Dearly, Departed

by Lia Habel

  My fingers dug into the upholstery of the sofa.

  “I’m not sure what was wrong beyond that, though. She was very short with me. I said that I hoped to see her well come January, and I took my leave.”

  Madame Winters nodded seriously. “Do you think that there’s any chance she could have known about the upcoming attack?”

  Vespertine folded her hands primly in her lap. “Well, I can’t remember ever seeing her so upset before. I’m afraid I couldn’t say one way or the other.”

  “Oh, it’s amazing you remember how to dress yourself every morning, Mink,” I muttered. Mom flashed me a look of confusion.

  “She was under stress?”

  “Oh, yes, I think so. I’m sure she didn’t know anything about the attack, though. Why, if she had, wouldn’t she have reported it to somebody?” Vespertine’s face was full of suggestion. Her lips then rounded, and she added, as if it had just occurred to her, “She does have a habit of watching war holos, though … I wonder if, perhaps, she watched a particularly savage one that gave her nightmares? I don’t think she sleeps well. She always looks like something out of a gothic play in the morning.”

  “War holos?” Winters leaned forward in her seat.

  “Yes … Punk history, I believe. I can hear them through the wall. I have the suite next to her room.”

  One of my fingernails actually popped through the upholstery.

  “Goodness,” Winters said slowly. “That’s … different, for a young lady. And how strange that she should then be targeted by what was, most likely, a sleeper cell of Punks …”

  “Please turn to Channel 4,” I said as I stood up. I was afraid I was going to be sick.

  Mom did so, even as she asked me, “Pamela, is that true?”

  “Yes,” I said, hugging myself with my own arms. “She watched them all the time, she thought they were interesting! Her father got her into it. She always took after him, you know that … she wasn’t in on this! She was writing a paper! She’s out there, hurt, or … and Mink’s trying to ruin her …” I couldn’t breathe.

  “Pam.” My mother stood up and took me by the waist, guiding me back to the sofa. “Calm down. Calm down, or I’m turning the screen off and your father will—”

  “No.” I took deep breaths and tried to cool my cheeks with my hands. “No, leave it on, please.”

  NVIC was a riot of tickers and computer graphics. While I grieved for Nora, others grieved for the loss of their security. The incident was being interpreted by most as an attack by covert Punk troops against a symbol of New Victorian pride, the Elysian Fields. They figured now that the flooding had been the start of it. The Prime Minister had yet to make a statement, but other officials had. They claimed there was no reason to suspect that another attack was imminent. Few mentioned Nora at all. To them, the Punk invasion was what was important.

  I tried the other news networks. Some anchormen were calling for the PM to go into hiding, for our troops to be immediately recalled from South America, for a curfew and additional security measures to be put into place. They wanted to know why the footage from the EF’s security cameras hadn’t been released.

  Others spun stories of their own to make up for the lack of facts.

  “I am forced to conclude,” the host of one show thundered, “that Miss Nora Dearly, the child of a man of some legend within the army, has run off with some young buck and that the army has arranged this elaborate staging to hide the fact!”

  Mom balked at that one. “What?”

  I leaned against her big round shoulder, my eyes starting to sting again. I should have listened to her. She angrily flicked back to NVIC.

  “In other news,” the anchorman said, “the clinic that serves the Elysian Fields’ populace has seen an increase of patients exhibiting odd symptoms. Spokesmen from the Ministry of Health have declined to comment on whether there might be any significant cause for concern, but do urge anyone suffering from the following to seek immediate medical attention.

  “The symptoms include: sudden high fever followed by a plunge in body temperature, an exceedingly pale or bruised appearance of the skin, convulsions, lack of coordination, dementia, and pain in the extremities. There has been no evidence that the disease—if it is a disease—is commonly communicable.”

  Apathy was beginning to sink in once more, and I paid the reporter no mind. If it wasn’t about Nora, I couldn’t care less.

  My mother patted my shoulder. “Do you want to go upstairs and take a bath? I’ll get dinner ready.”

  I nodded miserably and stood up. Mom left the screen on. As I climbed the stairs, I heard my brother, Isambard, enter the house. He called out for my mother, who greeted him. These noises were so utterly ordinary that they now seemed strange, and I continued up the stairs in search of silence.

  Once I was alone inside my room, I shut my eyes and tried to block out everything. I tried to shut up my chattering mind. I tried to internalize the feeling of being safe, secure in my tiny, familiar room with its plain yellow walls and unvarnished floorboards and secondhand furniture. In my own home, with the people who loved me—that confidence, that acceptance. Face serene, mouth shut. The face I should present to the world.

  I tried to tell myself that’s what Nora would do.

  I knew that this was a lie.

  Yesterday had been a hard day.

  After I’d asked Bram where my father was, he’d responded with, “Does that question encompass the whole … zombie thing?”

  “Yes. Everything.”

  “Okay.” Although Bram seemed calmer now that he could see me, I didn’t look at him in turn. I wasn’t up to eye contact yet. “A few days ago we received a transmission from the leader of the bad guys I told you about. We’ve been trying to intercept something like that for a while now. It’s a long story. It told us that they were going after you.”

  “For my immunity. Got it.”

  “After we left the base, your father apparently took a plane from our hangar and tried to get to you himself. Needless to say, he didn’t make it. We lost contact with the plane shortly after.”

  “So you don’t even know where he is.”

  “No.”

  “Why would he do something like that?”

  “I wish I could answer that question. I’ve never seen him that angry.”

  “But he …” I bunched the skirt of my nightgown in my hands. “If he was that worried about me, why did he just … die? Let me think he’d died, that is. You mean he’s been here, walking around, talking, for a year? And he never tried to tell me that he was all right, that he was safe?”

  Bram sighed. “What would you have done if he did, Nora?” He drew a circle in the air around his face. “We can’t exactly live out in the open. I mean, this—all of this—is a big national freaking secret. The military’s been keeping it under wraps for years. You think this is something the average person can handle? If people knew about us, there’d be chaos.”

  My head felt hot. “I’m not talking about him attending a parent-teacher conference or taking me shopping, I’m talking about him sending me a note, leaving a short message, you know, to let me know that he wasn’t really dead!”

  “Nora, I don’t know why he stayed quiet, but … whatever he did, he did because he thought it would be best for you. I mean, it’s been years, and I haven’t exactly written my mother.”

  “And he never told my mother. He never told her, and he infected her!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I mean, what was he even doing here?”

  “Working on a vaccine.”

  “Oh, now he worries about that!”

  “Nora …”

  It took me a few moments to dredge up a simple, “I’ll be right back.”

  “Nora?” Bram pushed himself onto his knees.

  I bounced up and walked away from the door. I had to walk. I had to breathe. I was filled with so many conflicting emotions—hatred, anger, elation, fear—that I felt like th
ere was no room for logical thought. I had to make some.

  I’d need more than a few minutes for that.

  “Nora?” Bram’s voice was building up that worried note again.

  I returned to the door. “I need time. Please, can you just … go? Go, and don’t come back until tomorrow morning.”

  “Is that your final question?” he asked, lowering his eyes to the chain. “Because, as much as I understand the weirdness of this situation—trust me, I am a believer—we don’t have a lot of time. My superior’s due back very soon, and my room’s the last place he wants you to be.”

  “Well, it’s more of a request.” I was still stiff from sitting on the floor, and my head felt like it was stuffed with chewing gum—a mixture of information overload and fatigue. “I just need to be alone for a while.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough.” He then asked, as if fearing he would be refused, “Can I give you something before I go away?”

  “Yes, if you can slip it through the crack and if you promise it wasn’t alive at any point in the last eight years.”

  Bram laughed, and I almost felt safe for a moment.

  The old envelope he’d gone to fetch for me had been sealed. I didn’t know what it contained until I shut the door and tore it open with my chipped nails, slowly—as if I instinctively expected a zombie silverfish to lunge out at me. Once I had the paper within unfolded, I recognized my father’s florid handwriting. Taped to the bottom of the parchment was a small silver tube about two inches long—an outdated video cylinder. New players didn’t even have slots for them anymore.

  I wadded the letter up and threw it angrily onto Bram’s desk. I couldn’t read it, not at the moment. I was still dealing with the fact that my father was apparently still capable of writing.

  I was still dealing with the fact that he was alive, in a strange sort of way, and had never taken it upon himself to tell me so.

  Bram did as I asked and stayed away. The only person I heard from that day was Dr. Elpinoy. Every time he dropped off my food, he tried to strike up a conversation, but I demurred. I spent the day alternately lying on Bram’s bed and pacing over Bram’s carpet, trying vainly to chase after my scattered thoughts. The hands of the alarm clock seemed to whirl past the numbers.

  Confused, overwhelmed as I was, it took me a while to realize that I had begun to consider leaving the room.

  The idea was both foolish and inescapable. Related thoughts included how stupid this made me, and how very shortly a snowy-haired man named Darwin would, somewhere in the realms of the afterlife, be pointing and laughing at me. I really did think about it, though, I seriously turned over, in my mind, what my chances of being eaten alive actually were.

  It was hard to concentrate. It was seldom completely quiet. I could hear noises from the other rooms around me—the scuffling of boots and furniture, the low murmur of voices, radios. The undead seemed to love music, for some reason. Once I caught a wet sound that my imagination immediately turned into messy feasting, an idea that made my hair stand on end and didn’t help my decision process any.

  It was Elpinoy, rather than Bram, who unknowingly offered me some reassurance. Quite simply, he kept coming back alive. He had spoken to the zombies outside my door with condescension, not fear. I would think that the last person you’d want to sass would be the one who might react by tearing you limb from limb.

  So, despite the fact that my survival instinct was hollering like a drunk town crier, I started to accept that if I wanted to find out more about my father, I would have to go out and hobnob with the zombies. Once I acknowledged that my options were death and remaining in a windowless room for the rest of my life, I felt a sort of peace about my decision.

  I slept deeply after achieving that, and woke up the next day ready to admit that … I was curious.

  My father’s letter only made me more so.

  Nora,

  By now, sweetheart, men in uniforms have come to tell you that I am dead. They have probably brought letters to confirm it, a flag, all the trappings. The Prime Minister himself might have paid a call—and surely, if I am dead, he would know about it?

  Don’t believe them for a second. Watch.

  I love you far too much to ever leave you.

  Love,

  Papa

  Put perfectly, I had no bloody idea what the letter meant. Did he mean for it to be sent to me after he was bitten? After his sham death twelve short months ago? All the letter told me was that Bram had spoken the truth.

  I needed to see what was on the cylinder.

  But first I needed to get ready.

  The warm water felt good against my skin.

  I poured out the last of the soap Dr. Chase had sent me and scrubbed myself ritualistically for the third time. When I shut my eyes I could still see those decaying people, all naked eyeballs and snapping teeth. I was beginning to think less of trying to cleanse myself of these experiences, though, and more of trying to accept the fact that I would probably never feel clean again.

  I was out of soap either way.

  I shut off the water and got out of the shower. There was no mirror in the bathroom. I towel-dried my hair and dressed in the clothes I’d been given, before packing up the canvas satchel. I included the letter and cylinder alongside the other things.

  The clock said it was almost six in the morning. I sat on the bed and watched as it ticked the seconds off. Bram would come at some point, but I didn’t know when.

  It nagged at me, I realized, not being able to see what I looked like. More than I thought it would. I tried to ignore it, spending further time drying my hair, coaxing my curls into proper ringlets with my fingers as usual. But after all the talk of disease and dead people, my subconscious had apparently decided that my continued sanity hinged on seeing my own face.

  I stood up and went over to the desk. The top held nothing that looked like a mirror. In the interests of science, I slowly flipped through Bram’s book collection. None of them were digital. He had a Bible, a grammar primer such as an elementary student might own, a few adventure novels (about explorers in the frozen Wastelands, apparently), and a large, illustrated biology textbook. I picked the last one up and opened it. It was worn, its pages dog-eared and scribbled upon. It looked as if he had spent some time trying to identify the deep muscle groups of the body.

  Should be right under these, he’d written in the margin. Try to feel with fingers?

  Ew.

  I put the book back and started opening the drawers. The top one held some pencils, a pair of scissors, and a sharpener shaped like a globe. The one beneath it held paperwork. I let my fingers walk through it, and pulled out whatever looked interesting. I found his enlistment papers from two years ago. I found some clippings from Punk newspapers, and marveled at these for their odd textures and fonts, as well as the contents. They detailed such things as food shortages and rationing, weather predictions, church socials. Mrs. Moreau’s Kissing Cake was tremendously well received, as always.

  As I was putting them back, I found another book in the drawer. A digidiary.

  I seized it up and opened it. The screen sprang to life with a photograph in sepia. There was a young, compactly muscular man in it, standing outside a neat wooden house with two little girls in plain pinafores. The resolution wasn’t great, but I wondered if it was Bram. I spent some time studying it—the hair looked similar—before giving up and fingering through.

  “Password?” the thing inquired in a lilting female voice. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  “Uh …” I had no idea. Rather than just give up, I decided to have a go. “Zombie?”

  It beeped scoldingly at me. No.

  “Undead? Bram. Abraham? Captain? Bing Crosby!”

  I tried all of the words I now associated with the person known as Bram, but none of them worked. With a sigh, I shut the diary and put it back into the drawer, burying it beneath the papers. We’d play again later.

  Finally, I opened his closet. Mount
ed on the other side of the door was a full-length mirror.

  I looked a fright.

  I spent ten minutes or so adjusting my corset, plucking at the blue dress—it was cut for someone with bigger breasts than I would ever have and sagged in the front—and fluffing up my damp hair. I’d never worn makeup, but I bit my lips and pinched my cheeks to get some color in them. Might as well try to look a bit more lively than the corpses.

  As I stood there, assessing my reflection, I had another idea.

  I got the scissors from Bram’s desk and went to work, cutting the bottom of the dress off at the calf. I then snipped away at the resulting strip of fabric, turning it into a ribbon I could use to tie back my hair. I trimmed the ends and tossed the scraps into the tin garbage can. Ta-da.

  Feeling quite proud of myself, I lifted my eyes to the mirror. Upon actually looking at what I’d done, it occurred to me that no one but myself had seen so much of my legs in a year or more. Like all girls, I’d started wearing long skirts at the age of fifteen. I felt a flush of embarrassment, but tossed it off with a shake of my head. It was a necessary evil—a shorter dress was easier to move about in. Call it a tactical advantage.

  Wardrobe quick-change completed, I went about exploring Bram’s closet. Most of his clothes were regulation issue—fatigues in gray camouflage, black T-shirts, the black uniform I’d seen him in on the roof. Last in line was, I presumed, his dress uniform. It was of black wool and included a jacket with a high mandarin collar and trousers with a red stripe on the outside of each leg. I stood on my tiptoes to see the insignia. He had ordinary military bars for a captain, but the epaulettes were of red silk fringe instead of the usual gold. Each shoulder had a crest with a stylized Z beneath two interlocking rings embroidered on it.

  The drawers held accessories and shoes. He was a size 14. No handkerchiefs—made sense. He owned a battered pocket watch of cheap, light metal, with the same picture from the digidiary glued inside its cover, and an old camera that had definitely seen better days.