He stares at her, his jaw slack.
Paul leans into the room, his knock interrupting Miss Thompson’s one-on-one with Roy. “Not a big turnout for tutoring, huh?”
She shrugs.
Roy stands with a stealth uncommon to boys his size and begins edging towards the door. Neither of them notices the fearful look in his eyes.
“Don’t forget what I said,” Miss Thompson calls after him, and he’s gone.
The English teacher adjusts his tie. “I’m getting kind of hungry. Was thinking about swinging by that Thai place. Want to come?”
“Is your wife still out of town?”
He licks his lips. “Yeah. She won’t get back until next weekend.”
“I’d love to, Paul, but I need to set up for tomorrow.”
“Can I help?”
She smiles. “Have you ever prepped for a dissection before?”
“No, but I’m a fast learner. “He glances at his watch, missing her smile go from pleasant to frigid.
She crosses to the door connecting her classroom to the dissection lab while Paul goes to retrieve his briefcase. At one time, she shared the space with a colleague, but downsizing and teacher attrition had left her this dream space all to herself. Several steel tables with industrial lights attached like robot limbs had been provided with grant money. Freezers line the walls, and there’s even a drain in the middle of the room for easy cleanup. It couldn’t be any more perfect.
She thinks she hears footsteps in her classroom. “Paul?” she calls.
Nothing. She shrugs and closes her eyes, reminiscing on the good times she’s had in this room.
It’s time. After turning on the hooded light at a near table, she takes out a box—much like a jewelry box—and opens it. A set of tools lay inside, and she removes them one by one, placing each in a row on the table. Scissors, shiny and pointed. Forceps, a set of two. Scalpel, No. 20 blade. Scalpel, No. 12 blade. She moves her fingers over them like a caress.
The light filtering into the room flickers as Paul crosses the threshold. “What can I do? I haven’t done a dissection since high school. You need me to get out aprons? Microscopes?”
She puts the box down and crosses to the still-open door. “Sure. Get down that tub on the shelf over there.” She points, and he obeys. After pulling the door closed, she locks them inside with a flick of the wrist.
“Why’d you close the door? I can hardly see in here.”
“I like mood lighting.” With a small smile, she draws the dark curtain across the window in the door.
“I didn’t know you were allowed to have anything covering that window.”
“I’m not.”
Julia’s heart beats faster as she returns to the table and perches on the edge, in her own perfect circle of light. Her tools sit within reach.
Like Paul is within reach.
Emboldened by her spotlight, she crosses one leg over the other, letting the hem of her dress rise, feeling the cold metal on her thighs. Not one to do anything halfway, she unbuttons her dress so that her bra peeks out, beckoning.
Paul leaves the aprons.
“I’m not hungry for Thai,” she says.
He shakes his head, in sudden vehement agreement.
“Have you ever had sex at work, Paul?”
Again, he shakes his head, but slower. “I can’t say I’d be opposed to it, though.” He joins her at the table.
She grins, then leans forward and kisses him hard, softening as she tastes him, drawing him in with her legs. Closer, closer.
Nothing exists but lips and tongues and the blood coursing right beneath the surface, from the carotid to the cerebral artery, the blood flowing through his veins. Oh, how quickly it will puddle onto the floor.
He pulls away and cups the back of her head with his hand. She flinches at this extra tenderness, but angles her face lower, sucking on his bottom lip before nipping it with her teeth. He groans.
She slides off the edge of the table, her body flush to his.
Paul’s heart beats with excitement, but he glances at the door again. “Sure you don’t want to go to my place? I mean, don’t they have to clean in here?”
She smiles. “Custodial hates dealing with the biohazards. I clean this room myself.”
Apparently, that’s all he needs to hear. Hands trembling, he unbuttons her dress.
Stepping out of it, she kisses him again, turning in place so that his back is to the table. She whispers in his ear, “Lay down. I’m on top.”
Copulation has its own kind of allure. In a sense, it’s the body’s way of fighting death—the opposite of decomposition, active compared to death’s passivity. She kisses along the line of his jaw, to his ear, and rocks her hips against him, his blood moving in a different direction now, causing a hardness to develop that makes her breath catch.
I’m not interested in mating with the man, not really. Her interests lie in another direction, and her hand snakes behind his head to the scalpel.
Enough with the foreplay.
She leans in, her lips next to his ear as she whispers, “Paul, the dissection’s not tomorrow.”
***
It doesn’t take long for him to stop struggling. Blood loss is the body’s the ultimate betrayal, after all, making it weak when it needs to fight.
She only has time to play with his kidney. A few strategic slashes, and it’s on the table. She spends the rest of the night separating it like a pomegranate. She cuts the cross-section first, cortex to medulla to artery, the little tunnels branching off. Oh the majesty of it all.
After she’s done, she preserves a piece in the yellowed solution— perfect for her classroom.
Now to prep the body for freezing. She’s getting tired at this point, but with a deep breath, she begins. Incision to joint. Twist to the left, there’s that sweet spot. Pop. Limb’s loose. Hold this back. Bend and cut. Off.
Her coworker is finally ready for storage, awaiting that final dissection.
When the light starts filtering in through the blinds, Julia knows it has to come to an end. She’s spent one of the best nights of her life with Paul. We’ll always have the memories.
With a sigh, she turns off the lights and heads back into her classroom. Pulling out her phone to check the time, she’s surprised to see the voicemail icon. She hasn’t been expecting any calls, but clicks “Listen” anyway.
“This message is for Julia Thompson. Your alarm alerted us at 9:47 p.m. that an intruder had entered your home. The young man at that address has a key and claims to be a relative of yours. Please call us back to confirm that no further action is needed.”
With a sense of inevitability, she opens her top desk drawer and checks her keychain—her house key is missing.
She returns to the dissection lab to pick up something that a student had left earlier that week, then makes her way to her car.
***
By the time she reaches her neighborhood, the sun spills a hesitant light over the streets. A new day has dawned. A beat-up pickup is parked around the corner from her house, and the intruder has left the porch light on, as if to say, “Come on home.”
She twists the knob, her heart beating more with anticipation than with fear. With a snort, she recognizes the young man sitting in the shadows on her couch. “Roy.”
He stands, an awkward gorilla of a kid, still in that camo jacket. “Miss Thompson.” He holds a hunting rifle loosely, the barrel resting on the floor.
She notices the half-full glass of liquor on her side table, coasterless. “Do you even know how to use that thing?”
“Want to find out?”
She finds herself surprised by his small display of wit. This is new. “What do you want? My TV? Computer?” She turns away from him and pulls her scalpel from her sweater
pocket, tucking it under her sleeve.
“You’re fucking with me, right?”
She scans the room. “I haven’t even started fucking. You’re not evolved enough for this.”
Roy stands and raises the gun steadily enough.
He must know how to use it. Surprising. So the hunting jacket and boots are not just a fashion statement.
He clicks the safety off. “Sit down.”
She licks her lips, not liking the sudden feeling of being prey. “Of course.” She sits on the recliner near her door. “But if you’re drinking my liquor, it’s only fair that I get some too.”
Roy frowns, reaches back, and grabs his half-full glass. With a sneer, he tosses the contents at her, the vodka splattering across her dress. “Where were you? Hiding the body?” he asks.
She flinches at his tone, at the vodka on her dress. She prefers neatness, prefers control. She lifts an eyebrow at him, but remains silent.
His frown deepens, and the silence stretches taut between them, a fragile rubber band of a thing, ready to snap.
“What do you think you know, you stupid oaf?”
“What do you do with the bodies?”
She shakes her head, meets his eyes like this is just another classroom scolding. If she could just get her power back, she could turn this around. “Really? You think I’m a killer? You have got to be kidding me.” She rises from her chair, slow, keeping her hands in front of her. “Look at me. I’m half your size. Could I really kill a grown boy?”
His eyes widen for a nanosecond, long enough to reveal doubt.
“And if you must know,” she continues, taking a small step towards him, “I was with Mr. Smith tonight.” Her voice drops low, sensual. “We were comforting each other.”
Roy’s lip curls in automatic distaste.
She shrugs and takes one step closer to him—the most dangerous game of “Mother, May I” she’s ever played. “You know Mark may have just run away. Maybe he’s not dead at all. There is no body.”
Now Roy sits down hard, and her couch creaks. The rifle remains trained on her chest.
“Put the safety back on. You don’t want to kill me.” She gives him her best smile and inches forward. “People get confused. People make mistakes. You may not know what you think you know. Let’s just call the police right now.”
He whines a little when he answers, slipping back into his role. “Then I’ll get in trouble for being here. I shouldn’t be in trouble. I didn’t kill anyone.”
“And you won’t either, will you? Now give me the gun.” Her voice is confident again, steady. She feels the balance of power shifting.
She takes another step, closer, closer, recognizing his expression, the doubt—now blown up balloon-sized in his head. With a sigh, he clicks the safety on and starts lowering his gun. She’s standing so close now that he can see the design of her necklace, the pattern of her dress—the tiny splatter of blood on her collar.
With a jerk, he raises the gun again, but she lifts her arm—raises it above his head, like she’s asking permission to speak. With a sharp downward stroke, she strikes, puncturing his eardrum with one quick motion.
His scream is that of an animal, sharp and full of its own pain.
She grabs his rifle, then, and shoves it against his chest.
He clutches his ear with both hands, his eyes wide. “Please. Don’t. Don’t, Miss Thompson.”
She doesn’t hesitate before squeezing the trigger, the sound a firecracker in the quiet house.
He slumps onto her couch, blood flowing from his chest and his ear, pooling on her rug. She wouldn’t have chosen to do it this way. Her hand twitches over her scalpel, but she can’t. Not now.
What a waste.
***
She riffles through Roy’s pocket for his keys. Then she walks to her car and retrieves the item she’d brought from school—Mark’s bloody sweatshirt. This she places inside the cab of Roy’s truck.
On the way back into the house, she makes a phone call.
“9-1-1. What’s your emergency?”
Julia’s voice sounds shaky, emotional. “I had an intruder—one of my students. He had a gun. He was saying crazy things about how he’d killed one of his friends in the woods. He said they’d been hunting and he wanted to see how it felt to kill someone. He said I’d be next. I was so scared. I—I think I killed him.”
“Yes, ma’am, and what’s your address?”
***
It’s apparently a slow night, and there are three police cars at her house within five minutes. Two more join them in seven. By ten, they find evidence that Roy may have been involved in the disappearance of Mark Bell. Within fifteen, they receive permission to launch a full-scale investigation into Roy Kennedy.
Miss Thompson stands in the middle of her living room, the blood of two people staining her dress, as an officer takes her statement. “He seemed like such a nice boy.”
The officer taps his notebook with his pen, a frown creasing his forehead. “So sad, too. I just got off the phone with his mother. She said you were his favorite teacher.”
Well, I am very good at what I do.
Feels Like Justice to Me
Edmund R. Schubert
Jonah sat on a thigh-thick limb in the highest part of a pine tree, his hands sticky from the climb. He didn’t mind the sap so much, except for on his trigger finger. That was a nuisance.
On the ground below him, a shirtless man with a pair of hatchets strolled unknowingly toward a zombie. Coming from the other direction, Ben-the-zombie stumbled up the creek-bed with typical erraticness. Jonah popped his right index finger into his mouth, licking and sucking it, trying to remove the pine sap. For something that smelled as invigorating as a freshly cleaned toilet bowl, it tasted God-awful.
Hatchet-man and Ben-the-zombie drew closer still, unaware of each other because of the dense, green foliage. Only from his perch up above did Jonah have a clear view.
They’d meet in less than a minute. Jonah tried rubbing his finger against his teeth, brushing, except in reverse, trying to use his molars to clean his fingertip. He didn’t have enough ammunition to waste on multiple shots; the first one had to be perfect. It wasn’t that the sap would interfere with his shot—not physically, anyway—but it was terribly distracting when your finger felt like something from the underside of a bus-stop bench, and Jonah had a tendency to get obsessive about things.
Hatchet-man crested the ridge of a small hill at the same time that zombie-Ben plowed through a copse of trees. Twenty yards apart and they still hadn’t spotted each other.
“Forget this,” Jonah said, slinging his rifle into position and firing in one practiced, nearly mindless motion. Practically zombie-like, he mused, reflecting on his technique. The bullet went through the man’s right shoulder. Blood sprayed and he fell to the ground, screaming.
The zombie was on him in an instant.
“Eat well, Ben,” Jonah muttered. “You son of a garbage bag.”
Unfortunately hatchet-man wasn’t ready to be eaten just yet. He swung the weapon in his left hand, slicing into what remained of Ben’s neck. The zombie’s head lolled at an unnatural angle and Jonah bellowed in dismay. “Noooooo!”
He snapped his rifle back into position and fired three more shots: left shoulder, center-mass, head-shot, all in rapid succession. Brains sprayed up into Ben’s face, driving him into a feeding frenzy. The undead thing tried to jam its face into hatchet-man’s shattered skull, the force of its lunge doing even more damage to its tenuously attached neck. Now the head was attached to the body only by the spinal cord and a few tendons on one side.
“No, no, no, no no no!” Jonah spat rapid-fire anguish, working his way down the tree. He looked repeatedly over his shoulder at the zombie’s flobbing head. With its short-cropped black hair and dark-hued sk
in, Ben looked like a rotting Alex Rodriguez bobble-head doll. A-Rod had been Jonah’s idol before The D Plague turned the world into a buffet for the undead, but seeing Ben’s head like this was anything but inspiring. There had to be some way to secure the head, to sew it in place, to keep it from falling off, to keep him from—
When he was almost down from the pine tree, a crusty, gravel-filled voice shouted from the leafy green nothingness: “Is he your brother?”
Jonah froze in place, trying to determine where the voice was coming from.“Your son?”
He remained silent, his head swiveling. He needed one more...
“Your boyfriend?”
Behind him.
Jonah grabbed a tree branch and pivoted to the right, swinging his rifle up with one hand, tucking his elbow against his side for stability. He was sure the owner of the voice was somewhere in this direction, but whoever it was, he was well-hidden.
He also wasn’t shooting. If their roles had been reversed, Jonah would have put a bullet in someone by now. He glanced down at Ben, who was no longer trying to eat hatchet-man. Damn it, these zombies lost interest in corpses faster than Jonah could squeeze a trigger. If the heart wasn’t beatin’, Ben wasn’t eatin’.
Crusty-voice called out, “I don’t mind that you killed him. Frank was a serious piece of shit. But if you’re killing people to protect zombies, that must be one special zombie.”
Jonah called out, “Show yourself. Who am I talking to? How many of you are there?”
Zombie-Ben shambled back toward the creek, oblivious.
Jonah jumped out of the tree, eyeing the ground as he dropped the final eight feet so he didn’t land on a root or rock and turn his ankle. A turned ankle equaled death in this D Plague world.
His knees flexed as he hit the ground and he rolled to disperse his momentum, popping up on one knee fifteen feet from a massive oak tree. He still couldn’t see anyone, but this tree was the only one with a trunk thick enough for a grown man to hide behind. He quickly put his hand behind his back to make sure his revolver hadn’t fallen out of the holster, then snapped his rifle into position.
The Big Bad II Page 19