls involuntary functions. Their hearts stopped almost instantly. Medically, "bleeding" ceased. Gravity took over and they leaked. Dylan's blood soaked into Eric's pant leg.

The Molotov blew. It started a small fire. It also spilled Eric's crude napalm over the tabletop and sealed a lump of his brain underneath. That detail would prove the boys died just before the eruption. The alarm system detected the fire and recorded the time as 12:08.

The sprinklers put it out and drenched the boys. Blood drained from their skulls and oxidized like blackened halos.