No Winter Lasts Forever, Prologue & Chapter 1
A serialized tragic thriller
This novel was published in 2019 and confronts the public scourge of mass shootings. Reader discretion advised.
S P R I N G
Prologue
Franklin, Missouri. Monday, 8:47 a.m.:
Normal day; perfect weather. April: relative present. Franklin-Betty High School is near full capacity. Three college-aged men in masks—one Frankenstein, one ski, one latex—approach in the mild air of the sunny day, guns jammed in their waistbands, rifles cocked in hand. They split up. The bell rings to change class from first period to homeroom. Students chat casually in the busy halls. Frankenstein, positioned at the primary administrative building, fires into the air, into the dirt. Ski, on the opposite side, fires into the brick wall, the windows of the main entrance. Security is frayed. Latex bursts into the back wing, filled with students, and fires indiscriminately. Dozens fall. Blood splatters lockers, the hallway floor, other students. Survivors whimper in heaps on the floor. Then, silence. Latex steps outside and fires three times rapidly into the air, lodges the handgun into his mouth, fires. Frankenstein and Ski, hearing the successive shots, fire bullets at the backs of their throats. All three fall dead.
When the shots have ceased beyond a few minutes, the principal and all administrators creep out of their offices and into the halls. They look around, wide-eyed and fearful. It’s quieter than on a Sunday. The teachers have done their jobs. All doors are closed and locked; any and all glass is covered. The resident officer comes rushing in from the main entrance.
“Shooters are down, shooters are down!”
“Dead?” someone yells.
“Yes.”
One of the vice principals turns to his boss and says, “I think you should get on the PA and make an announcement.”
The principal nods his head. Behind him, approaching sirens wail in the distance.
Chapter 1
It had been an easy Monday morning that sunny April day when my neighbor and sometime on-again girlfriend, Penny Grierson, banged loudly at my front door seconds before she came through it, calling my name. She still had clipping shears in her hands.
“Jackson! Jackson Warner, you here?”
“Yeah? What’s the trouble with ya?”
“No funny talk now—Franklin-Betty High has just been shot up. Three men, said to be early twenties. Twenty-two dead, students and teachers.” She covered her open mouth to suppress a sob.
I was immediately concerned about my niece. “Is Lucy all right?”
“Yes, she’s home. Kathy called, said the middle school was quickly evacuated and everyone sent home.” We paused in the shock of it all, staring at each other like it couldn’t be true.
“Jesus Christ…We just had that other one south of here! When was that?”
“A few months back,” Penny answered.
“They know anything more on these bastards?”
“Just that they were part of an EasyChat group.”
“What the hell is that?”
“An online chat room sorta thing. Place where they gathered and then planned.”
“This is out of control.”
“President’s on TV now talking about gun control.”
“A lot of good that’s ever done us in this state. Got some of the loosest laws! And a responsible gun community! It’s all just talk.”
“I know, Jackson, I know.” She paused. “I just thank God Lucy is all right. You should call your sister. I know they’re dealing with aftershocks, but all the same, just give a shout.”
“This is why I always knew where the old-school hole-puncher was in my room. It had steel edges under the rubber catch. And it was heavy.” I shook my arms as if clutching the old thing and stared at the wall, remembering.
Penny nodded her head like she’d heard me describe this so many times before. I had. I was always glad to have a weapon hidden among the everyday things that were allowed in my old room.
“Just call your sister,” she reiterated.
“I will.”
“I’ll come back tonight. I’ll bring some dinner, a casserole. I’ll bring it by.”
“That’s fine, good, yeah. Be safe.”
She left me standing on the staircase, thoughtful, but staring into the blank of disbelief and a terrible weakness. I had a premonition, or a sort of feeling that was like a vision. I felt it in the depths of my guts. Bad things were happening everywhere—now. No one, nowhere, and nothing was safe.
* * * *
This insane brand of violence had infected the youth, had erupted within them, closer than ever, at the local high school. The closeness of it made my skin crawl. My nephew, Luke, had graduated just four years prior from that very school; my niece attended one of the feeder middle schools. This was happening all too often, and it had never happened when I was a kid. Never. It had been unthinkable that such a thing would happen. Now it was almost commonplace. How could that be? What had changed in the culture? Slowly and over time and then suddenly everywhere. Could it simply be violent minds encouraged by violent media in films and video games? Fantasy nurturing fantasy until all these former weirdos had was bloody delusion? That was too easy and statistically false. It was always the weirdos, too. I didn’t care if they were bullied. Who wasn’t? Those boys needed a violent outlet. How could we have provided it?
Anti-bullying campaigns didn’t work. The irony was that the bullying still occurred, but these kids had to endure the bull of a campaign, officials saying they cared when no one actually did. That fraudulence was part of it. And even if the adults did care, the viciousness of children would find a way. It was always the more popular sociopaths preying on the weaker ones who became murderous psychopaths. What else would it be?
Too many questions swirled amid the confusion. There was too much sadness over the loss of the genuine kids, the kids who were kind, the kids who were loving and hardworking, the ones who cared. Nothing but contempt for the killers and the bullies, whose arrogance flipped the switch in these vulnerable and violent boys. Who are they? Which ones are they? I thought frantically. What they were was not a necessary question—that much was clear. How might we target them instead?
The same old debate was all over the news within the hour. The headline on the next day’s newspaper read, “KILL EVERYTHING.” This simple phrase was cut from a longer statement posted online from the killers. Kill everything? I thought. Not even kill everyone? Just obliterate everything?That was some serious pain or pathology. Would someone in genuine pain have had that thought? Those were the only explanations I had: one, the other, or both. This was the result of some deeply perverse, mentally deranged way to manage unmanageable suffering. It was not that I felt bad for those killers; I just had to explain it to myself somehow, and pain and suffering or the deepest of pathos seemed to be the only rational causes for such rage, such indiscriminate violence. Spraying bullets was sharing their pain. The perversion of human character required to commit such an act seemed unrealistic. But, of course, it was real and walking upright all over the place, sometimes exploding, sometimes not.
I called my sister, Elizabeth, that same day to check in, to see how the younger ones were managing it.
“Everything all right?”
“Hardly. But, yes, sort of. Lucy’s a bit shaken up.” She paused, “Makes me so mad. Now she’s got a trauma she’s not supposed to have. Ever!” Her tone intensified. “No little girl or boy should have to deal with this bullshit. No American kid should. We didn’t.”
“No, we didn’t. Different world now. Everything’s shook up somehow.” I sighed louder than I wanted to.
“I suppose that’s it. It just makes me so angry, but I have to remain calm and composed or Lucy breaks down.”
“How bad is it?”
“It’s not good! But if I keep it together, she seems to handle it better. Really, I just want to scream, run down to the school and scream. Scare the rest of the world into obedience, into behaving.”
“I know the feeling.”
She stopped talking, her rage satisfied for that quick moment. Little did I know, mine was beginning to simmer. After an initial outrage, I felt removed from the whole thing. I looked at it objectively, coolly. But my attitude would change again.
“Come over for dinner this week. Be good for you to see the kids, be another adult reassurance. Tony is on business until next Tuesday and Lucy could use a strong male presence.”
“Where’s Luke?”
She groaned. “If he’s not on campus, he’s locked in his room. Since he turned twenty-one, I feel like I have to leave him alone. God knows what he’s doing.”
“He’s on the computer.”
“I figured that much, thanks.”
“Do you monitor what he does on there?”
“Nope. Not since he turned eighteen, I guess.”
“Is it time for him to move on and out of the house?”
“Look, it’s not easy for this generation. He should move on, yes, but there’s nowhere to go. Rent is crazy, even in this town, and worse in the city. I don’t know what to do for him.” Her exasperation with all things came across as a defense.
“What’s his dad say?”
“Same thing. We’re exhausted. We work and travel all the time—you know that. We’re all just sorta stuck.” Emotion choked her throat. “Anyway…”
“How’s Thursday? For dinner. I’ll cook.”
She laughed, relieved in some way. “Sounds great.”
I hung up the phone and sat in silence, wondering how life could become so confused, so mismatched to the expectations of earlier years.