Dearly, Departed

by Lia Habel

  I opened one drawer only to find his underwear—black briefs.

  I started to giggle madly. Zombies wore underwear?

  “Nora?”

  I shot away from the closet so fast you’d think the underwear’d tried to bite me.

  “Yes?” I squeaked.

  “So you are awake.”

  I put a hand on my chest and tried to calm my rapidly beating heart. “I … am.”

  Neither of us made any further move to speak until he said, “So … will you be joining us today?”

  I thought about it for a moment. Would I?

  “Yes,” I said. There it was, my very own signature on my very own death certificate.

  I approached the bed and picked up the satchel. As I slung it over my head, my eyes fell on the teddy bear. I picked it up, too.

  I could have sworn that the door walked to me, rather than the other way around, so suddenly panicked and dazed was I. It was a minute, two, before I could bring myself to unfasten the last lock. I paused, my hand on the jamb. He must have heard the chain falling loose, but he made no move to try the door. He seemed willing to go at my pace.

  Taking a breath, I opened the door wide. With both hands, my eyes shut, I thrust the bear out into the hall. “Keep this in mind, though: one false move and the teddy gets it!”

  I held this position for half a second, before opening my eyes.

  Bram’s mouth was twitching. “Good morning to you, too.” His eyes fell from my head to my stockinged legs. “Alice.”

  I didn’t know what to say to this at first. Then it hit me—white stockings, blue dress, hair ribbon. I slowly lowered the bear, my cheeks heating again. “My face is up here, bunny boy. I’m just giving myself an edge, in case I have to run for my life.”

  He laughed. I clammed up at the sound of it. I could almost hear the air being sucked out from the space around us as I saw just how close the undead boy was, just how real he was, just how tall he was. He was at least a head and a half taller than me, trim but obviously strong. I thought of the huge shoes back in the closet, and my mouth went dry. He could tear me in two if he wanted.

  He probably did want to.

  But instead of doing this, he bowed from the waist. “Captain Abraham Griswold, at your service.”

  I hugged the bear against my chest and watched him, feeling like a canny child. “Good … morning.”

  Bram made no move to come closer. He watched me with his silvery eyes, and I watched him right back. He wasn’t all that bad-looking, strangely enough. He was dressed in one of his black T-shirts and camouflaged pants, his hair slicked back with water. His bare, ice-white arms were covered with wicked-looking scars, but aside from that, nothing was … broken. Or missing. Nothing about him seemed overtly weird. Whatever my dad had pioneered in the area of corpse preservation, it apparently worked rather well. Or maybe Bram was just lucky. Blessed among zombies.

  “Have you had breakfast?” he inquired.

  I shook my head.

  “Would you like to go get some?”

  “Will I have to watch you eat?”

  “No, not if you don’t want to.”

  I nodded.

  He slowly offered his arm.

  I squeezed his bear so hard I feared the head might pop off. No way.

  “Right, then.” He seemed to accept the fact that I wasn’t prepared to touch him. “We’ll walk right down this hall here. This way leads to the med facilities. That’s where you’ll always find most of the living people on base.”

  “First, I want a gun.” I’d decided to make this demand during my second scrubbing.

  Bram raised an eyebrow. “Should I trust you with one?”

  I stood up a bit straighter. “My father taught me how to shoot. The first lesson was about responsibility. I don’t want to hurt anyone, I just want to feel like I can defend myself.”

  “Question two, then. Will you trade me the bear for a gun? At the risk of sounding like a wuss, I’d really rather not have him caught in the cross fire. He’s not actually mine.”

  “Okay, deal,” I said, surprised that he was willing to go along with me. “But you don’t get the bear till I get my gun.”

  It was plain that Bram wanted to smile again, but he fought it back. “Okay, we’ll go down the other hallway, then. Ah, I have long legs, I walk fast even when I walk slow. I take it you want to walk behind me rather than in front of me?”

  Beautiful, we were on the same page.

  Bram did walk slowly—with a stiff, almost grandfatherly gait. He had a very slight limp and favored his right leg. His arms barely swung at all. It was rather eerie. Even at my normal pace, though, it was easy to keep behind him.

  There were doors all along the low, dark hallway. I saw a few of them crack open as we passed and just as quickly close again. It made me nervous. By the time we emerged in a wider, better-lit corridor, my skin was covered in goose bumps. Luckily, it seemed that no one else was there to see them.

  “Armory’s that big door over there,” Bram said, lifting an arm to point. I nodded and followed him. I watched as he entered a combination into a keypad near the door and then stooped down a bit so an eye scan could be performed.

  “That must be inconvenient for the ones that lose eyes,” I commented.

  “I have a friend who’s clinging onto one of his until it rots. You might’ve seen him. He doesn’t wear it on missions, it falls out too easily.”

  I remembered the zombie with the empty eye socket, and shuddered.

  The computer confirmed that Bram was really Bram, and the door slowly swung open. I leaned to the side, peeking around him.

  Sweet Father of All.

  I handed Bram his teddy bear as I walked into the armory. It was a weapon-lover’s paradise. Rifles and shotguns and blunderbusses, arranged by caliber and model, were mounted in rows along the walls. Shelving held equipment of all sorts. Cabinets filled with drawers topped with bulletproof glass stored every kind of grenade and handgun I’d heard about, ever. I pulled one of the drawers out and leaned down to look at the wares inside. I could see the New Victorian flag—a field of Wedgwood blue, sprinkled with white stars—engraved somewhere on each piece. Either the undead had a lot of cash to blow on black market New Victorian weapons or they were legit.

  I realized then that Bram was standing in front of the only exit, teddy bear in arm, watching me. I turned around to face him.

  “What sort of gun do you want?” he asked.

  “Well, I’ve had the most experience with a .22 caliber. My father taught me to shoot with one, and I take marksmanship as a phys. ed. course in school.”

  “A .22 doesn’t usually have the force necessary to make an exit wound in the skull, though. You’ll be aiming for the head—remember that, always aim for the head, any other shot’s a wasted shot. I’d recommend a shotgun again, quite honestly. I know it’s annoying to reload it, but given your size, I’d say the more power, the better. Or …” Bram set the bear down on one of the lower cabinets with, I noticed, quite a bit of respect and care, and opened one of the drawers. “Maybe a .38 or .45 pistol.”

  I dared to draw nearer to him, and looked down at the guns. “I’ve not had much experience with pistols.”

  Bram touched the glass, and clear red buttons swam into view. He entered another access code. “No time like the present to learn, eh? Here, we’ll get you a pistol and a shotgun. See, they say it’s ‘survival of the fittest,’ but you and I really know that it’s ‘survival of the most heavily armed.’ ”

  Ten minutes later I had a shotgun on my back and a pistol in a holster at my hip, and we were walking back through the hall that led to Bram’s room. I felt a little more confident with some firepower strapped to my body, I had to admit, even if I only knew how to use fifty percent of it. Eh, I’d figure it out.

  We stopped momentarily so Bram could put the bear in his room. “Why do you walk so slowly?” I found myself asking. “I heard you running in the hall before. Are you hu
rt? Is that why you’re limping?”

  He glanced back at me. “No, the limp’s an … old wound. I told you, our bodies don’t heal. We try to keep from wearing them out when we can. If I don’t need to run, I don’t run.”

  “But you sing. And you talk a lot. Won’t that wear out your vocal cords over time?”

  A shadow of a smile flitted across his lips. “You’ve got to have some joy in your life. Else, what’s the point?”

  “Good answer, I suppose.” I paused. “You have a nice voice.”

  His smile was boyish, a little self-conscious. “Thanks.”

  We continued forward in silence, although he didn’t take his eyes from me. He moved so slowly and knew the hall so well, it seemed that he didn’t need to watch where he was going.

  “You sure you’re okay with this?” he asked.

  I swallowed. “As okay as I’m ever going to be.”

  He turned his eyes forward. “Right. Brace yourself.”

  Alarm bells went off inside my head. “For what?”

  “A bunch of people fawning over you.”

  Huh?

  We stepped out into another wide, bright hallway, a mirror of the one that led to the armory. Windows along the walls looked in on what seemed to be laboratories and operating theaters. A set of stainless-steel double doors marked each end of the hall, and through their high, reinforced windows I could see sunlight.

  Unlike the last hall, however, this one was filled with people. Standing about were nurses and doctors and techs, as well as several other zombies, who all stopped talking when I walked in. One of the techs turned on his heel and ran into a nearby lab, and everyone in there stopped what they were doing and came to the window to peer out at me. Everything came to a standstill. No one spoke.

  Until the dead people started to whisper at one another, their eyes on me.

  I found my hand drifting down my dress, toward the pistol.

  “Miss Dearly!” It was Dr. Elpinoy’s voice. He was at the edge of the crowd but quickly approaching as it parted to let him pass. “Oh, it’s so good to see you! You poor thing! Shall I find you some breakfast?” He turned to speak to a living man behind him. “You! Go ready the kitchens. Here, we—”

  I pulled out the pistol, just to prove that I could, holding it with both hands and aiming it at an angle toward the floor. I didn’t take the safety off. Elpinoy jerked to a stop. I heard a few gasps.

  “Nora …” Bram said warningly. “Remember that whole ‘responsibility’ thing?”

  I narrowed my eyes and shook a few curls out of my face. “That’s close enough, Doctor.”

  “You gave her guns?” Dr. Elpinoy asked, turning on Bram. He was livid. “You gave the girl guns?” He made several fluttering, useless hand gestures before producing a rather high-pitched, “Why?”

  “She asked for them,” Bram said matter-of-factly.

  “Bram has the right idea, doing what I want,” I said, trying to make my girlish voice a little deeper. I didn’t do very well. “Trust me, I don’t want to harm any of you. I just want things to go at my speed, and I want information when I ask for it. Got it?”

  One of the zombies, a girl, gave a little squeal of excitement. “Yay, she’s not a loser! We are so having a sleepover!” I recognized her voice from the hall.

  “Can I watch?” quipped a boy zombie without a nose.

  My eyes flicked in that direction. I started to wonder which of them I should shoot first, but now for reasons that had nothing to do with my safety.

  “Nora, put it away.” Bram leaned a little closer to me. I instinctively stepped back and turned to meet his eyes. He was serious. “Just for now. No one’s attacking you.”

  I pressed my lips together and slowly holstered the pistol.

  “All right,” Dr. Elpinoy said, adjusting his houndstooth waistcoat nervously. “All right. Look, your father’s office is this way.”

  “Is there a video player there?” I asked. “One that’ll take an old minicylinder?”

  “Yes, there should be.”

  I looked at Bram again, who nodded. On this wordless advice, I took a risk and stepped in front of him, following Dr. Elpinoy.

  Tom was grinning like a fool when I passed him. It made him look even more like a fanged fish.

  “I so totally, totally called it,” he gloated. “I think I’m in love.”

  “I’ll fight you for her,” Chas countered.

  Both of them fell into step behind me. I turned around, blocking their way, and shook my head. “Not yet. Go get Coalhouse and Ren. Meet me in the mess in about an hour.” When their faces became all disappointment, I assured them, “I’ll try to bring her with me.”

  With only a little grumbling, they gave up and left.

  In moving away from me, Nora’d informed me of her comfort zone. About three feet. I maintained this distance from her as we entered the office, and with a well-placed look mandated that Dick do the same. I watched her as she took in the room, eyes large and cautious, muscles taut. She was ready to flee at a moment’s notice. She didn’t need any more gawkers to worry about, so I shut the door. At the sound, she turned sharply to look at me, lips parting in an unspoken question.

  “Keeping everyone else out, not you in,” I said. Elpinoy rewarded me with an odd look for this apparently random statement, but the only person who mattered nodded.

  I hadn’t been in Dearly’s office in several days. Everything was as he left it. Protocol D called for his segregation from the other living workers on base, and thus he’d been appointed three connected rooms that he still used in death—his quarters, an office, and a small laboratory. They were crowded with machinery, books, and heavy pieces of furniture, the walls almost completely hidden by memos and small pieces of framed art. Dearly’s taste for dark, highly decorated surroundings had not translated well to cramped military spaces.

  “You can stay here from now on, Miss Dearly,” Elpinoy said, making his way through the clutter to one of the doors. “These are your father’s quarters.” He opened the door, glanced inside, and immediately shut it again. “We’ll get one of the soldiers to clean his room out properly, of course.”

  Nora looked at me again. “If my father has a room, why was I put in yours?”

  “The locks,” I reminded her. “These rooms don’t have any locks. Dr. Dearly wanted to be completely accessible at all times—especially if he needed to be put down. That was his contingency plan.”

  Her eyes widened even more. I wouldn’t have said that was possible. “Put down? You mean … to kill him?”

  Attempting to change the subject, I waved a hand toward the laboratory door. “Your father didn’t want to endanger anyone. As you can see, there are plenty of living workers here. They rotate them out from our alpha base, which is farther north, to reduce their overall exposure time. No undead at that installation. But your father didn’t want to stay there. He felt more comfortable here, with us, even before he died.”

  Nora set the satchel she was carrying down on her father’s desk and paused for a moment to look at the photographs displayed there. She picked one up. It was of her, as a child, in black and white.

  “How do you know all these things about my father?” she asked softly.

  I looked at Elpinoy. I knew I’d stand a better chance of having her believe it if he said it. Elpinoy studied me gravely for a moment, keeping me in suspense, before announcing, “Well, your father and Captain Griswold are very close.”

  Nora looked up. I had an odd suspicion that if I went on about how well her father and I got along, she’d take it as some sort of come-on, and that was the last thing I wanted to burden her with. But, as usual, my mouth moved anyway. “He’s been teaching me biology and chemistry. I asked him to, about a year ago … after he died. Figured it’d be good to get some medical training. And he talks about you all the time, I told you that. He’s always been incredibly kind to me. Found me himself, when he accompanied some soldiers on a training exercise. I was �
� He talked me down.”

  I bit my tongue and fought the urge to hit myself in the head.

  Nora smiled, very slightly.

  The world was a happy place.

  “He’s been working in here,” I went on, a bit loudly, moving into the lab. Nora opened her satchel and dug around inside until she found something. Soon she and Elpinoy joined me in the next room.

  The lab was tiny, but one of the most powerful on base. Multiple computers were set up there, each sporting a tall, segmented screen that could be adjusted for the task at hand. A row of counters, cabinets, fume hoods, and sinks housed the usual tools of genetic and medical science, and a long, black, sharp-edged machine dominated the southeastern corner. I still didn’t know much about it, but I knew it was used to synthesize medications.

  Nora glanced into a nearby glass refrigeration unit. “So that’s all mine?” She was looking at the vials of blood within it.

  “That’s all yours.” I sat at one of the computers and pressed some buttons. The monitors around us glowed to life.

  “You’re going to use it to make a cure?”

  “No, I’m studying it,” Elpinoy said. “As intimate as that might sound. While a vaccine is what we’re after right now, it’s my personal belief that a more permanent solution lies in genetic therapy. Your DNA, and your father’s, can help with that.”

  Nora’s face slowly turned in the direction of the computer screens. Her voice, when she spoke again, was stiff. “But you don’t have anything yet?”

  “No. As far as I know, they’re getting closer to a vaccine by the day,” I said. “Your dad was running the latest batch of computer models when he raced out of here.”

  “We’ve been working from the information he left behind,” Elpinoy interjected. “We have everything, just … nobody really understands it the way he does. The Lazarus has been his life for almost a decade. Chances are, we can continue with his work, but it’s going to go much more slowly. And now we’re running out of time.”