Suicide Serial by Matthew Boyd Page B

patrol officers standing on the back porch.
     
    Quietly, Chief Lunkster said to the young patrol officer, “Get on the horn and get all those SWAT guys back here, now. A bomb has been placed somewhere in Lee Arthur Miller Elementary. Tell them to get their shit, get in that van, and link up with the bomb squad out there as fast as humanly possible. We gotta evacuate that school and find the bomb if there even is one. Do it fast and use a secure channel. Move it.”
     
    The young patrol officer looked like he’d been smacked across the face, but nodded his head. He grabbed his radio and started running around and shouting orders into it.
     
    “H-hello? Are you still there? Please, you have to help me…I can’t move off of this seat and I don’t want to die,” the voice of the shaken man returned to the phone.
     
    “It’s ok,” Jake reassured. “You’re gonna be alright. What’s your name?”
     
    “Father D-douglas. He said that the…bomb was on a timer here. I think I have about six or seven minutes left before it goes off. Please…hurry.”
     
    “We’re on our way now.”
     
    Jake handed the phone to the chief and took off running. He still felt wobbly and beaten from his near-death experience, but the adrenaline spiking through his veins made him forget about his injuries. Stacey was right behind him as he burst from the house and out into the bright sun.
     
    Lunkster yelled behind them, “I’ll send rescue and have a couple of patrol units go with you to the church! Don’t let this asshole get away!”
     
    Jake popped the trunk of the cruiser started rifling through it. Inside was a toolbox that held basic bomb disposal tools and a pump-action twelve gauge shotgun. He took out both and tossed them into the back seat. Jake then flung the driver’s side door open on the old silver cruiser and wrenched the transmission shifter into drive. Two marked WPD patrol cars accelerated and passed them with a loud swoosh, headed to the church.
     
    “Damn. That was fast,” Jake said as he watched the vehicles move down the road, already several hundred feet past them.
     
    Stacey had barely even gotten inside and closed the door when he jerked the wheel all the way to the left and peeled out in spectacular fashion. The church wasn’t more than a mile away, all the way around a giant “U” that formed Birch Landing Road. The engine roared loudly and Jake flipped on the siren as they tore down the residential street at breakneck speed.
     
    “He must have run right through the woods to the church. Son of a bitch,” Jake yelled, angry and holding the steering wheel in a death grip with both hands.
     
    Stacey placed one hand on the dashboard to steady herself and pulled out her pistol with the other. In the rearview, she could see members of the SWAT team exiting the house and piling up into the van before they disappeared around the curve. The units in front of them skidded through the curve, leaving long black marks on the road.
     
    Within moments, Saint Paul’s Catholic Church appeared on the horizon. As they came closer, Jake steered the car up and over the curb and into the grassy front lawn, bouncing them up and down and tearing muddy ruts across it with the car’s spinning wheels. The patrol cars had already come to a halt at the front entrance and the officers were stepping out. Jake once again jerked the steering wheel hard and slammed on brakes, sending the car into a fishtail and past the parked patrol cars until it stopped completely with a loud bang, crashing hard enough into the giant brick stairway at the front of the church to buckle the rear door of the vehicle.
     
    An old man wearing a light brown coat and carrying a bible ran towards them from the parking lot, waving his arms frantically, shouting, “He’s got Father Douglas in there! He’s got a gun!”
     
    The two patrol officers ran in first, guns at the ready.
     
    Stacey had her door open first and was the next closest to