Generation Dead (23 page)

Pulling out of the parking area, he realized that she hadn't looked at the Oxoboxo the entire time they'd been there, not even when the only view of the lake was in the rearview mirror.

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***

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A
REN'T YOU COMING, PETE? We're going to be late."

A half dozen scathing retorts bubbled up through his subconscious, but Pete let them dissipate without comment.

"You go ahead," he said, watching from the foyer as Williams got on the bus. "Tell Coach I have diarrhea or something. I'll be out in a while."

"Really?" Stavis said. "You sick?"

Pete turned back to him and shook his head. The dead kid was moving pretty well for a dead kid, much better than the girl that he let on the bus before him.

"You want me to get the nurse, or something?"

"No, TC," Pete said through clenched teeth. "No, I don't want you to go to the nurse. What I want is for you to get out of here and go to practice and tell Coach that I'm sick. Tell him that I will be on the field as soon as I clear my colon."

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"You want me to say
that
?" Stavis said. "I can't say that. He's gonna be pissed."

"TC, make something up. You're a creative guy."

"Yeah? You really think so?"

"Yeah, I really think so. Now go away."

Pete set his backpack down and took out the roster he'd ripped off the office wall. The blue sheet was creased and torn in places, one gummy strand of yellow masking tape still affixed at the remaining corner. There were four of them on that bus. Phoebe Kendall, Margi Vachon, Tommy Williams, and ...some other dead chick. Either Sylvia Stelman or Colette Beauvoir, because the slutty-looking one was Karen DeSonne. One of the girls, either Sylvia or Colette, got picked up every day by a blue van that also took a zombie who must be Kevin Dumbrowski, because Evan Talbot was the redheaded freak who lived in Pete's neighborhood and Tayshawn Wade was the black zombie. Well, the gray zombie, anyhow.

That left only Adam Layman and Thornton Harrowwood, who were no doubt getting suited up to head out to practice with lunkhead Stavis.

Williams was a missed opportunity, Pete thought. The idea that he and Stavis had had the chance to put the hurt on him and failed to do so still rankled. And he'd tried. Every touch that Williams got, every time Williams lined up for a block or to cover, Pete hit him with everything he had. No matter what he and Stavis threw at him, Williams got up again like it was no big deal.

Pete had heard that the zombie was off the team. He was glad about it, sure, but it would have been much more satisfying

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had the zombie left with broken bones that had no hope of healing.

Big talk, Martinsburg.

That's what Coach had said to him, and the words still rang in his head like a shout in an empty gymnasium.

"Big talk, Martinsburg. I hear you yapping all the time about what a big deal you are, all these girls you've supposedly made. Big man."

Pete had been hanging around the locker room after their first post-zombie game. Most of the other players had already shuffled off to the bus, but Pete was holding forth with Stavis and Harris. He'd been feeling pretty good about himself; he'd gotten a sack, another interception, and made a few key back-field tackles. He'd only been burned on one play, really, but even giving that one up, they'd beat the far weaker Waterford team by three touchdowns.

Something he said must have set Konrathy off, because he'd ordered the rest of the kids off to the bus but told Pete to join him in the hall. Pete thought about it, the tone Coach had taken with him, and he felt the muscles jump along his arms. A week later and he was still angry.

"Yeah, you're a regular god to the rest of these dumbasses-- morons like Stavis who don't know any better. But Layman doesn't buy your line of crap anymore, does he? And that dead kid, he never did buy it, either."

Pete was glad that Coach had ordered the rest of the team onto the bus so that they weren't around to watch him getting chewed on. He was also glad that they weren't there to hear how

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his voice cracked when he tried to answer. "Coach," he had said, "at least we ran him off the team."

Konrathy gave him a look like Pete was something to be scraped off his cleat. "You ran off nothing. He quit on his own terms. I had hoped that Stavis at least could get the job done, but he was a wash, too."

Pete was humiliated. He'd wanted to tell Coach that he'd been a coward for caving in to Kimchi in the first place, and that he'd been a coward again for not scrubbing Williams from the team. Konrathy had no right to fault him for not obliterating the zombie. At least he tried. What did Coach do, except make hand signals?

Pete walked under a huge handmade banner announcing the upcoming homecoming game against the Ballouville Wildcats, and the homecoming dance that followed.

"You're all talk, Martinsburg," Coach had said. "I've heard you crow about teaching those dead kids a lesson. All you've taught them so far is a lesson in how big a coward you are."

Damn, Pete thought, draining his energy drink in one swallow. He slammed the lid of the trunk of his car, and there she was, the zombie chick with the short skirt, slipping into the woods across the lot.

He sent the bottle bouncing off the hood of some loser's Impala.

Here's some new info for you, he thought, heading for the break in the trees.

He could feel his fury like a tight bubble within his chest as he entered the woods, tendrils of anger coursing through his

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veins. His fists were clenched and his mouth was dry. What right did this dead slut have walking around the woods in skimpy skirts and kneesocks while Julie lay still in her grave in some California cemetery? Why did she have a face like a porcelain doll, with pure white skin, while Julie was rotting somewhere beneath the earth?

Pete stifled a cough by pressing his fist to his lips. He wasn't sure what he was going to do; it was like a curtain of red fog had fallen across his vision, and it would not dissipate, no matter how many times he blinked. All he knew was that this zombie had no right to be wandering around these woods.

No right at all.

The path was wide enough to admit a small car or a pair of bicycles riding side by side, and it wound like an uncoiling snake after a sharp downward slope. Leaves crunched underfoot as he began walking. He thought about his last trip into these woods, when Williams had summoned his zombie friends from graves hidden within the forest. He stopped at the edge of the forest to watch her walk away.

He watched her plaid skirt twitch left and right. She was wearing headphones, the cord of which was plugged into something hidden within her small gray backpack. With her white kneesocks and patent leather, her boldness infuriated him. Where was she going? Off to some secret zombie lair in the woods, or some undead ritual on the shores of the Oxoboxo?

The dead girl was fast for a zombie. She cleared the slope and was a fair distance ahead on the curving path, just

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approaching a copse of thin birch trees whose branches leaned over and cut part of the path from view. The branches obscured her from the waist up, but Pete caught a glimpse of smooth white legs. He waited until she disappeared from his view before running. He figured that he would close the gap between them by the time he cleared the birches. There was no way that a zombie could outrun him; he was one of the fastest athletes in the whole school.

I'll catch her in no time, he thought as he began to sprint. Once beyond the birches, the path stretched out in front of him, long and straight.

The girl was gone.

Pete was beginning to tire of hide-and-seek. He peered around a thick clot of brush and then looked behind the remnants of a low stone wall. There she was, lying on the mildewed and mossy ground, leaves and crawling things twined in her hair, the flesh of her face rotting away, and one lidless eye fixing him with a cold empty gaze. He stumbled back because it wasn't the zombie lying there, it was Julie, Julie in the kneesocks, scuffed patent leathers, and a skirt too short for decency; it was Julie waiting for him behind trees and in dark corners.

Pete swore and rubbed his eyes, his rage morphing into another feeling entirely. Maybe if there weren't any zombies, he could leave Julie where she belonged, dead and buried. He cursed again, and when he turned, the dead girl--Karen--was fifteen feet away from him, standing beneath the shading veil of the birch branches, her hands clasped behind her back.

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The dead girl stared at him through lowered eyes--eyes whose blankness creeped him out. They were like diamonds without the sparkle. She did not blink.

"You were following me," she said.

Pete nodded, feeling a muscle twitch in his jaw. He wondered if this freak had put the image of poor Julie in his head.

"Why," she said, "were you following me?"

He didn't answer. She didn't look frightened, but what little he knew about zombies suggested that they weren't the greatest at expressing themselves. He could charge her and knock her down before her cold dead lips could speak another word.

"Did you ...want... to hurt me? Is that it?"

He nodded. He took one cautious step forward, as if she were a deer that was about to bolt, or a dog that was about to bite.

"Yeah," he said, his voice a low, soft whisper. "I do." She lifted her head after a slow nod. "Like you tried to hurt Tommy."

She'd colored her lips a soft peach hue, and he thought he saw a ghost of a smile there. He couldn't tell if she was mocking him or flirting with him.

"Like I tried to hurt Tommy."

She made a sound like a sigh. "Will that make you feel...better?" she asked. "If you could ...hurt me?"

"Oh yeah," he said, taking another step. There was a fallen branch on the side of the path, and he broke it over his knee. He was left with a sharp, jagged point of new wood at the end of a three foot section of branch. "I really think it would."

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She nodded, her spooky diamond eyes never leaving his. "Then hurt me," she whispered.

He laughed and moved forward, holding the stake level with the point of the V formed by the collar of her white blouse.

"But use a rock," she said, nodding at the stone wall. "We aren't vampires."

Pete paused and considered the option.

"It's a start," he said, choking up on his grip.

Her peach lips parted as if she were about to reply, but then she nodded and undid the third button of her blouse.

"Go ahead," she told him.

She's really going to let me do it, he thought. The sick bitch.

He took his time, but was almost to her when he heard a noise behind him that raised the hair on his neck with its tone and volume--he imagined it was like the bellow of a large, prehistoric animal.

He turned and saw two figures at a distance on the path. One of them was the big black zombie, making the noise again--Pete realized he was shouting the dead girl's name. He was moving as fast as his dead legs could carry him, which wasn't very. His right leg seemed locked at the knee, and the left twitched out in a violent spasm with every step. The overall effect was like watching an old drunk trying to evade the police while at the same time having a heart attack.

The other one, though, Pete thought, the other one was scary.

He was moving just fine, an Asian-looking kid with long

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black hair, black jeans, and a black leather jacket. He was almost running. And he was smiling, which was weird, because zombies rarely smiled, especially not with their teeth.

"Hurry," the dead girl said, and he whirled, intent on doing her right then, and not taking his time like he'd wanted to. But then he saw in her pale dead face that it wasn't her zombie pals she was warning.

"You're last," he said, tossing the stick away. He forced himself to walk, not run, back down the path toward the school parking lot.

"Is it just me," Thorny said, leaning back in his chair as he unwrapped a chocolate-chip granola bar, "or is this the longest shift of all time?"

"It's just you," Adam replied. He was staring at the four monitors that cycled real-time images from the dozen or so security cameras throughout the foundation. Periodically, monitor four would blink in the lab where Alish was explaining something or other to Kevin and Margi in their white lab coats emblazoned with the Hunter Foundation logo--a big gold HF on a black shield. Adam thought it looked like something you'd see on a yacht cap. Tommy sat next to him in the blue work shirt that both he and Thorny wore, the emblem sewn above the left pocket. Adam had been trying to figure out if Tommy blinked when the monitors flashed and switched cameras.

"No, seriously," Thorny said, putting his feet up on Duke Davidson's desk. "We've been here, what? Four hours?"

"Three."