by Lia Habel
Four soldiers, wearing black masks, marched Wolfe through the crowd. He was stripped of his army regalia, clad in a plain pair of trousers and a white shirt. His beard and hair were unkempt, and it looked like a wildfire was raging around his face. He was dead now. He’d not had recourse to regular postmortem medical treatment, and his flesh was rotting on his bones. When he passed by the very front of the crowd, several bonneted women cried out at the sight of him. I couldn’t see him well from where I was standing, but it must have been bad.
He was led to the scaffold and forced to back up against the glass. His hands and feet were already chained, and those chains were locked to the floor of the gallows. The four soldiers then took their places in front of him, each equipped with a rifle.
I heard another statement from the announcer, and knew that he was asking Wolfe if he had any last words.
“No,” Wolfe said, his voice thundering over the crowd.
Bram’s fingers gripped into my shoulder at the sound of it. I held my breath so I couldn’t say anything. Everything that man had done, and he couldn’t even be bothered to make a last statement? Apologize? Indulge in another big villainous speech?
“Just get it over with,” I heard Samedi say. Beryl shushed him.
The executioners raised their guns and took aim. The protestors grew louder. “Mercy!” one dead woman shouted. “Mercy! He’s suffered enough!”
The soldiers fired. Wolfe’s body crumpled to the ground.
It was over.
The bonneted women began to wail, huddling together before the scaffold. Their cries mingled with the shouts of the zombie protestors. Through the sudden accumulation of sound I could make out someone screaming, “Daddy! Daddy!”
I realized, with a start, that the women in front were Wolfe’s wife and daughters, the ones he’d spoken of in his office.
Pity for them welled up inside me, nearly choking me. That single, tearful word told me they were in the very position I now counted as my greatest fear, the nightmare that, if ever realized in the flesh, would utterly undo me—had almost undone me once before.
They were living women forced to watch the dead man they still loved die.
I felt sick. “It’s done,” I whispered to Bram. “I want to leave. Now.”
Before he could say anything, gunshots rang out from the direction of the protesting crowd.
Bram pulled me to his body, sheltering me; screams went up around us. “We have to get out of here!” Charles yelled. “The protestors are fighting!”
Behind the police lines the living and the dead were facing off, both sides brandishing signs, one side brandishing teeth. Reporters were attempting to escape, contributing to the bottlenecks swiftly forming at the gates of the park. I’d never known any of the protests to turn into a riot, but here it was, happening before my eyes.
“Have we got everyone?” Bram shouted over my head. “Come on, head for the western gate!”
I let myself be led along, so I didn’t get to see much of the fight. I saw a living man beating a zombie with his sign, which read, NO SPECIAL RIGHTS FOR THE ROTTEN! I saw a New Victorian soldier firing into the air, attempting to get everyone to disperse. I prayed that was the original source of the gunfire.
We were parked on a nearby street, which was choked with bodies as protestors and bystanders ran away from the clash. By the time we got there, I’d recovered, and, alongside Bram, I helped everyone into the carriages. I saw Dad hobbling toward one of them, Salvez and Evola with him. I knew they’d be heading for the hospital ships, in case they were needed.
“Chas, squeeze into the front seat with me,” I said, grabbing her arm. She nodded, her face creased with worry.
“What was that?” Coalhouse demanded from the backseat.
“Anger,” Bram said as he got behind the steering wheel. He flashed me a frightened glance before starting up the carriage. “Misguided anger.”
“Wolfe was up for the death penalty not because of what he is,” I argued. My voice was shaking. “It was what he did. But they don’t see that, and … Oh, God. His family was there. I didn’t even think that his family would be there.”
“It’s all right.” Bram sounded as if he was attempting to convince himself. “It’s all right. We were overdue for something like this, really. Let’s just get home.”
I knew what he was thinking. I knew what he was scared of. It was the same thing I was scared of.
A backlash against the dead.
Maybe Wolfe had gotten his way after all.
I didn’t sleep that night.
I cuddled against my pillow, my fingers stroking the cool cotton, as Beryl snored beside me. I couldn’t get the day’s events out of my mind, or rid myself of the gnawing anxiety, so potent that it seemed I was wishing the very thing I dreaded into existence, that the riot would lead to further anti-zombie sentiment. The idea of the living deciding to take out the dead once and for all made my entire body cramp with fear.
I understood now what Bram had been trying to tell me on the deck of the ship. We would never be normal. We would always live with this. It would never change.
It wasn’t over yet.
We’d watched the riot on the news. It had been short-lived. The protestors were separated, the guilty parties arrested in record time. Only a few people had been bitten. The zombies hadn’t attacked, at least not en masse. Still, I knew some would view it as if they had.
I wondered how it would come. A knock on the door at midnight? A letter telling Bram to show up somewhere and submit to a bullet? I shivered.
My door opened, slowly. Matilda was outside, holding a candle. “Nora?” she said quietly.
I sat up. “Matilda?” Beryl stirred. “What is it?”
“Your father wants you—he wants everyone living. Downstairs, in the kitchen.” She sounded scared.
At this announcement, Beryl got up and put on her dressing gown. When she saw that I was still sitting in bed, motionless, I think she understood how frightened I was. I was sure this was it.
“It’s all right, Miss Dearly. Here, put on your robe … there’s a good girl. Come on, let’s go see what your father wants.” Her voice was artificially cheerful.
I obeyed her, and we journeyed to the kitchen in silence. There, we found my father, Salvez, and Evola waiting. My father looked mournfully at me, before turning to whisper something to Elpinoy as he staggered into the kitchen, sleep-drunk. Whatever he said made the man suddenly alert.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nora—”
“What is it?” Without pausing another beat, I started pleading. “Please, please don’t tell me they’re attacking zombies, that they’re punishing them for the riot. Because if they are, I have to take Bram somewhere and hide. Tonight! I can’t live without him, I can’t—”
“No. No, it’s not the zombies.” My father came to me and wrapped me in his arms. He was trembling. “It’s not the zombies. It’s the living.”
“What do you mean?”
My father tightened his hold on me. “I’m so sorry, Nora. I’m so sorry.”
I stiffened. “What do you mean, you’re sorry? What are you sorry for?”
Evola took over. He looked exhausted. “Three people were bitten during the riot.” He leaned against the sink and removed his monocle shakily. “Two of the bitten reanimated.”
I felt my entire body go cold. “Were they vaccinated?”
My father started crying. He was incapable of making tears, and still he cried.
“We don’t know if it’s the vaccine yet, Victor. Calm down.” Salvez came near and tried to gently pull my father off me. “Come, sit down.”
“The prion might be mutating,” Elpinoy whispered. “Prions themselves can evolve, even though they’re not alive. It works so fast … perhaps it’s fast in this regard, too.”
“It’s all conjecture at this point.”
“It wants to live.” Elpinoy tugged at his tight pajama top and laughed somewha
t maniacally. “It’s not even alive, and it wants to live. It wants to survive.”
I bucked my father’s arms off and stared at him in horror. He fell against Salvez and let the man guide him to a chair. “But then … we’re not safe. The living. And if no one feels safe, they’ll take it out on the dead!”
“I’m sorry,” my father said again. He sounded like a two-year-old gazing across a broken toyland—like he had built his own empire and destroyed it, and could not now fathom why he’d done so. “I’m sorry for giving everyone false hope. I’m sorry for letting all of this go on so long. It should have been me they shot today, it should have been me.”
“Don’t say that!” I’d never heard Salvez sound angry before. “We’ll get to work in the morning. We’ll figure out what’s behind the apparent failures. We don’t know anything yet, so everyone just calm down.”
I bolted from the kitchen. I flew up the stairs to the guest room, where Bram was staying with the other boys. I knew the way, even in the dark. My father’s voice followed me, rising in volume, a dark siren.
I found Bram on his cot, slumbering peacefully. He didn’t breathe, he didn’t move. His body was laid out for my viewing, as legitimately dead as any body I’d ever seen on display at a funeral. And every funeral, no matter how hard one might wish otherwise, eventually came to an end. There was no way I could stop him from slipping through my fingers now. Absolutely no way.
But Bram wasn’t dead. He was alive in ways, before I met him, I’d have been incapable of describing. My heart, my very body, cried out for him.
I couldn’t let him go. Not yet.
Like him—with him—I had to keep going.
For my mother, who taught me early on that
real ladies can give orders, real gentlemen can
take them, and real zombies don’t eat brains.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is pretty much the accomplishment of my life. I never expected that a story that started as a joke would get me this far.
First of all, I would like to thank my mother, who has always believed in me—even when I’ve refused to believe in myself. I’d also like to thank my father for always helping me out, and raising me to be a proper carnivore.
Thank you to my best friend, Josh, for all of his support. Shout-outs to Desmond and Iason, for always being there for me. You know I mean every word I sing.
Enormous thanks go out to my fantastic agent, Christopher Lotts, who has the patience of a saint. I am willing to forgive him for the bad things he’s said about my Mountain Dew habit, as he’s proven himself invaluable and dedicated in every other way. I sincerely cannot thank him enough for all of his help.
Likewise, thank you to my American editor, Christopher Schluep, whose belief in me has been completely humbling and overwhelming. I still occasionally have to remind myself, “He’s not lying to you. He really thinks you’re good.” Same to my British editor, Lauren Buckland.
A big thank-you to all of the professors who inspired me and helped me to hone my craft through the years—David Schmid, James Holstun, and Howard Wolf foremost amongst them. And a shout-out to the managers of my local movie theater is due—Steve and Jim, you rock. Seriously. Thanks for all the free “research” passes.
And finally, thanks are due to everyone who ever made me love zombies or seriously think about the lessons that the dead and the weird have to teach us—Halperin, Romero, Raimi, Fulci, Lynch, Hill, even Russo and O’Bannon. When it seemed like everyone else in the world was addicted to the concept of beauty frozen in time, these people taught me about the greater beauty to be found in tragic decay. (<3 you, Bub.)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LIA HABEL is in her twenties and lives in western New York State. She is fascinated by zombie movies and Victoriana, interests that eventually led her to write Dearly, Departed. When she first found an agent, she was literally opening envelopes for a living. By the time the auction for Dearly, Departed was held, she was considering food stamps. Now that she has a book contract, she is busy working on the follow-up to Dearly, Departed, entitled Dearly, Beloved. Lia Habel can be found on Facebook and Twitter, and she has a blog at liahabel.com.
