She hesitated, then kept walking. “Chuck’s...going away for a while.”
Ani pulled back. “I thought he got off?”
“He did, on the dealing.” She didn’t elaborate, so they kept walking. “So I told him we’re having girls. Plural. And what does he do?”
Ani had no idea, so she said as much.
“He goes out for smokes. I get a call six hours later, he’s in county. They pinched him rolling Sharon’s.”
“The liquor store?”
Tiff rolled her eyes. “No, some other Sharon’s. Of course the liquor store.”
“He was stealing booze.”
Tiff’s sigh was long, loud, and intended to be obnoxious. “You’re such a goody-goody. Stealing booze is crashing the liquor store. Rolling the store means taking money. With a gun.”
Wow.
Ani didn’t trust herself to say anything that wouldn’t send Tiff on a rampage, so she didn’t. All she could think was, the longer Chuck stays in, the better for Tiffany and her kids.
“It wasn’t a real gun, neither. It shot pellets, and it didn’t even work.”
Ani raised her eyebrows in an interest she didn’t feel. “But?”
“But he’s still on probation and that means no nothing as far as guns. Even pellet guns.”
“So what’s he looking at?”
“They think he can plea down to, like, eight to ten. Then good behavior cuts that maybe in half?”
If it was a question, Ani didn’t know the answer.
“So, figure the girls will be fourish by the time he’s out.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Yeah, too long. But could have been worse. He didn’t hurt nobody or nothing, and he’ll be there for his girls before they’re too old.”
“That’s good.” They’d made a full circuit back to the lounge door, but Tiff didn’t seem done. “Another lap?”
“Sure, why not.”
Halfway around, Tiff stopped and grabbed her hands.
“Hey, I got something real serious to ask you.”
Ani steeled herself. “Okay.”
“If we do the thing here, will you be my maid of honor?”
I should have expected that. “Um... ”But I didn’t. “Uh.... ”Do you have no friends, Tiffany?
“Don’t you look at me like that. I’m totally serious.”
“Tiff, if you can’t even say the thing you shouldn’t even be thinking about doing the thing, much less planning the thing.”
Her eyes flashed. “Married, all right? We’re getting fucking married before he goes in, and I’m fucking asking you to be my fucking maid of fucking honor. Yes or no?”
Ani couldn’t help but smile. “Well if you put it like that, why not?”
Tiff leapt into her arms, wrapping her in a four-limbed hug. Ani stumbled into the wall, steadied herself, and tried not to think about what she’d just agreed to. She hugged back, then disentangled herself with a nervous look at the burn team.
“In the future, if you’re going to do that, don’t. I prefer room temperature to ten thousand degrees.”
Tiff took a step back, with a nervous look for the silver-clad men, and shrugged. “Sorry. Just got excited, you know?”
“Well, I’m happy for you,” Ani lied. “When’s the big day?”
She shrugged again. “We’re putting it off until we know his court date. Probably summer sometime.” She looked at her watch. “Look, I got to go. They only gave me a half hour. Be in touch, yeah?”
“I can’t,” Ani said. “Except by letter.”
Tiffany stopped mid-stride. “Oh, right. I’ll be in touch.” She walked off toward the main entrance, the burn team in tow.
* * *
The rest of the week rolled by without incident. Her lesson with Dr. Herley went much as before, only this time focused on classical compositions. Twenty minutes in, her mom left to get work done at the lab. Either she forgot or didn’t care that any zombie was never to be alone with a living human, ever.
Whatever.
When the lesson ended, he left, and Ani practiced until her mom got home at midnight.
Chapter
30
“All I’m saying,” Mr. Cummings said, “is that it’s stupid at this point to deduct health insurance fees from my paycheck. It’s not like I’m going to use it.”
Sam put her hands on either side of her helmet. “I just think you’re asking for a bit much.”
Ani tried to ignore the conversation, as well as the murmurs from Teah and Lydia. She and Devon sat off to the side, e-readers displaying pages from their US History textbook. With the January make-up Regents Exam only three days away, they both felt the stress. Sam had the same test but seemed to have an encyclopedic memory for history.
“So anyway,” Devon said, “you can’t really blame Lincoln. Washington set the stage for unlimited expansion of Federal power when he snuffed the Whiskey Rebellion.”
“Right,” Ani said. “But when Jefferson—”
“Hey!” Lydia yelled, startling her out of her train of thought. Lydia pointed at the muted TV. “Turn that up!”
Tuned to CNN as usual, the screen scrolled a ‘Breaking News’ announcement across the bottom, below some square-jawed talking head: APPELLATE COURT DENIES PERSONHOOD FOR ZOMBIES.
Mr. Cummings unmuted the volume.
“—three to two decision,” the commentator’s rich baritone recounted, “reinforced the lower court’s ruling that zombies, even zombies that can control their own actions, are medically dead and therefore not entitled to constitutional rights or civil protections. The Supreme Court injunction protecting the legal status of the walking dead, however, remains in place while the appeal goes to the Supreme Court in July. I can assure you, Joanne, that we’ll be watching this case very closely.”
“Thanks, Jim,” a female voice said. “A spokesman for the Living American Alliance issued a statement immediately following the ruling, praising—” The screen went black.
“Hey!” Devon said.
Mr. Cummings set down the remote. “I’ve seen enough. We can all depress ourselves later reading the details online.”
“Um.” Lydia’s hand shot up, then back down when he looked at her, then back up. “Mr. Cummings?”
He smiled at her. “This isn’t a class, Lydia. You don’t have to raise your hand.”
It jerked back down. “Sorry. Um. What does that mean?”
He took a moment to gather his thoughts, during which Devon muttered “idiot” just loudly enough for Ani to hear.
“What it means is the same thing as the previous ruling, which isn’t good for us. On the bright side, three to two is a lot better than a unanimous decision.”
Her expectant smile and wide eyes didn’t alter a bit at the explanation. Lydia and Mr. Cummings stared at each other for a moment, and when she didn't reply he sat back down.
“So where was I?”
“Health premiums,” Sam said.
Ani turned back to Devon and US History.
* * *
That Thursday, the main essay was about the effect of the quarantine of Los Angeles on modern civil-rights legislation. Ani nailed it. The following Monday, OFCSD officially canceled its foreign exchange program after not one student applied.
Tuesday they were allowed back in the yard, if “allowed” in some way meant “dumped into two feet of snow and twenty-mile-an-hour gusts for an hour.”
Mike rolled around in the snow while the girls sat on the steps. It struck Ani as odd that the snow clumped in the folds of Mike’s clothes but didn’t get him wet—he had no body heat to melt it.
“Is this child neglect?” Devon asked. “Or endangering the welfare of a child?”
“Most of you are adults,” Lydia said, cringing when they looked at her. “Except me and Teah.”
“I’m seventeen,” Teah protested.
If anything, Lydia seemed to wither further. Ani just heard her reply, “That’s not an adult.”
Teah snorted in disgust and tromped through the snow away from them, sitting down a dozen steps away. A gust of wind sent a vortex of white powder spinning across the yard and through the fence into the world beyond.
An engine revved in the distance, something big. Tires screeched, and they craned their necks to see what was going on. A beat-up blue pickup skidded sideways across Academy Street, slamming into a gray sedan parked on the curve, then accelerated, tearing off both vehicles’ side mirrors. The truck swerved down the street, ricocheting from curb to curb.
“Someone’s awful drunk,” Devon said.
At the last second, the truck veered, jumping the curb onto school property. Sam cried out as the left guard tower crumpled under the weight of the impact, metal screaming as struts and rivets sheared and twisted. The guard pitched out of his crow’s nest to fall into the snow below, his cry of alarm ending almost as soon as it began.
“Holy crap,” Ani said.
The driver of the truck popped the door and fell out, crumpling to his knees in the snow.
“Someone call 9-1-1!” Lydia yelled. Ani reached for her phone and realized that none of them had one.
A second truck, this one red with a jacked-up suspension, tore through the privacy fence in the lawn across the street, blasting through a frozen swing set and dragging it through the snow. A third truck, green but with tires just as big, swerved from behind it and headed straight for the other tower.
The guard opened fire, his rifle popping off rounds that did nothing to slow the vehicle. Ani ran out, grabbed Mike, and dragged him toward the door. The locked door. He shuffled his feet, smiling all the while, and craned his neck at the action.
The green truck hit the second tower, shearing two legs. It toppled into the street. A man clad in black and wearing a ski mask stood up from the bed of the green truck and opened fire on the guard as he fell from the tower. The fence exploded in bright white sparks as the red vehicle ploughed through it.
Shots rang out from the last tower, and return fire sounded from the first truck. The red truck made it halfway across the field before it bogged down, tires spinning as it sank into a spray of white snow and brown mud.
As the Special Dead cowered back against the wall, with nowhere to take cover, Ani saw a figure running toward the red truck. Teah.
Sam threw Lydia down behind the stairs, the only protected spot there was, and crouched on her haunches in front of her, shielding her with her body. “Nobody’s shooting at us.”
Sam was right. The guard in the third tower ducked for cover while the attackers plinked his position with bullets, but nobody aimed for the zombies. Teah stumbled closer to the red truck as its tires spun in reverse, digging the hole deeper. A man stood in the truck bed armed with a rifle, but he aimed at the door, not at them.
“Bill.” Ani said the name at the same time as Devon.
The door exploded outward, knocking Ani into the snow. The loudest sound she’d ever heard erupted over her head, a hellish cacophony she couldn’t process. A light rhythm tattooed on her helmet and shiny bits of brass fell around her.
She rolled onto her back and looked up. The soldiers that fanned out from the door held automatic weapons, every one of them spitting white fire. She heard nothing but the roar of the guns. She rolled over. A boot dug into her back. Devon and Mike lay next to her, each trapped there by another boot.
She raised her head. Teah had disappeared in the snow. Bullets ricocheted off and tore through the trucks, a relentless volley of high-speed lead. The soldiers parted, still firing, and four men decked in silver walked between them.
They walked toward the red truck, almost casually, until Teah leaped at them from the snow. She danced in place as bullets riddled her body, shredding flesh and knocking her to the side. Lydia threw off the soldier holding her down and took a step. Mike exploded from the ground, sending the man atop him sprawling, and tackled her from behind. He wrapped her in his massive arms and fell on her struggling form. Teah fell into the snow and out of sight. The burn teams advanced, and, as one, raised their flamethrowers.
Ani cringed from the hot breath of flame, and the world glowed orange. She jumped as the truck detonated, turning to stare in spite of herself.
The soldiers advanced, laying tight bursts of covering fire on the remaining trucks so that their assailants had no reprieve. The burn teams split up, two toward each remaining truck. A figure bolted away from the school and was cut down in a spray of bright red blood. The others cowered until the burn teams fired again.
Ani closed her eyes against the piteous shrieks. Two more explosions shattered the winter day, and then silence reigned except for the wind. Someone yelled, “Clear!” Farther off, others responded.
Mr. Benson’s clipped voice seemed almost mournful. “Kids, stay on the ground. Any of you so much as twitch, we’re going to kill you. That’s your only warning.” He spoke into his radio. “Casualty report, over.”
A voice crackled through. “Johnson’s got a broken leg, but it looks like the snow broke his fall. Leach is dead. Over.”
“Hostiles? Over.” Mr. Benson asked.
“Neutralized. At least seven, but it’ll be a few minutes before we can confirm, over.”
“And Miss Burnell, over?”
A long pause, then a crackle of static. “She’s still moving. Sort of. Over.”
Mr. Benson didn’t hesitate. “Terminate her—”
“Belay that,” Dr. Banerjee’s voice carried through the speaker. “I have other uses for her. Secure Miss Burnell and take her to the lab.”
“Roger that,” Mr. Benson said. He turned his attention to the zombies at his feet. “Kids, back against the wall, hands on your helmets. Move.”
They moved, all except Mike, who sat on the ground, collecting brass casings. Ani grabbed his shoulder. “Mike, we need to go.”
He smiled at her. “Pretty.”
“I know they’re pretty, and you can take them with you, but you have to come over here now.” She looked at Mr. Benson, who glanced at them and the returning burn teams. “C’mon, Mike.”
She sighed in relief as he lurched to his feet and allowed her to lead him to the wall. He didn’t put his hands on his head but instead sat down to look at the brass. Mr. Benson turned his attention away from them the moment the burn teams got within thirty feet.
“If they try to move from that area, torch them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ani recognized Mr. Clark’s voice.
The Special Dead stood there, daring to neither move nor speak, as three soldiers emerged from the school, one carrying a catchpole, while the other two carried long chains with manacles on the end. They walked out into the snow, where Ani lost sight of them beyond the men in silver. A few minutes later they returned.
Teah couldn’t walk. Her right leg dangled backward below the knee. Her arms, held up by the manacles, twisted behind her back, wracking her spine forward as the catchpole held her head up. The side of her helmet had blown out, and beneath it, tattered flesh gave way to white skull. Rips and tiny holes riddled her clothes.
She turned to them as they dragged her past, eyes wide in fear. She tried to say something through her bite guard, and air wheezed out of holes in her chest. She struggled, but the guards held her fast with the chains and the pole.
“Where are they taking her?” Lydia asked.
Ani shushed her.
“Where?” she demanded.
Devon spoke through clenched teeth. “Somewhere very bad, and they’re going to take you, too, if you don’t. Shut. Up.”
Ani tried a softer approach. “Lydia, now’s not the time to find your gumption.” It sounded like something her mom might say. “Teah made a very bad mistake, and I’m sorry, but she’s going to pay for it.”
A mournful wail carried out the open doors, reverberating down the school halls. Another followed it, and another. Ani closed her eyes, and through Teah’s agonized sobs could trace her path through the school, out
the front door, and into a personnel transport. In the distance, a motor coughed to life.
Chapter
31
Ani shifted in her chair. The school’s conference room wasn’t designed for nineteen people, ten assault rifles, four flamethrowers, and five young adult zombies. “Crowded” was an understatement. It felt weird to be in school without their helmets on.
Dr. Banerjee tossed a cell phone onto the table and gestured toward the Special Dead. “Can anyone tell me where Miss Burnell might have gotten that?”
Ani shook her head as the others did the same.
“Devon?” he asked. “Ani?” He turned his gaze to Lydia. “Lydia?” She wilted under his soft brown eyes, shook her head, then nodded.
Sam gasped. Dr. Romero put a hand on her shoulder and shook her head, index finger to her lips.
“Explain,” he said.
Lydia shook her head again, her eyes squeezed shut.
Ani’s mom knelt next to her, rubbed her head like she was a baby. “Lydia. You need to tell us what you know.”
“I’m going to get in trouble.”
Dr. Banerjee opened his mouth, and Dr. Romero cut him off with an upraised finger, a glare, and a shake of her head.
“Do you want to help Teah?”
Lydia nodded.
“You know she’s in a lot of trouble, right?”
She nodded again.
“If you tell us what happened, maybe she’ll be in a little less. You do want to help her, right?”
Lydia opened one eye, then the other. She nodded.
“Please,” Ani's mom said, taking both of Lydia’s hands into her own. “Tell us what you know.”
“Bill hid the phone in Burt. Her mom didn’t know.”
“Burt?” Dr. Banerjee asked.
Her mom dropped Lydia’s hands, stood, and walked over to stand next to Dr. Banerjee, all pretext of friendliness gone. “The giggling panda she got for Christmas. The circuitry must have fooled the guards.” She frowned. “Clever, stupid boy.”
“Bring Mom in,” Dr. Banerjee said, “just in case.” He looked at the rest of them. “Did any of you know of this?”
Special Dead Page 20
