Kiss of Life

by Daniel Waters

  She whistled for Gar, and when he wouldn't come she got up and captured him, sitting down with him on her lap. He gave her a grouchy look but didn't move, probably because she started scratching behind his ears.

  I have a list of people I want to talk to and places I want to go. Most of my agenda involves talking to people who could help us, or talking to people who refuse to help us, but there's also some other things I want |fc check out. On my way down from Pennsylvania I met a zombie who told me that there's a zombie gang--as in actual criminal street gang--who gets recruits by encouraging trad kids who want to join to shoot each other. If you come back, you get to be in the gang, and if you don't, game over. I can't see why anyone would willingly choose this existence over real life, but the kid I met insisted it was true. He said his cousin tried to get him to join, but he turned him down. He said

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  they're "crazy fearless" because they're dead, and apparently they have all the other gangs scared witless of them. Do me a favor and don't tell any of this to Takayuki or the other old-schoolers, because I think he'd come down here and be leading them within a few weeks. How is Tak and the whole dead crew, by the way? Is Karen keeping everyone in line?

  Phoebe smiled at the thought of Takayuki and George and the rest of his crew catching a bus down to DC so they could join the fun. But Tommy's next line erased the smile: Phoebe, he wrote, I wanted to let you know I've met a girl.

  She read the line a second time. Gar had begun to growl because she had stopped scratching his ears. He had written Phoebe, as in "Phoebe, listen up, because this next bit is serious. Very serious."

  Phoebe, I wanted to let you know I met a girl. A zombie girl. I don't know if it's going to go anywhere, but since I met her here we've been spending a lot of time together--time is something we've both got a lot of--and I like being with her and I think she likes being with me. Her name is Christie Smith.

  I don't want to know her name, Phoebe thought. Tommy, why would you think I would need to know her name? Christie Smith, Christie Smith. Sounds like a weathergirl. Or a porn star.

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  Why do you even care? she thought. You're happier with Adam than you ever would be with Tommy. With Adam, you never have to guess how he really feels about you.

  She pushed up and away from the desk with an abruptness that surprised Gargoyle, who let out a little yelp of surprise. She went back to the window. Adam was still working in the gray grass below.

  Christie Smith, she thought. And then: wasn't it you that broke up with himl Adam needs me. I don't have any time for you, you said, or something equally stupid. I don't have time to a boy who has nothing, nothing in the world hut time, an eternity of endless sleepless hours waiting, like waiting for the phone to ring when you know it never will.

  After a while she sat back down at the computer. There wasn't much left to read, and she was determined to get through the rest of it even though her hands were shaking and she could feel a rush of tears ready to spill from her eyes. She didn't know if she was angry or sad or both. Probably both.

  I still think of you a lot, he wrote, all the time, really, except some times when I'm with Christie. I haven't talked to her about you yet, but she's been to the Web site, so she knew that I had feelings for a living girl.

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  A living girl. Not a Traditionally Biotic Girl or a Beating Heart, she thought. For someone who chose his words so carefully, how could Tommy not know that each one he wrote was like a razor blade being dragged slowly across her heart.

  I feel like you're still in my soul, Phoebe. And I haven't told her about you because I feel like in doing so I would be letting you go, and I'm just not ready for that yet. It probably isn't fair to her, or to you, even, because I know how you feel, but just not ready.

  He thinks he knows how I feel, she thought. She closed her eyes and was more than a little surprised when the rush of tears subsided.

  Anyway, began his final paragraph,

  I hope you aren't mad at me for writing about this. I just wanted you to know that I really am trying to let go like you wanted, so you don't have to worry that some creepy, love-struck dead kid is going to show up under your window some night playing a mandolin. I'm trying, Phoebe. But it isn't easy.

  Love,

  Tommy

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  She was hot all of a sudden, and she wriggled out of her bathrobe and threw it onto the bed, where the belt fell across Gargoyle, whose ears pricked.

  "I know," she said, "you're wondering what's gotten into me tonight. I'm sorry, baby boy."

  Somewhat mollified, Gar put his doggy chin on his forepaws. He was too dignified to try to move the belt.

  "So you think you know how I feel," Phoebe said, the fingers of her now-steady hands tapping but not depressing any of the keys on her keyboard. She looked back at Gar, who seemed to raise one fuzzy, questioning eyebrow at her. "Well, how about I tell you how I really feel?"

  Her fingers were like long, vicious knives stabbing at her keyboard.

  "Dear" Tommy,

  I'm so, so glad that you have met someone new. And I'm so, so glad that you made the brilliant decision to tell me about her, but not tell her about me, because that once again underscores what a self-centered, manipulative jerk you can be. I'm still "in your soul," am I? Well, let me out, please. Evict me. Adam and I

  She stopped typing a moment, suppressing the cry of frustrated anguish that was welling in her chest.

  Eyes burning, she resumed typing with a steadily increasing rapidity.

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  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  " TO THIS IS IT," Duke said. "After tonight your debt to society is paid.

  What do you think about that?" Pete shrugged. 'I've still got to do the counseling for the rest of the year."

  "Cry me a river. You really aren't glad you don't have to work here anymore?"

  "I don't care about it either way." Which wasn't exactly true; being home-schooled was duller than actual school, and he hadn't seen or talked to TC since the trial. He didn't think Stavis's parents would let TC talk to him anymore.

  "Really?" Duke said. "That surprises me. I'd think you'd be pretty eager to get away from all of these dead people. All of these insane experiments. You must be completely rehabilitated."

  Pete didn't answer, nor did he return Duke's disturbingly reptilian smile.

  "Buck up," Duke said. "What's the matter?"

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  "Nothing."

  "Nothing, huh? Are you thinking about that creature in the lab? Thinking you want to put her out of her misery?"

  Pete looked at the monitor screen where Alish was bustling back and forth between what looked to be a microscope and another machine that looked like a microwave. After he'd thought about it a bit, he realized he had no wish at all to end the zombie's misery, if that is what it was. The disgust he'd felt when he initially saw it there gave him a reflexive urge to destroy it just like he would any other aberration of the natural world, like finding a bug as big as your hand, or a green mold covering the last piece of cake. He hadn't really thought that the zombies could feel anything, but that one looked as if it was in pain. And that was just fine by him.

  "No."

  "No?"

  "No."

  "Hmmm. What did you think of that book that I gave you?

  "I liked it," Pete said. Duke had given him And the Graves Give Up Their Dead, by Reverend Nathan Mathers. He hadn't much cared for the biblical references that backed up Mathers's arguments, but he definitely enjoyed reading the sections where Mathers urged his readers to "send the dead back to hell." There was a whole chapter on why it was necessary to burn the corpses, even if they had become inanimate after a head shot.

  "You liked it? You didn't think he was a little too over the top?"

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  "No," Pete said. "He didn't always go far enough. He gives an awful lot of biblical evidence and warnings, but he never actually recommends an action."

  Davidson
laughed out loud. "You are an odd duck, Peter Martinsburg," he said, "an odd duck."

  On the screen before him, Alish was closing up an experiment and dousing the lights. He walked past the door to his "office" four times, but never went in.

  "Alish is coming," Pete said. For some reason Duke always wanted to know when Alish was getting ready to check out. Probably because Duke was supposed to be doing something other than hanging out, drinking coffee, and having study groups with Pete.

  "You want to meet him?" Duke asked.

  "Who? Alish?"

  "No, stupid. Reverend Mathers."

  Pete looked back at Duke, trying to see if he was serious. He looked like he might be. "I don't know," Pete said.

  "The Reverend is an amazing person," Duke said, "absolutely amazing. A man of intelligence as much as faith." "You've met him?"

  Duke nodded, with what Pete thought was exaggerated solemnity. "Oh yes," he said, taking a swig from his Thermos cup.

  "Really? Where did you meet him?"

  "I've seen him a couple times, actually."

  "You're kidding. The foundation know about this? I wouldn't think they would be too happy knowing you were

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  hanging out with 'The Scourge of the Undead.'" Pete had done more than read the book. He'd gone online and read some other material about Mathers, his church, and his activities.

  "Oh, they know," Duke said, taking another swig.

  Alish arrived at the door to the monitor room just then, and he paused, as though aware of the sudden silence that greeted his arrival. His gray eyes regarded Pete the way they always did, which was as if he wasn't--or shouldn't be--there.

  "Hello, Mr. Hunter," Duke said.

  "Hello. I will be teaching with Angela today. Please vacuum the carpets in the encounter room before the students get here, and see to it that the lab floors are cleaned. Those shoes that the Wilson boy wears leave black marks all over the tile."

  "Will do, Mr. Hunter," Duke said. "Pete here will take care of it. It's his last day, you know. The last of his two hundred hours of community service."

  "Really," the old man said. He looked at Pete for a moment, but didn't say anything. Then he turned and started back to his daughter's office.

  "He's not using a cane today," Pete said. "Why doesn't he need it every day?"

  "You're pretty observant," Duke said. "Listen, I'm giving you a going away present. I'm going to talk to Alish. He and I need to meet about a couple of things, so I'll let you work your last shift without me hanging over your shoulder all night. I'll have the radio on, so if you need anything just give me a call. Otherwise, enjoy yourself. Just get the carpets and the floors done like the old man said."

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  "Okay." Duke was a permanent resident at the foundation, like the stupid Wilson kid and his stupid streak-leaving sneakers.

  "Lock up the labs when you're done, all right? You know how to do that?"

  Pete nodded.

  "Okay," Duke said, smiling. "Have fun."

  As he said this, he placed his keycard on the edge of his desk, pressing it down with an audible click.

  Still smiling, he turned and left the monitor room.

  What the hell? Pete thought, first watching Duke head down the corridor on the monitor screen, then turning back to the keycard on the desk. What is this, some sort of stupid test? A dare?

  Whatever it was, Pete wasn't playing. He was just going to get the floors done, keep his head down, and get the hell out of there, "fully rehabilitated," as the man had said.

  But filling up the mop bucket, he started thinking about the thing in the lab, how he could see its spine twitch when he was looking at it.

  He added some chemicals to the hot water.

  What did Davidson mean by leaving his keycard there? Was he trying to goad Pete into doing something?

  He mopped the entrance hall, then vacuumed the carpet in the encounter room. Angela had dropped a few hints about having him sit in on one of their sessions, but that had never materialized. Her legs, and the look of annoyance she gave him when she caught him staring at them, were the only things he'd miss about this place.

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  He went back to the supply closet, changed the mop water, and did the hallway outside the encounter room and the short hall to Angela's office. The keycard, he realized, would let him into her office as well as the main office, two areas of the building that were off-limits to him after hours. He could use the card to go in and get his files.

  Not like she wouldn't have backups, he thought. He went back to get his soda and sandwich from the small fridge in the monitor room. He had one more corridor to do, and then he could watch the clock until it was time to go.

  Time to go, he thought. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

  Well, he'd done the time. He knew, despite the wrist slap the judge had given him, that what he'd done was a crime. And despite appearances to the contrary, he did feel guilty for what he'd done. Adam hadn't deserved to die.

  But the zombies did.

  They deserved to die, die and stay dead. If it wasn't for the zombies, Adam would still be alive, and Pete would still be in school and playing football and getting an endless supply of tail, rather than getting homeschooled by a balding guy in his thirties who smelled like menthol and started shaking every time Pete reached for his pencil. He wouldn't be spending all of his free time in this cave, listening to Duke's rambling. He'd be hanging out with Stavis and getting drunk and playing Xbox or cruising around the streets of Winford looking for even more tail.

  Pete ended up throwing half of his sandwich away. His

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  mother had made him a salami sandwich. No matter how many times he said, "I hate salami, please give me ham," salami ended up in the bag. The Wimp must like salami. He saw the keycard on Duke's desk.

  He swore under his breath and got up from his chair. Just the lab hallway and he'd be done.

  The lab hallway, he thought, looking at the keycard.

  He switched off the monitors, thinking that maybe he ought to at least say good-bye.

  Phoebe and her friends stopped in their tracks when they saw Pete Martinsberg waiting in the front corridor as they entered the Hunter Foundation. Phoebe instinctively moved in front of Adam, as though by doing so she could rewind the past. She felt Adam's heavy hand on her shoulder. Margi and Karen moved beside them and stood glaring at Adam's killer.

  "I don't want any trouble." Pete raised his hands. "I was just leaving. Today was my last day of community service, and I won't be bothering any of you again."

  Adam, gently but firmly, drew Phoebe back and stepped forward at the same time, his big body casting a long shadow from the sunlight streaming through the foyer doors over Martinsburg.

  "I just want to leave," Pete said, looking at each of them in turn, as though unsure of who was the greater threat. From the corner of her eye Phoebe could see the other girls; Margi looked positively feral, a cat poised to spring. Beside her, Karen was the implacable ice princess, looking as though she could kill

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  merely by narrowing her eyes. Even Kevin Zumbrowski, standing behind them, looked vaguely threatening.

  "Can I go?" Pete said. He didn't say "please," but Phoebe thought there was a pleading tone to his voice.

  "Go."

  The word rumbled up from Adam's chest, and he moved aside, shielding Phoebe, in order to let Pete pass.

  "Thanks," Pete said, looking contrite. He ducked his eyes as the Undead Studies students watched him pass the way they'd watch a snake slither through the garden.

  He stopped once he had the foyer door open.

  "Oh, I almost forgot," he said. "Mr. Hunter said he had a surprise for you, something about one of your classmates being back. He said to meet him at the lab at the end of the east corridor. The one on the right."

  He might have smiled as he turned, Phoebe wasn't sure.

  "Grrr," Margi said, watching until Pete was out of
sight. "I really want to scratch his eyes out."

  Phoebe squirmed past Adam, feeling partly annoyed and partly proud of the way he'd tried to protect her. "At least he's done."

  Karen was already walking down the hallway. "His kind are ...never done. Come on, let's go see Sylvia."

  "Syl-vi-a!" Kevin said, drawing out all three syllables.

  They followed her down the hall, but Margi wasn't done with Pete. She held her arms out in front of her as they walked.

  "Look at me, I'm vibrating, I'm so mad. How can you not want to beat him up the moment you see him, Adam?"

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  "I ...do."

  "Why don't you?"

  "Some ...day ...maybe."

  "I really hope so. I really mean it. Let me ..."

  Phoebe cut her off. "Margi, I really think it's best if we forget about Pete Martinsburg. The sooner, the better."

  She started to explain why, but Karen had reached the lab door, which was open. And then she screamed.

  Phoebe had never heard a zombie scream before, and she never wanted to again. The shrill noise was the sound of a choking animal being tortured--it rang out and echoed through the hallways of the entire foundation at what seemed an impossibly loud volume.

  Phoebe ran the short distance to Karen, and she saw why she was screaming, and then she was screaming too.

  Karen was the first to recover.

  "Give ...me ...your phone," she said.

  "What?"