Generation Dead (17 page)

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"Why didn't the coach play Tommy more, then, Adam?" "Come on," Adam said. "Coach was afraid to play the dead kid."

"Differently biotic," she said, still smiling. "A differently biotic kid."

Adam shrugged.

"No," Tommy said, and Angela turned the smile on him. "No, that wasn't the reason?" she asked. "No, not...differently biotic. Dead ... is fine." Angela arched her eyebrows. "You don't mind being called dead?"

"Zombie is fine too," Karen said. "We call each other zombies. With affection. Sort of the way ...people ... in cultural and ethnic ...minorities ...take back certain...pejoratives ... to use among themselves."

Angela tapped her notebook with her pen. She blinked.

"I see. Is that true for everyone here, or do you see the term
zombie
as a hurtful word?"

Evan gave a slow nod, and Angela called on Tayshawn.

"Depends ... on who ... is saying it. And ... how," he said.

"Living people mean for it to hurt," Thornton said, and when everyone turned toward him he looked like he wished he hadn't spoken. "I mean, sometimes. Not always."

"Do you ever use
zombie
to refer to a living person in a negative way?"

"Don't."

Colette had spoken, and Phoebe thought her voice was nothing like that of the carefree, uncomplicated girl she'd

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known two years ago. She realized it had taken Colette that long to let everyone know she did not like being called a zombie.

"Why is that, Colette?"

Phoebe shrank into the sofa. What if Colette's answer was that she didn't like being called a zombie because her so-called friends had abandoned her and left her alone in her suffering?

If Colette harbored such thoughts, she kept them to herself. "People ...hate ...us."

Angela nodded, her eyes brimming with compassion. "Thank you, Colette. We appreciate your honesty." She regarded her notepad for a moment. "Which makes this a good time to point out the rules and intent of these sessions. Let me start by saying the goal is to have a greater education and understanding of the rights, thoughts, and concerns of differently biotic persons. We'd like you all to have a better understanding of each other's thoughts and feelings. We want you to leave here able to see through another person's eyes, and for them to be able to see you with greater clarity as well.

"To that end, we need to be able to create an environment of complete openness and honesty. We want you to speak your mind, but please do so respectfully. If you do not understand a person's point of view, please ask them questions. You do not have to raise your hand--we want the tone to be conversational rather than have you feel like you are being lectured to, but we do want to give everyone a chance, so I may interrupt to call on people if the dialogue is dominated by a few."

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Phoebe thought that Angela may have glanced at Karen but could not be sure.

"This is the portion of the work study upon which you are graded. The grades you get will be dependent upon the level of your participation. Are there any questions on either the goals or the rules of participation?"

She looked at each person in turn, but no one spoke.

"No? Well, then, I have a question for Colette. Why do you think that people hate you?"

Colette seemed to stare through her, unaffected by her glow.

"Because ...they ...have ...told ...me." "Mmmm. Has anyone else been told by someone that they were hated?"

Every hand went up initially, except for Phoebe's. Margi made a face at her.

"What? No one has ever said they hated me."

"Not in so many words," Margi replied.

She spoke for Phoebe alone, but Angela picked up on it.

"What do you mean, Margi?"

Phoebe was taken aback by the intensity of Margi's glare. "People give Pheebes and I a lot of crap because we dress different and act different."

"Hate is a strong word, Margi," Phoebe said. She was surprised at the level of Margi's conviction.

"It's the right one, though," Adam said. "Kids hate at the drop of a hat. People do."

"Who do you think hates you, Adam?" Angela asked.

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"I'd prefer not to say."

"Fair enough. That is another rule, by the way. If a question makes you uncomfortable, you don't have to answer it. It won't affect your grade as long as you are participating otherwise."

"The question does not make me uncomfortable. I just don't want to answer it."

"Okay," Angela said, her easy smile remaining on her pretty face.

Adam spread his hands. "Okay."

"Great. Let me change direction here. Who in this room has been told they were loved? By anyone at all."

Most hands were raised except for Colette's and Sylvia Stelman's.

"Sylvia?"

Sylvia closed her eyes. A full minute later one of them opened.

"Not ...since ...I ...died," she said. Her other eye opened.

Angela made a compassionate noise, but it was Karen who spoke up, her white diamond eyes seeming to catch even the pale fluorescent light above.

"I love you, Sylvia." She was seated on the end of the semicircle and she got to her feet and walked over to hug Sylvia. "You too, Colette."

Angela made some marks in her notebook. Colette did not seem to want to let go of Karen.

"Let's take a short break. When we get back, we'll read

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some headlines and articles concerning the differently biotic that ran in newspapers and magazines last week."

Phoebe watched Karen hugging Colette. She swallowed twice and turned away, blinking.

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***

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I
can't believe you are making me do this."

Phoebe smiled. "I know."

"You owe me big time for this, Phoebe. This is big." "Big," Phoebe repeated. Raindrops glittered on the windshield, backlit by the light of a passing car.

"So," Adam said, "is this like a date, or something?" "Or something. I don't know." "You've got feelings for him?"

"I have
feelings
for everyone, Adam." The more Adam talked, the slower he drove. Phoebe expected they would be crawling to a halt at any moment, the STD's truck rolling off into the grassy shoulder of the road.

"You know he's dead, right?"

She turned toward him in the seat, hot words rushing to her mouth. Adam stopped her by laughing. "Just checking," he said.

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"Watch the road," she said, unable to keep herself from smiling. "I don't know what it is, Adam. He's interesting to me, that's all."

"You can't be attracted to him, can you?" He turned toward her. "Just tell me to shut up if you want to." "You don't have to shut up."

"Okay. So are you attracted to him?
Attracted
attracted?" "I don't really know what I'm attracted to. I don't know." Adam nodded. Phoebe wondered what he thought she was explaining.

"You don't date much," he said.

"I don't date much. Not like you, anyway. How is Whatsername, by the way?"

He shrugged. "She is who she is. I'm just trying to figure out where your head is at."

"Well, where is yours? With Whatsername, I mean."

"Nice segue. I dunno."

Phoebe smiled, leaning her head against the window. "Well, there you are. I dunno, either."

It seemed like a good time to be quiet, so they were.

Some minutes later they rolled up to the gates of the Hunter Foundation at the edge of town. Her new place of employment made Phoebe think of a medieval castle. Instead of a moat, there was a high stone wall and a road that was barred by a retracting metal gate.

Adam leaned out his window and pressed the red intercom button.

"Can I help you?" a flat, male voice answered.

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"Adam Layman and Phoebe Kendall," Adam said. "We're here to pick up Tommy Williams."

There was a brief pause before the voice answered. "Drive to Building One."

They waited for the iron gate to separate, the Hunter logo, a large stylized H and F split down the middle and slowly swung inward.

Adam put the STD's truck into gear. "I think that was Thorny," he said

"Could be. He's working security with you, right?"

He nodded. "Yep. But they call it
facilities maintenance
, probably because we take out the trash in addition to delivering beat-downs to would-be bioist saboteurs."

"How many beat-downs have you delivered?" she said, laughing. "And just what is a bioist?"

"That would be zero beat-downs thus far, but I'm ever hopeful. And a bioist is like a racist but hates dead folk."

"Aha. Do you get guns? I'd love to see Thorny with a gun."

"No guns. He's bad enough with the Nextel. Duke carries a gun, though. And a Taser, if you can believe it."

"A
Taser
? Who's Duke?"

"Davidson. He's a real piece of work, that guy. Even Zumbrowski has more personality and warmth than that guy." "Adam!"

"Sorry," he said. "I don't censor my thoughts around you."

Adam drove to Building One. Evan Talbot, his shock of faded orange hair wicking up like thin strands of

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copper wire, was standing underneath the porch awning with Tommy.

"Is Evan coming too?" Adam said. "It'll be kind of cramped."

"I don't know," she said, and stepped out into the rain. "Hi, Tommy. Hey, Evan."

"Hello ...Phoebe." Tommy took his time saying her name, but she wasn't sure that he needed to. "Can Adam . .. give Evan ... a lift?"

Adam leaned over and called through the open door. "Hey, guys. I don't think there's room in the cab. I guess somebody can ride in the bed, but I think the rain is starting to pick up. It'll be a pretty wet ride."

Tommy nodded. "I can."

"No way," Evan replied. "I ...get the ...back."

He moved to the bumper and started to climb. Phoebe watched him awkwardly make his way into the bed of the truck, his arms and legs angular and stiff. He moved quickly for a dead kid, and she wondered what the difference was--why kids like Colette and Zumbrowski seemed to move at half zombie speed, which was like moving at a quarter of regular speed.

Adam got out of the truck and unlatched the lid of the tool kit that ran the width of the bed. "I think the STD has a painter's tarp back here. You're still going to get wet, but it ought to help."

"Gee," Evan said, "I hope ... I don't catch a cold."

The right side of his mouth twitched. Zombie humor, Phoebe thought.

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Adam spread the tarp out over Evan, who waited until he was finished before drawing it all the way over his head. Adam looked at him, a vague teen-size lump under the tarp, and shook his head.

"That's just creepy," he said.

Phoebe saw that the corner of Tommy's mouth was twitching as well. He looked at her, and she had the sensation that his eyes were illuminated.

"Do you ...like to dance?" he said.

She laughed. "I guess so."

"Great. We ... are going to ... a club. The Haunted House."

Phoebe's eyebrows rose and her lips pursed in concentration. She was hyperaware of her expressions and wondered how they appeared to Tommy, whose facial movements were so minimal. She imagined her face a constantly shifting landscape of twitches and tics. If Tommy noticed her sudden self-consciousness, he did not react.

"We don't really ...dance," he said. "We just sort of...jerk."

The thin line of his mouth turned up at the corner. Phoebe laughed.

"Holy crow," Adam said. "This really is a haunted house."

They pulled into the driveway of a home clear on the other side of the Oxoboxo, an old white colonial, faded and blank-looking in the pale light of dusk, with waist-high gray grass that rippled in the light breeze. There was a wide porch that ran the

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length of the front of the building, the roof of which had collapsed on one side. She saw a huge barn set back a little farther from the road that slouched at a forty-five-degree angle. On the main house, shutters hung askew from the few windows where they hadn't rotted off completely. Most of the windows themselves were broken, leaving glass teeth that shone in the headlights of the STD's truck.

The windows were rolled up, but they could hear music, loud and fast, blasting from the house. There was dim light somewhere deep inside the house, just a few flickers, as though it were lit entirely by two or three candles.

"Is that Grave Mistake?" Phoebe asked.

"A house ...favorite," Tommy said. "Please come in."

Said the spider to the fly, she thought. Tommy got out of the truck, as did Adam. Phoebe's left side was warm from being wedged in between them; the right side, which had been against Tommy, felt no such additional warmth. She shivered when she left the truck, but it might have been the cool rain hitting the back of her neck.

They followed Tommy up the creaking porch steps. The music was at a near-punishing level now, as Grave Mistake segued into a metal group Phoebe did not recognize, the double bass drum threatening to send the rest of the roof into collapse. She could feel the vibrations through her boots. The air smelled of old wood and, subtly, of decay. Rotten wood or maybe vegetation smells kicked up by the rain from the surrounding woods.

"Is he okay back there?" Adam said, nodding at the truck.