Generation Dead (38 page)

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look at the little disco ball. Isn't that just the ...cutest?"

"You did a great job, Karen," Phoebe said. She caught sight of Colette dancing in the corner by herself. She reminded Phoebe of the blissed-out hippie girls from the Woodstock movie her dad had made her watch a few years ago. Karen hadn't waited for her answer, though. She'd whisked Adam to the center of Club Dead and was spinning around him, the hem of her short skirt rising in a provocative floret of silky material. To Phoebe's surprise, Adam started moving his arms and feet.

"Oh man," Norm said. He was as pale as any of the dead people in the room.

"Breathe deeply," Tommy said. "I'll introduce you ...around."

Tommy introduced them to a few of the people lingering in the foyer, most of whom were expressionless and seemingly blasé about the introductions. The music was incessant but the strobe light flashed in intermittent waves, making the dancers look even more halting and bizarre. The scene threw Phoebe's perceptions off. She said hello and shook a cold hand or two, but it seemed as though some of the zombies were less than happy to meet her. Conversely, she thought Tommy was a little too happy to be showing her off.

It could be the lights and the music, she thought.

Someone grabbed Tommy's shoulder from behind.

"Tayshawn!" Phoebe said. "How are you?"

He didn't answer her and spoke directly to Tommy.

"Takayuki...wants to talk ... to you," he said. "More ...are arriving ...daily."

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Phoebe watched Tommy go from festive to serious in a heartbeat. "Where is he?" he asked. "Upstairs?"

Tayshawn nodded, and Tommy turned back to her. "I'll be right back," he said.

She watched them go up the dark staircase, where she pictured Takayuki hanging upside down and hidden in an empty closet somewhere.

Brr,
she thought, and went back to watching the dancers, squinting whenever the too-bright strobe flashed. Pretty much everyone was moving, but she couldn't tell if any of them were having fun, because most of the zombies wore no expression as they twisted and shook. The exception was Colette, whose smile looked more and more natural each time Phoebe saw her. She was chatting in the corner with Margi and Norm.

Thorny arrived with his date just as Tayshawn came back down the stairs, alone.

"Tayshawn!" he called, raising his arm for a high five. "How are you, man?"

Tayshawn left him hanging, making his way with purpose through the dance floor to the other room, where the stereo equipment awaited him.

"Dang," Phoebe heard Thorny say, and then he caught sight of her. "Hey, Phoebe. Do you know Haley Rourke?" he said, leading Haley deeper into the room. Phoebe thought she looked terrified; Phoebe said hello, but the tall girl was frozen in place.

"Thorny," Phoebe said into his ear, "did you tell her that there would be mostly differently biotic people here?"

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"Huh?" he said, swinging his arms to the new tune that began to blare through the speakers. "You think I should have?"

Phoebe started to reply when she saw Tommy and Takayuki coming back down the stairs. Tak kept walking out the front door.

"Is everything okay?" Phoebe asked him.

"Yes," Tommy said. "We have had ...new arrivals. Some for ...the party. Others ... to stay."

"That's good, right? The more, the merrier?" She wanted to ask about Takayuki, but didn't.

"Yes," he said. "But it might get us ...noticed."

"Isn't that what you want? To be noticed?"

"What do you mean?"

"The blog," she said. "Playing football and all that. Aren't you just trying to get people to notice your cause?"

She wanted to add
dating a trad girl
, but she didn't need to. The sentiment was obvious; it seemed to hang unspoken between them during every conversation.

He took his time answering. "It is ...important," he said, "for ...people to understand our situation. What we go through."

"Won't this help?"

"It could. But not everyone sees ...the same opportunities that I do."

"Tak?"

"Yes. And Tak ... is not alone."

An old power ballad began, and many of the couples,

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zombie and otherwise, began to break off into pairs. Phoebe watched as a pair of zombies, the boy in a suit jacket two sizes too big for him, moved toward each other into an awkward, spidery embrace. Norm was crouching so that his head rested on Margi's shoulder, some of her hair spikes poking behind the frames of his glasses and into his closed eyes. Haley Rourke was clinging to the much shorter Thorny as though he were the last free rock in a stormy sea.

She looked back to Tommy, who was scanning the room, watching his people reach for each other in the muted light beneath the glittering mirror ball above them. His invitation to dance seemed to her an afterthought.

"Actually, Tommy," she said, "could we go somewhere and talk a little more?"

"This house ... is full of zombies," he said, managing to affect a disgusted expression. It made her smile.

"Yes, it is."

"A walk in the woods? Like when we met?"

"Like when we met," she said. "I'd like that. It's a little chilly, though."

He gave her his jacket, which carried a subtle scent that she had a hard time placing at first but then recognized as Z, the cologne they'd laughed over at the mall--the "scent for the active undead male."

She followed him out the back door and into the woods.

Adam gently guided his dance partner around so he could peek

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out the living room window and watch Tommy and Phoebe enter the Oxoboxo woods. Karen's grip on him was tight.

He held his breath as they disappeared into the tree line, their bodies swallowed up by the darkness. He wondered if that's what it felt like to be dead.

I hope you know what you are doing, Pheeble, he thought. No wait. I hope you have no idea what you are doing. I hope you ...

"She doesn't know, does she?" Karen said, breaking his train of thought. "What?"

Karen's diamond eyes glittered like the stars. "Phoebe," she said. "She doesn't know how you feel about her, does she?"

"No," he replied. "How do you?"

"Telepathetic," she said, shrugging. Beneath his rough hands, her body felt airy and fragile, her bones like those of a bird. She pressed her face against his chest.

"Actually, it is a combination of things. Your body language. The way you look at her when you are with her, the way you look at her when she doesn't know you are looking. The way you look when you aren't with her. The way your overly serious face softens when you are speaking to her. That sort of thing."

"Ah. My overly serious face. It betrays me every time."

"Sorry. I meant to say your overly cute and serious face."

"Okay," he said. "That helps."

"Adam, look," she said, fixing him with her cut-diamond

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eyes. "Take it from me. Don't wait around to die for love."

"Great advice. What exactly does it mean?"

"It means you should find the right time and tell her how you feel."

"The right time for her? Or for me?"

Again he felt the subtle shift of a delicate skeletal structure beneath his hands.

"Just the right time."

He looked out the window, where shadows seemed to move among the trees.

"What about Tommy?"

"Tommy is Tommy," was her quick reply. "And your feelings aren't really Tommy's concern, are they?"

He thought there was an edge in her voice. "What about your feelings? Do you have feelings for Tommy?"

She laughed and squeezed him again. "I've got feelings for a lot of people. Dead people, trad people, whatever...."

He laughed and smoothed her silvery hair.

"You're a special girl, Karen." And without thinking, he brushed her hair behind her ear with his fingertips and bent low so that he could kiss her cheek. It was an act of pure impulse, one that he was scarcely aware of doing until the cool smoothness of her skin against his warm lips reminded him of who he was, and what she was.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, thank you, Adam."

The glittering stars in her eyes were going nova, like they weren't merely reflecting light but, instead, projecting it.

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"No," he said, hugging and then releasing her. "Thank
you
."

The song changed into something more frenetic, and he pressed through the dead with deliberation toward the back door.

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***

CHAPTER THIRTY

P
ETE COULDN'T BELIEVE HIS good luck. Even with TC half in the bag and reeking of peppermint, they'd managed to find the place--a short hike through the woods after stashing the car in one of his old make-out turnoffs. The roads around the Oxoboxo were full of these bootlegger turns, and he knew each one.

They'd just arrived when Adam's battered truck and the second car with Scarypants and Williams arrived. For fun he'd sighted along the barrel and aimed at the big zombie on the porch. At his head, specifically, which sat on his wide shoulders like a lump of melted candle wax.

Pop
, Pete thought, and then aimed at Karen and Adam in turn as they went up the stairs. Then TC almost gave them away with a loud sneeze.

"Shut up, you idiot," Pete had said through clenched teeth.

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"What?" TC said, grinning. "The music is wicked loud, and they can't hear too well anyhow."

Pete wanted to crack him with the rifle butt, right in his grinning moon face. He turned back, and Tommy was halfway up the steps, at the center of a loose knot of people. Scarypants was with him, and their usual crowd. Also some dweeb who Pete vaguely recalled roughing up on a few occasions.

Pete aimed at Tommy. While other kids had been daydreaming about all the wholesome fun they'd have at the big school dance, Pete had spent the week shooting cans and assorted woodland critters behind his house. He even put a round into the Talbot's chimney, just for fun. His finger was loose around the trigger.

Head shot, he thought, squinting.

"Why didn't you shoot 'im?" TC asked as they watched Williams enter the house.

Pete was sweating; he felt damp at the armpits and on his neck. He and TC had shucked their semiformal wear and put on dark sweats and sneakers for their mission.

"I didn't have a clear shot, stupid," he said, leaning back against a tree.

"So what do we do now?" TC asked.

"We wait."

"But I've got to piss," TC said, whining.

"So go piss! Just be friggin' quiet about it!"

TC lumbered off to relieve himself, moving with all the grace of a moose.

He returned and they waited, watching that little runt

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Harrowwood and his freakishly tall date arrive, and then they saw some way-too-happy metalhead dude leave and walk into the woods in the opposite direction. Pete thought he looked familiar.

"Was that a zombie?" TC asked.

"Couldn't tell," Pete answered. "Probably."

"Look!" TC jumped up and pointed.

"What?"

"They just left! They went out the back door!"

"Who? Williams?" Pete said, picking the rifle off the ground and rising.

"Yeah, and the goth chick! They walked off into the woods."

"Okay," Pete said, "there must be a path back there. We'll move along the tree line until we find it. When we catch up to them, you grab Julie, and I'll bust a cap on dead boy."

"You got it, Pete," TC said, but Pete was already moving, glancing at the house every few steps just in case any more zombie lovers decided to take a moonlight stroll.

"Hey," Pete heard TC say as they circled, "who's Julie?"

A muscle in Pete's jaw twitched, but he didn't answer.

The moon wasn't helping much, its reflected light casting only a murky gloom through the bare trees, but Phoebe didn't want to ask Tommy for his hand. She didn't know what signals she wanted to send him. She was already wearing his Z-scented jacket, and that was signal enough, even though all it really signaled was that she was cold.

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"The woods aren't made for heels," she said, pausing to slide her shoes off.

"They are unkind to nylons, as well," he said.

She agreed, but thought twice about taking those off.

He was faintly luminous in the poor light.

"Did I ever tell you how I died?" he asked.

She shook her head, not sure if he could see.

"It was a car accident. My father was driving. A drunk driver ran a red light and ...plowed into us. He survived, but he killed my father." He made a noise that was either a humorless laugh or a sigh; Phoebe couldn't tell in the darkness. "Me too."

"I'm sorry," Phoebe said.

"Dad was killed instantly. I took a little longer. One of my ribs had broken and punctured my lung, so I ended up ...drowning in my own blood."

"Oh, Tommy," she said, "that's horrible."

"No picnic," he said.

She felt his hand slide over hers, and he led her to a stone bench alongside the path. She let him guide her.

"It happened at night, at an ... intersection in front of a big church. I could see the steeple through the shattered windshield. We'd spun around a couple times and ended up in line with that steeple. I looked up at the steeple and ...prayed that my dad was still alive. I remember praying for that because I knew I was a goner and I didn't want my mom to be all alone."

Phoebe, mixed signals or not, squeezed his cold hand. Tommy had never seemed so vulnerable before.

"The first thing I thought when I ...came back," he said,