Bad Hair Day (22 page)

Jonah jogged off down the hallway, his pants practically falling off his skinny hips and pooling on the floor. You’d think he’d wear a belt, but that would make too much sense.

“So where were you supposed to meet him?” I whispered.

“He said he’d sniff me out.” Aaron’s nose wrinkled. “Which kind of makes me sick.”

It was tough to see anything in here; at this end of the school, only the emergency lights were lit, bathing everything in an eerie red glow. The office was to our right, the door cracked open. I took a step inside. Bits of gold crunched under my shoes. There was a case right inside the door that had held a bunch of dusty old trophies from the eighties. The contents of the entire case lay shattered on the floor.

Yep, Trey had been here, all right.

Aaron stood at my shoulder, keeping watch. “Take the stun gun,” I said, keeping my voice low. I thrust it into his hands, or tried to, anyway. He wouldn’t take it.

“No.” He folded his arms. “You keep it. I need to know that you’re safe.”

“But you’re the one he’s expecting. As soon as he sees me, he’ll know we’re on to him. And I’ll be a heck of a lot safer if you’d give
him a zap as soon as you get close enough. If you make me keep it, then I need to get within striking distance. So you’re putting me into more danger, not less.”

“And leave you weaponless? Fat chance.”

“Give me your pseudosword.” After a minute of glowering, he exchanged weapons with me. I smiled reassuringly. “You know how to use the stun gun, right?”

He nodded. I felt kind of funny; I really didn’t want to put him in danger. I knew that stereotypically speaking he was supposed to be protective of me and not the other way around, but I’d never done things the way I was supposed to, and I figured it was too late to start now.

“Good.” I gave the sword an experimental swing, testing the balance. It felt more comfortable in my hand than I would ever have admitted out loud. I would also never have admitted to practicing with them a little after the whole zombie thing. No way. “Now all we need is a werewolf.”

And then, as if on cue, the screaming started.

A
aron and I ran down the hall toward the auditorium. Everyone else was fleeing in the opposite direction. It was like trying to swim upstream, only the water was full of highly panicked salmon wearing show choir costumes. Everywhere I looked, there were sequined skirts and matching dickies. At least the show choir screamed very musically; I was really tempted to pull out a baton and start conducting.

Within seconds, Aaron and I got separated in the mass of bodies. Someone whacked me in the face; it reminded me uncomfortably of the stampede during the zombie attack. Two people had ended up in the hospital because no one could keep their heads in a crisis.

“Quit panicking, you idiots!” I yelled, raising my sword.

There was a sudden, shocked silence. Everyone froze, their
eyes locked on my pitiful weapon. A howl split the air again, and it took all my willpower not to jump. I needed to appear in control if I wanted them to listen.

“Get outside.” I started walking through the crowd, and they parted for me as if by magic. “Get into your cars. Go home. If you see someone without a ride, give them one. Do
not
leave anyone behind, you got me?” I fixed an underclassman with a glare and he nearly puked on his sparkly cummerbund.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“Go,” Aaron said, appearing at my shoulder. “Now.”

The crowd moved toward the door in a more orderly fashion this time. There was a rising murmur as people began making ride arrangements.

Aaron and I walked toward the auditorium, where Kiki and Jonah stood in front of the closed doors. As we got closer, I could see them shudder and hear the repeated thump of someone beating against the doors from the other side.

I ran up to Kiki. Her hair was mussed, and a pair of bright red scratches ran down one cheek. A trail of blood dribbled down her jaw.

“Kiki, I’m so sorry—” I started, but she cut me off.

“Don’t,” she said. “I was pretty pissed at you before, but if you were hunting him down, then you were doing the right thing. You were, right?”

The door shuddered, and I heard my name howled from inside the auditorium. “Kaaaaaate! I smell you!”

I swallowed. “Yeah.”

“So what now?”

“We’re going in.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but I pointed at the stun gun in Aaron’s hand. Then I shouldered my sword. She looked between the two of us and nodded reluctantly.

“Give me your sweater,” she said, beckoning us closer and pitching her voice low. “The scent might convince him you’re still out here. I’ll put it right up against the door crack and make some noise. Maybe you can take him by surprise.”

It was the best plan I’d heard. Okay, so it was the only plan I’d heard, but I still nodded.

“If it gets bad, run, okay?” I handed her my sweater and slipped my coat back on over my Marie Curie tee.

“I will. Now go!” She shoved me down the hallway.

Jonah, Aaron, and I went around to the auditorium’s back entrance, creeping in past the dressing rooms and through the backstage. The curtains were half drawn, and a spotlight shone down on a pair of chairs at center stage. One of them rocked lazily back and forth, creaking like the front door of a haunted house.

The lights screwed with my vision; I couldn’t see past the edge of the stage at all. And I wasn’t going to go out there blind. When I stopped in my tracks, Aaron blundered right into my back.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

“Very dexterous,” Trey’s voice boomed. It sounded like it was coming from the walls, and my head whipped around in a vain
attempt to look in every direction at once. The acoustics in here were great for orchestral performances and really crappy for pinpointing the location of a werewolf before he tore your guts out or infected you with killer nanomachines.

“Trey?” Aaron said. “Is that you?”

“Of course it’s me, you idiot.” A monstrous shadow stretched across the stage. I told myself that it was just a trick of the lights, but when Trey stepped out in front of us and took a seat in one of the rocking chairs, I had to concede that he really had changed. His forehead bulged, and his lips drew back from his gums, exposing fanglike teeth. Even his posture was different now; his shoulders curved forward, thrusting out his neck and making his hands dangle closer to his knees. And of course there was the hair. It even sprouted out of his waistband. I couldn’t stop looking at it.

“You brought your girl,” Trey said.

“What?” Aaron asked.

“I told you to come alone.”

“You didn’t really expect me to listen, did you?”

“I will let it slide.” He angled his head in a gesture that I think was supposed to be magnanimous. All he needed was a bald cat to pet and a cane topped with a skull and he would have made a great criminal mastermind. “She will be one of my pack mates. And I do mean
mate
. So it’s kind of you to bring her to me.”

Ew. I really wanted to leave now, but instead I tightened my grip on my weapon. Jonah took a step in front of me, holding his sword high.

“Over my dead body,” he said.

“Yummy,” Trey replied.

“You need therapy, dude,” Aaron said.

“I do not need therapy! I am now … a werewolf.”

I couldn’t help it. I snorted.

“Don’t laugh at me!” Trey shouted. “I hate that!” His voice went all growly. If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought he was actually a lycanthrope instead of a nanobot-infested tool. I was going to take an inordinate amount of pleasure in watching him get stunned.

Trey launched himself out of the chair, which sailed off the stage and landed with a splintering crash. Aaron didn’t even have time to breathe before Trey knocked him to the ground. His hands tightened around Aaron’s neck.

Aaron fumbled with the stun gun, his thumb searching for the button. At that range, he would absorb part of the charge too, but he’d be fine. I wasn’t worried. He pressed the machine against the side of Trey’s neck.

Nothing happened.

He tried again. His face started turning purple, and there was nothing I could do about it. My stupid stun gun was broken or out of charge or something. I really wished I had read the instruction book, although that probably wouldn’t have done any good besides maybe making me feel like less of an idiot.

“Tase him already!” Jonah shouted right in my ear, like Aaron hadn’t realized he should do something about the fact that he was currently getting throttled.

I couldn’t move. My limbs had gone on strike. So I stood there while Jonah let out a battle cry I’d heard a million times before. It was annoying when he did it in the basement, but here in the auditorium from hell, facing down a hairy lunatic, it was impressive. It echoed off the walls and bounced back at us with an almost physical force as he brought a long length of PVC right down on Trey’s head.

“AAAAAAAAAAAH!” Jonah yelled, raising his arms for another strike.

Trey released Aaron’s throat. That was all I had time to see before I backed into the hallway. Not that I was chickening out; I needed to come up with some other way to deactivate those bots. As tempting as it would have been to simply stick Trey’s finger into a wall socket somehow, I didn’t want to kill him. Not much.

A particularly resounding crash rattled the walls. I half expected to see Trey spring out, covered in the blood of my brother and my boyfriend. But then I heard Jonah’s laugh.

“Come on, fiend!” he shouted. “Is that all you’ve got?”

Clearly, he watched too many movies.

“Flank him, Jonah!” Aaron yelled.

Someone yelped in pain. I couldn’t tell who it was. Aaron and Jonah were getting pounded by a werewolf while I stood around like an idiot.

Then inspiration struck.

I dashed to the gym, but the doors were locked tight. My only other choice was to double back and try the locker rooms. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if those were locked too
and I found myself stuck in a dead-end hallway full of locked doors. But it was the only choice I had, so I snuck down the hall before I could reconsider the wisdom of this course of action.

My sneakers kept squeaking on the tile no matter how carefully I placed them. When I was about twenty feet from the locker room, the fluorescents overhead flickered and then went out. I couldn’t suppress a panicked squeak, although I tried. It only took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the dim red glow of the emergency lights, but it felt like an eternity.

“Kaaaate.” I heard Trey’s mocking singsong before I saw him. He stepped out into the hallway behind me, his hairy face twisted into an expression of gloating satisfaction. He thought he had me trapped. And if these doors were locked, he was right.

I had no idea where Aaron and Jonah were, and the fact that I didn’t hear them shouting didn’t bode well. If they were conscious, they’d be coming to back me up. No way would I ever believe they bugged out and left me to face Trey alone.

“Come to me, Kate,” Trey said, extending a paw.

“I’d rather gargle with battery acid.”

I dashed for the door as he let out a snarl of annoyance and gave chase. The door opened under my hand, and I said a silent prayer to the goddess of unlocked locker rooms as I sprinted past the lockers with Trey close on my heels. Thankfully, the showers were empty. Unfortunately, empty doesn’t necessarily mean dry. I slipped on the wet tile and went down hard with a hollow popping sound, my leg twisting beneath me. You’d think the pain
wouldn’t have meant much after all I’d been through, but I was barely holding it together as it was. This was too much; I tried to stand back up and my leg buckled.

Trey slipped on the same wet patch I had and slid straight into the tile wall. His head hit one of the shower nozzles and his body crumpled to the floor. I was torn between leaning over to check on him and continuing to run, but I’d seen enough horror movies to know what happens to the girl when she checks to see if the ravenous killer is still alive. I might not have been the cutesy-young-coed type, but I wasn’t chancing it until I was sure those bots had been disengaged.

It was a good choice, because in the two seconds it took me to come to that decision, his eyes flew open. Jonah rounded the corner, and I was so relieved to see him on his feet, even if his face was covered in blood. Aaron was a few steps behind him, and he looked like he’d been through the grinder too.

“Go! Go!” Aaron yelled, meeting my eyes briefly.

He jumped on Trey from behind, locking his arms around his neck. Trey stood up as if the weight was inconsequential, but then Jonah swung at his legs and knocked him back down to the tile.

I hobbled to the door leading to the gym. The machine I needed was hanging right inside the main doors across the room. When I tried to trot toward it, my leg bent sideways. The pain was so intense that I whited out again.

The locker room echoed with howls and thumps, and I
couldn’t tell who was winning. But I knew my time was limited regardless; I had to hurry. I dropped to my hands and one knee and dragged myself to the defibrillator. It took me a moment to make my awkward way up to standing and release the case from the wall. If I fumbled this, it could mean my death. I took the box down just as the locker room door flew open.