Passing Strange

by Daniel Waters

  He managed to knock his sunglasses off with his wild hand-waving, and once again Tak got the full effect of his bulbous eyes. Watching him flail, Tak realized, as he often did, that he was crazy. Manic.

  But then, they were all crazy.

  “Yeah,” Tayshawn said, tossing the CDs to the floor with disgust, or maybe disappointment. “The most.”

  Crazy. Manic Popeye. Mal, staring off into space, looking for God. Tommy with his messiah complex. The beating hearts, all crazy.

  Tak wasn’t excluding himself from the observation; he knew he was as crazy as the rest of them. Maybe crazier, because he knew that there was nothing else after this…existence, and yet he kept going. Kept trudging, as Popeye said.

  “Don’t be…depressed, Tayshawn,” Popeye said, rising from the couch to retrieve his glasses. Tak wondered if he was putting on his sunglasses for Tayshawn’s benefit; the other boy made no secret about how he felt about Popeye’s “work,” especially his eyes. “Let’s…make something.”

  “Like…what?”

  “I don’t…know. Something. Let’s…glue the…CDs…to the…ceiling. Something.”

  Crazy. Tak watched them argue for a moment, then turned away. He walked toward the stairs. Trudged toward the stairs.

  The creaking of the stairs sounded like the screaming of lost souls. In the days before they went underwater, he’d heard a newlydead telling a story about a zombie he’d known who claimed he’d heard screaming and saw bodies writhing when he died, and flames, but the flames were cold. Beneath the water Tak had tried to imagine cold flames, tried to imagine a coldness more intense than the Oxoboxo during the winter—a coldness he couldn’t even feel—to no avail. He had no faith in a heaven, so why would he believe in hell? He had faith in nothing. Nothing at all.

  There was a photograph of her on the Wall of the Dead. She was wearing her short skirt and white blouse, and standing at the edge of the Oxoboxo woods on a sunny day. He went to it, placed his fingers upon it. It was too dark in the room for him to make out the details, but they were painted upon his memory. Autumnal light framed her against the backdrop of trees. She was amused, her chin upraised, her head tilted slightly to the left. He could almost feel the sunlight.

  She was still alive. She had to be. There was nothing else.

  “Tak?”

  He turned. He hadn’t even heard Tayshawn coming up the stairs.

  “Yes?”

  “Can we…talk…for a minute?”

  “We’re…talking.”

  Tayshaw’s disgust finally came through in his expression. “What the hell…was that?”

  “What?”

  “With…Adam. You…stabbed…him, for God’s…sake.”

  Not for God’s sake, Tak thought.

  “It got…out of…hand.”

  “Out of…hand? We went there…to get…his help, and you…”

  “Tayshawn,” Tak said, “I don’t think…you know…how…angry…I am.”

  Tayshawn must have caught the note of warning in his voice, because he paused a moment before continuing with his questions.

  “Angry? About…Karen?”

  “Karen,” Tak said. “And George. And you, and me, and…Popeye. I’m so…angry, Tayshawn. I’m so full…of…hate.”

  Tayshawn leaned against the wall, an awkward movement that ruffled the photographs. He folded his arms across his chest.

  “Funny,” he said, after a long pause. “You don’t…look…full of hate.”

  A sly smile came to Tayshawn’s face in slow increments. Tak watched the progression and couldn’t help but be amused. Not that he showed his amusement.

  “Funny.”

  “Yeah, I…try. We’re all angry, man. But Adam’s…one ofus. Evenwhenhe was.. . alive.. . hewas . ..one of…us.”

  “One of…us,” Tak said. “You’re right…of course. I have…apologies…to make.” He didn’t really believe it, but he didn’t want to argue, either. Tayshawn moved away from the wall and straightened some of the photos he’d ruffled. “Why…are…we here, Tak?”

  “Honestly? I’m not…sure.”

  “If we are…going to…travel…back…to the lake…we should do it…now…right? While it’s…still…morning?”

  He saw the wisdom in what Tayshawn said. They shouldn’t still be here in the daylight—there was too great a chance the building was being watched—but traveling during the day was just as dangerous.

  “Not…yet,” he said.

  Tayshawn didn’t argue.

  “Popeye is…looking for…some paint,” he said. “He’s going…to start…a mural.”

  Tak didn’t reply. He realized that he was still touching Karen’s photograph, and brought his hand back to his side.

  “She…stayed…with her family, didn’t…she?”

  Tak couldn’t see his expression in the gloom. He wondered how Tayshawn knew that he’d been touching her photo.

  “She…did.”

  “I always…wondered…about…that,” he said. “When I was in…that class…Karen and Tommy…and Evan…lived with their…families. And they…seemed so much more…active…than the rest…of us.”

  Tak nodded.

  “It seemed to make…sense. They all had…families…so they…‘came back’ more…. My mom…believed all that…demon nonsense…the news…was preaching. She’s real…religious…my mom. She tried for…a few…days, but…she made me…leave. I never…heard…her crying…like when…I came back.”

  Tak heard him sigh.

  “Was that…what it was…like…for you, Tak? With…your…parents?”

  “No,” he said. “My parents…would not…have…turned me away.”

  “They…they wouldn’t?”

  “No.”

  “What the hell…are you doing…here, then?”

  Tak turned toward him.

  “I…was ashamed. I was not a dutiful…or obedient…son,” he said. “My death was…my own fault. My parents did not…deserve to live…with the consequences.”

  “You…you never went home?”

  “No.”

  “Do they know you are…a zombie…at least?”

  “I don’t. .. know. I’m sure they…know. .. about the.. . motorcycle.”

  “Tak,” Tayshawn said, “you should…tell them. Call them, or…something.”

  Tak shook his head. His hair had thawed some, but it still made crackling noises.

  “I don’t…think so. Better I…exist…only…as a memory.”

  “That’s messed…up, Tak.”

  “Maybe.” And maybe it wasn’t, he thought. He had already put his parents through the pain of his death because of his poor decisions. He had no intention of torturing them further with his monstrous walking corpse of a body.

  Tayshawn was silent for some moments before returning to the stairs. He might have muttered something about them all being crazy, or it might just have been Tak’s own thoughts reflected back to him.

  Tak remained standing in the darkness, trying to imagine that he was the sunlight on Karen’s skin.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  PETE SAT IN HIS IDLING car for a moment, giving the defroster the chance to work on the windows. The road beyond his driveway looked slick; the sun had shone for a few hours the day before, melting just enough of the snow at the curb to make ice when the temperature dropped again at night. Pete left the heater on and the radio off as he pulled out of the driveway.

  He had in his pocket a brand new digital camera, which he was supposed to use to take pictures of a bunch of beating hearts: families and friends of known Oakvale undead. Pete wondered why the Reverend seemed to be so pleased about what Williams was doing in the nation’s capital; he’d assumed that any political progress the zombies made was a step backward for the aims of One Life, but the way the Reverend sounded, you’d think it was the best thing that could happen.

  He drove to Layman’s and Scarypants’s houses. When he approached their homes he slowed to a crawl and snapped a few p
ictures in quick succession. There was an old muscle car warming up in Layman’s driveway, and one of Layman’s stepbrothers, Jimmy or Johnny—Pete never figured out who was who—was kicking at a blackened chunk of ice beneath a rear wheel well. He looked up as Pete’s car cruised by, squinting at Pete, or more likely, his car. The camera fit in the palm of Pete’s hand, and he didn’t think that Jimmy or Johnny or whoever could spot it.

  He didn’t see any sign of Scarypants or her dead buddy, but figured they weren’t home from school yet. Assuming they went to school; if they’d heard about Karen’s second death they may have stayed home to grieve. An image of Phoebe, crying her eyes out, came to him. He pictured them sitting on the sofa in her parents’ living room, her hand in Adam’s dead gray mitts. She would cry and cry, and all Adam could offer her was a cold embrace.

  I could still kill her, he thought.

  Pete looked in his rearview and saw that the stepbrother had walked to the edge of the driveway and was peering down the road at him. Pete didn’t even bother to accelerate.

  He drove over to Christie’s house—her real house; the DeSonnes’ address was in the yellow pages—and was somewhat surprised to find another vehicle already there, a news van. There was a reporter, an attractive young woman shivering in a purple suit, standing in front of Christie’s lawn. She was arguing with the cameraman, who was wearing about eight layers of clothing and a goofy ski cap.

  Karen. Not Christie. Her name was Karen.

  He couldn’t get her face out of his head, her blue eyes full of sparkle and life. When he’d hit her the blue disappeared and her eye was like cut glass.

  A sudden anger pulsed within him, and he could see himself getting out of his car, stomping across the street, decking the cameraman, and pushing over the pretty reporter.

  He went back to the time he’d stalked her in Oxoboxo woods, when he’d been about to impale her on a jagged branch. Had he really not known she was the same girl? Had he really been fooled by a change of clothes, contact lenses, hair color, and makeup? It didn’t seem possible.

  Or worse—had he known all along? Had something in his subconscious mind told him who she was, what she was, and still allowed him to respond to her? Because whatever he’d tried to tell Duke, he hadn’t been faking. He’d liked her from the moment he saw her folding clothes in that stupid store she’d worked in. And when he was with her, he’d felt things he hadn’t felt for years, and despite whatever he’d learned over the past two months at the One Life ministry, these were feelings that he had no desire to suppress.

  But she was a zombie. The whole time, she was a zombie.

  And he’d kissed her. He’d liked kissing her.

  He swore loudly enough to rattle the windows, and he was fortunate that the camera in his hand didn’t break when he punched the dashboard. He rested his head a moment on the steering wheel.

  She’d been dead the whole time, and he’d known. Deep down, somewhere in his mind, he had to have known.

  His train of thought was broken when a man came out of Karen’s house. He was carrying a little girl. The reporter tried to call him over, but the man pretended not to hear as he rushed to his car.

  They can’t even grieve, Pete thought. There won’t be a funeral. The meat wagon would be taking her right to the foundation as soon as all the paperwork was clear.

  He remembered that he was supposed to be taking pictures.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  TAK WATCHED THROUGH a crack in the boards of an upstairs window as the car made slow progress up the packed driveway of the Haunted House. He watched a teenaged girl get out of the battered brown compact car, drawing her leather jacket tighter around her shoulders. She looked up at the house and huffed thick clouds of steam into the chill morning air, as though she were trying to stoke a furnace of courage within her. She held a small flashlight in her hand.

  “Who the…hell…is that?” Popeye said, drawing close to his shoulder.

  “Don’t…know,” Tak said. “Get…Tayshawn…and hide.”

  “She has a pierced…nose,” Popeye said, a trifle contemptuous.

  “Go.”

  Popeye went. A moment later Tak could hear the weakened planking on the front porch creak as the girl went to the front door and opened it. Her voice filled the empty rooms as she called out a tentative hello.

  Tak waited. He could hear her moving in the rooms downstairs. Tak could tell that the police had been here, but they’d left the generator, the lights, and the music equipment. Popeye, rarely the voice of reason, had suggested they spend the night in the woods and not the house, because he figured the police would troll by on occasion to see if they could pick up any stray undead.

  But something told Tak that they needed to stay and wait. For what, he couldn’t say, but the voice inside his head had told him to go there and to stay there. And the voice in his head sounded a lot like Karen.

  He hid inside the doorway in the Wall of the Dead room, watching through the crack between the frame and the door as a pale disk of light from her flashlight tracked along the wall. Some of the papers on the Wall fluttered, and the girl shone her light into the room.

  She walked in and stood in front of the wall, letting her light and her gaze linger over the faded photos. Her clothing reminded him of Phoebe’s friend, the short one, except she was taller and thinner, and her hair had purple streaks instead of pink. The collar of her jacket had a fringe of fake fur.

  Tak stepped toward her, dragging his injured leg as best he could.

  Seeing him, she screamed and dropped her flashlight. Gray light from outside filtered into the room enough for her to see that he was still approaching her, and she fell back. Her screams became more shrill as they rose in volume.

  She’s loud, Tak thought as he crouched to retrieve her light. Loud enough to wake the dead.

  Still in a squat, he turned on her light, pointing it up at his face. He knew the effect wasn’t as great as it would have been if it had been really dark in the room. Even so, when she saw his face the girl shrieked even louder. But not for the reason Tak thought.

  “Ohmigod,” she yelled.

  “Not…quite,” he said, making sure she got a good look.

  “You’re him!” she cried.

  She was carrying a backpack, and Tak recognized it immediately. It was the one Karen had been carrying the day she’d entered the lake to find him.

  He watched the girl fumbling around in Karen’s bag, and wondered if she was silly enough to be going for a weapon. She withdrew a plastic bag and tossed it at his feet. Strands of black hair spilled out.

  “Look at it!” she said, still loud but no longer yelling. He dumped the bag out and smoothed the hair away from the rubbery mass it was attached to, and then he saw himself. Crude, maybe, and even worse than he really looked, but it was him.

  “You have…got…to be…kidding me.”

  He heard Popeye and Tayshawn come into the room behind him, and he worried that she’d start screaming again as she crab-walked to the wall behind her, but she remained silent.

  “Where did you…get…this?” he said.

  “From…from Karen,” she answered.

  Popeye bent down to look at the mask, and breathed a curse.

  “Looks just like…you,” he said, rubbing the edge of the mask between his fingers. “Except…prettier.”

  Tak ignored him, focusing on the girl. He held out his hand, and she handed him the backpack without speaking. Inside it was a pack of gum, a hairbrush and some twisties, a cell phone, and what looked to be a journal—a small book with a pale blue cover.

  “When did you…see…her?” he asked, thumbing the pages of the journal, half of which were filled with Karen’s neat, loopy script.

  “Just before the cops took her away,” she said, speaking rapidly. “I’m going to be late for school.”

  Tak and Popeye exchanged a look, and then Tak, his body creaking, focused on the girl as he rose to his full height.

&nb
sp; “Yes,” he said, “you…are.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  AFTER WATCHING THE watchers outside of Karen’s house, Pete went home for a while and watched some television, hoping for news about her apparent suicide, but what he saw instead were stories about the Zombie Walk in D.C. An odd sort of sea change had happened to the local coverage; the media seemed very eager to lay claim to Tommy Williams as a favorite native son, and equally eager to forget that zombies were supposedly responsible for the disappearance and possible murder of a lawyer and his entire family. Were Americans really so fickle?

  On the national news the pro-zombie fawning was even more apparent. There were interviews every hour with people, living and dead, who made the trek to D.C. to participate in the march. A pair of aging hippies were asked if their ancient and holey Grateful Dead T-shirts were some sort of an ironic commentary. A young zombie from Texas told a halting tale of her harrowing escape from a bioist mob, ending on a heartwarming note when she discussed the kindly trucker who veered off his route to deliver her safely to “DBHQ.”

  There was a noticeable lack of differing opinion, Pete noticed, whereas just a few short months ago the media was recognizably anti-zombie. The Reverend was a frequent talk show guest, one whose authority regarding the true nature of zombies was rarely, if ever, questioned.

  Americans were fickle, Pete thought.

  Photographs, photographs. He was supposed to be doing his job, getting more photographs. Of Layman and all his friends. Of the principal at Oakvale High. Of the priest that ran the zombie mission at St. Jude’s. Pete assumed that he was helping the Reverend put together some sort of enemies list.

  Then again, the Reverend might just be keeping him busy, trying to keep his mind off what had happened.

  Pete thought about driving to the high school. He could get a few pictures for the file: Principal Kim, Phoebe’s friend with the hair. Maybe snap one of his old math teacher Ms. Rodriguez for laughs; she was a zombie sympathizer, too. He could pretend to be waiting around for TC, and take care of some business.

  Or he could just go kill Phoebe.