favor?
She turned as she reached the doorway. 'Get out of the house,' she said.
'Quickly.'
Dion's mother nodded tiredly, not asking for or needing more information, and Penelope raced downstairs, through the house, and out the side door where she'd come in. She nearly ran into Holbrook and Kevin, struggling with both her boxes and their own as they approached the side of the house.
'Got 'em,' she said, holding up her photo albums.
'We thought you might get into trouble,' Kevin said. 'You didn't see anyone inside?'
She shook her head. 'No.' She took a box from Kevin, a box from the teacher, placing her photo albums on top of them.
'We're wasting time,' Holbrook said pointedly.
'This way.' She led them down the walkway that curved around Mother Sheila's garden in the back of the house and to the rear of the winery buildings.
The back door of the main building was open, hanging half off its hinges, and an enormous puddle of dried blood covered the slab of concrete in front of it. She hesitated for a second before going in. The open door worried her. But she did not feel comfortable staying outside when just around the corner of the building bacchantes were loading trucks with cases from the warehouse.
Holbrook shoved his way past her into the building.
She looked toward Kevin and their gazed locked for a second. Then Kevin shifted the boxes in his hand and followed Holbrook through the doorway.
Penelope went in after him.
The inside of the building was filled with bodies.
The extent of the carnage took her breath away. Despite what she'd seen the past few days, despite even the scene outside in the meadow, she had started to become inured to the bodies, had begun to view them as casualties of war, a natural effect of the current situation in the valley.
But there was nothing natural about this.
The long corridor had been carpeted with viscera, wallpapered with wet skin. What remained of the bodies after their skinning and evisceration had been hung up and strung up, attached to the ceiling with the heavy wire used to tie grapevines. They were hung low and high, positioned at regular intervals, forming makeshift dividers, creating narrow walkway that zigzagged through the wide corridor|
The thing that truly sickened her was that she recognized some of the faces on the wall. Eyeless and toothless,! they were stretched tight, widened and lengthened, distorted. Yet she saw familiar features, individual attributes! in the forcibly misshapen faces. There was Tony Veltri'sf big nose. Here was Marty Robert's close-set eyebrows.
The stench in the corridor was horrible--rot and decay; 1 blood, bile, and excrement--and Penelope held her: breath, trying to breathe through her mouth.
Only ... it wasn't quite as horrible as it should havef been. The shit was bad. And the rot. But the scent of the I blood was pleasant, alluring, and below it all she could 1 make out the sweet smell of wine, and she felt a familiarff tingling between her legs.
She tried to breathe in through her mouth, out through | her nose, tried not to smell the odors, tried not to think, about them.
Next to her, Kevin vomited loudly, bending over and| facing to the left so he wouldn't throw up on the boxes inj his hands.
Holbrook was already navigating the corridor, blithely! shouldering aside the bloody corpses as he walked for| ward. 'How far to the wine?'
he asked.
Turning back toward the open door and taking a deepij| breath, Penelope followed after him, her feet sinking intof the squishy organs and tissue that covered the floor. 'Sec-1 and door on He right should have some vats,' she said.1
Behind her, still gagging, she heard Kevin literally following in her footsteps, his shoes making loud, squelch-Jf ing sounds.
The door must have been locked, because Holbrooki had put down his boxes and was kicking it when shelf caught up to him. He kicked, slipped, fell into the grue on J| the floor, then got up and did it again. On the fifth try the door gave a little, and on the sixth it swung open.
Inside, the pressing room was clean. No bodies, no gore**! no blood.
Holbrook let his boxes drop to the floor He'! looked around the room at the huge steel vats and various Jf pieces of machinery. He turned toward Penelope, pointing;
at a red-valved pipe protruding from the closest wall. 'The power here,' he asked. 'Is it electricity or gas?'
'Both,' Penelope said.
The teacher grinned. 'Gas,' he said. 'This may work after all.'.
Kevin straggled into the room, lurching past Holbrook, trying to get as far away from the door as possible before putting down-his boxes and loudly exhaling.
'Uh-oh,' Holbrook said, frowning and patting his pockets. 'Did anybody bring a matchbook?'
Penelope's heart leaped in her chest.
'What--' Kevin began.
Holbrook grinned. 'Just joking.' He opened one of his boxes. 'Hurry up.
Let's get to work.'
Under the teacher's supervision, they soaked the rags and newspapers in gasoline, piling them in strategic locations. Penelope showed Holbrook where the runoff valves were, and he opened three of them to a trickle.
It was becoming hard to breathe due to the fumes, and even Kevin was taking gulps of air from outside the doorway.
'Isn't this going to explode when you put a match to it?' Kevin asked.
'How are we going to get out in time before it blows?'
Holbrook was emptying the last drops of gasoline in a trail leading from one pile of rags to another. He tossed the can aside, walked over, and grinned. 'I'm not completely dense.' He reached into his pocket and withdrew a folded envelope. He opened it. Inside was a bluish white crystalline powder. 'Chlorine,' he said.
Kevin frowned. 'Yeah?'
The teacher reached into his box, withdrew a plastic container of transmission fluid. 'Mix these two together, and they'll start a fire.'
'So will a match. What's the point?'
'There's a delayed reaction. It'll take a minute or so to start. I'll put it next to some paper that hasn't been doused with gas. It'll have to burn through that first. Then it'll start the rags on fire. Then the fire will spread. By the time this place goes up, we'll be long gone.'
'I hope it works,' Kevin said.
'It will.'
They finished placing the newspapers, rags, and boxes around the room.
'Okay,' Holbrook said. 'It's time.' He poured some transmission fluid into the envelope and heaved the still mostly full container at the wall. He shook up the contents of the envelope to mix them, then twisted the envelope and placed it next to a long length of rolled newspaper.
'Haul ass,' he said.
They ran. Penelope nearly slipped in the corridor, slamming into one of the bodies, a sticky chest cavity hitting her in the face, but she kept going, and the three of them emerged outside seconds later.
In front of them, the house was surrounded by young girls dressed in white and holding hands.
'What's that?' Kevin asked. 'What are they doing?'
'They're virgins,' the teacher said.
'Vestal virgins,' Penelope said. 'Or Hestial virgins. They are to be consecrated to the goddess of the hearth.'
'Consecrated? What the hell does that mean? Sacrificed?'
