Special Dead (13 page)

“How bad?” Devon asked before
Ani had a chance to.

Dr. Romero put her hands on her
hips. “Bad.” She tsked, an absurd gesture given the gravity of the situation. “Pending
an executive order, Rishi’s still in charge, and he’s assured me that your
safety is paramount to his research.”

“Nice,” Sam said.

She threw up her hands. “You
didn’t actually believe he was doing this for your good, did you?” She avoided
looking at Ani or Mike with a pathological intensity.

“For what, then?” Devon said.

“Research. An ultimate cure.
Something like that.”

“Great,” Sam said.

“So what now?” Ani asked.

“Now you kids stay out of sight
while we work this out on the legal end.”

“What if....” Everyone looked
at Kyle. “What if they come in to get us?”

Mr. Benson stepped into the
doorway. “Then we kill them.”

Lydia squeaked, and Teah pulled
her close.

Mr. Benson unlocked their
helmets one by one, hanging them on the pegs by the door. “Nobody dead leaves
this room.” He left Kyle’s on, as was now normal. “We don’t know who’s out
there or what they’re armed with.” With that comforting thought, he walked out.

They looked at each other, then
turned to Ani’s mother.

“What now?” Ani asked.

Dr. Romero sighed. “We wait. We
hope that the lack of an injunction won’t last more than a few hours. Stay put.”
She walked out and closed the door. The external lock keyed, and the security
pad lit red.

Kyle turned on the Xbox, and
Mike, Lydia, and Teah joined him at Mario Kart. Devon and Sam took a chessboard
and moved into the corner. Joe sat next to Ani on the couch and asked her the
same question.

“What now?”

She shrugged.

They sat side-by-side in
comfortable silence, watching the video game without interest. Ani felt Joe’s warm
thigh against hers and wished they were alone, glad that they weren’t.

“So,” he murmured. “What do you
think?”

“About what?”

He cleared his throat, an oddly...
living
...gesture.
“Life. Death. The universe. What do you think?”

She smiled. “I think most
people think too much.”

He grinned. “Except the ones
that don’t think enough, am I right?”

“Except those people.”

They talked about nothing and
everything, from college to homework to lifelong dreams, and Ani almost found
herself telling him the truth about her upbringing, but didn’t—there was too
much risk of being overheard.

Ten hours later, at 11:30 pm, the
door beeped and popped open. Kyle paused the game, and they all looked up as Dr.
Romero sidestepped through the door, her face grim. “We’re good. The
ringleaders have been arrested, and, more importantly, the Supreme Court
stepped in.”

Ani raised an eyebrow. “You don’t
look very relieved.”

“I’m not. They didn’t take the
case, but kicked it to the Second Circuit. They did put in an injunction up
until such time as they review it, though.”

Devon rolled her eyes. “Untouchables,
are we?”

“Worse,” Ani said. “Untouchables
are human.”

Joe cleared his throat. “So
what’s this mean?” He did it again and smiled at Ani when she gave him a
concerned look.

“It means we’re back to normal.
Same as yesterday, same as this morning.”

Nobody said anything for a long
moment. Teah surprised Ani by being the first to speak. “So who was the
ringleader?”

Her mom shrugged. “We don’t
know yet. It wasn’t a coordinated effort as far as we could tell.” Her face was
too earnest, too solid.
Liar.
Ani vowed to ask her about it later.

“So anyway, bath time.”

“We’re in the middle of a game!”
Kyle protested.

Joe chuckled. Dr. Romero didn’t.

“For ten hours? Go to bed.” She
put her hand on the light switch that would turn off the TV and console.

They grumbled but they got up.
Ani and Joe were the last out. They lagged behind the others, holding hands as
soon as Teah rounded the far corner. She marveled at the warmth in his touch. Her
mom gave her a pointed look, nodded her head at the ever-present security
cameras, then turned and walked off toward the lab. “Bath!” she called as she
disappeared from view.

They took their time, saying
nothing as they wandered down the fluorescent-lit, institutional hallway. Joe
cleared his throat, rubbed it, and his smile faltered.

“Are you okay?”

He nodded, and swallowed. “Something’s
a little off, but it’s not a big deal.”

“We can call Doctor—”

“I’m fine.”

She stopped and looked at him,
staring into his flat, still-lifeless good eye. “Are you sure?”

He kissed her, gentle and slow,
then pulled back. “More than sure. We’ve all got appointments tomorrow morning.”

She kissed him back, then led
him toward the apartment.

“Do you think your mom will be
back for a while?”

The answer was almost
definitely “no.” When she went to the lab late at night, she often didn’t
return until the next night.

“Yeah,” Ani said, hating the
word. “She usually just checks samples and comes right back.”

He smirked. “You’re a bad liar.”

She sighed. “I know. But a girl
has to try.”

“Sweet. What are we trying?”

“Pacing.”

“Pacing?”

“I don’t want things to go too
fast.” She refused to think about the last time she lost control. She refused
to think about Mike.

“But,” he said, running his
warm knuckles down her cheek, “you know, YOLO and all that.”

Her worry melted. “YOLO indeed.”
How do you do that?
She jerked her head at the security camera. “Mom’s
already watching, you know that, yeah?”

He lowered his hand to hers, lifted
it to his mouth, and kissed it. “We’ve already YOLOed, I suppose.”

“Do you think YOL-T’s really a
possibility? For us?”

“A second life? Why not?” He
coughed. “That’s new.” He shook it off. “Anyway, why not? Your mom’s the
smartest person in the world. She’ll cure—” His whole body jerked, and he
stumbled back into the wall. “Uh, wow.”

He grimaced, and she pulled out
her phone, jamming the buttons with her thumb.

He put his hand on his forehead
and spasmed again. “Something’s wrong.” He cleared his throat and sank to his
knees. His skin turned yellow, then gray. He gritted his teeth and slid to the
floor, his palms pressed to his eyes. “Nnnngh.”

“Sweetie?” her mom said through
the phone.

“Something’s wrong with Joe!
Come fast!” She dropped the phone and fell to her knees in front of him. His
skin writhed as his body vibrated like a speaker.

“Ah!” He grabbed her hands, and
his eyes flared with life they hadn’t held a moment before. “Ani....”

“Hold on, Joe. Please.”

He sighed, and his nose
sloughed off his face, sprinkling down his shirt like dandruff.

“Joe, no! I—”

They locked eyes, and he went
slack in her arms, his muscles turning to jelly and then dust.

“—love you.”

His skeleton crumbled, brittle
pieces falling to the floor, and she wailed. She was still screaming when they
found her, huddled in the powdered debris, clutching his empty shirt to her
face.

Chapter

19

Ani
went through the motions of her Saturday routine, poked and prodded by Dr.
Banerjee and her mother as if nothing had happened.

Joe’s gone.

Their clinical detachment made her want to scream,
to lash out and crush them and hurt them and make them feel what she felt.

Joe’s gone.

She succumbed to the tissue samples, the
questions, the mindless repetition.

Joe’s gone.

It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. He was in the
lounge, playing with Kyle because nobody else wanted to. He was at home, not
even a zombie, playing guitar and drawing and flirting with girls and picking a
college.

He’s dead.

“Honey?” her mom said. Ani looked up. She’d
crushed the steel bed frame in her hand, and her fingernails had gouged her
palm. “We’re done. Why don’t you get dressed and head home? I’ll be right there.”

The hand wasn’t hers; it belonged to someone else.
Even so, she forced it to let go, nodded, and shuffled out of the room. She
passed Kyle in the waiting room, and for once he had nothing to say. Putting
one foot in front of the other was all she could manage. His red, droopy eyes
followed her out.

She was a hundred feet past Dr. Banerjee’s office
when she heard his voice. “Ani? Can you come here, please?”

She turned around. Dr. Banerjee’s white lab coat
contrasted with his chocolate skin, framing his face against the sterile, hospital-bright
walls. She shuffled back to him. He put his arm around her shoulder and led her
into his office. He pulled out a chair, and she sat.

He took a seat across from her and steepled his
fingers. “I think it’s important that we talk about what happened yesterday.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Ani?”

She almost heard her own murmur. “I don’t want to
talk right now.”

“I know.” He reached into a drawer, pulled out a
syringe filled with green liquid, and set it on the table.

She looked at it, then at him, and still didn’t
speak.

“Do you recognize this?”

She dragged her eyes from the syringe to his. She
nodded.

“You took a sample of this and gave it to your
mother, didn’t you?”

She nodded again. It didn’t matter. He already
knew.
And so what?
He wasn’t supposed to be doing...whatever that was
anyway.

“So you understand, then?”

She didn’t. She shook her head. It hurt to pull
pointless air into her pointless lungs. “Understand what?”

“Why yesterday had to happen.”

Confused, she looked at the syringe, then back at
him. “Wait, what?”

“Before you respond in a rash manner, please keep
in mind that Mike and Lydia have both been treated and the compound can be
activated at any time. If you attempt to harm me, it will be. Do you
understand?”

She realized that yes, she did. She understood
perfectly the monster sitting in front of her. “You killed him.”

He nodded. Hatred consumed her.

She didn’t dare move as he explained. “I need your
mother’s expertise to finalize my research, but I can’t have her looking into
our side projects. They are not her concern, a cure is. This is what you need
to know: if you behave, nothing will happen to your friends, and if she
behaves, nothing will happen to you.”

There was nothing to say. She thought about leaping
across the table, tearing his head from his shoulders, gorging on his blood and
his brains. She thought about Mike, disintegrating in her arms, all his stupid
happiness crumbling away into dust as Joe had. Lydia’s smile hovered in front
of her, all worry and panic and self-doubt fading into nothing. No second
chance at life. No second chance at all.

“Ani?”

“I understand.”

His executive smile split his face. “Excellent. It
goes without saying that this stays between us. Nobody finds out. Otherwise I’ll
be forced to take action.”

She nodded.

“Go home. You have homework to do.”

She got up and walked out.

She wandered the halls, unable to go outside for
fear of a rogue zombie-hunter who didn’t get the memo, and unable to go home
because Joe was dead and she’d never see him again. Her phone buzzed, and she
ignored it. Mom could find her on the cameras, and she didn’t want to talk to
anyone else.

At four she found herself at the door of the
lounge, watching Mike sit on the couch and smile at the black, lifeless TV. She
stepped inside and sat next to him.

“Hi, Mike.”

He smiled and put his arm around her, pulling her
close where she didn’t and couldn’t cry. She buried her face in his chest and
told him the truth.

“I’m so sorry. I loved you and I killed you and
everyone’s dead because of me and I just want to go back to how it all was.”

He patted her head. “It’s okay.”

She looked up at him and saw a glimmer of
comprehension, gone as soon as it came.

“Are you in there, Mike? Do you know what
happened? Can you ever forgive me?”

He smiled. “Hi, Ani.”

She settled back down. At some point the lights
went off, sensitive to the lack of motion in the room. A long time later they
came back on, and Ani looked at the door.

Devon and Sam stood shoulder-to-shoulder, sad smiles
on their faces. Devon wasn’t wearing her wig, and Sam’s hair was a mass of
tangles. Both wore sweats.

“Still trying to steal my boyfriend, Cutter?”
Devon’s voice held no bite.

“Something like that,” Ani said without moving. “You
evil jock bitch.”

Devon stepped into the room, and Mike looked up at
her.

“Hi, Devon.”

“Hey, Mike.”

“Want to play Jenga?”

She looked at Ani, who nodded permission and sat
up.

“Why not?”