By a cluster of desks was the
Bushmaster. Its barrel and muzzle brake were coated in a film of white powder. A less experienced observer might have thought that it was concrete dust from bullets hitting the walls. But Dan was sure, from his time in the Marines, that the chalky residue was baked evaporated blood.
Karoline then steered the attorney general, his stride no longer so firm, into Classroom 8. The room where, days before, their resolve wavered. Where they momentarily lost and regained their sense of purpose. Where they all stood in silent disbelief, a light drizzle on the window ticking off each annihilating second, staring into the tiny bathroom. Where the children were packed in so tightly that the inward-hinged door could not be shut all the way. Where Art, who had seen what he had thought must have been every possible reconfiguration of the human body, did not even understand what he was looking at. And where Karoline found herself doing something that came naturally: holding up an imaginary rifle, pointing it into the bathroom, registering the casings on the carpet to her right where the ejection port would have sent them and noting automatically that this was obviously where the shooter would have been standing when he fired the Bushmaster. It was when she felt Jeff looking at her that she dropped the imaginary gun and left the room.
Sorry if a bit of TMI.
