Generation Dead (13 page)

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"No matter how many times I see that," Margi said, "I will never get used to it."

Phoebe nodded. The image of Dallas Jones being killed was more disturbing to her than what would come later--even though it was what came later that had "irrevocably altered the American way of life."

The shooter--the store owner--came around the counter, clutching the hand of the clerk, who was also his wife. Ahmad Qurati would receive a lifetime of criticism for the risk involved in shooting a robber when the man had a gun pointed at his wife's head. He would also be criticized for not checking Jones to see if the shot had killed him; the video showed him exiting out the door Jones had come in and then locking it behind him--another move that seemed to make little sense. The police department had also come under fire for not arriving until two hours and seven minutes after Jones was shot, even though the dispatch records clearly showed that Qurati did not call 911 until one hour and fifty-three minutes after the locking of the front door.

CNN time lapsed the remaining footage, up until minute 109. Jones was mostly hidden from view by the chip rack, one askew leg clearly visible, as was part of an arm and a dark puddle that spread perceptibly in the first few moments of the time lapse.

At minute 109 the footage reverted to real time, and Dallas Jones's leg twitched. The chip rack fell away, not like it had been lifted and thrown, but like it had been shrugged off. The arm lifted from the floor as Jones apparently---it was hard to tell

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because most of his body was off camera--pushed himself upright.

"Oh God," Margi said.

A minute later Jones lumbered into frame, the tread of his high-tops never leaving the floor as he shuffled forward. The camera was focused on his broad back, and his jacket was torn and leaking dark down feathers where the shot had ripped through him. He walked forward until he bumped against the glass doorway. He made no attempt to open it, and after another moment he turned and shuffled back the way he had come, toward the camera.

The narrator began talking over the video, giving the sad biography of Dallas Jones, teen hoodlum. Phoebe felt her skin grow tingly with anticipation for the moment that had launched a hundred doctoral theses, and when it came, CNN held it and then panned in, which made the image twice as grainy, but also twice as effective.

Phoebe always wondered why Dallas Jones looked up at the camera at the end of his second aimless lap around the store. The image grew until his eyes filled the television screen, so that individual pixels stood out.

"Dallas Jones was the first," the narrator said, and the image of Dallas's eyes was replaced by some equally grainy home video footage of other dead people moving around, and then some on-location reporters sending back stories about a dozen different undead.

"They didn't show the part where the cops come in," Margi said. Phoebe had studied the full video; after Qurati fumbled

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with his keys for a minute, two cops came in and tackled Jones. When the EMTs arrived a moment later, one of the cops was covered with blood, none of it his own.

"Repent," Reverend Nathan Mathers was saying. He was screaming, spit flying from his lips. "Repent, for surely the end is nigh. The graves give up their dead and the coming of the Lord is most certainly upon us!"

"I feel bad for whoever is in the first pew," Phoebe said. Next to her, Margi pulled Gar closer.

"I hate when they show this stuff," she said.

The next image was even more hateful. The video jerked around as though the camera were strapped to a hyperactive child, but the image it conveyed was easily understandable, and horrific. Two men with jerricans were pouring gasoline on a sluggish living impaired girl whose arms were bound behind her to a metal basketball pole set into concrete, like you'd see in a school yard. The girl went up in a sudden rush of yellow flame, and her twitching seemed to grow more animated, but that might have been a trick of the flames dancing around her. Mathers was still giving his speech in the background.

"Oh God," Margi repeated, and they were quiet for the remainder of the program, even when Skip Slydell, the young author, began talking about how parents should raise their differently biotic youth and help integrate them into a society that still does not have any legislation that prevents burning them at the stake.

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***

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
HERE WERE THIRTEEN NAMES on the list of students accepted into the Hunter Foundation. Phoebe Kendall was the third name on the list, right below Tommy Williams and Karen DeSonne. Colette was next, as was Margi and then Adam.

Phoebe felt a bounce in her step as she turned from the list, but it nearly carried her into the arms of Pete Martinsburg. He pushed her back against the wall.

"You should watch where you're going, Scarypants," he said, looming over her. She had an armload of books, and his hands were free, the left one balled into a fist. "You should watch what you're doing, too."

She could feel her cheeks flush with rage and embarrassment. And more than a little fear, too. This was a person who had no compunction against taking a baseball bat to another student, after all. Margi would already be dragging her hot-pink

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nails across his face and hissing like a wet cat, but Phoebe was afraid of getting hurt, and she could see in his face that he was not above hurting her.

"That's the most color I've seen on your face in a long time. You scared, dead girl?" he asked, smiling. "You should be."

Phoebe felt like she was shrinking beneath the weight of his stare. She was wearing her knee-high boots, which would have been great if she could have lifted them groin high, but the skirt she had on was tight all the way to her ankles, and barely allowed for a short stride, much less a swift kick.

A clear memory of the sound of Martinsburg's bat as it cut through the air to strike Tommy's flesh rippled through her mind. She noticed that his fists were clenched.

Martinsburg ripped the roster off the wall, tearing a corner where the masking tape held. He folded the list twice and put it in his shirt pocket.

"Everyone on this list," he said, "is going to regret ever hearing about this class."

He walked down the hall, and Phoebe watched him go, tears of frustration and shame gathering at the corners of her eyes. She could go in the office and tell someone what just happened. She could find Adam, and he would probably want to have a chat with Martinsburg. But in the end, all she did was wipe her eyes and wonder what Martinsburg was going to do when he saw Adam Layman's name on the bottom of the list.

Margi found Phoebe in the hall. The flush in Phoebe's

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cheeks must have subsided since Margi was back to her usual chattering self, relating a brief tale of an atrocity committed by Mr. McKenna in Spanish that morning, something about his failure to announce a pop quiz.

"Isn't that why they're called pop quizzes?" Phoebe asked. "Because they're surprises?"

"Still, it isn't fair. Speaking of surprises, when are they going to post the list for the work study? I mean, not like I want to do it or anything, but I am your best friend, and I guess it will look good on a college application. And they can't be grading very hard. Can they? I mean, the grading is just a formality with these things, right? I don't want to take it if I'm going to get a bad grade."

"They posted the list. It got ripped down."

"Really? Who would do that? Some moron who couldn't get in? I better not say that; what if I didn't get in? Do you know who got in?"

"You got in. Me too."

"Yay," Margi said with false enthusiasm, clapping so that her hundred bangles clinked together in a soft tinny rhythm. "Who else? Anyone as cool as us? As if that were possible."

"Tommy, Adam," Phoebe said, smiling when Margi made a face. "Colette. Thornton Harrowwood is taking it, for some reason. I saw that living impaired--that differently biotic--girl on the list: Karen with the unpronounceable last name. They only accepted thirteen people."

"Once again, the elite," Margi said, touching Phoebe softly

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on the shoulder that Martinsburg had just shoved. "Of course, only thirteen people applied."

The thirteen became twelve before the first bus ride from Oakvale High to the Hunter Foundation, which was a short drive through the woods near the Winford line.

"I heard that her parents refused to sign the permission slip to let her come," Margi said about the last-minute deletion.

"Is this precognition again?" Phoebe said. "Or telepathy?"

Margi shook her head. "It's called divination if you can reveal something that already happened. But no, it is really because I overheard one of the school secretaries telling Ms. Kim."

"Well, that was progressive of her parents."

"These are progressive times, Pheebes my dear."

In homeroom they discovered that they would be missing their seventh period class--which for Margi was a study hall, so she was none too pleased to be attending an orientation. The feeling that Phoebe carried around with her was similar to the one she'd had in the days and hours leading up to the seventh grade talent show. Sometimes the butterflies were there just to make you queasy; sometimes the butterflies were there to let you know that something good was on its way.

The dead kids were waiting when she walked down to the library for orientation. She saw them through the streaky windows in a loose ring of chairs in the study area. Principal Kim was waiting at the door with a clipboard.

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"Hello, Phoebe," she said, handing Phoebe the clipboard. "Please sign on the line next to your name."

Phoebe did. The dead kids had signed in already. Not known for their fine motor skills, their "signatures" were mostly block printing that looked as though they'd slashed the letters across the page with the pen. Tommy's name was the only one that was within the lines provided, and the letters were even and uniform in height.

"Hey, Pheeble," Adam said, taking the clipboard out of her hand, startling her. The old Adam was known more for his lumbering than for his stealth, but it gave him no end of amusement to sneak up on her.

"Mr. Layman," Principal Kim said, "please ..."

"Sign on the line that is dotted, yes, ma'am," he said, scrawling out a name that wasn't much neater than the marks left by the living impaired kids.

"Why don't you two have a seat?"

Phoebe watched Adam as he scanned ahead into the room. If he was apprehensive, he was doing a good job of not showing it, but she did note the slight shrug of his shoulders as he motioned for Phoebe to follow him into the room.

Tommy was sitting in one of the creaky wooden library chairs, his shoulders back and his head straight. Phoebe thought of the last time she'd been in a ring of living impaired kids and recognized a few of them: Colette sat on a cushioned futon next to the girl with streaky white-blond hair who Phoebe'd seen out in the forest.

"Hi, Tommy," Phoebe said. "Hi, Colette." She waved at the

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other kids, making brief eye contact with each. The girl with the white-blond hair returned her wave with barely a pause.

"Hello, Phoebe," Tommy said. "Adam."

"Hey, Tommy. Hello, everyone." Adam took the last of the lime-green lounge chairs, leaving Phoebe one of the wooden ones. Her chair squeaked when she sat on it. He laughed, and she made a face at him.

Margi entered the silent lobby like a small black-and-pink twister, her skirt flapping, her spangles jingling. "Ohmigawd, that was the longest history class ever. I think I actually became a historical figure in the time it took for that class to end."

She pulled up short, as though it had just dawned on her where she was and who she was there with. Her greeting of "Hullo, everyone" was mumbled, and she looked relieved when Thornton Harrowwood entered and demanded high fives, first from Adam and then from Tommy. There was a tense moment when Tommy regarded Thorny's raised hand as though he was wondering what it was for, but then he gave a light slap.

Thornton had been the last to arrive, which meant another person had dropped out. Principal Kim led Angela Hunter and her father, Alish, into the room. Ms. Hunter wore a pale blue skirt that ended at her knees, and Phoebe thought her legs could probably cause even a dead kid's heart to race. Tommy was watching her cross the room. The chair did not even creak when she sat on it.

"Well," Principal Kim said, "I must say that I'm quite surprised and pleased to see two football players in this program.

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I'm glad to see you boys taking an interest in something other than football. And I have already spoken with Coach Konrathy, so he knows that you will be missing one practice a week."

Adam nodded, and Thornton puffed up as though he had been named running back of the year. Phoebe noticed that Adam hadn't looked up from the spot on the carpet he'd been staring at since he sat down. She looked down. Moss green, slightly variegated with some dark green strands. There was a stain that might have been coffee near the leg of the futon where the two dead girls sat, but Adam didn't seem to be staring at that.

"Three."

She looked up. Everyone looked at Tommy, including the principal.

"There are ...three ...football players here."

The principal smiled. "Three. Of course. Thank you for reminding me, Tommy. First, let me thank you all for signing up to participate in what we expect will be a very exciting program for the Oakvale school system. The Hunters are here today to discuss the program in a little more detail with you, as well as to set expectations--yours and those of the school and the foundation."

"Thank you, Principal Kim. And again, thank you for joining our program! I look forward to working with all of you!

Angela's smile, like her legs, could bring the dead to life. Margi was squirming on the seat next to Phoebe.

Alish spoke next, and his voice was one suited for libraries: