Kurt pulled his knees further into his chest, sickness rising again in his stomach, wanting to bury his face, but not daring to cover his eyes. His heart was racing; the blood booming so loudly in his ears. His eyes were overflowing with tears of fear and shock, sliding and dripping from his pale face onto his heaving chest. He held one bleeding hand in the other, laced around his legs. But he was silent, as silent as he could be, fighting the urge to bite through his own lip. The small jut of wall behind his bowed back was painted and cold, the small ridges left by the brush and rollers finding their way through his shirt to irritate and scratch. The floor was as it had always been, poured, rubbery, with that ugly, blotchy colour pattern.

“School,” he tried to tell himself. “This is school.” The classroom door his shoulder was leant against loomed over him as if to reinforce the statement. One dry heaving sob escaped Kurt’s shuddering mouth before he could stop it, and he froze. Listening.

But at this moment there was silence. No shouting, no screaming. It was like that tiny period after the bell rings for a holiday, when everyone’s gone except for the boy who forgot one book. Kurt edged a centimetre to his left and risked a glance down the hallway, past the row of lockers in front of him. The light was fading outside and in; at this time of summer no-one bothered to turn on the lights, everyone was gone before it got dark. “But not today,” thought Kurt. “Jesus, not today.” Another tear escaped his eye and slid down his cheek. Any other day.
Nothing moved in the half light of the hallway before him. But the silence and stillness was terrifying; predatory. Because he was out there somewhere. The man. Kurt didn’t dare to turn around and glance around the corner behind him. To his left a few tiny embers of light suddenly flared in the fading light of the sun: broken glass, flung so far by the force of the bullet which had shattered the pane of glass in the door to the room two down from Kurt’s hiding place. The door that had been behind Kurt; behind him when he’d heard that unfamiliar voice at the opposite end of the corridor, turned, seen that unfamiliar face.

Kurt’s mind roved over those few images in his mind. The man’s face. He remembered the twisted pain of it. How his gut had swung to sympathy, how he’d put one foot forward to go to him and help him, how his mouth had opened for that first question: “Hey, are you ok, sir?” He hadn’t got past the ‘h’. Kurt’s mind opened before him as he saw again the man pull and lift from behind his back that awful looming shape, slowly, so slowly, and with such intent. Kurt hadn’t known what it was at first. Not until the man aimed, and the glass over Kurt’s shoulder had shattered into a million pieces. The crack of the gun and the dead quavering ripple of the man’s voice played over and over again in Kurt’s ears: “Boy. Where is everybody?”
-
Blunt pains. They jar through both of Kurt’s elbows as he flings himself down the corridor to his right. He hears the sound of himself hitting the floor, like an afterthought, as the echo of the shot shakes the entire building. Shock. Pale, hard shock judders through his mind, paralysing him. His eyes take in that he’s on the floor, face to face with salmon pink squares and mint diamonds. But then there’s a slight tremble in the floor beneath him. Two noises travel down the hallway and around the corner to his final resting place. Clack…clack…Shoes; hard shoes. Towards him. And the voice again. “Boy? I asked, where is everybody? I know your listening.”

And suddenly Kurt’s no longer frozen. He’s crawling, on all fours, running. Away. But the shoes follow him, and he realises he won’t make the corner before the man, and the gun, reach his corridor. He throws his head, left, right. There…Three strides ahead, on the right, an opening in the wall of lockers. Kurt stumbles the distance, and throws himself into it. And slams against the door. The thuddddd of it echoes just as the bullet did. The handle. He fumbles with it. Up. Down. Nothing happens; it’s locked. He beats it with his fists, fear cramping at his muscles and his heart. His hand catches on the nameplate of the door; it tears a slice of skin from his palm’s side.

The shoes reach the bend. They crunch on the first shards of glass. This is it.

But a door slams. Somewhere in the distance. In the distance above Kurt, above and behind the man, back down the hallways, up the stairs, and leaves silence behind it.

Everyone has stopped moving.

“Kurt?”

The shout is short and wary.

“Kurt? Was that you? Are you ok?”

It distorts in reaching them, but Kurt knows this voice. Blaine. His reflection in the window of the door, pressed against the end of the lockers, begins hyperventilating. The voice moves slightly closer; still at some distance. Kurt’s mind sees Blaine, jacketed, tied, shining, walking slowly down the corridor from the choir room, alone, glancing forwards and sideways at the empty, unfamiliar school.

“Everyone’s waiting. Where are you?”

In the short silence Kurt’s heart beats twice. No, Blaine. Stop. There’s a faraway creak that Kurt recognises. The cafeteria doors. Then the swoosh-thump as they close.

Thank God.

But what Kurt can't see is the light which ignites in the eyes of the man at that echoed fifth-from-last word. Everybody. Just what he wants. Just his chance. The glass squeals, cracks, tears at the floor as his booted feet twist to face the way he came, his arm swinging his precious implement after him. “Welcome me back, McKinley…”

And Kurt hears the whisper, and the changing direction of the shoes as they pass down the hallway, gradually loosing sound to the air. Fear, more fear than he’d ever felt before in his life, more than he’d felt in all these last seconds together, clogs his mind. Blaine. Everyone. He knew that the ‘everyone’ was only the kids from glee; they were the only ones left in school because they’d come in for a late rehearsal in this last week before Nationals, with Blaine coming along to listen. All he was doing down this hallway was going to get their music from the auditorium. Blaine. They were supposed to be going to dinner afterwards. Blaine. Kurt had been looking forward to it all week…Tears streamed freely down his face now. Almost overwhelmed with terror, Kurt began to shake. Blaine.

He could hear nothing now, couldn’t tell if the man was gone, if he had stopped, if he…if he…if he’d gone up the stairs…In his mind again he saw the short route from his hiding place, down the twists of the hallways to the stairwell, one flight up to the cafeteria, one hall length to the choir room…

No…no…he had to do something, had to warn them, had to get help…a gunman, a gunman in their school…the two words sounded so incongruous to his mind, to his world…Kurt had almost died. He felt weak, felt sick at the thought. An image of his jacket and bag, phone, keys, everything, comes forward in his mind. All left in the practice room.

His mind starts to race out of his own control. A horrible taste rises in his throat; he can’t get enough air. One noise comes from the far end of the corridor; a single step, like an afterthought. Then another. Prayers and curses fall silently from Kurt’s trembling lips. His heart beats against his ribcage like it would tear through the skin. Panic and fear go to overwhelm him.

Three shots ripped into the cream plaster of the wall above Kurt’s head, shattering dust down upon him. Three beats. Three moments as the shoes moved away again. Kurt blacked out.
-
He didn’t know how much later it was when he woke, curled against the door, blood lacing his hand. But one word filled his mind and his heart. Blaine.