Special Dead (15 page)

Chapter

22

Face beaming, Lydia gave Teah a high
five. She turned to do the same to Kyle, jerked her hand to her waist, then put
it back out so that he could slap it at the limit of his chain.

“Nice,” Kyle said.

“What’s so nice?” Ani asked.

Lydia held up her latest algebra
test. Mr. Foster’s handwriting emblazoned a circled fifty-two atop the first
page.

Ani raised an eyebrow. “This is
good?”

Lydia nodded, her lips peeled
back to expose her bite guard. “Fifty-two rounds up to fifty-five.”

Ani didn’t know what to say, so
she didn’t say anything.

“Fifty-five?” Lydia asked, a
hopeful whine in her voice.

“Isn’t fifty-five an ‘F’?” Ani
asked.

Kyle shook his head, rattling
his chains against his desk. “Nope.”

Ani looked at him, then at
Lydia for explanation.

“I got ADD. Fifty-five is
passing.”

Ani raised an eyebrow. “Fifty-two
is fifty-five is passing?”

Lydia’s head bobbed in an
excited nod.

“Awesome.” Ani turned back to
her homework, twenty ‘chain rule’ questions that Mr. Gursslin wouldn’t accept
unless it was at least eighty percent correct. She didn’t know whether to feel
cheated or grateful.

*   *   *

On Thursday, PE was canceled in
favor of an assembly. Shackled and handcuffed, the Special Dead were led into
the “auditorium,” a former gym with peeling, decrepit seats donated by a
defunct theater from outside of town. Three massive, new, and out-of-place
screens dominated the stage, and Ani half-expected a Kleincorps Pharmaceutical
logo to appear at any moment.

Mr. Benson led them to the
back, where the sound equipment and spotlight tower used to stand, and locked
their chain to a steel ring on the wall. The other end he looped around their
feet, entwining it with their shackles, and locked to a ring kitty-corner to
the first one. As soon as the second lock clicked into place, Mr. Foster
giggled and sat in the back row, right in front of Kyle. Jeff sat next to him,
with them but not one of them.
Awesome.

A few minutes later, the
student body filed in. The black-clad death worshippers filled almost a third
of the seats, sitting together in front of stage left regardless of what their
teachers tried to get them to do. As one they turned to Ani’s class, clasped
their hands together, and bowed, just like the creepy kid at the drinking
fountain had six weeks before. They turned back to the stage almost in unison
while the normal kids filled in the rest of the seats. Once everyone settled
in, the back half of the auditorium remained empty.
Is this all there is?
There couldn’t be more than two hundred and fifty kids.

The lights dimmed, and Ani
spent the next hour trying to ignore the crude, white-bread hip-hop poseurs extolling
the evils of peer pressure, drugs, and bullying. Sam leaned across Devon until
her helmet touched Ani’s. “Those gangsta kids say not to fall for peer
pressure, so we totally shouldn’t, yo.”

Ani formed a fist and patted
her chest twice. “Word.”

Devon’s eyes didn’t leave the
screen. “Just. Fucking. Die.”

“Too late,” Sam said. “Already gangsta.
Yo.”

Ani grinned. “East coast fo’
life.”

Mr. Foster turned in his seat
and shushed them.

*   *   *

The week ended as soon as it
began. Friday night morphed into Saturday morning, and Ani dragged her feet as
she approached the lab. She knew he was in there, and she knew she was capable—physically
and mentally—of breaking his neck with minimal effort. She wanted to, she had
the strength, and the will...but Lydia’s face appeared in her mind, nervous and
terrified that the world might not like her. Mike smiled behind her, dumb as a
post but undeserving of the fate Ani’s vengeance would give him.

Shit.

And everything went exactly as
it always had.

Physical examination, tissue
samples, injections....

Dr. Banerjee gave no indication
that things between them had changed, not even the slightest twitch of the eye.
Ani left the lab wondering if he was a great actor—or a sociopath. Or both
.

She took her time moving through
the halls, uninterested in another Saturday pretending that things were okay. She’d
made it halfway home when Sam fell in beside her and whispered, rapid-fire.

“Ani, you got to talk to your
mom. Teah’s going to get herself killed. Maybe the rest of us, too. Definitely
Bill, and some of his friends. Maybe some guards.”

Ani kept up her pace and smiled
for the cameras. “Whoa, there, slow down. What are we talking about, here? And
act casual.”

For Sam, a little too intense
was the same thing as casual. “Bill’s going to break Teah out.”

“How?”

She shrugged. “I’m a little
fuzzy on the details, but she’s serious. And so is he.”

“What details aren’t you fuzzy
on?”

“Something about smuggling her
out in a truck.”

Ani tried to puzzle through how
that might work. “How would she get in the truck?”

“I don’t know.”

“How would they get around the
guards?”

“Look, I don’t freaking know.
What I do know is that they’re serious. Maybe Banerjee—”

“No!” Ani dropped her voice. “Don’t
tell him anything. Anything.”

Sam stopped, forcing her to
stop. “You blame him for Joe.”

Ani said nothing.

“It’s not his fault the cure
didn’t work. He’s working around the clock—”

“I’ll tell Mom. Just don’t
involve...him.”

“All right.”

*   *   *

Ani barged into the bedroom. “Mom,
I—”

Her mom pulled the needle out
of the back of her own head, set it on the nightstand, and wiped a line of
drool off her mouth. Her glare was apology, accusation, and guilt wrapped into
one. “You should knock, sweetie.”

Ani stepped forward and picked
up the syringe. “Is this...are you...what?” She put a hand to her mom’s neck
and felt a pulse.

Her mom plucked the syringe
from her hand and set it back down. As Ani stood there, stunned, she unbuttoned
her blouse and opened it, revealing a small scar between her breasts, not quite
covered by her bra. “Pacemaker. I’m sure you’re familiar with the trick.” She
buttoned back up and patted Ani on the cheek. “We do what we have to do.”

“You’re dead.”

She nodded. “I was going to die
anyway. At least this way I can be of some use. It turns out that ZV is
inherently oncolytic—it obliterates cancerous cells and doesn’t reanimate them.”

“But Doctor Banerjee—”

“—installed the pacemaker. He
knows. And now there are three of us, but he doesn’t have to know that you do.”

Ani looked at the surveillance
camera. “A lot more than three of us. Every guard on duty knows, has known
forever.”

Her mom shook her head. “No,
sweetie. The camera in here doesn’t go to the guard station. They’re for his
eyes only.”

Ani shivered. “That’s disgusting.”

“It’s part of the deal.
Besides, I can’t imagine he watches this thing anyway. What’s there to see?”

“But...I don’t understand. What
about the bath?” Her mom lifted the mattress, revealing a silver metal lid
underneath. “Jesus, Mom, the bucket of brains in court. What, how did you
resist?”

Her smile was as dazzling as it
was unexpected. “That’s how we know we’re so close! Once we’ve nailed the cure
for ZV, we’ve got a cure for, well, just about everything. ZV destroys disease—even
AIDS—and sustains the body, just wipes out cancer, completely. We can infect
the terminally ill, then cure them.”

“Wow.” She waited for more but
didn’t get it. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Her mom patted her cheek. “Treated
from the very beginning, my cravings are almost zero.”

“Almost.”

“Yes.”

“So...” Ani gestured to the
world in general. “All this is just for show, then? The guards, the fences, the
orange helmets, Mr. Clark? If we’re that much of a danger, then so are you, and
Banerjee knows it.”

“Right.”

Ani asked the only question
left. “Why?”

Her mom wrapped her head in her
arms and pulled her to her chest. “Because it was the only deal I could make,
sweetie. With your cover blown, there was only one way to ensure your survival.
Banerjee needs me, and I need you.”

“I love you, Mom.”

“I love you, too, sweetie.”

*   *   *

Mr. Cummings was five minutes
into a rant about kids, laziness, career planning, and unrealistic expectations
for the future—Wednesdays seemed to draw the grumpy right out of him, and the
lunch crowd served as his sounding board—when Ani realized she’d forgotten to
tell her mom about Teah.

“Oh, crap,” she said under her
breath.

Devon raised an eyebrow, the
gesture just visible under the helmet.

“Nothing.”

Devon left her eyebrow up and
didn’t look away.

“Just forgot to tell Mom about
something.”

Devon jerked her eyes at Teah. “That
one?”

“You know?”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course
I know. Those two chuckleheads are too stupid to, like, actually keep their
mouths shut about anything. Even Kyle knows.”

“So why is it my job to tell my
mom?”

“Why would you bother?”

Ani froze. “What do you mean?”

“You have Teah Lee, Lydia
Stuber, and Bill Watson hatching a plan to break a zombie out of a
maximum-security installation. They have the collective IQ of a burrito. Why
would you worry even one split second about it?”

Ani crossed her arms, conscious
of Sam’s eyes on them from across the room. “Sam thinks they’re serious.”

“They
are
serious. But
who cares? They’ll eventually figure out that none of them are smart enough to
come up with a plan that won’t get them all killed. Meantime, we don’t have to
deal with any more security than the ridiculous amount we already have.”

Ani didn’t reply.

“You know I’m right.”

Do I?

*   *   *

Thursday brought the end of the
marking period—Ani had straight A’s—and her third piano lesson. They spent more
time discussing theory than hitting keys, but over the course of the two-hour
block, Ani learned a lot more than she thought she had to. Mr. Herley’s
exacting, uncompromising demands kept her on her toes mentally and physically,
and he left her mentally and emotionally drained. As soon as the door closed
her mom looked up from the pile of paperwork on the kitchen table.

“That man is worth every penny.”

Ani grinned. “Yeah, he is.”

Chapter

23

Ani heard voices as she shambled into
the lab.

“No,” her mom said. “Absolutely
not. It’s Teah’s turn, not Ani’s.”

“It is whoever’s turn I say it
is, Sarah. It’s Ani’s turn.”

Banerjee.
God, how she
hated him.

She stepped around the corner
with a smile plastered to her face. “My turn for what?”

Murderer.
Monster.

Dr. Banerjee patted the stool
next to him. “Sit.” She sat and contemplated crushing his head between her
hands. He looked at her mom. “Sarah, administer the dose.”

Dr. Romero’s veneer of
professionalism didn’t crack as she swabbed Ani’s arm with alcohol—a habit they
never broke despite the utter lack of needed sterility—inserted the needle, and
injected a bluish-green liquid. She pulled out the needle, placed it on the
tray, and took off her gloves.

“So, what was that?” Ani asked.

Dr. Banerjee didn’t smile. “That
was Stage VIII.” Her heart stuck in her throat, and she managed not to smile
when he patted her knee. “Don’t worry, the issues with VII have been resolved.
That won’t be happening again.” The warning touched his eyes but not his voice.

“I hope not,” Ani said.

She hugged her mom and left,
wondering what came next.

The worried stares of her
fellow zombies didn’t help. They walked on eggshells around her, as if
expecting her to disintegrate at any moment.
And why wouldn’t they?
It
wasn’t their fault they didn’t know that Joe’s death wasn’t an accident.

She spent the rest of Saturday
reading
The Azalea Assault
by Alyse Carlson, a charming murder mystery
with a gardening theme, and on Sunday she made breakfast for her mom—it only
occurred to her afterward that this was a fiction orchestrated for the security
cameras—and then sat at the piano. She didn’t get up again until bath time.

*   *   *

That Monday, she wrinkled her
nose as Sam sat next to her. “What is that?”

Sam scowled at her. “What’s
what?”

She sniffed the air. “It smells
like vanilla and, I don’t know, acidy medicine.”

“I’m wearing vanilla perfume,”
Sam said. “Not sure about the medicine, though.”

It clicked in her brain. “Formalin!”
She grinned. “Sam, you stink.”

“Smelled yourself lately?”
Devon asked.

She buried her nose in her
armpit and inhaled.
Yup. Bath residue.
“Yeah, that’s it.” She looked at
Mr. Foster. “Do we all stink?”

He giggled. “There’s a certain
aroma to the room, sure. I’m used to it, though.” His eyes widened as she
shuffled to his desk, filling her lungs once she got there.

“What are you wearing?”

“Uh,” he said. “Old Spice.” He
giggled again.

“I can smell it!” She beamed at
the rest of the class, and their return smiles were guarded, all but Mike’s and
Jeff’s.

“I got something you can smell,”
Kyle said. “Jeff’s butt.”

“Kyle,” Miss Pulver said. “Please
act your age.”

“Please act your age,” he
muttered under his breath, just loud enough that everyone could hear him. Jeff
guffawed, and Mike joined him.

Mr. Foster ignored them. “If we’re
done sniffing things, Ani, could you please take your seat?”

“Sure.” She sat, got out her
English assignment, and couldn’t help smelling the crayons. The odor was more
memory than actual sensation, but a tiny hint of waxy nostalgia triggered in
her brain.
Maybe it’s only strong smells.
She wasn’t about to test Kyle’s
suggestion.

*   *   *

The next morning she made her
mom breakfast and drooled on her nightie at the smell of eggs fried in butter.
She blotted the spot with a paper towel and called out to the bedroom. “Wow, Mom,
phase eight is pretty badass.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I still don’t want to
eat it, but this egg smells great.”

“Mmm-hmmm.” Sarah came out of
the bedroom dressed in a cream skirt-suit, in full makeup.

“What’s the occasion?”

“I’m going with the ACLU
lawyers to the Second Circuit hearings today.”

“Jeez, already? How soon do we
find out?” She flipped the pan over onto a plate, then put the plate on the
table.

“Oh, a month or two on the
inside. These things drag forever.”

Ani grimaced. “Could be a good
thing.” She grabbed a slice of light rye and put it in the toaster.

“No toast for me, sweetie.” She
looked down at the egg, the yellow yolk leaking out across the plate. “Actually,
I’m going to skip the eggs, too. My stomach’s in knots.” She smooched Ani’s
cheek and ducked out the door. “Don’t be late for the bus!”

“Bye, Mom!”

Alone in the apartment, she
dumped the egg in the garbage, put the bread back in the bag, loaded the
dishwasher, and went back into her room to change for the day.

*   *   *

Ani shuffled into the classroom
and stopped so fast that Kyle bumped into her back.

“Hey, what gives?”

Dr. Freeman sat in the back
corner, between Jeff Rock and Mr. Clark. She crossed her legs and favored Ani
with a cool look. “Good morning, Miss Romero.”

Kyle muttered “hubba hubba”
under his breath.

Ani shuffled inside, let Mr.
Benson unlock the shackles, and took her seat. Only then did she turn and give
the most pleasant smile she could through the bite guard. “Good morning,
Doctor. Observing Mr. Foster again?”

She nodded, though they both
knew she was lying.

This can’t be
a coincidence—Mom’s gone, she’s here.

Devon balled her hands into
fists and planted them on her hips. “Why are you really here?”

“I’m observing—”

“—no you’re not. You’re not
even Doctor Freeman. Freeman’s an old woman.” Devon’s eyes trailed up and down
her body. “Old
er
woman, no matter what you’re trying to say with that
skirt.”

Freeman, or whatever her name
was, flushed crimson, but her voice remained calm. “I don’t appreciate your
tone—”

“It wasn’t meant to be
appreciated.”

Mr. Benson cleared his throat. “I
think settling down would be an excellent idea.”

Devon sneered but sat. For her
part, the blonde woman observed the class for a half-hour without taking any
notes, then left without a word.

As soon as the door closed, Sam
spoke up. “Mr. F, you got to spill. She’s not on the faculty at Geneseo, is
she?”

He giggled. His eyes dashed
from Mr. Clark to the security camera to Sam and back to the camera before
settling on his shoes. “Sure she is. Now that’s enough about that.”

Devon leaned in to Sam’s
personal space and stage-whispered, “Man, he’s a bad liar.”

Miss Pulver scowled at her, but
that was the end of the conversation.

*   *   *

As they trundled down the
stairs to the bus, Ani leaned on the railing for support.

“What gives, gimpy?” Kyle
asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. A
dull ache spread through her upper thigh and into her abdomen. “My hip hurts.”

Sam stopped, halting the line. “Your
hip hurts? Since when do we feel pain?” She was right, of course. They felt the
sensation as much as ever, but the dull realization that something was wrong
with their bodies could hardly be described as pain.

Ani hissed through her teeth. “I
don’t know, but, man.”

“Keep walking,” Mr. Benson
said.

Boarding the bus, a burning
jolt shot through her hip. “Ow, fuck!”

Their driver widened his eyes
in concern. “You all right?”

She gritted her teeth against
the pain. “Think so. Sooner home the better.” She supported herself on the
seatbacks, then collapsed into her seat. Stars exploded across her vision from
the resulting agony. She hissed in a breath. “Devon, call Mom. Tell her to meet
me at home.”

“Are you...like Joe?”

All she could manage was a
shake of her head. “Don’t think so. Please.” She swam in and out of lucidity,
aware but unaware of the starts and stops, concerned voices, a swaying
sensation as someone carried her into the sterile confines of the lab.

An hour later she lay in the
open bath as her mom clucked her tongue at the X-rays. “I don’t know what to
tell you, sweetie. The pins in your pelvis haven’t shifted, the crack hasn’t
gotten worse—or better. There shouldn’t be any reason for the pain.”

“Now it itches more than
anything,” she said.

“That’s the regenerates. I
think. Stay in the bath through tomorrow and we’ll see if it gets better.”

“For how long?”

“Let’s start with twenty-four
hours and go from there.”

Ugh.

“Okay.”

“You want some music?”

“How about an audiobook? Something
long.”

“Rowling’s new thing?”

“Sure.”

Over the next day, the itching
got worse, then faded away altogether. By the time she got out of the bath, she
felt great, better than she had in years.

Tiptoeing into the living room,
she smiled at her mom, who was scowling over a pile of paperwork and oblivious
to the world. She did a pirouette, which ended with a slight stumble into the
piano. Her mom looked up at the noise.

“Hey, Sweetie. How are you
feeling?”

“Awesome. Really good,
actually. My hip doesn’t hurt at all.”

Her mom stood up, wiped her
hands on her pants, and grabbed her keys. “You’re not limping, either. Let’s
get you to the lab and have a look-see.”

After more X-rays and a
full-body MRI, Ani couldn’t believe her eyes. The fracture in her pelvis was a
fraction of its original size, and the ragged tear that the tree branch left in
her lung was gone.

“It’s a miracle,” Ani said.

“No,” came a voice behind her.
She turned to find Dr. Banerjee in the doorway, holding her chart. “It is the
primary thrust of our research.” His eyes flicked to her mom and then back to
Ani. “Behind a cure, of course.”

“What do you mean?”

He stepped into the room and
gestured in the air with his free hand. “When the Chinese virus became public
knowledge, the United States government convened the best and brightest medical
minds to counteract the threat. That included your mother and me, of course. We
realized at once that killing the virus would be a vital part of the program
but would not in and of itself be a cure. The human body dies as a result of
infection, and due to the nature of the pathology, traumatic injury is an
all-too-common ancillary condition. A cure, therefore, must come with tissue
regeneration. A healing, as it were.”

“So I’m getting better?”

He shook his head. “The serum
is at war with the virus in your body. I have no doubt at this time that the
virus will win again, as it has in the past. It remains to be seen if the
healing process we now observe will reverse when the virus regains hold.”

“Well, that sucks.”

Her mom tsked. “Language,
sweetie.”

Dr. Banerjee said nothing for a
moment, instead flipping through her chart before setting it on the table next
to the door. “Success is incremental. With each passing day, we get closer to a
solution. Good evening.” He stepped out of the room and was gone.