“Let’s peek out and see.”
“What if there’s someone there? A couple of seniors?” he asked.
“What if?” Winnie was exasperated.
“They see us, they think we’re behind the killings, a crazed student body somehow gets us, it’s all over.”
“Christ, Bray,” she said, “do you expect to spend the rest of your life in here?”
“It’s just safer, that’s all. It’s the prudent thing to do. He’s in here somewhere, I know it.”
“You’re a fucking wimp.”
“We’ll find him. Or he’ll find us.” We’ll fight him and kill him, he thought. “You can talk to him, you’re good at that.”
“That’s why you jumped your prom. That’s why you ran.”
“You can reason with him, bring the poor guy out into the public spotlight like you want to.”
“You’ve got no guts,” she said. “I say we have a look.” Even in insulting him, she was beautiful.
No way was their friendly slasher going to hold still for a dollop of argument. It was kill or be killed. That’s what it would come down to.
And he’d have to save Winnie. He’d have to rip the bastard’s guts out, to keep Winnie from harm and to prove to her he was no coward.
“You’re wrong about me,” he said.
“If only.”
“Okay, let’s have a look.”
The panels were clearly marked, bold and readable. A large white number, in this case a 975, was painted above the release.
Bray pressed the release and the panel slid open. Cooler air and indirect light rushed in, sudden unexpected friends.
No one there.
He breathed easier.
“Bunch of tables,” said Winnie behind him.
“Yes.”
Six chairs were upturned on each tabletop, their metal legs like TV antennas aligned, roof after roof. Bray peered out, his thumb keeping the panel retracted.
Somewhere in the distance arose a muffled hubbub. But other than pillows against the walls and posterboard with student numbers inscribed, the cafeteria was empty.
Winnie shouldered him aside, angling for a clearer view. Her body was warm and wonderful beside him. “I guess this shows you can read a map, at least,” she said.
Bray had a sudden image of someone creeping up on them in the narrow passageway, behind their backs, a knife raised, ready to fall.
“What is it?” Winnie asked.
He realized he had tensed.
“Nothing,” he said.
But he drew back and Winnie came with him. He let the panel shut with a faint whoosh.
It was damned dark in here. The dank heat, woody as a fresh pine box, crept in around them again.
Bray wished his eyes would adapt more quickly to the darkness. But even when the faint outlines of the backways resolved themselves, he had the persistent feeling that someone or something held them in its gaze, waiting, waiting to rush them or to strike as they passed by.
“This is hopeless,” said Winnie. “It’s an endless maze. He could be anywhere. Maybe even gone home by now.”
Winnie was full of surprises, thought Bray. Fired up one moment, now suddenly discouraged.
“Nope, our killer’s still here,” he said. “I can feel it.”
“Maybe.”
“No maybes. He’s not finished. Sooner or later, we’ll meet him. And somehow we’ll stop him.”
“We’ll talk him down. Coax the fight out of him,” she said, more assured.
“You got it,” said Bray, imagining a quick tussle with an unknown assailant, tackling him from the darkness, a flashing blade, Bray’s hand seizing a descending wrist to keep death at bay.
It could come at any time, from any place.
Or the knife blade might slip into them now, now, with no chance to fight back.
No.
He couldn’t afford to think that way.
They’d be prepared, they’d have their chance.
He and Winnie would subdue him, slay him or deliver him up to Corundum High’s freaked-out kids and faculty. Winnie would have her media moments of glory and persuasion. And one way or another, society would welcome them back into its embrace, where they could begin a life together, unharassed and free.
“All right,” said Winnie with renewed resolve. “What are we waiting for? Let’s press on.”
“Why not,” he said.
And on they pressed.
Kyla had never seen Patrice so worked up, so turned on by Fido’s sudden interest in them and off by the dangers that surrounded them.
Thank God that she at least had kept her wits about her.
To be sure, she tickled her fancy with the riotous times that awaited their threesome, should they be lucky enough to survive prom night. But survival came first in Kyla’s book, and it fell to her to figure out how to assure it.
“Keep up, you two,” she said.
Behind her, a sequoia to a sapling, Patrice hugged Fido to her and hurried along, her eyes impossibly large with fright.
They had left most of the kids by the front entrance, where a futile attempt was underway to ram open the heavily reinforced doors.
Ranks of peach-colored lockers marched by on either side, any one of them ready to explode into violence. Kyla kept them moving down the center of this gauntlet, their ultimate destination Lily Foddereau’s butchery wing in the back part of the school.
The least they could do was to arm themselves with real cleavers, not the futtering ones, sharp but small, that hung from everyone’s belt.
“Kyla, I’m scared,” whined Patrice. It had become an annoying mantra, as if admitting her fear could ward off the thing that frightened her.
Kyla’s cowardly lover didn’t even expect an answer. But Fido, who had settled into a litany of reassurance, piped up: “We’ll be fine, honey lamb. He won’t get us.”
Kyla understood they were both stressed to the max. But so was she.
And she didn’t like how it felt when the three of them were under pressure. If indeed they survived the night, she thought there was a good chance their relationship wouldn’t.
Kyla held open the glass door to the butchery wing, nose-wrinkling whiffs of gore lifting off the tile and wood as they passed. She followed after Patrice and Fido.
The stench of slaughter raised her hackles.
Curiously, it comforted her as well.
Very few students were roaming these blood-encrusted halls. Kyla guessed it was because butchery, the favorite subject of few, was far too near the night’s events.
Patrice, on the other hand, loved it.
As did she.
The two of them had in fact first met, first touched eyes, over the bloody spews of a lopped chicken head. Their love, such as it was, had grown out of the slaughter of pigs and lambs and wide-eyed cattle, neck slice, abrupt collapse of unsteady legs. They had a history here, she and Patrice Menuci.
“I don’t like this,” said Fido.
Maybe, thought Kyla, Fido were best to have remained a fantasy. The reality was beginning to wear thin.
“It’s okay, baby,” Patrice simpered back. “We’ll get us some steel and hole up somewhere until they rescue us.”
“In here,” Kyla said.
Over many years, mists of gore, especially during finals week, had turned the grout between the tiles from tan to rust. Ditto the hinges of the doors. This door’s pattern of bloodspray was nearly invisible, so much a part of the woodgrain had it become.
They slipped through.
A wall of cutlery winked at them from behind Miss Smiling-Bitch Foddereau’s chopping block. On the pegboard, chalked outlines surrounded each tool.
There were missing knives. But then a few knives had always been missing, gone astray over years of instruction and never replaced.
“Take two each,” said Kyla.
She reached her heavy arms upward for her favorite hackers and hewers, huffing from the exertion. Kyla loved the heft of them, their shaped grips and perfect balance.
Fido and Patrice obeyed, laying hands on the pegboard as if it were a prayer wall and they were penitents. They came away clutching the handles of honed steel.