Passing Strange

by Daniel Waters

  “Couple…days,” he replied. He wasn’t certain, but he didn’t think Karen’s business would keep him on the surface very long.

  “Okay, then,” Popeye said. “I guess…we’ll…see you.”

  Tak nodded. Popeye expected more, but Tak had nothing more to give. He watched them lope away until they were no longer visible through the trees. Karen took his hand.

  “It might be…faster…if I…carried you,” he said.

  Without a word, she looped her arms around his neck, and the sight of the scars running up and across her pale flesh made him clench his teeth. Her feet were bare, and although she couldn’t feel the cold, he was determined not to let them come into contact with the snow again.

  She felt weightless in his arms. He thought that he might be leaving the earth himself.

  He didn’t stop until he laid her down on the futon in the Haunted House. He placed her gently on the cushions, carefully tucking the sheets over her bare arms.

  “They look…ugly…don’t they?” she said.

  “You’re healing,” he said. “I can…tell.”

  “Jigsaw girl,” she said. “Putting myself…back…together.”

  “You’ll be…fine,” he said, trying not to sound as though he needed to convince himself.

  “Who knows…if I’ll…be able…to heal…all this. Maybe it…is too…much.”

  “You’ll heal. Wait…here,” he said.

  He went upstairs and got her backpack and the blanket that the beating heart—Tamara—had used to “defeat” Tayshawn.

  Karen was sitting up. She’d removed the sheet from her head, and now it lay bunched up on her naked body, so he could see more of what she’d done to herself.

  “Karen…” he said, the bag slipping out of his hand.

  “Not so…pretty…anymore, am…I?” she said with a rueful smile. “But this wasn’t…all me. They wanted…to be…sure.” His mouth closed with a click of his teeth. It was the closest he’d come to showing emotion since his death.

  “When I was…in my…cell…one of the…police…kicked…me. Used…the knife. Then he unholstered…his weapon. Pointed it…at my face. ‘Headshot,’ he told…his…partner. ‘Only…way…to be…sure.’ My eyes were…open. So was…the door…to the…cell. I could…have…tried…to run.”

  “Beating…heart…bastards,” Tak said.

  “Officer…Pelletier…stopped him. They fought. Argued. Had me…moved…to the…morgue.”

  “I…will…kill…them all,” he said.

  Karen looked as worried as her face was able to convey.

  “Oh, don’t be mad…Tak. They weren’t…all bad. Before…I did…it…Officer…Pelletier…came and…apologized to me. People…aren’t…all bad.”

  “They should…die. All…of them.”

  “Don’t be that way,” she said, touching his hand. “It isn’t…worth it.”

  Was the raspy quality already fading from her voice? He spread the blanket over her, then placed the bag on her lap. A tiny scar above her lip vanished before his eyes.

  “Oh, you have…my bag?”

  “I…do.”

  “My clothes,” she said, rummaging in the bag and pulling out a rumpled T-shirt. “My cell phone. Dead…like us.

  Wish…I could…call…my parents. They’d…freak, though.” She spread out her top across her lap. “Tamara…found you…?”

  “She found us,” Tak said, turning as Karen pulled the T-shirt over her head.

  “Is she…okay?”

  His back was still turned as he answered. “She’s…okay.”

  “Great. Here’s what . .. I need…you to do. I need .. .”

  “Whatever…you need,” he said. “I will do.”

  She smiled at him, and the purity of her smile touched him, even through her mask of scars.

  “Oh, Tak,” she said, reaching over to him, gripping his hand with hers, “I’m so glad you…rescued…me.”

  He patted her hand with his, while reaching out with his scarred hand to brush the back of her neck. His fingers caught and entwined in the tangles of her hair.

  “Takayuki,” she whispered. “There is something you need to know about me.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “PHOEBE,” I SAID. “WE need…your…help.”

  Phoebe was looking at me as if she were seeing a ghost. Which, for the record, must be a scarier creature than a zombie.

  Well, I guess she was seeing a ghost, wasn’t she? The poor thing. I had a scarf covering most of my face, and a powder-blue knit cap on my head, so just about the only visible part of me was my eyes. Kind of hard to hide those without my contacts. Too bad Popeye hadn’t left me a pair of his sunglasses.

  Phoebe opened her door, stepped out, and hugged me. Roughly. If I’d been alive, as cut up as I was, I’m sure her embrace would have been agony, but instead it was heaven. I looked up and saw Adam looming large over her shoulder. He smiled at me.

  “Karen,” Phoebe said. Her lips were right against my ear. “Karen, we thought…”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  Her hug tightened. She felt so strong, so alive.

  Eventually she brought Tak and me inside. I sat down at a tiny round table opposite Phoebe. Her dog walked into the room, his nails clicking on the linoleum. He glanced up at Tak, who was leaning against the refrigerator, barked once, and took off running. I wouldn’t swear to it, but it looked as if Tak were actually smiling. Again.

  When I told Tak about Monica and me, I was worried that I was taking his last little spark of humanity and hope, and crushing it between my pale dead fingers. Arrogant of me, I know, to put myself on such a pedestal; Tak felt like he’d been rejected by the creator of the universe, so why would one more rejection from insignificant little Karen DeSonne have any impact? But I could see the hurt in his face when I told him. He was never one to telegraph his emotions, but I knew him well enough to know that my words hurt him.

  He really loved me.

  But despite loving me—because of it, actually—a strange thing happened after I told him that I, too, was in love. That I was in love with a living girl, that her name was Monica Cruz, and that I needed to see her even though I hadn’t seen her since I died. Something strange and wonderful.

  Slowly, Tak’s expression changed. In his eyes, in his cheeks, in his ruined mouth. He was smiling—actually smiling—at me. When he moved his hand from my neck, it was only to comb out the snarls with his fingertips, not to withdraw from me.

  “I’ll help…you,” he said, repeating the commitment he’d made before I told him. “In any way…you need me…I will help you.”

  That’s love.

  When someone who considers themselves rejected by God is able to not only feel but express that type of love, there’s hope. Hope enough to make anything possible. His words erased my wounds.

  Well, not immediately, not after the Death of a Thousand Cuts. I had to make it as convincing as possible, after all. But that’s how I felt after he told me that he would be there for me. Healed. Whole.

  Then again, maybe it wasn’t his words that made me feel that way. Maybe it was my own.

  I was watching him while we sat in Phoebe’s kitchen, my wounds and my smile hidden beneath my scarf. He was looking at Adam, and I realized that something unseen was passing between them. Phoebe placed her hand on my gloved one. I could imagine the road map carved on my body disappearing, fissures healing, gray and black lines fading as though traced by an unseen eraser.

  “You were…right,” Adam said to Tak. Tak nodded at him.

  Adam turned to me. “He swore that you…were still…alive. He…knew.”

  “He’ll…always…know,” I said, my voice muffled slightly by the scarf.

  Phoebe gripped my hand.

  “Karen,” she said. “What happened?”

  “We can…talk about…that later,” Adam said. “You should…get to…the lake.”

  “Not…now,” I told
them. “I need…your help. We need…to go…to the foundation. And call…the Undead…Crimes Unit.” The sound of my stilted speech, the harshness of it, really was frustrating to me.

  “Our help?” Phoebe asked. I nodded.

  “I need…a beating heart…with me, Phoebe. Someone…I…trust. I need…you.”

  “Why?” Adam asked. “If…Phoeb…”

  “They might destroy her on sight, Adam,” Phoebe said, her green eyes never leaving mine.

  “They definitely would destroy Tak.”

  “I’d like to be…gone…soon,” Tak said. “Karen…needs me .. . to talk to the…Feds, but after that…I will…leave.”

  I took the Tak mask out of my bag and lay it on the table. “Tak wasn’t…responsible for the Guttridge disappearance. They will be able…to see . .. that. Tak…isn’t the one in the video.”

  “How did you…get that?” Adam said.

  “The other Tak!” Phoebe said, smoothing out the mask. “He was here!”

  “Pete Martinsburg,” I said. Phoebe looked over at the sink, beside which sat a wooden block of knives, her eyes growing wide.

  “He was…” she began. I noticed she was wearing a necklace, a misshapen lump of metal that hung below the hollow of her throat.

  “He was,” I said, quickly.

  “How…did…you get…that mask, Karen?” Adam said.

  Dead or not, he sounded furious, not that I blamed him.

  Phoebe just looked confused. “Let’s not worry about that right now,” she said, lifting her hand from mine, waving his questions away. “We need to get Karen in front of the UCU as soon as possible. It could really help Tommy if the true story about the Guttridge murders came out. The timing is almost perfect.”

  I realized what the odd ornament at the end of Phoebe’s chain was: a spent bullet. Whatever Phoebe didn’t figure out, I’d tell her. I hoped that she’d forgive me, but from the way Adam was looking at me, I wasn’t sure he would.

  I looked down at the table. There was a deep, jagged slash visible across my wrist where my sleeve had ridden up; the edges of the wound gray and furled like the pages of a drowned book, the center of the fissure a greenish-black. I folded my hands in my lap.

  “Okay,” Adam said. “I’ll get…Agent…Gray’s…card. I don’t know…if I trust…them, though.”

  “I trust Angela,” I said. “Especially after seeing what they did for Sylvia. And she knows…Pete from all those…therapy…sessions. She probably…knows…what he is…capable of. That’s why…we’re going to do it at…the foundation.”

  Tak didn’t react. He was back to his own inscrutable, emotionless ways, I guess, because when I first told him about my plan, he argued heavily against it, reminding me that my body was being sent to the very same foundation where I wanted to have the meeting.

  It would only make him feel badly if I told him that I’d been hoping to end up at the foundation after staging my retermination. I wanted him to feel like he’d rescued me—not delayed me.

  Phoebe called Angela, who apparently said all the right things and made all the right assurances. Adam’s conversation with Agent Gray was terse and without any detail beyond Adam stating that he they needed to talk. Gray told Adam he would meet him at the foundation in a few hours.

  “We have…a little…time,” Adam said, closing Phoebe’s cell. “Good,” I said. I rubbed my arm through my coat. All of a sudden it felt itchy.

  I looked at him, then at Phoebe. Tak regarded the floor.

  “There’s something about me that I want you both to know.” I breathed deeply, and told them.

  Phoebe drove us to the foundation, the boys sitting in the backseat. We listened to the local news on the radio. There was no mention of the ambulance crash or the body that had gone missing. My body. We drove past the spot where the ambulance had gone off the road; the vehicle had been cleared away, but the evidence of its abrupt impact with the guardrail was clearly visible.

  I wondered if anyone had tried to follow us; with Tak leading me by the hand and Popeye half-dragging Tayshawn it wouldn’t have taken Davy Crockett to follow our trail. But now the sun, at some point having broken through the gray, was high in the sky and warming the snow-covered ground, obliterating the evidence of our passing.

  The Hunter Foundation rose into view, a long flat building on a hill surrounded by a high spiked fence. I hadn’t realized how close the ambulance had been to its destination before they’d run it off the road.

  “Why is it…gated?” Tak asked. “To keep…zombies…in?”

  “To keep…beating hearts…out,” Adam answered.

  The voice from the gate was flat and vaguely hostile.

  “We’re here to see Angela,” Phoebe said. “Phoebe Kendall, Adam Layman, and…guests,” she said.

  The gate clicked open, and Phoebe maneuvered the vehicle up the hill.

  “Who was that?” Phoebe asked Adam.

  “I didn’t recognize…the voice,” he said.

  There was a man waiting for us at the door of the foundation; he was wearing a uniform, and his military bearing reminded me of Duke, although that was where the similarities ended. This man was broad and thick, bearded, with a mane of dark black hair that he was clearly very proud of. I thought he looked like a werewolf frozen mid-transformation.

  “I’ve never…seen him…before,” Adam said.

  The man opened Phoebe’s door for her, but the gesture did not appear to be an act of courtesy.

  “I’m Chuck McMahon,” he said. “Welcome back. I’m the new director of operations here.”

  McMahon regarded Tak with an expression so frank and curious it bordered on hostile. Me, he mostly ignored, maybe because I was still swaddled in layers of winter clothing. Tak made no attempt to cover his slashed cheek, and stared blankly back at the man, who didn’t blink.

  “Follow me,” McMahon said. “They’re waiting for you in the encounter room.”

  The encounter room, I thought. Adam was holding hands with Phoebe, and at one point she leaned into him and whispered something in his ear. Tak’s boots were loud in the empty corridor.

  “First room on the left,” McMahon said. “Have fun.” He walked down the other hallway toward the Operations room. I wondered why Duke wasn’t around.

  Tak led the way and came to a carpeted room that had a loose group of furniture, futons and sofas, arranged in a semicircle. Angela Hunter was sitting with Agents Gray and Alholowicz of the Undead Crimes Unit, supposedly the newest branch of the FBI. The last time I’d seen them was in this very same room, when they’d come to talk to everyone in our Undead Studies class about a rash of grave desecrations that had happened in Winford. Alholowicz was a large, unkempt man who spoke with his hands; his partner was thin in a tailored gray suit. They were both poker-faced (Alholowicz’s unshaven, Gray’s razor smooth) but I could see their eyes narrow slightly upon seeing Tak, who’d been the chief suspect in their desecration case.

  “Miss DeSonne,” Alholowicz said, hauling himself up from the sofa. “Please take a seat. Miss Kendall, Mr. Layman. And this must be Takayuki. It is Takayuki, isn’t it?”

  “Takayuki Niharu,” his partner said. “We’ve wanted to talk to you for a long time.”

  Tak didn’t answer. I realized I’d never heard his last name before.

  “Please,” Agent Alholowicz said. “Have a seat.”

  I sat down. My friends sat beside me, except for Tak.

  “I’ll…stand,” he said.

  “Suit yourself,” Alholowicz said, shrugging as he returned to the sizable groove he’d left in the sofa. “Phoebe, here, says you have something to tell us.”

  I took Tak’s mask out of my bag and held it up like a puppet.

  “Takayuki did not kill Gus Guttridge,” I heard myself say. “In fact, he isn’t dead at all.”

  Gray said he wanted to record the conversation, and he put a digital recorder on the arm of the sofa when I nodded.

  “Okay,” Alholowicz said. “G
o on.”

  I went on. I told them about how I’d nearly been reterminated after the incident at St. Jude’s, and how I’d been passing as a trad at Wild Thingz! I told them about meeting Pete and tricking him into telling me the truth about Guttridge, and about stealing the mask from him. I told them everything I knew. Angela would murmur supportive words at certain points, but the agents watched me in impassive silence, with only an occasional nod from Alholowicz to let me know they were paying attention.

  I was shocked at how few questions they had for me when I was done talking.

  “That’s why Martinsburg attacked you, then?” Alholowicz said. “Because you’d tricked him?”

  “Yes,” I said. I hadn’t gone into the gory details of how I’d tricked him. They weren’t stupid. They could add it up.

  “And he didn’t tell you where in Maine Guttridge was hiding?” Agent Gray asked.

  “No.”

  There were a few other questions, not many; mostly about where and when. I answered as best as I could, then they told me I was free to go.

  “That’s it?” I said.

  Alholowicz scratched his fleshy chin. “Hm?”

  “That’s all? Aren’t you going to arrest him? Are you…”

  His partner raised his hand. “It isn’t appropriate for us to discuss the details of an investigation. And frankly, I’m not so sure that the testimony of a differently biotic person would stand up in court.”

  Phoebe and I started protesting, as one. Alholowicz raised his hands to quiet us, and in that moment we heard the sounds of a confrontation in the hall. A raised voice, scuffling.

  A voice echoed down the hallway, followed by the sound of sneakers slapping on linoleum.

  “I just want to talk to her!”

  I knew that voice.

  Pete.

  He arrived like a bad dream, his eyes locking on mine the moment he appeared in the doorway. From the corner of my eye I saw Tak reach into his jacket for something that was no longer there. I heard a strange sound, and I realized it was him, growling.

  Pete opened his mouth to speak, but in that moment he was seized from behind in a rough tackle that would have knocked him down if he hadn’t shifted his weight, so his attacker, McMahon, nearly went over instead. But McMahon was quick, and grabbed Pete in a choke hold.