Dearly, Departed

by Lia Habel

  “Slow it down, Renfield!” Bram bellowed. He put that little extra something into his voice that gave me the chills.

  Renfield raised the lever a touch and grumbled, “Killjoys.”

  We slowed down, just a bit—enough for the others to find their feet and grope their way along the belly of the ship. Bram was soon at my side again, and he took the wheel from me. When I let go, my body was still quivering.

  “What the hell was that?!” Tom asked, fighting his way to his feet.

  “That … was not normal,” Bram said, gripping the wheel like he was afraid to let go.

  “I modified the engine somewhat,” Renfield confessed. That grin started sneaking back onto his face.

  “Modifications?” Bram asked. He slowly released his death grip on the steering wheel and turned around to look at Ren. “What modifications?”

  “Modification.” Ren really stressed the shun at the end of the word. “I just removed the governor. I told you some parts needed to come out. You were there when I did it!”

  “The what?” I asked.

  Bram stared at Renfield, his expression going completely slack. “You did what? I didn’t see you … You did what?”

  “What’s a governor?”

  “You didn’t,” Tom said, voice filled with awe. “You are not telling me that you left a piece of the engine behind on the ground.”

  Renfield sighed and turned to address me, waving a hand casually. “The governor, on an airship engine, caps the maximum speed the engine can achieve. So, by taking the governor off, I’ve allowed us to go much faster.”

  “And then we’ll blow up!” Bram yelled. “Because you took a safety valve off!”

  “You’ve turned the ship into a freaking death trap!” Tom shouted.

  “It isn’t critical. We just have to be mindful of the engine pressure ourselves, that’s all! Trust me, she can take it!”

  “Please, please don’t blow us up,” I pleaded as I sank onto a crate near the steering wheel.

  “I will not blow you up!” Renfield sighed and turned his back on me, adjusting a few of the pressure gauges so as to be better able to watch them. “Just trust me.”

  Chas went to see if Tom was all right. I looked up at Bram. “Is this bad?”

  He nodded slowly. His hair was a wreck. He looked at me, his eyes widening suddenly. “Ah, Nora …”

  “What?”

  He coughed, and gestured at me. I gave him a blank look. He pointed more emphatically to my skirt, and I glanced down. It was up about my waist, the petticoats having caught it. Beneath I had white bloomers on, which were now on display for the world to see. I forced my skirt down and blushed. Bram laughed, though there was no cruelty in the sound—that had disappeared.

  “You’re laughing,” I pointed out.

  He searched for the right words before replying. “It’s bad,” he said. “But not that bad. We just have to watch the engine, like he said, and … beat him, once we land. Beat him into a spectacularly bloody pulp. Get really inventive.”

  “I heard that,” Ren muttered.

  “What’s with that whole question and answer thing?” I asked, in order to distract both of us from the fact that we might die in midair. And from the fact that I’d just flashed him.

  He shrugged and smoothed back his hair, keeping one hand on the steering wheel. “Kind of pumps you up, gets you thinking. No room to be stupid out there.”

  “You’re good at it.”

  He chuckled. “I figure it’s the same thing any poor Punk’s raised to do. The ‘Okay, but’ game. ‘What happens if the crops don’t come in? Okay, but what if we can’t get a loan? Okay, but what if Uncle Bert won’t give us work or take us in?’ ”

  “Was your life really so hard down there?”

  “Sometimes, yeah,” Bram said as he opened up a panel next to the window. Within, I saw a variety of navigational equipment, none of it digital. There were little brass globes with moving parts that spun on bolted-down axes, astrolabes, compasses. It was the compass he checked.

  My fingertips were cold as I pressed them together in my lap. Talking to Bram seemed to make me feel better, no matter the situation. But now I had Pam to worry about, and I was starting to feel guilty for being otherwise preoccupied.

  I focused on her. I willed her to be safe, waiting there right where she said she’d be. I wondered what she was seeing, what she was feeling, how she was handling it.

  I wondered, on a side note, how in blazes she’d ended up in a church with Michael Allister.

  Renfield was prattling on about the ship’s specs to anyone who’d listen. Chas’d taken a break from helping Tom, and her eyes were practically glazed over.

  “Ren, you’re acting like a fanboy,” Coalhouse said.

  “Hush,” Renfield said, stroking the side of the engine. “Do you have three-foot intakes? I think not.”

  “No, you are, Ren,” Bram said, looking up from the cabinet. He was aligning the compass readings with points on one of the little globes inside. Must be some sort of positioning device. “I thought northeners were all about the horses.”

  Renfield pushed his rolled-up jacket sleeves back again. They kept slipping down his scrawny arms. “Horses don’t fly. I mean, that’s obvious, but … they’re not as romantic, let’s say. When I was a boy, I wanted to be an airship captain, you know.” The others groaned. “It’s true! I wanted the tricorn hat, the whole nine yards.”

  “What does your family do?”

  He smiled slightly. “They work for the mayor of our city, Gladsbury. My mother works in the teleautomata registration department, and my father works in the parks department. He’s an expert on insects. Now, insects I like. They’re very interesting.”

  “ ’Cause they fly?” Coalhouse snarked.

  Renfield sniffed. A moment later he adjusted his flak vest and asked, in a small and hopeful voice, “I take it that the situation is far too serious to warrant singing a pirate shanty.”

  “Oh my God,” Chas said, looking at me. “Shoot me.”

  Bram was still trying to master the positioning globe. His brow was wrinkled and he appeared to be having trouble with it. “You would be correct,” he said to Renfield.

  Ren held up his hands in a posture of surrender, although he looked a bit pouty. “Just making sure.”

  Bram couldn’t get the globe to work. “Tiny … little … freaking … parts! If a real pirate tried to use this thing, he’d starve to death!”

  So I kept watch at the mullioned window. Within half an hour I could recognize certain sites from our maps in geography class; within forty-five minutes I could tell definitely where we were. “A bit farther north of here,” I said, bouncing on my toes a little in my excitement. “We’re almost there!”

  Bram tossed down the little gold stylus he’d been attempting to adjust the globe’s sections with, and took out his communications device for me. “Call. I’m gonna go toss this thing off the side of the ship.”

  “You do and you go after it,” Renfield snapped.

  I punched Pam’s number into the device and held it up to my ear, plugging my other ear with my finger. Like before, it dialed and dialed, and eventually hung up on me. My stomach dropped. I dialed again. The same thing happened.

  “Oh, not again,” I groaned, dialing a third time.

  Bram stepped closer, peering at the screen with me. “She’s not picking up?”

  “No! She should, if she’s sitting right there.”

  Third call was a no-go. Through the window, I could see the city just floating into view beneath us. “We’re there. The cathedral is on the western side, on the same main street that runs from the EF.”

  “Lovely,” said Tom. “Let me guess—zombie central.”

  “Let’s get closer and look,” Bram said.

  While they concentrated on that, I kept calling. After the tenth or eleventh try I gave up, my teeth on edge.

  “Is it that big one there?” Bram asked.

&nbs
p; I looked. Ren had lowered our position, and the rooftops were now individually visible. “I think so,” I said, pointing to a wide, white one. “But it doesn’t look like there’s anyone there.”

  “Can you get her any lower?” Bram asked Renfield, who went to work on the controls. “Here, we’re slow enough now—you can go up on the top deck if you want, Nora.”

  I raced up the little staircase, using my arms as well as my legs. I ran to the prow of the ship and hung over the railing where the black wooden Alice was mounted.

  “Do you see anyone?” Bram shouted up.

  “No!” I had to reply.

  Where the hell had she gone?

  Every shadow embodied the possibility of being torn in half.

  Funny thing was, I was starting to get used to it. Just another day in the neighborhood.

  Being the person in our group with the most hands-on zombie experience—only one zombie, but still—I was impressed by how Michael seemed willing to be the one to lead us through the streets. All right, so he wasn’t terribly witty, but he was certainly a gentleman. Nora could keep her opinion to herself.

  The only one whimpering was Isambard. He flinched away from every shift in the light, jumped at every noise. Vespertine, who’d just learned what we were up against not ten minutes ago, was more composed than he was. It must have gotten to her, for at one point she turned around and took him by the back of his shirt, much as Michael had in the church, and whispered to me, “This is yours?”

  “My brother, Isambard,” I told her.

  She waggled him by his collar. “Make it shut up. It’s going to get us killed.”

  Isambard struggled. “Hey!”

  “Issy.” I gave him the hairy eyeball. “Hush. Miss Mink, please let him go.”

  Vespertine nodded graciously and released him. He scurried over to walk near me.

  “We’re coming upon an intersection,” Michael said.

  I slowly pulled my bow out and threaded an arrow onto it, though I didn’t pull it taut. “Let me go ahead.”

  Michael glanced back and nodded when he saw what I was doing. He flattened himself against the wall on our left-hand side, and I took his place at the front of the line.

  I stopped when we got to the corner and took a look around. Nothing. I could see the sports store directly across the street from us.

  “We need to run across the street. On three again, okay, guys?” I asked.

  “Okay,” Michael said.

  “One, two …”

  Michael gripped my shoulder and I almost dropped my bow. “Wait!”

  I took a few steps back and felt his breath on my ear as he whispered, “One o’clock.”

  I looked. There, in the shadows across the street, a zombie was shuffling past a pile of tin garbage cans. It was a young man in a highwayman’s coat, its hair held in a ponytail by a soiled ribbon.

  “What do we do?” I asked softly.

  “Go back,” Michael said, his hand tightening on my shoulder. “Come on.”

  I felt him tugging gently at me, but I stayed rooted to the spot, watching the zombie. I didn’t dare call out to it—that idea had flitted to mind momentarily, but I dismissed it. Even if this was a “civilized” zombie, caution said to treat it as if it weren’t. But we needed to get to the store. It was a two-story building, even—we could wait on the rooftop. What could be safer than a sports store? It was the pot of weapons at the end of the rainbow.

  I wasn’t about to let one zombie stand in the way.

  I pulled my bow tight and sighted down the arrow.

  “Miss Roe, what are you doing?” Michael asked.

  “We need to get to the shop,” I told him as I took aim.

  “Are you mad?”

  His incredulous voice was just loud enough to attract the zombie’s attention. It looked at us, and proved it wasn’t tame by rushing at me, coat cuffs flapping, voice rising in the howl of the hunt.

  “Thanks a lot, Mr. Allister,” I said, teeth gritted, as I let off the shot.

  I got the zombie through its open mouth, a feat I would probably never be able to re-create, no matter how hard I tried. It went down right where I capped it. There was no blood, no gore. It twitched a few times and was still.

  Two for two. I am the zombie-hunting queen! Engrave that on a plaque.

  I fell back into our little group, my heart pounding. Michael whirled me around and shook me. “You little fool! You could have been hurt! We could have found another way to get there!”

  I shouldered him off, even as my heart celebrated the fact that he cared. “It’s taken care of now! Come on!”

  Vespertine shoved my cowering brother forward. “She’s right. Let’s go.”

  We took a few steps clear of the corner.

  That’s when we saw that the undead highwayman hadn’t been alone.

  There were five or six of them, a street off, visible through the alleyway on the side of the shop. They immediately caught sight of us and started bobbing and ducking, like wolves scenting the air. They raised a communal screech of their own, and I wondered if they were attracting more zombies, alerting their brothers and sisters to the presence of prey.

  Seeing as I was that prey, I wasn’t all that eager to find out.

  “Come on!” Michael yelled. He didn’t need to. I was right with him.

  We raced farther away from George Street, into the city’s warren of side avenues and alleyways. I could hear the zombies running behind us, their hellish cries. I tried to think of where we were in relation to the big landmarks, where our next hiding place could be, my brain a tangle of images and sensations—the latter mostly fear. Fear that burned like acid, fear that made my muscles feel like lead.

  We thundered out onto another arterial road, Wesker Street. There, I caught sight of the holographic columns of the New Victorian Museum of Natural History.

  It was only a few blocks away. It was big. It was stone.

  It would work.

  “This way!” I shouted.

  I could hear the others pounding the asphalt with me, but I felt the need to look back. I almost didn’t dare, fearing that any break in my stride would result in teeth in my flesh, but I had to. Turning my head just a bit, I saw Michael a few steps behind me. Vespertine had picked up her gown and bunched it about her waist, revealing her embroidered heeled slippers. They weren’t the best shoes for running in, but even she was far ahead of Isambard. He wasn’t doing well. He’d never been terribly athletic.

  I groaned and stopped where I was, my feet skidding a bit.

  “What are you doing?!” Michael asked as he came upon me.

  “Keep going! The museum! See if you can find a way inside!” I launched myself back the way I’d come, toward the howling pack of zombies. They’d made it out onto Wesker Street and were a few yards behind my little brother, and closing in fast.

  “Pam!” Isambard wailed. He was flagging.

  “Come on!” I yelled, catching his arm and pulling him forward. “Come on, you can do it!”

  “I can’t!”

  “You have to, or they’re going to eat you!” I screamed. That should give anyone incentive.

  I ran like I’ve never run before, dragging Isambard along. He managed to pick up some steam under my urging, but there still lay only a few yards between us and certain death.

  We made it to the museum steps with the zombies still hot on our trail. “Climb!” I bellowed at him, pushing him up the stone stairs. He did, on hands and knees, as fast as he could. The hammer Vespertine’d equipped him with slipped out of his pocket, but he didn’t stop to pick it up. I fought my way up alongside him and surpassed him near the summit.

  At the top I could see Vespertine and Michael. He was trying to beat his way through one of the smaller access doors set into the huge show doors of the museum’s façade.

  “They’re almost here!” Vespertine cried, still clutching her skirts.

  “Just give me … a minute …” Michael huffed as he took
several steps back. He hurled himself at the door again, and it burst inward. He ran out and grabbed Vespertine by the shoulder, pushing her within. He then turned to help me. My entire body felt like it was on fire; I barely felt his hands on me.

  Just as I was clearing the threshold, I heard my brother screaming. I tried to turn around and fight my way back, but Michael shoved me inside.

  “Issy!” I yelled.

  “Stay here and figure out how to barricade the door!” Michael shouted, pulling his hammer out of his belt loop. He turned and left me, rushing back out to the marble steps.

  No.

  I took a step to follow.

  Vespertine pushed the door shut with a massive bang, almost hitting me with it. “Come on, listen to him! No one will be safe unless we figure out how to keep them out!”

  I couldn’t move. What had happened? I could hear my brother and Michael, their voices muffled behind the door, so far away—

  “Move, Roe!”

  I didn’t respond. I had no idea what was going on. Were the boys all right? What if they weren’t?

  Vespertine struck the loosened lock with her hand in frustration. “Blast him, he broke it!”

  For some reason this statement jolted me back to reality.

  I looked around. The foyer of the museum was vast, its sandstone walls engraved with important moments from New Victorian history. There were images of the First Families on the wall above the doors, people clad in denim trousers and T-shirts crossing the Rio Grande. The long wall opposite the entrance was decorated with a mural of the Genesis Flood, with more carvings arranged about it in octagonal panels—the founding of the Byron Institute, the Reed Massacre, scenes of Nicaro life. There were several artifacts on display, vases and suits of armor and large marble statues rescued from cities in the Wastelands, the museum’s finest treasures. In the middle of the hall a stone fountain babbled.

  “Those,” I got out, pointing at one of the statues. Vespertine turned, her back to the door. “We need to try and move them.”

  “There’s no way we can move anything that big,” she argued.

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  Before Vespertine could reply, she was bumped forward by the door. Her scream reverberated in the hall.