Special Dead (9 page)

“How do you guys rate food?” Mr. Cummings asked,
drawing their attention back to his desk. “They never bring me any food.”

“State law,” Sam said. “They have to provide a hot
meal.”

“Can’t you just bring one from home?”

Devon laughed. “Yeah, we’ll just have Ani’s mom
whip us up a couple of peanut butter and brain sandwiches. Hold the peanut
butter.”

“And the bread,” Teah said.

Ani almost didn’t hear Lydia’s murmur. “I’m so hungry.”

Sam grabbed Lydia by the helmet and manhandled her
backward, slamming her head into the cage bars. “Don’t.” She barked the word,
then lowered her voice as her eyes flitted from the burn crew in the back of
the room to the camera on the wall. “Don’t say that. Ever.”

“But—”

Her helmet rang against the bars as Sam slammed
her head back again. “STOP IT. Jokes are one thing.”

Mr. Cummings raised an eyebrow. “Ladies? Is there
a problem?”

“You stupid, stupid girl,” Sam mumbled. “Just shut
up.”

Lydia turned her wide eyes to Mr. Cummings. “We’re
just talking.”

Sam let her go.

“Good,” Mr. Cummings said. “Then the boys in the
back can take their fingers off the triggers of those napalm-throwers.” He
smiled at the silver-suited men who stood ready to incinerate them all.

If anything, the sudden scrutiny made the burn
team twitchier, so Ani turned to Mr. Cummings. “So what do we do for econ? Stay
here after lunch?”

He nodded. “Yup. The three of you stay, the rest
go back to Special Dead.” While he talked, Lydia and Teah murmured to one
another. Mike smiled at the burn crew.

“I wish you wouldn’t call it that,” Sam said.

“What’s in a name?” Joe asked. “A rose, by any
other name....” He shrugged. “What’s the end of the line?”

“...would smell as sweet,” Ani said.

“All I can smell is that spaghetti,” Joe said. “Yuck.”

Chapter

13

On
Open House day the Special Dead weren’t even allowed to go to school. Ani found
the time more productive than usual—without ponderous clanking from room to
room and putting up with Mr. Foster’s lame attempts to include them all in what
amounted to fifth-grade content, she finished
Catcher in the Rye
,
re-wrote the trill overtop “Straight, No Chaser” into something that actually
worked, memorized ten out of twenty trig identities for next week’s test, and
started adapting Skrillex’s “Breakin’ A Sweat” for piano.

She took a break before tackling the point when
the music transitioned into distorted noise. She wandered outside and smiled to
the guard on the tower.

“Hi, Ani,” he called. His breath fogged in the
early October air. The temperature had dropped thirty degrees since noon,
though the cold didn’t touch her. She found it a little sad that he knew her
name, but she didn’t know his.
Do you have a family? Friends? Hobbies?
She
waved again and wandered along the fence; his rifle tracked her movements.
Whoever he was, he wasn’t protecting
her
from the world.

On her third lap, the moon broke the horizon,
sparkling off of a dew-covered cobweb suspended between two bars on the
electric fence. She kept her distance from the sluggish black spider, not
wanting to disturb its work as it wrapped a late-season dragonfly in a tangle
of sticky web. Its tenacity impressed her.

You shouldn’t be out in this
cold, Ms. Spider.

She heard a telltale shuffle-step limp in the
grass but didn’t turn around. The spider clambered over its prey, spinning even
as the cold leached the last vitality from its body. Arms closed around her
waist, and she leaned back into Joe’s embrace.

“Howdy,” he said.

“Howdy yourself,” she said. “Am I in your way?”

“I was wondering what you were looking at. Poor
thing.”

Conscious of her head against his cheek, she
nodded. “Soon it’ll be too cold to spin. She might not survive the night.”

He shook. It took her a minute to recognize the
laughter.

“What?” she asked.

“I meant the dragonfly.”

“Oh.”

They stood in silence for a while. She wanted to
enjoy the moment but couldn’t help trying to categorize it. They weren’t
sharing warmth, so it had to be something else. Something more.

“What are we doing, Joe?”

He didn’t reply at first. “Watching a spider
freeze to death trying to eat a meal fifty times bigger than it?”

She hugged herself closer to him. “Why?”

“There’s nothing on TV?”

She smiled. “Could be.”

“You know your mom’s going to come along any
second. It’s the law.”

She stiffened. “Let her.”

“Seriously?”

She pulled away, careful not to get any closer to
the fence. They locked eyes. “Of course not. The only thing that kills a mood
faster than you bringing up Mom is her actual presence.” She couldn’t help but
return his lopsided smile.

“Good thing we’re just talking, then.”

“Good thing. I mean, if we weren’t just talking,
what would we be doing?”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Transposing Skrillex to
classical instruments?”

She gasped. “You were creeping!”

He put a hand over his heart. “As God as my
witness, I’m guilty as hell.”

“Well, then, Mr. Admitted-Creeper—”

“Ani?” Her mom’s voice rang out across the yard.
Joe melted into what passed for shadows under the artificial light.

“Yeah?” She squinted against the beams of light
stabbing outward from above the lab’s main entrance and saw nothing.

“Bath time!”

“Okay!”

As she headed in, she saw no sign of Joe. Not for
lack of looking.

*  
*   *

Ani had one foot in the bath when the doorbell
rang. She pulled her leg out of the icy, slimy liquid, toweled it off, and put
on a bath robe. Her mom beat her to the door.

“Hi, Miss Romero,” Sam said. “Can I talk to Ani
for a couple seconds?”

Her mom frowned but opened the door the rest of
the way. “You’re both supposed to be in the bath.”

Sam nodded. “I will be. I just need to talk to her
for a few minutes.” Her hair fell in golden curls around her face. Ani ran her
hand over her scalp, no longer self-conscious about the stringy wisps that
remained of her own hair but not in love with the situation either.

Ani smiled at her. “What’s up?”

Sam jerked her head down the hallway. Ani followed
her out the door. In her mind’s eye she saw her mother’s disapproving scowl as
she sauntered barefoot into “public” in a filmy bath robe.

The fluorescent lights bathed the hall in a
medicinal halo, reflecting off the green-and-beige tiles that snaked through
the complex in an endless series of hallways and rooms. Ani didn’t know how
many miles of underground tunnels made up the labyrinth or even how many
stories deep it went underground, but she knew the public would be stunned at
the complex beneath the unassuming collection of modest brick buildings.

Sam didn’t say anything as they took a left past
locked doors and hermetically sealed hallways, and Ani followed, content in the
silence. A hum grew as they wandered; the floor beneath their feet vibrated
more with every step. Ani smiled at the cameras that tracked them, baleful red
lights blinking as they triggered motion sensors.

The hum became a roar as they passed the room that
housed the generators and main boiler. Sam slowed, running her finger down the
tile as if lollygagging, though Ani knew better. Never frivolous before her
death, now Sam did nothing without a purpose. As they crossed in front of the
DO NOT ENTER sign over the double-doors, Sam spoke without moving her lips.

“You have to talk to Teah.”

Ani responded in kind. “About?”

“Bill. He wants to break in. Or bust her out.”

Ani snorted. “That’s retarded.” In her mind her
mom’s voice scolded her for the uncharitable word. “This place is locked down
harder than Guantanamo Bay. Literally.”

“She thinks he’s serious.”

Ani rolled her eyes. “Both of his brain cells will
figure out it can’t be done. Just give him time to process.”

Sam’s lips pressed into a thin line. “He’s not
thinking with his brain. Just talk to her, would you?”

Ani sighed. “Okay. I will.”

Only what am I supposed to say?

*  
*   *

The next morning Ani sidled past Joe’s seat on the
bus and plopped down next to Teah. When a shadow crossed her vision, she looked
up into Lydia’s timid smile.

“Ani? Umm...I usually sit there?”

Ani didn’t smile back. “I know. Do you mind if I
talk to Teah for a bit? Privately?”

“Um....” Lydia looked around the half-empty bus
with wide eyes, then settled on the seat next to Mike. “Okay. I’ll be over
there.”

As she moved off, Teah clacked helmets with Ani in
greeting, football-style. “What’s the special occasion?”

Ani didn’t say anything as Mr. Benson finished his
visual inspection of the bus, hopped off, and locked the door. The sound of the
lock catching brought to mind emergency fire drills in elementary school.

Well, if this bus catches on
fire, nobody’s getting out. Probably the idea.

As the bus started to roll Ani leaned in as close
as their helmets would allow. “What the hell is up with Bill?”

Teah’s eyes widened, searching for an escape
route. She schooled her face, too late, and said, “Nothing, why?”

“Rumor has it he’s getting some ideas. Some really
stupid ideas.”

“Like what?”

Ani knew Teah would play dumb, but she tried to
hide her annoyance. “Like breaking in to see you. Or breaking you out.”

Teah’s eyes drowned in guilt even as she scowled. “Who
told you that?”

Ani shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Probably Tiffany. That girl’s a bitch.”

Ani opened her mouth to defend Tiffany and
realized it didn’t matter. Tiffany was a bitch, but that was a distraction. “Who
told me doesn’t matter, and if Tiff knows, pretty soon everyone’s going to. Is
it true?”

“Someone’s just jealous that Bill and I are in
love, so they’re talking shit.” Teah’s defiant stare tried to hide the lie, but
her stiff expression betrayed her.

“It’s incredibly dangerous. There’s no way—”

“Bill’s smarter than you think! Nobody gives him
enough credit!”

Devon’s snort from the front of the bus told Ani
that Teah was speaking far louder than she should be.

Well, good. If she gives it
away herself, all the better.

Ani chewed her mouth guard in frustration. “Look,
I’m not insulting his intelligence. I just want to make sure he’s not going to
try something....”

“Stupid?”

Ani gave up on diplomacy. She rapped Teah’s helmet
with her knuckles to emphasize each word. “Yeah. Stupid, dumbass, moron, stupid.”
She dropped her hand but continued her rant. “If he tries to get in here, he
dies. You probably die, too. Then maybe the rest of us, if we’re stupid enough
to be anywhere near you stupid idiots when you do whatever stupid thing your
stupid minds have convinced you is a plan.”

Ani froze as Teah wrapped her in a hug and mumbled
into her ear. “It’s not fair. Everyone else gets to be with who they love.
Everyone. Everyone but me.” She quivered, almost as if she were crying.

Furious that Teah would bring
fair
into it
after all this time, Ani patted her shoulder instead of shaking some sense into
her. “We’ll find a cure, Teah. Then you can be together.”

“When?”

Ani rolled her eyes. “When we do. Until then, you
have to keep Bill from doing anything stupid.”

Like asking a puppy to babysit
kittens.

“I will.”

Ani pulled back and pressed the front of her
helmet to Teah’s so that they locked eyes. “Promise.”

“I promise.”

By the time they got to school, Teah had recovered
her composure. It was easier to do without tears, snot, sniffles, or blood.
They’d all had a great deal of practice.

Chapter

14

Friday was a half day. By the time
they’d bussed in, waited for everyone else to get to class, shuffled to their
room, listened to the announcements, and had a fire drill—where by policy they
waited until everyone else was out, then shuffled their way into the zombie
yard, then waited for everyone else to go back in before being allowed back
through the halls themselves—less than an hour remained. True to form, Mr.
Foster spent it with the underclassmen.

Ani sat in a funk. She’d
stalled on “Breakin’ a Sweat” and fought the urge to drop the project. Though
self-assigned, it wouldn’t do itself, and she hated to leave a song unwritten.

As the minute hand crawled past
ten forty, Mr. Foster stepped away from the underclassmen to approach Sam and
Devon. After a brief, murmured exchange ended in a snort from Devon, he stepped
over to Ani. She eyed the paper in his hand with trepidation, wondering what
new torture Mr. Giggles had conjured from his fresh-from-the-factory teacher
toolbox.

He knelt next to her and slid
the paper onto her desk. “Hi, Ani.” He giggled. “I was wondering if you can do
this problem.” Ani envied the pencil lines of his meticulous handwriting.

He should have
to use crayon, too.

She considered the problem:

(x + 1)(2x
²
+ 3x + 5)

Express in simplest form.

She glanced at Devon, who
glared at the back of Mr. Foster’s head, and got nothing but an eye roll for
her trouble.

“Of course. We learned that in
tenth grade.”

Mr. Foster sucked air through
his teeth, the hissing sound punctuated by tiny spit bubbles. “Yeah, that’s the
thing. I haven’t done this stuff since tenth grade. I’m a little rusty.”

She returned his expectant look
with one of her own. The silence stretched from awkward to uncomfortable.

Finally, he licked his lips. “So?”

“So, what?” she asked. When he kept
staring, she continued. “Yes, I can do the problem. That’s what you asked,
right?”

He nodded. “Right.”

She nodded back.

He giggled. “So, prove it. Show
me.”

Across the room, Devon snorted
again. “She doesn’t have math with you, Mr. F.”

He spoke through teeth clenched
in a frozen grin, his voice a bare murmur. “Can you please show me how to do
this, so I can show them?” He jerked his head toward Teah, Lydia, and Kyle. “It’s
hard enough with Kyle when I know what I’m doing.”

Ani gaped in astonished
understanding; drool dribbled down her chin. “Oh, you’re asking for help. I
thought you were quizzing me.” She pointed at the
x
. “Just multiply
everything in the trinomial by each term in the binomial,” she shifted her
finger to the one, “then add it all up.”

His vacant stare didn’t help
his grin any. “Can you say that again?”

She did. It didn’t seem to
help.

Mr. Foster flinched as Joe crouched
next to Ani’s desk. Joe grabbed a purple crayon and drew a four-by-three grid. “Look,
Mr. F, just make a chart....”

Ani caught herself staring at
Joe without paying attention to the words. Mr. Foster nodded along to the explanation.
They wrapped up two more examples, and he went back to the underclassmen.

“Wow,” Ani said. “You’re good
at that.”

Joe shrugged. “It’s just a
trick Mrs. Biggs taught me. No big.”

She smiled. “I didn’t mean the
math. I’m good at the math, too. I meant the explanation.”

He shrugged again. “It’s not
hard.”

A shadow smothered the desk. They
both looked up. Mike loomed over them, the soggy leather bite guard showing
through his smile, his eyes locked on Ani. She smiled back while Joe stood and
patted Mike’s shoulder.

Mike didn’t budge.

“Prom.” A gurgling moan escaped
his lips.

Ani’s heart caught in her
throat.

Joe’s pat turned into a rub. “We
don’t talk about prom, Mike.”

He scowled. “Prom. Something....”
He turned his whole head to look at Devon, then turned back to Ani. The scowl
intensified. “I love you.”

Ani opened her mouth and
nothing came out. Devon’s furnace stare lanced into her soul. The world froze,
spun, shattered.

Joe hugged Mike. “We love you,
too, buddy.”

Mike smiled and returned the
hug. The spell broken, Ani returned his smile. “We all do.”

The bell rang, and Ani let out
an unneeded breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

*   *   *

Ani spent the afternoon grinding
through “Breakin’ a Sweat”, only to find a half-dozen YouTube videos of people
who’d beaten her to it.
Well, mine’s better.
Grumpy and depressed all
over again, she downloaded Scriabin’s Piano Concerto No. 7, Op. 64, “White Mass”
and tried to play it. Even when she thought she had nailed a part, it still
just sounded like so much noise.

Russians.

Dr. Romero barged through the
door at four, her arms loaded with a giant stack of papers and manila folders.
She shot daggers at Ani as she dropped the pile on the coffee table, kicked off
her shoes, and sat on the couch.

“What’d I do?”

Sarah smiled and closed her
eyes. “No, honey, it’s not you. Just a long, long day.” She rubbed her temples.
“They spent an hour and a half doing a ZV safety in-service training...and not
only did they not consult Rishi or me—they used the SRO, who’s completely
unqualified—they made me sit through it. Between that and DASA and FERPA and
all the rest of the alphabet soup, it’s amazing anyone can do any teaching.”

Ani smirked. “You sound like
Mr. Cummings.”

“Thanks.” It came out as a
half-grunt.

“Anything else exciting?”

“No.” Eyes still closed, she
reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope. “Just this.”

“What’s that?”

“Birthday present.”

Ani looked at the date in the
corner of the laptop. “My birthday was three months ago. You got me an iPad.”

“Yup. Some things take time.
And convincing.”

The envelope was made out to
Sarah Romero at their home address, a house Ani hadn’t seen in the better part
of two years. It was from C. Herley of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.
Can’t
be tickets.
She pulled out the stationery and read.

“Holy crap, Mom, I’m getting a
tutor?”

Sarah opened her eyes, beaming.
“Not just any tutor. Doctor Herley himself is coming every other week. He’ll
start October 13
^th
and is contracted through next September.”

Ani lurched across the room and
enveloped her mother in a bear hug. Chris Herley was a master, a forty-year
concert pianist, now semi-retired. Age had done nothing to slow his hands, and
his recordings were unparalleled.

“Ani, you’re squishing me.”

She let up a little. “Sorry.
How’d you pull this off?”

“You know the new theater in
Irondequoit? It’s going to have a small hall, Herley Hall. His name, my money.”

Ani grunted. “That’s an
expensive tutor.”

“Yeah. The combination of ‘good
enough to tutor you’ and ‘willing to come into the zombie lab’ made for a
general lack of suitable curriculum vitae. Besides, Rochester’s gotten pretty
vulgar. It could use some culture.”

“True dat, yo.” Ani tried and
failed to hide a smirk.

They sat in comfortable silence
for a while before her mom spoke. “Honey?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

*   *   *

Later that night, Ani Googled
Herley Hall. An ‘anonymous donor’ had given two million dollars in Chris Herley’s
name to finance the construction of the concert hall, the only stipulations
being ideal acoustics and the name of the hall.
Two million dollars?
She
knew her mom had money, but not eighty-grand-a-lesson kind of money.
Huh.

She cleared the search history,
closed the browser, and got into the bath. Alone in the hermetic coffin,
immersed in miraculous fluids that could heal her body but not her heart, a
memory of Mike scowled down at her and professed his love.

*   *   *

Joe rubbed his arm and
hip-bumped Ani by way of greeting. “All things considered, that wasn’t so bad.”
He looked as ridiculous in his hospital gown as she did in hers.

She raised her eyebrows. “What
wasn’t?”

“Doctor B picked me for the
Phase V-I-I cure test.” He always said the Roman numerals as letters,
vee-eye-eye.

“I thought it was Kyle’s turn
to be guinea pig.”

“It is. Not sure why the
switcheroo. Anyway,” he swept a grand gesture toward the lab’s airlock, “it’s
your turn.”

“I’ll be right out.”

Ani stepped inside, submitted
to the core sampler, answered Dr. Banerjee’s questions the same way she had every
countless Saturday, and left. Disappointed by the Joe-less hallway, she
wandered back toward home to change into real clothes. She glanced in Mike’s
room on the way and found it empty. On a hunch, she back-tracked to the lab and
peeked through the window into Dr. Banerjee’s office.

Mike sat on the desk, the
sleeve of his hoodie pushed up to expose his forearm. He smiled his vacant
smile as Dr. Banerjee finished cutting a slice of skin and put it between
microscope slides. Ani ducked out of sight and headed home.

An hour later, when her mom
came in, Ani whispered to her what she’d seen. Sarah froze, then set about
making herself some lunch, using the motion to cover their muttered
conversation.

“Tell me again.” She pulled out
the peanut butter, a loaf of bread, and a jar of strawberry jam.

Ani repeated what she saw.

“We take samples all the time—”

“But this is different, mom.”

She smeared peanut butter on
both pieces of bread. “I don’t see how it is.” She closed the jar.

“It’s...secret. Something about
it isn’t right.”

Next came the jam. Ani used to
love strawberry jam, but now her desire was nothing, not even a longing for
what once was. “Doctor Banerjee has his secrets, but this doesn’t sound like
one of them. I’ll check with him on Tuesday.”

“Tuesday?”

“Monday’s Columbus Day. Federal
holiday. We have the day off, too. Everyone but the soldiers. Now go socialize.”

“Yes, Mom.”

Ani left grumpy. Sure, they
were dead people trapped in a top-secret government facility, unholy
abominations to be purified with prayer and fire, but that didn’t make them lab
rats.

*   *   *

Ani spent Sunday and Monday losing
to Devon at chess and reading up on virology. It wasn’t something she had a
passion for, but she figured that given her condition it was a good idea to
know as much about it as she could. Sam struggled through the material with her,
for much the same reason.

“So what’s your endgame?” Sam
asked.

Ani stopped biting her lip and
put down the book. “You mean, assuming a cure?”

“Yeah. Assuming a cure.”

Ani shrugged. “Pianist would be
cool. Maybe a scientist or something. Maybe both.” She once dreamed of being a
vet, but a few years of zombism had scoured that desire out of her. “You?”

“I’m going into medicine.” Sam chuckled.
“Maybe even virology.” She beamed at Ani. “Your mother is the most inspiring
person I’ve ever met.”

Ani grunted. Her memory
conjured Dylan’s head evaporating in a chunky red mess when her mom pulled the
trigger; he had been doomed by the virus Dr. Romero had infected him with.

“I’m serious. She’s so...driven.
I’ve never met a person with more focus. And smart.” She closed her book. “So
smart.”

Ani smiled. “She is that.”
And
ruthless. Don’t forget ruthless.
“It’s hard not to feel dumb around her.”

“Doctor Banerjee, too. That guy
gives me the creeps, though.”

“Mmm,” Ani said.
Dangerous
waters, Sam.
“So where are you thinking for school?”

“John Hopkins. U of R.” She
chuckled. “Harvard.”

“You talk to Mr. Murphy?”

“Yeah. He’s thinking SUNY.” She
spat the word. “I don’t think so.”

“Scholarships?”

Sam shrugged. “Trying, but I
don’t want to take money away from someone who could actually go.”

Ani hadn’t thought of that. “They’ll
redistribute it, won’t they?”

Sam shook her head. “Probably
not. It probably just goes back into their general fund.”

“Oh. That sucks.”

“Yeah. We’d be stupid not to
try, though. Wouldn’t we?”