Move

Watchman Campground, UT

 

Becca didn’t want to move. Becca wanted to cover Analise for all eternity, smother her here on this pavement for years to come.

“Becca?”

She turned over and looked up at Lee, crouching over her.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded. Sirens were wailing in the distance. But the air was now calm, almost too quiet.

“That was fucking amazing, what you just did.”

She tried to smile back at him, feeling weak.

Lee could hear the crunch of gravel underneath bodies flat on the sidewalk. And then he heard a voice, Josh’s, “It’s okay everyone. The shooter is down. I repeat. Shooter is down!” Josh, also a former military man. Like father, like son.

Lee heard a groan.

“Is anyone here a doctor? We need immediate medical attention now,” called Dylan.

After checking to make sure Analise and Becca were okay, Lee walked ahead. There were two bodies on the ground. One man in a navy-blue shirt, down and bleeding.

“Kurt!” Lee yelled.

He was groaning heavily, but alive. A woman in a dress, unconscious at the very least, Lee didn’t want to think about what else.

He ran back to the Subaru and began going through his supplies. He grabbed the first aid kit, some water, and an emergency blanket and brought them to the bodies on the asphalt.

“Here,” said a woman, running up. “I know wilderness first aid.”

“Have any more supplies?”

Lee nodded and returned to the Subaru, finally taking a look at the shooter, lying to the left of the car. It was a man, a burly man with a black beard, the same one he’d seen in the gas station two nights ago. He was wearing green army fatigues and combat boots.

Lee heard a scream, “Lee!”

“Becca!”

He rushed to her.

“She’s bleeding!”

Becca held Analise out to him. There was a thin line of blood running down the temple next to Analise’s ear. He touched it with his index finger. The consistency was like watercolor paint and Lee felt everything go cold inside him.

He rubbed her tiny skull with his hand, trying to find the source of the wound. Then he looked down to Becca.

“Becca, look.”

A piece of glass stuck out of the inside of her hand below her right thumb.

Both of them exhaled in relief as Becca picked the piece of glass out of her hand and another trickle of blood ran down her wrist.

Analise was safe.

“Shhhh,” Becca kept whispering to Analise, “shhhh.”

Lee knelt next to Dylan. “Are you okay?” Dylan nodded. “What happened? Did you see the whole thing?”

“We were walking back to the cars,” said Dylan, not looking at Lee, a pistol in hand, eyes scanning the surroundings, “When I saw a guy come out of the parking lot with a rifle and this gun. The man, man . . . I don’t know. He was off. He had a wild, hopeless look in his eyes. His eyes empty and confused. He knelt down on the pavement, set the rifle down, and calmly opened fire, firing sporadically. He wasn’t even aiming directly at anyone. It was like, he was, I don’t know, possessed and yet, having a stroke at the same time. It made no sense.”

“I was off to the side of him,” said Josh. “I had a gun on me and started firing back. But this guy, this guy had no, I don’t know, no singularity of purpose as most people who aim to kill others do. It was like he was drifting across the parking lot and just happened to pull out a gun and decide it was a good idea to shoot at people. As if he was trying to scare coyotes away. I mean, look, it’s a fucking hunting rifle,” said Josh, kicking it further away.

Lee kissed Analise on the head and tried to comfort her. Then he took Becca by the hand and grabbed another first-aid kit. He splashed water on her hand, patted it dry, and then wrapped it tight with a thick piece of gauze.

Paramedics, firefighters, and police officers were soon on the scene. Becca was wrapped in an emergency blanket and given oxygen, even as she thrashed about and screamed for Analise.

Lee unloaded some more of his emergency supplies and made sure people had water and gauze and band-aids, but now that the paramedics were here it was no longer necessary.

After Lee and Becca both gave their statements to the police and as Lee led Becca and Analise away from the scene, trying to get some quiet for Analise, he heard his phone ring.

It was his mom, Emily. He almost silenced it, but he wanted to make sure she was all right and let them know he was all right.

“Lee!”

“Mom!”

Both voices sounded panicked.

“Mom, I–”

“No, Lee, listen! I’m at the hospital. I’m fine, but look, it’s Rebecca, Becca’s mom, there’s been an accident. I found her flipped over on the side of the road.”

“What?”

Lee was confused. He mouthed at Becca, who was now wide awake, ‘It’s your mom.’

Becca’s eyes widened.

“Where are you?”

“I’m at the Intermountain in St. George.”

“Okay, we’re on the way. We were just in a shooting.”

“What?!”

“It’s okay, we’re fine.”

“What!”

“Sorry Mom, I gotta go, we’re on our way!”

“Lee!”

Lee hung up the phone.

“Your mom’s been in accident,” Lee said to Becca as he hung up, her eyes widening. “My mom, apparently, found her on the side of the road. We need to go.”

“But, I mean,” said Becca turning her eyes toward the fallen bodies, the crowd of people, and cop cars now flooding the parking lot, “don’t we need to stay here? Talk to the cops?”

Lee followed her eyes. He paused. “We’ve done as much as we can do here,” he said after only one or two seconds, but what seemed like a much longer pause. “What’s done is done. I think there’s plenty of people to help. I think we need to go.”

“Okay, okay, I just, what is happening Lee? What the fuck is happening?”

“Fuck if I know . . . let’s move. This whole area is about to be a giant clusterfuck in any minute.”

He turned to Dylan: “Dylan–”

“Yeah, Lee, everything okay?”

“No, apparently Becca’s mom was in an accident.”

“Shit.”

“Look, if the cops come and need a statement from us tell them we had to go to the hospital in St. George.”

“You got it.”

Becca and Lee ran back to the car, still hunched, just in case there was another shooter, and buckled Analise. Lee threw the car in reverse and screamed out of the parking lot, still in shock, but somehow thinking clearly enough to do what was required. More ambulances and police cars and news vans screamed past them. Red, white, and blue lights screaming into the night. A helicopter overhead.

“Can you grab me directions?”

“Oh, yes.” Becca grabbed her phone. “Shit, it’s dead.” Becca tried to plug her phone in, but all she could hear was the sound of her phone charging and then disconnecting.

“She said nothing about my mom? If she was okay?”

“What? No. Sorry.”

The phone charging and then disconnecting. Ding, ding, ding. Ding, ding, ding.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Fuck!”

Becca grabbed her phone and threw it against the windshield.

“Becca!” Lee yelled.

Becca could feel tears, anger, and hatred bubbling out of her. Everything she had kept buried and dormant so far beneath the surface. Her dad. Her mom. Her marriage to Lee. Pregnancy. Analise. And now whatever the fuck was happening here.

Becca picked her phone up after it fell off the dash, took it out of its case, and began slamming it against her passenger-side window.

“Becca!”

“FUUCK!”

She put a crack in the passenger window before her phone cracked and pieces of iPhone crumbled to the floor. She kept shouting. Beating her bare hand against the glass till blood flowed.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!!!!”

“Becca, stop! It’s going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Becca’s entire body shuddered and shook and trembled. Everything within her exploding at the surface.

Her screaming. Lee Screaming. Analise screaming.

The world was ending. But not quite. Not yet.