Slaughterhouse High

But inside, Dex had no faith at all in Principal Buttweiler and his staff, who, from the look on their faces, had not the slightest clue about how to bring the rogue killer to justice.

*****

Peach had never seen anyone look as stunned as Bowser McPhee.

To tell the truth, Peach couldn't believe what was going on either.

The multiplying bodies were bad enough.

Some teacher had gone off his nut.

Eventually, she had no doubt, he would be found and futtered. A few more classmates would eat it and the school would gain some notoriety, but Peach was sure she would survive.

Death-her own, that is-was not within the realm of possibility.

Bowser was a bit more upset by the killings than she. But what really seemed to torque him out, and how could Peach blame him, was Fido's reaction.

Fido had paled and woozed-and simply walked away from her and Bowser.

Right straight to the fat chicks over yonder, a pair of mustachioed slugs pup-tented in plug-ugly, wallpaper-inspired dresses whose green and magenta blooms splashed garishly everywhere.

In-fucking-credible!

"I can't believe he did that," Bowser repeated. "The simpering little bastard took a hike."

"He wants to marry a couple of blimps!" The nerve of anyone rejecting her for two lard-lugging losers like Kyla Gorg and Patrice Menuci.

"He was my forever." The poor boy was really broken up. "How's he gonna get home? What'll I tell my folks?"

Ms. Brindisi and Mr. Versailles were speaking at the mike like Academy Award presenters.

The sheriff's body had been carried to the band risers, a tarp thrown over him and the music teacher.

Peach wished they had joined the other dead folks in front of the Ice Ghoul. Putting them on the risers seemed to expand the ghoul's dominion, as though the huddle of frightened seniors between the creature and the wall behind the bandstand now fell beneath its sway.

"Whynchu take Fido aside and talk it over?"

"I don't know," said Bowser, stunned all over again. "I guess I oughta do that. But I feel like saying, Fuck it to hell and back. He's not worth it, walking away like we meant nothing to one another. We were everything, Peach, I shit you not, everything to one another."

"So take him aside and tell him that."

And do it, oh please God yes, she thought, do it before he touches those blubbering tent-sprawls of noxious girlflab.

"I won't," said Bowser. He gritted his teeth and flexed his fists. "I can't, but I will." But before he took his first step, the teachers at the mike were saying, "Make way for her."

Make way? Who was there to make way for?

Peach, hearing fresh rumblings ripple through the crowd, craned her neck to see.

Nurse Gaskin's bobbing head moved off to the left, her hands raised to slice through a dappled sea of bodies. Someone near Peach passed along rumors of blood on her dress.

"They're saying her dress is bloody," said Bowser.

"I hear them," said Peach.

Beneath a glisten of blue and pink and orange lights, the nurse passed through a jostle of students to the risers and the mike.

She looked shaken as she shouldered the two teachers aside and clung to the mikestand, a grasp at salvation.

"It's…"

She covered the mike and spoke briefly to Mr. Versailles, then back, as distraught as Peach had ever seen anyone.

"It's the janitor. We were in the band room, me and Bix Donner."

On Peach's right, a high hoot sounded from a woman holding a little girl. The woman raised a hand to her mouth. Brest Donner, Peach's biology teacher, gripped her fiercely in her arms.

Oh yeah, Ms. Donner's wife.

"I…" The nurse brushed off Jonquil Brindisi's hand.

The stains on her dress sickened Peach.

She pictured Ms. Donner's husband-this Bix guy the nurse was yammering on and on about, who had helped Mr. Dunsmore cut down the sheriff's body-being stabbed by the feeb janitor, blood from the wounds spraying upward to splash Nurse Gaskin's dress.

"I yelled at Gerber," she said. "I tried to stop him. He just kept coming at Bix. Then he swung the lampstand up and slammed it down-"

The nurse covered her mouth, her eyes hot with tears.

In an instant, Ms. Brindisi was beside her again, speaking words Peach couldn't hear.

Nurse Gaskin nodded.

A final thought occurred to her.

She dipped again to the mike: "Trilby? Brest? I'm sorry."

She almost seemed to regret her own survival.

"I've always treated the poor man well. We all have. Gerber couldn't help what he was, and what he's become again. He vanished through the band room doors into the backways. I…"

Her hand fumbled for a tissue in her right pocket.

That's when the lights went out.

There was a loud noise, like a big switch being thrown ker-chunk.

The image of Ms. Brindisi and the nurse hung in a ghostly afterglow, then wiped away to black.

Peach, fear ballooning in her like a sudden burst of fever, found Bowser's waist and clung to him.

"Jesus Christ," he said.

Peach saw the janitor coming at her from all directions, that benign wisp of a grin cracking open to reveal madness, bloodlust, a rapacious urge to kill.

A voice began, booming from the PA system.