Special Dead (17 page)

“Uh...no?” The question wasn’t quite genuine.

“The goons came through last night,” Teah said. “Confiscated
everything.”

Ani raised her eyebrows. “What was there to
confiscate, exactly?”

Devon rolled her eyes. “Try to text anyone this
morning?”

Ani opened her mouth, but Devon cut her off.

“Well you fucking
can’t
, because you don’t
have a fucking
phone
!”

“Wait,” Ani said. “They took our phones?”

“And disabled the ones on the wall,” Teah said. “I
can’t talk to Bill....”

Ani glared at Devon. “I warned you this would
happen, or worse. This isn’t my fault—”

“Then whose fault is it?”

Ani put her index finger right in Teah’s face. “Hers.
Hers and her stupid boyfriend’s stupid freaking plan.”

Teah’s mouth sagged, and she turned to Devon with
hurt in her eyes. “You...you told!” She ran off, hands over her face.

“Well,” Ani said, “that was helpful.”

Devon spoke through gritted teeth. “I told you
they weren’t fucking serious.”

“I’m not so—”

“Where’s my goddamned phone, dammit!” Kyle
shouted. His wail of frustration carried down the empty hall. “Hey, get your
fucking hands off me!” Kyle screamed in rage as they ran toward the commotion.

They skidded to a stop outside the lounge, where
four guards had Kyle pinned to the floor with catchpoles looped through his
chains. Another guard leaned against the wall, his hands covering a face gushing
blood. Kyle strained against the steel but was no match for it. “I’ll kill you!
Fucking kill you! Where’s my phone?”

As a man she didn’t recognize tended to the
wounded soldier, Ani knelt next to Kyle and ran her hand over his bald head. “Hey,
Kyle, calm down. It’ll be okay.” He bit her wrist, wrenching his head to the
side to tear off a chunk of flesh. Tougher than living meat, her wrist held
firm against his jaws.

“Ow!” She gritted her teeth against the pain, dull
and surreal, and kneed him in the side of the head. He released his grip, so
she smashed his skull into the floor with both hands and sat on his chest. “Sit
still, you moron! They’ll kill you.” They locked eyes, and he smiled.

“They can try. They took my goddamn phone.”

“Back away, please.” The calm voice startled her.
She looked up into Dr. Banerjee’s soft brown eyes. “Now.”

Ani scrambled back as he turned to nod at the silver-clad
men to his right. She opened her mouth to scream, but the sound drowned in the hiss
of hot, liquid flame.

The silhouette of Kyle shrieked on the floor as
the guards pinning him dropped catchpoles to shield their faces. Kyle screamed
profanity through the intense heat as his skin melted, then burned. Ani backed
against the wall and clutched her arms around her knees, unable to look, unable
to look away. His curses turned to an impotent gurgle as his tongue shriveled. The
flamethrowers belched white-hot napalm for an eternity, twin beams of pure hell
that reduced Kyle’s body to blackened, greasy bones and glowing, red chains.

Gray, freezing clouds smothered the flame to smoky
ash as two soldiers blanketed the area with fire extinguishers. The blackened
floor tiles had curled under the onslaught, and black soot covered the walls
and ceiling.

Ani gulped in air, repulsed by the smell of
cooking meat and vinyl, and grateful for the chance to breathe at all. At some
point she realized that the rest of the Special Dead stood off to the side,
faces slack in shock and resigned acceptance. All except for Mike, who smiled
and waved when he saw her looking.

The flames extinguished, Dr. Banerjee turned his
attention to Teah. “Kyle was warned. Violence against the living is
unacceptable. So, too, are you warned. Any attempts at escape will be met with
deadly force. Even discussing it with anyone. I will not have your petty
desires interfere with my research. Behave, or burn.”

As he walked away, the bloody-faced guard escorted
behind him, Teah stretched an accusatory finger at Ani. “Kyle died because of
you. You.”

Sam shook her head. “No, Teah. Kyle died because
Kyle couldn’t control himself. Be smarter.”

I appreciate the effort, Sam,
but Kyle died because he was at prom.

Ani threw up her hands. “Blame me all you want,
Teah.”

“I’ll blame you because it’s your—”

Devon cut her off with a hand on her shoulder. “Kyle
was violent and stupid. He thought he was invincible, despite everything that’s
happened. That’s not Ani’s fault. Just like it won’t be anyone but Bill’s fault
if he gets himself killed trying to dip his dick.”

Teah balled her hands into fists.

“Don’t.” Devon smiled. “You weren’t a match for me
alive, you aren’t a match for me now. You touch me, and there won’t be enough
left of you to burn.” With a scornful look at Kyle’s charred skeleton, she
turned her back on them and walked away, Sam at her side.

*  
*   *

Saturday morning, Ani wasn’t breathing when she
woke up. By Tuesday, her senses of touch and taste had faded. By Wednesday, she
felt normal—cold, dead, and dull. She didn’t even have the energy to challenge Dr.
Freeman’s next observance, when Mr. Foster made Jeff the “Special Student of
the Month” for his improvement in reading.

Chapter

25

Her
fourth lesson with Dr. Herley was a disappointment. He seemed detached,
distracted, as if anything else was more important, and called it a session
barely more than an hour in. Ani felt cheated. She resolved to tell her mom
that the maestro was way too expensive to just phone it in and that she should
demand a refund if he didn’t step it up.

That Saturday, her weekly checkup was just with her
mother. Dr. Banerjee was out of town, consulting with the President’s CDC task
force on disease epidemics.

They went through a full physical. The crack on
her hip had reverted just a little and her ruined lung remained better than it
had been. The most interesting result came from the lab on Sunday morning,
where it revealed that her brain chemistry was closer to human than zombie.
They postponed her weekly injection to see what would happen.

A follow-up test repeated the same result on
Monday afternoon, and by Tuesday morning she’d neither had nor felt that she’d
needed an injection. She got on the bus at the normal time, and frowned when
she saw Mike scratching his forearm. Zombies didn’t get itches except under the
right treatment, and Mike was too dumb to fake anything.

She sat next to him—he smiled at her—and rolled up
his sleeve. Tiny pin-pricks dotted his wrist, too large to be pores and not yet
healed.
Unless he wasn’t in the bath last night, these are new.
He
smiled and petted her head, like she was a hard, orange-skulled kitten. Devon
gave them a sidelong glance but didn’t say anything later when she had the
chance.

That night she ducked into the bedroom doorway
with an obvious, “Hey, Mom?” She had no idea if it would fool the guards, but
it was the only idea she had.

“Yeah, sweetie?”

“Can I talk to you a second?”

“Regarding?”

“Sudden girl stuff.”

If that wouldn’t snuff the
guards’ curiosity, nothing would.

Her mom’s cautious glare told Ani that she
understood. “Yeah, come on in.” Ani stepped inside and shut the door as her mom
pulled her dress off over her head, revealing mercifully old-ladyish white bra
and panties.

“In a hurry?”

“Yes. The secretary of Homeland Security is in
town, and we have a dinner in thirty minutes. What do you need?”

“There’s something wrong with Mike.”

Her mom pulled up a gray wool skirt that almost
covered her knee. “There’s lots of things wrong with Mike. Be specific.”

“He’s got a bunch of injections on his arm, and
they itch.”

Her mom grunted, grabbing a cream-colored blouse
out of the closet. She held it up and looked in the mirror, tossed it on the
bed, and grabbed a peach one. “Cream or peach?”

“Peach.”

She put on the peach blouse, buttoned it, and
nodded in satisfaction. “Good call. Now, given that I didn’t give him any
injections, we’re presuming Rishi?”

“That’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s not
like he’s got a crack habit.”

“True...tell you what, I’ll look into it when
Rishi gets back from Washington. Meantime, I have to go.”

Ani frowned. “Okay.”

Sarah kissed her forehead. “I’m serious. We’ll get
to the bottom of this or die trying.”

“Don’t say that,” Ani snapped.

Her mom grabbed her on either side of her head and
pulled her close, so that they were forehead to forehead. “I mean it. Some
things are bigger than us, and something doesn’t smell right.”

You mean, besides the dead
children, armed guards, clandestine medical research, and murder?

“Yeah, Mom. That’s the point.”

Sarah kissed her. “We both know Rishi’s up to
something. But it’ll be okay, I promise. Deep down, he’s a good man. I’ll talk
to him when he gets back. But I need to go.”

She opened the door, slipped on her two-inch
heels, and left.

*  
*   *

By the end of the week, Ani had started to get a
bit twitchy. Halfway through Mr. Foster’s fifth rendition of what makes a
radian a radian, after Teah’s fourth question that demonstrated an utter lack
of comprehension, Ani found herself staring at Mr. Clark. His gray goatee
covered a rugged, handsome face that had seen more than its share of sunshine.
This late in the day, his cheeks sported an eighth of an inch of bristle, and a
mere inch of flesh and bone separated her from his glistening, gray brains.

She shook the thought out of her head, but it
sprang back with a vengeance.

Five steps, maybe four, and a
quick jerk of the arms. I’ll bet I could eat most of them before the rest of
the class—

She jerked her hand up.

Mr. Foster held up a finger and continued to talk,
so she interrupted him. “Get Mr. Benson.”

Drool pattered down her chest as Mr. Benson walked
into the room, flanked by a pair of soldiers. She looked up at him and slurred
around the drool-soaked guard. “Injection, please.” She looped her hands into
the leather guards on her desk, and put her head face-down.

The sharp prick of the needle piercing the base of
her skull was replaced with a cool, soothing peacefulness. She mumbled
something that might have been, “Thank you.”

A few minutes later she sat up, eliciting a giggle
from Mr. Giggles. “Can you call my mom, please, and tell her I needed a shot?”

“Already informed,” Mr. Clark said from the back
of the room. “She said that eleven days is a huge improvement on seven.”

“Sure,” Ani said. The shot had cooled the craving,
but it was still there, lurking beneath the surface. If Mr. Foster or Mr. Clark
or Miss Pulver or Mr. Benson or those two soldiers got near her, she was pretty
sure she wouldn’t have to crack them open and gorge. Pretty sure.

Twenty minutes later, she was positive. Eleven
days was an improvement on seven, but she should have gotten an injection at
ten. Maybe nine.

Chapter

26

When
she walked into the lab Saturday morning—walked, not shuffled—Dr. Banerjee
settled his cool brown eyes on her. “Miss Romero, you’re walking well.”

“I am.” She did a clumsy pirouette, all the weight
on her no-longer-bad leg.

“I’ve seen the MRI. A promising development.” He
patted the table. “Lie down, please.”

She slid up onto the table and lay on her back. He
flicked on the overhead lamp, wreathing himself in a blinding silhouette.

“Where’s Mom?”

His hands slid up under her hospital gown,
pressing and prodding at her hip. “In the serum lab. Roll onto your side,
please.”

She felt something that might have been cold press
into the side of her pelvis and heard a hiss.

“Does that hurt?”

She shook her head. “No, but it’s...cold, maybe?”

Metal clattered on the instrument tray behind her.
“Hot. Extremely hot. I want to see if the bone tissue regeneration is
persistent.”

“Jesus, what did you do?”

“Nothing you’re apt to notice. I’ll check it next
week. You may sit up.”

She sat up, conscious of the power he wielded with
his delicate instructions. “So, you just, like, burned a hole in my hip?”

“Yes. With a high-powered, orthoscopic laser, thus
avoiding damage to the intervening tissue.”

“Just to satisfy your curiosity?”

“That’s correct. We need to know what effects the
serums are having.”

“Is that what’s going on with Mike’s arm?”

His thin-lipped smile was the most terrifying
thing she’d ever seen. “You’re bright, like your mother, but no.” The smile
disappeared into his typical, expressionless face. “That’s one of Doctor Freeman’s
experiments.”

I knew it.

“Who is she?”

“She’s a researcher in the Department of Homeland
Security, Bioterror. Her interests at least to some degree parallel mine, and
in return we receive a great deal of material support for the lab.”

“So you just rent Mike out, like a guinea pig?” If
her accusatory tone had any effect, he didn’t show it.

“That’s right. I, like your mother, have had to
make compromises I’d rather not have made in order to get what I need.”

She picked her jeans up off the floor, folded them,
and set them on the lab bed. “We’re nothing but lab rats to you, aren’t we?”

He sighed, as close to a human emotion as she’d
ever seen from him. “I have dedicated my entire life to curing ZV, to
guaranteeing that the population-destabilization events like we’ve seen in Los
Angeles and Rio and other cities never happen again, and I will do what is
necessary to accomplish that goal. We have tolerated your mother’s stupidity in
regards to her adopted daughter because without her we cannot replicate her work.
I have tried. But what I will not do is let her sentimentality interfere with
our end goal.”

They stared at each other while she processed what
he’d said.

“Did I answer your question to your satisfaction?”

“I guess so.”

Loud and clear. Squeak, squeak,
where’s the cheese?

“Good.” He pulled off his surgical gloves and
dropped them into the biohazard bin. “Perhaps, then, you’ll behave in such a
manner that control and cooperation are not an issue. If not, remember Joe and
think of your friends.”

Oh, I’ll never forget. Never
never never.

Her mom walked in and clasped her hands together. “All
right, MRI time. Time to take another look at that lung.”

*  
*   *

They looked at the MRI together, Ani peering
between Drs. Romero and Banerjee at the blown-up, black-and-white still-frame
of her torn lung.

“You see?” Dr. Banerjee said. “The delicate
tissues sprang back remarkably but have withered with the regression.”

“I see it,” her mom said. “But I can’t explain it.
We’ll take samples of both and see what shows under the microscope.”

“And we’ll try it again, on Mike.”

Ani and her mom locked eyes, and Ani didn’t like
what she saw. She turned to Dr. Banerjee. “Why Mike?”

“Because Mike has the most extensive fine tissue
damage of any of you and should thus give us the most data.”

Ani frowned but said nothing. There was nothing to
say.

*  
*   *

“No!” Dr. Herley slammed his hand on top of the
piano. “The counterpoint is staccato, intense, driving, but not aggressive. Do
it again.”

She played the nameless tune for the fourteenth
time. With each repetition, it got harder not to play with aggression. She
tried to drive all emotion from her body and let her fingers play the exact,
technical notes. She passed the twenty-fifth bar and smiled in satisfaction.
A
new record!

He stopped her on the thirty-second. “Too cold. Again.”
Dammit.

If the previous week’s lesson was a dud, this one
was an atom bomb. Dr. Herley drove her without mercy, wringing out of her what
he wanted and suffering nothing less than utter perfection. He stayed for three
hours and didn’t once sit down, take a break, or even so much as sip some
water. His pitiless critique drove her again and again over the same lines,
focused on tone and emotion rather than technique, and no matter how she played
it wasn’t good enough.

At 8:30 he stopped her for the last time. Ani
couldn’t imagine how much pain she’d be in if her hands had working nerves. “You’re
an excellent student, but not a virtuoso. Continue as you have been, and nobody
will know the difference.”

Without another word, he left.

Ani looked at her mom, who was buried behind a
pile of papers on the kitchen table. “Was...was that a compliment?”

“Yeah, sweetie. A big one.”

“Huh.”

*  
*   *

That Saturday, Ani walked Lydia through the finer
points of sonnet-writing, their papers spread out all over the coffee table in
front of the TV. Lydia had a great feel for poetry, but her limited vocabulary
didn’t help her end product any. Teah sulked on the couch in Kyle’s old spot,
refusing to say so much as a single word in Ani’s presence.

Teah had been like that the whole week, especially
after she saw the new cordon line that prevented her from speaking to Bill
through the fence by virtue of being sixty feet farther back, right next to the
road. They’d stared at each other all through yard time both Tuesday and
Thursday, with a shouted “I love you” their only communication.

At the far wall, Sam groaned in frustration and
picked up her king. She handed it to Devon. “You’ve got me. Checkmate in three.”

Devon smiled. “Don’t feel bad. That was a good
game.”

“I don’t feel bad. I feel frustrated. How’d you
get so damned good at this?”

“I’ve been playing since I was three.”

“But,” Lydia said, shriveling a bit when they
looked at her. “But you were never on the chess team.”

Devon snorted. “You couldn’t pay me enough to hang
with those dorks.” Her bitter laugh filled the room. “Not that they’d have me
now.”

Lydia looked at her feet and mumbled, “Sorry.”

Impatient with timidity even on her best days,
Devon ignored her. Ani tapped the paper with her fingernail to draw Lydia’s
attention back to the poem—and away from herself.

Instead, Lydia grabbed her hand. “Do you think
Kyle’s in heaven?”

Ignoring Sam’s snort, Ani smiled. “Sure, Lyd.”
Is
there a heaven? If there were, would any of us go there?
“Why wouldn’t he
be?”

She looked away, and then back, and then away
again. “He could be mean. Sometimes.”

“Sure he could. But we all can.”
Don’t look at
Devon. Don’t look at Devon. Don’t look at Devon.
She glanced at Devon, who
stared right at her and smiled. Ani couldn’t read it—forgiving or predatory?—so
she looked back at Lydia. “I don’t think it would keep him out.”

Sam opened her mouth, and Devon put a hand on her
arm.
Thank you, Devon.
Sam didn’t believe in an afterlife and had a hard
time suffering fools who did. Her mind was too analytical to give quarter on
the topic, and beating up on Lydia’s shattered, glued-together faith wouldn’t
accomplish anything worthwhile.

“But do you think—”

Mike appeared in the doorway, Ani’s mom right
behind him. He sat down next to Teah, smiled at her, and said, “Want to play
Jenga?”

Her glare dissolved into a crestfallen, twisted
grimace. “Sure, Mike. I’ll play Jenga.”

He clapped his hands in excitement, turned his
joyous smile on Devon and Sam, then to Ani and Lydia. “Want to play Jenga?”

*  
*   *

Mike wasn’t smiling at his math worksheet. Crayon
clutched in his fist, he scribbled across the page in neat, blocky numbers
while Jeff looked on, drooling.

Mr. Foster meandered over to them, his eyebrows
raised in curiosity. “What’re you doing, Mike?”

Mike looked up at him. “Math.” He looked back down
and kept working. As soon as he finished the sheet, he slid it across the desk
to Mr. Foster.

“These...these are all correct, Mike.”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “They are.”

Mr. Giggles giggled, then grabbed a manila folder
off his desk. He removed a sheet and set it on Mike’s desk. “Here, try some
two-digit multiplication.” Mike attacked it with gusto and finished minutes
later.

“Can I see that?” Devon asked, hand outstretched
for the paper.

“Sure.” Mr. Foster handed it over. Ani and Sam
crowded behind her.

Every answer right.

“How about something more complicated?” Devon
said. She flipped the paper over and wrote out an equation in crayon:

(37
x 12) + (16 x 3) - 40 = ?

Mike scrawled six neat lines on the paper, each
below the previous, pushed it back to her, and pointed to the answer: 452.

Mr. Foster checked it on his calculator as Devon
and Ani smiled at each other. “Holy shit,” Mr. Foster said. They looked at him,
and he cleared his throat. “I mean,” he giggled, “that’s impressive.”

“Not for a senior,” Devon said.

“He could barely add last week,” Sam said.

“What’s that, three grades in three days?”

Mike groaned, drawing their attention. He looked
constipated.

“What’s up, Mike?” Ani asked.

“I’m here.” He scowled at them, but then he smiled
his vacant smile. A spark of intelligence remained in his eyes. “Talk
to
me. Not about.” He scowled again.

Oh, my God.
The wonder of his increasing
recovery dueled with her terrified thought that he’d regain his memory.

*  
*   *

They sat in the lounge, everyone but Teah.

Ani patted Mike's arm. “How’re you feeling?”

“Itchy.” He scratched his other arm. “Weird.
Something...different.” He reached up and caressed Devon’s cheek. Ani fought a
spike of jealousy. He shivered. “Cold.” Then he smiled. “Want to play Jenga?”

Devon looked at Ani, then Mike, then Sam, then
Ani, then Mike. “Sure, Mike. I’d love to.”

They played four games, and Mike showed no sign of
recovered dexterity or intelligence. Ani almost felt comfortable, and then he
grabbed her hand. “Prom.”

Her heart leapt into her throat. She swallowed,
and tried to speak, and then swallowed again.

Sam put her hand on top of theirs, drawing his
gaze. “We don’t talk about prom, Mike.” She ran her free hand through the
remains of his hair. “Never, ever.”

He looked at Ani and bit his lip. He hadn’t done
that since fifth grade. She tried smiling at him through tears that wouldn’t
fall, but he furrowed his brow in confusion. “I...dancing?”

“Yeah, Mike. We were dancing. But shush.” She hoped
that Devon interpreted the guilt that must be painted all over her face as the
simple girl drama it wasn’t. She put a finger to his lips. “We don’t talk about
prom.”
Please, please, please.
“Another game?”

“Okay.” He scattered the blocks across the table. “Who’s
first?”

They played three more games, and Mike won the
last. As Sam rolled her eyes and dropped her block on the pile, Mike hefted
himself up. “I’m going for a walk.”

“You want company?” Devon asked.

His gaze drifted between Devon and Ani. He put the
heels of his palms to his eyes and sucked in a breath. “I’m confused,” he muttered.
“I’m...I don’t....”

Ani jumped when Devon grabbed her arm and
squeezed.

“It’s okay,” Devon said. “It was a long time ago.
Things are different. Weird, but okay for now.” The vulnerability in her smile
took Ani off guard.