Generation Dead

  Certain attempts to exploit us aside, some of Mr. Sly dell's concepts ring true. Transformation is usually a result of radical action, and in today's world, a dead kid playing a team sport is a radical action. What Slydell leaves out is that much radical action leads to violent reaction, and that violence simmered around school the day of the game.

  I was never afraid during the game. The protestors could have thrown hand grenades and nail bombs, and I would not have been afraid for myself. I'm already dead.

  But I was afraid for my friends who have not experienced what I have. And I was afraid for the other living people who were there, the ones who have compassion mixed in with their fear. I would not want those people hurt just so that I could prove a point by playing football. That would certainly have happened if I'd stayed on the team; the violence simmering through the bleachers would have boiled over at some point, and people would have been hurt.

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  I know many of you will think that backing out was wrong, that I had a chance to battle with the demon and I blinked. I won't argue, but I will say that I did what I set out to do, which was to plant a seed. I did not want to water that seed with the blood of the living.

  Phoebe leaned back and stretched. She rested her fingers lightly on the keyboard. There were a few replies posted already, the first of which was a short diatribe from AIIDEAD, who called Tommy a coward and said that only through violence and death will the "blood bags" have an understanding of what it means to be dead in a world made for the living.

  Phoebe licked her lips. AIIDEAD missed the point; Tommy's decision made her admire him even more. She started to go through the process of acquiring a blogsite login so she could leave a post, stopping herself twice. She wanted to post her own experience of sitting in the stands watching Tommy and feeling as though she were seated in the eye of a hurricane, a hurricane blowing over the surface of the underworld. But in the end, she didn't do it.

  She dreamed of Tommy that night. He was alone on the football field, in his gear but without a helmet, beneath a fat harvest moon. She was in the stands, clapping, but surrounded by angry people who were shouting and booing. A crowd of dead kids stood in the shadows of the Oxoboxo woods. Tommy was looking at her, walking toward her across the field, and then people began throwing food at him. Heads of lettuce, hot dogs, apples, bottles of soda. A tomato hit him just above his

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  numbers. Phoebe stood as a few of them began shooting. She had an armful of poetry that fluttered around her like dead leaves as bullets tore into his uniform and passed through his body. He still kept walking. A thrown bottle with a flaming rag stuffed in the neck burst against him, sending flames racing up his side. Bullet holes stitched a line across his chest; he was closer now, and she saw black holes in his cheek, his neck, his thighs. The fire began to melt his skin. He took one step onto the bleachers, and she woke up.

  The fourth week of Undead Studies class--Phoebe herself had begun referring to the class that way--began with Tommy relating some of the recent acts of violence that had been committed across the country on differently biotic persons. Phoebe had read most of the stories on Tommy's Web site, but hearing him tell the stories aloud lent them an even more harrowing quality.

  "They ran down a girl ... in Memphis," he said. "She was ...thirteen. She ...died ...twice in two ...weeks."

  "Terrible," Angela said, shaking her head in sympathy. Phoebe looked around to gauge the reaction of her fellow students; the dead kids were impassive and the living ones seemed to have difficulty looking at anyone or anything except for the floor, as though they in some way had participated in the atrocities that Tommy was describing.

  Phoebe felt it, too, the lurking sense of guilt that they were somehow responsible for the crimes.

  "There was another report ... of a white van ... in

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  Massachusetts. And the murder ... of a zombie."

  White vans appeared in many of the reports on the blog. Tommy had a theory that many of the random acts of violence committed against his people weren't so random. Angela, Phoebe noticed, neither approved nor condemned the theory.

  "Thank you, Tommy," Angela said, after he described how a zombie with two high-caliber rifle bullets in his head was found in his parents' backyard. "Why do you think these stories never reach the national news?" she asked the group.

  "Racism," Thorny said. He'd been shaking like a wet greyhound since sitting down, having pounded two cans of soda from the fridge as soon as he reached the class. He'd told Phoebe and Adam that he was trying to OD on sugar to gain some weight.

  "I mean, bioism. Is that a word? What I'm saying is that there are a lot of people out there who hate zombies, so the media isn't reporting everything like they should."

  "Maybe," Margi said. She was in a mood today, and Phoebe knew that whenever her friend got that way she could say just about anything. "Or maybe all of these stories are just urban myths."

  "What makes you say that, Margi?" Angela asked. Tayshawn, cursed, and Margi looked at him before responding.

  "I ... I just mean that it seems really weird that all these zomb ... I mean all these DB people are being killed and no one would do anything about it."

  "Why would anyone do anything about it?" Karen asked. "It isn't...illegal... to kill a zombie."

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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 c
ouldn'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."