Kiss of Life (9 page)

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"What did you think about Tommy joining the team?" "I can't lie," he said. "I wasn't really happy about it. I don't think it was the right thing to do. I still don't." "Why?"

"Because," and again Pete chose his words carefully, "because he couldn't play. I didn't think it was fair. Kids work really hard to get some playing time and qualify for the team, and this guy gets to play just because he's dead? Just because the school wants to prove how liberal and politically correct they are? It wasn't right."

"So you're saying Tommy was given playing time just because he was differently biotic?"

"Of course," Tommy said. "He couldn't move, he couldn't run. Last one around the track every single time. No disrespect intended, kids who can't play shouldn't be allowed to suit up. It isn't right."

"Do lots of kids get cut from the team?"

He knew by the way she asked the question that she already knew the answer.

"No. Not really."

"The one game he played," she said, "did he play much of the game?"

"It's the principle," he said. "If you can't play, you shouldn't be allowed to play." "So it made you angry."

"Sure I was angry," he said. "But he only played the one game, so I let it go."

"Why do you think you were so angry?"

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"Because it wasn't right." "What wasn't right?"

He considered throwing it out on the table. It wasn't right that the dead could pretend they were alive. It wasn't right that Julie was dead and Tommy was not completely dead. It wasn't right that little Miss Scarypants would choose a worm burger over him. None of it was right.

But what he said was just a reiteration of what he'd said before. "Like I said. It wasn't right that he got to play while a more deserving kid had to sit on the bench. People work too hard for that playing time."

"Like you."

"Yes, like me. I busted my ass to make sure I would be on the field for game day."

"You've worked hard today, too," Angela said. "I think this was a good start. Let's go out into the office and I'll call Mr. Davidson so you can start on the community service portion of your sentencing. Wait here a moment."

Pete watched her leave the office, wondering how he was supposed to be able to survive another twenty-three weeks of this. He heard Angela's voice over the intercom asking for Mr. Davidson. He looked around the office--shelves of books, the two chairs, a low table with a pitcher of water and two cups. A print on the wall of a New England coastline, a ship in the distance.

She returned with a tall man who had a bald, lozenge-shaped head. The man looked down at Pete in his chair with all the expression and warmth of the living dead. He was wearing

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a blue windbreaker with the Hunter Foundation insignia on it, and he wore a belt which had a Nextel clipped on the left hip and a handgun clipped on the right.

"Pete," Angela said, "this is Duke Davidson, the Director of Operations here at the foundation. He will be responsible for overseeing your community service hours."

Pete wasn't sure if he was supposed to get up and shake his hand, but Davidson's narrowed stare kept him in his seat. It seemed like the tall man was licking his lips at the prospect of putting him to work.

Pete considered making a crack about the handgun, but in light of his reasons for being there, it didn't seem well-advised.

"Hi," Pete said, and he said it in a way that he hoped conveyed that he didn't intend to be any trouble.

"Two hundred hours," Davidson said. "The clock starts now."

"I'll see you next week, Pete," Angela told him as he followed Davidson out of her office. "Thanks," he mumbled.

"The term 'Operations' has a broad context here at the Hunter Foundation," Davidson said, his long strides echoing in heavy, booted footfalls that resounded off the shiny tiled floors and concrete corridors. Davidson liked people to know he was coming, it seemed. "It means security. It means care and maintenance of the physical plant. It means utilities, it means plumbing, it means grounds keeping and whatever else it takes to keep the foundation running as seamlessly as possible."

He stopped at a door, withdrew a ring of keys and keycards

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from his belt, and plugged one of the cards into a slot beside the door, which clicked open. Davidson pushed the door open and flicked on the light, revealing a walk-in supply closet, rows of cleaning supplies, lightbulbs, and packs of C-fold towels on gunmetal gray racks.

"It also means janitorial work," he said, wheeling out a yellow mop bucket and wringer. "Especially in your case."

"Pretty high security for some cleaning supplies."

Davidson reached for some of those cleaning supplies. Pete, standing behind him in the frame of the door, looked at the heavy weapon on the man's hip, a single leather strap securing it in place.

"You ever want to cause some damage to a place," Davidson said without turning around, "start a fire in the janitor's closet." "I'll keep it in mind," Pete said.

"Good," Davidson, pouring some liquid into the bucket. "Use this stuff whenever I tell you to mop out the bathrooms. If you reach for my sidearm I will break your wrist. For starters."

"I ... I wasn't going to," Pete said.

Davidson looked up at him. "Just so we're clear." There was a sink at the back of the closet with a spray hose that Davidson used to spray hot water in the bucket, sending a lemon-scented steam up from the bucket and into Pete's nostrils.

"A few glugs of the stuff will do it. I don't care how exact you are; we aren't the scientists here."

"Right," Pete said.

"There are cameras all over the facility. Most of them you

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will never see, and some of the ones you do see don't really work. I watch the monitors. My staff watches the monitors. Some of your school chums get paid to watch the monitors while they're earning college prep credits. They'll be watching you mop the floors to pay off your debt to society. I'm sure some of them would like nothing better than to catch you doing something that you're not supposed to be doing. I'm sure some of them would like nothing better than to catch you doing something that would actually get you sent to prison, instead of working out your sentence by mopping the floors and cleaning the toilets that the living ones use."

Pete thought that Davidson must hang around dead people a lot: there was sarcasm in his words, but you'd never know it from his inflection.

Pete thought that there was something else in Davidson's words as well, some message hidden beneath his flat stare and deadpan delivery, something waiting for Pete to decode.

"I'll be careful," Pete said.

Davidson tossed a pair of green latex gloves against Pete's chest.

"Careful," he said. "Yes. You be careful. Get that mop over by the wall and wheel the bucket out into the hall. We're going to take a walk to the monitor room so I can get you a jacket."

Pete obeyed without comment. Davidson followed him out and popped his card back into the slot. The lock clicked.

The corridors at the foundation reminded Pete of the corridors at his grade school: long windowless tunnels of gray, the illumination from the fluorescent lighting above dim and

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shadowy. Every other panel was out, Pete noticed, and he wondered if the foundation was trying to save on its utility bill or that maybe the dead didn't need all that light. The dead, he thought.

They only passed one office on their long walk. Pete glanced into the open doorway and saw Angela talking to his old pal Pinky McKnockers, the chubby and chesty friend of Phoebe Scarypants. There was another girl in the office, but all Pete could see of her was a billowing cloud of flaming red hair as she sat in front of a computer screen on the wall opposite the door. Pinky's own hair, a thick nest of rigid pink spikes, made it look like a huge sea urchin was sitting on her head.

She looked up as they passed, and he caught the look of sudden recognition under the shellac-thick makeup around her eyes.

He winked at her.

I've still got my list, honey, he thought, remembering the expression on her face as he'd spread out the Undead Studies student list where the name "Evan Talbot" had been crossed out. She looked down at her desk so swiftly that his new boss noticed and glanced up at him. Pete suddenly took a great interest in steering the mop bucket to its destination.

"You aren't listening," Davidson said.

"Excuse me?"

"Cameras everywhere. You think punk stuff like that is going to endear you to anyone?" "What do you mean?"

Davidson stopped and turned with such abruptness that

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Pete almost plowed into him with the bucket. That's all I need, he thought, to slosh my boss's shiny black boots.

"I don't think you're getting it," Davidson said. "Do you want to get away with murder or not?"

Pete looked up at him, not sure how he should respond to that.

"You have an opportunity here," Davidson said. "Don't squander it."

"Okay," Pete said. "Okay."

Davidson regarded him a moment longer before turning on his heel.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

WHY DOES HE
always have to be the welcome wagon? Phoebe thought, seeing Takayuki perched like a vulture on the railing of the slumping porch. He lifted his head enough to glare at their approaching car, his dark hair brushed back from his face. "He looks friendly," her dad said.

"That's Takayuki," Margi said from the backseat. "He's not." "I was being sarcastic." "I know."

He rolled the vehicle to a stop, then got out of the car to help Margi and her extract Adam from the backseat. Phoebe thought she heard Takayuki make a noise of disgust, but when she turned toward him he dropped to the ground and headed off into the woods, the rusted chains of his motorcycle jacket somehow failing to make any noise as he passed.

"Hey, Adam!" came a cheer from the house, as some of the

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zombies--Karen, Colette, and Tommy among them, all wearing absurd pointed party hats--came out to welcome him. Tommy made fleeting eye contact with her, and she recalled their conversation--all of his questions about how she felt about Adam. Turning, she waved at Mal, a zombie who rivaled Adam in sheer size, and he waggled his fingers back at her. She leaned into Adam, wondering if Tommy was still watching but refusing to look at him.

Thorny was already at the house, along with Norm Lathrop--who had been Margi's date on homecoming night-- Denny Mackenzie, and Gary Greene. Phoebe saw Gary hide a can of beer behind his back upon seeing her father.

Holding his hand, Phoebe looked for Adam's reaction, and for a long time there was none--but then she saw his mouth tic upward.

She breathed a long sigh of relief. Thank you, God, she thought.

"I didn't know Norm was going to be here," Margi whispered. "We haven't talked much since the dance."

"Hi, Margi!" Norm said, waving at her.

"No better time than the present," Phoebe said, nudging her forward.

"Phoebe," her dad said. "I need to talk to you for a minute."

Phoebe didn't want to let go of Adam, not even for a second, but she joined her father over by the car, watching as Karen and Colette each took one of Adam's arms and guided him up the rickety porch steps.

"Phoebe, was that beer I saw in that boy's hand?"

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She held her breath as Adam tottered at the top of the stairs near Takayuki's perch, then let it out when a gentle tug from Karen righted him again. She was about to say "what beer?" But she decided to go with honesty.

"I think so."

"You know how I feel about you going to parties where there's going to be drinking."

"I do. I didn't know that there would be drinking. I really didn't think there would be any trad biotic kids here except for Margi and Thorny."

Her dad looked at her and she could almost hear the wheels of his mind whirring.

"The living impaired kids don't drink, do they?"

"They're called differently biotic now, Dad." she said. "And no, they don't drink, or eat, or sleep. Except Karen. She'll eat a piece of fruit every so often, but I think she does it just to be weird."

Her father opened his mouth and abruptly closed it. "Do you know that boy?"

"Gary Greene," she said. "Thorny must have invited him-- they're both on the football team. I've maybe talked to him twice."

He nodded, looked back at the house, then at the woods where Tak had disappeared.

"Dad," she said, "I'm not going to have anything to drink. I don't drink. I'm here for Adam."

He nodded. "This is where Adam died, isn't it? In the woods here?"

She lowered her eyes, nodding. Inside they cued up an old