by Anthony Izzo
“What if they put cuffs on me?”
“They won’t.”
He hoped.
“Okay. We’ll do it.”
“Just make sure you get out of the way. I’ll need a clean shot.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Go back and lie down. Get some rest.”
She shuffled across the floor and collapsed on the bed, her arm hanging limp over the side, hand touching the floor.
Liza had to recover for both of their sakes.
The night of the Fall Craft Show, Jill checked them out at the registration desk while Harry walked to the parking garage to retrieve the van. He had volunteered to go out in the rotten weather, sparing her from getting soaked. The temperature barely hit fifty and silvery rain fell sideways, pelting the windows like small pebbles.
Jill finished settling up their bill and waited in the lobby near the revolving doors. Harry finally pulled up in the van and Jill scurried through the rain and hopped in. They had left the pickup truck in the garage and would come back for it if this whole thing worked out.
She wiped droplets of rain off of her face, thankful that she only had to run a few feet to the van. Harry had taken it worse, his hair slicked wet by the rain and his clothes made darker by the dampness. He shivered like a wet dog.
“Ready for this?”
“About as ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Weather’s not so hot, huh?”
“I’m sorry you got soaked.”
“All in a day’s work.”
They pulled away. The van smelled of gasoline fumes, so despite the steady rain, Jill cracked the window. A fat raindrop landed on her cheek.
“Do you think Liza’s okay?”
She wanted to tell him yes, put his mind at ease, but that wouldn’t be fair to Harry, because she didn’t know if it was the truth. Liza was in the custody of a maniac who’d already amputated her finger just for kicks, and there was no way of telling what he would do next. Telling Harry everything was peachy keen would do nothing but give him false hope. “I honestly don’t know.”
He let out a sigh.
“Not what you wanted to hear, huh?”
“No, you’re just being honest. We have to remember who and what we’re dealing with here.”
Harry swung the van onto the expressway, headed for Lincoln. The rain came harder, creating a crystalline waterfall on the windshield. Harry turned up the wipers.
Twenty-five minutes later, they were pulling up to their destination.
Jill’s belly cramped. She checked the side mirror every few seconds; at any moment she expected a police cruiser’s lights to flash behind them and put an end to their plans.
“Try and relax,” Harry said, picking up on her mood.
“Fat chance.”
The school was on their left, a three-story structure made of sand-colored brick. A pine tree stood on the front lawn and towered twenty feet over the school’s roof. A silver cross hung over the main doors, and under it, in block letters, SAINT MARK’S SCHOOL.
Harry turned left into the driveway between the school and the church rectory, then into the lot behind the school and parked next to a Ford Expedition.
They got out of the van, Harry opening the rear doors and pulling out the green duffel bag with the weapons and ammunition in it. Jill took the two cardboard boxes they had filled with the Molotov cocktails and draped a sheet from the hotel over them. They still had the gas cans to bring in, but they would have to make another trip for those.
They hurried to the school’s side door, and Harry gave a pull on it. At first it didn’t open and Jill feared it was locked, but it gave with a rusty screech and they stepped inside.
Ahead and to the right was a stairway leading downward, across the hall to the left were stairs to the second floor.
“Those go downstairs to the cafeteria,” Harry said, pointing.
A murmur and the sweet smells of brownies and pies rose from the stairway. The ladies’ auxiliary or the PTA had most likely set up tables to sell their wares, Jill figured.
“Looks like the cafeteria’s out as a hiding place,” she said.
“Yeah. Wait over there while I get the gas cans.”
Harry set the duffel bag on the stairs going up and Jill followed him, setting the boxes with the Molotov cocktails down on the landing. She climbed up three steps to stay out of sight, hoping that if someone entered the door, they would walk past without noticing her.
“Be right back,” Harry said.
The cramp in her stomach knotted again.
Harry went outside and as the door swung she could hear the rain piddling on the blacktop.
She stood on the steps, chewing on her thumbnail, a nervous habit she hadn’t done since she was nine years old. Jittery, she sat down, stood up, then sat on the steps again. Come on, Harry, did you go to Texas for that stuff?
“Can I help you?”
Jill looked down the steps to see a woman with an egg-shaped figure, all butt and thighs, staring up at her. It looked like an airbag had deployed in her screaming pink pants. The combination of the slacks and the flowered top with pinks and purples in the petals made Jill think of an Easter egg.
“I’m sorry?”
“Can I help you?” Easter Egg Lady repeated, her fleshy jowls jiggling.
“Just waiting for someone,” Jill replied.
“Are you a crafter?”
“Yes, in fact we make the best doilies in all of western New York.”
“Oh, how lovely.” The woman clasped her hands together. “You know you don’t have long to set up. Can I help you down to the gym?” She started up the steps, arms outstretched, ready to grab the duffel bag and haul it off to the gymnasium.
“No!”
Easter Egg Lady stepped back as if she’d walked into a bug zapper. “Well, I was just trying to help.”
More interested in seeing what I had in the bag than helping, I’m sure.
“I’m sorry. My partner will be back any second. He’s kind of touchy about anyone else handling the merchandise.”
She could not let this woman, see Harry come in with the gas cans. Her radar might be up already, and Jill didn’t want to make her any more suspicious.
Hopefully she didn’t smell the gasoline from the cocktails, either.
Easter Egg Lady peered around Jill at the box; then, apparently satisfied, said, “All right. Just hurry to the gym. Time is short.” She spun on her heel, her butt jiggling as she did so, leaving in a huff.
She wasn’t gone down the cafeteria stairs two seconds when Harry opened the door and peeked in.
“All clear?” he asked.
Jill looked around the corner, and not seeing anyone, gave him a thumbs-up sign.
Harry swung the door the rest of the way, leaned against it to keep it propped open, and lifted one of the cans over the threshold. He did the same with the other, and then let the door close behind him.
“Let’s get out of sight,” Jill said.
“Up the stairs. We’ll cut across the upper floors and find a classroom. What’s today, Saturday?”
“Yeah.”
“Mind’s a little fuzzy. No school tomorrow means we can hide out in here.”
Jill slung the bag over her shoulder, then crouched and lifted the boxes of Molotov cocktails. She started up the stairs and Harry followed, a five-gallon can in each hand.
They reached the second floor and Harry protested for a break, but Jill urged him to keep moving until they were farther away from the activity two levels down. “If I can handle this, so can you, soldier,” she said. The muscles in her arms felt like they were on fire and her shoulder ached from where the strap dug in, but she didn’t want to slow down until they were out of sight.
They went down the main hallway, flanked by classroom doors eight feet high, painted chocolate brown with a silver number screwed into the center of each door.
“This is the old wing of the school,” Harry said, huffing and puffing.<
br />
The walls were painted a light color (she couldn’t tell if they were mint blue or the equally attractive mint green), and the paint cracked in little tributaries. A pink Barbie lunchbox sat against the wall, looking lonely and no doubt missed by some elementary school girl.
Jill’s arms felt like putty, so she stopped and set the boxes down. Harry came to a halt behind her, nearly plowing into her before setting the gas cans down.
“If we can find an unlocked classroom it would be ideal,” Harry said.
They spent ten minutes going up and down the wing, jiggling doorknobs and hoping a careless teacher had left one open, but they were all locked.
“Shit!” said Harry.
“Don’t say that in front of Him,” Jill said.
“What are you talking about?”
She pointed to the end of the hallway, opposite of where they entered the wing. A full-size crucifix hung on the wall, Christ’s pale, flaking body dripping blood from dozens of wounds. The Christ looked toward heaven, his face a mask of crushing sorrow, the eyes seeming to plead for mercy, looking all too realistic.
“That’d make me behave if I had to walk by it every day,” Harry said.
“It’s a little creepy, with the blood and all.”
“I guess we’re stuck here until the show’s over,” Harry said.
“You think anyone will come up here?”
“Not likely. I was really hoping for an unlocked room, though.”
“This’ll have to do. What’s around that corner?” Jill said, pointing to the junction where the crucifix hung.
“Doors to more stairs. One of them will take us back down to the gymnasium.”
They shoved the supplies against the wall, near a door with 201 on its face, and under that a hand-lettered sign stating, MRS. RANDALL—8TH GRADE.
The cramp hit her belly again, and she told it to get lost, but it hung on, keeping her in knots. She sat on the floor, drawing her knees into her stomach, hoping for relief from her stomach pains. Harry sat next to her.
For now it was quiet, with just her, Harry and the Savior of the World in the hallway.
She hoped for no other company that evening.
CHAPTER 32
It remained silent, save for the occasional murmur echoing down the hallway, or shrieking children running up and down the stairs.
Harry squinted at his watch.
“Time?” she asked.
“Ten thirty. The craft show was over at nine. I haven’t heard anyone for about forty-five minutes.”
“Let’s get set up, then.”
She literally couldn’t sit still a minute longer. Maybe if she got moving, got a sense of purpose, it would take her mind off of her nerves.
They picked up the equipment and hauled it toward the end of the hallway near the crucifix. They turned right at the cross and reached a beige door with a small window cut into it.
Harry set the cans down and a flutter wiggled through Jill’s stomach. She wondered what would happen if the door was locked.
Harry opened it.
They started down the stairs, reaching the first landing outside an office marked PRINCIPAL. There was a boys’ lavatory across from the office, directly ahead was a bright yellow door.
“That the balcony?” Jill asked.
“Yep.”
The balcony looked over the gymnasium on both the north and south walls, and was key to their plans: it was a good position from which to fire down on an enemy.
Jill said a small prayer that the door would be open, for if they couldn’t get to the balcony later, their plan would stall in first gear.
Again, Harry opened the door. He let it swing shut and it boomed in the empty school, sounding like the door to a tomb being sealed shut.
They continued down the stairs to the next landing. There was a set of red double doors with a silver panic bar, and above the doors a glowing exit sign.
“Where do those go?”
“To the foyer. And the main entrance,” Harry said.
They took the last five steps down into a small hallway flanked by two beige doors. A third door lay straight ahead; it was the door to the gymnasium.
Harry set his can down at the bottom of the stairs and shook his arms vigorously to work out the muscle burn. Jill set the boxes and bag down as well.
“This is the only door into the gym. No, wait, I take that back. This is the only door that ninety-nine percent of the people who come to the school know about. There’s another service door behind the stage. It connects to the cafeteria.” He pointed to the door at the left. “This one’s the locker room.”
“What’s behind door number three?”
Before he could answer she gripped the handle and yanked. The door swung open and a mop handle flew out and rapped her on the forehead. Jill shoved it back in among the assortment of push brooms, buckets and bottles of green and blue cleaning solutions. The closet smelled wet and dirty.
“Guess it’s a janitor’s closet,” she said, rubbing the spot where the broom had conked her.
“We’ll put the gas cans in here until it’s time to set things off.”
“That’s awfully close to the gym.”
Harry picked upon her vibe that being close to the gym also meant being close to Them, increasing the chances of being found out and torn to pieces.
“There’s nowhere else to store them. We can’t just leave them sitting here. Too suspicious.”
He was right and she knew it. She didn’t like it, but he was right.
She pushed aside a yellow bucket on casters and stuck some of the mops in the back corner of the closet in order to make room for the gas cans.
“Okay.”
Harry sighed and squatted like an Olympic power lifter, then lifted the cans and moved them into the closet. Jill slammed the door shut.
“Now the moment of truth,” Jill said.
She yanked on the doorknob and the gym door opened.
Harry picked up the duffel bag and Jill took the box containing the Molotovs.
The gym was lit with a queer, yellow and murky light, thrown off by dim lamps on the walls. It was the color of poison gas.
Their shoes chirped on the floor as they walked. The balconies ran along two walls, twenty feet in the air, painted bright yellow. Harry informed her that the school colors were yellow and blue, hence the canary-colored balconies.
“Let’s get up on the stage,” Harry said.
The stage had a dusty green curtain drawn across it, with steps flanking either side. They climbed the steps up onto the stage and it rewarded them with an enormous creak.
Jill didn’t like it in here, for it wasn’t supposed to be this quiet. She imagined children running across the gym, kicking red rubber balls, playing jump rope, tag or basketball. Their sneakers would squeal like a hot rod’s tires as they ran across the floor, full of energy that adults envied.
Their footsteps echoed through the gym, giving it a sepulchral feel and making Jill wish she were just about any place else right at the moment. They ascended the stage steps, and Harry went to the curtain, felt around for the seam and slipped through.
Although she knew he was directly on the other side, an irrational corner of her mind told her he had been swallowed up, never to return.
That feeling dissolved when he stuck his head through the seam.
“You coming?” Harry asked.
She snapped herself out of it and set her supplies down next to the duffel bag, then ducked through the opening in the curtain. Harry was down on one knee, sliding his hand back and forth over the floor.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for a trapdoor ring. Here it is.”
Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out a Swiss Army knife and opened the blade with a soft click. Using the blade, he pried at the floor until a rectangular piece of wood popped up and rattled on the stage.
“Your trapdoor?”
“You got it.”
He sto
od up and pulled the trapdoor open, then started down a flight of steps that led underneath the stage.
“Wait here. I’ll find the light.”
The darkness under the stage engulfed him as he descended into the hole. A moment later white light cascaded out of the opening and Harry said, “Come on down.”
Jill climbed down a set of rickety wooden steps into a basement that smelled dry and dusty, like old newspapers. A naked bulb hung on a wire at the bottom of the stairs, and a string for switching it on dangled from the fixture.
Plastic Santas, reindeer, a kneeling Mary and Joseph and a glittery star with the word NOEL scrawled across it were among the props in the storage area. There was also a wooden cradle filled with straw, and timbers used for constructing the manger scene.
The room also held stacked metal folding chairs and a backdrop painted to look like the yellow brick road as it approached the Emerald City.
“One time when I was working here I came down after school hours and found Mrs. Kelleher and Mr. Abernathy, the seventh grade teachers, naked from the waist down and going at it like rabbits.” Harry chuckled. “Abernathy offered me a thousand bucks to keep my mouth shut.”
“Did you take it?”
“Nah. I just told him if I ever caught him again I would go right to the principal.”
“I guess they were really into their work.”
“I’ll say. I’ll go get that bag and start setting up down here. You mind taking the cocktails up to the balcony? We should’ve left them there. Wasn’t thinking.”
“Not a problem,” she said.
She walked up the stairs, grabbed the boxes and headed to the balcony. Once on the balcony, she set the boxes down and stretched, trying to take some of the ache out of her muscles.
She wanted to get the Molotovs out of sight, so she hunkered down and pushed them across the floor, the cardboard boxes swishing as she shoved. There were old green file cabinets against the wall, and she found a space wide enough between them to slide the box in.
There was a yellowed tarp draped over a table, and she took that and used it to cover the box, making it less conspicuous. The only thing that would give them away was the slight odor of gasoline coming off of the jars. She hoped no one sniffed them out and removed the cocktails before the time came to use them.