Croak

  “Hey,” Cordy said softly, “are you okay?”

  Lex sat up and looked at the person with whom she had shared a womb, studying the contours of the face that was so very similar to her own. Though the girls were not identical twins, many features were still mirrored in perfect biological harmony: the small nose, the light olive complexion, and, of course, the large, almost black eyes that both sisters considered to be their best feature.

  Unanimously agreed upon as their worst feature, on the other hand, was the dark, pathetic excuse for hair atop their heads: Lex’s a long, thick, wavy mop, and Cordy’s an irreparable mess of frizz and curls. Neither took any interest in this hopeless situation, which led to more fights with their mother than anyone would dare to count.

  “What do you think about all of this?” Lex asked.

  Cordy picked up a nearby rubber band and absent-mindedly tangled it through her fingers. “I don’t know. It sucks.”

  “Yeah,” said Lex. Cordy wasn’t looking at her. “It’s just not fair,” she went on. “I mean, I know I’ve been a total sh—” She cut herself off, wondering if her mother could possibly be listening right outside the room, ready with the swear jar. “I’ve been a brat. But—”

  “But why have you been a brat? Why are you acting like this?” Cordy narrowed her eyes. “You used to be a hall monitor.”

  “Yeah, those were truly magical days. Nothing like the tyrannical power to give detentions to freshmen.”

  “But now you give them concussions!” Cordy jumped to her feet, her face flushing red with anger. “I just don’t understand why you have to be this way! Do you realize how many times I’ve defended you, told people that this isn’t the real you, only to have it shoved right back in my face whenever you get suspended for breaking someone’s nose? Can’t you just stop?” she said, desperation straining her voice.

  “I’ve tried!” Lex looked down. “You know I’ve tried.”

  Cordy slumped. “Then go,” she said, her voice cracking. “I don’t want you to, but if Uncle Mort is the only thing that’ll keep you from decimating the school population, if that’s what it takes to bring back the old you, go.”

  She crossed the room and sat down on her own bed. Lex watched, forlorn, unable to argue with her sister’s logic—until something occurred to her. She gave Cordy a funny look. “Huh.”

  “What?” Cordy asked irritably.

  “It’s kind of weird, isn’t it?”

  “What’s weird?”

  “That they picked Uncle Mort.”

  “So? What’s wrong with Uncle Mort?”

  “Cordy, come on. We haven’t seen him in years. Can you even remember the last time he visited?”

  Cordy scrunched up her face. “Sort of. We were six, right? He brought those things, whatever they are.” She pointed to a pair of spherical glass trinkets on a nearby shelf. They featured a whirl of small lights inside, and smelled faintly of alcohol.

  “Exactly. Other than the random crap he sends for birthdays, we barely know the guy. Half the time it’s like Dad forgets he even has a little brother. So why him?” She crept to the edge of the bed. “Why not Aunt Veronica, in Oregon? Or Uncle Mike? Or Mom’s cousin Dom—he’s a corrections officer!” She lowered her voice. “For all we know, Uncle Mort could be some dumbass hillbilly who lives off roadkill and drinks his own urine. How is spending two months in some disgusting shack in upstate rural hell going to turn me into an obedient young woman?”

  Cordy furrowed her brow. “Mom and Dad must have their reasons. They wouldn’t just ship you off to a mass murderer. Maybe they want you to get to know him better. Maybe he’s a cool guy?”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Well, you don’t make any sense either.”

  Lex looked wearily at her twin, whom she had never once punched, smacked, bitten, or even noogied. “I’m sorry, Cordy,” she said. “I mean, I’m sorry that you’re a part of this. I can handle leaving the city, but leaving you . . .”

  Cordy lay down and hugged her tattered plush octopus, Captain Wiggles. Lex looked at her sister’s watering eyes and sighed. How upset could they really get over this? They’d probably just be separated next year anyway, if they went to different colleges (if Lex managed to scrounge up the teacher recommendations to even get into college). They couldn’t stay kids forever.

  Afraid that much more introspection would lead to a frustrated crying jag, Lex sniffed back her own tears and fell into her pillow. “I just can’t believe I’m really going,” she said finally, in what she hoped was a mature-sounding voice.

  Cordy nodded. “It’s going to be so weird.”

  Lex glanced at the bookshelf. There, nestled snugly between a softball trophy and a photo of the two girls grinning with finger paint smeared all over their faces, their arms wrapped tightly around each other’s shoulders, sat Uncle Mort’s strange glass contraptions, wobbling ever so slightly.

  She raised a single eyebrow. “No kidding.”

  2

  Lex stared out the window of the Greyhound bus at the raging, apocalyptic storm. Ferocious winds whipped through the blackened sky, massive drops of rain pelted the glass, and every so often a lightning bolt would illuminate the entirety of the coach, repeatedly terrifying the man sitting behind her whose cocaine habit had become obvious to anyone within a five-seat radius.

  Clearly, the weather was not the only foul element of this trip.

  Lex was quite unhappily sitting next to a homebound college student. She was able to discern this by the sweatshirt he was wearing, which boasted a trio of Greek letters, and by his shirt collar underneath, which was unabashedly popped and sticking straight up. He resembled a preppy Count Chocula. And, as with most preppy Count Choculas, he had no idea how ridiculous he looked.

  Deducing that any interaction with her fellow bus travelers would likely lead to some form of manslaughter, Lex had done everything in her power to avoid getting stuck with a seatmate. She had poured all the contents of her bag onto the empty seat beside her. She spread out her body and pretended to be asleep. And when the driver ordered her to give up the seat, she threw a shoe at his face.

  All in vain, she thought bitterly as she glared at the kid, who had put on his best “I’m a douchebag” face and tried to strike up a conversation the second he sat down.

  “Hey there, cutie,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  Lex rolled her eyes and turned toward the window. “Kill me.”

  “Kimmy? I’m Steve,” he went on, undeterred. “So, are you in school? I go to NYU. Where do you go?”

  Lex gave him the same look a cheetah makes just before devouring a gazelle. “Listen, I really appreciate your efforts to make my trip infinitely more torturous than it already is, but do you think that you could maybe just shut the hell up for the rest of the ride, lest I rip off those hideous sunglasses and start beating you over the head with them?”

  Steve looked as though he had just swallowed a socket wrench. “Sor-ry,” he said. “Just trying to be friendly.”

  “Cram it, Steve.”

  Lex’s mood was fouler than usual. Not only she was getting shipped off to Uncle Dementia’s Land of Psychosis, but she had also received the mother of all gloomy farewells when her family deposited her at the bus station. Mom had cried. Dad’s chin quivered. And Cordy wrapped her in a sullen embrace, digging her nails into Lex’s back as she whispered, “Get it all out of your system. Bring back the old Lex, or so help me God, I’ll tell everyone you went to musical theater camp.”

  The two sisters had locked eyes once more as Lex took her seat by the window and the bus started to pull away. Lex broke the stare first, glaring sourly at the seat in front of her. If Cordy couldn’t see that this separation was equally excruciating on both ends, well, then, she deserved to be miserable.

  Lex tried to return to her book, but even good old Edgar Allan couldn’t improve the dreadful situation into which she was being dragged at sixty-five miles an hour. Scowling
at the total injustice of her life, she slammed the book shut and had just started scanning the vicinity for something to punch when a flash of red and blue lights caught her eye.

  She squinted through the rain as the bus slowed to a crawl. A tractor-trailer had jackknifed across the highway, taking three cars with it. Everything was jumbled together on the grassy median in a tortured, twisted mass of metal. It was hard to tell where one vehicle ended and another began.

  Both sides of the highway came to a standstill. Ambulance sirens screamed through the dull thudding of the rain as more emergency vehicles tore onto the scene. Lex surveyed the wreck with nothing more than a fleeting interest and a grim expression—until something bizarre appeared.

  A white, blinding flash of light.

  Startled, Lex peered through the rain. It was so brief—like the flash of a camera—that she couldn’t even be sure she had seen it at all. Or if she had, it must have been lightning—except hadn’t the light come from inside one of the cars? But that made no sense. The vehicle was crumpled beyond recognition, there were no signs of life.

  Another flash, this time definitely emanating from within a rolled-over SUV. Lex looked at the paramedics, some of whom were shining flashlights into the cars—but none of their lights matched the brilliance, or the brevity, of the powerful blazes she had just seen.

  Momentarily forgetting her policy of isolationism from the dreaded Bus People, Lex whipped her gaze around the coach, expecting the passengers to be gawking at the lights as well, but it seemed as if no one had even noticed. Some scanned the wreckage; a few grumbled about traffic. Lex huffed impatiently. Were these people blind?

  She jabbed Steve, who was listening to music and attempting to sleep. “Ow! What?”

  “Watch.”

  He removed his headphones. “Oh, now you want to talk?”

  “Grow up, Steve. This is purely out of necessity.” She leaned back in her seat so he could see out the window. “Look—there’s another one!” she yelled as the peculiar electricity sparked once more. “What is that?”

  Steve squinted. “Um, a car accident, I think?”

  Lex resisted the urge to grab his popped collar and send his head on a whimsical voyage through the glass. “No, I mean that.” She pointed at the SUV. “The weird flash that just came from that car!”

  “You mean lightning?”

  “NO, the—that!” she cried at another burst of light. “Right there!” She pounded her finger on the windowpane for emphasis, but Steve’s face remained quizzical.

  A chill ran through Lex’s body. “Can’t you see them?”

  “I don’t see anything but a massive car wreck and probably a lot of casualties.” Steve frowned in disapproval. “You shouldn’t rubberneck like that, it’s kind of an awful thing to do.”

  Lex was about to dispense a salty retort, but she lost her chance as the bus sprang to life and they were jerked back in their seats. “No no no,” she whispered, twisting around as the bus picked up speed. “I’m not done yet.” But the bus driver pressed on, pumping the accelerator until the grisly scene was nothing more than a blur of lights fading into the distance.

  Steve, disgusted, put his headphones back on. Lex swallowed and looked at her watch. An hour more until they reached Albany, then another two to Uncle Mort’s stop.

  She reclined the seat and closed her eyes. Surely it had been some sort of meteorological phenomenon. Or maybe a bit of the lingering cocaine in the air had found its way into her system. Either way, hallucinations were not something she needed to add to her list of problems right now. There was too much other crap to deal with.

  Including a snoring Steve, who was coming closer and closer to getting The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe shoved right down his throat.

  3

  Three hours later Lex finally stepped off the bus.

  And into a gigantic puddle of water.

  Luckily, by that point, hardly any passengers remained to witness her misfortune. Steve had gotten off in Albany, along with the cocaine guy and anyone else with enough sense not to continue farther upstate. She mumbled a thanks to the driver, who, obviously still bitter over the whole shoe-throwing incident, quickly closed the door behind her and mouthed, “Good luck.”

  As Lex assessed her surroundings, she began to see why luck had suddenly become so essential. She was standing in a muddy trench on the side of the road, a road that stretched for about fifty feet in both directions before being swallowed up by trees. And the trees—Lex had never imagined that a forest could be so thick. It seemed as if they were actually fighting one another for floor space, an inextricable web of broad trunks and tangled, sprawling limbs.

  She took out her phone. No reception. “Awesome.”

  At least the rain had stopped. Lex shouldered her bag, pulled her hood up to block out the dismal gray sky, and scanned the road for any hints of human civilization. As her feet squelched in her soggy sneakers, she desperately hoped that the luggage her mother had packed and shipped ahead to her uncle’s house would contain at least one pair of extra shoes.

  Of course it would. Knowing her mom, she had probably packed five, along with several handwritten notes proclaiming her unconditional love. A pang of guilt poked at Lex’s chest.

  Whatever, she thought, putting it out of her mind. It was their foolish idea for me to come here, not mine.

  Yet as she adjusted her bulging backpack and thought of Cordy—probably at work by now, scooping ice cream down at the local Baskin-Robbins, enjoying an endless supply of free chocolate chip cookie dough—Lex came to the conclusion that this whole insidious, rage-filled zombie thing, whatever it was, had been colossally unfair. Why her? And why smack-dab in the middle of high school, when it’s hard enough as it is to act like a normal, well-adjusted earthling?

  She sighed and looked at her watch. Uncle Mort was supposed to have picked her up five minutes ago. Restless, she began walking down the muddy road, not even sure if she was going in the right direction. A bear would arrive to eat her soon, no doubt. She certainly hoped Mr. Truitt would be happy upon learning that her bloodied corpse had been found in a muck-filled ditch.

  A loud rumbling in the distance paused her steps. Lex spun around. Something was coming.

  She resumed walking. Nothing could scare her now. She’d welcome a hint of danger, in fact. A deadly grizzly attack would certainly be preferable to a summer of cow wrangling.

  The noise grew louder, echoing off the damp trunks of the forest. It was only a few yards behind her now. Lex crammed her hands over her ears and finally broke into a run, but it was no use. The roar drew closer and closer—

  And stopped.

  Lex lowered her hands, turned around, and nearly shat her pants.

  Sitting atop a black and purple–streaked motorcycle was, in a startling number of details, the exact type of villain depicted in the Never Talk to Strangers! picture book that had been drilled into Lex as a child: a man six feet tall, in his late thirties, lean but strong, roguishly attractive, and sporting the rather nondescript ensemble of a smudged white T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and heavy black combat boots. Peeking out from underneath his sleeves were samplings of what was undoubtedly an impressive array of tattoos, and a red, craggy scar ran from his right earlobe to the corner of whatever sort of eye hid behind his sunglasses. Clearly, this was a man who would waste no time in snapping the neck of anyone who happened to piss him off.

  Yet this was only the beginning of what had unnerved Lex.

  A distinct change in the air had settled over her skin the moment the engine stopped. The atmosphere itself started to crackle with a bizarre, nameless electricity. As she searched the man’s figure for an explanation, more and more peculiarities began to pop out. The pale, slender fingers wrapped around the handlebars looked like those of a skeleton, yet his face was tanned and featured at least two days’ worth of stubble. Circling his wrist was a dark gray iron band about an inch wide, the surface of which seemed to turn to static every fe
w seconds or so, as if it were a television screen with bad reception. And topping it all off was the chaotic mess of hair on his head. Blacker even than Lex’s, and streaked with purple just like the bike, it stuck out in windblown, tousled spikes, as if he had stuck his finger into a charged socket only seconds before.

  He cracked his knuckles. “Hop on.”

  Lex remained very still. “Um, my ride should be here soon.”

  “Aw, Lex.”

  She blinked.

  “You’re killing me, kiddo! Don’t tell me you don’t even recognize your Uncle Mort!”

  What then escaped Lex’s lips was more than a gasp. The sheer force was such that she half expected the nearby trees to uproot and lodge themselves in her throat.

  “You deaf?” Uncle Mort moved the sunglasses to the top of his head, revealing a pair of piercing green eyes. “I said get on.”

  Lex didn’t move. “I’m actually not feeling the eviscerated-by-a-creepy-stranger thing today,” she said, unable to hide the nervous tinge in her voice. “My vital organs are just fine where they are.”

  He let out a short laugh. “That’s funny. You’re funny.” He thumped the seat of the bike. “Now get on.”

  “No.”

  Her uncle’s eye twitched. “You had five hours to change your mind. Get on the damned bike.”

  Lex’s hands grew hot, the way they sometimes did when she got mad. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you. We’re family.”

  “You don’t look like family. You look like a freak.”

  “Okay, Lex,” he said, revving the engine once more. “I didn’t want it to come to this, but you leave me no—” His eyes widened at some unknown horror behind her. “Is that a bear?”