Hitchers (25 page)

“Dave didn't show up?” I asked. Lorena shook her head.

“I have to go look for him.” I desperately wanted to take a shower first, but I couldn't spare the time. My mouth tasted like sour beer.
“I don't even have a toothbrush.” I looked at Mick. “Do you have a spare toothbrush?” Then I realized I needed more than a toothbrush. I needed a place to sleep. “Is it okay if I crash here for a couple of nights?” I added.

Mick shook his head. “Nah. Not for a couple of nights. Stay until we straighten this out or we go...” he motioned with his thumb. “Both of you. All right?”

I grinned and nodded. I wondered if Grandpa was in there realizing that while he'd hurt me by torching everything I owned, he'd also done me a favor. Suddenly I felt less alone. One good thing had come out of this wretched mess—my new friends.

On TV, CNN was covering a mass exorcism at the Believer's Church, one of those mega-churches that looked like an indoor stadium. Eyes clenched shut, the preacher stood with arms spread in front of the standing-room-only crowd, howling at Satan to release them from his unholy grip. On the History channel and TLC all they were showing were programs on possession and exorcism, which was feeding this sort of crap.

I turned to Mick to escape the pull of the television. “So, you talk to your FEMA friend lately?”

“Most every day.”

“Do the feds finally understand that it's possession, not mental illness?” I asked.

Mick wobbled his head. “Depends who you talk to. But they all agree that the hitchers aren't bothering anyone besides the people they're inside (unless you count scaring the piss out of people as bothering), and they're not sure how forcefully they should intervene.”

“In other words, they're trying to decide whether this is their problem.”

“Yeah, that's right,” Mick said.

Lorena had her jacket draped across her arm. She tugged me gently toward the door. “Should we get going? I've already been out for two hours.”

I shrugged my coat on and followed her out.

“This is so hard,” Lorena said as we rode the elevator down. “I want to spend time alone with you. I want to hear everything that's happened to you since I've been gone.” The tender sentimentality of her words was rendered so strange by the deep belching roll of her voice.

“I know,” I said. “It's so hard, though. I feel like I have to spend every minute trying to get free of Grandpa.”

Lorena made a sound in the back of her throat. “That's hard, too. Sometimes I feel like you're trying to kill me, too.”

Kill? The word made me squirm inwardly. I wasn't trying to kill anyone. “You know it's not that simple. It's all wrapped together so tightly; it's like we're all different sides of the same coin, and if some come up heads they can't also be tails, even though that's what I want.”

We had to pause to climb into the Maserati. When Lorena shut her door, her expression—hurt, angry, empathetic, all at once—made her look remarkably like herself. “That's not exactly a vote of confidence.”

“I'm sorry. I don't know how to navigate this.” I wanted to add that Lorena was being a little selfish, that it was Summer's body, after all. I didn't have the energy to get into it, though. I was so tired my eyes burned and my head ached.

Lorena opened Summer's purse, rooted around for something. “Oh,” she paused, looked at me, “have you called my sister yet?” The hope in her eyes was evident even through the slackness of her face. Here was another conversation I'd been dreading.

“Yeah, I did. Lore, I tried to explain it to her as gently as I could, but—” I struggled for words, then gave up and let it hang.

Lorena studied my face. The hope drained from hers. “She's afraid of me?” she said, her dead croak underscoring the point. Lorena and Fatima had been incredibly close, as close as twins. She squeezed her eyes shut. “I can't believe it. My own sister.” She looked at me. “What about my mother?”

I shook my head. Forewarned by Fatima, her mother had hung
up as soon as she recognized my voice.

“Oh, Mom. Not you,” she whispered. “They would have died for me. Both of them. Now they won't even talk to me?” Lorena wiped a tear with the back of her sleeve, picked up my phone, which was sitting in the cup holder between the seats. She turned it over and over.

“I can dial for you if you want to try yourself,” I said. “Maybe if she heard your voice.”

Lorena laughed bitterly. “That's okay. I don't want to—”

Scare her
, I thought she meant to say, but couldn't bring herself to.

“Give them time,” I said, although I wasn't sure time would heal this rift. I wondered, What would happen if the hitchers did take us over? Would they eventually be accepted back? Would the syndicate allow Grandpa to continue the strip knowing it was being drawn by a dead man? Would people read it?

Lorena shrugged noncommittally at my tepid attempt to console her. She pulled the phone closer to her face and chuckled. “Is that the date? Tomorrow is my birthday.”

I did a quick calculation. “Your thirtieth. I've been so preoccupied I lost track of the days.” Was it her thirtieth birthday, or did your birthdays stop when you died? So many strange questions arose out of this. If the dead did take over living bodies for good, would they count the age of their bodies, or their souls?

Lorena reached out and squeezed my hand. “Take me out for my birthday? I want to go
dancing!”
She wriggled her shoulders, tried to snap her fingers but got only a papery sound. Her movements were still stiff and rubbery.

“Sure,” I said, trying to sound more enthusiastic than I felt. “If you're here tomorrow night. And I'm here.” I sure didn't feel like dancing or celebrating a birthday. What were the odds that we'd both be here, though? I was in control about half the time now, Lorena maybe one third of the time. So, one in six?

I imagined Grandpa suddenly taking control while Lorena and
I were dancing, and it made me a little sick. Not that Grandpa wasn't a fine dancer, as I'd seen. “I should ask Summer if it's okay with her.”

Lorena lowered her hands, scowled. “I don't need her permission. I didn't ask to be in this situation any more than she did, and I think I've been very considerate.”

It
was
nice that all we had to do was ask Lorena to do something, rather than wrestle her to the ground and tie her hands. “I know. But—” I was going to say,
But it is her body
, and thought better of it. “We should all go out of our way to get along.”

Lorena's scowl melted. “Fine. As long as I get to go dancing on my birthday.”

We had no luck finding Dave, or Salamander. Twice I talked to people who said they knew Salamander, that he was “around here somewhere.” When the light started fading we gave up and went shopping. I was exhausted by the time I returned to Mick's. It had been forever since I'd slept through the night.

T
he McMansions along Fairview Road were mostly dark. These were the people who could afford to flee Atlanta for an extended period. When they were packing, I wondered if they had considered the possibility that they might not be allowed to come back.

They weren't calling it a quarantine, which was probably wise. The president called it a “precautionary controlled observation of the situation.” As promised, commerce wasn't being interrupted, so we were still able to buy Snickers bars and the new Arcade Fire CD, assuming they could find truck drivers with the guts to drive in and out of the Haunted City (as the press were now calling it), but people weren't able to drive in or out without a good reason.

Rather than risk sounding crazy by talking about the dead rising, or appearing to have his head in his ass by insisting on the post-traumatic identity disorder explanation, the president simply referred to it as “The grave events taking place in the aftermath of the anthrax attack.” Using of the word “grave” seemed like a bad call to me, but he went with it. He assured the American people
that the problem was contained and would not spread, and that every resource was being brought to bear to help those afflicted.

The federal government had so many resources, so many channels of information, yet they always managed to be a step behind in reacting to any but the most predictable disasters. Their response to an anthrax attack looked like a carefully choreographed dance. Their response to mass possession? More like a drunk stumbling home from a bar, pausing occasionally to vomit in the gutter.

When we hit Little Five Points, with its stretch of cafes, bars, and trendy shops, dark houses gave way to brightly lit streets.

“Wow,” Lorena said.

Hitchers were everywhere. It was almost as if they all knew Little Five Points was the place to be.

“How did you know we should come here?” I asked.

“There's a Facebook page for The Returned,” Lorena said.

I stifled an ironic laugh. Figured. We were calling them Hitchers, the dead, parasites. They were calling themselves The Returned and twittering each other.

They lurched along the sidewalks on Euclid like extras in a George Romero film, sounding like giant bullfrogs as they greeted each other. We passed a Fox News truck; near it a reporter was interviewing hitchers.

The dead must be eager to go out and live. Most of those still in Atlanta who weren't possessed were probably at home cowering behind bolted doors, watching the news. That's where I would be if my situation were different.

Not all of the unafflicted were hiding, though. A throng of people were standing across the street, watching, shouting things at the hitchers. Some looked scared, some angry. They weren't holding protest signs, but had that sort of air.

We found a parking space three blocks over and walked arm-in-arm to Loca Luna, one of Lorena's favorite hangouts. I wasn't the only person on the street who was not occupying someone else's body, and when I spotted a fellow “living” I smiled at them. I suspected most of
them had hitchers that were dormant at the moment.

There was a street preacher on the corner of Moreland. He was discussing Revelations, his lips frothy with emotion, imploring passers-by to let him cast their demons out.

A young woman in a short skirt approached him, sobbing, flat-out begging for his help.

The preacher touched the woman's elbow. “Pray with me.” They got down on their knees. Two others joined them on the pavement. The preacher traced the sign of the cross in the air as six or seven others joined the group, causing the flow on the sidewalk to clog as people skirted the group.

“Come on,” Lorena said. I couldn't imagine what she was feeling as she watched them there, so desperate to exorcise their “demons.” I, on the other hand, couldn't blame them for trying. It wouldn't work, I was sure, but when you have no good options, any option looks appealing. We moved on as more people joined the exorcism.

We passed the crowd of protesters and tried to ignore their angry shouts to go back where we belonged, that we weren't welcome here on Earth. They spat the word “demon” like it was a racial slur, and it felt like one. We picked up our pace, and I felt sweet relief when we passed through the doors into Loca Luna.

Most of the people there were hitchers. Loca Luna was a big turquoise place with high ceilings, recessed lighting, and fake palm trees. The dance floor was packed with people jerking to the Latin beat, their hands shuddering.

I wondered whether Lorena or Summer had picked out her outfit, a paisley caftan shirt that struck me as vaguely wizard-ish, and a long black velvet skirt. It wasn't Lorena's style, but it was probably the flashiest outfit Summer owned. My guess was Lorena picked it.

“Ooh, I'm getting a t-bone,” Lorena said as she put her jacket on the back of her chair. “They do great marinated steaks here.” She rubbed her hands together. “It's been
forever.”
Her hands stopped rubbing and her smile became wan. “Hm. That's almost right.”

I could see she was desperate for her birthday to seem normal.
She was trying to set aside everything that had happened, set aside the fact that she was dead, that she was in another woman's body, that in all likelihood I would soon be dead. It was a lot to set aside.

“What was it like?” I asked. “Is it bad?”

Lorena shook her head. “Not bad, just so different it turns you inside out.” She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, as if mentally returning herself to Deadland. “You
feel
yourself peeling away, a tiny fraction at a time. Little pieces of your past float off, all of your memories, sounds, smells, thoughts—everything you are, until you start to lose track of yourself.” She squeezed her eyes more tightly shut. “Once in a while a piece of someone else would land on me for a moment before floating off again. I would catch a glimpse of that other life. That was nice; I savored those moments. They were my only human contact.” She opened her eyes. The vastness reflected in them, the awe and dread, terrified me. “That wind is still blowing through me. I can hear it.”