“Post Mortem

 

“This is Pamela Cartwright reporting live for Action News. I am at the scene of one of the deadliest school shootings in modern history,” the usually cheerful reporter said into the camera, trying to hold together her composure. Behind her, frantic parents searched desperately for any information regarding the fates of their cherished offspring. Police and firemen did their best to calm the masses and secure the area. Pandemonium was thick in the air at Ambrose High School.

“Thirty-five people, student as well as staff, have been confirmed dead,” Pamela could hardly believe the words coming from her own mouth. She was only barely maintaining a straight face when out of her peripheral, she caught a glimpse of an officer giving a distraught father some obviously upsetting news. Pamela’s heart nearly broke into a million pieces, a tear finally emerging from her hazel eyes. The magnitude of the things that had transpired overwhelmed her and everyone else immensely .

From the scarce information that had been gathered thus far, it had been determined that four teenagers, each armed with various firearms, had entered the school a few hours earlier and open fire on pupils and faculty members. Witnesses that managed to flee to safety before the building was placed on lockdown recalled one of the shooters screaming almost incoherently about saving everyone. Their actions had proved that their intent was vastly of the contrary.

“There was blood everywhere. It was horrible. Why did this have to happen?!” a still shaken sophomore girl stated, wiping streams from her cheeks. Before being released to her parents, the young lady mentioned to reporters that the attackers even shot down those that were visibly ill. For the passed few days, several people had been experiencing a flu-like bug but had been assured it was nothing serious. For whatever reason, those who occupied the clinic were the very first victims. These students-turned-psychopaths seemed to show little to no compassion. One could only imagine the types of monsters that had preyed on the unfortunate school hours before.

—

“The end is near. Armageddon has begun. We know the truth and must fight back. A lot of people will die.” Detective Karl Morgan, seasoned veteran of the Ambrose Police Department’s Homicide Division read from a piece of paper as he sipped his lukewarm coffee. Seated across a cold, metal table in the interrogation room was one of the apprehended shooters, Jeffrey Henderson. Detective Morgan was disgusted by the presence of the mass murderer who appeared to have no remorse for his horrific actions. He took solace in the fact, however, that young Jeffrey had recently become of legal age and would suffer the consequences as an adult offender.

“You sent this email from your home computer this morning, Jeff. Right before you and your shit head buddies turned your high school into the streets of Bagdad. Not very smart. See, this little chat we’re having now is nothing more than a formality. Combine this email with the eyewitnesses, the video surveillance from the school and the blatant physical and forensic evidence we have already amounted and you and your friends are all looking at state-issued needles in your arms. But I want to know why? I can’t imagine the shame your parents must feel.”

“My parents are dead,” Jeffrey informed Morgan with a deadpan expression. There was something painful behind the suspect’s eyes. Not guilt. Not sorrow. But pain, nonetheless.

“That’s a lie, Jeffrey. We did some background checking on you and not only are you’re parents alive and well, but happily married and working their asses off to make sure you have a decent life. A life you just flushed down the crapper.” Detective Morgan was beginning to lose his patience with this one. The case was a slam dunk, no new information was going to come out of this sadistic eighteen year old punk. He gulped down the remainder of his coffee, organized his files and prepared to leave the room.

“My mother and father complained last Thursday about being under the weather. Stomach virus or something. I don’t know. When I woke up the next morning, they had gotten worse. A lot worse.”

“What do you mean? You trying to say that both of your parents died from a stomach virus and you’re just now saying something about it, almost a week later? Even if I believed you, what does this have to do with you slaughtering damn near forty people today?”

“ The stomach virus didn’t kill my parents. My dad owns a double-barrel shotgun. Once I realized that there was no hope for them, I put them out of their misery. I executed them. I had no choice,” Jeffrey explained, staring passed Detective Morgan, deep into his own thoughts.

“You didn’t have a choice?!” Morgan had lost his cool. He snatched Jeffrey up from his seat and forcefully shoved him against a double-side mirror, nearly cracking the glass. “You sick little fucker. I hope to God this is some sort of demented mind game you’re playing.”

“It’s not. Go to my house and behind the tool shed in the backyard you’ll find them buried. Look, I know you think I’m a heartless murderer but it’s not true. Killing my parents was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I didn’t want to kill those people at school, today, but it had to be done. You don’t understand. Nobody besides me and my friends understands. But soon, everyone will and it will be too late.”

As Detective Morgan stormed out of the room to inform his colleagues of the new development, Jeffrey sat back down in his previous seat and like he had been doing for the past week, attempted to process the unbelievable things that had taken place in his once mundane life.

He thought very little of it at the time, but in hindsight, Jeffrey could sense something was askew about his parents’ personalities the night before he killed them. They had seemed stoic and almost unresponsive to his words. He credited it perhaps to medication they had taken and left it at that. After a brief exchange, Jeffrey headed to his room, locked his door and prepare to slumber after a long night at his part-time cashier job.

Jeffrey took a drink of his cola as he sat in the frigid interview room. He could faintly hear the cops outside the door conversing amongst each other . His mind, though, was in the past.

The morning came to Jeffrey in the form of loud thuds against his bedroom door. Pissed off, he finally sat up in his bed and checked his alarm clock. Five-thirty-one. His regularly scheduled awakening wasn’t for another two hours, he angrily thought as he slipped on an old “Night of the Living Dead” t-shirt. What was so urgent that his parents felt the need to bang on his door at this hour?

A text message had summoned Detective Morgan to the medical examiner’s office and away from his interrogations. Apparently, a revelation had been discovered that was of the utmost importance. He stepped in the room and greeted the examiner who was standing next to one of the deceased teachers from the day’s killing spree.

“There is something I thought you might need to know before going any further with your investigation, Detective,” the anxious Dr. Barbara Williams said.

“Enlighten me.”

“Well, it’s rather unusual and by all standards that I’m aware of, a medical anomaly,” she started as she simultaneous glanced through her notes and shined the overhead light onto the corpse. “While removing bullets from this body, I noticed that the blood surrounding the wounds seemed to be coagulated.”

“Okay. So, what?”

“Coagulation begins after there is no longer oxygen left in the blood. Postmortem. Which is impossible because if what this body is telling me is true, then this person was technically deceased hours before being shot. There is a gunshot to the base of the neck that severed the brain stem, shutting down motor skills. Theoretically, this body could have been operating off of neurological impulses after the heart stopped pumping blood and brain function was all but inactive.”

“Do you know what you are implying, doc?” Morgan hated to even think about what this might mean. There was no way.

“I’ll have to check the other bodies, but if they are consistent with my finding here, we very well may have a very big problem. This may be something more than any of us realize. Also, this victim had a rare stomach virus. I’ll have to look into it more.”

Waiting to be hassled some more by the police, Jeffrey had fallen asleep in the windowless room. In his mind, he was back at home, though. Back to that morning that changed everything. After opening his door, he was greeted by gruesome shells of his parents. Their skins had turned a sickly pale pigment, saliva dripped profusely from their mouths and a crazed look was in their eyes. Jeffrey’s father lunged at him almost immediately. Dumbfounded, Jeffrey ran away and took refuge in his parents’ master bedroom.

It took about an hour for his father to break down the door with his bare hands. At that point, Jeffrey spotted the shotgun and did the only thing that he thought was reasonable.

Blood covered his clothes. He had shot his mother and father several times respectively before they were subdued. Living in the rural part of town had its benefits as there wasn’t another resident for miles and no one could have possibly heard the shots fired and no one would be watching as he dug up the earth that he was about to dump the remains.

Something was terribly wrong he thought as his father’s hand continued to claw at him, complete independent of the rest of his body. Something was terribly wrong.