Slaughterhouse High Part 38

Futzy felt no cause for confidence.

Yet oddly enough he was confident.

He looked forward to tossing Trusk and Torment out of his life for gooda"they would be amazed at the new vigor in him as he threw their sorry a.s.ses off the front porcha"and installing Adora Phipps there instead.

She would glow.

So would he.

And Kitty, at last, would be laid to rest.

But firsta"Futzy stooped and grabbed a s.h.i.+sh kabob skewer to complement his snubnosea"they had a rogue janitor to subdue.

Trilby sat in a folding chair behind the refreshments. Pill lay slumped on her lap, a thumb stuck deep in her mouth.

Stroking her daughter's hair, Trilby made soothing sounds and gently rocked her.

Above them, among the rafters, floated the dim shape of a basketball hoop and backboard that had been cranked up and away. From the ill-lit expanse before them rose the Ice Ghoul, the lines of its frame harsh and cutting, its face obscured by shadow.

But Trilby was unafraid.

A madman had murdered her husband, spooked her little girl, and thrown her household into chaos. Yet she feared neither for her life nor for Pill's.

They would survive and grow strong.

Before Brest left with Claude Versailles to check out the science labs, she had hugged Trilby and Pill. "Sit tight," she had said. "We'll be back soon." But as she said it, she had worn her stone face, tight and drawn, her eyes clamped down upon her feelings. There was no telling how tonight's mayhem had affected her, nor how it had affected their future.

Don't think about it.

Pay attention to Pill.

Pill had witnessed a murder, under threat of discovery and slaughter herself. She had heard her father's death announced before a frightened crowd of promgoers.

"There, there," she said. "That's my Pill." Her hand stroked the angel-smooth hair above her daughter's neck. Tonight's terrors might cause Pill to develop too early her l.u.s.t for blood.

Or she might never do so.

Trilby didn't know which would be worse.

No, that wasn't so.

If Pill were inadequately socialized, she would be treated as an odd duck, open to taunts and jeers and the most hurtful kind of bullying.

Worse, she might join the anti's.

Pill had a fiercely independent streak. If she were permanently damaged over thisa"and the magnitude of tonight's trauma threatened to make that a certaintya"she might join the crazies who, as they claimed, used violence to end violence. Eventually, she would be taken out by government forces.

Stop, she thought. You're hurtling into a terrible future. This will not come to pa.s.s!

"We'll come through this okay, honey," she said, her voice catching. "We just have . . . to be strong." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

Pill lay against her like an inert sack of pudding and bone, her eyes open but unfocused, slow blinks lidded upon them like an infant dull with sleep. Her thumb-sucking came and went but the thumb stayed firmed ensconced in her mouth.

Random shouts issued from distant hallways, coming from bunches of aroused, terrorized kids joining in a hunt for the slasher. At some point, that sick soul would be found and futtered. Then they would all be free.

She stifled a laugh.

Free.

Free to build a new life around the obsessive kernel of this night, a nightmare forever revived, recreated, relived.

No, she thought. We will get beyond this. We will process it and go on.

"We will, honey," she said. "We will."

It was almost time to thrust the drugged f.u.c.ker into the mob. Almost time for him to be royally futtered.

Delia had developed a taste for blood.

But for the sake of Kitty, and to a.s.sure triumph in her pursuit of Brest and Trilby, she would wrap things up now. Call it quits. Slake the frenzied bloodthirst of the crowd with good ol' Gerber Waddell.

And emerge a survivor.

There'd be time enough, after bedding her grieving girlfriends, to maraud and slaughter once more, carefully, selectively, at random intervals.

The janitor lay propped against the wall of a corridor, a lone lightbulb throwing a harsh glare across him. Alarm lit his eyes.

She wondered if she had trussed him up too tight. Had she cut off his circulation? Would his walk be convincing? Or would they see evidence, a.s.suming there was anything left to autopsy, that he had been bound and gagged for over an hour?

Slumped that way, Gerber looked so small.

Her toy, her plaything.

It was an odd responsibility she had taken on, this being in charge of lives and deaths, this manipulation. It made her feel creepy, and virtuous, and powerful all at once.

Stooping she put a hand on his shoulder and felt his muscles strain in resistance.

"You okay, big fella?"

Sweat stood on Gerber's blunt brow.

"Yeah, I thought you were."

Beyond the wall, not six feet from her roped hostage, lay the gym's north side, the bandstand where the princ.i.p.al spoke in low murmurs.

A squat stool on her left held a small kit of medical supplies. The syringe was out and ready, resting upon a leather pouch.

She worked Gerber's right sleeve up under the ropes, baring his arm just above the elbow. Tied him off. Smacked two fingertips against his skin. Squinted in the dim light. Found what felt like a vein and jabbed the needle in.

"This will only hurt a lot, and for a long time," she said.

She had drawn the entire ampule of liquid into the hypodermic. Now she shot it home, hard supreme power in the steady closure of her thumb, encircled by metal and slowly pressing down to dope him up good.

The janitor's eyes glazed over.

Needle out. No need for cotton. Let him bleed. Soon there'd be plenty more blood.

Delia returned the syringe to the stool and worked at his bonds. They were tight, but they were not impossible. Soon she had them off.

Gerber's eyelids had grown heavy. She undid his gag and vigorously rubbed his legs.

"No more pins and needles," she said. "It's meat-cleaver, serving-fork, and carving-knife time for you."

She had to get him up. Walk him about. He had to be convincing when she shoved him out.

At first he stumbled.

Heavy, drugged guy.

It felt as if they were on an unsteady deck, rolling and heaving with the waves.

Then he grew used to it, moving more like an obedient automaton.

His arm lay heavy across her shoulders. His big, denim-clad body stank of confinement.

"Only a little farther," she said, hoping she was right.

Years before, there'd been a math teacher, a designated slasher, who had, contrary to all law, ushered Delia into the backways the day after the prom. He had shown her about, doing his best thena"and his best was p.i.s.s poora"to p.r.i.c.k her, up against the outer curves of the band room.

Her memory had sponged up the details, where they were, how they had arrived there.

Even so, the backways tended to disorient. She concentrated on direction, staggering under Gerber's unsteady weight. The things she needed to complete his condemnation waited in the walls behind the auditorium stage.

He mumbled something, his breath close and reeky.

"That's right, Gerber," she said. "It's time to die. Would you like that?"

Gerber's head lolled, his lips open and drooly. He looked vacuous and thirsty.

His janitorial boots galumphed obediently along as they walked. Though they threatened to stomp her blue bloodcaked pumps, they never quite did so.

They turned a bend.

Ah!

The series of panels on stage left appeared. A cramped three feet separated that wall from the black legs, the array of curtains that hid actors about to enter the stage proper.

A tiny table held a rag.

On the rag was an ice pick. And next to it, soaking the rag, lay an icicle, one of many Delia had found in an obscure corner of Lily Foddereau's refrigeration room, where a leak in the overhead pipes had created an inverted forest of them.

A noise sounded behind her.

Delia froze.

All night, a pair of somebodies had been cramping her style. They had almost caught sight of her leaving the machine shop with the McPhee boy's head swinging from her hand.

Again it sounded, an exchange of words.

Still distant, but that wouldn't count for s.h.i.+t if they saw her.

"Stand up," commanded Delia in a whisper. A large 525 hovered ghostly white above them.

The dumb f.u.c.k cooperated.

She grabbed the ice pick. Then the icicle, cold, wet, stubbornly sticking to the rag.

"Take these," she said.

Gerber's hands opened at the touch of them and closed again feebly. She gripped them tighter about the handle and the icicle.

Huge hands, loam hands.

Fumbling for the catch on the panel, she jabbed it, missed, jabbed again, and felt the mechanism obey. The panel slid open, a soft shuck sound. At her feet, a shaft of light fell.

The intruders were almost upon them.

"Go!" she told Gerber. "Through those curtains."

By some miracle, she got him over the lip of the panel. He moved away from her, marching like an obedient clockwork toy, just where she wanted him to go.

"Yes, that way lies good things, Gerber."

Not a moment to lose.

Should she step through after him, or hide in the backways?

Her mind dithered.

Delia chose to step through, swift in the instant of decision, feeling eyes about to light on her.

Gerber was moving, brus.h.i.+ng black velvet but pa.s.sing between the hanging legs.

Any second now he would be visible. The clamor would begin.