Passing Strange

  He wondered if Adam’s condition allowed them to ignore the future and live purely in the present. So few people do, Tak knew. Most young people live in the future, always looking ahead toward the next big change they think will make their lives complete. “Things will be different when…I graduate, I get a new boyfriend, I get that job, that promotion, that new car. When my parents finalize their divorce.” Others lived entirely in the past, never able to move forward from the way things used to be—which, by definition, means the way things will never be again. Maybe Adam’s death brought them face to face with the realization that every moment you spend with another person is a moment that will never come again, and therefore should be treasured and cherished.

  But, he thought, what about the future? Phoebe is sixteen or so, an age which gives her a two-year window, three years at the most, to decide if she wants to try to join the other side. Eighteen or nineteen seems to be the oldest a person can return from the dead. What will they do when Phoebe turns eighteen? Will she elect to try and join Adam, or will she miss her chance and allow herself to get older? Will she become a woman while Adam physically remains a boy of sixteen forever? What then?

  A squirrel padded out of the brush three feet from where he sat. Seeing him, the squirrel raised its head and regarded him with suspicion, cheeks and nose twitching.

  I feel the same way about you, he thought. The squirrel scampered back into the brush.

  I should have discussed this with Karen, he thought. Martinsburg’s actions could prevent Phoebe and Adam from having to make the toughest decisions further down the road. There could actually be a positive side to Martinsburg’s plan succeeding.

  There are many things I should have discussed with Karen, he thought.

  Like her healing. She’d told him about the bullets and the cut. Why had her wounds gone away while everyone else’s—his, Popeye’s, Mal’s—remained?

  Love, he thought. Maybe Williams was right.

  The ghost light from the unseen television threw flickering shadows on the walls inside her home. The flickering—and her absence from view—gave the home a forlorn appearance. The cold, empty landscape and the silence contributed to a sense of loss. It was so quiet that Tak could hear an animal—another squirrel or a raccoon, maybe—walking around the side of Layman’s house. He could hear cars coming from miles away. Sometimes the wind played tricks on him, and he would think he heard random sounds, noises that sounded close but may have been from a distance: a chime, a baby’s cry, a car door.

  The quiet was disrupted by the sound of Phoebe’s dog barking from inside the house. Tak had never been a fan of smaller dogs—his family owned cats, some of them nearly as big as Phoebe’s pet. The dog’s routine, at least, was predictable. Once outside in the morning with Mr. Kendall. Once when Adam and Phoebe came home from school, with Phoebe. And again in the evening with Phoebe or Adam, depending on if he was over or not.

  The dog yapped again. It must be about that time.

  Two mornings ago, the dog had looked in his direction. The wind must have been blowing just right to have brought Tak’s scent all the way over to where the dog pranced around on the end of his leash. He looked right at Tak, his ears back and a low growl building in his throat. Mr. Kendall told the dog to stop being silly. Tak didn’t shift a muscle throughout.

  Inside, Adam rose into view, all but blocking the window. Phoebe rose as well, laying her hands against his chest. A moment later, Adam sat down. Phoebe bent low, as though she were talking to her dog. A moment later she crossed toward the kitchen and out of view, and a moment after that, the door opened and out trotted the little dog, leading Phoebe, who was coatless but sweatered against the nighttime chill.

  Her sweater was white, although it had the same bluish cast to it that the snow had in the moonlight, and she was wearing blue jeans and sneakers. When they reached the center of the yard, she stopped, and the dog started pacing, his nose to the ground.

  She hugged herself and turned away from the dog each time it looked ready to crouch. Tak didn’t often get to observe the living, but he was always fascinated with how fluidly they moved. Karen was the only zombie he knew whose movement even began to approach the traditionally biotic. Trads moved in curves, zombies moved in angles. As though to illustrate his thoughts, Phoebe sighed, and as she turned her head toward the opposite edge of the wood where Tayshawn and, presumably, Popeye were hiding, her long black hair fanned out over her shoulder and curled along her jawline, framing her pretty white face. He was so intent on watching her that he almost didn’t see a slant of light from the kitchen appear and disappear as the inner door was opened.

  But the shadowy form wasn’t Adam coming out. It was someone going in.

  Tak stood and started moving as fast as his injured leg allowed. The dog saw him first.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THIS COULDN’T HAVE WORKED out any better, Pete thought, his gloved hand going around the handle of the knife. The handle was heavy and the blade whisked against the wood as he unsheathed it from its slot. Layman probably thinks I’m Scarypants, fresh from letting little Rover have his tinkle.

  He paused just long enough to watch the light gleaming on the heavy beveled blade. Pete had been scarred by a switchblade; it had flicked in and out, and he only felt it as a sudden burning brand on his cheek, a brand that was wet to the touch. The knife he had in his hand would do more than draw on the flesh. This blade could etch; this blade could cut right through to bone.

  He looked out the door and saw that Phoebe and her dog were facing the woods. At first he’d been thrown off by the variation in their pattern—Adam usually took the dog out, probably because he couldn’t feel the cold. But this was even better—with her outside, he’d have even more time to kill her, and he wouldn’t have to worry about escaping from the house while Adam came back with the dog. This way, Adam might not even realize that something was wrong until Pete was long gone.

  He had plenty of time. Pete had been one of the fastest kids on the football team, and he hadn’t missed a step since his season ended abruptly, along with Adam’s life. And he wasn’t weighed down with twenty pounds of pads, now, either.

  Or a helmet, he thought, straightening his mask. He could be down the steps and across the lawn in the time it took Phoebe’s heart to throb out its last three beats.

  He could picture Adam going to investigate and putting his big corpse paws on the hefty handle of the knife and then on her cooling body. It would work best if he went a little crazy then, finding her dead and un-resurrected, his shuffling feet turning the snow around her into a bloody slush.

  Pete threw the screen door wide and took the stairs in one leap, not even skidding as his sneaker hit the snow. Then the dog started barking and Phoebe screamed, but it took him a moment to realize that she wasn’t screaming at him.

  He slid to a stop, realizing she’d seen something in the woods beyond. He heard a crash from inside the house, as though a lamp was knocked to the floor—Layman responding to her shrieks. Her back was still to him; she was only ten yards away. He had her. Even living, Adam couldn’t reach them in time.

  He took one step, and then he saw it loping out of the woods. It held its arms before it as it attempted to run, half dragging its leg behind it.

  “Phoebe!” it called, the word seeming to escape from the hole in the side of its cheek. “Behind…you!”

  She was paralyzed, Pete realized, even as he was paralyzed at the sight of the thing whose face he wore. The thing who’d cut him. The sight of it, seeming to form out of the very gloom of the forest, drove a sliver of icy fear into Pete’s heart. He gripped the weighted handle of the knife. The Reverend expected him to master his emotions. He needed to fight the fear. Fight the fear and move.

  I was parked on the shoulder just down the road from Adam’s house. I was gripping the steering wheel of Pete’s mother’s car, and I knew it was time to turn the key in the ignition, but I couldn’t move.

  My plan
had been to wait until he reached the edge of Adam’s driveway, count to three, then speed over to Phoebe’s house while leaning on the horn. That would give Pete enough time to reach her house, but certainly not enough time to kill her. I’d tell him I saw lights approaching, or that I heard a siren, anything. Maybe I’d just tell him that I got scared. Maybe he’d think I ruined everything or maybe he’d think I’d saved him, but it was the only thing I could think of to foil his plan yet still give me a chance to get the evidence I needed.

  I counted to three. Then I counted to ten, and then I stopped counting.

  I’d watched him leave the car, watched him steal across the snow-covered lawns, a shadow gliding in the moonlight. I needed to start the car. I needed to start the car and I needed to blare the horn, blast the radio, scream a warning. But I was frozen. My hands were clenched and my fingernails were pressing into my palms.

  The blue fog. It was all around me—it was inside me. I could feel it seeping in, flooding into my brain through the blue portals of my contact lenses. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t breathe.

  But Karen, a small still voice from inside whispered, you don’t have to breathe anymore.

  The voice wasn’t mine. It was Monica’s.

  My inaction with Monica, my failure to do something as simple as take her hand in public, led me down a winding path to my own death. If I didn’t act now, there was a very good chance that Phoebe would die—and it would be my fault.

  I placed my hand on the steering wheel, on the horn.

  I reached for the key, praying I’d find the strength to turn it.

  Her back was still to him. Phoebe couldn’t tell what the freak, the real zombie, intended to do. Pete knew he could still kill her, if he could only will his feet to move. He could kill her, and if the freak got blamed for it instead of Adam, that would still be a good thing, wouldn’t it? The freak knew he’d never reach her in time, and he shouted a second warning, one made unintelligible by frustration. She dropped the leash, and her dog took off running.

  There was the sound of screeching tires and a car horn from the street. Another crash from inside, and then Phoebe turned.

  She looked at him and her eyes went wide, almost as if she could see right through his mask, into his eyes and into his soul. Christie was leaning on the horn now.

  Pete made his decision, and ran toward the blaring horn.

  Christie was standing outside the running car, watching him run.

  “Did you kill her?” she yelled.

  “Get in the car,” Pete yelled back. “Get in the car and drive!” He opened his door and slammed it shut before she was even behind the wheel. “Go! Go!”

  She stomped the accelerator to the floor, and the car fishtailed as it ran across the edge of the Kendalls’ lawn. Unbuckled, Pete was rocked against the door.

  “Did you kill her? Did you?”

  “Jesus, watch out! You’re heading for that tree!”

  The tires squealed beneath them, and Pete thought the vehicle was no longer in contact with the earth.

  “Did you?” She was yelling now.

  Her eyes were crazed in the radioactive-green glow of the dashboard lights. She looked sickly and unreal, her hands tight on the wheel.

  “Slow down. I…”

  “Did you?”

  “There wasn’t time!” he shouted, his voice breaking. She was going to drive them right over the guardrail and into the embankment beyond. “Zombies!” He was aware that he sounded hysterical, that he couldn’t even form whole sentences. “Zombies!”

  At what seemed to be the last second, she pulled the wheel hard. The back end of the car whipped around, and for a moment he thought it was over, that they wouldn’t make it; but then as if by magic, the front end cut back and they were pointed in the right direction, all four wheels in contact with dry asphalt.

  His breath was coming in gulps. He tore off the mask and threw it over his shoulder into the backseat. He wasn’t sure for a moment who was more intent on killing him: the half-face zombie or his girlfriend.

  “Zombies,” he said, gasping as though breathing were something new. “There were zombies coming out of the woods. A dozen, maybe more.”

  She didn’t answer right away.

  “I know,” she said, the manic edge now gone from her voice. “That’s why I came for you.”

  She has the strangest look on her face, he thought.

  Takayuki knew he had no chance of catching Martinsburg, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try. Then Layman came through the door just as Tak reached the edge of the driveway, and laid a hit on him that sent him flying. He flew ten feet in the air and slid on his back in the snow until he came to an abrupt stop against the wheel well of one of the many junkers in Layman’s driveway.

  Tak didn’t feel a thing. Nothing but a twinge of memory—his final living memory, when he was launched from his motorcycle while cruising down the Garden State Parkway.

  That was kind of fun, he thought. Something in his shoulder crackled as he sat up. Layman was standing over him, his huge hands balled into fists.

  Tak looked up at him and showed his teeth.

  “Adam! Don’t hit him!”

  Phoebe ran into view, and again Tak was struck by how fluid her movements were. Adam moved like a big muscle-bound oaf, but one whose limbs were controlled by puppet strings instead of reflexive will.

  Adam didn’t look convinced. He must have been a terror on the football field, Tak thought.

  “There was another one,” Phoebe said, putting her hand on Adam’s arm, on the bare skin below the cuff of his Oakvale Badgers T-shirt. His skin did not yield at all to the gentle pressure of her fingers, Tak saw, as though Adam were made of lead and not flesh and bone.

  “Another…one?” Adam said.

  “And Gargoyle ran away!” she said. “He got scared.”

  “What do you…mean…another…one?”

  Tak made no attempt to get up. He tried to imagine what a real fight with Adam would have been like, back when they were both alive. Probably short, if he hit me, he thought. But Adam wouldn’t know how to fight, really. Not fight dirty, anyhow.

  “Another Tak,” Phoebe said, distracted, no doubt, by the thought of her dog lost in the cold, dark Oxoboxo woods. “Oh, Adam, did you hear that car? What if Gar ran out in the street?”

  “Wait, Phoebe,” Adam said. “Gar will…be fine.” He glared down at Tak. “What…are you…doing here?”

  “Just…checking in,” Tak said.

  “Just checking in?” Phoebe said. “Who was that, then? He looked like you.”

  Tak tried to read Adam’s expressionless expression as Phoebe helped him to his feet. “You…think?” he said. “Didn’t get…a good…look at him.”

  “How did you know he was going to be there?”

  “I had no…idea. Just good…timing.”

  They didn’t believe him. He was glad they hadn’t seen what he’d seen just before Adam tried to launch him into orbit. Karen, at the wheel of the car that sped Martinsburg away.

  “You’re…kidding.”

  “When have you…known me…to kid?”

  “You aren’t going to tell us anything, are you?”

  “What’s…to tell?”

  Adam and Phoebe exchanged a look, then resumed staring at him, suspicion etched onto their faces. It was Phoebe who softened first.

  “Tak, I want to find my dog,” she said. “But I have wonderful news. Karen survived the night you went into the lake. She’s okay.”

  “She…did?” Tak said, forcing his mouth into an approximation of a smile, and not the one he usually wore to terrify the beating hearts. “Somehow…I always…knew it.”

  They heard a sharp bark behind them.

  “What…the?” Adam said.

  Popeye and Tayshawn were walking toward them, Gar curled up comfortably in the crook of Popeye’s arm, his furry little body pressed against his bony ribcage.

  “Hey, Phoebe…Adam,” Tayshawn
called, waving. Tak lifted his index finger to his lips, kissing his knucklebone.

  Tayshawn nodded, almost imperceptibly. “How’s life among…the living?”

  Gargoyle yapped again, and Popeye was almost gentle as he handed him over to Phoebe.

  “Aw,” he said. “There goes my…midnight…snack.”

  Phoebe clutched Gargoyle tighter, but not before the dog’s little tongue licked out across Popeye’s flippered hand.

  “We…wondered…if you thought…it was safe…to leave…the lake,” Tak said, hoping that Popeye didn’t run his mouth.

  “Um, no,” Phoebe answered. “Not yet.”

  “I…wouldn’t,” Adam said. “How…is…everyone?” He looked at Popeye’s flipper hand, frowning.

  “Wet,” Popeye said, and forced out a high stream of giggles.

  “They’re fine,” Tayshawn said. “A little…bored, maybe, but…fine. Everyone’s…together in this…sunken…fishing…hut. Everybody but…Mal. He’s still…meditating…on a…rock.”

  Tayshawn’s hair rasped against the cracking leather of his jacket.

  “He’s…waiting…for God…to speak…to him.” From the corner of his eye he could see Phoebe shivering. The dog was squirming in her embrace, and he could hear her teeth chattering as she tried to calm it down.

  “Adam,” he said. “What…of…George?”

  He knew the answer already from his talk with Karen, but it was the question that Adam would expect.

  The larger boy shook his head. “He didn’t…make it. I’m…sorry, Tak.”

  “How’s…Colette?” Tayshawn said. “And…Melissa?”

  “Williams,” Popeye added, drawing the final syllable of Tommy’s name into a long sibilant hiss.

  Tak watched Phoebe bend low to release her dog, the leash wrapped securely around her hand. She hesitated a moment and then reached down for something in the snow. Adam was telling Tayshawn and Popeye all about Tommy’s efforts in the nation’s capital.