Read Generation Dead for Free Online Page B

some of the boys were running and some of the other boys were trying to knock them down.
    Adam was always easy to spot. He was the biggest one on the field just like he was the biggest wherever he was. She looked around for Tommy Williams, but all the boys moved strangely in their padding and helmets.
    Then she saw him, his movements stiff, but not because of his padding. He was taking his place in the line of boys about to be knocked over.
    Killian Killgore of the Creeps was singing in her ears about being lost on the moors and chased by a banshee. Phoebe tapped on her notebook with her silver pen, the remaining lines of her poem floating somewhere in the air between her and the field, waiting for her to catch them and write them down.
    Phoebe set her notebook on her lap and opened it. The first page was blank. She looked up at the sky and then wrote two words. Then she looked at what was happening on the field.
    Adam hit Williams cleanly from the side and tried to brush the football out of his grasp. The hit was easy to make, because Williams was pretty slow and didn't try to fake at all. He went down, but Adam thought that if he hadn't jumped into the tackle, Williams might have kept his feet. Tackling the dead kid was like tackling a brick wall.
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    Dead weight, he thought. Ha-ha.
    The ball popped loose and bounced end over end ten yards downfield. If it was the start of the season and Williams was already on the team, he'd offer his hand and lift him to his feet, but in preseason, Adam was supposed to spit next to his head and call him a wuss.
    Williams stared up at him with flat, expressionless eyes that reflected the moonlight above. Adam walked away without saying anything. It was creepy, tackling a zombie.
    "Layman!" Coach yelled, "did you play with dolls all summer? What kind of hit was that?"
    A clean one, he thought, looking back at his old pals Pete and TC. The Pain Crew. It had been funny when they were freshmen and realizing that they were tougher than about ninety-nine percent of the student population; not so funny now that they were juniors and toughness might not be the number-one criteria for success in life.
    TC was still grinning, like he was thrilled that he might still win the case of beer, but Pete was wearing that "what happened to you, man?" look that seemed to be on his face a lot when he looked at Adam these days. Pete whispered something to TC, who nodded and took his position at the line.
    Adam watched TC hit the dead kid square in the back. With his helmet.
    The sound of the impact echoed across the field. Phoebe could hear the hit up in the stands even with loud horror punk playing in her ears.
    "Good hit, Stavis!" Coach yelled.
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    Layman's jaw opened as far as his chinstrap would allow. Good hit? That was spearing, and it would be enough to get you disqualified from a game, if not the whole season. That sort of hit could hurt or paralyze someone.
    It could even kill someone.
    TC jogged over to pal Martinsburg, and they slammed each other's shoulder pads.
    "I think he's dead, Jim," Martinsburg said, loud enough for most of the team to hear. He was laughing.
    Adam walked toward Williams, who wasn't even twitching. He thought that the force of the hit might have shut him off like a radio being dropped on the concrete, but the dead kid pushed himself up from the turf with the knuckles of his hands, brought a knee up under him, and rose to his feet.
    Adam couldn't help but smile when the dead kid flipped the ball to Coach Konrathy. A hit like that and he'd held on to the ball. That kind of focus deserved respect.
    The attack continued for the rest of the drills. TC and Martinsburg always seemed to line up against the dead kid even though there were more tacklers than runners. Adam watched Pete hit Williams in the knees on his next turn, followed by TC wrapping his apelike arms around Williams for a neck tackle. Every hit was a dirty hit, but the only disappointment that Coach Konrathy showed was