The other kids stared at her, their expressions ranging from horror to reverence to disgust, but Mr. Gursslin never once looked at her. She raised her hand twice to ask questions, and he ignored her. By the end of the lesson she was so angry and hurt that she couldn’t concentrate on her notes. It was a relief when the soldier collared her and led her out of the room three minutes before the bell.
In the hall they shackled her to Devon and Sam, and three of them shuffled through their familiar steel door as the bell signaled class change. Rage swallowed her relief at the familiar confines. Since when am I agoraphobic? The similar expressions on Devon and Sam’s faces didn’t help.
She gasped when she saw Kyle.
He was chained to his desk. Metal rings protruded from his arms, legs, and torso, surrounded by ugly pink scars. The links were connected by a chain, limiting his motions to a couple of inches in any direction.
Mom did this. A second thought overshadowed her first. Dr. Banerjee ordered it. She wanted to hate him for it. She wanted to hate her mother. Would I do any different, faced with Kyle the zombie? Was there any other option? She took her seat and looked at Mr. Foster.
Huh.
She’d just noticed he was back. Pale and sweating in a wrinkled blue shirt and outdated red paisley tie, he didn’t look any worse for his previous meltdown. He returned her smile—with a giggle, of course—and continued with his lesson on “whole reading,” whatever that was.
Ani looked over her math notes, smiling at the fact that she didn’t quite understand all of it. About time I learned something.
Mr. Benson arrived fifty minutes early for the end of school, chained them all in a row, and marched them through the halls. Before, they’d shuffled along, restricted by the chains that connected their ankles. With Kyle’s new predicament, they couldn’t move more than a few inches per step. Nobody said anything, though Mike snorted in frustration more than once. When they shuffled into Mrs. Weller’s room, Ani tried not to stare.
Mrs. Weller’s desk had been moved from the side to the front of the room, where both it and the Smart Board could be surrounded by vertical steel bars. A single door stood at the far end, held fast by an enormous padlock. She sneered as they entered and outright snarled at Mr. Benson.
“This sucks,” she said.
Mr. Benson didn’t even shrug. Instead he fastened the students’ leg chains to an iron rung protruding from the floor in the back of the room and walked out.
They stood in silence under the imperious, bloodshot, dead gaze of Mrs. Weller. She grabbed the bars and shook them, reminding Ani of nothing so much as a caged monkey. After a rage-filled moment she froze in place and smiled. “Any of you kids got the key?”
Kyle laughed. Teah frowned. Mike said, “No, Mrs. Weller.”
“Letting you out would get us all killed,” Sam said.
Mrs. Weller snorted. “They can’t kill the dead.”
Ani frowned. “Don’t you want to live?”
Mrs. Weller flopped into her chair and cradled her head in her hands. Her efforts at mumbling were spoiled by the helmet—every word was intelligible. “It doesn’t matter what I want. I’m already dead. And now I’m in another cage, but this one’s at work.”
“Only for now,” Sam said.
Mrs. Weller slammed her hands down on the desk. In the ensuing silence she turned toward them. “Do you really believe that? Really?”
“My mom...” Ani started.
“...is a coldhearted bitch who cares more about her research than her subjects.”
Ani wanted to contradict her, but memories of the burn room in the basement, of Dylan and old men deliberately infected so that cure research could go forward, kept her silent. She had no idea how many innocent people Dr. Banerjee had killed over the past two decades, and her mom was party to much of it.
“Right?” Mrs. Weller pressed.
“You know what?” Devon asked. “I’ve got something to live for even if you don’t. You want to be a dried-up old hag, that’s your problem.”
“I’m thirty-seven!” Mrs. Weller snapped.
“As she said,” Kyle butted in. Though she couldn’t see it, Ani almost heard his stupid grin. In the corner of her eye, she saw Lydia punch his shoulder.
“Look,” Sam said. “This might not matter to you, but it matters to us. I—we—believe that we’re going to get through this. And that means we need to finish school. You’re our teacher.”
She sighed, then lifted her head. “I forgot. You’re seventeen, aren’t you?”
Sam shook her head. “Almost nineteen. I was seventeen at prom.”
“Close enough. You have to be young to be that optimistic.”
Joe nudged Ani and smiled at Mrs. Weller. “If we pout, would that make you feel better?”
“Just read Catcher in the Rye or something,” she replied.
“Mike doesn’t know how,” Kyle said.
Neither do you. She glanced at Devon’s broken hand.
Ani opened her mouth, closed it, and tried again. “We didn’t bring our readers.”
Mrs. Weller sighed. “No, of course you didn’t.”
* * *
That night, Joe plopped down on the couch next to Ani. A grin split his face as he leaned toward her. She eyed him askance, finished reading the paragraph, put a digital bookmark in The Catcher in the Rye, then met his gaze.
His good eye swallowed the fluorescent lights without a hint of sparkle; his bad glistened white under their glare. She returned his smile. When he didn’t say anything, she took the initiative.
“What?”
He put his hands on his knees, bringing his face to within inches of hers. “You hear about lunch?”
“No. Have they decided to stop wasting food?”
His grin broadened. “Nope. We get full, hot meals every day. Mmm mmm mmm!”
“Are they adding brains?” She just managed not to drool at the thought.
“I wish! But no, not that, either.” His grin strained into a grimace as he held it.
“Joe?” She patted his cheek, then grabbed a tuft of almost-beard. “You’re freaking me out here a bit.”
If anything his grin got bigger. “Location, location, location.”
She let go. “Not the cafeteria?”
Lydia shambled into the lounge. “Hey, we can have lunch in Mr. Cummings’ room!”
Joe pouted at her. “Awww, you ruined my surprise.”
Her face crumbled as she whirled out of the room. “I can’t do anything right!”
Joe and Ani exchanged glances.
“Wow,” Joe said. “What got into her?”
Ani sighed. “She’s sad on Teah’s behalf. And these new injections really let the hormones shine through.” It was true enough. After two years of dulled feelings, even a semblance of normal teenager had her scratching at the walls.
“I hadn’t noticed,” he said. “Though maybe it’s why I like sitting next to you so much.”
Despite herself Ani smiled. “Maybe that’s it. Couldn’t be the company.”
“Nope,” Joe agreed. “Just hormones, raging their way through my bloodstream.” He looked toward the door. “Maybe I ought to get me one of those.”
“A doorway?”
“A bloodstream.” He inched toward her so that his knee brushed hers, and her heart would have fluttered if it could have. Oh, shit. She felt the crush wheedling its way into her brain despite her best intentions. “So anyway, the cafeteria ladies are all freaked and threatening to quit, and Mr. C said he doesn’t mind, so the board said it’s cool if we go in there instead.”
Her brain wouldn’t let her be anything but conscious of the contact between them. “That’s nice of them. The board, that is. Not the—” She shifted away from him just as her mom walked through the door.
“Bath time, kids. Lights out in twenty minutes.”
Joe slid to his feet as Ani looked back at her e-reader. “Let me finish this chapter, Mom.”
“Okay. M
ake it snappy.” She disappeared out the door.
Ani didn’t look up as Joe lurched out of the room, but it took effort. Dammit. I don’t need this.
Alone, she smiled.
* * *
The next day proved Joe and Lydia right. After three hours trying to get Kyle to care about math, or English, or history, and only two hysterical fits from Teah, they found themselves deposited in Mr. Cummings’s room. Shackled to the bars of his cage, they couldn't move more than a few feet in any direction.
“Nice cell,” Kyle said.
“Nice...body art, Kyle.” Mr. Cummings said. He wrapped his knuckle on the cage. “The boss says it’s there to protect us from the students. I guess a couple of them were getting funny ideas about who should and shouldn’t still be walking around. The Good Doctor reserves the right of termination for himself.”
“Seriously?” Ani asked.
“Seriously, as in that’s what they told me.” He banged on one of the bars with his fist. “I don’t believe it either.” Nobody said anything for a minute. “I never realized how much I’d miss being able to go make copies, or take a leak.”
Sam scowled. “So what do you think the real reason is?”
“Oh, I couldn’t begin to speculate on the wisdom of the school board. Not like they’ll consult me anyway. Article One, Section Nine, Clause Two doesn’t hold a lot of weight for the unliving.” None of them said anything. “Habeas corpus applies to corpuses, not corpses.” He stared off into space. “But I can understand that, even if I hate this.”
“We’re not contagious,” Devon said. “We’re not mindless. We’re just sick. There’s no reason to quarantine us like this anymore.”
Mr. Cummings’s lips peeled back from his bite guard. “For now. Until the serum wears off or the virus adapts. You can’t tell me you’d hold back if they brought in a bowl of brains.”
Ani looked at the floor and quashed a feeling of guilt for her reaction in court. Everyone insisted that it wasn’t her fault, that she did great under the circumstances, but she couldn’t help feeling that she could have done better.
She jumped as the door banged open. A soldier wheeled in a cart laden with plates of watery spaghetti and gray-green peas. He seemed more concerned about the food than the room full of zombies.
“Morning,” he said with a weak smile. He left the cart with a nod, walked out of the room, and shut the door.
Ani couldn’t not notice how cute he was—strong jaw with a hint of stubble, bright blue eyes, and just a touch of baby face. She’d never considered herself a sucker for a man in uniform, but she might have to make an exception.
“Wow,” Lydia said. “He’s cute.”
“Wasn’t just me, then?” Devon asked.
“No,” Joe said. “You’re cute, too.”
Ani felt a stab of jealousy, but Devon ignored him.
“How do you guys rate food?” Mr. Cummings asked, drawing their attention back to his desk. “They never bring me any food.”
“State law,” Sam said. “They have to provide a hot meal.”
“Can’t you just bring one from home?”
Devon laughed. “Yeah, we’ll just have Ani’s mom whip us up a couple of peanut butter and brain sandwiches. Hold the peanut butter.”
“And the bread,” Teah said.
Ani almost didn’t hear Lydia’s murmur. “I’m so hungry.”
Sam grabbed Lydia by the helmet and manhandled her backward, slamming her head into the cage bars. “Don’t.” She barked the word, then lowered her voice as her eyes flitted from the burn crew in the back of the room to the camera on the wall. “Don’t say that. Ever.”
“But—”
Her helmet rang against the bars as Sam slammed her head back again. “STOP IT. Jokes are one thing.”
Mr. Cummings raised an eyebrow. “Ladies? Is there a problem?”
“You stupid, stupid girl,” Sam mumbled. “Just shut up.”
Lydia turned her wide eyes to Mr. Cummings. “We’re just talking.”
Sam let her go.
“Good,” Mr. Cummings said. “Then the boys in the back can take their fingers off the triggers of those napalm-throwers.” He smiled at the silver-suited men who stood ready to incinerate them all.
If anything, the sudden scrutiny made the burn team twitchier, so Ani turned to Mr. Cummings. “So what do we do for econ? Stay here after lunch?”
He nodded. “Yup. The three of you stay, the rest go back to Special Dead.” While he talked, Lydia and Teah murmured to one another. Mike smiled at the burn crew.
“I wish you wouldn’t call it that,” Sam said.
“What’s in a name?” Joe asked. “A rose, by any other name....” He shrugged. “What’s the end of the line?”
“...would smell as sweet,” Ani said.
“All I can smell is that spaghetti,” Joe said. “Yuck.”
Chapter
13
On Open House day the Special Dead weren’t even allowed to go to school. Ani found the time more productive than usual—without ponderous clanking from room to room and putting up with Mr. Foster’s lame attempts to include them all in what amounted to fifth-grade content, she finished Catcher in the Rye, re-wrote the trill overtop “Straight, No Chaser” into something that actually worked, memorized ten out of twenty trig identities for next week’s test, and started adapting Skrillex’s “Breakin’ A Sweat” for piano.
She took a break before tackling the point when the music transitioned into distorted noise. She wandered outside and smiled to the guard on the tower.
“Hi, Ani,” he called. His breath fogged in the early October air. The temperature had dropped thirty degrees since noon, though the cold didn’t touch her. She found it a little sad that he knew her name, but she didn’t know his. Do you have a family? Friends? Hobbies? She waved again and wandered along the fence; his rifle tracked her movements. Whoever he was, he wasn’t protecting her from the world.
On her third lap, the moon broke the horizon, sparkling off of a dew-covered cobweb suspended between two bars on the electric fence. She kept her distance from the sluggish black spider, not wanting to disturb its work as it wrapped a late-season dragonfly in a tangle of sticky web. Its tenacity impressed her.
You shouldn’t be out in this cold, Ms. Spider.
She heard a telltale shuffle-step limp in the grass but didn’t turn around. The spider clambered over its prey, spinning even as the cold leached the last vitality from its body. Arms closed around her waist, and she leaned back into Joe’s embrace.
“Howdy,” he said.
“Howdy yourself,” she said. “Am I in your way?”
“I was wondering what you were looking at. Poor thing.”
Conscious of her head against his cheek, she nodded. “Soon it’ll be too cold to spin. She might not survive the night.”
He shook. It took her a minute to recognize the laughter.
“What?” she asked.
“I meant the dragonfly.”
“Oh.”
They stood in silence for a while. She wanted to enjoy the moment but couldn’t help trying to categorize it. They weren’t sharing warmth, so it had to be something else. Something more.
“What are we doing, Joe?”
He didn’t reply at first. “Watching a spider freeze to death trying to eat a meal fifty times bigger than it?”
She hugged herself closer to him. “Why?”
“There’s nothing on TV?”
She smiled. “Could be.”
“You know your mom’s going to come along any second. It’s the law.”
She stiffened. “Let her.”
“Seriously?”
She pulled away, careful not to get any closer to the fence. They locked eyes. “Of course not. The only thing that kills a mood faster than you bringing up Mom is her actual presence.” She couldn’t help but return his lopsided smile.
“Good thing we’re just talking, then.”
“Good thin
g. I mean, if we weren’t just talking, what would we be doing?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Transposing Skrillex to classical instruments?”
She gasped. “You were creeping!”
He put a hand over his heart. “As God as my witness, I’m guilty as hell.”
“Well, then, Mr. Admitted-Creeper—”
“Ani?” Her mom’s voice rang out across the yard. Joe melted into what passed for shadows under the artificial light.
“Yeah?” She squinted against the beams of light stabbing outward from above the lab’s main entrance and saw nothing.
“Bath time!”
“Okay!”
As she headed in, she saw no sign of Joe. Not for lack of looking.
* * *
Ani had one foot in the bath when the doorbell rang. She pulled her leg out of the icy, slimy liquid, toweled it off, and put on a bath robe. Her mom beat her to the door.
“Hi, Miss Romero,” Sam said. “Can I talk to Ani for a couple seconds?”
Her mom frowned but opened the door the rest of the way. “You’re both supposed to be in the bath.”
Sam nodded. “I will be. I just need to talk to her for a few minutes.” Her hair fell in golden curls around her face. Ani ran her hand over her scalp, no longer self-conscious about the stringy wisps that remained of her own hair but not in love with the situation either.
Ani smiled at her. “What’s up?”
Sam jerked her head down the hallway. Ani followed her out the door. In her mind’s eye she saw her mother’s disapproving scowl as she sauntered barefoot into “public” in a filmy bath robe.
The fluorescent lights bathed the hall in a medicinal halo, reflecting off the green-and-beige tiles that snaked through the complex in an endless series of hallways and rooms. Ani didn’t know how many miles of underground tunnels made up the labyrinth or even how many stories deep it went underground, but she knew the public would be stunned at the complex beneath the unassuming collection of modest brick buildings.
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