Funeral for a Friend

38

Brayden steadied his gun arm and fired once, twice, three times, four times, five times. So did Serena, from her higher angle on the stage. It happened so fast that his head spun; it happened as everyone else ran, ducked down, fell, and jumped to get free. Brayden tried to quash his adrenaline and aim, to focus every shot on the girl and not the people that interrupted his line of sight. Bodies came and went like flashes of light; people screamed. He couldn’t tell whose bullets hit home, but he saw gunfire riddle Colleen, striking her in the chest, stomach, and legs, drawing blood and making her limbs jump like a marionette.

But Colleen fired, too.

She squeezed off multiple shots as her arm went wild, as bullets flew up, down, and sideways. A deadly crossfire laced the stage. Then one shot in the middle of her forehead ended the battle in an instant. Brayden didn’t know whose gun caused her death. Their fire overlapped, as if timed with the thunder of the storm. Colleen’s gun dropped from her hand to the floor. Her body pitched straight forward, like a pencil falling.

Even with the gunfire over, panic gripped the ballroom. The crowd flooded for the doors, trampling over abandoned political signs. Police and security fought past them in the opposite direction, heading for the stage. Screams lingered, and peopled huddled near the walls, crying.

Brayden holstered his gun and boosted himself onto the stage platform. He walked toward Colleen’s prone body, first securing the gun that lay near her hand, and then squatting next to the body to confirm that the girl was dead. Her face was sideways on the floor, her frozen eyes still wide open, the same tiny smile lingering on her lips. Blood made a widening pool beneath her and red stripes down her forehead.

He got to his feet and studied the rest of the stage. Not far away, he saw Serena Stride kneeling over a body, touching her fingers to someone’s neck, trying to get a pulse.

Who was it?

It was a woman’s body, and he thought: Cat.

Brayden ran over there, his breath leaving his chest. He stared down, shaking his head, not believing what he saw. The woman at his feet wasn’t Cat. It was Andrea Forseth. She lay on her back, eyes closed, her face at peace. A bullet had penetrated the side of her skull, and her blond hair was crimson with blood.

He opened his mouth to ask if she was dead, but he didn’t need to ask. She was gone.

Serena looked up. “You’re Brayden, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

He watched her mouth tighten as she held back the things she wanted to say. To throw blame at him for not protecting Cat, for letting everything spin out of control. He wanted her to scream at him, but she looked away and focused on the body.

“The girl didn’t shoot her,” Serena said.

“What?”

“The angle’s wrong. I’m pretty sure it was one of us.”

“What?”

“I’m afraid we killed her, Brayden. Either you or me.”

“No. No, that can’t be true.”

Her voice had the dead dullness of someone forcing down her emotions. “That’s what it looks like. When we run ballistics, we’ll know for sure.”

Brayden blinked over and over. “I killed her?”

“She strayed into the line of fire. It was an accident. We had an active shooter, Brayden. People panic. They lurch one way or another. Sometimes terrible things happen.”

Tears leached down his face. “I killed her.”

“We don’t know that yet. It might have been me. No matter who it was, it wasn’t your fault.”

Brayden looked down at Andrea, and then he looked at the position of Colleen’s body. He stared down at the ballroom floor, where he’d aimed his gun across the stage. Those seconds of gunfire had felt like hours. People had run, blocked him, forced him to stutter his shots. Even so, he knew. In the whirl of adrenaline, he knew. He could see it happen.

He’d been pulling the trigger as Andrea awakened from her trance and tried to flee the stage.

“I did it,” he said. “I tried to hold back the shot, but I was too late.”

Serena stood up and squeezed his shoulder. “Find a place to sit down for a while. It’s going to be a long night.”

Brayden felt dazed. His brain began to spin, and acid bubbled into his mouth, making him want to vomit. He tried to walk, but he nearly lost his footing, and Serena had to hold him up.

“What about Cat?” he asked, trying to make sense of what was happening to him. “Is she okay? Where’s Cat?”

Cat lay on her stomach, her hands over her head, not daring to move. She waited for the gunfire to stop, but then she realized it already had, and she wasn’t hearing bullets anymore. The crack she heard was thunder, rattling the building like ice calving from a glacier. A downpour of rain tapped on the windows. The smell of smoke tainted the air, bitter and sharp. She heard voices talking; she heard the thump of footsteps on the stage. The screams of the crowd had quieted.

It was over.

She opened her eyes. Stride was next to her, but the first thing she saw was Colleen’s face. The girl lay on the stage twenty feet away, eyes fixed, staring back at her even though she was dead. That image, that look, was going to linger in her dreams. She could still taste Colleen on her lips and smell her on her clothes. She still expected the girl’s mouth to open and for her to start talking from the grave.

I love you, Cat.

We’ll be ghosts together.

Cat stood up slowly, her legs wobbling. She tried to take a step and had to steady herself. She saw Brayden, his face stricken, his eyes full of tears, but he didn’t see her. When she tried to call his name, she found that her voice was missing, unable to form words. She saw Serena kneeling by a body, and she realized that people had been shot. People had died.

Then someone pointed at her. Some stranger. Shouts and screams traveled across the room at her, and people began to run her way. She didn’t know why until she looked down at her clothes and saw that she was covered in blood. When she glanced at her feet, there was more blood there. Blood was on the stage; she was standing in it. She patted herself all over, certain she’d been shot, but she felt no pain, no injury; she saw no wounds or bullet holes, and when she peeled up her shirt, her skin was unharmed.

And yet she was covered in blood.

“Am I hit, Stride?” Cat murmured. “Did Colleen shoot me?”

Stride didn’t answer.

She noticed him, as if for the first time. He still lay on the stage, where he’d been when she opened her eyes. He wasn’t moving.

“Stride?”

Cat’s whole body began to shake uncontrollably, like a young tree bending in a wind storm. She saw blood on the stage, saw blood where she was standing, and she realized it was coming from beneath Stride. From his body. Her hands tore at her hair, and she sank down to the ground in disbelief. She knelt in the blood and grabbed Stride’s shoulder, and with a fierce energy, she pushed him over, so that he lay on his back. His eyes were closed, his face pale.

His chest was covered in blood. Fresh, cherry-red blood, growing and spreading into a misshapen stain. A mass of blood, the kind of loss no one should survive. And amid all the blood, there was a scorched bullet hole in his chest, ripped through the fabric, right where his heart was.

“Stride? Stride? Oh, my God, no! No, no, no!”

Tears spilled from her eyes like a flood. Her fists squeezed open and closed. She cupped her hands under his head, shook him, and tried to wake him up, but he wouldn’t move. Her body twisted around, and her voice filled the room with her scream.

“Serena!”