Kiss of Life

by Daniel Waters

  "I don't think you could ruin any of the experiments if you tried," Davidson said, the ghost of a smile on his bloodless lips. "None of the real experiments are done here."

  Pete leaned his mop against the wringer. "What are you talking about?" he asked. "I've seen the ... I've seen Alish take blood or whatever it is from the zom ... from the living-impaired kids."

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  "Would people know that you're a murderer just by looking at you?" "What?"

  "Or would they have to talk to you a little? Watch you. See the look on your face when a zombie walks into your field of vision, like the look on your face when Cooper takes his pointless stroll? I wish I could hold a mirror up to you every time you see our resident zombie leave his room on the monitors."

  "What the hell are you talking about?" Pete said. His palms were sweaty, his mouth dry. His heart was racing and the lab equipment chirped like a field of crickets on a hot day late in the summer.

  "Sometimes you have to peel the skin back," Davidson said, and now he really was smiling. "Sometimes you have to go beneath the surface. Sometimes you have to dig."

  Pete opened his mouth and then closed it. The look on Davidson's face was like the look on the half-faced zombie just before he'd cut him. It was a look that held nothing, not hatred, not anger, nothing.

  "I'm not sure what we're talking about right now."

  "You will," Davidson said. "Keep the cleaning chemicals out of the experiments. We wouldn't want you accidentally discovering anything."

  He left, leaving the sliding lab door open behind him. Pete heard the arrival of the Undead Studies students down the hall; Pinky's voice was shrill enough to grind steel.

  Pete didn't realize he was shaking until he took hold of his mop again.

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  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  "MS. HUNTER?" Margi said, "I really, really have a problem with Pete Martinsburg doing his community service here."

  Phoebe stiffened on hearing his name, but Adam remained motionless on the seat beside her. Margi had pointed out Pete lurking in the shadow of one of the labs, leaning on his mop and looking at them as they entered the building. She'd wanted to take Adam's arm and rush him down the hall before he saw Pete, but she'd been too embarrassed after her smooth moves in the Garritys' kitchen to do much more than say hello to him when he climbed into the van.

  "I can understand that," Angela said. "And I'm sure you're not the only one here who feels that way. The court thought that it was a good way to bring him face-to-face with the consequences of his actions."

  "He threatened all of us," Phoebe said. "He said he

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  was going to hurt everyone on the Undead Studies list."

  "He ...killed Evan Talbott," Colette said. "And ...Adam."

  "We don't really know about Evan, Colette," Angela said.

  "He told me he did it," Phoebe said. "When they asked me for a statement after Adam was murdered, I told the police. I told the prosecuting attorney. I told everybody who would listen, but they all said there was nothing anyone could do about it. There isn't a law to prevent someone from killing the dead. The attorney actually told me it might hurt their case against him for Adam's murder if she were to bring it up."

  "He winked at me when he walked by the office," Margi said. "He's dangerous, Ms. Hunter."

  Angela frowned and made a notation in her pad. "I'll try to see that he's kept away from the students."

  "Is it true that he is getting counseling?" Margi said. "With you?"

  "It is."

  "What are you talking about with him?" "I can't tell you that, Margi."

  "Sure," Margi said, shifting her seat. "It wouldn't be proper for poor Pete's rights to be infringed on." "Margi ..."

  "He killed Adam!" she said. "It doesn't feel safe to be in the same building as him! What about our rights? Why can't dangerous kids just be taken away from the rest of us?"

  "I'll do what I can, Margi," she said. "I'll see to it that he only works and does his therapy here when you're all out of the building."

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  "How can you do that?" Phoebe said, wishing that Tommy was there to fight this. "Sylvia is still here in the building, isn't she? And Cooper, you're staying here too, aren't you?"

  "I don't ...know the guy," Cooper said. Beside him Melissa, her mask incongruous with the heavy weight of the conversation, began writing on her whiteboard.

  "You didn't know those white van guys, either," Thorny said.

  "Watch out for him. I think he would find you ...guilty ... by association," Karen said. "Angela, you know that this is a big part of the reason why Tayshawn refused to rejoin this class, don't you?"

  "Because he was worried that Pete would be coming here?"

  "He wasn't worried," Karen said. "He was furious. In his words, it was the biggest display of hypocrisy that he'd ever seen, an organization supposedly ...created ... to help the undead harboring someone who has sworn to destroy them ..."

  "We aren't harboring him. We're--"

  "...and has acted upon his promise."

  Angela held her hand up. "I understand why you're all so upset. I really do. We agreed to assist with Martinsburg's sentencing because, frankly, we thought we were better qualified than anyone else. We also thought it would be an opportunity to really dig at the roots of the prejudice that all differently biotic people experience. If we can get him to articulate the reasons why he has so much hatred inside him, then maybe we can fight it. If we understand it, maybe we can find a way to help people, traditionally and differently biotic alike, to find common ground."

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  "So you think you can ...reason with him?" Karen said.

  Angela nodded. "We're hoping. I think we can learn something from people like Pete. I think at the very least we may be able to find ways to prevent others from becoming like him."

  "Good ...luck," Cooper said. "My experience ...says ...otherwise."

  Phoebe thought of Tommy. Everyone in the class seemed out of sorts and lost without his leadership.

  "Look," Angela said. "The way to deal with prejudice isn't to ignore it, or worse, to bury it under a rock. It's to deal with it head-on."

  "Tayshawn would agree with you there," Karen said. "He would just have a ...different ...definition of 'head-on.'"

  "Karen," Angela said, "I would like the chance to talk to Tayshawn. I'd really appreciate it if you would let him know."

  Karen paused deliberately before answering. "I will."

  "Thank you. Now ...I'm sorry, Melissa. Did you have something to add?"

  Melissa's arm was raised, and her comedy mask seemed nearly sinister beneath the coppery mane of her hair. When she nodded, her puffy green velvet sleeve drooped a few inches from her wrist, revealing patches of cracked, raw, curling skin that resembled the pages of a book thrown into a fire. She turned her board around.

  ANGELA IS RIGHT, SHE'D WRITTEN, WE ALL NEED 2 UNDERSTAND EA. OTHER

  "Come ...on ...Melissa," Cooper said, leaning toward her. "You really ...believe that...would work? You think the

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  people that ...burned ...Dickinson House ...can understand us? Or we understand ...them?"

  She rubbed the board clean and her marker squeaked as she wrote.

  I'D 2 TRY

  "Give me ... a break."

  I'D FOR THEM 2 C ME

  "They'd be ...glad, Mel!" Cooper said. "They'd ... be glad! They wouldn't feel guilty ... at all."

  Phoebe watched Melissa drag the white cloth back and forth over the white board, erasing the heart, erasing her words. The room was silent as they all waited for her to write another line.

  TOMMY WOULD AGREE WITH ME

  "Good for ...Tommy," he said. "Easy to do ...when he isn't...here."

  "Hey!" exclaimed Thorny, whose idolization of Tommy was only exceeded by his idolization of Adam.

  "She's right," Phoebe said. "Tommy would meet the situation directly. That's why he did things like join the football team and
start the Web site. It's why he's going on this trip." She wondered if that was why he dated her. "He's going out to confront the world with his existence."

  "You think he'd be okay with Pete Martinsburg working right down the hall?" Margi asked. It was one of the first questions that anyone had posed today that sounded more like a question than a condemnation.

  "I think he would, Gee," Phoebe answered.

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  "You're right. He would," Karen said. "He thinks that safety-is an ... illusion, anyway."

  "Well ... he got that one ...right," Cooper said.

  "There's only so much you can do to take precautions these days, I think," Phoebe said. "I know not everyone is going to accept the fact that I want to hang out with zombies. Some people just get so crazy ...it's like there's so much pressure on everyone in our society, no matter what age you are. People break under that pressure. And when they break, they either give up or lash out. Until everyone is okay with the differently biotic, and I don't think that is going to happen for years, a generation, maybe, we're going to be dealing with violence."

  "We're zombies, sweetie," Karen said. "Forget...differently biotic."

  Phoebe shot her a look and would have thrown a pen if she'd had one handy.

  "Great," Margi said, "the crazies will hate us, and safety is an illusion. That doesn't mean I have to go playing with rattlesnakes."

  "I'll talk to Mr. Davidson," Angela said. "He'll keep Peter out of sight, if not out of mind. I'll understand if any of you are still uncomfortable with the situation and want to withdraw from the class. I'll see what I can do about getting you partial credit."

  She was looking at Margi when she said it, and it was Margi's turn to shy away.

  "Nobody's quitting," Thorny said.

  "I wouldn't blame anyone if they wanted to withdraw,"

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  Angela said, as though he hadn't even spoken. "Margi and Cooper both have a point. The path we're on isn't without risks. "

  "Nobody's quitting," Thorny repeated. Phoebe was about to say something when Adam's spoke.

  "Want ...to ...kill ...him," he said. His slow, uninflected voice lent an even greater degree of menace to the word "kill." The word cleaved through the conversation. Somehow as the debate about Pete went on, everyone had managed to forget that his victim was sitting right in the room with them, and that he might have an opinion on what should or should not be done with and for his murderer.

  "But..." he said, and though it took him some time to finish his sentence, everyone waited without interrupting. Phoebe watched him struggle to form the words, and she was close enough to hear the raspy wheeze that preceded each sound as he tried to work his lungs to force air through his voice box. She wanted to hug him, but knew that to do so would be a betrayal, a public admission of his debilitated state. He was having a hard enough time forgiving her for the kindnesses she did show.

  "Would ... do ... no ... good," he said.

  Phoebe allowed herself to smile. Because she was so proud of Adam, both because of the effort it took him to speak and because of what he was saying. More, she was smiling because Adam was choosing to follow Tommy, and not Takayuki.

  "Tommy ...is ...right."

  It was Adam's big moment, but again Phoebe found herself thinking of Tommy, and wishing he was with them.

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  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ALISH WAS muttering to himself as he stared at the computer, where long chemical equations scrolled to the bottom of the screen. Thorny, looking like the bass player in an eighties synth band with the cuffs of his lab coat rolled up, sat on the edge of his desk, checking the time on his cell phone every few minutes. Colette sat in a chair, no doubt wondering if Alish would require another hank of hair, vial of fluid, or patch of skin. Phoebe wondered if she would be as compliant if she were differently biotic. "Correlations," Alish muttered.

  "Did you find something, sir?" Phoebe asked, trying to make sense of the strings of data on his screen. She'd been allowed to skip the last couple shifts of the "work" part of the work study requirement of the Undead Studies class, and was confused by what it was Alish was trying to accomplish.

  "What? What?" he said, his wrinkled face far more

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  corpselike than Colette's in the white-blue glow of the screen. He looked up at Phoebe and pushed his wire bifocals up the length of his aquiline nose.

  "Well, yes," he said. "But in the fields of scientific inquiry finding 'something' may mean that what you have, in fact, is 'nothing,' as in, the something you thought was something really turned out to be nothing."

  "Huh?" Thorny said, dropping his phone into the deep pocket of his coat. He had a game later in the day--the upside of all of the stars of the team either being injured (permanently, in Adam's case) or under house arrest meant that Thorny got a lot of time on the field.

  "In this case," Alish continued, "there does not seem to be a correlation between the presence of formaldehyde in the body and a return to existence."

  Phoebe thought his choice of words was interesting, not to mention the course of his study. Adam hadn't been dead long enough for a trip to the morgue, never got the ole formaldehyde inoculation, so ruling out formaldehyde as being a "causal agent" of the whole undead thing seemed self-evident.

  Dallas Jones, the first known zombie, was killed on camera while robbing a convenience store, then arose a few hours after his death with no visit to the mortician either. Sometimes Alish's "science" was pretty suspect.

  "Isn't formaldehyde a compound?

  "What? Yes. Yes, Ms. Kendall. It certainly is."

  "Is there something in the compound that could be causing the return?"

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  He frowned, the skin of his face sagging down as the muscles around his mouth pulled. "My studies would indicate no, that that would not be the case."

  "This is going to sound rude and I don't mean it to be," she said. "But what have yours, or anyone's, studies indicated?"

  Alish smiled, his long fingers tapping on the edge of his desk. "Not much, I'm afraid."

  "Can I go, sir?" Thorny asked. "I've got to get to the game."

  "Certainly, Mr. Harrowwood," Alish said. "Score seventeen touchdowns for us."

  "I'll try, sir," Thorny said, sprinting past the lab equipment.

  Alish turned back to Phoebe. "What we know," he said, "is that there are at least fifteen hundred and sixty-three differently biotic persons in this country."

  Fifteen hundred and sixty-three seemed like such a small number, especially when she'd met at least twenty of them. She'd never counted the pictures on "the wall of the dead" at the Haunted House but estimated that there were two hundred.

  Tommy once told her he had over six hundred subscribers, but didn't know how many of them were dead.

  "Of that number, we have some type of reliable documentation on half. All of those we have good documentation for died between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. The verifiable period of 'true death' has been between two minutes, fifty-seven seconds and eight days, three minutes."

  "Eight days?"

  Alish nodded.

  "I was gone five ... days," Colette called from her chair. She

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  looked bored, but most of the dead looked at least a little bored if they weren't trying to emote.

  "Yes. There does not appear to be a relationship between the time spent dead and the amount of functionality the person has. There also does not appear to be a relationship between the time period one exists as differently biotic and the amount of functionality they have."

  "Time is not on their side," Phoebe said. "In increasing functionality."

  Alish took his bifocals off and closed his eyes. "It does not appear that way, no."

  "What helps?" Phoebe asked, thinking of Adam trying to will his body into a karate stance.

  "We have not found anything that helps," he said.

  "Music," Colette called. Alish opened his eyes and looked ba
ck at her. "Hugs."

  "I interrupted you," Phoebe said to Alish. "What else do we know?"

  "Not much, I'm afraid," he said. "Nothing conclusive. Our friends Ms. DeSonne and Mr. Williams--no offense, dear Miss Beauvoir--appear to be on the higher end of the functionality scale. There is a girl in California who only blinks. Some of the dead appear to regain senses beyond sight and sound. The degree of touch sensation appears to differ among them. We know that if the brain is destroyed, functionality ceases. We know that traditional biology does not seem to apply."

  "What do you mean?"

  "No heartbeat, no circulation, no respiratory activity," he said,

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  and there were teeth, faintly yellow and crooked, in his smile. "They're dead, Ms. Kendall. It just doesn't make any sense."

  "I can ...smell ...that perfume ...Margi wears now," Colette said. "I ...couldn't do that...before."

  "Interesting," Alish said, smiling at her. He looked like he wanted to figure out how to fit her inside a petri dish.

  "So what are you trying to find?" Phoebe asked.

  "Oh, a lot of things," he said. Then he leaned forward and motioned with a crooked finger for her to lean in.

  "Miss Kendall," he said, his voice a dry whispery rasp, "I'm trying to find the secret of life."

  He laughed then, and lifted the hooked finger he'd beckoned her with to his lips, as though it were their little secret.

  "What a ...weirdo," Colette said from the front seat of Margi's car, "a total ...creepy weirdo."

  Margi was clapping her hands to try and warm them up while waiting for the heater to kick in, her bangles muffled by her mittens and her coat.