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Mack had a detailed map of the school in his head. He knew every door, every locker and every closet. He knew which were unlocked, which exits were alarmed and where an open window might be found.
He had very little concern that Matthew or Camaro, who had now joined the chase, would actually catch him. He dodged into the chem lab and took the connecting door through to the former chem lab. It was being remodeled following an unfortunate explosion. He noted a ladder and the roller tray of paint that was perched atop the ladder. He placed Matthew’s book bag just so, beneath the ladder.
The windows were open to allow for ventilation and the painters were on break outside. Mack slid out through the window just as Matthew rushed into the first lab.
Mack crouched outside, just out of sight but not out of hearing and waited.
“Hey!” Matthew yelled.
Pause.
Mack heard the sound of Matthew’s knees popping as he knelt down to pick up his bag.
And then… thunk! Followed by a soggy clattering sound and a cry of pain.
“Arrggh!” Matthew yelled.
Mack knew he shouldn’t risk it but he did anyway – and peeked. Matthew’s head was dripping with pale yellow paint. It ran down his face and into his yelling, aggrieved mouth.
Camaro was a half step behind him.
She spotted Mack and was after him in a heartbeat.
Across the open space between Building A and Building C, Mack found an open door. He ran into a crush of kids very similar to those he’d left behind. He worked his way against the flow, intending to exit by the far door, the one that led to the gym.
But then, to his horror, he saw a massive blond beast just coming in through that very door.
No way he could have known that Stefan Marr would be coming from the gym, having previously forgotten his gym clothes and needing (badly) to take them home to be washed.
“Bluff it through,” Mack told himself.
He smiled at Stefan and started to walk very calmly past him. Ten feet and he would be safe. Stefan didn’t even know Mack was fleeing.
But then Camaro’s voice, a hoarse roar, rose above the happy hubbub. “Bully emergency!” she cried. “I’m declaring a bully emergency!”
Mack’s eyes went wide.
Stefan’s eyes narrowed.
Mack leaped for the door, but Stefan wasn’t one of those great big guys who’s kind of slow and awkward. He was one of those great big guys who was as fast as a snake.
One massive paw shot out and grabbed Mack’s T-shirt and suddenly Mack’s feet were no longer in contact with the floor.
He did a sort of Wile E. Coyote beat-feet air-run thing, but the effect was more comical than effective.
Camaro and a paint-dripping Matthew were there in a flash.
“Bully emergency?” Stefan asked. “You two can’t handle this runt?”
“Look what he did to me!” Matthew cried, outraged.
“You know the rules,” Camaro said to Stefan. “We dominate through fear. A threat to one of us is a threat to us all.”
Stefan nodded. “Huh,” he said. The word huh was roughly one-third of Stefan’s vocabulary. It could mean many things. But in this case it meant, “Yes, I agree that you have properly invoked a bully emergency, in which all bullies must unite to confront a common threat.”
“Better round everyone up,” Stefan said. “The usual.”
Everyone meant all the other bullies. The usual meant the usual place: the Dumpster behind the gym and up against the fence.
“I am going to mess up your face!” Matthew raged at Mack. He pointed for emphasis with a hand dripping pale yellow paint.
“Not the face,” Camaro said. “I like his face.”
Matthew and Camaro went off in pursuit of the others, while Stefan, seeming more weary than highly motivated, stuffed his sweaty shorts into Mack’s mouth and dragged him outside.
This was the point where Mack should have started begging, pleading, whining and bribing. But the weird thing about Mack was that even though he was afraid of puppets, sharks, the ocean, shots, spiders, dentists, fire, Shetland ponies, hair dryers, asteroids, hot-air balloons, blue cheese, tornadoes, mosquitoes, electrical outlets, bats (the kind that fly and suck your blood), beards, babies, fear itself and especially being buried alive, he was not afraid of real, actual trouble.
Which, when you think about it, is what tends to get heroes and those around them killed.
A REALLY, REALLY LONG TIME AGO…
rimluk was twelve years old. Like most twelve-year-olds he had a job, a child, two wives and a cow.
No. No, wait, that’s not true. He had one wife and two cows.
Grimluk’s wife was called Gelidberry. Their baby son’s name was as yet undetermined. Picking names was a very big deal in Grimluk’s village. There wasn’t a lot of entertainment, so when the villagers had something other than eking out a miserable existence to occupy their minds, they didn’t rush it.
The cows didn’t have names either, at least not that they had shared with Grimluk.
The five of them – Grimluk, Gelidberry, baby, cow and cow – lived in a small but comfortable home in a village in a clearing surrounded by a forest of very tall trees.
In the clearing the villagers planted chickpeas. Chickpeas are the main ingredient in hummus, but the discovery of hummus would take another thousand years. For now the chickpea farmers planted, watered and harvested chickpeas. The village diet was 90 per cent chickpeas, 8 per cent milk – supplied by cow and cow – and 2 per cent rat.
Although, truth be told, not a single one of the villagers could have calculated those percentages. Maths was not a strong suit of the villagers, who, as well as not being maths prodigies, were illiterate.
Grimluk was one of the few men in the village not involved in the chickpea business. Because he was quick and tireless, he had been chosen as the baron’s horse leader. This was a very big honour and the job paid well (one large basket of chickpeas per week, a plump rat and one pair of sandals each year). Grimluk wasn’t rich, but he earned a living; he was doing all right. He couldn’t complain.
Until…
One day Grimluk was leading his master’s horse when he spotted a hurried, harried-looking knave who, judging by the fact that his clothing was coloured by light brown mud rather than good, honest dark brown mud, was not from around these parts.
“Master!” Grimluk said. “A stranger.”
The baron – a man with more beard than hair – twisted around as best he could in order to see the stranger in question. It was an awkward thing to do since the baron was facing the horse’s tail as he rode. But he managed it without quite falling off.
“I don’t know the knave. Ask him his name and business.”
Grimluk waited until the stranger was in range, loping and wheezing along the narrow forest trail. Then he said, “Knave? My master would know your name and business.”
“My name is Sporda. And my business is fleeing. I’m a full-time fleer. If you have any sense you’ll join me in that line of work.” He glanced meaningfully back over his shoulder.
“Ask the knave why he is fleeing and why we should flee,” the baron demanded.
The stranger had been brought up well enough to pretend he hadn’t heard the baron’s question and waited patiently for Grimluk to repeat it.
Then the stranger said the words that would haunt Grimluk for the rest of his very, very long life. “I flee the… the… Pale Queen.”
The baron jerked in astonishment and slid off the horse. “The…” he said.
“The…” Grimluk repeated.
“The… Pale…” the baron said.
“The… Pale…” Grimluk repeated.
“No… no, it cannot…”
“No…” Grimluk said, doing his best to replicate the baron’s white-faced horror. “No, it cannot…”
The baron could say no more. So Grimluk said no more.
Only Sporda had anything else to say. And what he said then also changed Grimluk’s life. “You know, if your master sat facing the other way on that horse, facing the horse’s head instead of his tail? He wouldn’t need you to guide him.”
In less time than it took a rooster to summon the morning sun, Grimluk had lost his job as a horse leader and been forced to switch to a far less lucrative career: fleer.
o, back in the present day, Mack was waiting to get his butt kicked. Stefan kept his iron grip on Mack’s shirt and insisted that Mack keep chewing on Stefan’s unpleasant gym clothes.
They had reached the usual spot. Big green Dumpster. Chain-link fence. Cinder block back wall of the gym. Asphalt underfoot. No teachers, cops, principals, parents, or superheroes anywhere in sight.
Mack was going to get a beating. Not his first. But the first since sixth grade. One month into the new school year and he was already in the grip of Stefan Marr.
“I’m thirsty,” Stefan said.
“Mmm hngh nggg uhh hmmmhng,” Mack offered.
“Nah, that’s OK,” Stefan said. “I guess this won’t take long.”
Sure enough, Matthew and Camaro had been able to quickly assemble the available Richard Gere bullies. Six boys and Camaro were striding towards them with a purposeful, thuggish stride.
Mack had one and only one possible escape route. There was a fire door in the back of the gym. It had frosted reinforced glass that revealed nothing of what was on the other side, but Mack knew the cheerleaders would be practising just beyond that door.
He also knew the door was supposed to be locked at all times. But Coach Jeter sometimes unlocked it and turned off the alarm so that he could sneak out between classes and smoke a cigarette here in the alley.
Mack had one chance.
He waited, gathering his strength and focus. He went limp, almost collapsing. And in the split second that Stefan took to adjust his stance, Mack lunged.
His T-shirt ripped away in a single piece, leaving behind only the neck band.
He broke free.
Three steps to reach the door. One, two, three! He snatched at the handle and yanked hard.
The door did not open.
Mack sensed movement behind him.
He spun. Stefan’s fist flew and Mack ducked.
Crash!
“Yaaaah!” Stefan cried.
Mack jerked away, off balance, feet tangled. But he didn’t fall. He back-pedalled, needing just to get his feet back under him.
Then he saw the red spray all over the shattered window.
Stefan’s fist had gone through the glass. He had a four-inch gash in his arm, like a red mouth, spurting.
The approaching bullies froze.
Stefan stared in fascinated horror at his arm.
The bullies hesitated, almost decided to keep coming, but then, with a sensible assessment of the risks involved, decided it was time to run away.
They turned tail and bolted, yelling threats over their shoulders.
Stefan used his left hand to try and stop the blood flow.
“Huh,” he said.
“Whoa,” Mack mumbled with a mouth full of shorts.
“I’m kind of bleeding,” Stefan observed. Then he sat down too fast and landed too hard and Mack realised that what he was seeing here was not a painful but well-timed minor injury. Way too much blood was coming out of Stefan’s arm. There was already a puddle of it on the ground – a little pool was forming around a discarded candy bar wrapper.
The king of the bullies tried to stand up, but his body wasn’t working too well it seemed, so he stayed down.
Mack stared in amazement. In part he was terrified that he was on the verge of acquiring a whole new phobia: haemaphobia – fear of blood.
Escape would be easy. And Mack definitely considered running.
Instead he spat out the shorts. He straddled the seated Stefan and said, “Lie back.”
When Stefan didn’t seem to track on that, Mack pushed him none too gently onto his back.
Mack then knelt over Stefan and pushed down with the heel of his left hand on the wound. This was deeply unpleasant. The blood flow slowed but did not stop.
With his free hand Mack grabbed the aromatic T-shirt and clumsily tied it around Stefan’s massive bicep. He knotted it tight, all while keeping his palm pressed down on the red gusher.
