Generation Dead (25 page)

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"I know. I know. I just can't believe that people would just watch someone get killed and not do anything about it."

"Would you?" Karen asked. "Do something about it?"

Margi's mouth opened and closed with a shocked abruptness. Her face went as pink as her hair.

"Of course we would," Phoebe said, covering for her as best she could. "It is just so strange that Tommy has to go hunting for these stories, though. Especially the white van. What do you think that is? Some sort of fanatical group?"

"The ...government," Tayshawn said.

"Do you believe that, Tayshawn?" Angela asked.

He nodded.

"I...was ...left," Colette said.

All heads, some more slowly than others, turned toward her, but Phoebe looked over at Margi. There was a small stuffed animal, a black cat, on a key ring attached to her bag, and she was squeezing it hard enough to make her knuckles white.

Angela, apparently less interested in government conspiracies than she was in Colette's feelings and experiences, nodded. "Left, how?"

Colette was a long time in answering. "Left... by... everyone."

Angela started to speak but then stopped when she realized Colette had more to say and needed no further urging, only the time to vocalize her thoughts. This was their fourth group session, and the slower of the zombies--Colette, Kevin, and Sylvia--never spoke until directly prompted by Angela--until now.

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"My ...parents ...would not ...let ...me ... in the ...house. I...walked ...from the ...hospital...morgue ... in ...Winford. Seven ...miles."

Phoebe stared at the floor. If she hung her head just so, her long dark hair might prevent others from seeing the tears in her eyes.

"I...knocked ...on ...the door. I ...rang ...the ...bell. My ...mother ...was ...screaming ...for me ... to ...go ...away. I...knocked ... on the ...window ...and the ...window ...broke. Daddy ...he ..."

Phoebe heard herself sob, and she felt Margi shift away from her on the sofa.

"Daddy ...came out ... of the garage," she said, her staring eyes like portals into another world. "He had ...a ...shovel."

"Jesus Christ," Adam said.

"I... left. I... stayed ... in the ... woods. Three ... days. I went...to ...my friend's ...house."

Margi jumped off the couch. "You were dead, Colette! What was I supposed to do? You were dead!"

"My ...friend ...would not... let me in." She looked at Phoebe. "None of...my friends ...would let...me in."

"I was scared, Colette!" Margi said, her voice a thin shriek. "You were all ... all ... I was scared!"

Phoebe wanted to say something, but she couldn't move; her own guilt had paralyzed her. All she could do was cry, which she did, the makeup around her eyes running down her cheeks in thin black rivulets.

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Colette turned toward Margi and then she stood up. Margi flinched and tripped over the couch, nearly falling down. She ran out of the room.

"This is probably a good time for a break," Adam said, but Angela shook her head. Phoebe found the strength to stand, fully intending to go find Margi. Colette called her name, and she froze in place.

"Stay."

Phoebe turned toward her. Colette was so impassive, so cold and slow. She was blank and expressionless, with none of the tics or inflections attempted by the more functional dead kids. Phoebe felt like Colette's black eyes were boring through her skull.

"Please."

Adam touched her arm as he walked by. "I'll go find Daffy," he said quietly. Phoebe sat.

"What happened then, Colette?" Angela asked.

Colette remained standing. "I ...hid. In the ...woods. And then ... in the ...lake. Tommy ...found ...me."

Tommy lifted his left shoulder--a shrug. "It is a ...gift."

"What did you do when you found her?" Angela asked.

"I ...talked to her. I brought her ...home."

"Home? Your home?"

Tommy nodded.

"Your mother didn't mind?"

"My mother ...helped."

Angela's eyebrows arched. "You've brought other differently biotics home to your mother?"

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Tommy nodded again.

"Do they stay?"

"No room."

"Where do they go?

He gave the half shrug again.

Angela turned back to Colette. "Colette? Where did you go after spending time with Tommy?"

"I ...left. Went...to ...the ...house."

"The house?"

"She spent time with me," Karen said. "And with Evan, too."

"You have a house where you stay?"

"Some of us," Tommy said, "stay together."

"Where?"

"It would not be a good thing for ...everyone ... to know."

"True," Angela said. "But certainly you can trust the people in this room?"

"Certainly," Tommy said, his mouth twitching. But he didn't say, and none of the other differently biotic kids chose to fill the gap of his silence.

"Very well," Angela replied. "Thank you for sharing your story, Colette. I'm sure that was a very painful experience for you. Sharing, I mean. We're about out of time for the day."

Phoebe felt like her heart was frozen in her chest. The students shuffled past her. She was still crying and couldn't seem to speak.

Colette sat next to her on the couch. Phoebe looked at her, her eyes stinging and her vision blurred from the makeup that

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she'd tried to wipe away. Colette's gaze was unreadable.

"Colette, I...I'm ..."

Colette reached for her in the now-empty room.

Phoebe could hear the STD yelling when Adam picked up the phone.

"Yeah?"

It s me.

"Hey."

"How's Margi?"

"Couldn't really tell. She wouldn't speak to me. We got permission to leave early, and from the shuttle I drove her home. She thanked me, that was about it," he sighed. "How are
you
?"

"Urn ..."

"Yeah, I figured. Frisbee?"

"Okay."

"Give me a half hour. I've got to do some crap for the STD first."

"Okay."

It got dark too early, so Phoebe suggested they go over to the football field, where they could play under the lights. She felt better the moment she was in Adam's truck, and then felt better again as he tossed the moon-yellow glowing disk to her, throwing it in a soft lazy spiral.

"Can't remember the last time I saw you in sneakers," he said, looking down at her black tennies. "Don't those boots you wear all the time kill your feet?"

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She tossed the Frisbee back, wincing as she saw that it was going to drop about five yards short.

"No, they're really pretty comfortable. And I wore these just last week when we were out here."

"Oh," he said, running for the disk and snagging it the moment before it hit the turf. Adam could throw a Frisbee about two dozen different ways, and this time he threw it sidearm. Phoebe caught it on the angle behind her back.

"Sweet," he said. "I was worried you'd lose it after lying around all day drinking coffee and writing goth poetry."

"Oh, you heard about that?"

"Heard about what?" he said with mock innocence, and ran back so he could catch the disk she'd thrown high over his head.

"Never mind."

"Okay." He looped the next one with a quick over-the-forearm throw he snapped from his wrist. She tried the behind-the-back move, and it bounced off her side.

"Awww," he said. "So, what's the deal?"

Phoebe picked the Frisbee off the turf and sailed it over to him chest high, finding the range.

"Colette hugged me."

"Oh," he said, flipping it back to her in the same manner. "That's a good thing, right?"

"Uh-huh. I was crying like a baby."

"It's an emotional thing, her hugging you. A little scary, too.

She had to run for his next throw and caught it on her

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fingertips. "Yeah. But look how scary everything was for her."

He nodded, easily flagging down her return throw. He moved with an effortless grace uncommon in kids his size. "You can't feel what other people are feeling. You can only try to imagine what other people are feeling."

"We let her down, Adam."

"You aren't talking about the lake, are you? That wasn't your fault."

The next one went right to her, and she admired the back-spin he'd put on it. "No. Her drowning was no one's fault. I'm talking about her return."

"Oh."

"She came to our houses, Adam. And we turned her away." He was a long time in answering. "Second chances," he said. "She hugged you." "Yeah."

"Margi will come around."

They played for forty-five minutes, changing topics to give their thoughts about Margi and Colette some dwell time. They had a good laugh at Thornton, who'd worn a
Some of My Best Friends are Dead
T-shirt to school earlier in the week and had gotten a detention from his homeroom teacher, which Principal Kim revoked.

"What do you think of Tommy quitting the football team?" she asked.

"I'm disappointed. He was pretty good." "Did you talk to him about it?"

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"No. I figure he didn't want the protests and stuff getting out of hand."

She smiled. "When did you turn into such an insightful guy, Adam?"

He ignored her. "I like that sweatshirt. You should wear white more often. I didn't think you had anything that wasn't black."

"Not true. I have clothes that are gray, umber, and noir."

"My mistake." He laughed. "Let's get out of here."

The first thing that Phoebe did when she got home was check her e-mail, but Margi hadn't replied. Nor had she answered her cell phone.

"Dad, did Margi call?"

He looked up from his mystery novel. "No calls, I'm pleased to report."

But Phoebe wasn't pleased. She was worried.

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***

CHAPTER TWENTY

A
NGELA SAT IN THE OFFICE with Phoebe and Karen as they worked what would be their last shift in the clerical pool. Next week Phoebe would go off to the wild world of facilities maintenance while Karen would get to do some real work in the lab. Phoebe was not happy about the change, having no desire to spend any time with Duke Davidson, who she found to be creepier than just about anyone she knew.

"I wanted to thank you girls for all the work that you did here," Angela said. "You've been a lot of help."

"It's what we're here for," Phoebe told her. "I just wish we could have found more positive comments for you."

Angela laughed. "Eventually. Eventually I think we'll see a begrudging acceptance of what we do. Society will just have to grow."

"What do you think it will take for society to do that,

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Ms. Hunter?" Karen asked as she straightened a sheaf of papers.

Angela looked at her. "I wish I knew, exactly, Karen. I think it will be a combination of things. But chief among them will be a great deal of effort from people like you."

Karen looked up with the flat expression of the dead, something Phoebe noticed she could switch on and off at will, a mask for her.

"What do you mean?" she said.

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to make you feel pressured. But I think for the differently biotic--zombies--to ever get true acceptance, it will be because of people like you."

"Like me?"

"High-functioning zombies. You speak with few pauses. You move well. Your face is more expressive," she said. "When you want it to be."

Phoebe watched Karen for her reaction, but she maintained the empty gaze.

"High-functioning," Karen said.

"Please don't be insulted. But surely you are aware that you are different from most of the differently biotic students. You could almost..."

"Pass?"

"I was going to say, see the others looking up to you," she said. If Angela was insulted, she hid it well behind her smile. "The differently biotic community needs leaders. Art. Culture. People like you and Tommy could make a difference."

"Because the others ...could look up to us."

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"And because you can communicate well. You could be the public face of the differently biotic."

Karen did an approximation of a frown. "Oh my," she said.

"It's true, Karen," Phoebe said. "You're beautiful."

"What a sweetie you are, Phoebe," Karen said, allowing herself to smile. When Karen smiled, her face was almost magnetic in its beauty, but Phoebe found the rapid transition to such beauty from emptiness somewhat disconcerting.

"Well," she said, "it's true."

Angela nodded. "There's something within you and Tommy that some of the others haven't tapped into yet. A creativity ...a spirit ... I don't know what it is. But I know that neither of you show it enough. Especially Tommy."

"That isn't true," Phoebe said, but Karen spoke over her.

"I ...appreciate what you are saying. But you are ...assuming ...that living people want us to act, walk, and talk like them. I don't think that is true."

Phoebe wrote www.mysocalledundeath.com on a piece of paper along with her site login ID and password.

"You don't think that makes it easier for people to listen to you?"

"For some. I think that for others it is harder. The more we act like them the more they are aware we aren't. It makes them paranoid."

"Really?"

"I think it would ... absolutely blow peoples' minds if they couldn't...tell we were dead."

"Hm."