‘Eeeeeewwwwwwww!’ the zombies exclaimed in revulsion.
‘Stop that!’ the Automator commanded. But she could not stop, and the hall filled instantly with the acrid miasma of stomach acid and alcohol and too-sweet fruit punch. Along the line, mouths bulged; chests lurched. ‘All right, maybe we should get some fresh air,’ the Automator said hurriedly. ‘Howard, open the – ’
But it was too late. First at intervals, then, in seconds, en masse, with a noise like nothing Howard had ever heard before, what seemed like all two hundred teenagers were throwing up: pale, half-naked bodies in various attitudes of expulsion, a vast and hellish deluge washing over the floor…
‘So much vomit,’ the Automator recollects now, from the safety of his office.
‘Yeah,’ Howard says miserably. He was the one who mopped most of it up: two hours with an aching back, the Automator grim and unspeaking at the other end of the hall, a solitary black balloon the only other company, Miss McIntyre having gone home ashen-faced and wordless shortly after they’d discharged the kids, leaving him, as the clock tower tolled one, to climb into his car alone and drive in complicated elaborations of circles through the darkened suburbs for another hour, till he could be absolutely sure that Halley would be gone to bed, and then sit in the kitchen reeking of disinfectant in front of an undrunk glass of water as the panelled surroundings, at once familiar and secretly changed, sparkled at him complicitly; he lowered his head like he didn’t know what they meant.
‘I don’t know what happened, Greg,’ he says as sincerely as he can. ‘They just suddenly seemed to… transform. I can’t explain it. I don’t know if there even is an explanation.’
‘There’s always an explanation, Howard. In this case the explanation is that the punch was spiked.’
‘Spiked?’
‘Punch’d turned blue, meaning probably sleeping pills of some kind, your standard date-rape set-up.’ The Automator examines his nails thoughtfully. ‘The results aren’t back from the lab yet, but from the symptoms – loss of inhibitions and motor control followed by acute nausea – my guess is a large quantity of benzodiazepine.’
‘Back from the…?’
‘Couple of old boys working on the force, Howard. Simon Stevens, class of ’85, Tom Smith, class of ’91 – you might remember Smithy, couple of years ahead of you, decent prop-forward, lot of potential but never quite made the cut. Got them on the case this morning. Had to. All it takes is for one parent to figure out what happened in there and it’ll be raining lawsuits. And when it does we’d better be ready.’ He turns on his heel and circumnavigates the room, tapping thoughtfully at his lower lip. ‘I’ve spoken to the boy in charge of the punchbowl but I don’t think he has anything to do with it. Most likely someone distracted him while his partner slipped the mickey into the vat. What with the disco lights the colour-change wouldn’t have been noticed. Though frankly some of these kids, first whiff they got the punch wasn’t kosher they’d be queuing round the block for it. That doesn’t explain how, with two supervisors in the room, the situation escalated to the level it did.’ He wheels round: his gimlet eyes, and Trudy’s doe-like ones, fix on Howard. ‘How was that possible, Howard,’ he says.
‘It just seemed to… happen,’ Howard says in a strangulated voice. The Automator waits without responding, and then says, ‘When Wallace Willis called me, he said that you and Miss McIntyre did not appear to be in the hall.’
‘Oh yes… that is…’ Howard stutters, and then, as though it has just occurred to him, ‘well, Miss McIntyre and I did both briefly leave the hall at one point.’
‘You did?’
‘Yes, we did, briefly.’
‘Uh-huh.’ The Automator scratches his ear, and then roars, ‘God damn it, Howard, what the hell were you thinking? Rule one of education: never leave the kids unattended for a second, not for a second! I specifically told you, someone in the room at all times – damn it, there’s your lawsuit right there! Flagrant neglect of duty! Flagrant!’ The vein is back, hammering a tattoo in his temple.
‘I know,’ Howard wheedles, ‘but what happened was, you see, Aurelie, Miss McIntyre, discovered a large quantity of alcohol in the toilets, too much for her to carry, and we wanted to store it out of harm’s way, so we briefly went to the Geography Room, because that seemed like the safest place…’
‘And how long were you briefly gone for, would you say?’ The Automator’s gaze bores into Howard; Howard uplifts his eyes to the ceiling, as if for inspiration: ‘Um…’ He squeezes them tight shut, then half-opens just one. ‘Ten minutes?’
The stare has not gone away. ‘Ten minutes?’
Cold sweat breaks out under his collar. ‘Roughly that, I would say, yes.’
The steely eyes narrow – and then are averted. ‘Yes, that’s pretty much what Aurelie said – Trudy?’
Trudy leafs through a manila folder: ‘That’s what I have here – confiscated alcohol from girls’ toilet, left to store in Geography Room, gone ten to twelve minutes.’
‘Although it sounds like you and Aurelie have overestimated slightly, because Trudy and I timed it and it takes just under four minutes for a person walking at average speed to get from the hall to the Geography Room, and four minutes back is eight minutes,’ the Automator comments.
This information, however, and the good fortune of Miss McIntyre’s lie corroborating his, are drowned out by the mention of her name. ‘She was here? Aurelie – I mean, Miss McIntyre?’
‘First thing this morning.’ The Automator wags his head solemnly. ‘Whole thing has shaken her up pretty badly. She’s an investment banker, she’s not used to that kind of unbridled depravity.’
Howard descends into a momentary reverie of Aurelie unbridled, bare, on the other side of those twelve tumultuous hours, and wonders, at the same moment that his stomach churns with guilt, just how he can recross them, get back to her.
‘Let’s call it ten minutes,’ the Automator resumes. ‘Whatever our doper used, it must have packed a heck of a wallop for the effects to take hold that quickly. A heck of a wallop.’ He rounds on Howard, who looks back with a gesture of helpless imbecility. ‘Well, the boys in the lab will be able to clear that up for us. The bigger question is, who’s responsible?’ He picks up a paperweight from his desk, roughly the size of a hockey puck and vaguely weapon-like. ‘I think we both know the answer to that one. This has Juster’s fingerprints all over it.’
‘Juster?’ Howard wakes abruptly from his Aurelie-reverie. ‘You mean Daniel Juster?’
‘You’re darn right I mean him, Slippy or Snippy or whatever he wants to call himself.’
‘But what… I mean, what does he have to do with it?’
‘Well, damn it, Howard, do I have to draw you a picture? Just look at the facts. One week ago we have this kid, in contravention of all classroom protocol, throwing up in his French lesson. Next thing we know, an ordinary school Hop turns into a mass vomiting spree. The connection’s unavoidable.’
Perhaps it is, but Howard’s brain is struggling to make it. ‘I really don’t see Juster drugging the punch, Greg,’ he says. ‘I just don’t think he has it in him.’
‘Okay, Howard. To me the vomiting seems incontrovertible. But I’m going to let you play devil’s advocate. God knows we don’t want Juster’s parents dragging us into court either. Try this on for size, then. We’ve definitively placed Juster at the Hop last night. Father Green remembers him arriving. But when I lined the kids up against the wall, guess who wasn’t there, Howard? Guess who’d already made his exit?’ He bounces the paperweight up and down on his palm, and continues theatrically, ‘But maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. Maybe he just went to bed early. Maybe he came to you and asked for special permission to leave. Did he do that, Howard? You were in charge of the door. Do you remember him asking your special permission to leave?’