Deviant (33 page)

“Oh, it does. You're going to screw everything up,” Danny said, changing tack. “If you kill me now, the plan will be ruined.”

Lebkuchen's eyes widened for a moment but then his smile and equanimity returned. “You're just trying to talk your way out of this. You don't know anything about demons or the Great Controllers.”

“Neither do you. You don't believe any of that; you're running the Secret Scripture Union. You've got the God squad on your side. What would they say about all this?”

Mr. Lebkuchen shook his head dismissively “Those idiots? What do they know? They think Noah's Ark is literally real. If it rained for forty days, there would be so much moisture in the atmosphere you would literally drown in the air. Those fools. Useful to have an inside track, of course, so we can keep tabs on the teachers. Easy bunch to manipulate. Give them a little info here and there, make them feel special. The Master's idea, of course, like this school, like all of it. I will ride his coattails.”

“You don't even realize that you're a lunatic, do you?” Danny said. If he could keep him talking long enough, kids would start showing up for school …

“No, not a lunatic. Rash, perhaps. Some of the ideas have been mine. Like this one.”

Mr. Lebkuchen took a step closer and Danny backed up against a desk.

“Wait a minute,” Danny said. “Let's talk about this—”

“We've talked enough. Now it's time for you to die.”

“No!” Danny said, throwing his backpack and pencils and notebook at the crazed principal, but Lebkuchen swatted them away like King Kong swatting at biplanes. Nothing was going to stop him.

Danny looked around desperately for something else to throw, but the room was clean and the science cupboards were padlocked. He made a dash for the windows but Mr. Lebkuchen lunged forward, grabbed him by the tail of his blazer, and threw him to the ground.

“Heard you broke some ribs. Bet they're pretty painful, eh?” he said, punching Danny hard in the chest.

Pain tore through Danny, winding him, doubling him up on the floor.

The Tesla coil sizzled and made sharp, loud snapping sounds.

Surely it was making so much noise that eventually someone was bound to come and see it. There were always early birds, and even one witness would ruin Mr. Lebkuchen's plan. That was Danny's only chance.

“Please, I'm nobody. I'm innocent.”

“No one is innocent. Your mother works in a casino, no? What kind of a place is that? You are the symbol of the decline of this nation. You and your family, building a casino in a holy place. Colorado Springs—the great nexus of America. You … innocent? Who do you think your real father is, Danny? Have you ever thought about it? I'll bet
it's Mr. Glynn himself. And he's the real criminal, a feeder on human weakness.”

“I don't care about that guy. Walt is my dad,” Danny said.

“Oh, is he? Well, he's no innocent either, I'll bet. And you're no innocent. And besides, you should think about me. It won't be easy. It's one thing to kill a cat, another to kill a man or a child.”

“Mr. Lebkuchen, I—”

“Enough talk.”

Mr. Lebkuchen kicked Danny in the ribs to cripple him with pain and then bent down, wrapped him in a bear hug, and lifted him up. He carried him toward the massive, spitting Tesla coil. The smell was of raw electrical energy as it singed atoms in the air, burning molecules and leaving lightning in their wake. What purpose, Danny wondered, could this machine have had but to frighten and to kill?

Danny tried to wriggle from Mr. Lebkuchen's grip, but he was being held too tightly.

“A little closer,” Mr. Lebkuchen said, and carried Danny to within a few feet of the machine.

White electron fire whipped terrifyingly from pole to pole in great buzzing arcs of death, like some dreadful, future serpent mankind might discover in deep, deep space. The noise was horrible, the heat intense, and already the static had lifted Danny's hair from his scalp.

“Demon, I cast thee out!” Mr. Lebkuchen said, planting his feet on the ground and shoving Danny toward the coil.

Danny felt weak and hurt and part of him wanted to just let events carry him along to a quick death.

But then he thought:
No
!

What would Dan Flight of Eagles do?

What would the samurai in Japan do?

What would Jeff do back at the Tropicana Wash?

They would fight to the very last.

He would fight to the very last.

Danny bit into Mr. Lebkuchen's wrist; he bit hard into tendon and bone.

Mr. Lebkuchen screamed, and at the same moment, behind him, a window smashed as a brick came hurtling through it.

Tony Meadows climbed through the broken frame a moment later.

“Danny, what the hell is going on in here?” she yelled.

“Better yet!” Mr. Lebkuchen cried. “Two birds with one stone!”

“It's Lebkuchen. It was him all along! He's crazy!” Danny said.

“I will cast thee into the fire too!” Lebkuchen cried, walking toward Tony.

“Cast this,” Tony said, throwing her backpack at him.

“And this!” Danny said, freeing himself. He spotted a heavy wooden chair and tossed it.

The chair and backpack caught Lebkuchen in the stomach, tripping him and sending him clattering into the Bunsen burner gas taps at the back of the classroom.

He got to his feet quickly just as they heard a car screech to a halt outside the building.

Tony tried to dodge him, but he was too fast for her. Mr. Lebkuchen grabbed Tony by the scruff of the neck.

“No!” she yelled, and began clawing at him.

“Perhaps it should be ladies first,” Mr. Lebkuchen said, and carried her toward the Tesla coil.

Danny jumped him and tried to tackle him to the ground, but Lebkuchen was far too strong and threw Danny away from him, hurling him almost all the way into the hissing coil.

Danny landed awkwardly on the floor just in front of the machine.

“I'll blame you for both of your deaths,” Mr. Lebkuchen said to Danny. “And you won't be able to contradict me because you'll be dead.”

With Tony under one arm he walked purposefully toward Danny.

Danny tried to get up but his leg gave way under him.

“Wait a minute! You smell that? You fell against the gas taps and turned them on. That's gas! If we don't get out of here we're all going to go up in flames!” Danny said.

Mr. Lebkuchen laughed. “All the better. The Controllers, the Masters of this false reality, will reward me for this in the next go-round. But first you, the two of you, into the flame.”

Suddenly they heard banging at the classroom door.

“Open up, Lebkuchen, the game's up. The cops are on their way!” Bob was yelling as he shoulder-charged the door.

Mr. Lebkuchen's eyes widened for a moment, but then he shook his head and continued walking toward Danny. “So be it; we will all of us go together!” he snarled.

“Come on, Lebkuchen, open up. It's over!” Walt yelled through the door.

“Shut up!” Mr. Lebkuchen yelled back.

“Why did you do it, Lebkuchen? To impress your father?” Bob yelled.

Mr. Lebkuchen was taken aback. “What do you know of him?” he snapped, dropping Tony to the ground in his rage.

“We know everything. Okinawa, the murder, the suicide. That's how it started, isn't it? But then you came back to the States and it all stopped for a long time. What got you started again? What gave you the push? Did something happen? Did you meet someone?”

“You know nothing! You are ignorant!” Mr. Lebkuchen screamed, and advanced the last two paces toward Danny. “Come, boy, let us enter the coil together!”

He bent down to pick Danny up, but before he could reach him, Tony grabbed a piece of broken glass from the window and tossed it underhand to Danny, who caught it in his outstretched T-shirt.

The glass glittered in the Colorado sunlight.

It was long and sharp like a dagger.

Mr. Lebkuchen grabbed at Danny and the boy stabbed the glass into his principal's shoulder.

Mr. Lebkuchen screamed, clutching his shoulder, and fell backward, tangling himself in the snake pit of cables at the base of the Tesla coil.

Tony helped Danny to his feet just as the classroom door burst open and Bob and Walt rushed into the room.

“I smell gas! Kids, quickly, we've got to get out of here!” Bob yelled.

Mr. Lebkuchen was desperately trying to free himself from the cables. His eyes were wild and panicked.

“We've got to help him!” Danny said, pointing at Mr. Lebkuchen.

“No time! We've got to run!” Walt said as he and Bob helped Danny to his feet.

All four of them ran out of the classroom and sprinted across the playground.

They dived into the snow just as the Tesla coil ignited the room full of gas.

There was an almighty explosion that sent fragments two hundred feet into the air and whose percussion wave set off every car alarm in Cobalt and Manitou Springs.

Burning splinters and liquefied glass rained down on Tony, Bob, Walt, and Danny.

“Cover your eyes!” Bob yelled.

Yellow fire licked the sky, and the Tesla coil, which had taken off like a rocket, landed with an enormous crash.

The fire burned and the debris came down like snow in a nuclear winter.

People were pouring out of their houses now. In the distance Danny could hear a fire truck already on its way from Manitou and a cop car coming up from the Springs.

Danny was still dazed. “Bob? What are you doing here?”

“Saving your bacon,” Bob said with a smile.

“Well, thank you,” Danny said.

“You did well, son,” Bob said.

“I was lucky,” Danny said.

“Nah, you weren't lucky; you were smart—both of you,” Bob said, and winked at Tony.

Walt was talking now. Danny nodded, but he couldn't really hear anymore because of the ringing in his ears.

Seeing was enough.

An exploded classroom.

Burning drywall. Upturned desks. Fizzing electric cables.

And all around, smoke—tight corkscrews of smoke curling from dozens of little debris fires into the impossibly blue sky.

Sirens. More sirens. A news helicopter. Firefighters. Cops. FBI.

Danny and Tony were taken to the hospital.

For Tony this was the first time ever.

For Danny it was the second time in a matter of days.

They were both released the following day.

Interviewed.

Their picture in the local paper.

Their picture in the
Denver Post
.

Of course, the school was closed.

First for a week and then for two weeks.

At an emergency parents' meeting it was decided that Mrs. Sanchez, the Spanish teacher, would take over as
principal and run Cobalt Junior High along traditional lines until they could figure out what to do next. Only the science classroom had been destroyed and it seemed a shame to let the rest of the buildings go to waste.

But Direct Instruction was scrapped and the silent system was scrapped.

The uniform was kept, but they lost the gloves.

Newspapers speculated about Mr. Lebkuchen's motives, but no one really knew the answer. Was it about his father? Was it about some satanic religious cult? Was it about his terminal illness? Or was it simply the fact that he was insane?

He had kept a journal, on the cover of which he had written the line “It was written that I be logical to the nightmare of my choice,” but, frustratingly for the investigating officers, all the other pages had been torn out and presumably destroyed.

It came out about Bob's part in the rescue.

He was released early and said good-bye to everyone at a meal at Casa Bonita and hopped a bus for anywhere that wasn't Colorado.

Life slowly got back to normal.

February.

March.

April.

It wasn't quite as cold.

Daffodils were everywhere.

The casino was open and doing a roaring trade.

Danny and Tony held hands as they walked to Tom's house.

Her hair was short, boyish, spiky. It would always be like that. Eventually she would get a nose ring.

Danny wouldn't like it, but he'd put up with it.

They walked up Hill Street and rang Tom's doorbell.

“Poor Tom. He hasn't been the same since the SSU collapsed. No one to spy on, no big conspiracies … His life's pretty dull,” Tony said.

Danny rubbed his chin.

Coming to Cobalt had changed him. It had deepened him. He had grown up and he had become a more astute observer of himself and everyone else.

He could acknowledge Walt and accept him, flaws and all.

He could look within himself and see his own flaws.

And sometimes this self-knowledge helped him understand others, too.

There was something about Tom that he didn't quite like.

Something—

“What is it?” Tony asked, concern knitting her brows together.