Passing Strange (10 page)

“Nah. Not with all the new laws, and with the police looking for them. They’ll arrest any corpsicle that doesn’t have a legal guardian. I figure they’ve all burrowed back into their graves. Or someone else’s grave, whatever.”

“Really?” I said, trying to shudder. “Really, that’s what you think?”

“Yeah. But I’m going to find them. I’m going to find them and burn them out of their holes.”

The vehemence and conviction in his voice was frightening, but it also got me very angry. I might be a good little actress, but those were my friends he was talking about.

“Is that why you came back to Oakvale?”

“Yeah. And I’ve got something else planned. Something the Reverend is going to love.”

“What?”

Maybe I sounded too eager, because he looked at me, smiling. Smiling like a wolf, I thought. “How do I know I can trust you?”

I looked up at him. “You can trust me.” I whispered. I left my lips slightly parted.

“Sure,” he said, laughing. He put his arm around my shoulder. “You’re shivering. Let’s get out of here.”

He drove me home—or a few streets away from home, because I told him my father couldn’t know I was with him—without making a move or anything, which seems ludicrous, considering how hot I am. He asked me if I was okay walking the rest of the way, and when I said I was, he nodded, and for a moment I thought he was just going to drive off, but then he asked if we could get together tomorrow night.

And I said yes.

T
HIS MIGHT BE THE
hottest chick that I’ve ever been with, Pete thought.

Perfect skin, perfect figure. Maybe it only took a few weeks among the gorgons, to cement the idea in his head that Christie was something special, but he thought it was more than that. She was even hotter than his sisters’ friends, the ones he used to go with in California, there was a little something different in the way she walked.

She was funny, too, whereas most of the girls he knew were brain-dead.

“You smell nice,” he’d told her when she climbed, oh-so-slowly, like a cat, into his car.

“Thanks,” she said. “It’s Lady Z.”

“Lady Z? That zombie stuff?”

The way she’d looked at him, her blue eyes seemingly sparkling from within, was like a caffeine spike to the blood.

“You don’t like that zombie stuff, I take it?”

“Not a big fan, no.”

“Do you still like me?” she’d said.

“Oh, yeah.”

And he did. Hot, smart but not smart-assed, and natural. That was something that was different about her than most of the girls from school; she was very natural, very real. Without pretense.

But mostly, she was hot. It had taken a great deal of effort not to put the moves on her the other night.

He chuckled to himself. If the Reverend only knew how good he was getting at so-called “emotional mastery”!

She was so hot he wanted to show her off, so he took her over to his old haunt, the fast food restaurant where all his friends used to hang out. The parking lot was full of cars, and there was a loose group of teens, six or seven of them, having loud fun beside a pair of humming muscle cars.

Pete watched the guys watching Christie as she got out of his car.

“Friends of yours?” she said. She knew they were watching her, but she didn’t seem bothered or threatened by it. He liked that.

“Maybe,” he said. “Used to be.”

They went inside and he ordered three cheeseburgers, large fries, and a soda. He asked Christie what she wanted and she said a hot fudge sundae.

“Ice cream?” he asked, getting his wallet out of his jacket. “On a night like this?”

“I like sweet things.”

Oh, man, Pete thought.

He took the tray and led her to a corner booth, taking the seat facing the wall so she could see and be seen.

“So,” he said, unwrapping the first cheeseburger, “tell me all about Christie.”

She laughed, and he took a big bite of his burger.

“Not much to tell. I’m seventeen, I live with my parents and little sister. I quit school to go work and have fun.”

“Bold move,” Pete said after swallowing. He drew on his straw. “Did you grow up here?”

She shook her head, and he watched the light catch in her hair. “No, we’re from Iowa. We moved here a couple years ago.”

“You and all the zombies,” he said. “Iowa, huh?”

“Iowa.”

She seemed to be watching him eat very closely, but not like she was grossed out by him or anything. More like she was interested. Pete knew a girl like that in California; she was always bringing him cookies and all sorts of other junk that she’d made for him to eat. She wasn’t one of the more attractive girls that hung around, so he figured she was trying to make up for it by feeding him or something.

Pete was a very fastidious eater, unlike some of the guys he played football with who sounded more like grunting swine when they ate than like human beings. TC especially. Pete polished off the first burger and watched Christie watching him chew.

“How’s your sundae?” he asked, unwrapping his second burger. She hadn’t even taken a bite yet; the soft-serve vanilla was still a gently swirled mound, as pristine and smooth as her skin.

“Oh, it’s great!” she said. She looked down at the sundae for a long moment, as if contemplating what the dessert could do to her figure. He liked that. The sundae was packed with calories, and a girl should be concerned with how many she ate.

She took the slightest nip of hot fudge off the tip of the sundae, then licked the spoon. He liked that even more.

“What about you, Pete?” she said. “Why’d it take you so long to call me?”

“I’ve been away.”

Another nip of the sundae. “Mmm-hmm.”

“I was. I’ve got tell you, I hate cold weather. Hate it. I had the chance to go out to Arizona and…”

Christie looked up at the door with something like shock, and when Pete turned he saw a lumbering form making a beeline for him.

Speak of the devil, he thought. Stavis’s face was florid beneath a Dallas Cowboys stocking cap.

“Pete,” he called, his voice loud. “Pete, man!”

Pete turned back to Christie. “Friend of mine,” he said, trying to put her at ease. She didn’t look like she enjoyed having their conversation disrupted.

“Pete,” TC said, tagging Pete on the shoulder with a blow that would have sent a less solid companion sprawling. “Pete, why the hell didn’t you call me? How long have you been back?”

“Hey, TC,” Pete said. He may have been gritting his teeth.

“I saw your car in the lot. How long have you been back, man?”

“A little while,” Pete said. “TC, this is Christie. Christie, TC.”

“Oh, hey,” TC said. Pete watched his friend take Christie in, his eyes never rising above her neck. Class act.

“Hi,” Christie said, sliding along the bench to make room. Pete knew that she knew where TC’s attention was focused, but she didn’t seem to mind.

TC slid in beside her, managing to press himself against her despite the vast amount of room she’d left him. Christie’s eyes met Pete’s, and she smiled as though to tell him she didn’t mind his friend’s boorish behavior.

“So how’s life in the seminary?” TC said, helping himself to a cluster of french fries.

“It isn’t a seminary, dumbass,” Pete replied, watching TC bring the cluster to his fleshy lips with his fat fingers. “It’s a retreat center.”

“Yeah, like a religious place, right?”

“Like,” Pete said. He glanced at Christie to see how she was fielding this new info about him. She looked intrigued.

“What’s it like? Pretty dull, I bet.” Another bunch of fries went into his mouth.

“Are you enjoying those?” Pete said.

“Huh? Oh, yeah.”

Shaking his head, Pete turned to him to speak directly to Christie.

“I was living at the One Life Retreat Center in Arizona, which is part of One Life Ministries, an organization started by the Reverend Nathan Mathers. Do you know who he is?”

If life were a cartoon, there would have been a large black question mark hanging in the air over TC’s thick head. He answered before Christie could speak.

“He’s the guy that writes those books about zombies, right? I saw him on TV once,” he said, as though to banish the idea that he might actually have read one of those books.

“That’s right.
And the Graves Gave Up Their Dead
and
Cloaked in Human Flesh
, among others. The Reverend has a school program there.”

“Dag,” TC, incredulous, said. “I thought you got off with just community service and counseling.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Well, being there is, like, punishment, right? It’s like a reform school, isn’t it? A religious reform school?” Pete laughed. “No, dummy, it isn’t like that at all. I wanted to be there.”

He winked at Christie, who really did seem intrigued at this point. He leaned in across the table and whispered to her.

“He teaches us how to kill zombies,” he whispered.

“Seriously?” TC said, eyes widening, a fry almost escaping from the corner of his mouth. Pete, laughing, punched him with a raised knuckle to the sternum. TC coughed and swore.

“Not exactly,” Pete said, as TC inconspicuously rubbed his new bruise. “But pretty close. You might like it there, TC.”

“I don’t know. I’m not exactly the churchgoing type. And there’s no football.”

“You can’t play football with the Badgers anymore, either, you idiot. And it isn’t about forcing everybody into church every day, anyway. His ministry is more about helping you understand yourself and the way you relate to other people. The idea being that by understanding yourself you’d be more inclined to want to understand the divine.”

“Really?” Christie asked.

“Yeah. It works,” he said. “I went to church for the first time since I was a little kid.”

“No kidding,” TC said, dubious.

“Too soon to tell, but I might have even gotten something out of it, too.”

TC grinned. “That mean you can’t hang out with me anymore?”

“Nah,” Pete answered. “I just don’t want to.”

TC’s laughter was nervous, and Pete waited a beat before joining in with him.

“I’m just kidding, man. Maybe you can visit me out in A-Z, though. You might like it.” He looked at me. “You, too, Christie. There aren’t nearly enough women at One Life for my liking.” Gorgons aplenty, he thought, but no women.

“Oh,” she said with a practiced nonchalance. “Is that what would make you happy? More women?”

“It’s a start.”

“Church, and no girls? You really pitch a strong case, Pete,” TC said.

“Hey,” Pete said, feinting with another raised-knuckle punch, making TC flinch. “At least it’s warm.”

“Okay. Sold,” TC answered, probably just not wanting to get hit again. “So, are we going to hang now that you’re back?”

“I’m only back for a few more days,” Pete said, trying to see if the news disappointed Christie. “But yeah, we’ll get together.”

“We should kick Lame Man’s ass while you’re here,” TC said around a mouthful of fries that had cooled, untouched, in their cardboard carton.

“Layman’s still around?” Pete said. “I thought the zombies were confined to their houses or something.”

“Yeah, but the maggot farm is still going to school, if you believe it. I thought it was against the law or something, but nobody seems to want to do anything about Layman.”

Agitated, he started choking on his wad of fries, and it took a few minutes of violent coughing for him to regain his wind.

“We’ve got something planned for him,” TC said, his face bright red from his near-death experience. “You want in?”

“Nope. You’re on your own with that one. I do anything to him, and I could end up in prison. You better watch it, too. You almost got dragged in as an accessory.”

TC waved the concern away with his greasy mitt of a hand. “Whatever. He’s got it coming.”

“They’ve all got it coming. Which reminds me—you haven’t seen any of his other corpse buddies around, have you?”

“It’s like they vanished, man. I haven’t seen a zombie since before Christmas, other than Lame Man. It’s been great.”

“Hmm. None of them, huh? Where do you think they went?”

Christie shivered. Pete wondered if all this zombie talk was scaring her.

“Underground. Like worms.” Here he wiggled his fat fingers, still glistening with fry grease. “Back to their graves. Hey, did you see the footage of what happened to your lawyer?”

“I saw it,” Pete said, the corner of his lip twitching.

“One of them was the guy that cut you, wasn’t it?”

Another twitch, just short of a smirk.

“Yeah.”

“Bet you’d like to get back at that guy, huh?”

“I don’t think about it anymore,” Pete said.

“Don’t worry, Pete. We’ll get him, too.”

Pete didn’t answer right away.

“Glad we could catch up, TC. But maybe you can let me get back to talking with Christie here, okay?”

“Huh? Oh. Oh sure, yeah. Listen, I’ll…”

“I’ll call you, TC.”

TC blinked. “Okay. Yeah.”

“Nice meeting you,” Christie said, waving at his back as he walked away.

Pete lifted his hands like “what are you gonna do?”

“Sorry,” he said. “No manners.”

“He was pretty happy to see you,” Christie said. “If he had a tail it would have been wagging.”

“TC’s a moron. But he’s a loyal moron.”

“Like a dog.”

“Yeah, just like a dog.”

“Do you think he’s serious about getting back at Layman?” she said, shaving a layer of vanilla off the sundae with the edge of her plastic spoon. “That’s the kid that you…”

Pete nodded. “Yeah. He’s the kid I zombified. But TC won’t do anything without me around to lead him.”

“But you don’t want to get back at them? The zombies, I mean?”

“Oh, I didn’t say that. I’ve got something really special planned for Layman and his creepy girlfriend.”

Christie leaned in toward him, smiling.

“And just what would that be?”

Pete laughed, watching her as she brought the spoon to her pink lips.

“I can’t tell you. If I get caught, you could get arrested as an accessory.”

“Is that all I am to you?” she said, pretending to pout. “An accessory?”

He regarded her closely. “You really should come out to Arizona with me.”

“Oh. So you were serious about that.”

He looked at her, thinking it over. Young girl, attractive, lousy relationship with her parents, dropout, directionless—if she wasn’t perfect for One Life Ministries he didn’t know who was.

“Yeah, Christie,” he said. “You should come with me.”

“It sounds kind of interesting.”

“It is. It really is. Life changing.”

He looked down the remains of his meal: the half eaten burger, the few fries that had escaped TC’s greedy fingers.

“I’m done. Let’s blow.”

“Okay.”

Christie asked him not to drive to her house but to let her off at the edge of her neighborhood. She said that her father was a violent man, and said it in a way that implied regular, repeated violence to her, as well as the prospect of similar treatment for him, and once again Pete thought that she needed to go out west with him. He liked her, which was something he couldn’t say about any of the other girls he’d been with.

None of them, at least, since Julie.

The interior of his car was warm. The heat seemed to be coming off of him as much as it did from the vents on the dash.

She turned to him.

He leaned forward and kissed her.