33
Ranger James Stone entered Nationals Park through a cargo door in the back. He simply hooked his legs through the metal rods that dangled beneath a beer truck and openly invited himself to a free ride. Once he was inside the major league baseball stadium’s huge warehouse, he simply rolled out and stood as though he had been walking beside the truck. No one even took notice.
Making his way into the ball park stands above, James observed a medium sized fan whose plate was loaded with fresh nachos. James observed the greedy manner in which the guy stuffed his mouth. The man appeared to be well dressed and he seemed to be unshaven on purpose. James noticed that he was deadly fat, and happy as a bed bug as he waddled his huge frame forward into the ball park’s seating.
Down below the athletes were slamming fists and balls into their gloves, waiting for the game to begin. As James walked down the outer aisles, he stuffed the empty seats with pamphlets discussing Obama Care in negative terms and stating that Americans would never sleep as long as the Obama Care scandal continued to kill their beloved mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers.
James noticed the beautiful grass down below blowing in the wind. Their tiny waving blades of deep green instantly triggered his sniper specialist training. They indicated exactly how much he’d have to correct for air flow to accurately shoot his targets. To James it was just one more easy piece of cake in a long list of recent take downs.
James made his way to the top rows, where he checked things out to see if any guards were around, then positioned himself behind a wall of advertising signs that stood in the area of the National and American League score boards. He selected a particularly dark area where he could not only hide but rest his sniper rifle on a railing to stabilize his aim. In addition, this would place James in a dark shadow where no one in the stadium would ever see him as he methodically completed his deadly extermination spree.
The national anthem was announced and a war team of several armed and uniformed fascists marched forward as the voice in the speakers praised American glory in the middle eastern wars which cost Americans trillions of dollars and had gone on and on without end for years and all for nothing. The fans cheered and stood. As the team of singers began, James shot into the crowd with his silenced sniper rifle. He gently squeezed off shot after shot, connecting with the fans right atop their hearts where their hands had been placed in respect for their national anthem. In this way, his bullets entered their reverently placed hands then sliced through them and into their splintering ribs and then down even deeper into their warm, beating hearts below.
The instantly dying fans slowly slouched to the floors and across the chair backs as though they had fainted. Each victim had that one nail hole in his hand where the bullet rang true before passing through their ribcage and entering their hearts. In the two minutes that the anthem rang out, James shot 87 fans through the hand and heart. At that point, the stadium became quiet. Suddenly, the fans covered in blood splatter and standing above the dead and dying victims burst forth in a howling chorus of terrified screams. James continued firing his silenced shots again and pushed in more and more magazines as his rifle spat its deadly bees into the crowded seats. He aimed them into the foreheads of the American patriots down below and across the field. He was soon killing hundreds of them.
It was now becoming quite obvious to almost every person in the stands that something was dreadfully wrong. The fans in several areas that James had hit hard ran up the stairs and out of the stadium, dragging their children with them by their tiny hands. James shot several of these mothers and fathers at the top of the stairs just to stop them, blocking the exits to those trying to escape from below. To increase the terror he aimed at their children and shot them in their heads. The stadium began to panic even more as fans either ran to the sides for another exit or squeezed themselves under their seats to hide.
Stone felt his rifle heating up from the fast discharge and ejection of bullets. The heat made the Browning Fifty easier and faster to operate. James plugged more and more bullets into the fans. The small amount of sound his silenced sniper rifle made was over-ridden by the screams and yells of the hysterical Nationals fans as they tried to extricate themselves from James’s deadly pounding bullets that fatally wounded the trapped and bewildered fans one after the other. In another seven minutes, the stands were even more alive with screaming. People pushed their fellow fans to the side, attempting to walk over them, and scramble into the increasingly scarce exits in the shortest possible time. Some were rapidly walking on top of the rows and heading in all directions to reach their exits before being shot.
You bastards will pay, James thought to himself. My son’s death will be avenged as long as I can make it happen!
James’s rifle popped again and again as the announcer’s voice asked for calm and told the people to proceed to the exits in an orderly manner.
Next, he took out the honor guard. Their flags fell to the ground alongside them in reddened cloth clumps. That particular stroke of sniping genius sent even more horror into the already frightened fans below.
In the end, the stairs and seats were blood stained with spraying micro-pellets of gore. The TV cameras surveyed the on-going mayhem, and the official play-by-play broadcaster told the fans listening on radio and watching on television how, “Something seems to happening here. It seems that a sniper is shooting down fans right and left all over Nationals Park. The fans are dropping to the ground in large numbers. My God, the humanity! Look at that! The sniper has even killed the honor guard! I have never seen anything so hideous and disgusting in my entire lifetime of sports announcing.
I am praying that these fans who are badly wounded are going to survive this awful mass murder attempt. Look! Those that ran onto the field to escape are also being shot. They are falling down within ten feet of third base! Now some have gone down right behind home plate! Oh my god! This is a national tragedy of immense proportions. I am not sure how many fans are either wounded or dying at this very moment. It could be in the hundreds, maybe even more, and it’s still going on. The bullets are silent. We cannot hear anything until a well aimed bullet smashes into a luckless fan with a sickening thump. This horrible sound of flesh yielding to a madman’s bullets is terrible. This is worse than a Jason horror flick. I know instinctively that it is going to haunt me for the rest of my of life.
“If you are religious in any way, please pray for all of these victims. They seem to be falling like flies out there, and nowhere in National Park is it safe at this point. Oh my God! Is it ever going to end? It is going on and on and on! The blood is splattering here and there and just about everywhere and even those who are not yet shot are covered with the stuff as they make their way toward the exits and fields. Pray for them out there. Pray for us all. Who knows? I might be next. And there’s no way to even hear where the shots are coming from. We are all in the dark as far as the gunman or gunmen are concerned. We don’t know where they are or where to hide.”
The voice of the Nationals Park loudspeaker again urged the patrons not to panic, but to continue to exit in an orderly fashion, but for those whose loved ones had already died, it was too late. They were fighting and doing whatever they could to get out of the various killing areas inside the stands where death and dying was all around them.
“Thump! Thump!”
The bullets clattered through the fans for eight or nine minutes. Then, all of a sudden, they stopped.
The stadium had become an even louder and seething sea of screams and cries. The countless wounded lay dying while their friends and families called for a doctor, a refrain which the voice of the stadium's loudspeaker soon took up saying, “If you are a doctor, please treat these people. Please come forward and help them! If there is a doctor, please come forward and help!”
The broadcasters put out the call on live radio and television to hospitals and ambulances to come immediately, to bring their doctors, medical bags, nurses, supplies, and whatever staff members
they could muster to Nationals Park to help the hundreds of dying persons who were being shot from nowhere by an unknown shootist.
“If you are at a hospital or a doctor’s office, please ask the doctors and nurses to leave now and to proceed directly to the Nationals Park. Come now, because there are too many to be taken to hospitals. These people require immediate attention. Please, doctors and nurses, bring all of the necessary tools and drive right away to Nationals Park where you are sorely needed.”
They came by the hundreds. A massive onslaught of specialists from all over Washington, whether from private, public, and military hospitals. All of them moved rapidly toward the scene of overwhelming tragedy at the baseball park.
At CNN, smart phones and digital cameras held by fans transmitted picture after picture of the dead and dying. The indy press was also abuzz. HD videos of the panic and fan reaction surged across the nation’s computer and TV screens from video phones. Their owners cowered, took pictures, and realized these might be the last few minutes of their lives.
The nation’s gaze was riveted on Nationals Park and the dying fans sprawled in the chairs and across the aisles.
At Fox News, the announcers were ranting about terrorism coming to the United States, saying, “It hit the Boston Marathon and now it has raised its ugly head at a place more American than apple pie. It has struck at the fans watching a major league baseball game, and it has done so right in the heart of the nation’s capitol. It seems that no one is safe from terror this summer. Look at these pictures and videos. They are pouring into our studios second-by-second, and we are going to bring them to you unedited as we receive them as we try to bring you the rapidly breaking news of this tragedy. I want to warn those who have family members attending this game that it might be very inappropriate of your children or yourselves to be watching this right now in case a member of your family has been shot in this melee. If your family members are in Nationals Park, please turn off your TV set. That is my best recommendation. But for the rest of us, these instant HD videos and photographs of the developing news of a significant tragedy are unprecedented in their ability to instantly bring home to us what real Americans like ourselves are experiencing there at National Park at this very moment and the feelings they are expressing at this very terrifying national tragedy.
“The gunfire which no one heard actually, if first reports are correct, may indicate that some type of silencer might have been used allowing the people in the stands to be shot out of nowhere one after the other with no gunshot sounds ever being heard. Evidently, the killer or killers, we are not sure how many are involved, have not been identified. They are still at large. The situation remains very dangerous.
“Everything is so sketchy right now. Is the shooting over? Will it start up again? We just don’t know. This is a developing story. It is another tragedy for America. It is possible that high level politicians at this game were targeted, we just do not know yet. It has been rumored but not yet verified that some high level government figures and their families may be among the stricken.”
A photograph of a parent holding her young daughter covered in blood and screaming was plastered across the TV screen. “This woman is obviously distraught. We are not sure if this is her child. However, it is a child whether hers or someone else’s, and she is overwhelmed with emotion, grief, and a sense of loss. Look at her face. This just so awful. Now, we are going to the white house where a statement is going to be made.”
The president walked into the white house press room where he stood for several minutes, looking at the press members. He waited for them to become totally still so that he could speak to them.
“My friends, we have been witnessing another tragedy of immense proportions. I have had to speak with you concerning many similar tragedies of late. First of all, let me express my condolences to all of those whose family members were injured or killed in this senseless act of domestic violence. Even with such powerful tools as the Patriot Act, NDAA, and NSA, we have suffered another shocking and terrible incident as well as other shootings in public places of late. I think I can speak for all of us in asking for your prayers for the victims and families whose lives have been so seriously affected here at major league baseball’s Nationals Park. We shall not allow these activities to end our American way of life.
“I ask you to be careful when you leave your home, work, or school today and in the future, because these tragedies can happen to you or to anyone close to you. I have signed an executive order closing all public events today. All such places where people gather including restaurants are being asked to close down, until we assess what to do tomorrow and for the days to come. We want to insure the American people that these venues are once again as safe as they can be. We need to find out how these persons got into the stadium without being seen and stopped.
“I have asked experts in all areas to determine better answers to making certain that another act like this is stopped before it happens, once and for all. I never want to preside as your leader at a mass murder like this ever again, and I will try my best to insure that this cannot happen to our people either now or in the future. Thank you.”
A question came forward from a reporter, “Mr. President, do you think this is another atrocity meant to avenge the death of a family member who was denied health care by the present administration?”
“I certainly hope that is not the case. Next question.”
“Mr. President, what are you doing, if anything, to change America’s approach to medical care including the role of the profit-driven American insurance industry concerning what is happening right now? Will there be a change in policy as a result of these horrible murders by disaffected family members?”
“The government will not be railroaded by terrorists of this ilk,” President Obama said. “We will not back down in cowardice, but we will care for the people of this nation in a forthright and honest manner as we have always done. Everyone seeking care will be given care. Every operation on an American citizen that is necessary will be approved and given in a very timely manner. I will not allow anyone to go untreated, nor will I allow delays in treating these cases. I intend to erase all stumbling blocks to patient care and to end all delays in receiving it. This is my promise to you. The American people shall be treated with respect. All manner of treatment will be approved wherever warranted by each patient’s diagnosis. No one will be deemed too old to be treated. I am issuing an executive order to this effect tonight.”
“Will you attend a mass funeral for these sports fans?”
“Yes. I will attend their funerals and memorials, and I will do so at the National Cathedral here in Washington and another one at Nationals Park itself. I will appear anywhere and everywhere that I am needed and no terrorist, no matter how brazen or cowardly, shall hinder me in carrying out my mandate for representing the great people of this nation.”