Special Dead

by Patrick Freivald

  Shouldn’t. Shouldn’t and couldn’t weren’t the same. A mewling, pathetic part of her cried out, screamed to her to remember Mike and prom and death and pain, but it was weak and it drowned in her hunger. She stumbled forward, then fell back against the wall.

  No. Yes. Please!

  The man appeared again, hot and alive behind the door. He said things, asked questions, but she didn’t know his words. Cold steel kept her from him, wouldn’t let her crush and break him and suck out the sweet insides. Denied, she turned to the warm thing.

  That could be eaten. Nothing stood between them. Nothing would stop her. Nothing could. She moaned, twitched, fell to her knees. HER NAME IS SHAYLAH. She shrieked, and the inner voice recoiled.

  Please don’t do this.

  She crawled forward. The warm thing made a noise, something small and sad and scared.

  She’s just a little girl.

  She slid forward, hand then knees then hand. The warm thing cried out, cowered, pissed itself.

  You don’t have to.

  Another hand, another knee, and the warm thing was in reach.

  Her name is—

  Her hands reached out, her arms twisted. Something cracked, and she sighed in release. Nothing had ever tasted so good; nothing had felt so very right. She gorged, happy for the first time, overcome with joy.

  * * *

  Ani’s eyes snapped open, then closed against the fluorescent brilliance. She tried to sit up and couldn’t move. Restraints held her to a gurney.

  A hand ran across her scalp, cold but comforting, and something blocked the light. She opened her eyes to a silhouette surrounded by radiance.

  “Mom?”

  “I’m here, sweetie.”

  She shuddered in anguish, unable to cry. I killed her. The thought strangled her, and she gasped against it, tried to bury it, tried to hide it behind something, anything. HER NAME IS SHAYLAH. She drowned in grief, and couldn’t shed a single tear.

  “They won’t hurt you anymore,” her mom said. “I’m so, so sorry. I had no idea what they’d do.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to think about it. She couldn’t not. She breathed, because she could, and asked the only thing she thought of. “Where were you?”

  “She won’t say,” Dr. Banerjee’s disembodied voice answered. “She didn’t tell you; she won’t tell us.”

  Ani lolled her head to the right, and there he was. She struggled, tried in vain to snap her bonds and tear him apart, crush him, annihilate him.

  “I hate you,” she spat.

  He ignored her and instead turned to Sarah. “As you can see, she’s no worse for the wear. If you both behave yourselves, we can continue as we were. But know this, your insubordinate behavior will not be tolerated again. You will do exactly as told, or your daughter and her friends will join those below.”

  Her mom shook her head. “I won’t give you the serum. It’s the last bargaining chip I have.”

  Ani shrieked. “No! Mom, you can’t—”

  She smoothed her hand over Ani’s bald head. “Shh... we have to do what’s necessary, sweetie. Our options have run out.”

  Ani snarled and struggled against her bonds, snapped and raged against her inhuman captors. In a small instant she caught the determined, furious look in her mother’s eyes. Something wasn’t as it seemed. There would be a reckoning. She calmed, lay still.

  “Okay. I’m okay. You can let me up.”

  Dr. Banerjee stared at her until she averted her gaze, then turned to Sarah. “No more surprises. If you disobey, she burns. If she disobeys, you both burn. Acceptable?”

  Her mom said nothing for a long moment, then finally nodded. “I accept.”

  He turned and left without another word.

  Chapter

  34

  Ani stepped into the lounge at 11:50 am, in the middle of class, almost three weeks since they’d first locked her away. Everyone looked at her in abject surprise, but only Sam’s face transitioned to worry.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Devon asked, at the same time Mr. Cummings said, “The prodigal daughter returns!”

  Chunks of flesh and tattered blue dress and liquid red streaks across the wall. Ani blinked the memory away. “Nowhere. I had a bad reaction to a new serum, I guess.” The agreed-upon falsehood screamed its lack of authenticity, but they all seemed to buy it.

  “Shit,” Sam said. “You’d think they’d tell us.”

  “Mushrooms,” Mr. Cummings said. Mrs. Weller nodded as if that made some kind of sense.

  “What—”

  Arms wrapped her from behind and squeezed the air from her lungs. She patted Mike’s forearms, the only things she could reach while he pinned her arms. She tried to breath in and couldn’t, so she waited for him to let go.

  When his arms slacked, she turned around and smiled, inches from his lips.

  “Hi,” he said.

  She struggled back against his loving embrace, putting a full foot between them only by pushing on his chest. “Hi, Mike. How are you?”

  “I missed you,” he said. He raised his eyebrows, but his eyes remained dead. “Want to play Jenga?”

  At that moment she wanted to hurt something or someone, more than she ever had before. Her suffering, her pain, her anguish, screamed for release. She looked into his eyes and she smothered it.

  “Sure, Mike. Let’s play Jenga.”

  He clapped in anticipation as he trotted over to the box.

  “Shit,” Devon said. “We just played four games.”

  The third time the tower fell, Mr. Cummings handed her an envelope. The front said, Ani in Tiffany’s impeccable calligraphy. She opened it and forced a smile through impotent, murderous rage.

  Tiff lay in a hospital bed, cradling a pair of infants, wrinkled little trolls swaddled in fluffy pink. Ani wanted to scream, to cry, to lash out and hurt something, anything, anyone, and instead she smiled. She told herself she was happy for Tiff, happy for the children to have a mother who cared, no matter how screwed up that mother was, and yet all she could see was Shaylah.

  Who were you? Is your mother dead, too, or does she miss you? What did you die for? What is there to protect? What is there that matters?

  “Are you okay?” Devon asked.

  Ani put up her hand, turned away from them, and closed her eyes. By the time she’d recovered, they were knee-deep in the Russian Revolution. Mrs. Weller gave her a concerned glance as she pulled herself together but continued with the lesson. When she felt able, Ani pulled a chair up next to them. She almost lost it again under the weight of their sympathetic scrutiny, but with closed eyes and a few deep, unnecessary breaths, she managed to stay with them.

  After school, she wrote Tiffany a reply—three short lines congratulating her on the birth of her babies—and sat at the piano. She didn’t play, only sat, until her mother got home from the lab and told her to get in the bath. As she sank into the cold fluid, Shaylah’s innocent face filled her vision. Ani wasn’t contagious, which meant Shaylah was truly dead, not stuck in the bowels of the lab awaiting possible rescue. But what about the rest of them?

  * * *

  Devon passed Ani her twenty-five-week report card. “Remember that bitch Kate?”

  Ani looked at the card—straight A’s, same as her own and Sam’s. And Mike’s, for that matter. “Kate Jackson?” You mean, the girl who idolized you and became you once you became one of us?

  “Yeah. What do you think she’ll do when she realizes I’m going to be valedictorian?”

  Sam snorted. “She'll bitch that you padded your GPA with easy classes?”

  “I did not!”

  Sam threw up her hands. “She took four AP classes to your none, and her GPA is almost as high. Take out art and philosophy, and you’re behind her almost a full point.”

  Ani didn’t bother mentioning that Sam, not Devon, would be salutatorian in that case, and with three more AP courses than Kate. Sam did it for her.

  “If they curved AP cla
sses the way they said they were going to, I’d be valedictorian, Kate would be second, and you’d be third.”

  Devon’s smug smile held no joy. “But they don’t.”

  “No,” Sam said. “They don’t.”

  “So that’s it,” Devon said. “I’m on top.”

  “Conga-rats,” Sam said. Ani couldn’t tell whether or not she cared and was faking it or just didn’t care.

  “What’s your speech going to be?” Ani asked.

  Devon bit her lip. “Hmmm...I’ll have to think about it.”

  * * *

  The following Monday, Ani got two pieces of mail: an acceptance letter to the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music, and acceptance to RIT for graphic design. Harsh reality tempered her elation.

  “Mom,” she looked up from the kitchen table, “both of these assume I’m attending next fall.”

  “Well,” her mom said, “that’s pretty typical for a graduating senior.”

  “I’m not a typical graduating senior!”

  Her mom sighed. “No, sweetie, you’re not. Next step, I suppose, is to have Mr. Murphy call them about deferred enrollment.”

  “As in, deferred until I’m cured,” which could be never, “or deferred until the Supreme Court says I’m a person?” Which could also be never and would involve a whole heap of costs for them.

  “Whichever, I suppose.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll talk to Mr. Murphy tomorrow and see what he has to say. I’m sure he’ll go to bat for you.”

  * * *

  Sam got her acceptance letters to Baylor and Vanderbilt, and Devon to Brockport and Fredonia. They had a mini “does this even matter” party, complete with a cake nobody ate, though Mike had fun playing with it.

  The following Tuesday, RIT rescinded her acceptance in a curt, three-line e-mail to her mom. Friday, the U of R followed suit, though at least they sent a letter...which included an invitation to talk to a virology professor at Strong Memorial Hospital.

  The week before Easter, Mr. Murphy came to the lab to talk to Devon. She’d already heard from Geneseo—they wouldn’t be admitting her—but held out hope for Brockport. She took the in-person visit as a good sign and smiled over her shoulder as they went into the room across the hall to talk.

  School was over, so Mr. Cummings and Mrs. Weller had gone back to wherever they spent their nights. Mike played Mario Kart by himself on the Xbox, while Ani tried to show Sam the basics of acrylic on canvas.

  “WHAT?” Devon’s screech carried across the hall. “THIS IS TOTAL FUCKING BULLSHIT!”

  Ani reached the door a step behind Sam, to see Mr. Murphy backing into the hall, hands raised in a defensive posture. “I’m sorry, Devon, it’s not my call. The board decided—”

  Devon shattered a wall tile with her fist, then kicked the fragments down the hall. Mr. Murphy backed away as the burn team stepped forward. Devon gave them a sweet smile ruined by her bite guard, then sat down, hands on her head.

  Her knuckles showed exposed white bone dusted with powder from the shattered tile. “Sorry,” she sulked. “It won’t happen again.”

  Eyes wide with fear, Mr. Murphy uttered an apology and scampered down the hall, toward the main exit. The burn team settled back, then turned and walked away—with no humans to endanger, there was no need for their protection. Devon moved her hands down to her face and shook.

  Sam sat on her left. Ani took her right. After a few minutes, she removed her hands and glowered at the wall. Ani hazarded a question.

  “You want to talk—”

  “Not really. Yeah. It’s just so fucking unfair.”

  Ani exchanged a glance with Sam. That Devon would bring up fairness, after all this.... A breakdown of the social order, Mr. Cummings would call it.

  “What’s unfair?” Sam asked.

  “I’m not valedictorian.”

  Sam snorted. “You’ve got the highest GPA.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Why’s that?” Ani asked.

  Devon formed air quotes with her fingers. “I’m not in the ‘right cohort.’ Whatever the hell that means. Basically, if I’d have graduated two years ago, I’d be on top. Now...” she shook her head. “Now I’m just another shithead.”

  “I lost Baylor,” Sam said. “Vanderbilt can’t be far behind.”

  Devon snarled. “I could just fucking kill somebody.”

  Ani closed her eyes and thought of Shaylah, alone and starving, locked in for days with the monster that would ultimately devour her. As shitty—as unfair—as it was, she couldn’t summon the energy to care about Devon’s class rank.

  “Or,” Sam said, “you could do what I’m doing. The University of Phoenix doesn’t care that we’re dead, and it might not be Ivy, but it’s a college.”

  “Because that matters,” Devon said.

  Sam rolled her eyes and pushed herself to her feet. She grabbed Ani’s hand, hauled her up, and they left Devon sulking on the hallway floor. “So,” Sam said as they sat back down at their canvases, “how come when you mix colors you get all kinds of cool stuff, but when I mix colors all I get is brown?”

  Ani was halfway through an explanation about warm and cold colors when she noticed that Devon no longer sat in the hall.

  Whatever.

  * * *

  With nothing better to do and nowhere they could go, they held class through Easter vacation. Sam spent most of her time cramming for AP English, calculus, and physics—the latter two without help—while Ani concentrated on AP US History and AP Literature. Not vying for AP credit, Devon spent much of the week playing chess with Mr. Cummings. She won more than she lost, but he held his own.

  As the AP exams approached, the world condensed into immediate problems. Class focused on the AP exams, after school time was spent with review books instead of at the piano, and Sarah administered practice exams twice a week. They started off pretty bad but got better as time went on. Ani had a hard time caring but, with nothing else to do, went through the motions. The distraction helped.

  Midway through April, Dr. Banerjee interrupted the intense, marathon studying with an announcement. He called a meeting that included all the zombies, Dr. Freeman, Mr. Benson, several people in lab coats and others in military uniforms that Ani didn’t recognize, and Ani’s mom. They crammed into a small auditorium, the zombies shunted off to one side, with a buffer of armed men between them and the rest of the audience.

  Dr. Banerjee tapped the microphone, then leaned in close so that he didn’t have to raise his voice. “Thank you for coming. I’ve called you here to make two announcements. The first and less important announcement is:” He cleared his throat. “Preliminary indications from Supreme Court justices are that they are not in favor of personhood for zombies.”

  He continued over the top of their anxious mutters. “The second and more important announcement is that I’ve received executive imprimatur to continue our research regardless of the outcome of the case. We expect that life around the lab will continue very much as it has, although I’m afraid that, should the court rule against personhood this summer, no non-living persons will be allowed outside under any circumstances.”

  Sam raised her hand, and he gestured to her. “Who knows about this?”

  “The people in this room and a few high-ranking government officials.”

  “I assume, Colonel,” Mr. Benson said, “that this won’t remain the case for long?” Dr. Banerjee nodded. “And that there’ll be new security protocols?”

  “There will. Personnel will be briefed on a need-to-know basis.”

  Mr. Benson gave a satisfied nod and stepped back. As soon as he did, a blond man Ani didn’t recognize, wearing a white lab coat over blue jeans, put up his hand. “I hate to be that guy, but with an increased threat from anti-zombie crazies, will we be getting an increase in hazard pay?”

  The question-and-answer period lasted twenty minutes past when Ani had stopped paying attention. Later that day, they
interrupted class to watch the mayor announce an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security to raze and replace four vacant buildings in downtown to serve as a new DHS “Class Five Bioterrorism” training facility. Behind the podium to his left stood Dr. Freeman.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Mayor,” a female reporter said, shoving a microphone toward the podium. “What is this facility supposed to do, exactly?”

  “It’s my understanding,” he replied, “that there will be close cooperation between the new facility and the one already in place.”

  “Does that mean,” A male reporter said from off-screen, “that zombies are here to stay?”

  He looked at something the camera didn’t catch before replying. “Yes, it does. Ohneka Falls is going to be the zombie capital of the world!” He smiled to put a good spin on it, but the flat reaction from the crowd left him looking like an idiot.

  Mr. Cummings muted the TV and opened his arms. “You know what I just realized? If we don’t get cured, I can never quit. Awesome!”

  Sam smirked. “I don’t know about that, Mr. C. One of these days you’ll run out of stuff to teach us.”

  Mrs. Weller snorted. “Don’t count on it.”

  * * *

  The next two weeks blurred into one long, agonizing cram session. By the time the exams came, Ani felt well-prepared. She figured that what amounted to house arrest added up to hundreds of hours of study time that a lot of students didn’t get—they were too busy with sports and movies and making out and living their lives. With no lives to live, the girls found that school wasn’t much of an issue.

  Ani felt good coming out of the history exam but struggled on lit. It seemed to her that whoever wrote the test had a bit of a fetish for Native American captive literature and had never heard of the likes of Shakespeare, the Bronte sisters, or Mark Twain. Sam killed English and calculus but remained nervous about physics that coming Monday.

  On Saturday, Devon got the Phase IX injection.