Dearly, Departed

by Lia Habel

  “We chose, after a long period of blood and tears, to fix our eyes on a star and return to a time of civility, order, and beauty. We chose to honor those who died to earn our place in history by making that place worthy of attention. We embraced such things as military power, high standards of conduct and morality, and technological progress.

  “What makes us the strongest tribe on the continent is the fact that a group that opposes these values—a group that would have mankind remain in the new dark ages—is permitted to express its opinions, permitted to grow, permitted to exist … and, after it becomes a violent terrorist organization, is allowed to live on its own lands, taken out of the lands of those it has attacked and continues to attack!” He had to stop speaking then—the applause was louder than even his amplified voice.

  “They expect that fear will drive us to become like them … closed-minded, blind, angry. Our society will remain open and free so long as I am standing upright,” he continued, once the applause died down. “We will never surrender to the desires of our sick, inhuman attackers. And I thank each and every one of you who came here today, who woke up this morning and dined and dressed and stepped out into the streets at the request of your leadership. It might not have seemed it at the time, but it was a noble, self-sacrificing thing to do. So long as our society is strong, we are strong.”

  I rose with the crowd, though I didn’t clap. Standing amid that final crescendo of applause, I wondered at the point of it all. The Punks wanted us to live like them? I would have been more than happy to be a village farm maiden with a wooden plow, if Nora were with me. I’d give in, if the Punks’d return her. Progress didn’t matter that much to me.

  At the same time, I couldn’t help but feel that if they actually had taken her, if they had done anything to her—I’d hate every last one of them until the day I died.

  A few more families approached us as we made our way out, but not many. Isambard kept looking about like a lost puppy dog, eager for attention.

  “That was wonderful,” Mom commented, cooling herself with her painted paper fan. “I think that’s just what a lot of people needed to hear. See, Pamela? You don’t need to worry. Everything will be all right.”

  “Yes,” Dad said. “I just find it odd, though, that he didn’t say more about how we’re going to go after the Punks for this. We can’t just let it go unpunished. I mean, if a group of them were living here, waiting to strike, why didn’t the government know about it?”

  “The Punks want us to punish them,” Isambard muttered. “So they can point and go, ‘See? They’re attacking us!’ Better just to thumb our noses at them.”

  I knew—as much as I hated to admit it—that what Issy was saying made sense. But my thoughts were still far away, with Nora.

  A second later they were focused on someone else.

  It was Vespertine Mink’s fluffy hair that caught my attention. She was standing with her mother, Lady Elsinore Mink, and her mother’s bosom companion, the much-gossiped-about Miss Prescilla Perez. Both women were slender, fashionable brunettes.

  Vespertine saw me and regarded me with her customary coldness. She was, if not exactly pretty, arresting, with a smoothly sculpted nose, high cheekbones, and big gray eyes—but there was a morbid, calculating air about her.

  Never mind that she had maligned Nora on a national broadcast.

  I felt myself take a step toward her.

  “Miss Roe?”

  I felt my mother’s hand on my shoulder and turned around. Michael Allister was standing before us with his family.

  “Oh, hello, Mr. Allister,” I said. If it had been any other day, my heart would have swelled in my chest—but right now I wasn’t the least bit interested. No matter how adorable he looked.

  He pushed some of his hair out of his face and smiled slightly. He then took a step to the side and said, “May I present my father, Lord Leslie Allister, and my mother, Lady Allister.”

  I mimicked him, introducing, “My father, Mr. Geoffrey Roe, and my mother, Mrs. Roe, and my brother, Isambard Roe.”

  There were reverences all around. Lord and Lady Allister, however, looked uncomfortable.

  “Did you enjoy the speech, Lady Allister?” my mother asked, all politeness.

  “Yes,” Lady Allister responded. “Thank you. But if you’ll excuse us …”

  Lord Allister gave her his arm. With that, they walked away, leaving my parents to wallow in the wake of their blatant disinterest.

  My father’s jaw clenched. My mother’s eyes widened, just a touch—but that half-millimeter made me want to hug her until she burst.

  “Ah,” Michael said, obviously embarrassed himself, “I just wanted to express my deepest sympathy, Mr. Roe, Mrs. Roe, Miss Roe.”

  My father nodded stiffly. “Thank you, young Mr. Allister. That’s very kind of you.”

  I could see Michael’s Adam’s apple bobbing through the collar of his shirt. Continuing to address my father, he said, “I would like to beg leave to pay a call upon your house, perhaps sometime tomorrow. Miss Roe and I met previously, at my parents’ home.”

  Dad looked at Mom, who looked at me. Michael was introducing himself as a friend, not as a potential suitor, else he would have asked to see me instead of the “house.”

  “We would be pleased to see you, Mr. Allister,” my mother said.

  Michael smiled and bowed. “Thank you. Until then.” He flashed me a smaller smile, before turning on his heel and hurrying off to find his parents. I watched him go, confused. Half of me was thrilled at the idea that he’d singled us out and asked to come over.

  The other half felt guilty as sin.

  I lifted my eyes to my mother. She looked as pleased as I might have admitted I felt had it been a different time and place. The little bit of joy this development had granted me evaporated. I remembered Isambard’s words, and wondered. Was my mother viewing this as a chance to ascend the gleaming tower of the elite? Was she relieved that a rich boy might be interested in me?

  And what am I doing?

  I looked back at the crowd. The Minks were gone. What had I planned to do? Beat Vespertine up? Yell at her? She would never have received a better Christmas gift than my public humiliation.

  Armies played the same games young girls and their families had to play.

  I didn’t trust myself to look at Isambard all the way home.

  “Okay,” I said, bracing myself. “What is his deal?”

  “Doc Sam?” Bram asked as he pushed the big steel door open and held it for me.

  I stopped and looked outside. Fresh, moist air hit me, and it smelled so green that my first impulse was to run out into the sunlight and just inhale. But first I checked for zombies. There didn’t seem to be any.

  “Yeah, him,” I resumed, looking up at Bram as I stood on the threshold. “How’d he … do that whole head thing? I mean, not the mechanics of it, but—”

  “He cut it off.”

  I felt my brow pucker. “What?”

  Bram gestured for me to continue outside, and I allowed him to follow behind me once we were beyond the big steel door. After my encounter with the headless zombie, Bram seemed downright normal.

  I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “Circular saw.” Bram fell in beside me and made a throat-slicing motion with his hand. “He planned it for six months beforehand. Was pretty experimental, but hey, it worked. That’s why we keep him around.”

  “But why in blazes would he do something like that?”

  Bram pulled his mouth, as if debating whether to tell me. “Because he tried to bite Dr. Chase.”

  I halted again, and so did Bram. “But she acts so comfortable around him!”

  “Mostly because she knows that if he tries it again, one good punch will render him harmless. Whenever he works with her, he takes his head off. He did it to reassure her, so she wouldn’t leave. They’re a brilliant team, we need them.”

  I suddenly felt a chill, despite the su
nlight tickling my skin, and wrapped my arms across my chest. “Why’d he try to bite her?”

  Bram ran a finger behind his right ear. “He likes her.”

  My throat started doing that funny tightening thing again. “He tried to give her some kind of love bite? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Bram grimaced and lifted a hand to shush me. “No, no! It was an accident! He … got brave one night, told her how he felt. She didn’t return his feelings, I guess, and he got angry at himself. She tried to calm him with a hug, and … it happened. At least, that’s how he tells it. He doesn’t get angry often, so it must have fueled the Laz and made him lose control. I mean, he stopped after the first try. He didn’t run after her or anything.”

  I allowed two fingers to rest against my lips for an instant before asking, “Is that a normal thing? Losing control?” I could hear the sick anxiety in my own voice.

  “Not when we’re healthy and mentally focused, no. And honestly …” He trailed off, then relented with a sigh. “We’re the stable ones, Nora. The unstable ones destroy themselves out there, or go mad once they’re in here. And we … take care of that.”

  “What, you put them down?” I asked sharply. “They use that phrase for animals.”

  “Would you rather we keep them around and let someone get hurt?”

  Point taken.

  “That man can have his head knocked off, my father thought someone might have to kill him someday … why? Are you all destined to go insane? Will you all become like those monsters back at the house?” My voice was softer than I wanted it to be. I’d tried so hard all morning to sound tough.

  Bram trained his eyes on the ground. “Do you really want to know?”

  I took my new surroundings in again, restively. “Just tell me things, okay? Tell me the truth when I ask, like I said before. I can handle it.”

  “Yes. With medication and care, we have maybe five years to be ourselves.”

  And he’d used up two already.

  “We all know we’re going to go at some point. Facing up to that is part of dealing with what we are. When I eventually lose it, I plan to lock myself in my room and keep myself there, if I can, until I’ve forgotten how to undo all the locks. My first choice would be to be shot, but, as I’ve gathered from experience now, you never know when you’re going to go. Better to have too many contingency plans than too few.”

  I looked at his face. It was so open, so calm. His dark eyebrows curved outward slightly over the blank canvases of his eyes; the masculine contours of his face betrayed no hint of fear. Here he was, telling me how he planned to face madness and death by imprisoning himself, and to him it was as if he were talking about the weather.

  “It’s all so awful,” I said. “How do you stand it?”

  He shrugged. “I figure, looking back, who’s to say how much time I ever had? I could have died permanently that day. Instead, I was given a few more years. And I plan to do something with them.”

  I suddenly felt like a pathetic heel.

  “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go get you some food.”

  He took me across an open courtyard. It was studded with doors that led into squat buildings set around the perimeter. None of the buildings had more than two floors, and all were crafted of pressed metal and plastic painted with camouflage. A tall gateway separated our courtyard from another one exactly like it. I recognized the style from my father’s war stories and holos—this was a hastily erected temporary base. The parts were interchangeable and could be snapped together in many configurations, but they offered no real protection against an attack.

  We stopped outside the mess, which was just another low building like the rest. I could hear voices within. I flexed my fingers in unconscious preparation.

  Bram opened the door.

  The mess hall was filled with zombies. I quickly figured that if they decided to ration me out, they were looking at a couple of pounds of offal each.

  Squaring his chest, Bram marched forward. I scurried after him, unwilling to let him get far away from me. I realized, in that second, that I had ceased to fear him.

  The undead sitting at the long wooden cafeteria tables were another story.

  There were more men than women, all of them older than Bram and clothed in black. There was no sudden silence as we passed, no flash flood of attention turned my way. Rather, I was given furtive, stolen glances, which were then dissected in whispers. It was as if someone had warned them not to stare. They were all dining on the same colorless, unappetizing meal—must have been the tofu he’d spoken of. Through the low hum of voices I could hear the strains of Handel’s Messiah.

  “What’s with all the music I’ve been hearing?” I asked Bram.

  “Life should be a jazz funeral,” he replied. “I don’t know. It’s familiar, I guess.”

  “Ren, you’re insane,” said a familiar voice.

  Bram stopped, and I drew up behind him. A few feet away sat a table taken over by four zombies that looked to be in their late teens. Two were eating, one was absorbed in a book, and the final one, the only girl, was peering into a pocket mirror and scraping a knife against her metal jaw. I recognized her from the med wing.

  “We’ll ask the young lady when she gets here,” the boy with the book said.

  “Seriously, why do you read that crap?” asked the girl.

  Book Boy snapped his volume shut and removed his glasses from his nose. “I speak the truth! In all of these books the girls are throwing themselves at the romantic heroes—romantic heroes who are dead, who drink human blood. Be of good cheer, my brothers, for I tell you there is hope!”

  One of the other guys, a large black chap, rolled his lone eye. “Okay, you’re cut off. Someone get him a cookbook or something?”

  “Or, you know, some fair damsel to seduce,” the girl said, looking up from her reflection. When she saw us, her mouth split into a grin. “Hey, speak of the devil!”

  The one with the book whirled around and held up his hands. “Before we do this formally—you.” He looked at me, and I took a step back. “Have you ever heard of vampires?”

  I nodded. Who hasn’t?

  “Had you heard of zombies before you came here?”

  I shook my head.

  “See?” He thumped his book for emphasis. “Vampires are just zombies with good PR! That could be us in a few years!”

  The bald, noseless zombie sitting behind him rolled his fingers over his nonexistent eyebrows. I recognized him, too. “You forget one important thing, Ren. Vampires don’t exist.”

  “Every myth is based on truth. And the ice hides many things.”

  “Save it.” The girl stood up and brushed her hands off on her pants. She came over, stopping an arm’s length away from me. Her gait was energetic, her smile cheerful, even though the lower half of it was metallic. I could see several designs scraped onto the metal, including a word: insufurabelle. “Hi, I’m Chas.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I managed.

  Bram took over from there. “Chas is our Jill-of-all-trades. That’s Tom Todd, grenadier.”

  The noseless one nodded at me. “Hey.”

  “Coalhouse Gates, sniper,” Bram said, motioning toward the black teen.

  “Welcome to the land of the dead, doll,” he said with a wink—or was it a blink? I couldn’t tell.

  “And this gent here is Renfield Merriweather the Third, engineering and logistics.”

  Renfield donned his glasses again and stood up, bowing from the waist. “My lady.” I bobbed in return, driven by sheer muscle memory.

  Bram indicated that I should take a seat. Every step I took in the direction of the table was a struggle, as the last thing my body wanted to do was move toward the undead. When my knees hit the bench, I knew that I had conquered my flight response, and I clumsily sat down. Bram sat right next to me.

  Everyone was silent for a few moments before Tom offered, “That was some nice shooting on the roof.”

  “Thanks,�
�� I said, sliding my fingers over the fake leather of my pistol holster.

  “Yeah, you made that easy on us,” Bram said. “Not getting caught by the Grays, I mean.”

  “Is that what you call them?”

  “Mmm-hmm. They’re our new toy. First ones showed up about a year ago.” Chas returned to her seat and took up her knife again. “We only just managed to snoop in on a transmission from them.”

  “That’s what got us after you,” Coalhouse added. “Seeing as it was about their plan to kidnap you. No idea why we didn’t get a transmission before. Haven’t gotten one since.”

  “Yeah, I told her all this,” Bram said. “But we were lucky that the one we did catch was that one. They’re a sneaky bunch. Wolfe has taken us out against ’em on several missions, but we’ve never quite managed to get the drop on them.”

  My eyes swept along the table as they spoke. They were dead. Dead. They should be lying in boxes, wilted lilies sagging against their chests, worms crawling in and out of their flesh. Instead, they were discussing fictional monsters and intercepted military transmissions.

  The weird thing was, it was beginning to seem … maybe … just a little bit normal.

  Maybe.

  Dr. Elpinoy soon swept through a nearby door, cradling a tray in his arms like an infant. He hurried over and set it on the table before me with some fanfare. It was covered in baked breakfast goods and cups of tea—different kinds, judging by the varied colors. There was no meat, though, nothing savory. The cups and plates were made of paper, the utensils plastic.

  Chas slowly lowered her knife. “So. Jealous.”

  “I hope this will be satisfactory, Miss Dearly?” Elpinoy asked, worrying his hands together.

  “Yes, absolutely,” I said, feeling a bit overwhelmed. “Thank you. You’re very kind.”

  Elpinoy smiled as if I had just complimented his entire lineage. Then his expression darkened and he said, “Ah, just … eat quickly.” Before I could ask why, he’d bustled off again.

  I had to admit, as I looked at the tray, that I was starving. As I tucked in, the others made up for the fact that my mouth was busy.