Passing Strange

  “Karen,” he said, recovering first. “I’m so…glad…to…see…you.”

  What a sweetie.

  “Are you surprised?” I asked. It took me a while to get the words out. He’d had no way of knowing that I survived the St. Jude’s massacre.

  “Yes and…no.”

  “Did you think I’d bit the dust? Kicked the bucket? Bought the farm? Taken the ol’ dirt nap?” I said. I was feeling a little giddy, I guess. “Again?”

  He shook his head, his frozen hair rasping against the shoulders of his leather jacket like the bristles of a broom.

  “No? It looked pretty grim for poor little Karen.”

  “I knew.”

  The thing is, I knew he knew. I don’t know why I knew, but I did.

  “How is that, Tak?” I said, softly. “How do you always know when I’m in trouble?”

  “I just know.”

  “Telepathetic, are you?”

  He didn’t answer, just shrugged, dislodging a newly formed mass of slush from the hem of his coat. He was regarding me in a strange manner.

  “But Karen,” he said, eventually. “You were…shot. I know you were…shot.”

  I was going to laugh it off, make jokes about the bullet holes not being visible, but then I realized that everything was visible. I mean everything. Here’s a little fashion tip from K. DeSonne: avoid wearing white lingerie while swimming, if you want to keep secrets. Tak was still wearing everything he’d gone into the water with—T-shirt, jeans, studded motorcycle jacket, boots—and I might as well have been naked.

  What was even stranger, and I’m sure that Tak noticed this as well, even though he didn’t mention it, was that my skin wasn’t going all frosty like his. The water was beading up and dripping off me, as though it were warmer than that which covered Tak. Or as if I was warmer than Tak.

  “Um,” I said. I was really, really embarrassed. Tak doesn’t do “expression” unless it’s for effect, so I don’t know if he liked what he saw, but I have a feeling that he did.

  “About that,” I said, walking to where my bag hung, “let me just get my clothes on first, okay?”

  “Sure,” he said, and then did me the gentlemanly courtesy of turning his back as I peeled off my wet things, toweled myself dry, and got dressed in the clothes I’d put in my duffel.

  Unlike the half story I’d given my (mostly) living friends, I decided to tell Tak everything. I started with what happened at St. Jude’s, my narrow escape, about how I seemed to be, well, changing. I told him about the healing, and he found that pretty interesting because the bullet he’d taken in the leg was giving him a lot of trouble. I told him about the wounds, where they were and where they aren’t any longer. I even told him about the box-cutter wound I’d given myself. He listened to all of it without so much as raising a frosty eyebrow.

  “I don’t know why I can do this stuff, Tak,” I said. And I didn’t, really. Still. The power of positive thinking? A kiwi fruit I ate the week I got shot? Clean living? True confessions? I had no idea.

  “Williams thinks it is…love,” he said, like he was reading my mind. “He thinks it is…love that…brings you back.”

  “No one loves me,” I said, mostly joking. I was probably thinking about Monica when I said it. Say the L word out loud, and hers was the face that came to mind.

  “Everyone…loves you,” he said. “But maybe…it isn’t how much…you are…loved, but…how much…you love…that matters.”

  I didn’t answer with a quip. This was special; this was as close as Tak got to expressing his feelings. And maybe he had something there. I mean I do love everybody. Phoebe and Tommy and Tak and Adam, Margi, Melissa, Colette, Angela, Katy, my parents, Alish, George. Everyone. Monica.

  “Well, I don’t love Pete, even though I’m pretending to,” is what I actually said. It just sort of slipped out. Tak’s lip curled up on the side near the hole in his cheek, which I’m sure took real effort.

  “Pete…Martinsburg?” Tak asked.

  So I told him the rest. He already knew about me passing, and had tried to talk me out of when I told him. “No good…will come…of it,” he’d said, the grumpy old dead man. But here I was, Nancy Dead Drew, ready to solve the big mystery. I told him how close I was to getting the evidence, that I’d seen it, actually seen the mask that bore Tak’s face, and now all I needed to do was get it and find out where Guttridge was hiding, and then I’d have it all and the mystery would be solved.

  “Besides,” I told him, “I have to see it through. He’s threatened to hurt Phoebe. To kill her, actually.”

  As much as he’d been against me getting a job in the first place, Tak didn’t try to talk me out of what I was trying to do, even though he of all people would be aware of how dangerous it was. If I’d had more friends like Tak when I was alive, maybe I would have stayed alive. Friends who can listen are a good antidote against the fog.

  “Even if you get…the evidence…there is…a good chance…they will destroy you…anyway.”

  Tak carries around a lot of anger, I know. Anger for the living people he feels rejected him. And anger for more celestial beings. I guess that’s why Tommy’s theory about love and the dead seems plausible to me, because despite everything they—the living—have done to me, I still love them.

  “Maybe,” I told him. “But I have to take that chance.”

  I told him about what Tommy was trying to do in going to Washington to lobby to get Prop 77 passed. I told Tak how much better a chance Tommy would have if I could clear zombies of these horrific crimes “against breathing humanity.” How Tak can look amused without twitching a muscle, I may never know.

  “Do your…beating-heart…friends know…about…the danger? Of…what…you are planning? Adam and…the Kendall…girl?”

  I shook my hair, which still had some life to it. His was frozen into a blackish-gray helmet.

  “Adam isn’t a beating heart anymore,” I said, a superfluous comment that he ignored.

  “Does…Williams?”

  “Nobody,” I said. “Just you.”

  “Just…me.”

  I told you about Tak’s beautiful dark eyes. When he turns their full intensity on you, you have a choice—melt, or turn away. I turned away.

  “They would try to stop me,” I said.

  This was about more than not putting anyone at risk; this was about my atonement. I think he understood. I think Tak has some sins of his own that he’d like to seek forgiveness for, someday.

  “And if you don’t…succeed?” he said. “What do you want…me…to do?”

  “Forget me?”

  He wasn’t amused. I guess I hadn’t really thought about failure as an option.

  “I thought about meeting you here every other week or so, but…”

  He shook his head, coming quickly to the same conclusion I had. There were twenty-one other zombies beneath the ice in this lake, and each visit increased the odds that they would be discovered. The speculation—yet to be tested—was that unregistered zombies without breathing guardians would be destroyed.

  “I figured you could sneak away when the lake thawed,” I said. “But I don’t know how you’ll know if something happens to me before then. Timing could be critical, with Tommy already…”

  He cut me off, and I think there was the ghost of a smile on his lips.

  “I’ll know…Karen,” he said. “I’ll always…know.”

  I wanted to hug him, but he moved away, as though by instinct. If anyone on this planet needs a hug, it’s Tak; I was terribly sad when I realized why he moved.

  He’s in love with me.

  Poor Tak. He must know how I feel about him. I was sad, because he knew and turned away.

  And truthfully, I felt sad for myself, also.

  “I want you to help me, Tak,” I said. “I want you to protect Phoebe.”

  He just stared at me.

  “How…do you propose…I do that?”

  “Watch her. Watch her house. He won’t tr
y anything at school, and I don’t think he’ll try to catch her elsewhere; if he does anything it will be at her house. If Pete comes and I’m not there, stop him.”

  “You are…risking…her life,” he said.

  I turned away. For a moment I felt as cold as I should have felt standing by a lake in January.

  “I know,” I said. “But…I think it is all our lives, if I don’t…stop them. Pete and all his kind.”

  Tak nodded. He didn’t require any more discussion on the subject.

  In the end, I didn’t tell him everything. I didn’t tell him about Monica. Maybe it would have helped him and maybe it would have hurt him, I don’t know. The only reason I didn’t say anything was because I still wasn’t ready.

  So much sadness. Before he left, Tak told me about everyone under the lake. The sky was darkening by the time he slipped back into the water. I thought about him and all the others on my way back to my house.

  I’m determined for them to be walking among us, dry and safe, by the time that the ice that imprisons and protects them is fully melted.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  SHE WAS WEARING THAT Endless perfume, the one for dead people. He could smell it even before she entered his mother’s car. It actually smelled pretty good.

  “Where have you been?” she asked, her voice laced with anger and the scent of cinnamon gum. “You’re almost two hours late.”

  “I called to tell you I wouldn’t be here on time, didn’t I? Your boss wouldn’t let you work a few more hours?” He tried to sound put out, but inwardly he was thrilled that she was feeling so possessive about him.

  “That isn’t the point, Pete. I’ve been waiting…”

  Pete waved the comment away and put the car in drive. “You know I had some things to do.” He winked at her. “Special things.”

  He knew she was angry as soon as he saw her, but her reaction was fiercer than he’d imagined. The growl she made in her throat, almost subvocal, didn’t even sound human as she struck him in the face with a half-closed fist. The car had begun to roll forward, and his jerk of the wheel nearly put it on the curb.

  “Christie, what the hell?” he said, slamming the car back into park while he tried to hold her at bay. She was clawing at him with both hands, going for his face. She opened up a tear on the arm of his leather jacket. He got a hold of her left hand with his right, but he was still belted in, and the shoulder strap was making it difficult to turn toward her. Her right hand came across with a raking motion that just missed his eyes.

  “Christie!” She was strong, too. Unnaturally strong. “Christie, will you stop?”

  She slipped his grip and punched him, hard, on the sternum, and was launching herself at him full force. He barely held her back with his forearm. If this kept up he’d have no choice but to hit her.

  “You said that you wouldn’t go without me! You said…”

  “Take it easy!” Was she actually trying to bite him? He was trying to keep from laughing, despite the ferocity of her attack. “I was only kidding around!”

  She froze for just a second, and he grabbed both her wrists. He had terrible leverage, though, and if she pushed off against her door with her legs he’d be in trouble again, especially if she really was trying to bite.

  “Easy,” he said, trying to be soothing, as if she were a strange dog jumping all over him. “I was kidding. Just kidding. I got stuck on the phone with the Reverend, that’s all.”

  Christie looked at him, her pretty blue eyes sparkling with fury. Or passion. Or both.

  “You were on…the phone?”

  “Yeah, that’s all.” He took a risk and let go of her wrists, but kept his hands up in case she went at him again. She was still leaning over him, but after a minute he realized the fight had gone out of her. Moving with caution, he began to caress her shoulders.

  “I promised you could be there when I zombified the girl. I keep my promises.”

  Christie sighed. “Really?”

  “Really.” Pete kissed her. He never realized how much he’d liked cinnamon gum. She let the kiss happen and then sat back in her seat.

  “I guess I…overreacted.”

  Laughing, he eased the car back off the curb. “You guess? I thought you were going to claw my eyes out. It was like I had a rabid badger in the car.”

  “I’m sorry, Pete.”

  He looked over at her. She was staring out his windshield with a sort of shocked, dead stare.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” he said, chucking her under the chin. “No blood, no foul.”

  She was still weirdly expressionless when she turned toward him. Kind of psycho-looking, he thought. He’d dated psycho chicks before and had to admit that he liked the unpredictability and randomness they brought to his life. He liked volatile girls.

  “There could have been blood,” she said blankly. “And look, I ripped your jacket.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You must really hate zombies.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Why?”

  She blinked.

  “What do you mean, why?”

  “Why do you hate them? Did a zombie hurt you? Hurt someone you love?”

  “In a way,” she said, her voice hollow. She sounded sort of like Dorman the zombie killer, back in Arizona. She was starting to creep Pete out a little. “They pretend to be something they aren’t. They pretend to be alive, and they aren’t. They aren’t alive at all.”

  “No,” Pete said, hoping to mollify her and shake her out of this spooky funk. “They aren’t.”

  “You promise I can be with you?” she said, turning her baby blues on him. “When you…do it, I mean?”

  “Yeah. I promise.”

  She sat back in her seat. “I don’t know, Pete.”

  “What? What don’t you know?”

  “I’m worried about you. What if you get caught? I don’t think you’ll get away with just community service a second time.”

  “Oh, you heard about that, did you?”

  She took her time answering. “Everyone heard about it. It was the talk of the town that you got away with murder.”

  “Criminal negligence,” he said. “My sentence was criminal negligence, not murder. I wasn’t convicted of murder.”

  “I’m sorry. Don’t get huffy.”

  “Huffy? This from the girl that nearly rips my face off.”

  “Don’t be mad at me, Pete. I’m trying to tell you I care about you. I’m worried that you’ll get caught. I’m worried that they’ll find your lawyer.”

  “Fat chance,” he said. “He’s holed up someplace in upstate Maine.”

  “I don’t want you to go to jail, Pete,” she said, stroking his cheek with her cool fingertips. “I really like you, Pete.”

  “I really like you, too,” he said. “But I hate zombies even more.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE ICE CRACKED IN A star-shaped pattern, the lines spreading like thin fingers reaching for the shore. Takayuki had been pounding at the blue-white sheet above him for some moments, using a small-craft anchor he’d found near the deepest part of the lake not far from where the submerged cabin lay. Pieces of ice were chipping off with each blow he struck, and the sound of his hammering was only a faraway tapping to his waterlogged ears. He imagined a stricken submarine, propellers stilled, reactor spent, caught in a crevasse miles away, the suffocating crew pounding on the hull with lengths of pipe.

  The ice ceiling gave way all at once, the anchor smashing through like a body flung through a car windshield. Chopping at the edges with the flanges of the anchor and then clearing away the fragments with his free hand, Tak soon had a hole big enough to permit his head through.

  He passed the anchor back to Tayshawn and then pulled himself halfway up with his hands, letting the air hit his face.

  He opened the lids fractionally and saw that he was coming out to a spectral moonscape, the pale light from above reflecting off the hard white shell covering the lake and
the land beyond. He looked around and saw no one, saw nothing living except a pair of birds streaking across his field of vision, their silhouettes blacker than the bruise-colored sky. He’d wanted a nighttime exit just in case there were breathers hanging around. Apparently he’d timed it well, because the moon was directly above, making it feel as though the whole world, and not just he and his friends, was dead.

  He slid back down and resumed his work until the head-sized hole was big enough to allow the rest of his body through. Gripping the ice with his hands and pushing off the sandy lake bed with his boots, he managed to haul himself up and out of the hole. Tayshawn came up behind him, and the ice creaked and split beneath his additional weight, at one point separating as Tayshawn’s foot plunged through.

  His expletive was incomprehensible, as his throat and lungs were filled with water. Tak motioned with a dripping finger to head toward the bank of the lake.

  Popeye was the last of the three dead boys to climb out. On his first two attempts, jagged shards of ice came away in his grip, and he thrashed the black water in frustration. His hands flopped on the ice like a speared salmon as he struggled for purchase, a gout of lake water spewing out of his mouth. Tak watched him flounder a moment, noting that his left hand actually was salmonlike—black webbing spread between each finger, and forefinger and thumb, making it look more like a fin than a human hand.

  “Don’t…just…watch,” Popeye said, gargling out the words as he clung to the crumbling shelf. “Help.”

  Tak looked at Tayshawn, who was leaning over and trying to drain the rest of the water from his chest. When the liquid discharge slowed to a trickle, he spit out the slushy remainder. He came up grinning, although only the left half of his upper lip worked. The lake water, air-cooled, was already crystallizing in his hair.

  “Not…funny,” Popeye said, thrashing like a cat tossed into a swimming pool.

  Tak, never as talkative as Popeye to begin with, was almost afraid to speak. They’d been in the lake for about five weeks, and he was concerned that his friends’ vocal chords would pop like guitar strings if they tried to use them too quickly. When they went under, Popeye, a “fast” zombie, could speak with almost no pause whatsoever, and now he sounded like a newlydead.