* * *
A ladleful of a grayish-brown meat-like substance slopped onto the hamburger bun on Ani’s plate, the greasy juice spilling over to entwine around pallid, boiled broccoli. Mrs. Stevens’s hands trembled, her brow creased in concentration. Even through an inch of bulletproof glass, the cafeteria worker’s wide eyes glistened with fear. She pushed the tray through the access slot and jerked her hands back. “There you go, hon,” she said in a mousy voice.
Ani carried the tray out of the line and dumped the food into the garbage, banging the plate against the side of the can to shake it all off. She put the tray onto the return conveyor and sat down next to Teah.
“This is really stupid,” Teah said. “I wouldn’t eat that if it had brains in it.”
Ani’s stomach lurched.
Yes, you would. And so would I.
She suppressed the tiny, nagging ‘brains brainsbrains’ and shifted her tongue under her bite guard. “Mom says it’s state law. Now that we’re back in school, they have to give us a hot lunch.”
Sam nodded in agreement. “That’s what my dad said. Even if we’re not going to eat it, they have to provide it. As long as it’s under eight-hundred fifty calories.”
So much for thinking green.
“I used to like ‘Sloppy Me’s,’” Joe said.
Teah rubbed her stomach. “Maybe if it were Sloppy Brains—”
“Stop,” Ani said. “Don’t talk about brains.”
Brains.
The urge was constant but not a big deal if you didn’t think about it. Her mom said it was a craving for specific chemicals found in the limbic system and neocortex. It didn’t feel like a craving; it felt like a need. Ani craved brains the way lungs craved oxygen. Need, craving, whatever it was, it was always there, lurking in her subconscious, kept in check by her mother’s drug cocktails.
“Yeah, Teah,” Devon said. “Don’t talk about brains.”
Brains.
“Don’t even mention tasty brains,” she added.
Brains.
Joe grinned. “Anyone with half a brain would figure out this is a waste of money.”
Kyle sat next to Joe and jerked his thumb at Mike, still in the line, staring at the ice cream as if it were an option. “No, he wouldn’t.”
“Watch it,” Devon said.
“Or you’ll brain me?”
Devon flipped the table with one hand and lunged, lifting Kyle by the throat. Kyle wheezed out a laugh. Leaning against the far wall, Mr. Clark lowered his visor.
“Stop!” Ani snapped. Devon set Kyle down but didn’t let go. “Stop saying...that word. Just stop.”
Kyle laughed. “Looks like someone needs her shots.”
Chapter
5
Ani didn’t bother to breathe the chilly September air. She watched the sun clear the trees above East Hill. The leaves were just turning, splashes of yellow and red mingling with the sea of green. An early flock of geese flew by, their asymmetric ‘V’ pointed south.
Ah, the joys of PE, week two.
She sat a cautious ten feet from the electrified fence. Tiffany Daniels walked up on the other side, her shy smile as out of place as her normal appearance. A sentry watched from the guard tower, his sniper rifle aimed in their general direction, but the barrel pointed toward the sky.
Tiffany had changed her image since graduation—her hair had reverted from black to its natural brown, her understated makeup complimented the single stud in her nose, and she no longer went by “Fey.” She wore the black pants and white shirt of retail peons everywhere. For her part, Ani had gotten rid of all of her facial piercings, wore a teal sweater and jeans, and heavy makeup that masked the facial scars never quite fixed by Dr. Banerjee’s ministrations.
Tiffany followed her gaze to the geese. “Hey, Ani, you know why one side of the ‘V’ is longer than the other?”
Ani didn’t. “No. Why?”
“More geese on that side.”
Ani looked at her. The corners of Tiff’s mouth betrayed the traces of an impish grin. “Hilarious. You should do stand-up.”
Tiff picked at the grass. “Nah. The Dollar Mart has me doing too many important things to make time for performing. I’d have to go on the road, and then I’d miss work and stuff.”
Please, not another pity-party.
“How’s Chuck?” Tiffany had met her boyfriend when exchanging “favors” for drugs, just like half the girls in the town.
At least you keep him away from the high school.
Tiff nodded. “Good, he’s good. Has an interview at Ace on Friday.”
“Rocking the helpful place, is he?” I’ll believe he’s going straight when I see it. Ani heard a commotion and looked as an unmarked black sedan pulled through the front gate. The line of protestors screamed and shook signs from the legally-determined fifty feet away.
“Yup,” Tiff said. “He’s been clean for two months. We even quit smoking.”
Soldiers closed the gate as the car pulled up to the main entrance. Two men in black suits got out; one opened the passenger door. A blonde woman, pretty but in a skirt a bit too short for her age, clopped up the sidewalk and met Dr. Banerjee and Superintendent Salter at the front door. They went inside, leaving the car to idle. With nothing else to see, Ani turned her attention back to Tiffany.
She raised her eyebrow and realized that Tiff probably couldn’t see it under the helmet. “Everything?”
“Yeah, everything.” She twirled a blade of grass between her fingers and blushed. “Mostly.”
“It’s a start—”
“We’re getting an apartment,” Tiff blurted.
Ani sat back. Oh, you stupid girl. “Really? Where?”
“Water Street. Near where the Lair used to be.” After Dylan had burned the Dragon’s Lair to the ground, Ani’s old boss Travis had relocated it from the outskirts closer to what passed for downtown in Ohneka Falls.
“Not a bad area.” If you like ancient houses split into six or eight apartments.
Tiffany shrugged. “It’s cheap. We can save for school.” Tiff talked about going back to college a lot, but never mentioned a major or a career plan.
A rock bounced across the grass between Tiff and the fence. Over with the protesters, Jeremy Washburn sat on his haunches, picking up larger pieces of gravel from next to the sidewalk. A regular at the Lair, Ani had spent hours listening to him complain about bad dice rolls when she’d worked there, pretending to commiserate without ever caring about his little toy soldiers. Now his face was twisted in pure hate.
Tiff snatched up the rock and returned his glare with rolled eyes. “Think I can hit him in the forehead from here?”
“Don’t even think about it,” Ani said. “We don’t need a confrontation.”
Tiff tossed the rock in the air, caught it, then dropped it and pulled out her cell phone. “I got to go anyway. I got work at ten thirty.”
Jeremy didn’t approach but didn’t throw another rock either.
“Yeah,” Ani said. “Gym class is almost over. Time to get out of the sunlight.”
Tiff pulled in a breath, stopping Ani in mid-turn. “They’ll find a cure, Ani. Between your mom and Banerjee, this’ll all be over soon.”
Ani gave her a sad smile. “I know.”
Just like last year. And the two years before.
Tears welled in Tiffany’s eyes.
It felt weird to envy them.
* * *
Sarah Romero sighed and leaned against the piano. “Look, sweetie, I don’t think there’s anything Mr. Bariteau can teach you anymore anyway. You’re not exactly at the high school band level anymore.”
Ani pounded the ivory keys with her fists. The dissonant noise reverberated through their apartment. She knew she was sulking and hated it. “Don’t sell him short, Mom. He’s really, really good. Like, concert pianist good.”
Sarah gave her the ‘someday you’ll be as old and as wise as me’ look. “If he’s that good, why is he teaching high
school?”
Ani bit her lip. “Maybe he likes it.”
Her mom’s blank stare carried through “uncomfortably long” and straight into “creepy.”
“Sure, sweetie. I’m sure that’s the reason.”
Ani crossed her arms and didn’t bother trying not to pout.
Her mom threw up her hands. “It doesn’t matter anyway. We don’t have the personnel for pull-outs—it’s hard enough trying to figure out a way to get you girls mainstreamed into some curricular classes.”
“Music is a curricular class, Mom.” She jammed out the first ten bars of Rachmaninov’s Concerto No. 3, too loud and too fast. She held the pedal and spoke over the dying final chord. “It’s as important as anything else.”
Her mom frowned. “It’s not math. It’s not science.”
“Maybe that’s why it’s so important.”
Come on, Mom. Just this once, consider the remote possibility that you might be wrong.
Her mom sighed. “I’ll look into it.” Ani grinned but didn’t dare hope. Her mom held up a finger. “No promises.”
“Thanks, Mom!”
* * *
Joe rolled his good eye toward Ani, then out across what the other kids were calling the Zombie Yard. “I’m bored.” He looked at Kyle. “Are you bored?”
“Nah,” Kyle said, scratching his name in the dirt. He’d been using the same stick for a week, and the ground was littered with ruts. “I’d rather be out here than in there.”
You need an imagination to be bored. Ani looked up at the clouds, gray and ominous and fast-moving. “That might not last.”
Kyle’s gaze followed hers, then dropped earthward. He lifted his chin toward the fence. “Hey. What’s up with that?”
Teah stood near the fence, almost too close, talking to a guy on the other side in dark glasses and a black-and-yellow Pittsburgh Steelers hat and jacket. A quick glance told Ani what she already knew: the proximity had drawn the attention of two snipers, one from each of the corner towers. Lydia stood nearby, but far enough to give them some privacy, huddled in a wool sweater that couldn’t provide more than psychological warmth.
“Bill,” Sam said, voicing Ani’s thought.
“No,” Joe said. “He wouldn’t be dumb enough to come here—”
“There aren’t brain cells in what he’s thinking with,” Devon said.
“Don’t be gross,” Sam said.
Devon’s eyes flickered to Mike, then to Ani, and then locked on the grass. She scowled. “Don’t be naive.”
Kyle flipped to his stupid voice. “Don’t be hatin’!” He grinned. They ignored him, so he went back to scratching at the ground.
“That says, ‘Kyle,’” Mike said.
Kyle aped him and laughed. Mike laughed with him, not knowing he was the joke. Devon’s fist hit the concrete step hard enough to break off a chunk. White powder sprayed into the air.
“Jesus,” Sam said. “Are you okay?”
Fists still clenched, Devon ground her teeth on her bite guard. She kept her voice almost too low to hear. “It was the sidewalk or Kyle’s face. He’s really starting to piss me off.” She turned her hand over and inspected her fingers. The bones on three fingers were exposed; at least one was cracked. The knuckle on her middle finger looked shifted somehow, off-center. There was no blood. “Ow.”
“Miss Romero’s going to be pissed,” Sam said.
“It’ll heal.” Devon flexed her fingers, teeth still grinding.
“The bones won’t,” Ani said. “You’ll need surgery. Pins.”
Devon shrugged. “I’ll just tell her I could have hit something softer.” She looked at Kyle, then back at her hand. He didn’t seem to have noticed, or to care if he had. “It’s better—”
“Hey, Teah!” Joe yelled. They looked up. “Don’t touch the fence!”
Teah stood inches from the inner fence, her outstretched hand trembling. Bill stood at the outer fence in the same position, staring under the brim of his hat. A guard on the inside jogged toward them.
“Is that a suicide pact, or are they just stupid?” Devon asked.
Sam covered her face with her hands. “Why not both?”
The guard called out. “Sir, step away from the fence.”
“I’m on public property,” Bill snapped.
The guard grabbed his arm. He jerked it away. He spun as if to take a swing, but the soldier had choked up the assault rifle and aimed it at his head. “I’m going to have to insist, sir.”
Bill’s face paled and he took a step back. With a frustrated growl he got in his car and peeled out, the back end fishtailing down the asphalt in a plume of burnt rubber. Teah sulked back to them, a sad smile on her face, as the guard returned to his post. Sam hugged her, and Devon stalked to the other end of the yard as Teah broke down. Ani followed, leaving behind the sound of Teah’s blubbering and Sam’s comforting murmur.
Devon stood near the inner fence, her arms crossed, glaring at the picketers. Ani put a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t respond.
“Are you okay?” Ani asked.
Devon shrugged without looking at her.
“Is there anything I can do?”
Devon breathed in, then sighed. “No.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
They stood there in uncomfortable silence, Devon staring at the ground, Ani trying to ignore the newest witticism from the anti-zombie picketers. “Hey hey! Ho ho! Zombie kids have got to go!” They’d been chanting it since the beginning of PE.
Still, it beats dodgeball.
Mr. Benson’s whistle sounded behind them. They headed inside, back to the realm of Mr. Giggles.
Chapter
6
It was a mid-September Sunday, but the thermometer flirted with eighty degrees. As Ani and her mother walked, Ani held an umbrella over their heads to keep the sun off. Her presence scattered the mosquitoes and flies brought out by the warm weather, leaving her mom bite-free.
“Are you ready for Tuesday?” Sarah asked, kicking a cobble down the sidewalk.
“Yeah,” Ani said. “My skirt-suit’s in the closet. Can I borrow your brown flats?”
Her mom frowned. “Don’t you think heels would be more appropriate? This is the district court, not a classroom.”
Ani bit her lip. “Um, have you ever tried walking in heels and leg irons?”
Her mom laughed, a rare and wonderful sound. “Okay, good point. Flats it is.”
To the left of the sidewalk, something white lay in the grass, overwhelmed by a buzzing cloud of flies. “Remember this isn’t a trial, but you’ll be under oath. You have to keep your story straight, and—”
“I know, I know. Don’t give details unless I have to.” Her mom angled off the sidewalk to approach the white thing. “Don’t mention anything about ZV prior to prom. Claim ignorance on everything Dylan-related.”
“...and shoulder everything research-related onto Rishi—Colonel Banerjee. I got back into ZV research after the prom.”
The flies scattered as her mom reached down. Something brown tumbled out of the white thing when she held it up. A Burger King wrapper, with maggots abandoning ship as fast as they could wriggle.
“Right. I’ve got the timeline down.”
Her mom shook out the wrapper and crushed it in her fist. “How would this even....” With no garbage can in sight, she stuffed it into her pocket. “Is your homework done?”
Ani shook her head. “Not yet. I have some math and government. I’ll do it after dinner.”
“Okay. We should probably get you out of the sun.”
Ani smiled. “More you than me. Sun damage is cured every night for us dead kids.”
Her mom pursed her lips. “That was quite an improvement.”
They walked in companionable silence back to the dormitory.
* * *
“Oh, lovely,” Sam said. “Are they making up their own commandments now?”
Ani looked across the
Zombie Yard to where Teah sat, fourteen feet and a world away from Bill on the outside. Bill still looked suspicious in his identity-hiding hat, sunglasses, and coat. Behind the picket, the crowd was down to fourteen dour jerks with nothing better to do, including Lydia’s old pastor and the rock-thrower, Jeremy. They had two new signs: “The Wages of Sin is Death!” and “Thou Shalt not Lie with the Dead!!!”
“I think the exclamation points really make their point,” Sam said. “They should drive it home with an ‘lol.’”
Joe looked up from his sidewalk drawing and called out across the yard. “They should have one that says, ‘Anyone who has a better time than me is going to hell.’”
Lydia smiled. “‘We hate kids with cancer, too!’”
“Will you people shut up?” Devon said. “I’m trying to study.” She glared at them over her economics textbook.
“How’s your hand?” Lydia asked.
“It’s fine.” She flexed her fingers. “Good as new, near enough.”
Lydia’s eyes widened. “Does it hurt?”
Devon stared at her until she averted her gaze, then looked back down at her book.
Ani walked over to Joe. The concrete slab that once contained a merry-go-round was covered with chalk pictures. Flowers, people, horses, whales, even Jim Morrison, mouth open wide, out of which flew the Starship Enterprise.
“Wow,” Ani said. “Did you do all that today?”
He touched up the edge of an orca with blue pastel. “Nope. I started it last week. Now I’m just adding little details.”
“It’s...incredible, Joe.” I had no idea you could do this. “Too bad it’s going to wash away in the rain.”
Joe smiled up at her, shielding his eyes against the sun. “I think that’s why it’s my favorite medium. It’s transitory. Like us. Ugly or beautiful, soon enough chalk art is just washed away.”
I’d never have thought of that in a million years.
“Especially if you pee on it,” Kyle said from behind them.
* * *
At lunch, Ani sat with the boys after throwing away her limp hot dog and four soggy tater tots. Joe broke out a deck of cards and dealt—euchre, as always. Ani expected Kyle to complain about Mike as a partner, but he didn’t. Ani wasn’t very good, and neither was Joe. Mike used to be, and Kyle still was. Maybe he liked the handicap.
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