‘I’ve never seen you before,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘But you look like a slacker!’
Wait a minute! Maybe Strickland recognised him
‘That’s right!’ Marty exclaimed enthusiastically.
‘You're always calling me a slacker! I'm always late, you’re always giving me tardy slips.’
Strickland still stared as if he had never seen this teenager before. There had to be some way to remind him. Of course!
‘You just gave me detentionlast week!’ Marty added happily.
Strickland nodded to himself, as if Marty had confirmed something he had known all along.
‘Last week?’ the vice-principal snapped. ‘Now I know you’re lying.’ He nodded across the street. ‘The school’s been burned down for six years.’
Strickland glanced meaningfully at the shotgun.
‘Now you’ve got exactly three seconds to get off my porch with your nuts intact.’
He curled his finger around the trigger.
‘One.’
What? He wasgoing to shoot Marty? But he couldn’t! ‘Mr Strickland!’ Marty insisted. ‘You’ve got to tell ; me what's going on here! ’
‘Two,’ was Strickland’s only reply. He raised the shotgun.
A car screeched up to the curb, full of scruffy teens sporting leather jackets and multi-coloured mohawks. , And, Marty noticed, all of them had guns, too.
‘Eat lead, Strickland!’ the mangiest of the bunch announced. The entire punk-filled carload opened fire. Bullets strafed the porch. Strickland ducked for cover, as Marty vaulted over the railing. He was in the middle of a war!
Strickland came back up shooting.
‘Eat buckshot, slackers!’
Marty ran like hell. He had to get out of here!
But where was he?
And where could he go?
Chapter Eleven
Marty ran all the way to Courthouse Square. He had to go this way to get to Doc’s Jab anyway, if Doc’s lab was still there - and Marty could make it that far without getting shot. In the meantime, maybe he could find somebody here to tell him what was going on.
He walked past the ‘Hill Valley - A Nice Place to Live’ sign. It was riddled with bullet holes.
The Courthouse had changed, too. Someone had turned it into a hotel - and what a hotel! It looked like something straight out of Las Vegas, full of neon and glaring lights.
Marty couldn’t believe it when he read the sign:
BIFF TANNEN’S PLEASURE PARADISE
Biff Tannen? Marty thought? The Biff Tannen?
But there was more to the sign, below the name, flashing one after another:
HOTEL