Slaughterhouse High

Twice they had counterclockwised the vast square that was the second floor hallway. Twice they had passed the same damned lockers and clocks, the same damned classrooms where she had been forced to endure Home Ec and Art and Algebra and Spanish and the ill-named "teachers" who had inflicted all of that boring crap on her.

Visions of hell.

Sandy guessed that Cobra's strategy, if he had one, was to keep going, to stay within the maundering crowd and steer clear of doorways.

He released her and lit up a cigarette, never stopping, moving forward in a confident stride.

"Hey," said Rocky, "you can't smoke in here."

"What're they gonna do?" Cobra asked with a sneer. "Kill me?"

"No, but they might expel you."

Cobra, bemused, flashed Sandy a look of exasperation. "I'll take my chances, jocko."

Rocky pointed. "There's Mr. Buttweiler's office."

"I'm acquainted with it," said Cobra.

Some kids shuffled through the principal's door, their chosen place of refuge. Had he left it unlocked? Or had the janitor's key opened it as a lure?

"Our next set of corpses."

"Come on, Cobra," said Sandy. "Don't joke about it."

"Who's joking? Those dweebs are dead."

Bloodslicks stained the tile floor outside Futzy's office. Drippings from the zippermouths. Sandy had been royally grossed out by what the killer had done-not to mention what the zipheads themselves had done-to their bodies.

"Can we settle someplace?" she complained.

"Good idea," said Rocky.

"No way." Cobra nixed it. His heels clacked as they walked. "Shut your traps a sec and let me think." Fumes drifted past his ears. "I got it!"

Abruptly he veered off.

They followed.

There would be time, when this was over, to right the balance. For now it was okay with her to let Cobra set the agenda.

*****

Humming a soft song of grim determination, Matthew Megrim pressed on through the backways.

Ten minutes before, he had stepped off the elevator; it felt as if an eternity had passed.

He'd had a similar feeling years before, descending a tower of spiral stone steps in an ancient cathedral. The sameness of what passed before his eyes, then and now, drew him into a sort of circular time, his footsteps seeming not to advance him at all.

In the obscurity ahead, Matthew thought he saw a flash of white, the distant rustle of bunched cloth. An organdy dress?

He hurried onward, suppressing the urge to call out. No need to alert the slasher or put him or her on the defensive.

By the time he had gained the bend where the vision had appeared, it was gone.

Still, he pressed on more hurriedly, losing his way but trusting to luck to bring him at last into the presence of Tweed's killer.

Earlier, he had attained the walkways above the gym, a dizzying drop downward past balloons and crepe hangings and a flat-browed Ice Ghoul.

Why, he wondered, was the gym without lights? And it was so quiet, as though everyone had fled elsewhere. The only illumination came from bulbs around him, light-hoarders as always, and from the doors to the backways below.

Matthew's fancy strained downward, a platter of corpses trying to resolve itself before the Ice Ghoul.

Were there any bodies lying there at all? He couldn't tell. One moment, there were none. The next? Two, or three, or four. Inert lumps of black on black that might just as well be tricks of the air.

He thought to call out but felt it would be useless. There was no one down there to answer. And if there were, they'd know he was breaking the law and have him arrested.

Instead, he had made his way along the narrow path, crawling, feeling the smooth edges with his outstretched fingers, then taking laddered steps down into the backways again. Their familiar cloy and hug had seemed comforting for a moment. But quickly, they became once more a bewildering and hopeless maze.

The tune that circled in Matthew's head was low and ominous. Limited in scope. The noble revenge of "I'll get them" had been replaced with a cavelike chant in Latinate grumbles.

It didn't echo.

Even if he had let it out full instead of hoarding it inside his mouth, it wouldn't have echoed.

The close, airless wood and stone of the backways absorbed all sound, closing over it like rent skin healing after a flurry of welt-wounds. Matthew felt as if he were in a diving bell, cut off and confined, steeped in his surroundings but observing apart from them.

Into this cauldron of physical and temporal disorientation fell his hopes and fears about Tweed. One moment, his daughter was already dead and he was embarked on a fool's errand. The next, she had survived and the two of them, aided by an anti-slasher groundswell, would turn this nation around.

They were only two people.

But sometimes you got lucky. Sometimes, forces came together like waves, and you rode them and fed them until things changed.

Yes, and sometimes idiots deluded themselves and fell off the deep end into quixotic crusades. Naked emperors on parade they were, thinking they were arrayed in the finest cloth, hearing not the hoots of the mob but high hosannahs.