Special Dead Read Online Free

crayon mass-suicide. Still face down, she said, “I’d be
delighted to.”
    Teah looked up from her
worksheet. “What’d I do?”
     
    *   *   *
     
    At the lab, Ani stepped off the
bus and let Mr. Benson unlock her mouth guard. It felt good to take off their
helmets. As Mr. Benson unlocked Sam’s, her hair fell in blonde rivulets to her
shoulders.
    “That’s so not fair,” Lydia
said.
    Kyle hissed, and Joe nudged Lydia
with his elbow. Grinning, Joe said, “And what’s fair?”
    They’d made a deal almost a
year before:  being dead was hard enough without constant whining about it. Nobody
was supposed to complain that anything was unfair.
    Lydia rolled her eyes. “A four-letter
‘eff’ word.” She jutted an accusing finger at Sam. “But look at her hair!”
    Lydia was right. Sam’s hair
looked almost perfect right out of the helmet. The rest of them wore wigs,
except the boys, who claimed not to care. Even so, there was no point
complaining about “fair” when you were one of ten people on the planet unlucky
enough to be the walking dead.
    Sam smiled. “It’s only a matter
of time, Lydia. One of these days we’ll have a cure, and no one will have to go
through this ever again.”
    Joe chuckled. “It’s not like we
chose to be this way. If I had to choose a monster, I’d be Godzilla.”
    Ani tried not to smile, and
failed. “Sparkly vampire, Joe. That’s where it’s at.”
    A blue Audi four-seater
screeched to a halt next to the bus. Sarah Romero had bought the car seven
years before, when she was still a practicing surgeon, and liked it enough to
keep paying for repairs instead of getting a new one. She got out, stretched,
and waved. Mike waved back.
    “I got them from here, Frank,”
she said. Mr. Benson gave her a curt nod and walked off without another word. Ani
had the impression he didn’t much like his job. “Okay, kids, homework first,
free time until nine, and then bath time.”
    Nobody bothered to complain. Every
night from 9:00 pm until 6:00 am they soaked in the “bath”—a noxious mix of
formaldehyde, regeneratives, and ice. At least now they had their own rooms so
they could listen to their own music. Kyle liked alt-punk and thrash metal,
Devon preferred silence, and Lydia liked pop and dubstep. Ani’s tastes meshed
with Lydia’s, but Ani also liked classical music, which Lydia hated.
    Her mother tapped her shoulder,
shattering her reverie. “You okay, sweetie?”
    “Yeah. Just thinking.” They
stepped toward the lab and Ani’s thoughts turned to the ride to school. “What’s
up with the weirdos outside Wegmans? The ones all in black? I think we met one
of them in school today.”
    “Yeah, those guys are creepy,”
Lydia said, hugging herself.
    “Since the injunction allowed
you kids to come back to school, a lot of people moved out of town, but others
have been trickling in. A weird group. They started some kind of pagan church
up on Vine Street.”
    Devon raised an eyebrow. “Are
they dangerous?”
    Kyle snorted. “What’s going to
be dangerous to us?”
    Joe grinned. “Nothing would be
dangerous to me if I were Godzilla! RAWR!” He clawed the air and stomped around
in a circle. Mike laughed and clapped his hands.
    “All right, guys. Homework time.”
Sarah pointed toward the lab door. Joe stomped in that direction, Mike and Kyle
at his heels. A final roar and they were inside.
    “Boys,” Teah said.
    “Men are no smarter,” Sarah
said. “Just bigger.” She followed the boys inside.
    Teah’s voice dropped to a
conspiratorial whisper. “Bill’s coming to visit next week.”
    “Is he on leave?” Devon asked.
    Teah flashed her eyes. “Not
exactly.” Ani and Sam exchanged looks.
    “And how ‘exactly’ is he going
to visit?” Devon pulled off her blonde wig, ran her hand over her puckered
scalp, and put it back on.
    Teah pouted. “We just want to
see each other, you know, through the fence? It’s been a year.” The whine in
her voice put