Passing Strange

  “So the real goal of the zombies is to take souls?” I asked. I was learning so much. I’m all about self-discovery, as you know.

  “That’s right.”

  “Why do you think they killed your lawyer, then?”

  He broke out into a grin. A really wide and scary grin, a you-got-me grin, like you’d see on the face of a mischievous little kid with his hand still in the cookie jar.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “sometimes things aren’t what they seem.”

  He’s telling me this? But I told him to go on.

  “It’s like this. The demons’ art is subtle, and the devil has many ways to ensnare a human soul. It would seem like the easiest thing to do is to go out with some right-thinking people and destroy every zombie you find, right? But the media puts it out there that the zombies are the victims, not the aggressors.”

  I was having a difficult time picturing a zombie who’s tied to a stake and set on fire as an aggressor, but whatever. Must be the imp in me. I let him go on.

  “The media takes these examples of zombies being destroyed out of context, like they didn’t have it coming. They paint sympathetic portraits of them, to humanize them when they’re clearly not human. Why do so many parents refuse to let their kids come home after they die? Because they know! They know that those aren’t their kids anymore. They know this instinctively, and send the demons from their door.”

  Which made me think of Colette and a ton of others whose parents sent them away.

  “But the media manages to plant the seed in the minds of a large part of the public—the ignorant, sheeplike part—that zombies should be tolerated, or worse, integrated, instead of destroyed. It makes our work a lot harder.”

  “Our work?” I asked. It was really weird. Watching and listening to Pete as he went from this brokenhearted, sad character into a crazy fanatic in the space of a few minutes.

  “The Reverend taught us that the social climate isn’t right for the simple expunging of the zombies. First we need to win the battle for hearts and minds.”

  Expunged. He said expunged.

  “The way to do that is by turning the demons’ tactics against them. Help the general public—the sheep who flock in the middle of the fight between good and evil—see them for what they really are. Not victims, but victimizers.”

  “Well, I guess when they do things like murder your lawyer, they’re really helping out, aren’t they? But why do you think they did that, if they want to collect souls?”

  He laughed. “The story is that Guttridge, in his public stance against the zombies and in defending me, was not someone they could corrupt.”

  “Why do you say ‘the story’?”

  “Guttridge isn’t dead.”

  And there it was: a break in the case. I affected a look of utter surprise and incredulous innocence. Pete stopped pacing long enough to see the effect his bombshell had on me, and hopefully I was a good enough actress. I must have been, because his riff was getting a bit cocky, and when he started pacing again there was a little more of the old Pete Martinsburg swagger there.

  “Nobody got killed. We faked the whole thing.”

  “What…what do you mean? Who is we?”

  “We faked it, Christie. The murders, the video, the whole thing. We even had blood samples from the Guttridges that we splashed around.”

  “No way.”

  “Did you see the video? It looked real, didn’t it? Those carpets were empty. Heavy, but empty. We were in and out of there in an hour, and an hour later the television stations had the video.”

  “You’re kidding me. Who is we?”

  “One Life Ministries. Guttridge owed One Life big and they came to collect. Something about not being able to pass the bar. I guess there’s lots of folks in power and in the media that owe One Life.”

  I sat there, probably forgetting to breathe. Luckily Pete was in the grip of high fervor and didn’t notice.

  “One Life has a group of people who the Reverend picks to fight special battles against the demons. I’m one of those people.”

  I looked suitably impressed.

  “So you’re telling me that you’re one of the zombies in the video?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Which one?”

  He smiled, walked to his dresser, and opened the second drawer. He turned around and held something out to me, and when I saw what it was I started back on his bed in fright. For the first time that night, I wasn’t faking, because he was holding out a face. Takayuki’s face. I hadn’t seen Tak since the night we all got shot, and my first thought was the totally irrational “ohmigod, they caught him,” as though what was hanging from Pete’s extended fist wasn’t a latex mask but actually the skinned remnants of my friend.

  He tossed the mask into my lap, and I shrieked as the eyeholes rolled up to face me. The hair was long and still retained some luster, like the real Tak’s.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Pete said.

  I forced myself to look closer and saw that the mask didn’t look anything like Tak. The rent in the cheek was almost comical: the exposed rubbery teeth would have been more at home on a werewolf than in a human mouth, and the eyeholes didn’t do a great job in bringing out the epicanthic folds of the real Tak’s eyes. He had the most beautiful black eyes I’ve ever seen. The cheeks of the latex, or rubber, or whatever it was, were rough and pitted, and Tak has very nice, smooth skin. The hair was brittle, not at all like the real thing.

  I was right. Pete was Tak.

  “That’s the bastard who gave me this,” Pete said, pointing to his scar. “Kind of poetic that I get to be him, huh?”

  “Poetry,” I said, beaming at Pete like I’d never been more proud of anyone in my life. But of course I was thinking of how and when I could steal the mask.

  Here I was wearing a mask daily, and Pete wore a mask to help discredit Tak and all of our kind—in effect, his wearing a mask assured the necessity of my wearing a mask. And then when you consider that Tak’s face—his real face, I mean—is a sort of mask because he intentionally uses it to shock and scare…well, my poor little off-blond head started to spin.

  Not just a break in the case but a full confession. Pete spent the rest of the evening telling me how clever he and his pals in the One Life Ministry were. They dug up the graves in Winford Cemetery. They were the ones responsible for pet disappearances and animal atrocities in town. They were the ones responsible for the fact that everyone hated and feared us even more than they had before.

  It seems impossible that their plan (so far) had succeeded as well as it had, but just a brief glimpse through a history book will reveal countless instances of people intentionally spreading false information about someone who’s different from them. It makes you want to question everything.

  If I could get that mask into the right hands, then maybe someone could start poking holes in the Guttridge “murder.”

  I held the Takayuki mask, rubbing the latex with my fingers.

  “The Reverend asked me to come back here to do some things,” Pete said. I was only half paying attention to him at this point, envisioning a hundred Petes, all wearing masks, roaming around the country causing trouble for zombies.

  “Yes?”

  “Yeah. He wants me to find out where the rest of the worm burgers are hiding. He thinks they never left town. He’s also got me taking photographs and watching people who were close to Williams. His mom is a nurse; she lives over in the trailer park in Oakvale, all alone.”

  “Really?” I said, suddenly alert.

  “Yeah. Then there’s the foundation…the Reverend thinks that Oakvale is an important domino in the war against the demons.”

  “And you are one of his generals,” I said, pretending to be all impressed.

  He laughed. “More like a secret agent. I’m just gathering data.” He sat down on his weight bench. “Although there’s something else I’ve been thinking about doing to advance the war, something the Reverend doesn’t even know abo
ut.”

  I leaned forward. “You keep hinting. You’re such a man of mystery.”

  He’d already decided he was going to tell me, though. I suppose, in his mind, that after telling me about Julie, other secrets like the Guttridge fraud and whatever his new scheme was were minor secrets. I wondered if telling my friends about Monica would make me feel similarly unburdened.

  I didn’t have time to think about it. He licked his smiling lips, his dark eyes shining as he told me his plan.

  “I’m going to kill Phoebe Kendall,” he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “I’M GOING TO KILL PHOEBE Kendall,” he said. “I’m going to kill her and make it look like her corpse boyfriend did the crime.”

  Even though I’m dead, his words had the power to chill me. I don’t know how I managed to act my way through the rest of the night, when what I wanted to was jump up and claw his eyes out. Whatever sympathy he’d generated with his story about Julie evaporated when he said he was going to kill Phoebe.

  “It’ll be great,” he told me. “I’m going to do it so Layman gets the blame. It’ll totally cut Williams’s legs out from under him, if his big dead pal kills his girlfriend. Whatever gains he’s made will be erased; the whole country will believe that the zombies want nothing more than to end lives.” He laughed. “They’ll probably shut down Oakvale High, too. You can bet they won’t be letting any more dead kids walk through the school doors.”

  “How are you going to get Adam blamed for it?” Inwardly, I winced. I was fortunate that he was so excited about his cunning plan that he didn’t notice that I said Adam instead of Layman.

  “I’ll make sure he’s around when I do the deed. People in town are so anti-undead right now—did you see that bit on the news where a bunch of grade school kids caught a zombie who was out past curfew? All they had were sticks and boards with nails pounded in them.”

  I had seen the clip, but all I’d noticed was one scared boy being tortured by another group of scared boys.

  “So you’re going to frame him?”

  “Why not?” he said. “It worked before. People will believe anything they hear about zombies right now. The ‘living impaired,’” he added, throwing air quotes around the term.

  “Great plan,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “But what if…what if she comes back?” I said.

  “Even better. He’ll get to see her zombified, and then I’ll kill her again. Head shot. If I do this right, zombies won’t just be criminalized. They’ll be hunted down in their holes and destroyed.”

  I held the mask in my lap, the rubbery, eyeless face staring up at me in silent accusation. I knew that I should warn Phoebe. Even though Pete elaborated on his plan, saying that he wanted to kill Phoebe while she and Adam were at her house, I knew that she wouldn’t be safe until he was caught.

  When he let me out at the top of the street, he plucked the mask—my only tangible evidence—from my lap.

  “Hey,” I said, my disappointment unfeigned. “I thought that was a present.”

  He laughed. “I’m not done with it, yet,” he said. “Me and Scarface still have some work to do. Tonight, actually.”

  “What type of work?” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “What are you planning?”

  “Can’t tell you, babe,” he said. “It could get rough.”

  His statement would have frozen my blood in my veins were it not already cooled. His grin was overly smug and I could tell that he was puffing himself up to show off, but that only made me more nervous. Who knew the lengths he’d go to impress me?

  I told him that I wanted to help him with his “work,” especially with his plan against Phoebe.

  “Yeah, I might need you for that,” he said. His smile was a rubbery as the mask that he’d made of my friend.

  I called her early the next morning, before the bus came to pick her and Adam up. We made small talk for a while—or rather, she did, chatting away about Colette and DeCayce and the Skeleton Crew tour, and then about Tommy, who’d had a meeting with Congressman Armstrong, which meant more support for his march. Phoebe would have gone right on talking until the bus came if I hadn’t interrupted.

  “Phoebe,” I said. “I need you and Adam to be really, really careful.”

  She laughed, not the reaction I hoped for.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m serious, Phoebe. I can’t tell you everything, but you and Adam are in danger. Just please tell me you’ll be careful.”

  “Karen, you’re scaring me.”

  “I know,” I said. “I know I am, honey, and I’m sorry. Just please trust me. There are people who aren’t happy Adam isn’t in hiding.”

  “Karen, is this about Pete Martinsburg? Thorny said he saw him lurking around the schoolyard the other day.”

  Phoebe is the only beating heart I know who actually has telepathetic powers. “I can’t say any more, Phoebe. I…”

  “Karen, are you still working at the mall? I think you’re the one who’s in danger. And I…”

  “Phoebe, I don’t want to argue. Just please be careful. Okay?”

  The silence on the other end of the phone was broken by a Mesolithic roar.

  “The bus is here, Karen. I’ve got to go.”

  “I’ll see you soon, Phoebe. I’ve got a lot to tell you. Have a great day at school.”

  She laughed at my somber tone, God love her. “Okay, Karen. Quit your job. I promise we’ll be careful.”

  And she would. But that might not be enough. I needed help, and I knew only one place to get it.

  I walked around the lake for a long time, telling myself I was looking for that perfect spot, one that offered seclusion along with a patch of the thinnest ice. Of course my hesitation had nothing to do with the fact that, under the ice, there was water. I wondered if Colette was hesitant around bodies of water, too. She’d also drowned, but her death was an accident.

  Eventually I stripped down to my underwear, folded up the clothes I’d been wearing and put them in the backpack I’d brought. When I was done I hung the bag from a low branch. I was on the wooded side of the lake, far from the beach or the boat launch, and I was relatively certain that no one would come by and poach my clothing while I was under the ice.

  I found a big rock, which I heaved up and onto a spot where the ice looked brittle, and luckily it plunged right through. I had to chop at the edge of the hole with a fallen branch, but before long I had a gap big enough to fit through.

  I lowered myself in gently, gingerly, as though I could actually feel the coldness of the water and needed to acclimate my body to its freezing chill. I held my breath when I went in all the way; how stupid is that?

  One thing I hadn’t really counted on—it was really, really dark. Like ink dark. Above the ice it was a typical midwinter day in Connecticut, the landscape a study of whites and grays. The feeble light was insufficient to penetrate the ice, which was quite thick in places. My bare feet touched bottom, and I had to duck my head at first to get it under the frozen shelf. I started to walk, and when I could no longer touch my fingernails on the ice above, I swam. I’d always closed my eyes when swimming anyway.

  I went to where I thought the lake would be deepest. There’s a legend about a fishing cabin at the center of the lake, one that plunged through the ice when its owner tried to move it from one bank to the other. I liked to imagine Mal and Tak and the others sitting around in the submerged cabin, spinning yarns about the one that got away. I swam until I got tired—bored, really, because I don’t get tired—then I let myself sink to the bottom and walk. Every so often I’d bump into something, and sometimes whatever it was would move away, and sometimes it was solid and unyielding. I believe that I ran my palms over the smooth hull of a sunken boat at some point, and the heavy lump I stubbed my toe against may have been a rock, or a treasure chest. The world will never know.

  Being aware of my movements but not able to see them was exhilarating and terrifying at the
same time. I could imagine I was drifting right into another dimension. Everything was a complete unknown. The only things in existence, the impenetrable water and my consciousness; the only thing that could save or destroy me, my own imagination.

  I drifted far from the little hole I’d made in the ice. I didn’t hear the voice of God, not unless God was one of the many voices in my head. I wish I had, because then I might not have been so terrified when something looped around my ankle and pulled tight.

  I tried to scream, but all I managed to do was to expel the last little pocket of air that had been trapped in my lungs. I thrashed, and the grip on my ankle loosened, then disappeared as another appendage caught me around the waist. I tried to pry it off me, but it only constricted that much harder. Something grabbed my wrist, then enclosed the fist I’d made to fend it off with. It pried my fingers apart one at a time and then I realized it wasn’t some mutant freshwater squid or octopus that was manhandling me. It was a human hand.

  A zombie hand.

  I relaxed, spreading my fingers, which the zombie laced with his own. Even before his grip loosened from my waist and before he brought my hand up to his ruined face, I knew who he was. I knew because I could feel his knucklebones beneath my fingertips in the spaces where the skin was split like the cushions of an old leather couch.

  Tak. He’d found me.

  The trip back to the hole I’d made in the ice was surprisingly quick, as though I’d traveled twice the distance to get away as I did to return. Tak led the entire journey, tugging me along as if I were a balloon tethered to his hand. He gave me a boost up and out of the hole, then he hauled himself out, planting his scarred hands firmly on the ice, which groaned but did not crack under his weight.

  Once we were both out, we just sort of stared at each other a long minute. I watched as frost formed on his skin; his long hair quickly becoming brittle and frozen in place. I started to speak, but instead of words, water burbled up and out of my mouth—it was really gross. He showed me how to expel the water—it wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t pleasant—and in a few minutes we were able to speak.