Harry Truman High School - 11:26 AM

     Peter Benton felt like he was going crazy.

     It had been almost ten minutes since the last group of kids had come out of the building.  The criticals had been assessed and either driven or flown to County; the minors had been bandaged up and taken to LakePoint and Mercy if they required further attention; the uninjured were being gathered in the gymnasium across the street.

     There was nothing to do now but wait.  And Peter Benton wasn't very good at waiting.

     He hadn't seen Carter since his stunt in the window.  Benton insisted on calling it a stunt, insisted on believing that what Carter had done had been stupid and foolish.  It somehow made the insanity going on around him easier to handle if he convinced himself that it hadn't been necessary for Carter to stay inside.  Being angry with Carter was easier than trying to understand why those boys were shooting their classmates and teachers.

     The surgeon paced up and down behind the ambulances, glancing every now and again in Mark Green's direction.  They hadn't spoken since they had seen Carter climb back inside, and Benton didn't think they should.  They were of two seperate minds on Carter's actions this morning.  Benton took the position that Carter should have come out and gotten his own injuries attended to, leaving the heroics to the men who were trained for it.  Green had begun lauding Carter as a hero of the type you just didn't see any more.

     Benton spared a glance at the roof of the gymnasium as he flopped his suddenly weary body down on the curb.  He knew there were men up there with guns waiting for a chance to shoot.  The gunmen had so far kept themselves away from the windows, with the exception of the library on the second floor, but they had pulled the shades down across the windows in there.  If those shades went up, Benton knew that the men on the roof of that building would open fire.

     What if Carter was in the way when they did?  What if he was already dead?  What if the wound in his arm was worse than he had thought, and he was lying alone in there, bleeding to death?

     Peter Benton was a surgeon.  He saved people's lives.  He put them back together when they were broken and bleeding, and then he sent them off with the nurses.  He didn't think about what their feelings were, or wonder how they were ever going to live with what had happened to them.  Never considered what their reactions were going to be, or worried about the nightmares they'd have.

     Except for John Carter.

     When it had been John Carter lying on that operating table in front of him, under his hands, all of those things had been swirling through Benton's mind.  Why had it happened?  How had it happened?  Could he have prevented it?  Could anyone have?  How would he go on if Carter died?

     It had been the last question that had driven him to the brink of panic in the operating room that night.  He had been so frantic to save the young man that he'd been not only willing, but insistent, that Dr. Anspaugh let him remove one of his kidneys.  The older surgeon had kept his head together, though, yelling at Benton to slow down and think.  But Peter didn't want to think.  It was thinking that was making his hands move faster than he had known they could.  It was thinking that was clouding his mind, overwhelming him with emotions he'd never felt during surgery before.  It was thinking that had made him realize that he wasn't trying to save John Carter just because he could.

     He was saving John Carter because he needed to.

     He had to.

     He suddenly realized, after almost eight years, that he needed him.

     Peter sighed and closed his eyes, leaning his head into his hands.  He had tried many times since then to figure out just what his relationship with, and dependence on, Carter was.  There were times that he had seriously disliked the younger man, been annoyed with him, irritated by him, jealous of him.  But every time he had a problem to deal with: when his mother died, when Dennis Gant died, when he broke his hand punching a salesman, when his appendix needed to be removed, when Reese had almost died...  Every time Peter Benton turned around, Carter was standing right behind him.  He had tried time and again to make the young man go away, but Carter never had.  He had always been there.

     And then it was Carter's turn to push Benton away.  Benton tried so many times during those months after his stabbing to get the younger man to open up, had asked him so many times if he was certain he was all right, if he was sure that he was ready.  Carter had always answered with "I'm fine," and Benton had gone on, convinced that if there really was a problem, Carter would talk to him about it.  He'd been so wrong.  And he had almost lost Carter again.

     He still didn't completely understand why he had gotten on that plane.  Carter was hurting and needed his help.  Carter had never left him alone when he needed help, and he was damned if he was going to abandon him.  So many people had asked him about his relationship with the young man.  Cleo had gone so far as to tell him that she thought he was wasting his time with him.  But he kept going back.  Carter had been standing behind him through everything for eight years.  Peter Benton would do the same for him for at least that long.

     Were they friends?  He honestly didn't know.  He had never really had time in his life for friends, and he didn't remember ever having any.  But if he did have one friend on the face of the planet, John Carter was it.

     Mark Green sat down beside him, rubbing his hands together.  "Crazy day, isn't it, Peter?"

     "Yeah," Benton answered, raising his head from his hands.  "Crazy day."

     Mark glanced over at him, then reached out and tapped his fist against the surgeon's knee.  "He's all right, Peter."

     "I know."

     "There's a lot of heroes around here today," Mark commented with a smile, leaning back on his hands.  "A lot of heroes."

     Peter sighed.  Mark was right.  There were a lot of heroes.  Some might even consider him to be one.  "Only one real one," Benton answered softly, gazing in worry at the window Carter had been sitting in only an hour before.  "There's only one real one.  And he's my best friend."



     Carter didn't exit the stairs on the second floor, as he had been intending to do.  He kept running, taking the stairs two at a time, until he reached the entrance to the third floor.  He could hear footsteps behind him, coming up the stairs after him.  He bolted into the hallway, and started yelling.

     "Get out!"  he yelled, slamming his fist against the lockers as he ran.  "Everybody out!  Get out of here!  Get out of here now!!"

     He saw the doors opening, and a flood of students and teachers filled the hallway, looking around them in uncertainty.  "RUN!!" he screamed at the top of his lungs.  "They're right behind me!  Run!  Get out!  Get out of the building!!  GO!!!"

     He saw the teachers suddenly take command of the situation, leading their classes to the nearest exit as quickly as they could.  The crowd in the hallway was thinning, and John glanced back down the stairs.  They were on the landing right below him now, screaming and cursing at him to shut up.

     "You're dead!" the leader bellowed.  "Son of a bitch!  You're dead!!"

     "RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" John screamed again, pushing his way past the last of the stragglers.  "Get the hell out of here!!  RUN!"  Carter kept running, glancing behind him.  The hallway was suddenly empty, with the exception of the two very angry young men who had emerged from the stairs.  They were running after him, their guns raised at his back.  He turned back around and pushed himself to run faster.

     He heard the bullets whizzing past him, slamming into the floor behind and beside him, heard the glass in one of the trophy cases shatter as he ran past it.  He reached out and grabbed the frame of the door that led to the stairs, using it as a pivot so he could turn without slowing down.  He ran down a few steps, then placed his right hand on the concrete bannister, kicked his legs across the top, and jumped.

     He stumbled a bit when he landed on the stairs below, but recovered quickly and dashed into the hallway.  He had bought himself a few more seconds, but not many.  He didn't have time to clear this floor as he had the one above.  Glancing around himself frantically, he saw the door to the girls' restroom, and pushed the door open, nearly collapsing on the floor once he was inside.  He pushed himself to his feet again, and dove into one of the stalls, closing and locking the door behind him as he climbed up on to the stool.

     It suddenly ocurred to him that if there was only one stall locked, they would know which one he was in, and he climbed down from his hiding place.  He lay down on his stomach on the floor and pushed himself under the metal that divided one stall from the next, pausing just long enough to reach up and close and latch the door before moving on to the next.  When he had latched the last door, he pushed himself back into the one beside it, and stood.  He climbed up on to lid of the stool as he had before, pulling his right foot up just as the door to the restroom burst open.

     "He has to be in here!" he heard the boy yell.  "There's no where else he could have gone!"

     Carter was crouched on the stool in the second stall from the windows, his back pressed against the one behind him, his left hand on the wall behind the toilet and his right hand on the door.  He closed his eyes and willed his heart to slow down, convinced that it was beating loudly enough for them to hear it.  He heard the boys walking slowly in front of the bank of stalls, testing each door, only to find them all locked.  He held his breath as he saw the shadow on the floor in front of the door to his hiding place, and then leaned his head back and closed his eyes as the boy moved on.

     "We know you're in here, Mister," the boy began, and Carter was again struck by how young his voice sounded.  It still cracked on a few words here and there.  How much life did this boy have ahead of him when he got out of bed this morning?  How much did he have in him now?

     "We're not stupid.  We know you're in here because there's no where else you could have gone so fast.  Locking all the doors was a cute idea.  But that doesn't mean we still can't shoot you."

     Carter jumped when the gun went off, but managed not to cry out in surprise.  The sound of the bullet tearing through the metal of the stall furthest from him was unmistakable, as was the boy's intent.  This child was going to shoot through every door in the room until he shot him.

     Carter looked around frantically as he heard another shot.  There was no where to hide.  If he tried to run, they would see him.  If he stayed where he was, they would shoot him.

     'High school boys don't do this!' his mind screamed at him.  High school boys played basketball and video games, took their girlfriends to McDonalds and cheap movies on Friday nights, went to football games and school dances, listened to old Duran Duran songs and watched television.  High school boys drove beat up old cars, worked at gas stations and grocery stores, and dreamed about Natalie Portman and Jennifer Love-Hewitt.  High school boys did NOT run around their high school shooting people!

     Another shot, another bullet, another hole in another door, this time the one right in front of him.  He was out of time.  There was no where to run, no where to hide, no way to escape what he knew was coming.  Carter took his left hand off of the wall and put it in his mouth, closing his eyes and praying that the bullet he knew was coming didn't hit anything vital.

     The pain he felt as the bullet ripped through the side of his thigh was unlike anything he had ever felt before.  He bit down on his hand as hard as he could to keep himself from crying out.  He felt his leg start to shake, threatening to throw him off balance on his perch, and he shifted his weight to his right hand, praying that his arm didn't give out.  Tears were rolling down his cheeks, and his mouth was full of blood.  He'd bitten his hand so hard that he'd drawn his own blood, and his jaws refused to let go.

     He hardly heard the last shot rip through the door of the stall behind him, barely heard the boy speak again.  "Damn.  Guess he's not in here after all.  Go get Donnie.  Round everybody on this floor up and put them in the library.  We'll have to find this asshole later."

     'Just hold on,' John told himself.  'Just wait till they're out the door.  Then you can lose it.'

     He heard the footsteps moving away from the stalls.  'Too slow.  They're moving too slow!  I can't take this any more!'  Then they opened the door and walked out, letting it close slowly behind them.  They were gone.

     "Oh God!" he cried out softly, taking his hand out of his mouth and throwing his head back.  His right arm started shaking, unable to support his full weight for any longer, and it gave out, sending him crashing to the floor.  He pulled his leg up to his chest, wrapping his arms around his thigh, and rolled on to his back.  "God that hurts!"  He started to cry again, not bothering to try and stop it.