Stavis, who, Pete knew, had no hope in scoring high on the critical-thinking portion of his SAT, was nodding his head. Harris still looked like he was wondering where Pete was going with this.
"I don't think they're human, and they're certainly not alive.
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I'm just waiting for the day they throw down and start shuffling around trying to eat our brains, to be honest with you. But even if that doesn't happen, what's next? Worm burgers making your milk shakes down at the Honeybee? Taking up scholarship money that should be going to kids with a life ahead of them? Just wait until a zombie wants to date your sister, Harris."
"I don't want any zombie sniffing around my sister," Harris said, and Pete knew he'd turned the corner.
"Me neither, pal, and that's why we've got to do something about this list," he said, shaking it in front of their faces before handing it off to Stavis, who pursed his lips and squinted as he read the names. "We've got to do something to ...discourage them. Whatever they are."
"What do you mean by discourage?" Harris asked.
"I mean we have to take them out of the game," Pete said, "permanently."
"We can't go killing people ," Harris said. "That's crazy."
"I'm not talking about killing people, man. The actual people on this list--Adam, Julie, and the others--I think they deserve a good beat-down for fraternizing with these monsters, but I'm not talking about killing them." He smiled. "Just the others."
Harris shook his head. "Pete, man ..."
"Wait up, Harris. I want you to think about it. These aren't people . They aren't citizens . They don't have any rights at all. Haven't you been hearing all the talk in Washington? What that senator or whatever the hell he is was talking about today before the game, that's all BS, man. They're like mushrooms--
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there's no law against killing a mushroom. People destroy these things all the time and nobody cares. It is only a matter of time before these things start to want to get with real girls. And real boys. Then they'll be marrying each other. Can you imagine that?"
"I've got a couple of thirteen-year-old cousins," Stavis said, scratching his stubble-covered head. "I'd kill any zombie that went for them."
"That's why all those zombies crawled out of the forest to attack us," Pete said. "Because that thing that they are calling Tommy Williams is trying to get into Julie's pants. And we cannot let that happen."
"Who's Julie?" Stavis asked, looking up from his list.
"What?"
"I said, Who's Julie? There isn't any Julie on the list." Pete felt the heat rise to his cheeks.
"So sue me, idiot," he said. "Phoebe, Julie, Jenny, Katie, Hildegard. Whatever her name is, we have to protect her from them. We have to protect her from herself ."
Stavis handed back the list and then spread his hands.
Pete held his gaze a moment. "So are you with me on this?"
"Absolutely."
"Harris?"
Harris rubbed his jaw with a nervous hand. "I guess so. Yeah, I guess so."
Pete reached out and clapped them both on the shoulders, the same way he'd slap their pads if they were in a huddle out on the field.
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"Good."
His crew leaned in, and he told them his plan.
For the fifth time Phoebe read the note that Adam had given her. Once at the field, once in the car on the ride home, another three times throughout the course of the night, and the last as she sat in front of her computer screen.
There was an e-mail address at the bottom of the note. Phoebe typed a short reply and hit SEND.
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***
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
O N MONDAY A BLUE VAN picked Phoebe and Karen DeSonne up at the school and brought them to the Hunter Foundation so they could do the work part of their work study. They exchanged brief pleasantries and then Karen took a book out of her satchel and read, and Phoebe stared out the window. Phoebe sneezed at one point and Karen coughed a minute later, and Phoebe thought that the dead girl might have been making fun of her, but she wasn't sure. The book Karen was reading was William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.
Phoebe was certain that in getting the clerical job, she'd drawn the dullest detail of the lot. Margi was selected to work in the lab, and it sounded like Adam had a pretty easy gig on the facilities-management crew. The plan was for everyone to switch every six weeks, but after the first day, Phoebe knew she couldn't wait. They spent the entire four hours of their shift
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opening mail and sorting it into three piles--support, complaint, and junk. Angela stopped by at one point with two thick stacks of paper.
"E-mails," she said. "Please sort them in the same manner. I hope neither of you is easily offended."
Phoebe said that she wasn't, and as she turned, she saw Karen fluttering her eyelids with mock concern, her long lashes twitching with more movement than some of the other zombies seemed capable of. Karen's eyes had a thin corona of crystalline blue at the far edges of her retina but were the color of diamonds close to the pinprick pupils. Phoebe wondered what they had looked like when she was alive.
Most of the mail was hate mail, and it made for interesting reading, at least in the early going, when it seemed that there was some variety in the letters. Phoebe was initially impressed at how creative the writers were.
Dear Necrofiliacs,
What you are doing is sinful and wrong and deep down you know it. Why don't you just die too so you can be with the dead people that you love so much. Dead people are evil and demonaic and should all be burnt up. Jesus is coming and He will be very displeased at the filthy things you are doing. You will burn in Hell
Sincerely,
A rightious soul
"A rightious soul" wasn't as concerned with spelling as
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he/she was with pronouncing judgment, apparently. There were a lot of righteous souls who wrote in with various admonitions, and while Phoebe thought the letters were vaguely creepy, they were nothing compared to the dozen or so that promised threats of a less metaphysical nature.
"Here's a good one," Karen said, walking over from the other cubicle with a piece of yellow notebook paper someone had block printed on. It was a short letter.
You are just like an abortion clinic but worse. You steal the right to death as they steal the right to life and the explosions will reach you, too. This is your last chance.
"Oh my," Phoebe said, looking over at the pile of mail in front of her.
Karen laughed. "Why don't you let me do the snail mail?" she said, scooping the pile off Phoebe's desk. "Who knows what sort of spores or toxins the ...freaks ...could send through the U.S. postal service?"
"Thanks, Karen."
"No worries, Phoebe. If I say I smell something funny ...start running."
Phoebe smiled and hoped she was kidding.
At the end of the shift, she had two communiqués, both e-mails, in the positive column. One from a senator in Illinois who "believes in the work they are doing," and another who had forwarded a PayPal receipt of twenty dollars to an edress of the Hunter Foundation.
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I hope that one day I can send my daughter to you good people. I thank you for the literature you e-mailed to me and we are trying our best but it is difficult since my husband moved out. We are still married and trying to be a family but my youngest is too scared to live with Melissa right now. Melissa is able to speak more clearly now but we were worried because when Jonathan took Emily, Melissa stopped talking all together. Any advice you have I would appreciate as always. Bless you all.
Phoebe didn't know who she felt worse for in the shattered family, the girl who died, her parents, or her little sister. They were all suffering in their own ways, and Phoebe doubted that there was an easy answer for it. She wished she could have read the previous correspondence so she would know what it was that Angela or Alish wrote that had made such a difference for the writer of the e-mail.
br /> She was going to show it to Karen, who had not looked up from her three tidy piles since grabbing the rest of the snail mail, but then Mr. Davidson, the director of operations, came to let them know that the van was ready to take them home.
The encounter group that comprised the bulk of their sessions was led by Angela in a comfortable lounge with a number of cushioned chairs and sofas arranged in a jagged semicircle. There were coffee tables, which usually had soft drinks and bags of potato chips that the living students had taken out of the adjoining pantry. Sometime during the orientation Phoebe had mentioned liking coffee and she noticed that they
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had added a coffee maker. The cushioned chairs were far more comfortable (and less creaky) than those in the library, and the sofas were long enough to seat two without touching. For the second session Phoebe and Margi plopped next to each other on a sofa.
"Hello," Angela said. "How was everyone's weekend?"
No one answered. The differently biotic kids were silent and still; the living kids, likewise, except for Thornton, who had difficulty remaining motionless.
Angela smiled. "The questions get much harder from here on out."
"I had a great weekend," Thornton said. "We won the game."
She nodded. "That's right. I had forgotten so many of you played."
"Yeah," Thorny added, "Tommy was the star even though he only got in for a few plays."
He meant it as a joke--Thornton didn't have a mean-spirited bone in his body--but the joke fell flat. Phoebe tried to read Tommy's expression but saw nothing there that she recognized. She wished she could tell if he had any feelings whatsoever about their upcoming date--was he nervous, excited, regretful, what?
"Tell you what," Adam said. "Denny would not have gotten sacked in the first half if Tommy had been on the line next to me."
Angela nodded. "No?"
"No. He's better than the kid Coach played instead."
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"Why didn't the coach play Tommy more, then, Adam?" "Come on," Adam said. "Coach was afraid to play the dead kid."
"Differently biotic," she said, still smiling. "A differently biotic kid."
Adam shrugged.
"No," Tommy said, and Angela turned the smile on him. "No, that wasn't the reason?" she asked. "No, not...differently biotic. Dead ... is fine." Angela arched her eyebrows. "You don't mind being called dead?"
"Zombie is fine too," Karen said. "We call each other zombies. With affection. Sort of the way ...people ... in cultural and ethnic ...minorities ...take back certain...pejoratives ... to use among themselves."
Angela tapped her notebook with her pen. She blinked.
"I see. Is that true for everyone here, or do you see the term zombie as a hurtful word?"
Evan gave a slow nod, and Angela called on Tayshawn.
"Depends ... on who ... is saying it. And ... how," he said.
"Living people mean for it to hurt," Thornton said, and when everyone turned toward him he looked like he wished he hadn't spoken. "I mean, sometimes. Not always."
"Do you ever use zombie to refer to a living person in a negative way?"
"Don't."
Colette had spoken, and Phoebe thought her voice was nothing like that of the carefree, uncomplicated girl she'd
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known two years ago. She realized it had taken Colette that long to let everyone know she did not like being called a zombie.
"Why is that, Colette?"
Phoebe shrank into the sofa. What if Colette's answer was that she didn't like being called a zombie because her so-called friends had abandoned her and left her alone in her suffering?
If Colette harbored such thoughts, she kept them to herself. "People ...hate ...us."
Angela nodded, her eyes brimming with compassion. "Thank you, Colette. We appreciate your honesty." She regarded her notepad for a moment. "Which makes this a good time to point out the rules and intent of these sessions. Let me start by saying the goal is to have a greater education and understanding of the rights, thoughts, and concerns of differently biotic persons. We'd like you all to have a better understanding of each other's thoughts and feelings. We want you to leave here able to see through another person's eyes, and for them to be able to see you with greater clarity as well.
"To that end, we need to be able to create an environment of complete openness and honesty. We want you to speak your mind, but please do so respectfully. If you do not understand a person's point of view, please ask them questions. You do not have to raise your hand--we want the tone to be conversational rather than have you feel like you are being lectured to, but we do want to give everyone a chance, so I may interrupt to call on people if the dialogue is dominated by a few."
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Phoebe thought that Angela may have glanced at Karen but could not be sure.
"This is the portion of the work study upon which you are graded. The grades you get will be dependent upon the level of your participation. Are there any questions on either the goals or the rules of participation?"
She looked at each person in turn, but no one spoke.
"No? Well, then, I have a question for Colette. Why do you think that people hate you?"
Colette seemed to stare through her, unaffected by her glow.
"Because ...they ...have ...told ...me." "Mmmm. Has anyone else been told by someone that they were hated?"
Every hand went up initially, except for Phoebe's. Margi made a face at her.
"What? No one has ever said they hated me."
"Not in so many words," Margi replied.
She spoke for Phoebe alone, but Angela picked up on it.
"What do you mean, Margi?"
Phoebe was taken aback by the intensity of Margi's glare. "People give Pheebes and I a lot of crap because we dress different and act different."
"Hate is a strong word, Margi," Phoebe said. She was surprised at the level of Margi's conviction.
"It's the right one, though," Adam said. "Kids hate at the drop of a hat. People do."
"Who do you think hates you, Adam?" Angela asked.
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"I'd prefer not to say."
"Fair enough. That is another rule, by the way. If a question makes you uncomfortable, you don't have to answer it. It won't affect your grade as long as you are participating otherwise."
"The question does not make me uncomfortable. I just don't want to answer it."
"Okay," Angela said, her easy smile remaining on her pretty face.
Adam spread his hands. "Okay."
"Great. Let me change direction here. Who in this room has been told they were loved? By anyone at all."
Most hands were raised except for Colette's and Sylvia Stelman's.
"Sylvia?"
Sylvia closed her eyes. A full minute later one of them opened.
"Not ...since ...I ...died," she said. Her other eye opened.
Angela made a compassionate noise, but it was Karen who spoke up, her white diamond eyes seeming to catch even the pale fluorescent light above.
"I love you, Sylvia." She was seated on the end of the semicircle and she got to her feet and walked over to hug Sylvia. "You too, Colette."
Angela made some marks in her notebook. Colette did not seem to want to let go of Karen.
"Let's take a short break. When we get back, we'll read
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some headlines and articles concerning the differently biotic that ran in newspapers and magazines last week."
Phoebe watched Karen hugging Colette. She swallowed twice and turned away, blinking.
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***
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I can't believe you are making me do this."
Phoebe smiled. "I know."
"You owe me big time for this, Phoebe. This is big." "Big," Phoebe repeated. Raindrops glittered on the windshield, backlit by the light of a passing car.
"So," Adam said, "is this like a date, or something?" "Or something. I don't know."
"You've got feelings for him?"
"I have feelings for everyone, Adam." The more Adam talked, the slower he drove. Phoebe expected they would be crawling to a halt at any moment, the STD's truck rolling off into the grassy shoulder of the road.
"You know he's dead, right?"
She turned toward him in the seat, hot words rushing to her mouth. Adam stopped her by laughing. "Just checking," he said.
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"Watch the road," she said, unable to keep herself from smiling. "I don't know what it is, Adam. He's interesting to me, that's all."
"You can't be attracted to him, can you?" He turned toward her. "Just tell me to shut up if you want to." "You don't have to shut up."
"Okay. So are you attracted to him? Attracted attracted?" "I don't really know what I'm attracted to. I don't know." Adam nodded. Phoebe wondered what he thought she was explaining.
"You don't date much," he said.
"I don't date much. Not like you, anyway. How is Whatsername, by the way?"
He shrugged. "She is who she is. I'm just trying to figure out where your head is at."
"Well, where is yours? With Whatsername, I mean."
"Nice segue. I dunno."
Phoebe smiled, leaning her head against the window. "Well, there you are. I dunno, either."
It seemed like a good time to be quiet, so they were.
Some minutes later they rolled up to the gates of the Hunter Foundation at the edge of town. Her new place of employment made Phoebe think of a medieval castle. Instead of a moat, there was a high stone wall and a road that was barred by a retracting metal gate.
Adam leaned out his window and pressed the red intercom button.
"Can I help you?" a flat, male voice answered.
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"Adam Layman and Phoebe Kendall," Adam said. "We're here to pick up Tommy Williams."
There was a brief pause before the voice answered. "Drive to Building One."
They waited for the iron gate to separate, the Hunter logo, a large stylized H and F split down the middle and slowly swung inward.
Adam put the STD's truck into gear. "I think that was Thorny," he said
"Could be. He's working security with you, right?"
He nodded. "Yep. But they call it facilities maintenance , probably because we take out the trash in addition to delivering beat-downs to would-be bioist saboteurs."