Company Town (11 page)

Fortunately, she knew exactly where to get one of those.

“I think I know what you're doing, and I think it's really stupid,” Joel said.

“Probably is.”

“You're wounded. You shouldn't even be standing up.”

“Got us this far, didn't I?”

Hwa's hands lit on the emergency ladder. It was lightweight yellow nylon. Joel would have no trouble hauling it up after her.

“You're not supposed to leave me,” Joel said. His voice was flat. He wasn't afraid, but he wasn't happy, either. Hwa had a feeling this was the first time he'd seen somebody on the family payroll doing something they weren't supposed to.

Well. It was a school. Might as well make it a teachable moment. “You're safe up here. But everybody else down there is still in danger. Now you can order me to stay, or you can let me try to help. Which is it?”

Joel didn't answer at first. Instead he turned and plucked out a bunch of the gels from the lighting cabinet. On their black envelopes was an orange sticker with a campfire on it. W
ARNING:
E
XTREMELY
F
LAMMABLE,
it read. Then he held up a black glass tube with an electrical cord dangling from it.

“What's that?”

“It's a black light. Probably the last incandescent bulb in this whole town. It absorbs most of the visible light spectrum, so it's spectacularly inefficient. That makes it good for checking for lint on a red velvet curtain, which is why it's up here.” He knelt down and plugged in the light. He reached for a bottle of water from the tub of snacks. Then he started unfolding the black envelopes.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

“I'm starting a fire,” Joel said. “I don't want him to hear you coming.”

The fire caught almost immediately. Joel quickly fed it more gels. A weird metallic smell arose from them. Smoke started to rise. Joel backed away. The fire leapt up about three feet. Then the alarm sounded. It was a shrill keening sound, as though the whole building were shrieking in agony at being burned. Then the sprinklers came on. Together they stared up at the water. It tasted of ocean.

“Great,” Hwa said. “Just great.”

“I'll get the ladder.”

Hwa stomped out the fire and opened the exit. Joel secured the ladder to a set of hooks hanging off the threshold. Hwa watched the ladder fall into the darkness around the nearest catwalk. If she fell, she would die. Period.

Joel's head stuck out above her. “If you kill him, I'm sure my dad's attorneys will defend you in court. They're very good. They got him out of a whole criminal negligence thing with an oil spill, before I was born. So you probably won't do any time.”

Hwa winced. “That's a real comfort, Joel.”

He held up both thumbs. “Good luck.”

“You, too. Lock that door, and turn off all the lights when I'm gone.”

Going down a nylon ladder with one arm and a heavy toolbelt wasn't easy, but it was a lot easier than the ducts. Her arm was oozing, but she felt okay. Sitting still and focusing on it would have just made the pain worse. Her feet found empty air, and she looked down. The catwalk was another two feet down. Holding the ladder with her wounded arm she quickly changed her left hand's grip on the ladder to something more like a one-armed chin-up. Then she slowly let herself dangle down off the ladder, and dropped onto the catwalk. It was slick and she slipped, gripping the railing with her whole body and getting an eyeful of auditorium. One of the screwdrivers dived out of the toolbelt and glittered as it fell into the deep dark far below.

Righting herself, Hwa looked up at Joel. She gave him a thumbs-up, and he gave her one, too. Then he started pulling up the ladder.

Twisting on the flashlight and sticking it between her wounded arm and her body, Hwa navigated across the catwalk and down a set of stairs to the backstage area. Right near the outdoor exit (locked) was a fire extinguisher. Hwa lifted it off its housing and carried it to the interior exit that led to the drama department (also locked). She lifted the fire extinguisher and bashed at the lever on the door.

Behind the door, she heard screaming.

“It's just me!” Hwa bashed at the lever. After two more tries, it fell out with a clunk. She opened the door, and a stage sword jabbed her in the belly. “Ow! Fuck!”

“A rat! A rat!” Mrs. Cressey said. She was holding on to two crying girls. She smiled. Hwa thought she had maybe gone a little crazy. “Dead for a ducat! Dead!”

Hwa pushed the stage sword away and gave the huge boy holding it a hard stare. He backed off, and she pushed into the classroom. All the other students stared at her. They were freshmen. They looked so small and formless. Like little tadpoles. She had never felt old before. Not until this moment. She was still young, and she knew that, intellectually. But staring at these kids with their jewelled eyelashes and chipped nail polish and their knees all hugged to their chests, she felt like some ancient thing that had crawled up out of a very deep and ugly pit.

She pointed behind herself. “You'll be safer up in the catwalks! Get to a higher ground!”

The students looked at each other. Then they looked at their teacher. Slowly, they got to their feet. Hwa threaded herself through them, and started bashing on the door to the hall with a fire extinguisher. As she did, other students started streaming out of the room. She watched as the last one left, and then kicked open the door and got out into the hall.

The hall was a loop that made up the vocational pod. Mr. McGarry's shop was around the bend. This time, she paused and looked through the window first before raising the fire extinguisher to the lever. No one was inside. Once the door was open, she dashed in and put the fire extinguisher down. The entire wall to her left was a pegboard of tools. The red chalk outlines for each tool's shape were all bleeding down under the sprinklers' onslaught. But the tools themselves were still in place and ready to be used. Including the big gas-powered nail gun, complete with its backpack of fuel.

Hwa wiggled her fingers. They were mostly numb. “Come to Mama.”

Threading her injured arm through the straps of the backpack made the wound open up again, and she wished she'd taken that other pad from Joel. Then again, it was shop: Mr. McGarry probably had the best first aid kits in school. Hwa found one on the wall and popped it open. Right there was the syringe of puncture-filling foam. She bit the protective cover off the needle and spat it out. Hissing, she managed to peel back the padding and fill the wound with foam. It stung mightily and she howled in shock. She suddenly felt a lot more awake and alive. Endorphins were a wonderful drug.

She checked her specs. The shooter was back on the main floor, now. The same floor as she was. He'd gone up and around and down, covering the whole school. Looking for something. Or someone. She had to get him before he found the open door to the drama department. Before he found the other students. Before he found Joel.

Hwa checked the fuel gauge on the tank. It was in the green. She added a couple of cartridges of nails to the toolbelt. Then she wiped the specs dry with a chamois from Mr. McGarry's desk. In the security tab, she changed the video feed to a basic semitransparent map in the lower left of her vision: the shooter was now just a red dot on a set of lines, and she was the blue one. It would be easier to see what was in front of her this way.

Easier to aim.

She took a few deep yogic breaths to centre herself. It wasn't easy with a heavy pack on, but it was necessary. In (two, three, four), hold (two, three, four), out (two, three, four). And again. The pain dissipated. So did the endorphins. There was only her—a calm person accustomed to hurting other people—and him—an imbalanced student who probably came here with a death wish. They were probably equally frustrated by the fact that the cops hadn't shown up. One way or another, they would have to end it themselves.

Hwa entered the hall. She moved past the doors. In other classrooms, there were kids pressed up against the windows. She felt them watching as she walked to the main hall. There, way on the other side of the school, was the shooter.

Behind her, something splashed.

Hwa whirled. At first, she couldn't see it. But in the rain created by the sprinklers was a … shape. A human shape outlined in water trickling off its surface. Only, she could see straight through it. Without the water it would have been completely invisible. She ripped off the specs.

It moved. Glittered. Like a poltergeist caught in the act. It wasn't real. Couldn't possibly be real. She knew that. And yet. And yet. The longer she stared at it the less real everything became. The hallway. The water. The shooter. Even the pain. It was all broadcasting from somewhere else, some other channel, and she was just watching it happen. Blessed, merciful calm descended over her like a hot towel fresh from the dryer. She recognized the feeling. It was deliciously familiar, but she couldn't remember the last time she'd experienced it. Hadn't felt it in a long time.
Derealization.
That was the medical word for it. That moment when everything around you seemingly shifted to another phase of reality. It was one of the brain's many self-defence mechanisms. In Hwa, it was preparation for a seizure.

“Oh, Jesus.”

All her calm vanished abruptly. She was cold and wet and wounded and alone. And she was about to seize for the first time in three years. It made sense: she'd barely eaten anything, meaning there was a dramatic change in her blood sugar, and she was under physical and emotional stress. Her brain had handled all of these challenges just fine until now, and now the sparkling aura in her vision was warning her to sit down and hold on before she hurt herself.
Scintillating scotoma.
That was the term.
Scintillating,
the doctors called it, like it was something to get excited about.

“Master control room,” she said aloud. “Master control room.”

She pictured the bank of buttons. Big and bright and perfectly fitted to her fingers. Imagined punching them. That satisfying click. The way each button lit up as she locked a series of doors behind her, locked herself away—

Behind her, the shotgun sounded. She turned. The shooter was running at her. Her icy fingers fumbled on the nail gun. She lifted it. It shook in her grasp. She pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Oh, Christ, the safety, shit—

“Hwa, get down!”

Síofra. In her bones. Finally. She fell to the floor. So did the shooter. The sprinklers stopped. The siren died. Her ears rang. Her hands kept shaking. Something peeled away from the shooter's scalp. A skein of skin, with hair attached. Beneath it was a skullcap. Light danced across the shooter's skin. It slowed down, ceased, and he went limp.

“He's inoperative, now, Hwa. He can't hurt you. I'm coming. Stay there.”

She tried to say something. But then there were people in Lynch uniforms, and they had bright yellow towels of absorbent foam, and they were picking her up under her arms and dragging her to the nearest wall and taking the backpack off and unbuckling the toolbelt. They were saying how sorry they were. How glad they were that she was okay.

Síofra skidded out into the hall. He nearly wiped out on the wet surface. But he just kept running until he got to her end of the hall. The others scattered and lined up against the opposite wall, chins up, shoulders back. Waiting for orders.

“Hwa?” He waved a hand in front of her face. “Are you in shock?”

“Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.”

He laughed. He started dabbing her face with a towel. “Look at you. You must be freezing. We didn't know the sprinklers would go off. We'll change the crash protocol before the next drill.”

Hwa tried hard to make her lips shape the word. “Drill?”

“Yes.”

She had lost too much blood to feel proper anger. She realized that now, distantly, and without anxiety. “For … the school?”

“No. For you. To see how you would protect Joel.” His lips thinned. He looked away. “I asked Mr. Lynch not to go through with it. But he wanted to test you, and I … I knew you would pass.” He smiled like his mouth hurt. “That's why we didn't use real rounds.”

She really was pretty far gone, now. She couldn't even come up with something clever to say. Why was she so hot? Why was she sweating so hard? She'd barely run at all. She lifted her wounded arm. “Blanks do this?”

Síofra peeled back the tie and looked down. Blood covered his fingers instantly. Apparently she should have taped down the wound after foaming it shut. Hwa felt sticky all down her right side. She'd thought it was the sprinklers. But it was hot. It was blood. The hallway tipped over on its side.

Her boss was screaming.

“I NEED A MEDIC!”

Her vision went pure white. Then deep black. Then they were lifting her on something. A stretcher. Síofra was shaking the skullcap by the collar of his long black coat. Shaking him and slamming him against the lockers and yelling in his face about how
you fucking idiot she's bleeding out just look just look JUST FUCKING LOOK WHAT YOU DID TO HER—

“H … Hey.” Hwa held out her hand. It fell. She had to concentrate to bring it back up. Imagined all her muscles working like the girders on a causeway. Imagined all the tendons in her hand working her fingers into a fist. Close. Open. Close. Open. Síofra dropped the skullcap and reached out. He held her hand in both of his. They felt almost obscenely warm. She was so terribly cold.

“What is it?”

“You can…”

“Yes?” He bent down closer.

“You can take this job and shove it.”

 

6

Palinopsia

The room smelled like mould. Like fungus. Like feet. Hwa suspected that she might actually be dead, and this environment—the damp dimness, the tangy air, the twitching walls alive with blue veins of bacteria—was nothing more than a vivid hallucination of her own corpse's slow decay.