Generation Dead (34 page)

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"I think my taste buds are coming back," Karen said. "I can taste the sugar." She crinkled up the empty cup, and a thin beige trickle ran along her hand. "What is involved in the augmentation process?" she asked, her clear retinas fixing on Angela as she sucked the coffee off of her skin.

"It has ...something to do with reestablishing neural pathways. I'm not very clear on the science; you would need to talk to Alish," Angela said, and she set her clipboard on the carpet near her feet. "Let's take a break, shall we? Ten minutes?"

"We just started," Thorny said.

Angela's exit from the room was sudden and swift. Phoebe could hear the echo of her heels on the glossy burnished tiles far down the corridor.

"What was that all about?" Thorny asked. "What's eating her?"

"I wonder if I could be augmented," Karen said.

Phoebe lifted her own cup and realized the peach imprint of Karen's lips was still on her skin, fading like the afterimage on a television screen.

"I should ...go ...first," Colette said. Kevin, as motionless as a mannequin on the futon next to Karen, nodded

"I'm not sure that...the science is there ...yet," Tommy said.

"Oh, you think?" Karen said. "I wonder if they will let us see Sylvia?"

Tommy shook his head. "I asked," he told her. "So did ...Tayshawn."

"Maybe they've got a white van parked around back, too,"

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Adam said. Phoebe threw mental daggers at his back as he got up from his seat to get a soda.

They heard Angela's heels tap a staccato beat up the hall.

"Hey, Thorny," Karen said, her diamond eyes twinkling. "Before she gets back, do you want to go to a party after homecoming?"

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***

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

P
ETE SAW JULIE OVER BY the dead kid, waiting for him with her books clutched against her chest while the zombie was taking his books out of his locker, one at a time. Leaning against the wall with her ankles crossed, she looked over at Pete and blew him a kiss. Pete cursed and took a step back.

"Makes you sick, doesn't it?" Stavis said in his ear. "Me too." Pete jerked his head as though reacting to a mosquito. It wasn't Julie after all; of course it wasn't Julie, because she was dead and under the ground miles away. This was Little Miss Scarypants, and the rapturous look on her face as she waited disgusted him almost as much as the mirage of his dead girlfriend.

Williams said something to Scarypants, and she gave a flirty little laugh, her eyes lowered in a falsely coy manner. Yeah, I've got your number, Scarypants, Pete thought.

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"You'd think it would be illegal, a boy like him and a girl like her."

"Why do you even talk, Stavis?" Pete said, turning toward him as Williams closed his locker. Pete noticed that he brushed against Phoebe as they sauntered down the hall.

Pete'd been watching for patterns, just as he had watched the Talbot household for patterns. Eventually they would begin to emerge. Sixth period seemed to be their one rendezvous period throughout the week; they'd meet at his locker before algebra, they'd sit through the class, and then they'd walk to his locker and down the hall to separate classes. The information wasn't useful, yet.

Stavis looked hurt, as much as a gargantuan doughboy could. "Pete, I just meant--"

"Forget it," Pete said. "Let's go to class."

Pete shared most of his classes with Stavis; he was a lot smarter, but Stavis tried harder; the end result being that they were in classes a shade tougher than remedial. They were headed to English, a class they shared with a few other under-achievers. Pete knew he could get out of the classes if he tried, but what was the point? He'd never be up there with the braniacs like Scarypants and her friend Pinky McKnockers, and he'd have a cushy job waiting for him after college in his dad's company anyhow. No point in overachieving.

Pete looked up at Stavis's round pasty face, which was knitted with concentration. He made a mental note to try and go easier on Stavis; with Harris backing out of the plan, Stavis was really the last person Pete could count on.

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"So is he the one?" Stavis asked, his voice a stage whisper.

"Yeah," Pete answered. "Either him or corpse bride there."

"He's the one that punked us in the woods, right?"

"That was him," Pete said, too irritated to even berate Stavis properly.

He still had his list; he carried it around in his wallet. After taking out Dead Red from the neighborhood, Williams seemed the obvious next choice. The slutty zombie could go last; no one was likely to miss her. Pete figured that he'd put the hurt on living kids a lot better if he took out all their dead buddies first. He could--and did--slap around that puny Harrowwood kid whenever he felt like it, either in practice or outside the locker room. Pete smiled, thinking about the block he'd dropped on purpose against Ballouville so that their big tackle could paste a good one on the kid. He'd sat out the rest of the half.

There was a wide cardboard sign above the corridor archway proclaiming the date and time of the homecoming dance. Pete thought that Oakvale should have waited a week and had it on Halloween, seeing as how a bunch of the students had built-in costumes.

"We still going to do it at the dance?" Stavis asked.

"No, I've got a better plan now."

"Really? What is it?"

"I heard about a party," he said, "and we're going to crash."

That was the one good thing about having a little punk like Harrowwood in the locker room, a guy who had to use his mouth to make up for his shortcomings. Thorny had started

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running his mouth about this "sweet party" he was going to after homecoming, and how not that many people were invited, and blah and blah. Adam had shot Thorny a look, but it was too late.

Pete had caught up to Harrowwood in the parking lot and had the full story in two slaps. "What party?"
Slap.
"I don't know about any party."
Slap
.

"The zombies are having a big party 'cause most of them can't go to the homecoming. Heck, most of them don't even go to school...."

"Where?" Pete had asked, but that was the one question Thornton couldn't answer.

"They won't tell me," the runt had said. "I'm supposed to follow Layman over there. He's been a couple times."

"If I find out you are lying to me, Thorny," Pete threatened, "I swear you'll be partying with them permanently."

"I'm not." The fear in the kid's eyes told Pete what he'd needed to know. "I swear it."

Stavis's nasally voice brought him back to the present. "A party? What kind of party?"

"A zombie party," Pete said, imagining a whole house full of worm burgers, and then imagining the house on fire.

"No way."

"Way," he said, seeing flames rising, smoke curling up under the moonlit sky. He was smiling as they arrived at their class.

He'd planned on being a little earlier to class than the rest of the pack, which was easy to do, because the nosebleeds

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weren't too interested in punctuality. There was only one other student in the class, and she looked up at the board as the teacher passed an eraser over the grayish surface, her stare more vacant than school on a Saturday. "Ugh," Stavis said.

Pete laughed and winked at him. He gripped him by one bulbous shoulder.

"Talk to you later, man," Pete said, and went over to sit next to the girl.

"Hey, kid," he said, smiling, "I hear there's a big party going on after the dance."

Colette swiveled her head toward him with all the alacrity of a slowly oscillating fan, and it took her a while to bend her mouth into a smile, but Pete suddenly felt like he had all the time in the world.

Phoebe jumped as a cat screeched like its tail was being stepped on. Gargoyle leaped off of her bed and started barking at the four corners of the earth.

The unearthly sound was her computer's way of letting her know that Margi had just signed on to the Internet. The name Pinkytheghost appeared next to an avatar of a pink Casper-esque phantom that fluttered like a sheet on a clothesline along with Margi's first message of the night.

I got my dress May. U have yrs?

Phoebe shushed Gargoyle. His bobbed tail stuck straight up, and his low growl was more endearing than threatening. Phoebe typed back
Yep
.

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U
promised we would both wear black. Is yr dress black?

Phoebe sighed, because Margi typed like she talked: fast and incessant. Phoebe had been reading the latest installment of mysocalledundeath.com and was trying to decide how she felt about it. Because, unlike a good many of the differently biotic topics it contained, this one was deeply personal to her. The title of the blog, which Tommy had posted earlier that day, was Homecoming.

Nope,
she typed.

Promise-breaker
, came Pinkytheghost's reply. And then,
Me neither
.

Phoebe smiled, hoping that if she ignored Margi for a few minutes her friend would get wrapped up in some other Internet diversion.

So what are U doin
? Pinky/Margi asked. So much for her theory.

Phoebe scrolled down the blog entry and read what Tommy had written.

I'm going to the homecoming dance at my school. I have a
real live date. And when I say real live date, I mean an actual

living, breathing, traditionally biotic girl
.

Phoebe frowned and turned down the Bronx Casket Company album she'd been listening to on her MP3 player, on the odd chance that one of her parents crept into her room. She didn't want them to read the screen.

R U there
? Pinky/Margi typed.

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Phoebe typed back
No
. Never mind her parents; she didn't want Margi to read this blog. Or Adam, or Karen, or anyone else. She had a vision of Tommy whisking her around at the party, showing her off to all his dead friends and saying, "Hey, everybody, this is my traditionally biotic girlfriend," and then forgetting her name.

Don't be a b*
***, Margi typed.
Is my special fluffy boy there?

Phoebe looked over at Margi's special fluffy boy, who had resettled at the edge of her bed.

Gar says hi
, she typed.

She turned back to the blog.

The dance will not be our first date. We have gone to a
movie at the mall. She has been to my house and has met my

mother, who likes her a lot. I like her a lot, too.

That's what you get for writing poetry, Phoebe thought, her pulse racing from more than the music. She wanted to call Tommy up--Tommy or Faith--and ask him to pull what he had written. What if the hordes of protestors her father had warned her about were reading this? What about the faceless white van patrol; what if they were monitoring his posts? She wasn't comfortable with this at all; in some ways it was like a kid climbing up on a table in the middle of lunch to declare his love for a girl he barely knew. Uncool. Definitely uncool.

XOXOXO special fluffy boy
, Margi sent.

Phoebe made a noise of exasperation that caused the special fluffy boy to lift his head from his special fluffy pillow.

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She looked over and assured him everything was all right.

"I just wish our friend would shut up," she said under her breath. Gargoyle returned to his reclining position, looking disappointed.

What can it mean for a differently biotic boy
--a zombie--to like" a traditionally biotic girl? And what would it mean if the living girl liked" him as well? Would society crumble? Would nations fall into the sea? Would the heavens open up? Would the falcon no longer be able to hear the falconer?

Phoebe rubbed her eyes. This was a little esoteric for Tommy, whose typical writing was quite literal except during the times he was speculating on the anti-zombie conspiracy he saw stretching across the country.

What R U listening to
? Margi sent. When Phoebe rushed a response of BCC back, Margi's response was swift even though she upped the point size of the font and colored it red.

No way! Me 2! Telepathetic!

Yeah, Phoebe thought, unable to get too excited.

I don't know what will happen. I don't know if anything will happen. I don't know if a mob of traditionally biotic people with minds less open than my date's will drag me bodily from the gymnasium and put me to the torch. All I know is that I want to go to the dance with her, and actually dance. I know this because I know that when I am with her, there are times,