Desks were shoved together in the center of the room in a logjam of fake-wood planes. Along the walls hung posterboard squares with a number scrawled in black felt-tip pen.
A couple of girls, Dixie Rathbone and Bliss somebody, slumped like stuffed scarecrows on the floor beneath the blackboard.
“Here,” Cobra said.
Peach saw their number and beneath it a dark arrow directed downward. Pillows had been placed on the floor, thin as a threadbare blanket but gentler on the butt than hard tile.
She settled in. Cobra humphed down by her side. From where they sat, Peach could see Dixie and Bliss. She wondered if they were the ones, if they’d be slaughtered without warning, if she and Cobra and the others arrayed around the classroom would witness the sacrifice. She wiggled fingers at them, but they didn’t move, almost as if they were dead already.
Commotion outside the door, raucous boy-talk. From the unclaimed numbers on the walls (she had overheard Bowser mention theirs), Peach guessed Bowser McPhee and his date Fido Jenner. A moment later, they walked in.
Peach had always thought Bowser was cute and little-boy brash and funny, a ferocious mismatch for Fido in her opinion. He had picked up a book she dropped once, then blushed and stammered like an idiot when she kissed his right lobe in thanks.
Now he and Fido started along the far wall, looking for their number.
“Over here,” Peach yelled to them.
Cobra smacked her for speaking.
“Thanks,” Bowser said. He and Fido collapsed ten feet to her left, beneath their sign.
“Hey weenie,” Cobra said, “shut the fuck up.”
“Come on, Cobra,” Bowser replied, clapping a hand on Fido’s knee. “Everybody’s up against it tonight. Lighten up, okay? It’s a free country.”
Cobra tensed beside her.
“Listen, doggie boy. Your fuckin’ free country’s got two things in it: your face and my fist. You say another word, they’re gonna fuckin’ connect. It’s gonna be one bloody mess of zits, skin, and flesh, you dig, scumwipe?”
She could see Bowser retreat inside his skin, though he glared iron pellets at Cobra. That took more guts than most kids had.
Too bad.
Peach knew, but never told anyone, that when it came right down to it, and without of his gang members around, Cobra would fold.
She had seen, alone late at night, the little boy in him. She knew Cobra was one scared coward hiding beneath layers of protective armor.
She also knew that she was just about ready to dump him.
The bell suddenly clanged. It sent a shock through her system.
Same damn bell signaled the end of one class and the beginning of the next. But in this context, it sounded three times as loud.
All talk ceased. A pall fell over the half dozen in-turned duos seated around the room.
Twenty minutes until the next bell, the one that meant find-the-dead-folks.
Those twenty minutes might be choke-thick with silence.
Or the shiv of a scream might slide into their heads from a nearby classroom, a scream both chilling and relieving.
Or the wall they leaned against might give way and a rough hand draw quick steel across their throats.
On the opposite wall, above two dorky girls in scared embrace, a large clock ticked.
Cobra’s hand slipped into hers where no one could see and gave it a private squeeze.
His terror met hers.
10. Defying Gravity
Dark delight.
The school understood perfectly.
Through the glass doors that led into its butchery wing waltzed Flann Beckwith and Brandy Crowe, high-toned worshipers of style, the best slap’n’smack dancers Corundum High had ever seen. Flann and Brandy were odds-on favorites for prom king and queen, despite the run Rocky and Sandy had given them.
Whoever assigned stations-many doubted its much touted randomness-had surely wanted to bring Flann and Brandy down a few pegs.
They’d be pegged down all right.
All the way down.
Though the hallway grate below the peephole muffled sound, Flann’s voice came through loud and clear. “Christ, what a stench! I thought for sure we’d smelled our last carcass at Monday’s final.”
Brandy flumphed, “Someone’s got it in for us.”
“It’ll seep into your dress. And my tux.”
“I hope they’ve given us blankets in there,” Brandy said. “Even a minute’ll get pretty cold.”
The taps on Flann’s spit-polished shoes came to an abrupt halt outside the refrigeration room. “Nothing we can do about it now. But before the night’s over, I’m complaining to somebody. After you, hon.”
Sickening.
Even here they moved with grace. Brandy twirled out of view, and Flann’s taps followed.
In this part of the school, the backways were tight and ill-lit. They stank of old oak, wet and rotting.
Motor hum from the refrigeration room masked sound from back here. But it also turned the couple, the dapper Flann and his redheaded Brandy with the cinnamon heart, into soundless mouths.
Fortunately, the hanging racks of butchered flesh and the ice sculptures provided ample concealment. Moreover, the large panel farthest from the couple’s designated spot had taken two drops of lubricant a half hour before.
Minimal slide, open, shut.
A chilled world stole away all warmth.
Man-sized Ice Ghouls waited here. Legions of them, opaque glassy shapes, sleek and muscled save for a fat howling ghoul who terrified by sheer bulk. Each one raised an icicle dagger, but the howling ghoul’s was thickest and most menacing.
Out through their massed numbers, cautious in movement, an ice pick rode tight aslant the killer’s torso.
Brandy sneezed.
These two had everything. Good looks. An unending stream of sycophants. A smoothness of manner and tone that erased all grief. Unlimited future prospects. Flann’s voice rode upon their assured arrogance. “You okay?”
It would be a pleasure to finish them.
“It’s nothing.” A sniff, a soft blow, one nostril, then the other. “At least we’re out of danger.”
“Somebody,” Flann insisted, “is gonna lose his job.”
“It’s okay. It’s only ten more minutes. No one ever touches a finalist. That’s the law.”
“They can’t do this to Flann Beckwith.”
“We’re fine,” said Brandy. “We’re all alone. Just us and nobody else. And you look real sexy. Sexy as money.”
“Really? You think so?”
Racks of crayola’d pork flesh serried by as the killer threaded through them.
Sides of meat hung near the doomed pair, a protective veil of butchered beef providing one last barrier if only they’d keep jabbering.
“I’ll tell you what I think.” Her prom dress rustled. The sounds of thick smooching and shared mmmm’s betrayed what they were up to. Then they abruptly stopped. “Did you hear something?” asked Brandy.
Caught breath, three haunches away.
“Hey, relax,” said Flann. “All I hear is my heart. And yours.”
“Mmmm, you’re warm.”
“You too.” There was a slight rustle, as of tinsel brushing against a glass ornament.
“Do you think we should?” Yield filled her voice.
“Who’s to know?” More rustling and Brandy’s vulnerable moan. “I’m going to suck my sweetie’s lovelobe.”
The killer stepped free of concealment.
Flann was stylishly hunched over, almost a choreographed flamenco pose. Brandy’s eyelids were closed, her chin nestled upon his left shoulder as he mouthed her lovelobe. From his right hand hung her silken lobebag, limp as a finger puppet.
A gleam of debutante eyes opening. Flann’s embroidered suit-back, a stretched target. The brutal drive of cloaked resentment.
Then came a pin-cushion zit of pierced felt, the ice pick’s keen tip driving through expensive cloth.
The body accepted puncture and impalement as though they were crude afterthoughts, the sudden flair of the ice pick handle stopping its forward hurtle in a pit of depressed serge.