Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go (7 page)

12 · FIRST-CLASS FRIGHT

MILTON CREAKED OPEN
the door and walked into the sudden hush of a classroom, interrupted. Yep, there was no mistaking it. Standing in front of the class was Richard Nixon, the deceased thirty-seventh president of the United States, who had resigned in disgrace in 1974 after a big scandal called Watergate where he had tried to cover up a secret government conspiracy. The stooped, drooping old man was lecturing about ethics, of all things.

“The term comes from the Greek word
ethos,
which in the plural means ‘character,'” Mr. Nixon said, his sagging jowls flapping as he spoke before the twenty or so terminally bored boys.

Milton crept toward the nearest empty desk, but it was near impossible to be stealthy in wooden clogs and bright yellow lederhosen.

“Ethical actions may be approved of in that they are good, desirable, or right,” the teacher continued, undeterred by a chorus of loud yawns, “or disapproved of because they are bad, undesirable, or wrong…like being late for class.”

Milton sat down at an unoccupied desk in the back of the class.

“As I was saying,” Mr. Nixon carried on, “ethics is the study of moral principles and philosophical quandaries. A traditional philosophic question is whether right and wrong are fundamental in the nature of things, making them absolute, or merely relative to present circumstances, fluctuating on the requirements of the moment.”

Mr. Nixon's bloodshot eyes settled on the class list on his desk. “Mr. Fauster,” he said in a low, cutting rumble. “Since you know so much about ethics that you feel your attendance is optional, give us an example of the latter.”

Milton hated being singled out like this, not because he didn't know the answers—he almost always did—but because he had to act like he didn't know the answers in order not to seem like any more of a freak than he already was. But his teachers
knew
that he knew the answers and took great pains to drag them out of him. This made Milton seem like a know-it-all to his classmates, and a head case to his teachers. Either the teachers were completely oblivious to the nuances of Milton's situation or—on some deep malicious level—cruelly aware.

“Um,” Milton finally managed. “Like lying. Sometimes you lie to save yourself and others. Like when you lied about the whole Watergate thing…you probably thought you were doing the right thing, but each lie and criminal act kept taking you further and further away from what was right, or what you believed was right. Then, before you knew it, it was a big mess and you were impeached.”

“Resigned,” Nixon seethed. “Fully pardoned.”

A blond boy with a head injury slapped his hand on his desk. “That's it! I thought you looked familiar. You're that crook from the history books!”

“I was NOT a crook!” Nixon bellowed. He opened his bottom desk drawer and switched off his tape recorder. “The decisions a president must make are very…
complicated.
And every situation, every time and place, has its own unique logic, its own ethical code, that no one outside could possibly understand. It's just like down here. Each circle of Heck is governed by its own principles, an all-encompassing logic, that hold it together.”

Milton straightened up from his usual “don't notice me” slump and shifted to the edge of his seat.

“Within that logic is its own set of rules, a contract of right and wrong. If something—anything—maintaining that contract is proved unethical, the whole thing crumbles…like an administration built on lies…but that's all water under the gate, um…
bridge.
”

Milton scribbled notes on the back of his registration folder as the bell rang.

Mr. Nixon mumbled as the boys filed out of his class. “No respect for authority,” he said while rubbing his gray, doughy face with his hands.

Contract…rings…own logic…rules…unethical.

Milton folded up his paper and stuffed it into his pocket as he fled the class. He hoped his faithful ferret was close to finding a way out of this awful place.

13 · SCENT UP THE RIVER

THE WORLD WAS
a lot different when you were low. It seemed longer, higher, dirtier. Ferrets, it is generally known, have relatively poor eyesight. They do, however, more than make up for this weakness with their keen senses of smell and hearing.

Unfortunately for Lucky, the halls of Heck were knotted with sharp, distracting smells and strange, echoing noises that didn't seem to come from any one particular direction. The booming sounds never quite disappeared, either; they layered on top of each other until they formed a deep, unsettling roar.

One smell in particular sliced through the blend of pungent ammonia and decay: the biting musk of a particular three-headed heckhound.

Lucky followed the dark, twisting fumes until they became a taste in the back of his mouth. They led him to a towering ebony door carved with nightmarish monsters and, strangely, puppies and unicorns. The door was locked tight, though to a creature such as Lucky it posed no real obstacle. There was a small gap beneath the door, probably no more than an inch and a half high. Lucky possessed the rare ability to make himself almost completely flat. It was quite handy sometimes, like when Milton's aunt Agnes would visit and wrongly assume she could pet Lucky whenever she liked. It was harder to pet something stiff as an uncooperative board.

The twitching ferret slipped under the door and snaked across the floor of Bea “Elsa” Bubb's office, like a fuzzy white eel swimming in a shallow pond. He sniffed Cerberus's filthy velvet dog bed and nearly fainted. It was an assault to such a delicate instrument as Lucky's nose. Just beneath the stench was another smell, a familiar smell, a friendly smell.

The ferret skittered toward Principal Bubb's file cabinet that, lucky for Lucky, had been left slightly open.

Lucky slid inside and sniffed his way through the folders until he found the scent of his tall, hairless pet, Milton. At that moment, he heard the door creak open, followed by the heavy thump of hooves and the padding of paws. Lucky wasn't a creature of exceptional thought, but what he did think, he thought quickly. He grabbed Milton's contract with his sharp little teeth and began to chew…until he felt a pair of jaws—perhaps two pairs—seize his furry tail.

14 · SCIENCE FRICTION

THE AIR SEEMED
dead, Milton thought as he watched his teacher prepare today's experiment. Stale, like the hot breath of a car left in the parking lot on a summer's day. Maybe he didn't even need to breathe anymore, Milton mused as he tried to free his arm, wedged between his torso and the sharp metal arms of his uncomfortably small desk chair.

Suddenly the air was filled with a sharp, sweet tang. It was a gross, saccharine, sugary smell, like dozens of overly glazed doughnuts locked away in a tomb for a million years then suddenly exhumed. Milton's ears popped as an explosive gurgle of foam shot out of a beaker on the teacher's desk.

The sickly, bearded teacher jumped back and scratched his head. “Hmm…perhaps I went a little nuts with the high-octane corn syrup.”

He sat up and scraped his name on the blackboard with his fingernail. “My name is Dr. Pemberton,” he stated in a strange, hollow voice, “and I am your chemistry teacher.” Dr. Pemberton coughed and smirked.

“Let's start off our class with a little joke. What do you do with dead chemists?”

He searched the empty gray faces of his students.

“Barium!”

Dr. Pemberton grinned hopefully, but all he got were blank stares and stifled yawns.

“Get it?
Bury 'em.
And because barium chloride is used in chemistry as a reagent in the preparation of…Oh never mind.”

The teacher shook his head in exasperation, then turned to his chalkboard. As Dr. Pemberton leaned over to grab a stick of chalk, the side of his lab smock widened, and Milton saw a large, gaping wound where the man's stomach should have been. Apparently Milton wasn't the only student to notice.

“What happened to your belly?” asked a boy with a bandaged hand who was not just big for his age but for
anyone's
age.

“Maybe you ate it,” snorted a short, redheaded thug to Milton's left. The class dissolved into wicked chuckles as the large boy with the bandaged hand—
Hey, the kid who got his hand stuck in the Automat
, Milton thought—slid down in his seat.

“If you must know, not that it's any of your business, I died of overcarbonation,” Dr. Pemberton said indignantly. “My stomach one day just…blew up. It was incredibly painful, as fatal wounds go, and I would appreciate it if we could get back to the business of learning.”

Dr. Pemberton walked over to a table covered with vials, beakers, liquids, powders, and Bunsen burners.

Milton raised his hand. “Excuse me, Dr. Pemberton. Not to dwell, but…how exactly does one die from overcarbonation?”

The teacher pressed his palms against the table, glared at Milton, and sighed deeply, producing a whistling rasp that fluttered his lab smock. “Well, young man, it was an unexpected occupational hazard from my particular brand of chemistry: sodalogy, better known as soft-drink science. See, I was the father of mass-marketed, consumer-focused carbonation.”

He rubbed the tight, dark coils of his woolly beard in reflection.

“I was obsessed with trying to outdo myself, to concoct breakthrough beverages, each more delicious than the last. Then, one morning after a prolonged illness, I emerged from my sickbed to perfect my fizzvescent masterwork, which unfortunately left me with a sunroof for a stomach.”

The redheaded boy picked his nose and yawned loudly. “So, Dr. Gutless, did you make anything that anyone could actually drink?” The boy's beefy twin brother sniggered behind him.

Dr. Pemberton jabbed his finger in the air. “Another unsolicited comment like that, and I'll give you lot a pop quiz!”

He sat down and mopped his brow with a rag plucked from his lab coat. “Well, right out of the gate, I created my first, historic formulation, one which I cannot name due to a trademark agreement so all-encompassing that it even applies to the afterlife. But for every successful beverage in your local supermarket, there are thousands of quiet failures.”

The teacher stared wistfully at the table of frothing beakers. “They all seemed like good ideas at the time. Nurse Pepper and Ms. Pibb were two sodas I made just for women, to capitalize on the suffragist movement. Mountain Don't and Six Down were two others that went belly-up before they could even go down anyone's throat.”

Milton furrowed his brows. “If your drink was so popular, why are you here? Every kid I know loves soda. They can't get enough…oh…I get it.”

Dr. Pemberton scowled and examined his class list. “Hmm…Mr. Fauster, is it? Thank you
so
much for picking at the scab covering my ultimate wound.”

The teacher rifled through his desk drawer, pulled out a Tums, and swallowed it. The tablet soon clattered to the floor.

“Apparently,” he continued, “four out of five dentists are on the Almighty's board of directors.”

With a mournful sigh, Dr. Pemberton put his handkerchief up to his nose. He inhaled deeply and shook himself out of his funk.

“Now, if we can focus less on me and more on our subject…”

The teacher rose, collected an armful of bound textbooks, and ambled down the aisle, plopping the heavy books down in front of the dumbfounded boys.

“Class—and I use the term loosely—it's time to pick a partner and make some chemistry!”

Milton and the grossly overweight boy were the two left after everyone else picked everybody else. The boy leaned toward Milton and inhaled deeply. “You smell like a s'more.”

The boy's pupils expanded as he eyed Milton hungrily. Milton suddenly felt as if he were a particularly enticing item on a dessert tray.

“Uh, my name's Milton.”

The boy snapped out of his hunger-induced hallucination. “I'm Virgil. Virgil Farrow,” he said, offering his bandaged hand in greeting. Milton shook it gently, while the boy's small, kind eyes winced in pain.

“Sorry,” offered Milton.

“Don't worry about it. It's my own dumb fault. I know the only decent food in that Automat is just bait in a trap. But still, sometimes my tummy has a mind of its own.”

Milton was at a loss for words. Virgil was the first person in Heck who was actually conversing with him, not just yelling at him—other than Marlo, that is. He thought of that freaky pamphlet he had been given,
So You're Dead,
and the suggested conversation starters he thought he'd never need.

Milton cleared his throat.

“Who were you?” he asked cheerfully. “You look great! Did you die in your sleep?”

Virgil smirked at Milton. “That's funny…that stupid pamphlet…like that thing could help anyone.”

Milton looked down at his Bunsen burner. “Yeah. Stupid pamphlet.”

Virgil flipped through his ancient chemistry book.

“What about this?” he asked.

His sausage of a finger pointed to an experiment involving root beer and sulfur dioxide that, when mixed just so, was supposed to produce a soft drink that caused burps of poisonous yellow fog.

“Sure.” Milton shrugged. “Sounds cool.”

Virgil rifled through the drawer, searching for the right chemicals.

“So, anyway, you asked me who I was…,” he relayed sadly while scooping crystals into a beaker. “Just a normal kid, I suppose, only…bigger. I lived in Dallas, Texas, where everything is bigger, anyway. My last day was my birthday.”

“That should make it easier for people visiting your grave to figure out how old you were,” Milton said.

“Yeah,” Virgil said, smiling. “That's something, anyway. So I was at I Scream, You Scream, that ice cream place that humiliates you on your birthday.”

“Yeah, I'm all too familiar with it,” Milton said. He shuddered.

“I had the Noah's Dark Chocolate Fudge Flood,” said Virgil.

“Wow,” Milton said in hushed, reverent tones. “I've never met anyone who actually ordered that.”

“It's supposedly the most chocolate you can get without a prescription,” Virgil said. “I can still taste it. So there I was, making my way through the Mount Ararat of sweet frozen cream when I felt something funny at the back of my throat, and definitely not of the ‘ha-ha' variety. I looked down at my spoon and saw just one plastic hippo. And, you know, ‘Twofer by twofer they went into the ark to Noah,' or whatever, so where was the other hippo? That's when it hit me—I was choking on it. A total goner. The waitress tried to give me the Heimlich, but she couldn't get her hands around me.”

Virgil shook his head. “That's all I remember. Next thing I know is, I'm here. It seems like only yesterday…probably because it was.”

Virgil smiled and looked over at Milton. “What about you?”

Dr. Pemberton glared at the two boys. “Less talk, more science,” he snapped.

Virgil shrugged his shapeless shoulders and began scooping candy-colored chemicals into test tubes.

“I'll tell you later,” Milton whispered. “But, as you can probably guess, it involved burnt marshmallow.”

“Sweets will kill ya,” Virgil mumbled as he blended his bubbly mixture. “But what a way to go.”

“Well,” Dr. Pemberton said as he wove his way between the lab stations, “let's see what we have here.”

He inspected the experiments with obvious disapproval, grumbling under his labored breath. “Terrible. This lot wouldn't even make the grade as generic cola.”

Dr. Pemberton examined an especially volatile mixture prepared by the hostile redheaded twins.

“Hmm,” the teacher murmured as the bubbling, lava-like liquid gurgled over the test tube's rim. “Whatever this is, it isn't cola. But it might have some rewarding attributes nonetheless. Every night, all the sewage from the Stage goes through the River Styx down to…
the other place.
It would be an excellent way to unclog it when the sewage is especially nasty.”

Milton and Virgil's mixture was murky and thoroughly unappetizing, with tiny bubbles that fell to the bottom and detonated rather than floating to the surface and delicately popping. As the teacher drew close to Milton's station, Virgil shook the concoction until it was a neon green sinkhole of exploding foam.

Dr. Pemberton examined their work.

“Hmm,” he muttered. “Bubbles floating down. Not good. That's what my last experiment did,” he added, absentmindedly patting his nonexistent stomach. “Well, slug it down, son. It's the only way to be sure.”

Milton's eyes widened. “There's no way I'm drinking that.”

Dr. Pemberton frowned. “Show some guts, boy.”

“That's exactly what I'm afraid of!” Milton cried out. “I prefer my stomach intact, thank you very much!”

The class was totally still, though the teacher was vibrating like a teakettle set to blow. But before he burst, Dr. Pemberton patted his stomach and leaned against the lab station.

“You're giving me the second-worst stomachache I've ever had,” he moaned. “Since you're taking up so much of my valuable time here in class, it seems only fair to rob you of some of yours. Detention. You. After school.”

As Dr. Pemberton hobbled away to examine the handiwork of his other students, Milton contemplated his very first detention.

The word itself, “detention,” was almost thrilling. It carried with it a slight tingling charge from the third rail of the wrong side of the tracks.

Milton had never once been given detention. It was fitting, somehow, in this nonsensical place, that he should be reprimanded for exhibiting common sense. Of course, good would be punished down here. And now Milton could taste what it was like to be a delinquent. Besides, detention in Heck would be like a holiday. He could read, write, draw…whatever. It could be like an all-expense-paid vacation from himself.

After the bell tolled, Virgil and Milton spilled into the hallway with the other boys.

Virgil burped loudly. He wiped telltale bits of green foam from his lips.

Milton's jaw dropped open. “You actually drank that? Are you trying to get yourself killed…
again
?”

Virgil shrugged his shoulders. “That which does not kill me only makes me gassy.”

After another deep gastric rumble, Virgil stopped short and patted his ample tummy. “Whoa, that one had attitude,” he said. “Anyhow, tough break about detention. That bites.”

“How bad can it be?” Milton replied. “Just sitting in a room for an hour, relaxing, away from Principal Bubb.”

Just then the other boys in the hallway scattered like cockroaches when the kitchen light turns on. From down the hall strutted Damian, apparently exempt from classes. He wasn't dressed in the humiliating wool lederhosen and clogs that all the other boys had to wear. Damian was sporting a black tailored suit, gleaming leather shoes with tassels, and a starched white shirt with monogrammed cuff links. Pinned to his lapel was a red badge reading
HONORARY AIDE AND DEFECT ENFORCEMENT SECT (HADES
).

Damian swaggered to Dr. Pemberton, who was closing up his classroom, and handed him a coiled parchment.