Special Dead Read online

  Chapter

  3

  When they walked into school that Friday, Superintendent Salter pulled Mr. Benson aside and murmured through his full gray beard. The kids waited in a single file line while the conversation heated up. After a few minutes of violent gestures and red faces, Mr. Benson led them into the auditorium.

  The stained paint on the former gymnasium walls was faded beige, the blue upholstery on the seats was torn and ragged and repaired with gaffers tape—Ani remembered it well. A small, smiling Asian man in an expensive suit stood near a laptop hooked up to the projector. Mr. Clark—Ani thought it was Mr. Clark—stood in the back, visor down, pilot light glowing blue.

  Teah led them into the third row, where they sat. Ani pulled out her cell phone and texted her mom: “WTF?”

  The house lights dimmed, and the projector displayed a logo of a giant K circled by a Chinese dragon. The guy in the suit spoke; his accent was all New Jersey. “Okay, kids, how you doing? My name’s Jim Chang, call me Jim, and I’m here to talk to you about some opportunities with Klinecorps Pharmaceuticals. Have you heard of us?”

  Kyle yelled, “NO,” while Ani checked her phone.

  The message from her mom read, “?” She was about to reply when it buzzed again.

  “WHERE ARE YOU?”

  Ani typed in A-U-D and hit “Send.”

  The guy babbled about the history of the company. Ani put in an ear bud and offered the other to Teah. Teah took it, so Ani swapped Chopin for Rihanna and cranked the volume.

  A few minutes later the door slammed open and Mr. Benson leaped to his feet. He settled back as Dr. Romero stalked through, face red and eyes ablaze. She ignored Jim and looked at Superintendent Salter.

  “This is unacceptable.”

  Ani killed the volume on the iPod.

  Mr. Salter raised his hands in what he probably thought was a calming manner but to Ani looked patronizing. “Now, Sarah, you don’t—”

  She cut him off. “Mr. Benson, shut off the projector.” She pointed at Jim. “Then escort this man off the property. If he resists, use whatever force is necessary.” Mr. Benson sauntered forward, unplugged the projector, and slammed the laptop shut far harder than he had to. “And confiscate that laptop.”

  Mr. Salter’s face was red as Dr. Romero’s. “You don’t have the authority—”

  “Shut up,” she said. Joe gasped in astonishment. Lydia cringed. “I don’t work for you or for this district. I work for the United States government. There will be no changes in routine or protocol without my explicit approval and the consent of the board. After I’ve examined the intent of this representative,” she jerked her head at Jim, “I’ll make a full report to the board; and advised by the friendly lawyers at the Department of Defense, they can decide what authority I do and don’t have in this situation. Meantime, the men with the weapons take orders from me.”

  Mr. Salter opened his mouth to reply, then closed it. Behind Dr. Romero, Dr. Banerjee stepped into the room. His lush tone and faint Indian accent sounded charming. “Is there a problem?” Ani had never known him to raise his voice.

  Dr. Romero stepped to the side. “Oh, good, Rishi. I’m sure Superintendent Salter will explain to you what a representative of Kleincorps Pharmaceutical is doing giving a presentation to our students without our or their parents’ consent.”

  Mr. Benson had stopped Jim mid-march. Dr. Banerjee nodded, and Mr. Benson shoved Jim—no longer smiling—toward the door. Jim gave Ani's mom a black look and stalked out. “Mr. Clark,” Dr. Banerjee said without turning around, “escort the children to their classroom.”

  “Yes, Colonel.” He herded them out the door and to their room.

  Mr. Foster looked surprised to see them. Miss Pulver wasn’t even there. “I thought they had an assembly?” he asked no one in particular. Mr. Clark shrugged and took his spot at the far end of the room. They sat down while Mr. Foster rummaged around his desk.

  Friday. Awesome.

  * * *

  Sarah Romero passed a piece of paper across the kitchen table. “Can you believe the gall of that man?”

  Ani took it. The Kleincorps Pharmaceuticals letterhead framed an agreement between the company and the “signing parties” for a series of tests and medical product development for ZV carriers in exchange for ten thousand dollars. “Ten grand? Kyle would sign this in a heartbeat.”

  “So would Mike,” her mom said.

  “That’s ridiculous. Mike’s not competent to sign anything right now.”

  Her mom snatched the paper back. “It doesn’t matter. He’s twenty years old, and his dad refuses to have him declared a mental dependent. He’d sign it just for a smile.” She crumpled the paper and tossed into the garbage.

  “Why was Mr. Salter willing to go along with this?”

  Her mom shook her head. “I’m not sure. There’s nothing on the laptop that indicates he was getting paid or that the school would be getting anything from Kleincorps. But I’m sure if we dig deep enough, we’ll find money.”

  “What a scumbag.”

  “Rishi’s fit to be tied. I’ve never seen him so angry.” Yeah, Mom, but he doesn’t actually care about any of us, either. We’re just research subjects to him.

  Her mom took her hand from across the table and squeezed it. “Is your homework done?”

  “Yeah.” She squeezed back. “Except for precalc. I can’t figure it out, and Mr. Foster’s no help.”

  “Well, let’s take a look. It’s been a long time, but I can probably puzzle through it.”

  * * *

  Ani scowled across the coffee table at Devon, who returned the look with bland disinterest. Ani reached toward the board that sat between them and Devon slapped her fingers. Ani jerked her hand back. “What?”

  Devon sighed. “If you castle now, I’ll move my bishop to rook four. Then, you’ll have a choice of either losing your rook or sacrificing two pawns and landing yourself in check.”

  “So what should she do?” Sam asked.

  “Something smarter,” Devon said.

  Kyle spoke up from in front of the TV, where he was racing cars on the Xbox. “Like playing a game that doesn’t suck.”

  Ani moved the pawn in front of her queen up one square.

  Devon surveyed the board, then looked her in the eyes. “Better. Now let me show you why that was a bad idea....”

  Later, as Ani dumped the pieces into the box, Joe patted her on the back. “You’re getting better.”

  Ani stopped biting her lip. “I lost seven games in a row.”

  Joe took the box and put it on the shelf next to the other games. “Yeah, but she had to think to beat you. Six months ago you would’ve lost twenty in a row, and she wouldn’t have had to try.” His knuckles brushed her forearm, but his eyes were locked on the floor. “I like the way you don’t give up.”

  You have no idea. She took a step back. His proximity didn’t bother her, but she didn’t want him getting any ideas. “Thanks, Joe. It’s nice of you to spend your free time helping Mike with his English.”

  He gave her a sheepish grin. “I kind of like it, actually. I think maybe I’ll be a teacher, you know, later.”

  “I think you’d make a good one. You have a real gift.”

  “Hey,” Teah said from the couch. “I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.”

  Kyle barked a laugh.

  The alarm on the TV stand beeped.

  Bedtime.

  * * *

  Ani stripped and dropped her clothes on the floor, then jammed her thumb against the button on the “bed.” The lid slid back with a hiss as the pressure seal broke. She barely noticed the harsh chemical smell anymore—her nose just didn’t work that well—but the slimy cold hit her every time. Why ZV affected some nerves and not others was a nut they hadn’t yet cracked, but Ani was sure that somewhere amongst the legions of people toiling away in the lab seven days a week, one of them, somewhere, was working on exactly that problem at exactly that moment.
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  She set her iPod to shuffle classical music. It started with the Boston Pops. Close enough. She shut her eyes, slid the rest of the way under the liquid, and pushed the “close” button.

  Whenever Joe was nice to her, all she could think of was prom.

  * * *

  “Put your hands over your head, please,” Dr. Banerjee said. As usual, the hazmat suit muffled his voice to the point where Ani couldn’t understand him, but it carried just fine over the speakers on the wall.

  Ani did as she was told, and her mom reached around from behind her and lifted her shirt to expose her torso, the thick rubber gloves making the task more of a chore than it should have been.

  “This will hurt,” Dr. Banerjee said. It always did, but he always warned her. The thing he used was kind of like a syringe, but bigger and uglier, and instead of drawing blood or other fluids it took a tiny cylinder of flesh that Sam called a “core sample.” Dr. Banerjee placed it between two of her ribs and pressed, punching it straight through her torso and out her back. She gritted her teeth and tried to smile at her mom in the mirror at the same time. It looked like a sneer.

  A sunken depression, almost gone, was all that remained from the grease burn she had gotten at the Fall Foliage Festival a lifetime ago. The treatments that Dr. Banerjee had at his disposal made some of what her mom had been doing look like child’s play. Then again, her mom’s work on an actual cure had outstripped anything Dr. Banerjee and his team had done in the previous decade.

  It hurt more when he pulled the thing out. He placed the red, drippy, nasty thing in a biohazard tray, slid the tray into the wall, and resealed the room. The precautions they once used to prevent possible infection or escape of the zombie virus now served only to make sure that their samples were pure. Her mom’s ZV suppressors had advanced to the point that as long as the dead had regular injections, there was zero risk of infection.

  As if on cue, her mom stabbed a syringe into the back of her skull. She didn’t feel it except as a vague prick. It’s weird that the brain doesn’t have any nerves. She used to need injections every two to three days, but with the new formula, it was down to once a week.

  Her mom pulled out the needle, dropped it into a biohazard bag, and stepped to the side. Dr. Banerjee paced and recited his observations into the microphone as he did every week. No physiological changes, no psychological changes, virology results pending—but of course they would be no different—and no other changes of note. Same as last week, and the eighteen weeks previous.

  After a long wait Ani was released and allowed to go back home. She straightened her clothes, put on her wig, and walked out of the airlock. She glanced into the next observation room on her way and stopped in surprise. Dr. Banerjee pressed the plunger on a syringe filled with some kind of green liquid, injecting it into Mike’s arm. Her mom was nowhere to be seen.

  Dr. Banerjee’s soft, brown eyes rested on hers. After a long moment, he dropped the syringe into a biohazard bag and turned away from the door. Ani frowned.

  * * *

  “I miss church,” Lydia whispered. She fiddled with the silver cross at her neck and looked at the clock. Ani followed her gaze. 11:00 am Sunday. It’s got to be hard to be a Baptist zombie. Especially when your preacher organized marches encouraging the government to send you to hell where you belong.

  “Shush,” Ani said, patting Lydia’s knee and returning her eyes to the performance. Kyle’s riff wasn’t anything special, but he wasn’t murdering the bass like he had last month. Joe’s lead guitar was sloppy and enthusiastic, reminiscent of his idols, The Ramones, and was about all he could pull off with the lost dexterity that came with some ZV infection. Sam’s vocals were a growling, indecipherable mess that had their own kind of charm. Without a drummer, the tempo wandered.

  The last chord hung in the air. The audience, all eight of them, clapped politely—even Mr. Clark, who had shouldered the flamethrower and lifted his visor, exposing a rugged, handsome face under a graying goatee. Lydia grabbed Ani’s hand and squeezed hard.

  Ani patted her arm. “You’re up.”

  Lydia stood, ran her hands down her spring dress, and picked up the paper from the floor. She stumbled on her way to the microphone, cleared her throat, and opened her mouth. “Um....” With wide eyes and trembling hands, she adjusted the mike. She exhaled, shook out her nerves, and tried again.

  Her confident voice erupted in a staccato sestina, a poem that recycled words according to a predetermined pattern. Ani smirked, surprised. I didn’t know you had it in you. The meaning was hard to follow, something about love and loss and deliberate callousness, but the rhythm had a harsh beauty to it. Ani had encouraged her to try poetry because she was a talentless mess when it came to music.

  Lydia finished with a bow, and Ani stood, clapping. Everyone joined her in the standing ovation, but behind her she heard Kyle mutter to Teah, “What the hell was that?” She couldn’t hear Teah’s response over the applause.

  As they changed places, Ani gave Lydia a hug.

  Lydia squeezed hard, and whispered in her ear, “Thanks.”

  “It was all you,” Ani said, letting go.

  For this month’s recital, Ani had stolen melodies from Vi Hart, increased the tempo, and woven a whimsical ditty allegretto around them. The result was a neoclassical pop mishmash that Ani wasn’t quite sure she liked. The newest generation of regeneratives were amazing, but as her hands moved over the keys they were still slowed by the dullness that threatened to overtake her dead body.

  Dullness. That’s what Devon called it. Devon, who was the most athletic of them before their deaths, who hated Ani with all her heart while she was alive, jealous of the attentions given by her boyfriend.

  Mike. Poor, stupid, mentally challenged Mike. I made him a retard. An honest-to-goodness retard. Their kiss at prom had overwhelmed her, and she’d lost control. She still remembered the hot blood gushing down her throat, the sickening crunch as she’d punched through his skull, the pathetic mewling wail that—applause startled her.

  She stood, took a curt pianist’s bow, and returned to her seat between Lydia and Devon.

  Devon. Devon had more reason to hate Ani now than ever before. Ani had stolen her boyfriend, eaten half his brain, killed her, killed some of her friends, and condemned the undead survivors to a purgatory of medical experiments and public humiliation.

  “That was cool,” Devon said. “Not really my thing, but still....”

  “Thanks,” Ani said. It’s cool that we’re cool now, but if she ever found out....

  Chapter

  4

  “No,” Sam said, banging her hand on the desk. “It’s easy. Just use the double-angle formula and solve for theta.” Her raised voice was mushy through the bite guard.

  Devon snorted.

  The sea of indecipherable gibberish on the page taunted Ani. She’d always been pretty good at math, but precalc was a game-changer. Ani wasn’t used to feeling dumb.

  “You can always ask Mr. Foster,” Devon said, grinning. The leather strap covering her teeth was moist with saliva. Saliva. Mom’s right. The new regeneratives are working.

  Ani glared at her. “How’s that calculus coming, Devon?”

  Devon’s blue crayon snapped in half.

  Sam replied for her. “Oh, fantastic. We have a teacher who can barely do algebra, a book written by a guy whose first language is math—”

  “—and we can’t even use a fucking pencil,” Devon finished.

  Miss Pulver gasped. “Devon!”

  “What?”

  She answered Devon’s murderous glare with a condescending smile. For the moment she seemed to forget she was talking to the dead.

  “You know what. Rules are—”

  “Stupid,” Devon said. “I’m an adult. I should be in college, not wasting my time in a room full of morons.”

  Careful, Devon. You have to live with these morons.

  Kyle gave her the finger from across the room. Mike noticed them lo
oking and waved, smiling. Lydia scowled at her desk and leaned over to murmur to Teah.

  “Miss Holcomb,” Mr. Foster said. “We’re working on the math situation.” He leaned over her desk, his eyes wandering across the page with no sign of comprehension. “You have to be patient.”

  Devon rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t roll your eyes at me, young lady.”

  Devon rolled her eyes and her whole head, the helmet making a slow orbit around her neck before her glare snapped back to him. “Or what, seriously? Mr. Clark’s going to cook me? For saying ‘fuck’ in class?” She blew a kiss at Mr. Clark, the gesture made even more absurd by the helmet and mouth guard. “Fuckety fuck fuckfuck that.”

  Mr. Clark didn’t move a muscle, and the mirrored visor hid his reaction. His job was containment, not discipline.

  Mr. Foster crossed his arms and tried to look stern. A nervous giggle escaped his lips. “Devon, this behavior is unacceptable. You need to make better choices.”

  Devon grabbed the facemask of her helmet with both hands and planted her elbows on the desk. Her mumble was almost inaudible. “Right now I’m going to choose to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

  “Devon?” Mr. Foster reached out to put his hand on her shoulder, then jerked it back with a nervous giggle. He knelt instead, bringing his eyes down to her level. “I know you’re frustrated, and I understand. I do. But we can’t have this kind of behavior in class.”

  Devon responded without looking up, her voice muffled by her hands. “So ground me. Take away my car. Don’t let me go to the mall. Give me out-of-school suspension. Kill me.”

  Mr. Foster yelped in fright as Mike pushed past him. As the teacher scrambled out of the way, Mike wrapped his arms around Devon and squeezed.

  “I love you, Devon.”

  A sob wracked her, but no tears fell. Behind them, the pilot light on Mr. Clark’s flamethrower flickered a pale blue.