The area from which she'd come was f coming even more crowded. Others were joining the frayl the fight spreading. In the yellowish glow of the street-1 lights the silhouettes of unmoving bodies could be seenl on the asphalt. 'School,' he said. 'It was abandoned when I went by earlier. We can go there.'
'And do what?'
'Hide. Find a classroom, lock ourselves inside, and wait for morning.'
'I don't know ...'
Kevin smiled thinly. 'Dion won't care. He knows he can trust me.'
Penelope blinked. He didn't know about Dion. Tears seeped out from between her eyelids-and down her cheeks, and she wiped them angrily away, willing herself not to cry. She had not had the luxury of experiencing her feelings, and as far as she was concerned, that luxury was still not yet available to her. She would have time to wallow in her misery later. Right-now she had to act. She had to keep herself alive.
And away from Dion and her mothers.
Kevin saw her wipe away the tears. Their eyes met, and he looked away, embarrassed. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Dion's dead?'
'No.'
'He's all right, then?'
'Not that either.'
'He's one of them?'
She shook her head. 'It's a long story. Let's find a room. I'll tell you there. We'll have a lot of time to kill.'
Kevin nodded. 'I was thinking Sherwood's history class. It's on the second floor, facing the street. We'll be able to see anyone coming.'
Penelope nodded tiredly. 'Fine with me.'
They hurried, side by side, down the rest of the block, checking first to make sure no one was around before dashing across the faculty parking lot to the classroom building.
The front doors were locked.
'Come on,' Kevin said. 'Around the side. We'll break a window and crawl in. Too much exposure here.'
Kevin took off one of his boots and used it to break and clear out the window glass of one of the science rooms. He crawled in first, then grabbed her arms and helped her in. They waited a minute, listening, ready to jump back out and escape if necessary, but there were no alarms, voices, no sounds within the building at all.
They exited the science room, walked down the hall-l way and upstairs to the history classroom. It was unlocked, and they had no trouble getting in, but ther seemed to be no lock on the door at all. Kevin wanted try another room, maybe the teachers' staff room, some! place that would have a lockable door, but Penelope like the idea of being able to see the street, and they pushe the teacher's desk against the door, then sat on two of thej students' desks and stared out the window.
There were fires and searchlights, mobs of people passed in front of the street, going first one way and then the other. In the still air, sounds were amplified, distorted.! Everything sounded close. Gunshots. Car crashes. Laughter. Music. Screams.
A lot of screams.
Kevin fell asleep a few hours later, after she had told 2 him of Dion and her mothers. It was a wild story, but I questions he'd asked made it sound as though he believe it.
Why wouldn't he after everything he'd seen?
She couldn't sleep, though. She stayed awake, staring] out at the city above the rooftops and the trees. The gun| shots stopped, as did the crashes. The laughter died. The| music faded.
Only the screams remained.
And they continued throughout the night.
In the morning, she could almost believe that none of it had happened, that it was a normal world, that she and Kevin had merely stayed late in the classroom to study and had fallen asleep, or even that they were rebellious teenagers in love who had snuck into the building for a romantic rendezvous and had spent the night together.
Anything was easier to believe than the truth.
Getting up quietly, Penelope walked across the cold tile to the window and peeked through the closed slats of the blinds. The street outside looked the same as it always did. There were a few cars parked next to the curb, and the houses across the way were early morning still. The weather was gloomy and cold, the air touched with a tinge of fog.
Only there was no traffic on the street. Not a single car drove past, not a single pedestrian walked by.
In the center of the parking lot she saw empty, broken wine bottles.
Dion, she thought.
She felt a sickening twinge of nausea as she recalled Mother Janine bending over in front of Dion, baring her sex to him. What had happened to her mother after that? Had she been ruptured by his enormous organ?
Had she died from hemmorhaging or internal bleeding?
Penelope hoped so.
No, she didn't.
Maybe she did.
She took a deep breath. She wasn't sure. The truth was, she didn't really know what she felt Her thoughts and emotions were still in a state of shock. She peered through the blinds, at the hillside above their winery on the opposite side of the city. She thought of the orgy in; the meadow last night, and though the remembrance hot-j rifled and frightened her, it was at the same time ... enticing.
She moved away from the window. The pull was strong. There was no denying that. It was only strength and willpower that had kept her from succumbing, that| had allowed her to overcome the base desires of herl blood.
Blood.
That was the most frightening thing about it all. The fact that she wanted to be part of it, that she knew she should be part of it.
But how long could her mind hold out against her body and her emotions?
She moved away from the window. There was a telephone mounted on the wall to the side of the blackboard. She hadn't noticed it last night, but she saw it now, and she walked across the room and picked it up.
No dial tone.
The phone was dead, but that didn't really mean any| thing. The line just went to the switchboard in the office. If she could get to a phone on one of the outside lines, she might be able to call for help.
She walked over to the door, started pulling on the < of the teacher's desk to move it away. There was a loud screech as one of the desk legs scraped across the floor.'!
Kevin awoke with a start, practically leaping to his feera from the position on the floor in which he'd fallen asleep.| He was instantly awake and on the alert, glancing quickly! from the door to the windows and back again, before fn! nally letting his gaze settle on Penelope.
'What are y doing?' he demanded.
'I was going to look for a phone, see if we could c; for help.'
'You were going to sneak out on your own?'
She looked away, embarrassed. 'I didn't want to w you up.'
'Shit.' He shook his head. 'I guess you can't trust an one.'
'And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?'
'It means I thought we were in this together. It means that since we seem to be the only two normal people left in the whole fucking valley, I thought we were going to stick with each other and not sneak around behind each other's backs.'
She looked at him apologetically. 'Sorry.'
He was silent for a moment. 'So where were you going to call from?'
'A phone in the office. Or the pay phone by the gym if that didn't work.'
'Who were you going to call?'
'I don't know,' she admitted. 'The police in Vallejo, maybe. Or Oakland.
Or San Francisco.'
