Passing Strange

  “We need to…get his…attention,” Tak said, nodding at Adam’s window.

  “I can…get his…attention,” Tayshawn said. He bent low and started pulling handfuls of snow together.

  “What are you…planning?” Popeye asked.

  “I was…all-state on my…high school baseball team my…freshman…year. Played…shortstop.” He started fashioning the handfuls of snow into a ball.

  “Didn’t you…die…playing?” Popeye asked. Tak was ashamed to realize he didn’t know how his friend had passed.

  “Yep,” Tayshawn replied. “I had an…acute asthma…attack…right there…on the field. You know they…say…‘at least you…died…doing…something…you love’? What a bunch…of…crap.”

  “You can…still…throw?” Popeye asked. Tayshawn packed the snow into a reasonable sphere, and they followed him out onto the smooth white landscape of Adam’s back lawn. “There aren’t…many…zombies…who could manage…that.”

  “There aren’t…many…who were…as good…as me,” Tayshawn said, hurling the snowball. They watched it sail perfectly toward Adam’s window, where instead of splatting wetly into its component pieces, it smashed right through the glass with a jagged sound that cut through the stillness of the night.

  Tak blinked.

  “Nice…throw,” he said.

  When there was no answer, he turned to see his companions “running away,” their stiff, inflexible limbs propelling them back down the hill toward the woods. Tayshawn’s shoes failed him again halfway there, and he fell heavily onto his backside. Tak would have laughed if he’d known how.

  There was commotion inside Adam’s house, shouts of the living. Tak decided not to wait and see who made it to the window first, and followed his fleeing friends toward the relative safety of the woods.

  Adam’s dragging footsteps cut long swathes in the white blanket covering his backyard. He stopped momentarily to look at the cluster of boot prints across from his window, which were already beginning to fill up with new snow. He followed the prints, stopping just outside the tree line. Tak watched his slow progress without comment.

  “You could have…knocked, you…know,” Adam called. “My parents are…pissed.”

  Takayuki stepped forward through the bare branches of the trees.

  “Sorry,” he said. Popeye and Tayshawn, their dead faces almost comically hangdog, stepped out of the shadows as well.

  “Hey, fellahs. I thought you went…back…to the life…aquatic,” Adam said. He paused to ask a question, as if realizing that his irritation at them shouldn’t affect his concern. “Is something…wrong? How are the rest of…our…friends?”

  “Safe,” Tak replied. “They’re…safe.”

  “Good.”

  They hadn’t been friends when Adam was alive, but after he’d died, Tak had tried to recruit him for the Sons of Romero; he’d even invited Adam to hide with them in the depths of Lake Oxoboxo. Adam would have gone, too, if Phoebe hadn’t risked pneumonia to stop him.

  “So what…are you guys…doing…outside…the lake?”

  He was aware of the boy’s scrutiny, even as Popeye and Tayshawn were shuffling their feet and averting their gazes like truant school kids hauled before the principal.

  Tak didn’t answer. He clenched his fist, crumpling the newspaper in his hand.

  “Adam,” Tak said, his voice like a sigh, “I want to know…about…Karen.”

  Now it was Adam’s turn to have difficulty maintaining eye contact.

  “She’s…in jail, Tak. Something happened with…Martinsburg. She was…passing…as a traditionally…biotic…person. She…”

  “She’s in…jail, is…she?”

  Adam gave a slow nod. “Yeah. Phoebe…and I…”

  “In…jail,” Tak said, throwing the wadded newspaper in Adam’s face.

  Adam glared at him, but Tak didn’t retreat. He knew Adam was used to people—living people, anyway—backing down from him, his enormous size enough of a deterrent to keep all but the most foolhardy people from starting trouble. Tak watched him smooth the newspaper, and watched his eyes as he read the headlines.

  “Where…is…she?” Tak said, his voice a guttural snarl.

  Adam looked up. “Tak…”

  “Where…is she, Layman? Tell…me .. . where she…is?”

  “Oh God,” Adam said. “Oh, Karen…Tak, I had no idea…”

  “You let them…do this,” Tak said, the last word escaping as a horrible hiss through the rent in his cheek. “You stood…by and…did…nothing.”

  A reply started to form on Adam’s lips, but Tak wasn’t done.

  “Karen!” Tak said, shouting her name. He raised a long bony finger—literally bony where the skin was missing from the knuckle—and pointed it in Adam’s face. “You let them…do this…to Karen!”

  Adam raised his hand from his side, in what Tak would later think was probably a gesture of sympathy, or helplessness, but at the time, Tak only saw it as one thing: an excuse. He lashed out, throwing himself at the much larger boy, actually making him stagger. Adam struck out, more to ward off the frenzy of the assault than anything else.

  His blow struck Tak on the collarbone, and Tak went over backward, his body thudding on the snow-covered ground.

  Tak imagined that Adam had been aiming for his face. His teeth, to be exact, the ones that were always visible. He struck out with a booted foot, hitting Adam in the ankle. Adam over-corrected, trying to keep his footing, and hit the ground, getting a face full of snow. Tak growled like a wounded animal and scrambled toward him.

  Adam rolled onto his back, sweeping across with a crooked elbow as Tak closed in. Tak knew that Adam had studied martial arts, but he still considered him an inelegant fighter. He came in quick and low, but Adam’s elbow thumped solidly on his head, and Tak flew away from him like a discarded doll.

  Tak fell in a sprawl, his neck hideously twisted.

  “Oh, man.”

  This was from Tayshawn, who’d stood in mute shock with Popeye, both boys obviously stunned by the savage attack. Tak lay in the snow staring at Adam, who looked both shocked and guilty. Tak knew Adam hadn’t held back when he’d struck him.

  Tak got to his knees and heard the dull grind of bones as he flexed his neck and shoulder muscles, twisting his head back into place. He couldn’t get the alignment quite right until he placed his hands over his icy ears and gave his head a sharp jerk, eliciting a sickening crack. Adam, still sitting in the snow, watched with fascination.

  “Tak,” he said. “Tak, I’m…sorry.”

  “It’s over…Tak,” Tayshawn said, standing between the two boys. “It’s…over.”

  Tak swiveled his neck this way and that, testing to see if his skull was settled properly. He looked past Tayshaw and favored Adam with his best smile.

  “Sorry?” he said. “For me, or Karen?”

  Adam looked up at Tayshawn and Popeye, who seemed as stunned as he’d been at the short but brutal fight.

  “For you. Karen wasn’t…my fault.”

  Tak rose to his feet, then strode over to Adam and reached down. He knew Adam thought that his motion was a peace gesture of some sort, but he ignored Adam’s outstretched hand and reached lower.

  He gripped the handle of the switchblade he’d stuck between Adam’s lower ribs. Tak tugged, hard, and the object popped free.

  “Don’t be,” he said, holding it up for Adam to see. A tear of viscous black fluid ran from the tip, and the moment the tear struck the hilt, Tak retracted the blade.

  Adam stared at him. “You…stabbed me? You actually…stabbed me?”

  “You did…nothing,” Tak said, aiming a bony finger at him. “Stay…away.”

  “Tak…”

  “She’s still alive, Adam. No…thanks…to you.” Tak started backing away into the woods. Adam made no move to stop him. Popeye kicked snow onto Adam as he shuffled past, but Tayshawn’s look was almost apologetic.

  “Tak…” Adam said.

 
“Stay away…from us, Layman. Stay with your…beating heart…friends. You aren’t…one of us.”

  “She was my…friend, too, Tak,” Adam called after him.

  Tak kept walking, his companions falling in line as they put distance between them and the dead boy who sat at the edge of the forest, pressing his hand to his side.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “IT’S SO GOOD TO HAVE YOU home, Pete,” Mrs. Martinsburg said. “Would you like another glass of lemonade?”

  Pete looked at his mom and smiled as he stowed the sarcastic comment that rose to his lips far back into his mind, mentally thanking Reverend Mathers as he did so. He was still feeling bruised and agitated at the memory of her pale newsprint eyes looking up at him, and part of it, he knew, was that he’d been too quick to let go of so many of Mathers’s essential teachings, and so soon after leaving his company. He’d worked hard to master his emotions—he had mastered them.

  At least until the whole business with the girl. The zombie Karen.

  He was so confused, his thoughts a jumbled mess. The Reverend—although Pete vowed he would never confess the full story to him—would probably tell him that the incident was a necessary slip, a step in his overall development. Either way, Pete was anxious to regain his self-control. He took his restraint with his mother, the easiest and most frequent of his emotional-outburst targets—as a positive sign. In addition to being proof that he could force some control on himself, instead of a fight and tears, which would be typical of an exchange with her, he now had someone that was willing to rush off to get him refills.

  “I’d love some, Mom,” he said. “Thank you.”

  She almost blushed as she handed him the glass, so good was he at feigning a grateful, warm look.

  His cell phone rang. Pete picked it up and looked at the screen, scarcely believing it when he saw that it was the Reverend himself calling, as though he could sense Pete’s negative thinking from the other side of the continent.

  Pete tried not to stutter as he picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Peter,” the Reverend said. “How are you, my boy?”

  Peter gave an involuntary shudder. The Reverend sounded quite pleased.

  “I’m very well, sir.”

  “Are you enjoying your break?”

  “I am, sir. I’m anxious to be getting back to One Life, though.”

  The Reverend chuckled, a dry throaty sound that Pete would have thought sinister from anyone else. “Don’t you think your ministry in your home town is more important?”

  Pete smiled. “Well, I suppose it is important, sir, but…”

  “Imprisoning the demon. Brilliant. And the press that followed, the idea that the demons could pass among us undetected. But you know that, we’ve spoken often of your success. And I have spoken to my congregation of it as well.”

  Pete knew that happiness was an emotion that needed to be quelled as much as anger or fear, but listening to the Reverend’s praise, and recalling the look on her face as the police hauled her away, it was too much to contain. He found he was holding his breath, waiting for the Reverend to say more.

  “Undetected, that is, by all but the righteous! By you, Peter! By exposing the demon, the trickster, you have swayed public opinion. Those who’d begun traveling the slippery path, those who’d begun to feel a flickering flame of sympathy in their breasts for these things, these zombies, these demons that cloak themselves in the flesh of our young ones—why, you have transformed that flame of sympathy to one of suspicion! You have exposed the liars for what they are!”

  Although he was still basking in the warmth of the Reverend’s words, Pete wondered why the man was suddenly so effulgent with his praise. Soon, he had his answer.

  “And,” the Reverend said, his voice rising to pulpit pitch, “you have shown the world that demons can despair!”

  “Sir?”

  “Now it is back in hell, burning, burning and seething, it’s attempts to lure more souls foiled for the time being.”

  “Sir? I’m not following you.”

  “The demon,” the Reverend repeated. “It returned to hell.”

  There was a pause as Pete waited for the Reverend to continue.

  “You don’t know?” the Reverend said. “The demon destroyed itself rather than to continue as an example of the lying nature of its insidious kind.”

  “I knew,” Pete said. “I knew she was dead. Destroyed, I mean.” He hadn’t considered her suffering in the fires of hell, however. That had not occurred to him. He felt his lemonade-rich stomach churn. But why? Hell was the first and last stop for all zombiekind, that much was clear. Not to mention suicides; self-murderers got their own special place in the fiery furnace. These facts had been internalized weeks ago, so why did they disturb his digestion now? What did he think was going to happen when he outed her, if not eventual damnation? Redemption?

  The Reverend laughed, mistaking Pete’s silence as humility. “The demon is not getting as much press as its cohort in Washington, but if you watch CNN long enough you will see a brief clip about its return to the fiery furnace.”

  Returned to hell, Pete thought, again having difficulty holding his emotions in check. He’d promised her that day in the woods that he would destroy her last.

  But he’d also told her that they would be closer than ever, bonded by blood. The sound he made wasn’t laughter.

  “Stay with your mother and her husband for a few more days,” the Reverend said. “We need to see if the demon’s destruction brings more of the vermin out of their holes.”

  “Yes, sir,” he replied, at once sorrowful that he wasn’t going back to where the Reverend could help make the world understandable again, but also glad he wasn’t going, for fear that the Reverend would be unable to do so. She was like sand rubbing between the folds of his brain and his skull.

  “I’m sure you learned much from your encounter,” the Reverend said. Pete was about to respond, but the Reverend wasn’t finished. His next words seemed to freeze Pete’s blood in his veins.

  “But I’m more interested in what they learned from you.”

  So Pete told him. All of it. And when he was done, expecting the wrath of hellfire to descend upon him, there was only silence, until the Reverend spoke at last.

  “I see,” he said. And then he told Pete what needed to be done. The Reverend spoke very clearly and calmly. The destruction that Pete had been awaiting did not arrive; instead, a very specific set of instructions, surprising instructions, came. Instructions that the Reverend said needed to be followed to the letter. Some of what the Reverend said seemed almost ludicrous to Pete; it seemed to undo all his work in Oakvale. Still, Pete listened without comment until he got his final command.

  “Go see Davidson,” the Reverend said.

  “I will,” Pete replied, swallowing.

  And then the Reverend said the words that almost brought tears to his eyes.

  “Good work, Peter,” he said. “This too shall pass.”

  And then he said good-bye.

  Pete hung up the phone, and a moment later his mother scurried into the room with his lemonade. She upped the ante with a trio of cookies on a china plate.

  “I didn’t want to disturb you while you were on the phone,” she said. “Was that the Reverend?”

  “Yes,” Pete said, keeping his voice flat. He found it wasn’t hard to do.

  “Such a nice man,” she said. “What did he have to say?”

  “He said that the zombie I helped put in jail destroyed herself.” He took a sip of his lemonade.

  His mother nodded. “I heard it on the radio. They didn’t go into much detail, just said that she’d done it.”

  “What are they doing with the body? Did they say?”

  “They mentioned something about transporting the body to the foundation,” she said.

  She’d put ice cubes in his drink, something she did no matter how many times Pete yelled at her not to, but he stowed this chip of anger away, to
o. It was utterly amazing that she had no idea whatsoever that he’d been dating this zombie, this dead girl. She was completely unaware. Her smile was nervous, frightened, almost, and he realized that he’d been staring at her.

  “Ken called,” she said, her voice quavering. “He’s coming home early so he can have dinner with us. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Pete steadied himself with a gulp of lemonade. Ken was his mother’s husband, the Wimp. He tried not to shudder as one of the cubes of ice clicked into his front teeth.

  “Of course not,” he said, “I’ve wanted to talk to Ken.”

  His mother stiffened, reading ominous portent into her son’s words.

  “This is great lemonade,” Pete said, smiling in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. He bit into a cookie and chewed until his mother carefully backed out of the living room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “WALK, WALK, WALK,” POPEYE said. “Trudge, trudge, trudge. Then sit, sit…sit. Sometimes being a zombie totally…sucks.”

  Tak looked at him. He was sprawled out on the sofa, one leg on the floor, his bony arms flung out behind him. His leather jacket was open, revealing the muscles of his abdomen where he’d pared away the skin. He looked like a daddy longlegs that had been struck by a thrown slipper. Or like a dead man.

  Many, many times Tak had wanted to ask him about the flesh removal. Tak had a similar patch on his torso, one that had gone all the way to his ribcage, but that was the result of the motorcycle wreck that killed him, not self-ornamentation.

  Tayshawn snorted from across the room. He was flipping through some CDs they’d left behind before making their pilgrimage to the lake, but he knew better than to ask Tak if he could play one.

  “What did you…expect?” Tayshawn said. “A big party?”

  Popeye sat up, practically bouncing off the couch. “Why…not? We’re…back, man. Why not…make…the most of…it?”