Tak was looking at me. When he felt he had my full attention, he lifted a finger to his lips, motioning for me to be quiet, and then he started crawling through the underbrush. We crept and crawled, two dead things, toward a heavily wooded outcropping that looked over a small camp a short distance below. I could see two small weathered buildings, white paint flaking off boards that had been warped and bowed, their gray-shingled roofs covered with pine needles and bird droppings.
Between the buildings, three boys no older than Tak or I were shooting with handguns at a trio of paper targets posted maybe thirty feet away from their firing line. They worked under the watchful eyes of a man I first mistook for Duke Davidson; his bearing was the same, as was his tight expression of mild dissatisfaction, but then I saw that he had dark black hair trimmed just above the white collar of his shirt. He wore a blue baseball cap, dark sunglasses, and ear protection; and like Duke he gave off an aura of being ex-military or ex-police. He watched the boys shoot without comment; each of the three also wore ear and eye protection; I couldn’t see their results from my vantage point beneath the bushes but it looked as though the boy in the center had the steadiest and surest stance.
“They are…members…of Oakvale’s newest church,” Tak said, the slurred, almost lisping quality created by the tear in his cheek made more evident by his whispering. “They arrived…a few…weeks ago.”
“Newest church?” I said, watching as the shooters placed their weapons and their gear on a small folding table behind them before stepping out onto the range to retrieve their targets. The one in the center paused to rub his gun, as though the barrel or the handgrips had been soiled and that such a thing was intolerable to him.
“Reverend Mathers himself has come to town,” Tak said, without pause. If my heart beat, it would have stopped. If I had breath, it would have caught. Butterflies would have been released to flutter in desperation against my rib cage, a cold chill would have danced along my spine, my legs would have grown rubbery and weak. The dead have no greater enemy than Reverend Mathers, who has been preaching hatred against us from pulpit and publication from the day Dallas Jones picked himself up from the puddle of his own blood spreading across a filthy convenience store floor.
“Mathers?” I said. “Really?”
“His first…service…was last Sunday. It was…well attended.”
The central shooter paused again, and he lifted his head toward the tree line where Tak and I lay. He was a slight, skinny kid one that looked vaguely familiar now that his earphones and safety glasses were off. His gaze lingered in our general direction for a few moments before turning away.
“I thought…you should know,” Tak said to me. The shooters were inspecting their targets; their coach was walking toward them, saying something I couldn’t hear. “Your work…isn’t over.”
“My work?” I said. “My work?” Tak didn’t answer.
“The boy in the middle looks very familiar to me,” I said. He was wearing black jeans that looked too big for him and a black T-shirt with some band logo. The shirt was so baggy it seemed to be floating above his wiry frame. He didn’t look insane; if anything he looked too normal and that was more disturbing to me. The three boys turned toward their coach, he was the only one not smiling.
“I think I recognize him. I think…”
My voice trailed off, because I realized that Tak was no longer beside me. I looked over my shoulder and saw him moving like a shadow through the trees.
I watched the people below a while longer. When I finally did withdraw and begin the long walk home, I can’t say that I was any lonelier than when we walked out.
* * *
I went back to school the following day. Mom dropped me off, kissing me on the cheek before I stepped out of the car.
“I started making you a sandwich for lunch this morning,” she said. “Isn’t that funny?”
I smiled at her. “Pretty funny.”
I leaned over and kissed her again, and then I went into the school.
Walking into the school was a bit strange—it is always strange for the new kid, even the old new kid. Most of the people I saw in the foyer and down the hall recognized me; some nodded in greeting, some looked away, some whispered behind their hands to skulking companions. I’d almost made my way to the office before I was attacked.
I heard her shriek before she slammed into me from behind, pinning my arms against my sides as she screeched my name.
“Tommeeeee!” she said, and I recognized her voice even before I was able to wriggle around enough in her iron grip to see her face. Actually, not her face but her hair. Her pink, pink hair that rose up in spiny tufts that would have tickled my nose and chin if I could feel them. She was squeezing me tight enough to crush the life out of me, so I’d have been unlikely to notice the tickle in any case.
“I missed you so much, we missed you so much. All of us! You look great, Tommy! You smell great, too! Is that Z? Are you still wearing Z? That bottle Phoebe bought you, are you wearing that you are aren’t you? Tommy, we’re all so proud of you, and you…”
“I…” I managed to say. Ever articulate. Margi released me and took a step back, looking me over a moment before again wrapping her arms around me and pressing herself close in yet another fleshy embrace. Somehow she managed to do this without slowing her mouth down even a beat.
“. . . and you are back here with us now, I’m so happy, so, so, happy! Wait until Phoebe sees you, she’s going to flip! And Adam, and…”
“Margi, I…” I managed. I wished that I could feel more. I imagined that Margi was very warm, a small furnace, a dynamo. It wouldn’t have killed me to hug her back, but my body was a slab of ice.
“Margi Vachon,” a stern voice behind us said. “Are you aware that PDAs are punishable by detention at Oakvale High School?”
Margi released me, her cheeks already turning the color of her hair. I turned around and saw Principal Kim standing and glowering behind us, her hands on her hips. I’d often wondered how such a strong, authoritative voice could come from such a slight woman.
The principal’s dark look cleared as she broke into a smile; a rare moment of good humor from her. “But I think we’ll make an exception in this case. Welcome back, Mr. Williams,” she said. Her hug was not as aggressive as Margi’s was, but it was every bit as surprising.
* * *
Thirty minutes later I was walking to my first class. Principal Kim made it very clear how happy she was that I’d returned, and she made it very clear how happy she was at the increase in what she termed “undead enrollment”—forty-three new students—since I’d left, but she was also very clear about letting me know her concerns about me being back.
“You aren’t just a student,” she said. “You are a media personality. A sort of celebrity. And like any figure that has caught the eye and imagination of the public, you have to expect a certain degree of…undue attention.”
I’d remained silent as she spoke; there was no point in denying what she was saying. I’m not entirely naive and any disavowal of my “status” in the community would only be false modesty.
“You are also a symbol now,” she had said, and looked away as though embarrassed by what she was saying. “An important one. I hope you’ll agree that weshould take certain…precautions with you being here at Oakvale High. Don’t you agree?”
“I agree,” I said, and asked her what she was thinking in terms of precautions.
She mentioned security guards, metal detectors, bag and locker searches, zero tolerance for any bullying or harassment of the differently biotic. Oakvale was a rural community, one that prior to my baby steps toward becoming “a symbol” had been relatively free from violence and crime, but what she was suggesting were measures more likely to be found in tough inner city schools—or prisons.
“I might be a…”—and here my pause had more to do with me carefully choosing my words—“. . . media figure…but I’m also a person. I think that what you are pr
oposing will cause even more people to…hate me.”
She nodded. “And possibly the other forty-three as well,” she said. “But I have to think that it will be safer for them if we go that route. Safer for everyone, The Hunter Foundation has graciously offered a sizable grant to properly equip the school, so I won’t even have to try to squeeze money from the already tight school budget.”
Sitting there, I thought about how odd that the principal was discussing what amounted to policy decisions with me. But I knew the subtext of what she was telling me as well: be careful.
She shifted in her chair. “Unless you have other ideas?”
I didn’t. For the moment, I didn’t.
And now there were a thousand different ideas, thoughts, and words rolling like a swift tide through my mind, the same thoughts I’ve had on every moment of every endless night since I left Oakvale a few months ago.
In just a few short steps I would arrive at the classroom, and I would see her.
Phoebe.
I’ve very rarely been thankful that I was dead before, that all but a small range of my physiological functions have been shut down, but I was thankful then. I could only imagine how my body would have reacted during those moments, what havoc the swirling pools of my mind would have caused a living body to experience. Sweaty palms, upset stomach, shortness of breath, dry mouth, extreme nausea, convulsions, heart attack, instant death. I shuffled forward; I opened the door.
The class was silent, in the middle of a quiz or a test, but most turned to look at me as I crossed the threshold. My eyes found her immediately, in her usual seat near the window where the sunbeams streaming through the blinds made her long dark hair shine and catch the light like a raven’s wing. She turned as well, and even across the room I could hear her breath catch, a slight, barely perceptible gasp that I could feel move through me and reverberate against the walls of my heart. Her green eyes flashed and lowered and I imagined a spot of color rising on her smooth, white cheeks.
“Tommy,” Mrs. Rodriguez said, a slight tone of surprise and delight inherent in her voice, the way she might thank a student for leaving a chocolate bar on herdesk. “Welcome back. Please take an open seat in the back row.”
I nodded at Mrs. Rodriguez, but then my eyes drifted back to the beautiful girl sitting beside the window. Some moments later I noticed Adam Layman sitting at the desk behind her; he lifted his chin toward me with the slightest of acknowledgments. I might have detected a trace of wry humor glinting in his unblinking eyes, but it may have just been a trick of the same light that bathed his girlfriend so beautifully. I nodded back and started to take my seat.
And that was when I noticed the boy from the shooting range, staring forward at Adam’s broad back as though his eyes could bore holes through his flesh. I was certain now that I recognized him; not only from the previous day, but from an incident of some months ago when his photograph appeared in a free zombie newspaper that friends of mine put out called The Underground. I sometimes linked articles from their site to my blog, mysocalledundeath.com. If I was remembered correctly, the boy was responsible for the retermination of two zombies, people like Adam and me. Of at least two zombies—if there were some, there were likely to be more.
The boy didn’t glance at me. He just sat with his arms at rest on his desk. He wore blue jeans, black sneakers, and a zip-up gray hoodie over a white T-shirt. His pencil and his quiz lay before him on the desk, and I could see rows of neat, uniform writing toward the bottom half of the page. I was almost certain it was him.
Dorman, his name was. Davis or Denny Dorman, something like that. I wasn’t certain of the story exactly, but I know it had something to do with reterminating zombies in either Louisiana or Texas, in a state where he wouldn’t be reviled for his action but praised as a hero.
None of the zombies in the class—five of them, including Adam—rose when the early “undead bell” sounded to give them an additional five minutes to let them get to their next class. They all stayed so they could stop by my desk to say hello or to thank me. Even some of the living welcomed me back, chucking or slapping my shoulder as they passed with what I assumed was an expression of solidarity. The gestures from the traditionally biotic were unexpected and especially appreciated.
The boy in gray—Dorman—wasn’t among my well-wishers, however. I watched from the corner of my eye as he lifted his books and headed for the exit. He seemed to take special care not to look at me as he walked out. He moved very deliberately but managed not to look hurried.
I was certain that he wanted to destroy me. He didn’t do anything to telegraph this desire; he didn’t leer or wink like Pete Martinsburg might have done, but I could sense this desire burning within him as fiercely as my desire for Phoebe burned within me. He said “excuse me” to a larger boy blocking his path, and I could hear a slight lisp in his voice. Then he was gone, slipping into the flow of student traffic in the hall beyond.
Adam and Phoebe waited until most of the class had left before approaching me. Adam seized my hand in his with a grip that I’m certain would have been painful if I could have felt it.
“I’m glad you’re…back, Tommy,” he said. I think he meant it, too. I was sort of touched by his sincerity. Phoebe, though—her smile looked painted on her pretty face, and I thought she was blinking an awful lot when she finally spoke to me, like maybe I was something causing her vision to blur. Her voice—the voice I’d heard in my head every free moment ever since I’d left—was soft and tentative. I’d only heard those qualities in her voice once before, when we first met, really met, that night long ago at the edge of the Oxoboxo woods.
“Yes,” she said, and I’m sure I would have shivered if I’d still been alive. “We’re all glad you’re back.”
“I’m glad to be back,” I said. I stared at her too long, too openly. I didn’t possess the willpower to take my eyes off her. She noticed; Adam noticed.
But he didn’t haul off and hit me as he might have. Adam may be the best person I know in terms of heart;certainly the best male. I was glad to see that he was moving and speaking far better than he had been when I left; but then, if Phoebe’s affection—her love—couldn’t bring him back from the edge of death, nothing could.
“You and…Phoebe,” he said. “Have some…catching up…to do.”
I couldn’t tell if Phoebe was thankful to him or wanted to crush his instep with the heel of the calf-high boot she was wearing. Probably both.
“We do, I suppose,” she said, flipping a stray strand of hair over her shoulder with her fingertips. “Do you have sixth period free?”
“I do,” I told her. I really had no idea. I hadn’t memorized my schedule yet.
“Great,” she said, and for the first time I thought that her smile slipped into something real. “Want to walk? They started letting us outside just last week.”
“Sure,” I said, wondering if the elimination of that newfound freedom was going to be one of the first “precautions” that Principal Kim undertook to keep her school and its student body—and bodies—safe.
“Great,” she repeated, and I saw the nervousness return to her smile, and I heard it in her voice. She looked up at Adam and clutched his arm, as though for support. “Meet me by the bleachers?”
I told her I would. The bleachers were where we had had a fight, where I decided that I should leave Oakvale. It seemed fitting.
“Later,” Adam said, and the hand that had just gripped mine enclosed Phoebe’s as he led her out of the room. I willed her to look back over her shoulder at me, but she didn’t.
“Go ahead and follow them, Tommy,” I heard a voice behind me say. Mrs. Rodriguez; we were the only people left in the room. “You don’t want to be late on your first day back.”
She was right; I didn’t want to be late. But I was already too late. Far, far too late.
* * *
I stopped by my locker after my next class was over and spun the dial to enter the three-digit code of my combin
ation. The locker sprang open on my first attempt, and I saw that someone had left me a gift. There was a white card taped to the shelf, just below eye level, with a single word written in blue, the letters even and delicately formed but formed also with confidence.
BOOM
I plucked the card from where it hung, the tape tearing away from the metal with a soft rasping sound, the sound of a bandage being ripped free from an unhealed wound. Whoever had hung the card there had managed to unlock my locker; either by breaking the code with the expertise of a safecracker or by having gotten the combination from someone who knew it. I’d been careful not to let anyone see me work the combination earlier—and even if they had been watching they would have been unable to decipher it, because it typically took me three or four tries—and so to find the card taped there, perfectly centered rather than merely slid through the vents, was a bit of a shock. A shock, but not the biggest one.
I flipped over the card and found it wasn’t a card at all but a photograph. The pale blond girl in the photograph was smiling at someone, posing almost, but it wasn’t at whoever had taken the picture that I held in my hands. This photographer was behind and to the left of whomever the girl was smiling at so that her pretty face was almost in profile.
Karen.
And on the other side, that one word: Boom. I didn’t recognize Karen’s surroundings; she was sitting on a shaded bench or a table on the edge of what looked like a small parking lot, her long legs drawn up beneath her. I could see cars behind her. I thought that maybe she was at a fast-food restaurant or someplace like that. She was wearing cutoff jean shorts and a white blouse and her feet were bare. I didn’t think the photograph had been taken in Connecticut, and at first I thought that it was an older photo, one taken before she’d died, because she looked so lively and healthy in this shot, but there was something about the photo that made think it had been taken recently. I hadn’t heard from Karen in a while, but then I had been pretty hard to get hold of for some weeks.