Special Dead (11 page)

Jeff side-stepped, booted the
ball past the goalie’s outstretched hands, and slammed into the side of the
goal. His head pinged off of the aluminum, and the crowd’s collective gasp
drowned out the rest. Everyone surged to their feet, blocking the view, and
they stood in lost silence, unable to even ask what was going on.

The fire house whistle sounded,
and three minutes later an ambulance screamed into the parking lot and across
the field. The crowd parted to let it through. Ani craned her neck to see
between the masses. Jeff lay on the ground, motionless, with Coach Savard
kneeling over him. The crowd swarmed back in and she lost her view.

“Doesn’t look good,” Devon
said.

They murmured in agreement, and
eventually sat in silence until Mr. Benson herded them back through the school,
onto the bus, and home.

*   *   *

Sam shared the news later that
night, just before bath time. “He’s in ICU at Strong Hospital, still in a coma.
There’s swelling on his brain. And some other problems.”

“Aw, man,” Kyle said, for once
not a smartass.

“Is he going to be okay?” Lydia
asked. Teah pulled her close and rubbed her shoulder. Ani was grateful that
Devon didn’t put words to her scornful glare.

“They don’t know yet,” Sam
said. “They have to wait and see.”

*   *   *

Sunday dragged to eternity.
Lydia was a weepy mess even though she was less familiar with Jeff than Ani—jock
circles were hard to break even before death—and Devon’s brooding scowl cast a
pallor over everything. No one felt like playing games or practicing for
December’s talent show or even talking. Ani gave up on the common room and went
back to something she understood.

She didn’t feel like doing her
exercises, so she settled on something contemporary. Dan Gibson’s “A Path to
Solitude” fit like a glove, meandering and quiet without being lonesome. She
played it once through and sighed. Maybe it was lonesome, if not on purpose.

She cocked her head at a knock
on the door. “Who is it?”

The door opened a crack. “It’s
Joe. Can I come in?”

She looked around the
apartment, clean but not tidy, with piles of sheet music and her mother’s
notebooks scattered over every horizontal surface.
Too late.
“Sure.”

He stepped inside, kicked off
his shoes, and surveyed the mess. “Where do you guys sit?” Ani could get used
to that smirk.

“Kitchen table.” She shifted
over to the side of the bench and patted the black wooden surface. “Or right
here.”

He sat next to her, and their
lips touched. His cold lips held a faint whisper of formaldehyde and his
scraggly beard tickled her nose. She jerked back and looked at the door. “We
shouldn’t.... Mom—”

Joe raised his hands. “Hey,
lady, I was just sitting down. You kissed me.”

“No, I didn’t, I...” She
grinned. “Maybe I did.” She did it again and opened her mouth to him. She
panicked and pushed him back into the piano keys. “That’s not a good idea,” she
said over the sudden clamor.

Joe rolled his eyes, the scorn
drowned in his smile. “Your mom’s at the lab. Knowing her, we’ve got hours
before—”

She cut him
off with an upraised index finger. “That’s not what I mean.”

She heard
music, laughter, talking, as the meat thing on the ground struggled to its
feet, bowtie askew and splattered with blood. She looked at it, warm flesh and
hot blood, and wanted it. Mike, dead and hungry, a victim of her love.

She gritted her teeth against
the memory. A guttural, frustrated moan escaped her lips.

Joe’s flat, bloodless left eye
widened in shock. “Are you okay?” He reached out his hand as she stumbled to
her feet, out of his reach.

“I think you need to go.”

He lurched off the bench and
wrapped her in his arms. His voice murmured in her ear. “Not until you tell me
what’s wrong.” Her mind sobbed as her dead body stood motionless in his arms. “Trust
me.”

“I can’t, Joe. Not...not yet.”
She put her hands on his waist and pressed her forehead to his. The hurt in his
eyes tore at her, but she smothered the weakness. “Some secrets aren’t mine to
tell.”

And some are
too dangerous.

He frowned. She couldn’t tell
if he knew she was lying. “I don’t understand.”

She kissed him, a brief peck on
the lips, and he didn’t try for more. “I know. But you will, someday.”

“Promise?” His grin returned,
sunshine with gray gums, surrounded by scraggly red fuzz.

“Yeah, I promise.”

“Cross your heart, hope to live?”

“Yeah.”

His memory lingered longer than
the taste of him, and before long she’d moved from Gibson to Grieg. She tidied
up the apartment—a Saturday job interrupted by Jeff’s accident—finished her
homework, and went back to the piano.

Her mother stumbled in just
before eleven, eyes bloodshot and face smudged with blue ink. She dropped her
purse, dragged off her wig and dropped it on the end table next to the door,
and collapsed on the couch, eyes closed.

“Dinner?” Ani could see that
her mother wasn’t up to preparing anything for herself.

“Sure.”

Ani microwaved a thin slice of
pot roast, threw it on some wheat bread, gave it a squirt of spicy mustard, and
brought it to the couch. She knelt and held out the plate. Her mom gave her a
grateful smile, sat up, and took a bite. Ani was about to get up when her mom patted
the cushion next to her, so instead she sat.

“Long day?”

“Yeah.” She took another bite,
and mumbled through the food, too low for the camera to pick up. “That sample
isn’t medicine. It’s gallium arsenide and silicon and very, very strange.” She
swallowed and spoke up. “Did you finish your math?”

Ani prattled about her homework
as her mom wolfed down most of the rest of the sandwich, continuing their
private conversation over the top of the public one. “Baby, I think...” She
took another bite. “I think it’s mechanical.”

“What do you mean?”

“They appear to be machines.
Nanotechnology.”

“Isn’t that science fiction?”

“Not really. No. Especially
now.”

“What does it do?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find
out.” She took her plate to the kitchen, signaling the end of the conversation.
She rinsed it, dropped it in the dishwasher, and went into the bathroom. Two
minutes later she crawled into bed, mumbling about Ani and the bath.

Chapter

17

 “I
don’t know what to tell you,” Mr. Cummings said into the phone. “These people
don’t listen to me any more than they listen to you.” He rolled his eyes at
Sam. “Because they’re idiots! Okay. Yeah. Bye.” He slammed the receiver down,
snatched a crayon from his desk, and turned his back on the group to write.

“So, anyway,” Sam said, “the doctor said the
swelling in Jeff’s brain hasn’t gone down.”

Lydia leaned in close as if to whisper, but then
spoke at normal volume. “What does that mean?”

“It means he’s in deep shit,” Kyle said.

If Mr. Cummings heard the curse, he didn’t turn to
address it.

“Is he going to die?” Lydia asked.

Kyle shrugged, so she looked at Teah. Teah
shrugged, so she looked at Devon.

“We don’t know,” Devon said. “They’re doing
everything they can for him.”

In Ani’s mind, Jeff Rock was still a freshman,
five-nine and over two hundred pounds, most of it muscle. By all accounts he’d
gotten bigger and was aiming for a basketball scholarship to Syracuse.

“That’s so sad,” Lydia said.

Before anyone could reply, the door opened and the
blue-eyed soldier wheeled in a cart loaded with limp green beans and gray,
half-congealed goulash. Teah’s mouth went slack in her helmet, and Lydia kicked
her under the desk.

He is quite dreamy.

“Lunch duty again, huh?” Mr. Cummings asked.

The man nodded, less timid with every passing
week. “Yeah. KP’s not so bad, compared to...other things. Y’all have a good
one.”

He shut the door and Lydia asked, “What’s KP?”

Kyle pointed at the cart, his chain jerking his
hand short of fully outstretched. “Kitchen Patrol.”

Joe grunted. Everyone looked at him as he stood
and approached the cart. “I’m hungry.” He pulled out a tray, grabbed a plastic
fork, and lifted a glob of pasta to his mouth. Half of it scraped off onto his
bite guard as he ate it, and half of what made it into his mouth fell out as he
tried to chew around the rubber-coated wood. He leaned over the desk so that
the plate would catch most of what fell and took a second bite, then a third.

“You’re going to regret that,” Ani said.

He smiled, gobs of hamburger stuck between his
lips and the guard, his scruffy beard smothered with dingy gray sauce. “I can
taste it. And it’s good.” They watched in awed silence as he finished the
plate, shoveling the green beans into his mouth with his fingers. He finished
the plate, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and leaned back. “Wow. I’ve missed
food.”

“Looks like it,” Kyle said.

“So that really tastes good?” Mr. Cummings asked.

“Better than before.” He looked down at the
demolished plate and grinned. “I didn’t realize just how much we’d lost.
Taste-wise, I mean.”

“I haven’t tasted a damned thing in a year,” Sam
said. Devon nodded her agreement.

“I can taste a little,” Teah said. “But I haven’t
liked anything.” Ani could agree with that.

“Come here,” Sam said to him. Joe approached with
an exaggerated waddle, his hands clasped over his lean stomach. She brushed his
hands out of the way, pulled up his shirt, and put her cheek to his stomach.

He looked at Ani, then at Mr. Cummings, then down
at Sam. “Ask, much?”

“Shut up.”

They waited while she closed her eyes, then
snapped them open. “Teah, come here.”

Teah’s reply was doubtful. “Why?”

“Because you were bitching about being cold last week.”

Teah walked forward as if that made any sense,
then knelt down next to Sam.

“Put your wrist on his stomach.”

“One at a time, ladies,” Joe said, waggling his
eyebrows at Ani, Devon, and Lydia. “There’s plenty of Joe to go around.”

Sam punched him in the thigh. “Hold still.”

“Why my wrist?” Teah asked.

“Because our extremities are too dull. Just do it.”

Teah put her wrist against his abs and gasped. “He’s
warm! Ish.”

Sam stood, and pulled Teah to her feet. “That’s
what I thought, but I couldn’t quite tell.” She patted Joe on the side of the
helmet. “Your metabolism is churning on that school food.”

“Great,” Joe scowled. “Now I’ll probably have the
runs.”

“So what does this mean?” Mr. Cummings asked.

Sam leaned against the lunch cart, thought better
of it as it started to roll, and sat down. “It means that Joe’s hungry because
his metabolism is amping up.”

Ani’s heart caught in her throat. “You mean, he’s
alive?”

Sam’s curt nod held no joy. “At least a little. I’d
guess he’s well below ninety-eight-point-six, but his core is warmer than room
temperature.”

“That’s amazing!” Ani stepped forward and put her
hand under Joe’s shirt. A thrill shot up her spine as her hand ran over his
naked, taut abs, but she felt no warmth. “I don’t feel anything.”

Kyle snorted. “Try lower.”

“Kids,” Mr. Cummings said, “if we’re done
molesting Mr. Simonton, lunchtime’s about over.”

On cue, Mr. Benson burst into the room, followed
by Mr. Clark. “Shackle up!” He took one long glance at the empty plate, then
got to business.

Everyone but Ani, Devon, and Sam stood in a line,
fed the chain through their leg irons, and waited for Mr. Benson to secure the
locks. Kyle, half-hunched behind Joe, giggled.

“What?” Teah asked.

Kyle bumped his helmet on Joe’s lower back. “I
hope he don’t have gas.”

Doesn’t
, Ani thought.

“He won’t,” Sam said. “Intestinal gas comes from
probiotics, and there’s no way Joe has any of those.”

“No, of course not,” Kyle said with an obvious
lack of comprehension.

“Still,” Sam said as they clanked their way out
the door, “it makes me wonder.”

“Wonder what?” Ani asked.

Sam called out to Joe. “When the time comes, could
I get a stool sample?”

Ew.

“Any time!” he called back, and the door closed.

They got into their cage and took out their
economics stuff. As soon as their cage door locked, the classroom door opened,
and the living filed in. They looked morose, and Ani realized she’d forgotten
all about Jeff in the excitement of Joe’s theoretically warm stomach.

After forty-four minutes of capital flow diagrams,
the living filed back out. Not one of them had said a word to any of the
zombies but Mr. Cummings. Two minutes later Ani, Sam, and Devon shuffled through
the hall, their manacles clanking.

They passed by a pair of black-clad, black-haired,
ankh-wearing boys kneeling at their lockers, their eyes upturned in bloodshot
rapture.

“Hi,” Ani said, and they dropped their gazes to
the floor.

“I wish those losers would get a life,” Devon
said.

“You know they can hear you, yeah?” Sam asked.

She grinned and shouted through her bite guard. “Get
a life, losers!”

“Miss Holcomb,” Mr. Benson admonished. “Behave.”

She rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath.

They shuffled into the classroom six minutes later
to an enthusiastic “Hello!” from Mike and a more perfunctory “Good afternoon”
from Mr. Foster, then Ani met the cool gaze of Dr. Freeman.

She sat in the back on a folding chair, her long,
athletic legs crossed beneath a green dress no more appropriate than last time.
Crow’s feet betrayed her age under perfect makeup, and the skin on her neck had
the slightest sag to it.

“Doctor Freeman,” Ani said with a nod.

“Miss Romero,” she replied. “I’m glad to see you recovered
from your time at court.”

Mr. Foster looked back and forth between them with
a furrowed brow. “Do you two know each other?”

“No,” Ani said as she sat.

Dr. Freeman stayed for the rest of the school day.
At dismissal, Dr. Banerjee met her at their room, and they walked behind the
shackled conga-line, talking in voices too soft to overhear. Once on the bus,
everyone squeezed around Ani.

“Okay, spill,” Devon said.

“I forgot all about it,” Ani said. “That woman,”
she made air quotes, “‘Doctor Freeman’ or whatever, she was in court when I
testified in Buffalo.”

“What’d she do?” Kyle asked.

“She didn’t do anything, she just sat there in the
back with the reporters.”

Joe frowned. “Is this about you or about us?”

Sam shrugged. “It sure as heck ain’t about Mr.
Foster’s master’s degree.”

Nobody said anything as they pulled out onto the
street toward the protesters. There were only eight of them today.

“Maybe they’re losing enthusiasm,” Teah said.

“Maybe it’s cold out,” Lydia said.

Mike waved as they passed, then settled back into
his seat.

“Do you think she’s working for Banerjee?” Devon
asked.

“I’ll ask my dad about her,” Sam said. “If the
school board knows something, he’ll know.”

“And if they don’t?” Devon asked.

“Then she has to be working for Doctor B. Nobody
else has the authority to let her in there.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence.

When they got home, Ani booted up the common room
computer and did a search of SUNY Geneseo’s faculty. There was a Dr. Freeman,
professor emerita, listed in their education department, but no picture. Her
bio said that she’d gotten a PhD in education from SUNY Stony Brook in 1977 and
had worked at Geneseo ever since.

She showed the page to Devon, Sam, and Joe.

“Well,” Joe said, “unless they’re awarding
doctorates to toddlers, she ain’t Doctor Freeman.”

They stared at the screen for a minute before Sam
asked the obvious question.

“So who the hell is she?”