by Lia Habel
A horrible thought occurred to me. “Did the monsters get anyone else? In the city? My friend Pam is … oh, she is going to be sick with worry …”
“No, no. As far as I know, we got all of them. Trust me, that was my fear, too. Will you calm down, please?” He sounded both annoyed and … desperate?
Screw his desperation. He didn’t know the meaning of the word.
“Like I’m going to let some sick, rotting cannibal tell me to calm down!” I shrieked.
“I’m not a cannibal!” He was angry now. “I’ve never tasted human flesh, okay? Your father got to me before I could!”
I took a breath.
When he spoke next, I could tell that he was standing directly outside the door. “The methods that Dr. Dearly developed keep us going … our minds, as well as our bodies. It’s hard to explain without being able to show you anything, but look—I eat tofu, okay? Nummy, nummy tofu. Hurrah, protein that I can’t use. But it takes the edge off. I get topped off every day, too … there’s a small army of doctors in this facility who do nothing except tune us up, like carriages in a garage. So physically, we’re as fine as dead people can be, and mentally, we have our bearings. We don’t have to fend for ourselves. We’re not lost and confused. We know exactly what we are.”
Bram stopped talking then. He seemed to know that I would want to digest this—ha-ha. And so I crept nearer to the door again, allowing the sensation of my bare feet on the hard floor to ground me as I let my mind turn over this information.
He was a monster. He appeared to have the ability to rationalize, to think, to experience emotions. Perfectly normal ones, like aggravation and amusement. He was quick-witted. And although he sounded impatient, I realized that he had to have some capacity for patience in order to sit outside the room so long and talk to his ignorant captive.
But he was a monster.
And a teenage boy?
“How old are you?” I found myself asking.
“I died when I was sixteen. That was two years ago, though.”
I was surprised. “You look good, for being dead for two years.”
He laughed then, fully. “I thank your father for that. But yeah, the others you saw tonight, they don’t have the benefit of our technology. Your taxes at work.”
I hesitated in consideration for a moment, before undoing one of the locks.
“Thanks,” he said, at the sound of it.
“But no more questions.” My voice was growing hoarse again.
“Three was better than I expected to get in one session, anyhow. Oh, did you wind the clock?”
I looked to the bedside table, where there was a brass alarm clock. “It says three-fifteen. In the morning?”
“Bah, no, it’s almost five A.M. now. If you could keep it going, I’d appreciate it. If it’s left unwound for too long it doesn’t seem to like to keep the tension afterward, and I have to take it apart and mess with it.”
I walked to the table and picked it up, doing as he asked. And then it struck me that I was setting a so-called zombie’s alarm clock for him, and I swear I heard something snap in my ears. I started laughing uproariously.
I heard the monster’s bemused voice outside, asking me if I was all right, but that just made it funnier.
When Dick came by with a breakfast tray and a canvas satchel a few hours later, she spoke to me again.
“I give. ‘Topped off’?”
“Is this question going to count?” I asked.
“Just answer it.”
“Saline cocktail,” I responded. “Plumps up the muscles, bathes the joints.”
Dick gave me an odd look as one of the locks clicked open. I was used to it.
“Doc Elpinoy’s here with … whatever those are.” I pushed myself to my feet. I’d made a nest of blankets on the side of the hall opposite the door. I picked one of them up and tossed it over my old digital cathedral radio.
“Crum-pets,” Elpinoy said, in the tone of voice he often used to remind me that I was a filthy, uncivilized Punk boy from the outback.
“Right. Anyway, I’m going to go borrow a shower, since you have mine. There’s nobody else in the hall but the doctor. I’ll be back in a bit.”
There was a beat before the girl said, “Okay.”
I picked up the brass lantern I’d been using to light my section of the hallway and headed down the hall, my combat boots making heavy sounds on the floor. I paused behind the next corner, out of curiosity. There was a minute’s silence, then the sound of the locks being undone—four, five, six.
“Good morning, Miss Dearly. I—”
“Thank you.” The door slammed shut and the six locks were done back up.
The doctor caught up with me in the hallway. “You’ve been speaking to her? What did you say? You know this is a sensitive matter.”
“Yeah, it’s not like she’s the daughter of the man who’s practically our lord and savior, or anything.” Dick Elpinoy and I didn’t get along. He was too hoity-toity for my tastes; I didn’t follow rules well enough for his. But now we were united in villainy. Or something.
“Look, Bram.” Elpinoy tugged on the hem of his jacket. His clothes were always too tight. “I went along with your idea because I happen to be in agreement with you, for once. Locking her up and not telling her anything would simply lead to her either going mad or attempting to escape—and then we’d have no control over what she saw. Can you imagine the first zombie she met being someone like … like Dr. Samedi, for example?”
“Hey, Doc Sam’s a good guy,” I said defensively.
“In your book, perhaps.” We exited into another, busier hallway, and he lowered his voice. “But what I’m saying is that we can’t tell her everything. Wolfe will have our hides. Besides that, she’s a fine young lady.”
“I’ll be sure to remind her of that next time she starts yelling at us.”
Elpinoy stared at me a moment before recovering himself with a sniff. “I can’t say I blame her. I just hope that you were respectful.”
“How is telling her the truth disrespectful? It’s not like I enjoy introducing myself as a creature from beyond the grave.” I desperately wanted to roll my eyes, but we were discouraged from doing so. The muscles around the eyes are always some of the first to go.
“Did you tell her anything about her father?”
“No. I let her ask the questions. Predictably, the main questions she had were ‘What?’ and ‘Am I going to be on the menu?’ Oh, and ‘What?’ ”
“What did you tell her?”
“Enough.”
We passed through the main hallway that led to the med bay, and I lost him in a crowd of recently returned soldiers. They’d arrived back about the same time Nora’d started talking, and the techs were still processing them. I cut through them without looking back, crossed the western courtyard, and continued on to the barracks on the other side. Rather than visit the communal showers, I decided to knock up Coalhouse.
“Coalhouse!” I shouted as I banged on his door. “Let me in!”
It took a few more bangs before he finally opened it. Coalhouse had joined the Punk army half deaf, a condition that hadn’t improved with his appointment to the artillery. He had a hearing aid, but usually refused to wear it unless he was on a mission. He had the sharpest eye I’d ever encountered, though, and was one of the best snipers we had.
He popped his right eye in and wedged a thumbprint-sized piece of latex foam in with it for support. “ ’Ey, Cap,” he said. “What’s up?”
“I need to use your shower.”
“What’re you doing, going for the Holdover King of the World Award?”
A “holdover” was anything that we found ourselves doing, or wanting to do, that didn’t serve any purpose now that we were dead. Eating was a holdover. Cutting our hair was a holdover. “Showering is not a holdover, Coalhouse. No wonder you can’t get a girlfriend.”
“We don’t sweat, Bram. And they fill us up with that antibacterial stuff, so
we don’t smell.”
“We still get dirty. What’re you, five?” I shouldered my way in.
“Is she still in your room?”
“Yeah.” Coalhouse shared his room with a handful of other soldiers, but his corner was a mess, clothes and comic books everywhere. I should, rightly, have written him up for it.
He grinned. “Ahh, the shower makes sense now. I gotta say, I’m starting to see things from your point of view.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone knows you have a thing for black hair.”
I gave in and rolled my eyes.
“Hey, she’s hot. Literally. And circulation, I find that very, very attractive in a woman.”
I suddenly had an idea of what Dick had been getting at regarding our behavior—and I knew that it was my responsibility to nip it in the bud. “Keep a civil tongue in your head, Coalhouse. She’s Dearly’s daughter. And she’s already scared enough as it is. You address her as you would the Virgin-freaking-Mary, got it?”
I put a little bit of “scary zombie” into my voice, a touch of death rattle, and it was enough for Coalhouse to take me seriously. He nodded and sighed. “Yeah, yeah.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be with your boys?”
“Huh?”
I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Boys. Sniper training?”
Coalhouse glanced at the clock, mouthed an expletive, and dashed out the door.
I showered in tepid water, resting my forehead against the plastic wall. I hadn’t slept at all, between the girl wanting to talk and … well … wanting to talk to her, too. Not that we physically needed sleep, but it was necessary for our mental health.
I didn’t need Elpinoy to tell me that I’d talked too much. Nice stoic soldiering there, Bram. Well done.
She made me nervous. When I get nervous, I talk.
Well, there was that and the fact that she was living, and therefore … fascinating. It happened every time new living people showed up to work with us. Part of our brains wanted to know everything about them, monitored the way they moved, unconsciously focused in on the temperature of the air that surrounded them, relished the sound of their breathing.
Deep down, we all probably wondered what they might taste like.
I shook off the idea. I hadn’t had breakfast. I finished up and threw on a pair of Coalhouse’s cargo pants and one of his T-shirts before heading for the mess.
There were a few zombies chatting in the western courtyard, but the eastern one was empty. The air was warm and heavy. A small flock of parrots exploded from a clump of trees outside the compound wall as rifles went off on the range.
“Honestly, you and your guns.”
I turned to behold Father Jacob Isley, the chaplain, coming up beside me. I smiled and stopped walking. “You act like they’re especially unholy or something. Are you trying to tell me that in the final showdown between evil and good, the weapons of choice will be guns and … cats?”
The priest gave me one of his singular smirks—wobbly due to lack of muscle control, and thus somewhat goofy. He stooped down to scoop up one of the cats in question, selecting it from the four or five currently milling about outside the base’s makeshift wooden chapel. The ginger tabby nuzzled its head at his cheek, which held a bullet hole that would never heal. He kissed its nose.
“As if even the forces of the Almighty could tell them what to do. Hmm, sweetie?” He set the cat down. “How are you today, Abraham?”
I liked Isley. He was a bit more worn-out than the rest of us, preferring not to be subjected to constant repair. His religion was gentle and accepting, never forceful. And, hey, sometimes it was nice to be able to borrow a furry little thing to cuddle. He had a soft spot for cats and owned about twenty of them, strays from villages attacked by the dead.
“I’m doing fine. Miss Dearly’s being kept in my quarters. It’s a little weird.”
“Understandable.”
I knelt down to stroke the head of a black kitten, and it reared up for the contact. “The cute is strong in this one.”
“I know,” he sighed, with paternal pride. “Do you think the girl might be open to a visit at some point?”
“Probably. I don’t know how religious she is. She’s braver than I thought she would be, though.”
“Well, let’s hope that bodes well.”
I nodded slowly. “For all of us.”
“Some people say a man is made outta mud.
A poor man’s made outta muscle and blood.
Muscle and blood and skin and bone,
A mind that’s weak and a back that’s strong.
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go,
I owe my soul to the company store.”
A digital gramophone with a flimsy tin horn was set up in a corner of the mess hall, near the window where sundries could be purchased. My regulars were gathered near it. The tip of Chas’s cigarette glowed like the red buttons on the front of the grammy as she inhaled. She swayed her hips a bit to the music as it picked up.
Tom chose that moment to reach over and smack her rear.
Before anyone could blink, Chas slapped him. Tom dropped the fork he’d been using to eat his rations and lifted a hand to inspect his cheek.
“Geez, woman, you’re gonna dislocate my jaw.”
“Well, don’t do that in public, you brute!”
“Wow.” Renfield adjusted his glasses. He was sitting across the table from them with a book. “I feel so privileged, being an audience to this—”
“Shut up, Ren,” the other two said simultaneously.
Given this setup, how could I not contribute? I took the long way around the mess so I could sneak up behind Chas. Tom saw me and hid his laughter behind his fork as I reached stealthily over her shoulder and plucked the cigarette from between her lips. Chas whirled around with a punch loaded, but I ducked and squashed the cigarette out on the concrete floor.
“Bram!” she said in surprise as she backed up and gripped the edge of the table in her hands.
“Yes, me. You shouldn’t smoke, Chas. Does bad things to you.”
She tossed her hair out of her face. “I get paid the same as you do, Bram. And I can buy what I want with it.”
“Yeah, but I’m your captain. So you have to listen to what I say.”
“Bull.”
“Yeah,” Tom said, leaning back. “I’m her boyfriend. She really only has to listen to what I say.”
She moved closer to him. “I am gonna kill you today, Tom. I can smell it on the air.”
“Really?” he asked. “I would’ve thought the cigs’d taken care of your sense of smell by now.”
Renfield, meanwhile, had buried himself back in his book. Ren was a scarecrow, the bones in his hands and forearms close to the skin. He had regal, sharp features beneath his sallow complexion, and a mop of curly auburn hair. He’d gotten to the point where he could tolerate the rudeness and roughness of the army, but he still preferred to retreat when he could. I didn’t really blame him.
“So,” Chas said as she slid onto Tom’s lap. Tom offered me his barely touched plate with a lift of his eyebrow, and I sat down and took it. “How’s the girl?”
“Talking.”
“Seriously? That’s surprising.”
“Yeah, I hadn’t expected her to. Basic questions. I think I might’ve squicked her out. Probably should have kept my fat mouth shut.” I was beginning to feel very embarrassed about how much I’d prattled on.
“Well, we are kind of squicky. No use holding back.” Chas glanced to Renfield. “You know, like, putting a doily over it?”
Ren didn’t lift his eyes from his book. “Hush, you insufferable woman,” he drawled in that posh northern accent that drove some girls nuts, but just made Chas snigger.
“I love it when he calls me that.”
I studied my breakfast for a m
oment before digging in. Mixed in with the food was an enzyme that broke it down in our bodies, since our stomachs didn’t work anymore.
“I still think I should talk to her,” Chas said.
“You’ll get your chance.”
“If anyone should talk to her,” Renfield piped up, “it should be me. We’re the most compatible, culturewise. I’m sure that on top of feeling as if she’s been thrust into one of the many levels of Hades, with all of its attendant demons, she feels like a lady wandering, lost, amongst the mannerless cads of the slums.”
We were all silent for a moment before Tom asked, “You do realize that we’re sitting right here, right?”
“Oh, I am horribly aware of this fact.”
“Just checking.”
“Elpinoy wants us to handle her with kid gloves,” I said. “The full princess treatment.”
Tom cackled and slapped the table. “Oh, a princess. She is. I haven’t heard that word in forever.”
I grinned, despite myself. “You have no idea how many times I said ‘royal’ when I was talking to her last night.”
Ren’s brow crinkled. “What’s the matter with ‘royal’? I mean, it’s obviously slang, and therefore should be punishable by at least the loss of a finger, but it doesn’t sound outrageously bad.”
“Nah, it’s not,” Chas said. “Just stands for ‘royal pain.’ ”
“Darling, don’t go giving away all our secrets, now,” Tom argued. “Let them think we’re calling them filthy things in our heathen worm-language.”
As I shook my head and moved to shovel another tasteless forkful of food into my mouth, Dick came rushing into the mess with a few of the older soldiers on guard duty. I stood when I saw them. Nobody had to tell me that something was up.
“Captain Griswold, you’re needed immediately,” Dick stammered.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, already walking. My friends watched me go, but knew not to follow. At least, not immediately.
