Kiss of Life (17 page)

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looked bored, but most of the dead looked at least a little bored if they weren't trying to emote.

"Yes. There does not appear to be a relationship between the time spent dead and the amount of functionality the person has. There also does not appear to be a relationship between the time period one exists as differently biotic and the amount of functionality they have."

"Time is not on their side," Phoebe said. "In increasing functionality."

Alish took his bifocals off and closed his eyes. "It does not appear that way, no."

"What helps?" Phoebe asked, thinking of Adam trying to will his body into a karate stance.

"We have not found anything that helps," he said.

"Music," Colette called. Alish opened his eyes and looked back at her. "Hugs."

"I interrupted you," Phoebe said to Alish. "What else do we know?"

"Not much, I'm afraid," he said. "Nothing conclusive. Our friends Ms. DeSonne and Mr. Williams--no offense, dear Miss Beauvoir--appear to be on the higher end of the functionality scale. There is a girl in California who only blinks. Some of the dead appear to regain senses beyond sight and sound. The degree of touch sensation appears to differ among them. We know that if the brain is destroyed, functionality ceases. We know that traditional biology does not seem to apply."

"What do you mean?"

"No heartbeat, no circulation, no respiratory activity," he said,

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and there were teeth, faintly yellow and crooked, in his smile. "They're dead, Ms. Kendall. It just doesn't make any sense."

"I can ...smell ...that perfume ...Margi wears now," Colette said. "I ...couldn't do that...before."

"Interesting," Alish said, smiling at her. He looked like he wanted to figure out how to fit her inside a petri dish.

"So what are you trying to find?" Phoebe asked.

"Oh, a lot of things," he said. Then he leaned forward and motioned with a crooked finger for her to lean in.

"Miss Kendall," he said, his voice a dry whispery rasp, "I'm trying to find the secret of life."

He laughed then, and lifted the hooked finger he'd beckoned her with to his lips, as though it were their little secret.

"What a ...weirdo," Colette said from the front seat of Margi's car, "a total ...creepy weirdo."

Margi was clapping her hands to try and warm them up while waiting for the heater to kick in, her bangles muffled by her mittens and her coat.

"Who?" she said. "Alish?"

"First ...guess," Colette said. She turned on the radio so that they could listen to the Restless Dead CD that they had listened to only fifty-three times that week.

"Ugh ... I hated it working in the lab," Margi said. "But Angela is more than a little creepy too."

"What do you mean?" Phoebe said, leaning forward so she could hear over the bass-heavy drone pouring from the speakers behind her head.

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"Well, she's perfect," Margi said. "Just look at her. Nobody is that perfect."

"Except...me," said Colette.

"I stand corrected. But really, how could she possibly be the daughter of leathery old Alish? He must have conceived her in his sixties."

"Conceived her ... in a state ... of scientific inquiry," Colette said. They all broke up.

Phoebe was the first one to control her giggling. "I just don't know what he's really trying to do. It seems so random."

"He told Tommy once that he was looking for a cure," Margi said. "Tommy got pretty mad. He said he didn't have a disease."

"I don't...know." Colette's expression was wistful. "I ...wouldn't mind ...being ...cured."

Margi put the car in gear and rolled down the hill to the gate.

"Okay, Duke," she said, waiting for him to trigger the release so they could leave the compound. And then whispering, "Speaking of creepy."

"Yeah," Colette said, "if anybody should be ... a zombie . .."

The gate clicked open and began to separate in the center.

"Creeeeeeeeeeak," Margi said. "So Pheebes, are you hanging out with us today? It's a beautiful gray Saturday. I had my mom buy some expensive coffee, which is perfect for a day like this. We can go through my recent MP3 downloads."

"I can't, Gee," Phoebe said.

"Can't, or won't?" Phoebe knew that Margi had been

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aiming for a gentle chiding tone, but she could hear the irritation in her voice.

"I've got to check in on Adam," she said. The silence from the front seat told her how everyone felt about that excuse.

"He's ...moving ...better," Colette said after a time.

"Yes."

"And talking ...too."

"He's really making some progress," Phoebe said.

"Well." Margi pressed the accelerator a little too hard. "How about I pick him up too?"

"I ... I don't think that is a good idea right now," Phoebe said, wishing that Margi would back off, knowing that she wouldn't.

"Why not?"

"He's still very self-conscious," she said. "Can we take a rain check?"

Margi looked at her in the rearview, and it was obvious she didn't buy it. She opened her mouth to reply, but Colette beat her to it.

"I was ...that way ... at first ...too," she said. "Tell him ...when he is ...ready ...he's always ...welcome."

"Thanks," she said, deciding that she'd go see Adam when she got home and maybe talk to him about what had happened. Putting off the inevitable hadn't worked so well with Tommy, and she didn't want a replay of that scene.

She regretted her decision soon after knocking on the Garritys' door. Jimmy opened it.

"He's at karate, pretending he's a real person," Jimmy

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said, his contempt for her clear in his dark eyes. "Go the hell home."

"Tell him I stopped by, please?" she said.

Jimmy's laugh matched his personality. "Yeah, right," he said. "I don't talk to corpses."

He slammed the door, and Phoebe could hear Adam's mother yelling at him from a room deeper in the house. She sighed and crossed the short stretch of lawn that separated their houses, then went inside hers. Her mother, still in a sharp, blue business suit, was moving around the kitchen and pulling things from various cabinets and drawers.

"Hi, honey," she said, reaching high into the cabinet where her father--who did most of the cooking--had arranged the spices. "How was your day?"

"Filled with wonder," Phoebe said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. "How about yours?"

Her mom smiled and leaned into her daughter's hug. "I don't know about 'filled with wonder,'" she said, "but it could be worse. Your father is going to be a little late, so I told him we'd get dinner ready."

"Sure," Phoebe said, looking at what her mother had spread on the counter: bread crumbs, heavy cream, tarragon, egg noodles. "Tarragon chicken?"

"Tarragon chicken," her mother replied.

"That's fowl," Phoebe said, continuing one of the little goofy family traditions that seemed to hold the internal world together while the external world was making no sense at all. Her mom smiled.

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"I know," she said, "and no fuss about it being Thanksgiving in a couple days. More bird won't kill you."

"Unless, of course, it is avian flu--rich bird."

"Miss Morbid," her mother said, "you mind getting things started while I change? Or do you want to change first?"

"I never change, Mom," Phoebe said. She meant it as a joke, but she could tell by the look that crossed her mom's face that she didn't take it that way.

"Is something wrong, Phoebe?" her mom asked, stopping her bustling to move loose strands of ink black hair out of Phoebe's eyes. "Are you okay? Was it the article?"

Uh-oh, Phoebe thought. "What article?"

"It was in the paper. Some undead people went around Winford last night killing people's pets."

"Can I see?" Phoebe asked. She didn't bother to correct her mother's terminology.

Her mom opened the recycling bin and withdrew the paper for her.

"I'm going to get changed," her mom said. "The chicken breasts are in the fridge. They might need to be defrosted a little more."

"I'm going to read this first, okay?" Phoebe said, scanning the front page of the
Winford Bulletin.
ZOMBIES KILL PETS,
the headline read, and Phoebe was glad that she hadn't corrected her mother. There was a photograph of a young mother holding two distraught children. The caption beneath the photo said that the Henderson family was mourning the loss of the Airedale Brady, who was "attacked and killed by zombies" sometime during the night.

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There was also the photo of George from the Undead States recruitment flyer.

"Oh my," Phoebe said.

The article suggested that the zombie in the poster was considered the primary suspect in the rash of pet killings that had happened over the past few weeks, and she instantly thought of the wet furry lump that had been in George's trick-or-treat bag on Halloween.

Her mother's voice startled Phoebe. "Terrible, isn't it?"

Phoebe looked at her mom, who'd changed into jeans and a loose T-shirt. "I can't believe it."

"Do you know that boy? You know so many of the living impaired people in Oakvale."

Phoebe looked back at the paper; she thought she knew
all
of the living impaired people in Oakvale.

"Yes."

"Really?" her Mom said. "Shouldn't you go to the police?"

"I ... I can't believe he would do this, Mom," she said, although she really could.

Her mother got the chicken out of the fridge, cut the plastic wrapping, and slid the three split fillets onto a white cutting board. She began trimming them with a knife.

"Is he a friend of yours?" she asked. She wasn't looking at Phoebe when she said it.

"Not really, no," Phoebe said.

"Well," her mother said, plating the breasts and covering them to prep them for a brief spin in the microwave, "let's hope that it wasn't really him, and that something else is going on.

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Coyotes, maybe. It wouldn't be good for your friends if this crime was committed by living impaired kids."

Phoebe wanted to argue the point. She wanted to say how stupid society was if they would blame a whole group of people for the actions of a small minority, but in the end she held her tongue, because she knew her mother was not speaking judgmentally, and that she was right. This was going to make trouble for differently biotic people through out the town. Phoebe had visions of a parade of cop cars leading up to the Haunted House, their lights flashing on the dead faces that gathered at the cracked windows to watch their approach.

"What goes better with tarragon chicken?" her Mom asked. "Carrots or peas?"

"Dad likes peas," Phoebe said. "Peas it is."

Phoebe had trouble sleeping that night, so rather than fight it she lit incense and a few candles, then straightened her room. Her restlessness annoyed Gargoyle, who raised his furry eyebrows as she bustled around.

"Oh, Gar," she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed to mollify him by scratching behind his ears. "I would never let mean old George eat you."

Gar's eyebrow twitched once, then he settled back down to sleep. Phoebe went and sat at her computer. The article, and its accusations really bothered her.

She set the media player on her desktop to cycle randomly

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through the thousands of songs stored on her hard drive. The first one that came up was by the Restless Dead, a group that always made her think of Adam.

She had three real e-mails among the advertisements and spammage. One from Margi, exhorting her to not be a lame-o and go to Aftermath. The second one was from Margi, telling her not to be a lame-o, and to go to Aftermath with them. The last one was from Margi, and it asked her to
puhleeze
not be a lame-o and go to Aftermath with them.

Hey, Margi,
she typed in reply to the third e-mail,

I'm sorry I have been such a lame-o. I'd love to go to Aftermath with you tho I wish that the train could pick me up at my house becuz in truth yr driving scares me to death. True and final death. See you in school Mon. and we'll make plans. Say hey to Colette fur me, love Pheeble.

She surfed for a while, popped on and off MySpace addys of bands as the media player selected them. The Restless Dead appeared again after about a half hour, and Phoebe wondered how the "randomizer," or whatever it was, could pick two songs from a band that maybe had twenty total among thousands in such a short span of time.

She popped onto
mysocalledundeath.com
and reread