Slaughterhouse High Part 19

The squealer, the one named Pesky, skipped and danced around the room, hand-kissing stuff on the long counter and peeking into the mini-fridge. Pill caught glimpses of her: a s.h.i.+ny pink ribbon in s.h.i.+ny black hair, her creamy neck and lobe-flesh going by, the gleam of a pleased eye.

Pill was afraid one of them would fling open her closet door and she would get yelled at.

Flense called Pesky a teacher's pet. "you here cuz you kiss their big fat behinds all the time."

"Yep. No blood's gonna be spilled here. What the hey, they're not gonna you-know-what where they eat," said the other girl. "Well I guess, for form's sake and so they don't kill us 'n' s.h.i.+t for disobeying the rules, we ought to sit on the couch, under our number."

They quieted down and hugged a bunch. Among the rustle of dresses and the slaps and slurps and moans they gave out with, the deep-voiced one sometimes shushed the other and asked if she heard any screaming yet.

Pill hugged Gigi and pretend-whispered that these two were silly and a bother, and she hoped they would go back to the dance soon so she could curl up again in the stuffed chair and count the dots in the ceiling tiles.

Then a loud crack startled her. It sounded like a huge toaster popping bread.

The high-pitched one said, though not in reply to anything, "'Mjust askin'!" followed by "But you can'ta"!" which was cut off by a thud.

Pill hunched up tight and held her breath.

A weak no from Flense gave way to sounds of running and the rattle of a locked door. Then a louder series of no's pierced the air as she was struggled back across the room.

The hunching made Pill's shoulders hurt. She felt light and funny in her head.

She had to keep breathing. Had to trap her whimpers inside.

Through the thras.h.i.+ng, Pill moved her right hand to the closet k.n.o.b, grasped it, afraid it would creak. Then she froze her arm there. She had been ready to shut the door. But the noise gurgled away, and Gigi warned her not to.

Putting an eye to the crack, Pill saw a glove gripping a tiny pellet. The pellet was all swirly with mist. The gloved hand thrust it between the Flense girl's lips, fingers jammed in, abruptly, in an ungentle way like her old daddy shoving a pill into their cat Puff's pried-open jaws and forcing him to swallow.

Then the glove smacked Flense's face and was gone, and Flense fell out of sight, oddly quiet as the struggle stopped. "Wait!" she said. "What did youa"? Leave Pesky alone! Oh jeez, oh s.h.i.+t. Make it stop. Please make it stop." She sounded like she had bad tummy-ache pain, like she wanted to throw up but couldn't.

Someone fell like a sack of potatoes.

Dragging sounds outside.

Grunts of effort.

Pill was suddenly sure that the knocked-out Pesky was going to be shoved into the closet, and that the hurty man with the dark blue arms and the b.l.o.o.d.y workgloves was going to see her then and do really bad things to her.

Should she scream?

Could she get away if she darted out right now, clonked him with a chair or something, and broke down the door?

Then the shuffling sounds stopped.

The girl who'd been forced to swallow the misty pellet cried and moaned like wind in a lonely cave.

Pill could see the other one through the crack. Her skull knocked hard on the counter top. Then a shoof sounded, like some weird heavy car door closing in the distance, and the girl's face bunched up and opened wide into a scream like Pill had never heard before.

Pill started to s.h.i.+ver. She no longer trusted her hand on the k.n.o.b, but she didn't dare move it.

"My fingers!" came the high scream.

Pill remembered her mother working at that same counter, squaring paper on a green grid and clumphing a curved blade sharply down.

Pesky's face smeared out of the crack as she tried to tear away, but again she was grabbed, to judge from the violent waver in her voice, and the noise grew really loud and close. Pill's fingers flared with pain as the crack shut and the closet door slammed and darkness struck her like a heavy fist.

Pill heard whimpering. When she realized it was her own, she made it go away. Outside, dulled to cotton by the closed door, the fierce fighting went on.

She backed up against warm wood, touching it with one hand and hugging Gigi to her chest with the other.

An angled corner, pillows, her little nest. She inched downward, the walls sliding up around her, soft comfort beneath her as beyond the black m.u.f.fle the killing continued.

Go away, she prayed.

Go away, go away.

At the s.h.i.+te House, one side of the split-screen showed the scrubbed teens sitting beneath the number 57, the other the Home Ec teacher poised to spring open the metal panel above them.

She's closing in for the kill," murmured the announcer.

Secretary w.a.n.ker suppressed a laugh.

Prom night always fired up the President and his cabinet. The slaughter of the young fueled a year of decisions and proved far more effective a teambuilding effort than any touchy-feely retreat with teams of fake-empathetic facilitators.

To be sure, the cabinet secretaries' juices flowed free, and the naughtiness of their exposed lobes gave everyone that extra jolt.

But the real thrill lay in eavesdropping on two frightened kids thinking someone else had been chosen. And on a teacher who, for one evening of planned mayhem, dropped all pretense of caring for her snot-nosed charges.

It revived memories of their own proms even as it firmed up governmental resolve.

But tonight, thought w.a.n.ker, something new would be added to the mix.

As if that thought were a signal, the trap was sprung onscreen.

"There she goes!" screamed the announcer.

The blade flashed.

Out popped the Home Ec teacher. The wide-eyed boy sustained a lethal slash to the throat. His date, offering a feeble whine and a feint at struggle, joined him in death.

The beautiful brutality of it brought most of the cabinet over the top, though they were careful that their moans did not top in intensity those of President Windf.u.c.ker.

Holding back his own release, w.i.l.l.y w.a.n.ker spoke softly into his lapel mike: "Now."

The doors burst open.

Everybody turned in mid-spurt at the heavy tromping of boots, taking in a sudden rush of soldiers in camouflage, men and women not much more than high school age themselves, brandis.h.i.+ng knives and grimacing with resolve.

The stern-faced suits who tried to protect the President lost fingers to the downslash and were shoved out of the way by the sheer force of numbers.

Cholly Bork took a stab to the neck. The crossbarred airplane control that animated Gilly Windf.u.c.ker flew out of his hands, and the puppet leader collapsed. Beneath the pummeling, Bork went down, his arms flopping ineffectually this way as he tried to ward off the attack.

A crack crew lofted the inert president into the air. Snips at his strings. Snips where his limbs articulated. His arms and legs were pa.s.sed on to two solders a.s.signed to snap them over their knees. Others stomped on his head and torso, then tossed the bashed and broken parts into a waiting trash can for the bonfire w.a.n.ker had scheduled at midnight on the s.h.i.+te House lawn.

All of this a trio of filmers filmed, cameras perched like parrots on their shoulders, eyepieces to their eyes, close enough but not too close to be caught up in the melee.

So as not to detract from the slaughters being carried out across the nation, the footage would be aired on late-night news. This would be a capper, not a distraction.

So the Committee to a.s.sa.s.sinate the President had planned it, and so it would be.

w.a.n.ker was pleased with himself.

He was able then, at last, to relax into the ride of his o.r.g.a.s.m, his huddled privacy set aside for a brief instant as he moved into the flow and gave all he had for his country.

"I think we've made it," said Tweed, barely whispering. The darkened chem lab, with its odd stifle of odors and its solid workbenches, would suffer nothing louder.

Dex confided, "I think you're right."

"Did you hear screaming?"

"I might have." He gestured in the same direction she had fancied m.u.f.fled sounds coming from moments ago. "Off that way."

"Yes, just ringings in my ear," she said. "I thought I was only spooking myself."

It might be, thought Tweed, nothing but a shared deception. Right this moment, the square grate above Dex might be kicked spangling across the cla.s.sroom and the killing begin.

Or now. Or now.

But she felt a lifting in the lab, as if it and its ghostly pairs of seniors arrayed against the wall were being raised heavenward. Intuition, sure. But that was something she and her sister Jenna excelled in.

"I wonder who bit it," Dex said.

"I love you, Dex."

He looked into her eyes and smiled through a sadness, a good wish toward somebody now defunct. "Love ya, Tweed."

"No, I mean more than ever."

Relief flooded her body. Dex looked so good, so indescribably good, that she thought she might burst.

"I mean," a laugh escaped, his eyes steady on hers, "I mean," she said, putting her hands to the sides of his head, his earlobes warm between thumb and forefinger, "I mean I really sincerely truly love you, Dexter Poindexter."

Then her lips pressed against his.

His hand touched her back.

A lip tingle, like spot-on trombone playing but a kajillion times more gratifying, softened her. She grew moist as if Dex were fondling her, her earlobes beating hot with pa.s.sion.

Her fingertips found something smooth at his lapel. With a laugh, she broke the kiss.

"What?" he asked.

"You still have your sax strap on," she replied.

"Makes me feel saxy."

"Old joke." Bubbles of joy effervesced in Tweed's head.

"Besides," said Dex, "I knew, one way or the other, that we were going to survive this. I just knew it."

A bell shattered the silence, so loud and so sustained that gasps and shouts and a flurry of startled obscenities erupted in the cla.s.sroom.

Tweed hugged Dex anew, taking his friends.h.i.+p lobe between thumb and forefinger as though it were a fat velvet b.u.t.ton.

"Let's go," said Dex, helping her up. "Time to hunt for the victims."

Whichever couple found the dead folks first won some silly prize. But Tweed didn't care about that. She only cared that she and Dex were out of the woodsa"a murkier and more wicked place than she had imagineda"and she told him so.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," he said. "But let's get into the spirit of the thing anyway. We did it. We're survivors!"

"I've got to call Dad first."

Dex took her hand.

Futterware and cleavers swaying in tandem, they headed for the hall, which was already choked with kids on the move. This was the beginning of an unenc.u.mbered life together for her-and-Dex-and-whomever.

And it felt wonderful!

PART THREE.

The Game Changes.

The future smells of blood and leather, of G.o.dlessness and incessant whipping. Our grandchildren would be well advised to come into the world with extremely thick skin on their backs.

a"Heinrich Heine.

When you skin your customers, it's a good idea to leave a little skin behind to regenerate, so you can skin them again.

a"Nikita Khrushchev.