Follow in the life of Senior Constable Aaron “AJ” Joy as he patrols the streets of Salernum. A routine call-out to a house soon leads AJ down a dark path, where he will fight to keep the fires of his soul pure against the evils that threaten to take down his city.
CHAPTER ONE: RUN TO YOUR DEATH
Senior Constable Aaron “AJ” Joy of the Salernum Police Department (SLPD) was breathing hard.
His hands were slick with sweat, the cold metal of his BCM Reece-14 MCMR patrol rifle soaking up the excess fluids from his body. His heart was full of adrenaline, pumping furiously as it tried to keep up with his mental pace. His green eyes were darting everywhere, as he kept his black rifle punched out in front of him, his left hand working the pressure pad atop his rifle, the Surefire Light Pro torch illuminating dark corners.
Screams were mixed with sirens, disorienting AJ in the exact direction where they were coming from. The corridors that stretched out before him, felt like nightmarish tunnels that never ended, the cream lockers lining the walls like silent sentinels.
But his sense of panic mixed with duty drove him ever forward, his combat boots pounding down the hallway, as terrified eyes peeked through doorway windows like disembodied spirits.
As AJ rounded a corner, he heard a scream that was cut abruptly short by the crack of a gun.
This one was close.
Slowing down ever so slightly, but not to point where he lost his momentum, he raised the BCM and looking above the EOTECH EXPS Holographic sight, he still shuffled his feet quickly to where he heard the terrified scream.
Then, like a jump-scare out of a horror movie, a hooded figure with a cheap medical mask came rushing out in the corridor, the front of his black hoodie soaked with sweat and blood. His dark brown eyes were a mixture of glee, anguish and confused pain. He was giggling, and there was no mistaking the large Colt Python revolver in his hand.
The weapon’s silver finish was matted with the same dark red stains on the shooter’s hoodie.
AJ froze on the spot, and without hesitation, shifted his BCM into his shoulder and settled his green eyes behind the EOTECH’s iconic red ring and dot reticle. He heard his voice yell in a coarse and rough manner. Time slowed down as his brain processed everything at a speed unprecedented in its 27 years of living.
HANDS, HANDS, HANDS.
DROP IT RIGHT FUCKING NOW.
The hooded kid whirled around, and raised his gun at the blue uniform. There was a gleeful intent behind his brown eyes.
AJ squeezed the trigger 6 times without hesitation, the rifle rounds punctuating the corridor’s natural echo with their supersonic booms. AJ saw through the sight, how each round landed centre mass into the shooter, blossoming the chest with his blood instead of the innocent.
Heart, lungs, liver. thought AJ dispassionately as he saw where the 5.56mm rounds punched through.
Moving closer, he slammed his boot down on the hand that held the gun, and kicked the revolver far away. Leaving the shooter to his final moments, AJ looked into the classroom that he had heard the scream, hoping he wasn’t too late, but knowing better than to trust that hope.
The sun was shining bright through the windows, the whiteboard still messy with the maths calculations that were interrupted by alarms. Only a single girl was inside, her bloodied chest covered by her books and hands, long blonde hair covering her face. AJ could see the red spittle on her mouth, and his heart sank in despair. Her white top was turning red, and her tortured breathing barely masked her final sobs.
Bowing his head, AJ turned away and knew that there was nothing he could do. She was gone. He would learn her name later, when her parents screamed and yelled at him in agony and anguish. Madison Harris. 15 years old. Aspiring engineer. A long-crush time crush on Jack Hamill, her best friend who had to be stopped from going in, when he heard the shooting start.
She had arrived to class early, hoping to ask her maths teacher some questions about the upcoming assignment. Being early cut short her time.
AJ knew that there was still two more shooters out there. He had to prevent another tragedy to another family. Pushing away the tears that threatened to overwhelm him, AJ ran back out and noted that what was once was a threat, was now a cooling corpse.
Stepping over the dead kid, he started to run again. He could hear screams above him, of running footsteps, as people scattered and took cover from what sounded like a shotgun blast.
AJ sprinted faster than he had ever moved in his life, and as he reached the end of the corridor, he briefly scanned left and right to check the junction before taking the stairs to the next level, almost three at a time.
As AJ rounded the curve in the staircase, he looked up and saw another hooded figure leveling a shotgun at him from the top of the staircase.
The boom of the shotgun was deafening. But AJ was too fast, and the crater that would have taken out his right hip, instead blew open the wall behind him.
As the hooded shooter tried to rack in another round, AJ managed to clear the staircase, and without hesitation, rammed the Reece-14 muzzle into the shooter’s chest and squeezed the trigger as fast as he could pull it.
Blood blossomed out of the school shooter’s back, as nine 5.56mm rounds exploded out of his torso. The shooter buckled repeatedly as each round tore through his body, before crumpling into a bloody heap on the ground, his life expired within seconds. AJ looked down in vague horror at what he had done, the adrenaline coursing through his nervous system making the fact his body was moving without him.
His brain, having processed the number of rounds he had fired, moved his left hand down to the spare magazine in his back pocket, and he tac-mag the half empty one in his rifle in a practised motion. He then moved, without thinking to secure the shotgun, kicking it away from the dying teen.
Move AJ. There is still one more shooter out there! screamed his mind.
AJ buried his emotions again, and rushed down the corridor, where amongst the crying and the soft sobs, disembodied voices shouted at him.
That way! He went that way!
Please stop him. I’m so scared.
I just want to live. Why is this happening to us?
AJ kept pushing forward, surging through the corridors, his BCM held at high ready as he was guided by petrified sounds and voices. The nightmare had to end soon. He could feel himself starting to atrophy, the emotional trauma of what he had done and witnessed slowly getting through the shield of adrenaline.
A pair of double doors in front of him, suddenly burst open, and a stream of terrified teenagers ran through. At the sight of him, they stopped, frozen in fear. Ignoring their screams, and hands that grabbed at him, AJ used his left hand to clear them out of the way, his rifle held high in his right to avoid flagging and he burst through the same doors, to see a library, the shelves and books making it difficult for him to find the final shooter.
Peering desperately through the gaps of the shelves, AJ’s first clue presented itself audibly. A soft gasp, that could only come from someone’s hands choking a victim’s neck.
Spinning around to his right, AJ saw through a gap in the books, the final shooter in the corner, a young girl’s neck in his left elbow, and a 1911 pistol aimed squarely at her temple.
His hood had slipped down, and it showed a young kid, no older than 16, his dark eyes panicked and fearful. Tears were streaming down his brown eyes, and they were oddly in sync with his victim’s own sobs, a girl barely 15, her legs shaking in fear, her small hands on the shooter’s arms.
The right hand of the shooter that held the 1911 were quivering and there was no mistaking the fear that was dominating his every thought and action.
AJ leaned forwards and settled his green eyes behind the reticle of his EOTECH once more.
The red dot hovered exactly on the shooter’s head, inches above the soft brown hair of the girl.
DROP YOUR GUN, OR I’M GOING TO DROP YOU.
The shooter spun towards AJ, his eyes widening in shock as he noted the blue uniformed officer behind the shelves.
FUCK YO—
The shooter’s head snapped back, his grey brain matter spraying the back of the library’s walls. The single round echoed eerily in the silence that now signaled the end to the chaos. The schoolgirl collapsed to her knees, the relief of being alive too much for her small body to bear.
AJ flicked the safety on his rifle, and pulled her gently towards him, where she clung to his leg, her tears soon soaking his uniform.
His heart-rate still pulsing furiously, Senior Constable Aaron Joy reached for his radio and robotically reported in.
The female operator that answered him back was equally toneless. But she added one thing, that humanised the communication.
Good job officer. You saved lives today.
The compliment pierced through all the high stress and adrenaline, and AJ felt his emotions start to overtake him. Kneeling down, he hugged the girl tight to him, absorbing her tears as his own, as he whispered to them both.
It’s OK. It’s all over now. You’re safe now. It’s OK. You’re going to be OK.
AJ knew it was a lie. Nothing was going to be OK after this. But it still felt good to hear it. As the girl sobbed into his chest, AJ looked down at his watch, a simple blacked out Stirling Durrant, noting from the moment he rushed through the doors of the school, to this moment was only 14 minutes. 14 minutes … a length of time that would haunt him for the rest of his life, because he would forever wonder what happened if he could have cut it down more.
Slinging his rifle to the rear, AJ stayed with the girl, all the way until the SLPD SWAT team converged on his position, and began the tedious task of clearing every single classroom, every single corner, door, storage cupboard and hiding spot. She held onto his hand tight, as they both walked out of the Salernum Secondary Conservatory, escorted by paramedics who were busy giving them trauma care.
It was not until he loaded her onto the ambulance stretcher that she finally let go, her blue eyes thanking him for the rescue.
AJ merely nodded back in sadness, before sitting down on a bench in what was the common yard for the school, now an emergency centre for hundreds of first responders and traumatised kids.
Cradling his head in his hands, AJ took a ragged breath and closed his eyes. The emotions were now running rampant through his mind and there was no denying the trauma of what had just happened. He had killed 3 children. As sick, tortured and mentally ill as they were, taking the life of 3 young men wasn’t something you could brush off easily.
AJ’s mind began to work into over-drive, justifying his actions, replaying every single moment of the shooting, wondering what he could have done different, what he could have changed.
What if I had just sprinted a bit quicker? What if I hadn’t checked that room … Jesus AJ, why didn’t you check on those kids? I should have floored the car faster. Why did I spend so long on that body? I should have moved on quicker. If I had just sprinted down corridor a bit faster, she’d be still alive …
A weathered, leathered hand on his shoulder broke him away from his reverie. Looking up, AJ saw his Captain standing over him.
At 60 years old, Captain John Armstrong was a seasoned, fair and much beloved leader in the SLPD. A Gulf War Veteran serving in the famed USMC, Armstrong ran his department like the military captain he was in the 90s, engaging Iraqi soldiers. A broken office when Armstrong marched in, the SLPD was in major need of reform, with officers quitting or committing suicide at an unacceptable rate and public perception at an all-time low. Squad cars were frequently vandalised, rocks thrown at officers on patrol, and crime was rampant, with criminals so emboldened by the SLPD’s incompetence, that they were openly carrying firearms in their territory, dealing near major infrastructure and there were even rumours of a high-ranking mole in the office.
A fearless yet just leader, Armstrong championed the men and women under his command to perform at the best of their abilities, whilst prioritising moral and ethical conduct. Like a chaplain, every week on a Friday morning, Armstrong would gather his entire department and deliver an impassioned speech, highlighting good and bad behaviour from footage he had reviewed from every officer’s body cam, whilst surreptitiously transferring or firing the bad cops that brought others down, including the sergeant who was rumoured to be the mole.
His mantra, “you represent the best of society, which means you have to uphold your personal best” instilled in every officer a reminder to constantly train, and constantly review their own behaviour. In the SLPD shooting range, it was difficult to find a free spot, as so many officers would spend their off time practising their pistol and rifle skills. Even more difficult to book, was the monthly CQB shoot-house session that Armstrong would hire from his friends in the USMC, in which officers found the training immensely applicable in their day-to-day work, a fact that was bolstered by the decrease in friendly-fire incidents.
This weekly “police sermon” and supporting training regimes, resulted in a much better-behaved department. Men and women conducted themselves to a higher standard, and community relations rose after a slump. The pride and ethical morality that so often degraded in the job, was slowly being reinstated in the day-to-day work and behaviour of the SLPD’s finest.
John Armstrong was someone that AJ looked up to with a near religious reverence. It was Armstrong who originally championed AJ to sign up, having been an early proponent of the rookie who had just finished his college degree in criminology and now wanted to apply that knowledge in real time. If there was any advice that AJ wanted more right now, it was going to come from the grizzled former Marine.
Son, I want you to remember something. You did something good today. Look around you, son. Look at all these kids that get to go home, because of what you did. I’m proud of you Aaron. You did damn good today. Now the media’s going to hound you, but the department got your back. As of this moment, you’re going to go on administrative leave and take some time off. Use that time wisely son. Relive, process and settle. Make sure you do those things, in that order and we’ll see back here once you’re ready.
AJ shakily took a breath and nodded.
Thank you, sir.
No, thank you. You’re a credit to us all.
John Armstrong shook AJ’s hand firmly and squared up in a salute, that AJ promptly returned.
Rest easy, son. We’ll see you back soon.
~ Author’s Note
Am starting a new LEO (Law Enforcement Officer) story. Stay tuned for Part Two.
Damocles' Journal 