Chapter Fifteen
Nick Garaldo studied the silhouette of the ruined school across the open stretch of dirt and grass. He reached into the side pocket of his backpack and fitted a hands-free voice recorder over his ear. He tapped the switch and spoke softly.
'I'm outside the Buckthorn School. I'm preparing to make my assault.'
Nick emerged from the protection of the tall weeds lining the creek basin and picked his way through a minefield of dirty glass. He dug into his pocket for a handful of red pistachios. One by one, he pried apart the shells and popped the nuts into his mouth. As he chewed them, he sprinkled the shells on the ground. Pistachios were his weakness — he ate three bags a week — and his calling card, too. On every assault in the urban caves, he left a trail of salty red shells behind him. The Duluth Armory. The steam tunnels underneath the University of Minnesota. The abandoned mental hospital in Cambridge. The silos of a shuttered flour mill in the western prairies. He had invaded them all and signed his name with pistachios. It was his little joke for the police and the security firms that tried to catch him.
When he had scouted the old Buckthorn School over the summer, Nick wasn't concerned about access. The ruins were wide open for anyone who was brave or foolish enough to explore inside. But not now. He assumed that someone had been killed or raped at the site, and the liability had finally forced the township to shut up the building against marauders and post
The windows were now boarded up, nailed shut with sturdy plywood. Chains and locks looped through the door handles. It wasn't going to be easy to get inside, but for Nick, that was part of the challenge.
He switched on his flashlight. The beam of light speared the bright eyes of a raccoon, which lumbered away into the field. He crunched through brick and rubble into the open lower level that had served as the plant for the school's utilities. Most of the foam ceiling tiles had fallen and decayed, and those that remained were water-stained and furry with mold. Electrical conduits dangled from the ceiling.
'They can lock it up, but they can't keep the kids out entirely,' he recited into his voice recorder. 'You've got cans of Budweiser, Big Mac boxes, and used condoms. God, who would be crazy enough to have sex in this cesspool?' Nick wrinkled his nose. 'There's a nasty smell, too. I think it's coming from upstairs.'
He did a reconnaissance of the stairwell leading up to the main level of the school but, like the windows, the concrete stairwell had now been sealed. He made a complete circle, navigating around fallen stonework and pipes. He never noticed the black box cemented to the stairwell or the red light that flashed once as he crossed through an electronic beam.
Nick retreated to the field behind the school and made his way up the grassy slope at the northwest corner so that he was on the same level as the main floor of the school. He ate more red pistachios and tossed the shells. He followed the wall of the school, stepping over a rusted radiator that lay on its side like a lazy pig. A row of sixteen windows cut through the brick wall. He could reach up and touch them with his hand but, like all the others, the windows were sealed. He turned the next corner, stirring a nest of blackbirds that startled him as they screeched and flew away in a huff of wings and feathers.
From where he was, he was now visible to traffic on Township Road but, so far, he hadn't seen a single car. He pointed a flashlight beam toward the high end of the wall, where five sets of windows stretched in a row to the front of the school. The plywood on two of the windows was loose, thanks to rain dripping from the roof and rotting the wood. The windows were frosted and square, large enough to allow him to squeeze through, but they were set at least twenty feet above the ground.
Nick continued to the front of the school, where a large sinkhole marked a section of the building that had burned down. He hauled himself up on the jagged edge of a low concrete wall. Minding his balance, he grabbed the edge of the roof and pulled himself up far enough to swing his leg on to the tar surface. He completed the climb and found himself on the roof of one of the lower wings of the building, abutting the brick wall where the plywood hung loose from the window.
He ripped off the plywood so easily that he almost fell. Half of the frosted panels on the window had long since been broken in. He leaned through the open space and examined the interior with his flashlight. The beam illuminated steel braces and the backdrop of what had once been a basketball frame. He was breaking into the school auditorium.
'Here we go,' Nick said.
He removed a coil of rope from his backpack and secured it to a steel pipe on the exterior wall of the auditorium, then threw the rest of the rope through the window where it dropped to the floor below. Hanging on to the rope with gloved hands, he pushed himself through the gap, bracing his legs against the inside wall. Inch by inch, he worked his way down the wall until his feet splashed into a puddle of cold water at the floor. He let go.
'I'm inside the ruins,' he said.
With the windows covered over, the interior of the school was darker than the night outside. He listened to the dripping of water and felt it spatter on his face. Somewhere in the great space, he heard a familiar squeal. Rats. He couldn't see them, but he knew they were there, scrabbling through the stagnant water.
Then there was the smell.
Now that he was inside, it was ferocious, like rotting meat in the hot sun, so strong and nauseating that he had to pinch his nose shut with his fingers. He wanted to gag, and even when he breathed open-mouthed, the stench rose up anyway through his nasal passages.
'Something's dead in here,' Nick said.
He waved the beam of his flashlight ahead of him. The floor was a mess of ventilation pipes, wire netting, and steel I-frames. The interior walls had gaping, jagged holes where bricks had caved in like missing teeth. He took fragile steps toward a doorway on the far side of the auditorium. Dark shapes scurried in and out of the puddles and hid inside the pipes as he came closer. He saw red eyes in the tunnel of light.
The doorway led to a narrow hall, where the line of dark, boarded-up windows stretched along the wall. Glass littered the floor. He shivered from the cold and dampness. The smell, as he moved down the hallway, got even worse. So did the gathering of rats.
Nick stopped.
It was impossible to move silently through the debris, and for a moment he was certain he had heard the clatter of someone else's footsteps on the far side of the school. He waited to see if the noise would recur, but a minute passed, and it didn't. He told himself he was letting the place get the best of his imagination. He was alone. No one else would dare to be inside.
When two more minutes of silence passed, he kept going.
He reached a doorway leading to a smaller room, where a broken wall of cinder blocks rose to the ceiling like a honeycomb. His flashlight shone on a row of concrete beams. Green algae bloomed on the floor. In this room, the smell soared, feeding rancid decay into the air. He covered the whole lower half of his face with his gloved hand, but he couldn't extinguish the stink. The rats were bolder here, running back and forth in front of him. Urgent. Excited. Hungry.
Four feet away, where the light made an arc on the floor, he saw them.
Six bare feet.
Nick lifted the flashlight and then dropped it and shouted. The flashlight fell and broke, bathing the room in darkness, but it couldn't erase the awful image from his brain. Three women, naked, were tied to old-fashioned school chairs. Their skin was bloodless and white, where they still had skin. Most of it had been eaten away, exposing muscle, organs, and bone. Rats scampered on the desks and in their laps and across their shoulders and breasts. 'FUCK FUCK FUCK!'
Nick backed up and staggered like a blind man, hands outstretched, colliding with the concrete pillars as he hunted for an escape. His feet tripped on debris, and he fell, cutting his hands and arms on sharp metal. His skin
