Passing Strange (16 page)

“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 try 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.

S
HE 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.”

T
HE 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.

Tak shook his head but was disturbed by the soft cracklings he heard as he moved. The water clinging to him had begun to ice up the moment he emerged from the lake. Frost could be seeping into his skin, sending white roots deep within him, into his unworking organs. His long hair was all icicles that clattered like wind chimes when he moved.

He planted his boots on either side of the hole and reached down, grabbing Popeye’s arms. He leaned back and pulled, yanking Popeye out of the hole like a carrot. He let him go, to keep his own balance, and Popeye splayed and went spinning across the ice, sliding a decent distance away.

Freezer burned he might be, but Tak felt strangely powerful, as though their time under the ice had let them store up energy.

Popeye, perhaps surprised by the release of that energy, stared up at him with his forever unblinking eyes. Then he leaned over and emptied the sludge from the bottom of his lungs as best as he could, the stream of water being followed by a stream of curses when he was done.

“It…must . .. be…February,” he said. “I died…in…February.”

“Dude…put…on…your…glasses,” Tayshawn said. He was not a fan of the self-proclaimed “bodifications”—skin art more extreme than tattooing or simple piercings—that Popeye had made to himself and some of the other zombies, the more impressionable kids who were always seeking their approval.

Tak started walking across the ice, clenching and unclenching his hands into fists with each step. They’d left nineteen zombies below.

“What’s…the…matter, Shawnie?” Popeye said, thin canals appearing in the clear ice coating his face. He sat up and sheets of ice fell away from his chest, bare beneath his leather jacket. “Hating…me…cause…I’m…beautiful?”

“That’s…it…exactly,” Tayshawn said. He scrutinized Popeye a moment longer. “Aw…no.”

“What?” Popeye said as he sat up, withdrawing his sunglasses from the inner pocket of his leather jacket.

“Dude,” Tayshawn said, “what did…you do…to your…neck?”

Popeye lifted his left hand, the webbed one, to his throat in an oddly subconscious, human gesture. His fingertips probed a rent in his skin just below and back of his lower jawbone.

“Gills,” he said, managing a smile. “I figured with…us…being underwater…and all. You…like it?”

“No. And what is…up…with your…hand?”

Popeye held his hand up. The webbing between his index and middle finger had started to tear loose, and he picked at the threads with his normal hand.

Tayshawn shook his head. “How did you…do that?”

“With…fishing line…and a scuba…flipper. You can…find…anything…down there,” he said, indicating the lake with a nod of his bald head. There was a sharp crack, and the patch of ice Popeye was sitting on gave way.

Tayshawn looked at Tak, rolling his eyes skyward. His right eye stayed in that position until he rubbed at the frosted orb with his fingertips.

“What?” Popeye said, more to Tak than to Tayshawn, as he scrabbled toward the shore. “You don’t…like…it?” He flexed the webbed hand, and the unstitched corner of black rubber poked up over his knuckles. Tak knew that his was the only opinion he cared about, the only person who could dampen Popeye’s enthusiasm for his “art,” and so he reserved his true judgment.

“Be yourself…Popeye,” Tak said, looking at the array of fishhooks Popeye had put through his left ear—the lowest, one of those four-pronged jobs Tak’s father liked to call a gut-ripper.

He looked away. He hadn’t thought of his father in months, since long before they fled the beating hearts by disappearing into Lake Oxoboxo.

“Be…yourself,” he repeated. “That’s all that…matters.”

Popeye chose to take the remark as a high compliment, and his thin lips twisted into a bloodless, smug grin at Tayshawn, who was too busy coaxing his eye back in place to notice.

“Ever read…H…P…Lovecraft?” he asked Tayshawn, smug. “
At the…Mountains of…Madness
?
The Dunwich Horror
? I’m a…Deep…One.”

“Yeah, you’re…a…deep…one, all right,” Tayshawn said, helping Popeye to his feet.

Tak scanned the tree line across the frozen surface of the lake, trying to ignore their chatter. The thing he’d miss most about being underwater wouldn’t be the relative safety, but the silence.

“Tayshawn,” Popeye said, adopting a pedantic tone, “bodifications will…become…a primary…art…form of post…living…society.”

“You’re one weird kid, Bug-Eyes,” Tayshawn said. “I…don’t even…know…what you are…talking about.”

“That’s…why I’m trying…to educate…you. You…”

“Oh, so…you’re educating…me? I…”

“You…”

“Will you…be quiet, please?” Tak said.

It was an odd request for people that had been under the ice for nearly two months, but his companions complied. For a moment, anyway.

“So…Tak,” Popeye said, eventually. “What…are we…doing…outside?”

Popeye could be clingy and irritating, but he was loyal. All Tak had need to do was beckon him, and he followed. Tayshawn, too.

“Recon,” he said, his voice alien. He was aware of moving much more slowly than usual, and without the languid grace that he and his people had when under the water. He wondered if it was the cold or simple disuse that was causing his limbs to seize up. The bullet he’d taken above his knee wasn’t helping, either.

They’d left eighteen of the nineteen zombies that had followed him into the water at the submerged cabin, a two-room, post-and-beam structure that had settled at the deepest part of the lake. The cabin was found by the only zombie still underwater that was not inhabiting it—Mal. Mal seemed to climb into a shell after Tommy left, which was a niggling irritation to Tak, who thought a friendship existed between him and the large zombie.

Mal had listened to Tak’s plan to go into the lake, without comment, and when he finally moved off of his rock in the forest he did so without any acknowledgment. Tak wasn’t even sure that Mal had gone into the water until he swam over to the rest of the zombies who were scouting along the lake bed. He managed, with just a few gestures and hand signals, to convince them to follow him, whereupon he led them all to the cabin, which had some benches, a table and chairs, the remains of some fishing gear nailed onto the walls, and a plethora of fish.

Oddly, Mal left soon after, apparently not needing the psychic comfort the building provided, or the psychic comfort the zombies provided each other. Tak found him one day when he was exploring. Mal had been sitting on the bow of a sunken Chris-Craft, staring up at the ice ceiling the way he used to stare at the stars from the backyard of the Haunted House. He didn’t move when Tak approached, and Tak left him undisturbed.

“Uh, Tak?” Popeye said. Tak realized that his companions were staring at him, waiting for him to give instructions of some sort. “Are we…going…to find…George?”

“George is…dead, man,” Tayshawn said. “I mean…really…dead. He wasn’t…moving…after they…Tased…him.”

“We’ve…got…to find…out.”

Tak rose to his feet. He couldn’t feel the temperature, but he found himself imagining how cold he should feel.

“George is…gone,” he said. “But Karen has a…job…for us.” He turned back toward the forest. “Karen needs us.”

“Karen, huh?” Tayshawn said.

“To do what?” Popeye said.

“Bodyguarding,” Tak replied. “The Kendall girl.”

“Whaaaaat?” Popeye said, freezing in his tracks.

“Phoebe?” Tayshawn said, catching up to Tak. Tak had forgotten that he’d been in class with both of the girls. “Why? What’s going on?”

“Pete Martinsburg,” Tak replied. “He framed us. He…is responsible…for George. He…wants…to kill…the girl. And frame…Layman…for the deed.”

“What the…hell. Are we…ever going…to be rid…of that guy?”

“Why don’t we just…kill him?” Popeye said, serious.

“We don’t…kill,” Tak said.

“Oh, sure,” Popeye said. “But we can risk…our necks…for a…beating heart. Our necks and…everyone’s…under the…lake. Does that…seem right…to you?”

“We don’t…kill, Popeye,” Tak said.

“Yeah. That’ll make me feel…just great…when I’m getting…reterminated. When our friends…in the lake get…”

Tak turned. “If you don’t want to…help…then go.”

“I’m staying,” Tayshawn said. “Phoebe’s a little…weird, but…she’s a good…kid. We need more…beating hearts…like her, not…less.”

Popeye lifted his webbed hand skyward, popping one of the stitches that secured the rubber to his thumb. “Fine. I’m just…saying. We have other…responsibilities, is all.”

“Yes,” Tak said. “We…do.”

They made it to the edge of the woods by Adam’s house, just before the sun began to rise.