Helluva thing .
He watched Angela Hunter laughing with Layman and Scarypants, and the pen he'd been tapping on the back of the chair in front of him snapped in his hand, spilling a long blue bubble of ink onto his skin.
He smeared the ink bubble onto the seat cushion next to him. Dad was utterly clueless about how Pete had felt toward Julie. Just like he was clueless that Pete would never feel that way about anyone ever again.
The sad tale of Dallas Jones, the original zombie, had hit the media a few weeks after his dad broke the news of Julie's death to him. At first, Pete had secretly clung to the hope that Julie might come back, but when she didn't, that hadn't surprised him either. People hung around the edges of his life, but they never really "came back."
His hand was blue from the base of his little finger all the way down to his wrist. People had begun to leave the auditorium, but not Morticia Scarypants; she was still hanging
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around where the hot blonde stood trying to pass out sign-up sheets. There was something about Phoebe that reminded him of Julie.
Why Scarypants gave him this feeling, he wasn't sure. Julie had been the furthest thing from a goth and she hadn't been the dress-and-boots-wearing type, either. But there was something-- an expression, a smile. Something.
He watched Phoebe for a little while, and then he left to go wash his hands in the big lavatory outside the auditorium. He ran the water as hot as he could stand it and squirted six shots of the thin pink hand soap into his palms and worked up a lather. The restroom door swung open, and he heard someone shuffle in. Frowning, he looked up and saw the blue-gray face of Tommy Williams in the spotted mirror.
"Didn't think you'd have much use for this room," Pete said, smiling and shaking his hands over the sink. "Seeing as how the parts don't really work anymore. They don't, do they?"
He watched Williams clench and unclench his hands.
"Leave ...me alone," the dead boy said, his strange voice echoing over plumbing and tile. "Leave ...Phoebe ...alone."
Pete thought about walking over and drying his hands on the dead boy's shirt, but the idea of coming that close to his body without the benefit of football pads and tape was nauseating to him.
"You should be the one leaving her alone," he said. "Freak."
Tommy took another step toward Pete, and Pete had a moment of panic because he really didn't know what he would do if the zombie reached for him or took a swing at him. There
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wasn't anyone in the school he was afraid to fight with, from Adam on down--anyone living, that is. He'd tried a half-dozen different ways to hurt him in practice, but the zombie had shaken him off like droplets of sweat off his skin.
"I know ...what you are ...thinking," Tommy said, the left side of his mouth lifting in a sick approximation of a smile. "You are thinking ...what do I ... do ... if he ... hits me? What do I ... do ... if he puts his ...hands ... on me?"
"You can't get inside my head," Pete said, but he saw Tommy raise his hand and cover the light switch with it. Pete looked over his shoulder at the door. He didn't want to be in the dark with the zombie; not in this bathroom, not anywhere, ever.
"I'm already in your ...head," Tommy said, his voice a dry whisper. Pete felt the exhalation of air touch his cheek, and he shuddered. "Do your worst at practice. It...only makes me ...stronger. But do not...threaten ...my friends."
Pete was about to reply, but he couldn't find the words, and then the lights went out. He threw a punch in the dark, hit nothing but air, and threw another one with the same result, then covered up, expecting a rain of blows that never came. A moment later the lavatory door swung open and the room was illuminated with light from the noisy hallway outside.
Pete felt along the wall and got the lights on a moment before Norm Lathrop entered. Norm hesitated upon seeing Pete, probably debating whether or not he should just run out the door before Pete had a chance to terrorize him.
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"You're in my way," Pete said. He took a paper towel out of the dispenser and wiped his forehead.
"I'm sorry," Norm said, almost jumping on the way to the urinals.
I've got to do something about the freakin' zombies, Pete thought, and punched open the bathroom door.
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***
CHAPTER TEN
S O," PHOEBE SAID, SQUEEZING over next to the dirty bus window. There weren't all that many students taking the bus home, but she and Margi usually shared one of the double seats. "So what?"
"So what do you think?"
Margi was practicing being "obtuse." "About what?" "About the assembly, brainiac."
"Oh. I don't know." She took her iPod out of her satchel and started to scroll through the long list of bands.
Phoebe sighed. "I'm going to join," she said, "if I can get in."
"I figured you would," Margi said. She selected a song off of M.T. Graves's solo album All the Graves Are Empty Except Mine and pushed the volume until they could both hear it, a thin tinny wail, above the chugging of the bus. "You'll get in."
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"You figured I would?" Phoebe rocked into Margi's shoulder, applying gentle pressure. "You and me against the world, right, Margi?"
"Yeah. I know why you've been hanging out after school, Pheebes. I know it doesn't have to do with getting your history project done."
"Oh," Phoebe said. "I did get the project done, though."
Margi leaned gently back into her, like she appreciated Phoebe not coming up with some stupid cover story that would have embarrassed them both. Margi's stare normally had a hard edge, but now her eyes were soft and scared.
"What is the deal with you and him, anyhow?"
Phoebe turned to look out the window; they were already on the wooded roads. She saw no zombies-- differently biotic persons --swaying in place among the birches and oaks.
"I don't know what the deal is. I don't know that there is any deal. There's a connection, I don't know what. We're communicating, and that's rare for you or me to do with anyone. Living or dead."
Margi nodded. "That's our choice, pretty much."
"Pretty much."
They were quiet for a few moments, which was uncharacteristic for Margi.
"Will you join with me?"
Margi shrugged.
"C'mon, Gee," Phoebe said. "Weird Sisters, right?"
Margi leaned her head against Phoebe's shoulder. "Minus one," she whispered.
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"Gee ...."
"No, I know, I know. Maybe it could be a good thing. Like I'll learn how to talk to her or something." "Colette?" Phoebe asked.
"Yeah, Colette."
"Maybe. Maybe you would. That would be good, right?"
"Sure. But it's still weird, you know? Something is happening. Something is up. Why aren't there any dead kids on the bus today? Colette, or your pal, or the other one? They don't drive."
Phoebe looked around her. The dead kids never missed their ride home. Margi was right. It was weird.
"I didn't even notice."
Margi shifted against her shoulder, like she was nodding. She also rubbed her eye. "I'm not totally brain dead, you know. I see things too."
"I know you do, Gee."
"You'll tell me if you and--Tommy--are more than friends?"
"I'll tell you," Phoebe said. "I don't even know if we are that
yet.
Margi sniffed. "Pheebes and Gee against the world, right?"
"That's right," Phoebe said, putting her arm around Margi's shoulder and hugging her.
The old bus groaned to a halt at Phoebe's driveway, and Rae, the driver, said "Good night, ladies," same as she did every time they disembarked. Rae didn't discriminate--she said her farewells to living and dead students alike.
Gargoyle met them at the door, his rump swaying back and
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forth with doggy glee when Margi stooped to pick him up and let him lick her face.
"Careful," Phoebe said
. "Foundation is poisonous to puppies."
"Shut the hell up and get us some snacks. I'm taking my little pretty boy outside."
Phoebe turned the stereo on and filled the house with The Empire Hideous. She took a pot of coffee out of the refrigerator and poured some into tall glasses in which she added too much cream and too much sugar and too much ice, which was how they liked their coffee. There was a bag of potato chips and a box of crackers and some hummus spread.
Margi came back with Gargoyle and began singing along with Myke Hideous, her husky voice blending well with his doleful intonations. Phoebe smiled, filled with affection for her.
"Today's beverage?" Margi asked, setting Gar down and watching him pad over to the couch and hop on.
"Crème brûlée," Phoebe said, holding out the tray for Margi, who selected one of the glasses.
"Mmmmm," she said. "Tastes sweet."
"That would be all the sugar I added."
"Yes. Good choice. So what are we doing, other than getting caffeinated?"
Phoebe brought the tray over to the coffee table and sat next to Gar, who rolled over for a tummy rub.
"I TiVo'd something last week. I thought we could watch it."
"Uh-oh. My spidey senses tell me this is a setup."
"Wow, Margi, I'm really impressed. First bilocation, and
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now precognition. Your telepathetic powers are working in overdrive today."
"It's that psychic bond we share," she said. "Because if there is one thing you are not, it's predictable. Goo-goo eyes at a dead kid, even I couldn't have foretold that."
Phoebe tossed a throw pillow at Margi. "The show was on CNN. It's called The Young Undead in America ."
"I sense a theme here," Margi said, flopping ungracefully next to her, with Gar in between. "I don't suppose that we could just listen to Empire Hideous and call it a life?"
"Nope. We're going to be socially conscious today. Topical. I hear differently biotic persons are all the rage these days."
"Hmm. Me too."
Phoebe worked the TiVo remote with one hand while using the stereo remote to kill the music with the other.
"You're good at that," Margi said. "You should have been a guy-"
"Too cute," Phoebe said. "And I like smelling nice."
There was an opening montage narrated by someone who'd mastered the art of the grim monotone. Then there was a brief clip of the Dallas Jones video with some explanation of the start of the living impaired phenomena, crosscut with some sound bites from Reverend Nathan Mathers, who seemed to think that the dead coming back to life was a sure sign of the Apocalypse. The montage ended with the narrator suggesting that, as with any other new trend in American society, someone would be on hand trying to profit from the phenomenon. The montage ended by showing a well-dressed man with a toothy smile
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signing copies of a book called The Dead Have No Life: What Parents Need to Know About Their Undead Youth.
Phoebe rubbed her temples. "Telepathetic powers, activate," she said, and then attempted to replicate the narrator's delivery: "One thing is clear: the living impaired phenomenon has changed the very fabric of American society."
"One thing is certain," the narrator replied, "the presence of the living impaired has irrevocably altered the American way of life--no pun intended."
Margi laughed. "You totally watched this before."
"I totally did not," Phoebe said. "If you watched the news occasionally you'd be able to do it, too. And you'd be better at doing the voice."
"Deadpan. No pun intended."
"You're dead right. No pun intended."
"He has a better vocabulary than you do. Irrevocably."
"Someone has to. Inevitably."
They sipped coffee as the Dallas Jones video began to run.
"Ugh, I hate this," Margi said as the now-familiar grainy black-and-white image began to click forward. Dallas Jones walked into the convenience store and withdrew a gun from the pocket of his puffy black bomber jacket and pointed it at the clerk. There was no sound, but it was clear he was shouting at her.
Dallas turned his head to look toward the street, and in the moment he turned back, there was a smoky blur as the shotgun blast caught him high in the chest and blew him back a good five feet into a rack of snacks and a pyramid of soda cans.
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"No matter how many times I see that," Margi said, "I will never get used to it."
Phoebe nodded. The image of Dallas Jones being killed was more disturbing to her than what would come later--even though it was what came later that had "irrevocably altered the American way of life."
The shooter--the store owner--came around the counter, clutching the hand of the clerk, who was also his wife. Ahmad Qurati would receive a lifetime of criticism for the risk involved in shooting a robber when the man had a gun pointed at his wife's head. He would also be criticized for not checking Jones to see if the shot had killed him; the video showed him exiting out the door Jones had come in and then locking it behind him--another move that seemed to make little sense. The police department had also come under fire for not arriving until two hours and seven minutes after Jones was shot, even though the dispatch records clearly showed that Qurati did not call 911 until one hour and fifty-three minutes after the locking of the front door.
CNN time lapsed the remaining footage, up until minute 109. Jones was mostly hidden from view by the chip rack, one askew leg clearly visible, as was part of an arm and a dark puddle that spread perceptibly in the first few moments of the time lapse.
At minute 109 the footage reverted to real time, and Dallas Jones's leg twitched. The chip rack fell away, not like it had been lifted and thrown, but like it had been shrugged off. The arm lifted from the floor as Jones apparently---it was hard to tell
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because most of his body was off camera--pushed himself upright.
"Oh God," Margi said.
A minute later Jones lumbered into frame, the tread of his high-tops never leaving the floor as he shuffled forward. The camera was focused on his broad back, and his jacket was torn and leaking dark down feathers where the shot had ripped through him. He walked forward until he bumped against the glass doorway. He made no attempt to open it, and after another moment he turned and shuffled back the way he had come, toward the camera.
The narrator began talking over the video, giving the sad biography of Dallas Jones, teen hoodlum. Phoebe felt her skin grow tingly with anticipation for the moment that had launched a hundred doctoral theses, and when it came, CNN held it and then panned in, which made the image twice as grainy, but also twice as effective.
Phoebe always wondered why Dallas Jones looked up at the camera at the end of his second aimless lap around the store. The image grew until his eyes filled the television screen, so that individual pixels stood out.
"Dallas Jones was the first," the narrator said, and the image of Dallas's eyes was replaced by some equally grainy home video footage of other dead people moving around, and then some on-location reporters sending back stories about a dozen different undead.
"They didn't show the part where the cops come in," Margi said. Phoebe had studied the full video; after Qurati fumbled
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with his keys for a minute, two cops came in and tackled Jones. When the EMTs arrived a moment later, one of the cops was covered with blood, none of it his own.
"Repent," Reverend Nathan Mathers was saying. He was screaming, spit flying from his lips. "Repent, for surely the end is nigh. The graves give up their dead and the coming of the Lord is most certainly upon us!"
"I feel bad for whoever is in the first pew," Phoebe said. Next to her, Margi pulled Gar closer.
"I hate when they show this stuff," she said.
The next image was even more hateful. The video jerked around as though the camera were strapped to a hyperactive child, but the image it conveyed was easily understandable, and horrific. Two men with jerricans
were pouring gasoline on a sluggish living impaired girl whose arms were bound behind her to a metal basketball pole set into concrete, like you'd see in a school yard. The girl went up in a sudden rush of yellow flame, and her twitching seemed to grow more animated, but that might have been a trick of the flames dancing around her. Mathers was still giving his speech in the background.
"Oh God," Margi repeated, and they were quiet for the remainder of the program, even when Skip Slydell, the young author, began talking about how parents should raise their differently biotic youth and help integrate them into a society that still does not have any legislation that prevents burning them at the stake.
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***
CHAPTER ELEVEN
T HERE WERE THIRTEEN NAMES on the list of students accepted into the Hunter Foundation. Phoebe Kendall was the third name on the list, right below Tommy Williams and Karen DeSonne. Colette was next, as was Margi and then Adam.
Phoebe felt a bounce in her step as she turned from the list, but it nearly carried her into the arms of Pete Martinsburg. He pushed her back against the wall.
"You should watch where you're going, Scarypants," he said, looming over her. She had an armload of books, and his hands were free, the left one balled into a fist. "You should watch what you're doing, too."
She could feel her cheeks flush with rage and embarrassment. And more than a little fear, too. This was a person who had no compunction against taking a baseball bat to another student, after all. Margi would already be dragging her hot-pink
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nails across his face and hissing like a wet cat, but Phoebe was afraid of getting hurt, and she could see in his face that he was not above hurting her.
"That's the most color I've seen on your face in a long time. You scared, dead girl?" he asked, smiling. "You should be."
Phoebe felt like she was shrinking beneath the weight of his stare. She was wearing her knee-high boots, which would have been great if she could have lifted them groin high, but the skirt she had on was tight all the way to her ankles, and barely allowed for a short stride, much less a swift kick.
A clear memory of the sound of Martinsburg's bat as it cut through the air to strike Tommy's flesh rippled through her mind. She noticed that his fists were clenched.