Passing Strange (25 page)

T
HE HOUSE REALLY DID
feel haunted, Pete thought.

He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. Jars of eyeballs? Webs stretching from the far corners of the room, giant blood-colored spiders scuttling along the threads? An untidy pile of severed limbs? Instead, there was soft, well-worn furniture that looked as though it had been culled from a decent yard sale. A futon, a couple of beanbag chairs. There were a few comic books scattered on a scratched coffee table; the blue corner of a paperback peeked out from beneath the skirt of the futon. The room felt oddly lived-in, but Pete thought there was a cloud of loneliness drifting above, along with the dust motes that became visible in the light that filtered in through the windows.

Pete went through the kitchen, then back out to the foyer, turning toward the stairs. He looked up and saw a reflection of the light on the fifth step.

He placed his fingers on it, and they came back wet. The ceiling above was free from water damage that he could see. He examined the other stairs and found them to be wet as well, as though someone had tracked snow in on their way up.

He frowned. He hadn’t explored the upstairs yet.

The upstairs was considerably darker than below. He turned on his flashlight, a large, heavy-handled light that Duke had given him. It could work as a club if he needed it to. The house creaked, both with his steps and when he stood still. There could be zombies upstairs, he thought, and they probably wouldn’t be very happy to see him. The weight of the flashlight was reassuring.

What he didn’t expect to find were dozens of them—hundreds, maybe—in the first room that he looked in.

He shined his light across them, the faces pinned and taped to the wall. He leaned in, his eyes taking them all in at a glance.

But the more he looked, the more he saw their differences. A girl with yellow bows in her hair, clutching a tennis racquet. A boy in a doorway, slouching in a jacket two sizes too big for him. A living girl. Two boys, brothers, it looked like, standing in a junk lot beside a horribly mangled automobile. He saw one he recognized, a huge black boy that had run at him, twice, in the woods. A smiling boy with a familiar shock of red hair. A girl wearing a mask.

He stared at the photographs for a long moment, trying to figure out what was bothering him. It took a while, but then he had it.

He no longer wanted to kill Phoebe Kendall.

He should have felt a murderous rage overtaking him as he stared at the Wall of the Dead, but instead he felt…nothing. Nothing at all, no hatred, no loathing, no anger. He actually laughed out loud, the echoing of his voice disturbing the dusty stillness. Was this the end result of all of Reverend Mathers’s training on mastering the emotions? Did mastery of emotions equal eliminating them entirely?

Alien thoughts crept into his mind as he regarded the zombies on the wall. Here was a photograph of a family, smiling parents and two boys, the smaller of them grayish-blue, grinning and dead beneath his baseball cap, his brother’s hand set firmly on his shoulder. Here was another one with a girl and her kitten, its eyes perhaps a little too wide as it regarded its undead owner. Here a grainy shot of a boy leaning against a steel post with a basketball hoop set above.

He took a step back and heard something crackle beneath his sneaker. He bent down and found a photograph clinging there.

Karen.

He looked at the photograph a long moment before scanning the wall for a free pin, and finding one, he affixed Karen’s image beside a picture of a somber, freckled girl that had been printed out on computer paper. The girl was standing on a beach, her brown hair trailing in the wind like the flag of a defeated nation. His eyes narrowed and then they opened wide.

His phone rang, and the blaring ringtone in the silent room was loud enough to arrest all of his biological functions.

“Hello?” he said, whispering.

“Pete. You okay? You sound strange.”

“I’m…fine,” he said, blinking, turning away from the haunting images.

“I want you to meet me. I’ve got something to show you.”

“What?”

“You’ll see. A surprise.”

Pete swallowed. “I’ve had enough…surprises…to last a lifetime.” He was having trouble getting the words out, and his voice sounded alien to him in the empty house. “One more. It won’t kill you,” Duke said, telling Pete to meet him at a commuter train lot an exit up from Winford. “Not if…I’m already dead,” Pete said, but Duke had already hung up.

Pete clicked off his flashlight and stood in the center of the room. He could feel them, the dead, staring at him. He removed the photo of the freckled girl, put it in the pocket of his jacket, near his heart.

Then he walked out into the snow, and drove to meet Duke.

“S
O YOUR OTHER CAR
…is a broom, huh?” Popeye said.

Tayshawn told him to shut up and let her drive, and there were slapping sounds from the backseat. Tak gritted his teeth, refusing to turn around.

“No, really, I’m…curious,” Popeye said. “That’s what it said…on one…of her bumper…stickers. Are you, like…a witch…or something?”

“Wiccan,” Tamara said, her eyes steady on the road.

“Wiccan, huh? Can you cast…spells…and stuff?”

She didn’t answer him.

“Do you…have a black…cat? Wear…a pointy…hat? Have…unholy…congress…with…the Devil?”

“Give it a…rest,” Tak said.

“You’re awfully intolerant for a zombie,” she said.

“Intolerant?” Popeye replied, leaning forward until his pale face was thrust between their seats. Tak never realized how much he looked like Nosferatu with sunglasses before. “Sweetheart, you have…no idea…what…intolerance is.”

“But you do?” she said.

Popeye’s voice grew loud and shrill, and his gills flared as he shouted. “I didn’t even have…to die…to…know—”

“Enough,” Tak said to him. “Seriously, Popeye. Enough.”

Popeye slumped back with enough force to make the vehicle shudder.

“How long are you going to kidnap me for?” Tamara said.

“Eye…of…newt,” Popeye said.

Tamara didn’t respond. They continued on to the Winford police station without incident. Tak told her to park in the lot across the street. The station was on a hill that overlooked the river; Tak wondered if Karen had been able to see the water from her holding cell.

“Keep it running,” he said. “And keep…quiet.”

He got out of the car and walked to the edge of the lot, just as a pair of police cars pulled out. A woman in a suit and sensible shoes walked toward the building, pulling along a wheeled laptop case through the snow as though it were a reluctant puppy. “Tak…get back in the car,” Tayshawn called. Tak could hear Popeye telling the girl that he would kill her if her hands moved off the steering wheel.

That’s where she died, he thought. Again.

A police car cruised by. Tak hoped that his face was shaded enough by his cap as he lifted his good hand in a wave.

The cop returned the greeting and continued on. Tak went back to the car.

“Don’t you…think…you should…get back…in the car?” Popeye said. Tak noticed that the gills sometimes gave his voice a buzzing quality, as if there were a hornet inside his throat.

“Wait…here,” Tak said. “Go…if I’m not…back…in ten minutes.”

He was going to get Karen back or die—die again—trying. If the breathers destroyed him in the attempt, so be it. Final retermination was preferable to a life without her.

He started limping toward the police station without waiting for the protests that Tayshawn would surely voice. Part of him felt like he should have given some instructions on what to do with the girl, but Popeye would just do whatever he wanted if he thought Tak was reterminated. Popeye and Tayshawn would end up fighting over the girl’s life. All things equal, Tayshawn would probably win that fight, but Popeye was devious and had a vicious streak like no one else Tak knew.

All Tayshawn had to do was delay Popeye long enough to give the girl a decent head start. Popeye wouldn’t have the legs or the inclination to pursue her over a long distance.

Tak was nearly at the police station. He knew that thinking about some fictitious fight between his friends was just a way of distracting himself from the fact that he was practically on the front doorstep of people who wanted nothing more than to destroy him, people who actually had the arsenal to do it.

He didn’t want to kill the girl, but Popeye was probably right. Then again, Karen had sent her and it was unlikely that she would approve of her murder.

Die, or don’t die. It was all the same to him. There was nothing after this world, anyway.

A woman leaving the station gave Tak a double take. He realized that with his hair swept back, there was nothing hiding his ruined cheek. He clasped his hand over the wound, as though he had a toothache. It was an inadequate disguise, but there wasn’t much hope of hiding what he was from the rest of the world, anyhow.

A pair of police officers were talking by a cruiser that was parked along the street. Tak looked at them from the corner of his eye, but they didn’t even give him a second glance. There would many more, a dozen at least, in the station house.

His switchblade was in his pocket. He put his hand on the metal handle of the door, seeing the dark streak of his reflection in the glass. He had no idea what was about to happen.

Karen, he thought.

There were benches and a high desk, more a podium, at which a large female police officer sat, her expression at once sympathetic and bored. She was speaking to two men, one in a gray suit and the other in khakis and a dark-green winter jacket. The more casually dressed man turned from the podium, running a hand through his white-blond hair, his facial features set in an expression of frustration.

The man glanced at Tak and froze, recognizing instantly what—maybe even
who
—he was. They’d never met, but Tak knew him right away, too. The white-blond hair, the handsome, angular face—this man was Karen DeSonne’s father. Tak would stake his second life on it.

A policeman walked past in the corridor beyond, a red folder in his hand. Tak lowered his eyes to the level of his gun. The policeman did not break stride.

“What do you mean you’ve already transported the body?” the man in the suit said to the bored woman. “That isn’t legal. You haven’t even let her parents…”

Mr. DeSonne looked at Tak, emotion surfacing and fading on his grief-stricken face, like ripples on water, before he finally spoke.

“Please tell us where you sent her,” he said, his voice quiet but still carrying over the protests of his lawyer and the murmuring responses of the cop. “At least you can tell us that.”

The woman pouched out her lower lip, weighing the request. She probably wasn’t supposed to tell them anything, but then again, there was a chance that if she did, this pesky shyster and his client could go bug somebody else. It was as though Tak could read her every thought.

“She just left for the Hunter Foundation,” she said. “Don’t tell anyone I told you.”

Mr. DeSonne thanked her. Tak turned away without waiting for him to acknowledge his presence any further.

He turned and nearly bumped into another policeman coming into the building.

“Excuse me,” the cop said. Tak mumbled a reply, averting his eyes as he stepped past.

He kept his pace steady as he went back to the waiting vehicle. More police seemed to be arriving with each passing moment, as though he’d caught them in the middle of a shift change, but he made it back to Tamara’s car without incident, and opened the passenger door. He sat in the shotgun seat and closed the door, gently. He knew that if he were still alive, his body would be producing adrenaline at a frenetic pace, and that he’d feel it in his skin and the shaking of his hands, but instead he felt a preternatural calm.

“You are…crazy,” Tayshawn said. “Just…crazy.”

“That took cojones,” said Popeye.

“We’re too…late,” Tak said. His dead companions were squeezed in the back, their long legs drawn up, knees nearly to their chins. “They’ve already…moved her.”

“How do you…know?” Tayshawn asked.

“Her…father,” he replied. “He…knew…me.”

“No joke?”

“They are…bringing her…to the…Hunter…Foundation.”

He fully expected Popeye to start in on all the sick experiments they would do to her there, but the gill-man must have been learning that Tak’s temper was on a hair trigger over her.

“What are we going to…do now?” he asked instead, his voice oddly muffled. Tak turned and saw a rubbery mirror image of himself staring back. Popeye and Tayshawn burst out laughing.

“Take that off…you idiot,” Tak said, his brief flash of optimism at Popeye’s growing sensitivity dashed.

“What? I like…being you,” Popeye said, sitting back and straightening up in what Tak assumed was an imitation of his own posture.
“I believe…in the sanctity of…death,”
he said, with melodramatic intonation.

“Idiot,” Tak said. Karen was gone.

She was gone, and with each passing moment the chances of saving her grew more distant. Even if she had somehow survived whatever horror they had wreaked upon her in the jail, there was no way that she would survive being “studied” at the foundation.

There was a very good chance she was already dead. Really and truly and finally forever dead. He clenched his jaw until he thought his teeth would crack.

“Let’s go,” he said to Tamara.

“Where to?”

“Just drive. Do you know…where Fire Street…is?”

She nodded.

“Head…there.”

The laughter in the backseat cut off abruptly. Popeye peeled off the mask.

“What’s on Fire Street?” Tamara asked, but he could tell from her voice that she knew exactly what she’d find there.

“Here?”

“Here.”

Tamara pulled over to the side of the road. Tayshawn and Popeye didn’t say anything as they extricated themselves from the backseat. They shuffled off the shoulder of the road and into the woods.

Tak reached over and turned the key, cutting the ignition.

“You’re going to kill me?” she said. “You don’t have to kill me! I’d never tell!” Her hands were on the wheel, but her arms were shaking. He’d wondered if she would try to fight or run for the woods. She looked like a healthy girl. “I wouldn’t. I’m on your side!”

“Shhhh,” Tak said, but the sound was ghastly as it half escaped through the wound in his cheek. He couldn’t feel the weight of the slim switchblade in his jacket pocket, but he knew it was there. It was always there. “Be quiet for…just a minute.”

“I know you have to do it,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve known ever since your friend told me about the lake. I could see it in your eyes. I wouldn’t tell, you know. Even if you did it and I came back, I wouldn’t tell.”

Tak looked out the window and into the woods where Popeye and Tayshawn had gone.

A tear escaped from Tamara’s left eye. She laughed as she rubbed it away.

“Maybe I’ll come back,” she said. “Who knows?” Tak thought he could see Tayshawn and Popeye moving through the brush, but it may have just been the wind.

“Would you take me in?” she said, rubbing her nose with the back of her wrist. “If I came back, I mean? I could be the twentieth zombie in your little clan.”

Tak looked at her.

“Yeah,” she said, her breathing ragged. “They told me all about it while you were in the police station. Nineteen of you, down there in the depths. It is kind of amazing that no one has thought to look in there. I mean, where else are you going to go? There’s no way that such a big group of dead people wouldn’t have been spotted leaving town.”

Her speaking, her breath, had already begun to fog the windows in the swiftly cooling car. The living could impact the world in a thousand subtle ways, he thought, like the beating wings of a butterfly. There was only one way he felt he still could have an impact.

“I’m babbling, aren’t I?” she said, trying and failing to laugh.

He didn’t answer her.

“What did you see when you died?” she asked him. “Was it beautiful?”

Ahead of him, specters of snow were called up by the wind and dispersed just as quickly, as if Nature herself were displeased with her creations.

Tak wasn’t sure how he should answer her, but he felt that she deserved something, at least. The dead who came back all had different stories of what they’d experienced at the point of departure from their bodies. Like their lives, or snowflakes, no two death experiences were the same. He’d heard tales of the white light, the long tunnel, of long-gone relatives waiting with open arms. For Tak there had only been a great dark emptiness. He found himself wishing it would be different for Tamara.

“It was…beautiful,” was what he said, his voice hollow in the cramped interior of her car.

It was a lie. God wasn’t there to greet him when he died. Nothing was. He rose in the hospital morgue, six hours after he’d been pronounced dead at the scene of his accident.

He saw that her hands were white on the wheel. She began to hyperventilate, and Tak paused, fascinated by the rapid in-and-outtake of breath. He realized that she was terrified.

“Takayuki?” she said, his name a whispered aspiration. “Would you…would you…hold me?” She was crying freely now, the tears leaking from the corners of her closed eyelids.

She was so attractive, he thought, so
alive
, displaying so many biological functions at once. The streaming tears, the swift rise and fall of her chest, the clenched hands, the rose blush at the base of her throat. So beautiful, so alive, whereas his heart was like a lump of clay in his chest. Looking at her he couldn’t help but think of Karen.

“Well?” she said, her voice rising, breaking.

“I’m not…going to kill…you,” he said.

She opened one teary eye. “You…you aren’t?”

“No. But I want…Popeye…to think that I did. I’m waiting until…he’s…away.”

She didn’t look like she believed him. She also looked a little disappointed, he thought.

“Really?”

“Really. I don’t want…to kill you. Sorry to…disappoint. But please…don’t tell…where my…people are.”

“Oh, I won’t!” she said. “I wouldn’t do that! I really sympathize with you guys, you know? Even before I knew that Karen was a…was one of you, I thought the way you were treated was awful. I saw a zombie arrested in the parking lot a few weeks ago, and when I told Karen she…”

“Please,” he said. Each mention of her name was like a slap, or salt rubbed into his cuts. “Please…stop…talking.”

She was silent, but only for a moment.

“Oh,” she said. He wished that he could have caught that exhalation, bottled it like a butterfly. “You were in love with her, weren’t you?”

He listened to the soft intake of her breath and watched the flutter of her moist eyelashes.

“Yes,” he whispered. “I…was.”

She laid her hand against his ruined cheek, and he imagined he could feel its warmth. The muscle in his cheek twitched under her touch.