Slaughterhouse High

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 principal 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 then-and his best was piss poor-to prick 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 shit if they saw her.

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

The dumb fuck 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, brushing black velvet but passing between the hanging legs.

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

Fleeing to a prop closet upstage of the legs, Delia hid herself behind it.

The space was maddeningly shallow.

All it would take was one glance her way and the game would be up.

But the strange, soiled couple that emerged from the backways, and Jonquil Brindisi behind them, had eyes only for the denim-clad man making his slow entrance onto the stage.

*****