Dearly, Departed

by Lia Habel

  The boy didn’t look well, I could see that much. He was green around the gills and his eyes were bloodshot. He obligingly but limply offered his forearm, which was wrapped up in a bloodstained cloth.

  “I couldn’t run … fast enough,” he got out. He was still breathing heavily. “Mr. Allister … saved me.”

  The other young man was staring at Nora as he caught his breath. “Not just him. Miss Roe, as well.”

  “Were you hurt, Mr. Allister?” I asked.

  “No. By sheer luck I managed to avoid them. They pressed in all around, and so quickly, it’s a wonder I did. I beat them off, gave up when the hammer got stuck in one.” Michael finally turned to look at me, and that’s when he started. He asked, tone suspicious, “Excuse me, but … whom am I addressing? I’ve never known our servicemen to hide their faces before.”

  “Yeah, who the hell are you?” asked the blond living girl more bluntly. “Not that we’re not grateful and all.” Nora looked at her in shock, before casting a worried glance my way.

  “Fair enough,” I said, mostly for Nora’s benefit. Time for the big revelation.

  Bracing myself, I pulled off my mask. The newcomers stared at me for a moment, but the gravity of the situation didn’t seem to sink in until Coalhouse removed his, revealing the cavernous right side of his face.

  The blond girl was the first to scream. She pressed herself back against the wall of the hold, producing a shriek that would’ve traumatized an alley cat. Michael rocketed away from me and stood in front of her, watching as Chas and Tom divested themselves of their masks. Renfield finally turned around as well, to see what the commotion was about.

  “They’re monsters!” the blond girl cried.

  Pamela pulled Isambard to her side, eyes full of fear.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Michael’s eyes jumped from zombie to zombie, seemingly growing bigger by the second.

  “I can explain,” I said, showing an open hand. “We’re going to take you someplace safe, all right?”

  “Shut up, Mink! They’re not monsters! Are you the one they rescued?” Nora glared at Mink for a moment before returning her attention to Pam. “I told you, Pamma.” Attempting to appeal to the person who might understand her best, Nora dropped to her knees in front of her friend. “I told you, I was with the good guys. These are the good guys. They got to me before the bad zombies did. It’s a long story.”

  “Stay away from us!” Michael ordered. He was looking at Nora in horror, as if he couldn’t believe what she was saying.

  “No one’s trying to get near you,” Chas snorted. “I don’t do living guys. Call me prejudiced.”

  “They’re … they’re dead, Nora …” Pam’s voice was shaky. “Ayles said they were dead …”

  “Pamela …” Nora reached out to cup her friend’s face. “You have to believe me. Look, I traveled here with them, and they didn’t hurt me. I’ve been with them for days, and they never hurt me. Just think, okay? Am I lying to you?”

  “But—But—”

  Nora held up a hand, and Pam shut her mouth. “Right now you just need to know that they’re not going to harm you. Do you see the red beacon they’re wearing? Think of it, like, um … ‘red light, they’re all right!’ ” Everyone, human and zombie alike, stared at her. She grumbled, “Well, it works.”

  Renfield started his beacon up.

  No one spoke. Allister and Mink remained against the wall, eyeing everyone around them distrustfully. I took a step back from them as a show of goodwill. Their expressions told me that they weren’t buying it.

  “Isn’t there something that can be done?” Pamela asked. “For Issy?”

  I shook my head. “No, unfortunately.” She was Nora’s friend, so I figured I might as well be straight with her. “It takes about six hours. He might wake up fine at the end of it, he might wake up … not. We won’t know till then.”

  Pam didn’t reply immediately. For a moment I was worried that we’d really blown her mind. When she did finally speak up, her voice was filled with sadness. “There are good ones, aren’t there? There’s this family near me, and they’re dead, but … they’re not violent, they’re just really confused, and I didn’t know what to tell them. I mean, how do you phrase something like that?”

  Relieved, I told her, “That’s who we’re out to help. That’s what we’re like. Not all of us go insane.”

  Nora ran her hand over Pam’s head and said, “It’s okay. Just because Isambard was bitten doesn’t mean he’s going to become like the ones that were chasing you.”

  “But he’ll become like them!” Pam said, pointing to us. She hid her face against her brother, and Nora embraced her. Isambard started to weep.

  I couldn’t watch. I felt like I was intruding on yet another moment of private grief. So I joined Coalhouse by the window and took over the steering wheel from him. Below us the city was gone; we were flying over grassy fields dotted with large manor houses. According to the compass, we’d drifted west. I twirled the steering wheel to bring us back south. Renfield throttled our speed down a bit to steady the turn.

  As the engine quieted just that much, I heard the com unit go off. “It’s gotta be Doc Sam. Someone get it,” I said.

  Chas picked it up. “Samedi?” she said.

  “No.” Wolfe’s voice boomed from the com. “Turn on the screen, you stupid bitch, and listen up. Where’s Griswold? I want to see his face.”

  Bram abandoned the steering wheel and took the com unit from Chas.

  “What’s going on?” Pam asked.

  “Shh,” I told her as I stood up.

  “Care to apologize to the lady, scumbag?” Bram asked angrily.

  “Shut up, deadmeat. Turn on the screen.”

  Bram hit a button, and the glow from the screen on the com unit lit his face from beneath, making him look ghoulish. The fact that what he saw made his eyes narrow and his mouth pull back in a growl, revealing his teeth, didn’t help any.

  Chas’s eyes widened. “Oh my God,” she said, taking a step back. She ended up tripping over the crate behind her and sitting on it.

  I ran over. “What is it?”

  Chas put out her arms, stopping me. “He has Sam.” She sounded scared.

  “What’s going on?” Bram demanded. “What the hell are you doing, Wolfe?”

  I stepped between Chas’s legs, climbed onto the crate beside her, and looked over Bram’s shoulder.

  My heart stopped.

  Wolfe was in Samedi’s lab. Sam was seated on a stool in front of him, glowering at us through the camera of the unit they were using to transmit. Off-screen I could hear yelling and banging. Wolfe must have locked everyone else out.

  He was holding a gun to Samedi’s head.

  “Baldwin!” I heard Dr. Chase scream.

  “Samedi! Wolfe, you monster, let him go!” Salvez was with her.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Wolfe said. His hair was rumpled, his eyes intense. “Where are you, Griswold?”

  “On a ship,” Bram said. “Just not the one you wanted. We had to rescue some people.”

  “Had to?” Wolfe laughed brokenly. “Had to? Why? Because that spawn of Dearly’s wanted you to? You think she’ll love you for this? You think she’ll give a damn about you if you do what she wants? You’re dead, Griswold!”

  “We did it because it was the right thing to do,” Bram told him stiffly.

  “Is she with you? She better be with you.”

  I leaned over Bram’s shoulder so Wolfe could see me. “I’m here.”

  His furious expression relaxed. “Good. Good.” He repositioned his finger on the trigger. “Now, Griswold, you bring her back to base or I’ll blow this meatsack’s brains all over this room. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

  “Don’t do it, Bram,” Samedi said. “Dr. Dearly is fine, he’s—”

  Wolfe hit him in the head with the butt of the gun. “Shut up!” Samedi snarled. Wolfe turned his attention off-camera. “Anyone out in the
hall speaks, I shoot him! You got that?”

  “Why do you want her so bad?” Bram asked. As he spoke, he reached back and took my hand. I clung to it with all my strength.

  “Dr. Dearly?” Pam asked. “He’s not dead?”

  “That doesn’t matter!” Wolfe yelled. “Show some loyalty to your own species, damn it! Even I know that this sorry sack of bones is worth more than Dearly’s stupid little louse of a daughter!”

  “Then why do you want her so bad?” Bram repeated, his voice low and filled with barely repressed rage. “We’re heading back to base. We’re on our way. Tell me why you want her.”

  “Because everything has been ruined!” Wolfe bellowed, his face going red. He jabbed the barrel of his gun into Sam’s temple. “Do you know how long I’ve waited to eliminate your kind? Do you know how long I’ve waited to see you all dead—the plague gone?”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. Bram squeezed my fingers to hush me.

  “Shut up! Shut the girl up, Griswold!” Wolfe glared into the camera. “I will not have this taken from me! Do you know how long I’ve had to fight to prove myself? Can you even imagine what that’s like?”

  “Prove yourself?” Bram asked. “You’re not making any sense. Take the gun off Samedi and talk to us, all right?”

  The gun didn’t move, but for some reason Wolfe talked. “I remember that day so well—the day the PM was attacked. My company went with him, to guard him. We’d never seen the dead before. So can you blame us for being curious?”

  Bram and I shared a quick look of mutual confusion.

  “We were supposed to be guarding the front gate,” Wolfe said, voice quieting somewhat. “But we were distracted by a zombie. Girl. Fresh. We just wanted to talk to her, but she was scared of us. She tried to run, but some of the boys were intent on cornering her …” He took a breath. “I knew chasing after her like that was stupid. But before I could call them off, we heard the commotion, everyone yelling and running. The Punks’d gotten in. They’d shot at the PM.”

  “So the Punks attacked the Prime Minister on your watch … and an infected man was the one to save him,” Bram realized aloud.

  This statement set Wolfe off again. “A plague-bearing rat gets lauded … meanwhile, the only reason I ain’t court-martialed is because I’ve seen the living dead and can never return to civilian life!” Wolfe tossed back his head but he didn’t laugh. “Forty-three years old, and I just barely make captain again. Barely.”

  “So what, this is all over a freaking promotion?” Bram asked, appalled.

  “No!” Wolfe yelled again. “This is about justice!” He swept his free arm behind him. “I did hard time after messing up that bad. I was made to fight the zombies on the ground, made to work with the Punks. You wouldn’t believe the things I saw, the things I had to go through. I knew the only way to stop the dead was to wage total war on them, hunt them down mercilessly. I told my superiors that again and again … and you know what? Every single one of them agreed with me. But they kept listening to Dearly and Ayles, trusting them, hoping they’d come up with a vaccine.” He returned his hand to Samedi’s shoulder. “I tried to bite my tongue. I tried to be a good soldier. I even tried to help. After they let me have my stripes again, I maneuvered myself into command of Dearly’s little research project. Hell, I’ll be honest—I figured, ‘Hey, at least I can be in charge when the cure is produced.’ And I paraded Company Z around for years, cleaning up the messes the dead were making, containing the outbreaks so Dearly could spend his time in the lab. And still there was no vaccine! Fool spent all his time patching up the walking dead instead of worrying about the living!”

  “You want the vaccine?” Bram asked, not understanding. “We all want the vaccine!”

  It clicked. “He wants credit. He wants to redeem himself.”

  Wolfe carried on, ignoring us. “Then Dearly died. I knew he couldn’t be trusted after that. I couldn’t wait any longer.” He took a hot breath. “When I was on the ground, we heard about this Punk named Averne. He went AWOL, and soon there were rumors that he was marching around out there with his own little undead army. So, last February, I tracked him down. Bugger’s completely crazy. He bought every lie I fed him, and soon he wanted personal revenge against the man he thought had started the plague.”

  “The Grays,” Bram whispered.

  “Exactly. Back then I was afraid that radio might be too risky. We’d meet somewhere quiet, and plan, while our ‘kids’ ran around in the dark and shot at one another.” Wolfe actually laughed. “It was quite beautiful, the way it worked out. I told him that I wanted to put the fear of God into Dearly, to make him work faster on the damn vaccine. Averne said he wanted to kill Dearly’s entire family, not just him. So, Averne figured, why not kidnap Dearly’s daughter? You know, sometimes the craziest guys are the most brilliant. What could possibly scare Dearly more than the idea that his living girl was in the hands of a madman? So, I made it happen.”

  “But … Dearly got on a plane …”

  “Of course he did.” Wolfe smiled. “One I pulled a few wires out of. I’d worked with the man for years. I knew he had a habit of doing things without thinking them through. He took those bullets for the PM, he would head off to rescue dead men at a moment’s notice … I figured he’d run off into the fray. Which was good … he’d be too distracted at base, worried over the fate of his daughter. I never intended that he’d stick around and moon over her—I wanted him to work. Alone, isolated, afraid. Nora was meant to be my insurance against getting double-crossed, to keep Averne from getting too cocky. I told him I’d hand her over in exchange for the vaccine. Never meant to, of course—too risky. I figured I’d just kill her after he delivered.”

  I sank onto the crate. I’d stood not two feet away from the man, and all the while, he’d been planning—coldly, calmly—to kill me.

  Bram looked like he wanted to eat Wolfe inch by inch. “But … why were Averne’s troops in New London, then? If this was all your idea, your big plot, why didn’t you just send us to get Nora instead of putting the whole city at risk?”

  I couldn’t see the screen from my position. I could only hear Wolfe’s voice, suddenly smug. “You would have questioned me every step of the way, Griswold, unless you thought there was a real threat to deal with. You would have challenged me. And you would have blabbed to Dearly—you never can keep your mouth shut.”

  Bram’s face went slack, and Wolfe started laughing. “Besides, you had the chance to kill them all! I never denied you that! You’re useless, Griswold, to a man! Of course, I figured that if a few nippy dead survived, if our people got a taste of the plague they’re facing, the plague the government’s kept hidden, they’d be even more grateful for the vaccine when I brought it home.” He sighed. “It did get a little out of hand, though.”

  “A little out of hand?!” Bram shouted. “People are dying down there! You did this!”

  “What did you do with my father?” I asked. I felt a tear sliding down my cheek.

  “Never you mind!” Wolfe cocked the gun. Beryl screamed. “I can’t wait any longer. The military’s finally smartened up. They’ve put out the order to exterminate every last zombie, and that means a vaccine is now meaningless!”

  “Exterminate?” I heard Renfield ask.

  Pam hugged Isambard even harder.

  “You’re my only chance now, Nora. You’re the prettiest scapegoat there ever was. I’m going to let the whole world know that your love affair with a dead boy brought this unholy hell upon your people. I’ll tell them that he came for you in the night, like some rotting Romeo. And I won’t hand you over to be torn apart till I’m in the clear.”

  “Over my dead body,” Bram snarled.

  Wolfe started laughing fully, insanely, at that.

  “Nora,” Chas said, reaching out for me. I let her take my other hand.

  I saw nothing. I felt nothing. I stared at the wall as Wolfe continued to laugh, knowing that my only option was to h
and myself over to him. It would be a small price to pay. I didn’t care what happened to me, as long as Bram and Samedi and Chastity and the others were bought some time. They could run away. They could hide. As long as they were alive, I’d be fine. There’d be hope.

  But then another idea entered my head.

  I stumbled over Chas. I fell when I got clear of the boxes, and she helped me up.

  “What’s going on?” Pam asked again, a bit more hysterically.

  I held up a hand to hush her and made my way behind the com unit, where Wolfe couldn’t see me. Bram watched me, his eyes filled with questions.

  Bite me, I mouthed at him.

  “What?” he barked.

  Wolfe went off on a tangent, thinking that Bram was speaking to him. “You know perfectly well ‘what.’ I’ve explained it all. You’re about the stupidest thing on two legs. Haven’t you learned to listen to me yet? Haven’t you learned to just do what you’re told?”

  Bite me, I mouthed again. Bram was staring at me in disbelief, as if I were trying to persuade him that his entire existence as a dead man was simply an incredibly realistic dream.

  “Of course not,” Wolfe went on. “You think you’re intelligent, still. You think you’re human, still. Why do I bother?”

  “Take me hostage,” I said softly to Bram. “Bite me.”

  “Idiot!”

  It seemed like an eternity before Bram started moving.

  I saw him shake the com unit. I heard him yell at Wolfe, “Idiot, am I?” It sounded so fake. He handed the unit to Chas and told her, “Make sure he gets a good look!”

  “Griswold? Griswold, what are you doing?”

  The others watched as Bram stepped closer to me and took me in his arms. He whirled me around so I was facing the com unit. Chas was all eyes, her mouth open, as Bram wrenched my borrowed blouse aside and revealed my shoulder. His left hand, huge and powerful, splayed scandalously across my waist.

  “You want her so bad?” Bram said, looking to the com. “You forget, she’s currently up in the air with a whole hell of a lot of hungry people, Wolfe. I think we have the upper hand here.”