Kiss of Life

by Daniel Waters

  "There," Popeye said. "It's ... perfect. Let me take ... a few ...pictures."

  He withdrew a camera from his backpack and urged George and Karen to stay in the frame for the first few shots. "Why don't you ...join them ...Tak?" "No."

  Popeye's eyes were unreadable behind his thick wraparound glasses. He turned and snapped a few pictures with Karen and George in the background.

  Tak watched her pose, and he could tell she was aware of his attention. She leaned over and mimed a kiss to the mannequin with the slashed cheek. Popeye snapped a few more with them out of the frame, then popped out the memory stick.

  He held it out to Karen. "Do you have ...pockets ... in that skirt? It's ...awfully ...small."

  Karen took the stick and dropped it into the pocket of her white blouse. "Don't be cheeky."

  Tak watched the exchange, wondering if Popeye got away with his innuendoes because he was gay. He looked back at Tayshawn, still under his spotlight.

  "Are we ...done ...here?"

  Popeye cast his hands heavenward. "Are we done ...here,

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  he ...says. Not ...'Popeye, you ...genius! You've ...done it...again!'"

  "Popeye, you genius, you've ...done it...again. Now ...can we ...go?"

  Popeye shook his bald head and shouldered his bag of supplies, muttering about the lack of respect. Tak watched Karen help George down the stairs; fearsome as the boy looked, he was easily defeated by a simple staircase. His left leg just wasn't working the way it was meant to.

  They started across the lot.

  "I'm really ...glad ...you came with us, Karen," Tak said, once they were out of the spotlights and into the woods. "Thank ...you."

  "Why, Tak. You say the ...sweetest...things."

  Tak looked over his shoulder, making sure that George wasn't lagging too far behind. He felt Karen's hand brush against his, and wondered if she'd felt the hard bones of his knuckles where they protruded from the skin. His sense of smell may have been dull, but his hearing was excellent--he could hear the rattling of the equipment in Popeyes bag, the scrape of George's step as he dragged his foot along the trail, and above it all the swish of Karen's skirt as she kept pace beside him.

  He cleared his throat. "Will you ... be late ...for school?"

  She shook her head, and he was almost certain he could detect floral traces in the air around her. "I'll walk ...straight there. It's ...closer ...than home."

  "Karen ...I ..."

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  He didn't get to finish, as Popeye trotted up beside them, angling his thin body between them.

  "I can't...believe ... no cops ...the whole night," he said. "We were ...wicked lucky."

  Tak wasn't so sure. "Yes ...lucky."

  "And Karen, thanks for ...getting the ...shirts. That really made the ...piece ... I thought." "Sure, Pops. Anytime."

  Tak wanted to trip Popeye, who stood between him and the memory of flowers. "You risked ...your job ...for us."

  Karen smiled at him. "You mean you aren't still ...mad at me ...for taking the job?"

  Tak looked at the ground before their feet. He'd argued with Karen when she told him about how she was passing, going as far to say that she was setting their cause back to the days of Dallas Jones, the original zombie, by her actions. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that Karen had a right to live her own undead life. Besides, he'd thought, there were ways that her actions could be useful to everyone.

  "I was ...wrong," he said. "It ...happens."

  Tayshawn, who had stayed back with George, called for them to wait up, and the trio stopped at an intersection of paths.

  "Was it hard ...stealing the shirts?" Popeye asked. Karen looked offended. "I didn't... steal... them, Popeye. I ... bought... them. I have two ...jobs, you know." "Really? You ...bought ...them?" "Yes, really."

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  Tak frowned. "At the same ...time? I would ...hope no one connects ...your ...purchase ...with ...the installation."

  Karen looked unconcerned as she took a seat on the remains of a stone wall that had once marked off some Connecticut landowner's plot. "We sell so many ... of them," she said, "and I've bought... a bunch more. I think I'm ...safe."

  "Good," Tak said, watching her smooth her skirt on her pale legs. "We want you ... to be safe."

  Tak knew that that was what had fueled his initial rage when she told him about her job at the mall. Working in a public business was different from her working at the foundation, where there's at least the pretense of a shared beating heartIzombie worldview. If her zombie nature was to be discovered while she was working at the mall, Tak thought she ran the risk of being dragged out into the parking lot and destroyed. It had happened to zombies across America for lesser offenses.

  "Does this mean ...you are ... a Daughter ...of Romero ...now?" Popeye asked.

  Tak thought he detected a slight note of jealousy along with the excitement in Popeyes voice. He knew Popeye was fond of him, but he also knew that what drove Popeyes train most of all was his "art," and if Karen was on the team he'd be able to accomplish a lot more because of her access to computers, photocopiers, and things that could be bought in stores. And besides, Tak had made it as clear as he could without saying it out loud that he thought Popeye a trusted friend, but that was as much as he'd ever think of him.

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  Popeye, he knew, wasn't really deterred. That was one curse that didn't leave when you died. The curse of hope.

  "I don't think I'm ...ready for a ...commitment yet," Karen said, her eyes that flashed in the darkness still locked on Tak's.

  "Your presence is ...enough," Tak said, "for ...now." Karen smiled, and in her smile Tak realized that he was still cursed as well.

  Tayshawn and George caught up a moment later, and then they continued through the dark wood.

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  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  UNDEAD STUDIES. Alish looks grave (ha) when class enters. He and Angela are talking to a pair of tall men in suits, some type of law enforcement. Duke Davidson was there as well, his expression and pallor could make him and the gray cop cousins. The men both have zombie eyes. Gray Suit turns, and although Thorny spends much of his day around dead folks, the man's stare is enough to kill the laughter in his throat. Feel Phoebe's hand on arm, her touch a vague sense of pressure. She could be gently resting her hand or squeezing with all her might. Touch could be one of compassion, or affection, of alarm--can sense none of these gradients.

  "Guest speakers?" she whispers. Try to shake head. The presence of men like these indicates that Something Has Happened. First thought is of Tommy. Sitting--unaided--can see by the way Karen goes to the beverage service that she is

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  having similar thoughts. Wonder what it is about the presence of certain types of authority that triggers a rebellious response in her. The fact that she can drink liquid, and does so to distract the living people around her, is something of a defense mechanism. She does it in the same way that a juvenile delinquent would clean his nails with a knife.

  Angela speaks to us first. She looks as though this class has aged her; the radiance in her smile has diminished.

  "Class," she tells us, "this is Detective Gray and Detective Alholowicz. They are here to talk to each of you. About..."

  "Ms. Hunter, if I may?" the gray one, Detective Gray, said. It wasn't really a question. "We're here to talk to you about a crime." He looked at everyone in the room, but he seemed to find me particularly interesting.

  "A terrible crime. A felony. Grave desecration."

  "And you think one of us ...did it?" Karen asked, pouring at least an inch of sugar into her coffee cup.

  Gray turned toward her. He was a thin guy; the suit jacket made him look bigger, but when he turned you could see how thin he was.

  "We know at least one of the perpetrators of this heinous act was dead," Gray said, and for the first time I saw a flicker of reaction in his pale eyes. I think it was because he'd assumed that Karen
was alive when he first walked by. "Ms. Hunter, I think I'd like to begin the interviews right away. Adam Layman, you're up first."

  Might have blinked.

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  In Angela's office, a little room off the clerical offices that had a couple leather chairs and shelves filled with books. Three chairs stood on a red oriental rug.

  Alholowicz kept dabbing at his left eye with a handkerchief. The eye was tearing and glassy looking. He was lumpy around the middle in contrast to his partner, and there was a coffee stain on his white shirt that his tie almost covered.

  "You want to stand?" he asked. "You guys don't get tired, right?"

  "I want him to sit," Gray said before I could answer, pulling the office door closed with a little more emphasis than what I would have thought necessary. He waited, then he took the other leather chair, pulling it a little closer.

  "Do I ...need ... a lawyer?" Probably sounded guilty, or worse, scared.

  Gray didn't blink. "You don't have any rights," Gray said. "You're dead. You're not even a citizen."

  "Jeez, Louise," his partner said. "Give the kid a break, will ya Steve?" Good cop said. "It doesn't have to be like that, does it?"

  Gray's eyes were like drills as he reached inside his suit jacket. Inside was a gun in a holster and for a moment I thought he was reaching for the gun and now I'm sure that is exactly what he wanted. Instead he took out a photograph.

  "You tell me," he said, holding it out in front of me. "You tell me how it should be."

  Looked at the photograph. It was of a murky dark hunched figure heaving a shovelful of earth from a grave.

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  "Real nice, huh?" Gray said, slapping the photo on the table beside us so hard that Alholowicz had to steady the lamp before it fell to the ground. There was another chair behind Angela's desk, but he remained standing. "That's Chesterton Cemetery, right over the Winford line. You want to tell me who that is in the photo?"

  "Have no ...idea."

  "Do you always talk that slowly, or just when you have something to hide?"

  "Don't...have ...anything ... to hide. Didn't... do it."

  "You didn't do it. He didn't do it, Agent Alholowicz." Gray leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands tented as though to keep them from shaking. "I guess we can just go. He didn't do it."

  He got up quickly, his whipcord body brushing against the table. Alholowicz replaced the lamp again.

  "Look, kid," he said, "we know you didn't do it. Agent Gray has a niece that's a whatchacallit, a zombie, and he gets really angry when a zombie does something like this because he knows you all don't have, um, any constitutional rights."

  "Every time one of you maggot brains screws up like this," Agent Gray said, "you get that much closer to sending people wild in the streets. We're talking chains and torches, smart guy. Eighty percent of America is just waiting to light you guys up in one big bonfire, you hear me? And what do I got if they do? What can I arrest people for? Public disturbance? Fire code violations? I do not want some crazy mob burning up my sister's kid."

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  He slapped the table in case I didn't understand how passionate he was about the subject.

  "You ...are in ...the FBI?" It took a while. Gray, undead niece or not, wanted to hit. He turned away, thrusting his fists on his narrow hips.

  "Yeah, we're FBI," Alholowicz answered. He walked over to the shelves of books and tried to look like he was scanning their spines. "We're a new task force, actually. Undead Crimes. No disrespect intended if that isn't, whatchacallit, politically correct. You know better than anyone that people don't really know what to do with you fellers."

  "Undead ...crimes?"

  "Yeah," Alholowicz said, lifting a glass paperweight off the bookshelf with one hand while dabbing at his eye with the other. "Yeah, absolutely. Lots of undead crimes. We started out investigating crimes against you people, you know? The burnings and the lynchings and the getting dragged behind cars. We cracked this one case where this group was actually crucifying dead folks. Nailing 'em up on crosses and leaving them there. Didn't kill 'em or anything, but left them hanging there in fields for days. Remember that, Steve? That case in ..."

  "I remember," Steve said.

  "Anyhow, that's how it started. The Bureau figured that even though you people were dead already and didn't have any legal rights or anything, it wasn't exactly something we wanted to condone. I mean, crucifixions! Jeez, Louise!"

  "Can we get on with this, please?"

  "Sure, Steve, sure. Take it easy. Anyhow, kid, that's what we

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  were supposed to do. Investigate groups of people that were getting together and committing acts of violence on dead people. But then a funny thing happened. Not so funny, really. More and more we got called upon to investigate crimes of violence committed by dead people."

  Agent Gray turned around then, no longer looking angry, but just looking tired. "And that isn't good, Layman," he said. "It isn't good, because like it or not--and I don't like it--you and your friends don't have any rights. Zero. The laws aren't there to protect you. Which means that the laws aren't there to protect from you either, and the last thing we want is people going to look for some street justice.

  He leaned close again, but this time his intimacy was free from rage.

  "I don't want to see that happen," he said. "It's wrong."

  "Steve's a patriot," Alholowicz said, fumbling the paperweight before navigating it back to the shelf. "He really is. And he loves that little niece of his."

  Gray leaned in a little closer, close enough to count Adam's eyelashes

  "So let's cut the crap," he said, "Tell me about this guy with half a face."

  The dead were always given some distance in the halls of Oakvale High, but once the news of the grave desecration came out, students were literally turning around and running the other way. The incident was all over the news, with the families of the people whose graves had been disturbed making tearful

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  pleas for the police, the government, anybody to do something about the "evil zombies" who would commit such blasphemy. One man, the scab of his grief not yet healed from having lost his wife to a drunk driver the year before, was stone-faced as he called for "the eradication of the zombie menace" on national TV.

  The fear the incident had caused was so disruptive that a notice was posted mandating that all differently biotic students needed to be escorted from class to class by a teacher.

  "Come on, Layman," Coach Konrathy said, meeting him at his locker before the first bell. "Show some hustle." Phoebe couldn't decide who looked more pissed off about the arrangement.

  Some trad students, ones that had been in the pink of health just twenty-four hours before, were absent from school entirely. Norm Lathrop told Phoebe that there was a petition going around school to ban undead students from common areas like the foyer and the cafeteria.

  "Boy," Karen said to Phoebe in the hallway as she waited for her to retrieve her books. "Dig a few ...graves and the whole world comes down on your head. Could I get ...arrested for digging out of my own grave?"

  "Don't even joke. This is too weird," Phoebe said. The flow of traffic had moved all the way to the other side of the hall to keep from getting too close to Karen. "We're getting together at Margi's after school. You want to come?"

  Karen shook her head. She was staring over Margi's shoulder, as though her diamond eyes were recording each and every one of her classmates who was now shunning her.

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  "I'm going to try to ...talk to Takayuki ...and the boys. Find out what the story is. Tak swore that George didn't hurt the animals. Maybe they didn't do this either."

  "Karen, they were showing pictures of someone that looked a lot like Tak."

  "The pictures were grainy. And I know the boys had nothing to do with those flyers." "How do you know that?"

  "Because I didn't make them." Karen's expression went blank. "This time."

 
"Karen! You made those flyers?"

  "The first ones, yeah, I ...used the computer and the ...photocopier at the mall, when I was on break. It was ... a joke. A funny one too. This wasn't ...funny."

  Phoebe didn't know what to say, she just stood there with her mouth hanging open.

  "Miss DeSonne!" Principal Kim called. "You have a date with history!"

  "There's my escort. At least she doesn't ...pretend these new rules make sense. See you." "See you."

  Phoebe was halfway to her own class when she saw a group of boys standing around Kevin Zumbrowski. His books were on the floor, his shirt was untucked, and one point of his shirt collar pointed at the ceiling. His cheek looked dark, as though it had just been slapped, or punched.

  "Hey!" she said.

  The boys, she was surprised to see, had Denny Mackenzie

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  and Gary Greene among them. She heard someone make a joke about the B.O.F.: Bride-of-Frankenstein. She took Kevin's arm.

  "Are you okay, Kevin?" she asked. "Where's your escort?" He shook his head from side to side violently, like a dog with a new chew toy. "What is it, Kevin?"

  "He ...wouldn't...take ...me," he said, making a noise like a sob.

  She put a steadying hand on his shoulder, shushing him. He looked so pitiful leaning against the wall, unable to cry real tears. "We're going to be late, honey," she said. "Don't...leave me!" he wailed.

  The final bell rang, and for a moment she didn't know what to do.

  But then she hugged him, holding him until he calmed down. "I won't leave you," she said, holding him tight. "I won't."

  "They actually gave you a detention?" Margi said, incredulous. Phoebe had gone over to Margi's after school to vent her rage. She hoped some time with Margi and Colette would help her feel sane again. "And Kevin too? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."