SUSAN BAILEY<br/><br/>The phrase 'all hell broke loose' is a really overused phrase isn't it? People say it to describe a rush in the January sales, or people arguing over petrol crisis pump queues or things like that. Well... in Rockford High's auditorium that early afternoon, I'm telling you, Hell really did break loose.<br/><br/>I have never seen anything like it in my life, nor ever wish to again. It was chaos. Complete pandemonium and I was scared. Scared to death. I admit it. I was shaking. There was an immediate stampede for the doors, not an orderly exit like you get with huge crowds at rock concerts where everyone is trying to get out of a few small doors but they wait their turn, no. Not like that. There was no waiting your turn here. People<em>ran</em>, people jumped over seats, people jumped<em>on</em>people still in their seats. People fought, I saw boys punching and pulling each other, girls too - fighting. I saw people screaming and stumbling and in the rush they couldn't get up. They were trampled, crushed, stamped on. I saw senior boys actually grab smaller girls who were in their way, punch them and hurl them aside. It was awful, just awful. I wanted to cry - I did cry. I wanted to throw up - I nearly did. I wanted to scream and shout and make them all hear me and stop, just STOP, but it was useless, everyone was screaming and shouting.<br/><br/>People who were classmates, team mates, groups - they formed groups and fought like this was a crazy online clan game or something. It was sick. I was so ashamed and upset, ashamed to be a person like these people. I wanted to curl up in a ball and wait until it had gone away.<br/><br/>From the moment people got up and started running I didn't see a single faculty member or hear one. No doubt they were at the exits trying to get people out or shouting for calm or making signals of which way to go but they were drowned out, or swept away or maybe crushed in the rush.<br/><br/>Our group was kind of lucky I guess. We were towards the front of the auditorium, maybe twenty rows back and in the middle of the rows of seats, so when people got up and started pushing past or climbing over seats they mostly went away from us to either side. Maybe that's how we got out, how we survived. Just pure luck of the time we entered the auditorium and where we sat.<br/><br/>I got up and turned round, trying to check where everyone was going too. Mel got up and said, "C'mon, this way! Rick! Su! Let's g~" she took two or three paces and vanished behind a group of people. I called for her and saw her arm wave above some heads then it was gone. I never saw her again. I called for her and called but my voice was almost inaudible in the screaming mass. I hope to God she got out.<br/><br/>"Oh shit! Shit! I need to find Todd!" Katie looked around but it was hopeless.<br/><br/><strong>"Get down guys! Let's wait! Katie! Wait!"</strong><br/><br/>"Mel! MEL! FUCK!" Rick got up and went after his girlfriend, he vanished in the mass of people climbing and jumping and tripping over the seats. There was a horrible crunching sound and some screams nearby. Did a seat row collapse?<br/><br/>To get up was certainly to get caught in the dreadful crush and maybe get trampled. To stay risked simply being trodden on or worse trapped and crushed under collapsed rows of seats. Katie and I just hugged each other and cried.<br/><br/>It seemed to go on a long time, a very long time. I felt thuds and bangs and awful stabs of pain to my back and shoulders as people used me for a stepping stone. Katie and I stayed down. In her lap she tried texting Todd. "Seat S21" "Seat S21" she kept texting every few moments. The label of the back of the seat in front of us was right by her face. I was impressed how she had a clear enough head to do that.<br/><br/>"Katie!"<br/><br/>"Todd!? Todd! Oh my God!"<br/><br/>"Katie! Here! Right here!"<br/><br/>Todd was there suddenly, he had a cut to the side of his head which looked bad and his knuckles were really grazed.<br/><br/><em>You punched people.</em>It was all I could think of.<em>You hit people. You fought. Your own school mates!</em><br/><br/>"We need to get out of here."<br/><br/>"I know!" Katie answered him.<br/><br/>"Have you seen any of the others? Anne or Syeda?" I asked.<br/><br/>"No. No-one. Just that gorilla Benson from the Shop. He had a fucking switchblade. I saw him stab Mr West when the teacher was telling people to form a queue. He just fucking stabbed him. Right in the chest."<br/><br/>"Oh my God!" Katie covered her face. I think I did the same.<br/><br/>"Bales!? Bales!? You there?"<br/><br/>"Syeda! It's Syeda! Over here!"<br/><br/>The Pakistani girl came over. She looked a mess. Her hair, normally long and black and pretty and sleek was all tangled and tugged and messy like someone had used it as a rope or something. Her tee shirt front was all ripped down and her bra straps torn off, I could see bruises on her shoulders where they'd cut into her before they'd parted. She was clutching the remains of her top over her chest. She was limping.<br/><br/><strong>"Oh God! Syeda! What happened?"</strong>I stood up and hugged her, clutching on tight. We hugged madly and cried.<br/><br/>"Look, we gotta get out of here! You can cry later!" It was Todd.<br/><br/>"How? The exits are all blocked?" Katie said.<br/><br/>"I'm in the drama group. Let's try the stage doors, I reckon few will try that way. Come on!"<br/><br/>By now the largest crush of people had left the centre of the huge room. At the main exits there were still large crowds screaming, yelling, fighting... tearing... Rockford High's main auditorium is a big room. It has to be to seat 3000. There were maybe 2000 people in there a half hour ago. The room is sited at the east end of the main building complex. There are four exits - at the west end the main doors which give onto a wide corridor which runs north-south. North towards the main school entrance on Ennerdale one way and south to the main block where the cafeteria and admin area is - lockers, nurses station, Principal's office, library. The south end of that corridor gives out to a T junction of a transverse corridor serving the classrooms and science labs that are strung out in a row running east-west on the side of the main complex away from Ennerdale.<br/><br/>There are two fire exits that go out the north wall of the auditorium and give onto the lawns and paths along the front of the school and get you onto Ennerdale Street. There's a fourth door which is on the south wall but that just goes into the store room. Here is where all the seating is kept when the auditorium is used for other events that require the floor cleared, like proms and such. All sorts of other kit and equipment is stored here too. Double doors lead into the store and another pair of double doors lead out onto the transverse east-west corridor between the science wing and the arts classrooms. Usually those doors are kept locked. I glanced over. That hadn't deterred some people from trying them. Others had apparently seen people at the doors and thinking only of escape had pushed in behind. Maybe the doors were locked, maybe they weren't but it didn't look like they'd been opened. Then I realised they opened into the auditorium. Of course, even had they been unlocked the people at them could never have pulled them open because of the people pressing in from behind. Against the doors was a ragged pile of what looked like discarded sports equipment, but I could guess what it was. I looked away almost ready to throw up.<br/><br/>Two thousand people had rushed for four double door exits. Some had got out, sure, the two sets of fire escape doors had opened and the main doors but even there a huge crush of people had caused many to be injured and trampled. The main rush had been towards the main door, naturally. I noted that the crowd still trying to get out the westernmost fire door was smaller than the other two. Fewer people wanted to get out nearer the rioters.<br/><br/>The four of us stood in a nervous, weeping huddle and then Todd, bless him, took charge.<br/><br/>"Stage doors. Come on." He took hold of Katie around the waist and I and Syeda hugged together too and we made our way along the tilted and bent seating rows to the aisles. On the floor at various places were what looked like bundles of dirty laundry... there was blood too, bare legs bent at unnatural angles, heads that were not round enough... I couldn't bear to look, it was too awful.<br/><br/>Even at the stage which is reached by two side sets of stairs there were people, unlike Todd had suggested. The stage wings were crowded too, here people milled about, nursed injuries and called hoarsely for friends.<br/><br/>God this was awful. This was going to go down in infamy as one of the worst disasters ever to hit any American high school. Why hadn't they got us out earlier? Why wait so late? Who had fucked up? Someone was responsible for this, for so many innocent dead and injured. I forgot my fear and upset and now just got angry.<br/><br/>"It's no good. Too many people. This way." Todd turned about and led us back down off the stage.<br/><br/>"Where? Where can we go?" Syeda looked exhausted and close to collapse. I hugged her more and held her up.<br/><br/>"Here. Under the stage." Todd ran across to the front of the stage wall in the orchestra pit. No-one was down here, it wasn't a way out... was it? He pulled at a recessed handle that was mounted on the stage's front wall and a door opened. It was a low cubby hole door about five feet high. The under-stage storage.<br/><br/>"There's no way out of there!" Katie said.<br/><br/>"Trust me. There is," Todd grinned, "Some of us drama guys go in there to chill and smoke weed and drink beer some afternoons. No-one knows of the service door at the far side."<br/><br/>"Smoking weed! What! You never told me about that!" Katie was indignant.<br/><br/><strong>"Now is not the time, Kate. Please. Let's go. Todd - lead on."</strong>I nodded at the boy and he ducked down into a stoop and went inside. To the left was a light switch and he flicked it on. Under here was all kinds of crap. Old seats, gym mats, stage flats from long forgotten Christmas plays, filing cabinets full of who knew what, old desks stacked in broken heaps. Dust and must and dank smells.<br/><br/>Todd led us right to the back and then turned right. He came across a small door under a few hot water pipes. Here it smelled even worse. There was the tang of suspicious cigarettes in the air.<br/><br/>"Jesus, Todd, if the teachers had caught you..."<br/><br/>"But they didn't. So its all good. C'mon."<br/><br/>Within a few minutes we were out in a small room that was a store of some kind. Todd went to the door but it was locked.<br/><br/>"Balls," he cursed and looked around. Back under the stage he came out with the broken steel leg of an old desk or something and smashed it through the upper glass half of the door. He used the leg to break out all the glass and hammer the jagged bits flat so that we now had a door with a big rectangular hole in its upper half. Katie grabbed a chair and put its back to the door as a step. Todd went through, got a chair from the classroom beyond and made a step down the other side. Within a couple of minutes of struggling Syeda through the hole we were in a room I didn't recognize. Outside in a hallway there was shouting, running and the sounds of breaking glass.<br/><br/>"Old faculty lounge. Now disused. Part of the stage and drama store. Now for this door I have a key!" Todd held up a key with a grin. For a nerd he was pretty resourceful.<br/><br/>"Where'd you get that?" Katie asked him. It looked like she was discovering New And Interesting Things about her boyfriend today as well.<br/><br/>"Never mind," he replied. He still clutched the table leg like a club. A weapon. He moved to the door.<br/><br/><strong>"Wait,"</strong>I called,<strong>"Katie, here, just hold Syeda a moment."</strong>I went back across the chair steps and ducked back under the stage. I had seen them as we passed... yes, there they were. An old cloth bag with baseball bats in. What they were doing in the drama group stores and not in the sports equipment shed I had no idea. Perhaps an old school play that needed them as props? They were old wooden bats, hickory and stamped with the Rockford High Crest. Hard as steel. Maybe dumped when the school moved to aluminium bats. I didn't care. I grabbed three of them and scurried back to the others.<br/><br/><strong>"Here,"</strong>I said, offering one to Katie and one to Todd. Katie took one.<br/><br/>"I'm fine with this," Todd responded wielding his steel table leg through the air like he was in a martial arts movie. I wondered what we were doing. Were we trying to defend ourselves from the rioters (no<em>way</em>was I going anywhere near them) or from our own school mates? Todd unlocked the door.<br/><br/>We had come out at the very far or east end of the transverse corridor that ran away west towards the science and arts rooms and then to it's T junction with the main admin corridor. There was almost no-one around. They had all gone north to the fire doors or west to the main doors. A few people were here, running about, heading for exits. A couple were carrying crude weapons such as we were but most were just thinking of escape.<br/><br/><strong>"The bleachers. My car. Let's go,"</strong>I said and we hurried towards the T junction. The door opposite the T gave out onto the sports field and a way out of this nightmare.