Reckoning in an Undead Age

by A. M. Geever

  The silence that filled the Comm Shack felt leaden. Miranda felt dizzy…light-headed. There was no air, no oxygen, nothing to breathe. If Doug and the others had made it to San Jose, and the Council had attacked the Jesuits and won, someone like Harold—who traded information—should know. Someone would have seen Doug during the fighting. That he’d go unnoticed under those circumstances beggared belief. Doug would defend SCU with his life, whether he was a priest or not.

  But if he wasn’t there, where was he? And what had happened to the others?

  24

  “Why did you choose Doug?”

  The voice was disembodied, coming from everywhere and nowhere. Miranda looked around. There was no one beside her on the bench, nor the other a few feet away. No one stood by the statue of Saint Clare. She stood, gravel crunching under her feet, the darkness complete. She walked to the statue, in case whoever it was stood behind it, but no one did. She was alone in Saint Clare’s garden.

  The scent of rosemary hung heavy in the air. There were no lights anywhere, none at all, not even the moon or stars overhead. She should be able to see a light somewhere, at one of the gates, or in one of the buildings, or the ambient glow of downtown San Jose a mile away, but there was nothing. But she cast a shadow. She could see its clear edges, the elongated silhouette of her body on the gravel path before it climbed up the side of the statue. That’s not right, she thought. She looked again. Several hundred yards away, lights were on at The Hut, the dive bar near the original north border of SCU’s campus.

  “Are you going to tell me or not?”

  Mario sat on the bench—their bench—where they used to sit and talk. The bench where he’d told her that he loved her and changed their lives forever. His face was in shadow, since the lights from The Hut were behind him.

  She said, “Tell you what?”

  “Why you didn’t give my name.”

  Her head ached, unable to parse anything from the jumble that filled it. Then a heavy feeling of dread descended. The acrid scent of fear filled the air, overwhelming the earthy aroma of the rosemary.

  “I don’t know,” she said, her voice small—helpless.

  Mario stood up, his face still in shadow, and approached her. He held his arms close to his body. A mewling sound caught her ear, and at first she thought he was holding a kitten.

  “Do you want it?” he said.

  “Oh my God,” she said, retreating a step. He was holding a baby, its wriggling form wrapped in a blanket. She knew it was dead. It was unnatural, that it should be dead but still wriggling, dead but still mewling as if it were hungry.

  “No? Okay.” The mewling stopped. The baby was gone. It was just Mario. His brown eyes were warm, but filled with a grief so profound it hurt to witness. When he spoke again, his voice was so gentle it felt like a caress. “Wouldn’t you feel better if you just admitted it?”

  “No,” she said, a sob building in her chest. She threw the baby at him…she’d been holding it all this time. Her arms ached and throbbed. How long had she been holding it? Something wet rubbed her face. She flinched away—

  * * *

  Delilah whimpered beside her, sniffing and licking her cheek. The wet thing on her face…it was Delilah. She sat up, looking around her living room. The lights were on. Her jeans felt wet, and she realized she’d spilled her glass when she’d passed out.

  She reached for the bottle of Scotch on the coffee table. As soon as she lifted it, she could tell by its weight it was empty. It had been almost two-thirds full when she’d started. She got up, barking her shin on the table’s sharp corner. Tears filled her eyes, the flare of pain slow to fade as she got another bottle, cracking the seal while she climbed the steps to her bedroom. She slugged it back, straight from the bottle. Alec was right—it was pure savage to drink it like this, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t drinking for enjoyment.

  She flipped the bathroom switch, squinting in the sudden glare. She set the bottle down with a bang on the back of the toilet, hard enough that she winced and expected to see a crack in the porcelain. When she opened the medicine cabinet, they were on the shelf where she’d left them. They gleamed, like the welcoming smile of a friend.

  She didn’t realize she was crying until she shut the cabinet door. The woman looking back at her in the mirror looked like hell…eyes red, face puffy. The razor was cool against her fingers. She sat on the toilet seat. A raw, angry sob shoved up from her chest.

  “I gave them Doug’s name… Oh, Jesus.”

  She pushed up her sleeve, already anticipating how it would feel. The bite of the blade, the warmth of the blood. The maelstrom inside her head would subside. She’d be able to quit crying, quit dreaming, quit hating herself, for a little while. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, lay the back of her arm on her knee, exposing the scarred inner side of her arm. She could feel it scratching under her skin for release, urging her to hurry, hurry, hurry.

  “And then what?”

  She didn’t realize she’d spoken at first. Her voice sounded rough and tremulous, not like her own, but the question lingered in the still air. After she cut and bled, after she let the misery out in a burst so strong it felt like coming for the first time—then what? Do it again, when getting blind drunk wasn’t enough? Do it again, until she ran out of razors and had to use a knife? Do it again, until she got so tired of feeling like this that she cut deep enough to never need to cut herself again?

  She stared at the razor, gleaming up at her. Winking, like a star, like a flame… Like the teeth of a shark.

  “I can’t keep doing this,” she whispered.

  There was no one to hear, no reason to say it out loud, but she did. When she set the razor on the vanity, the metal clicking against the porcelain, she whimpered, sounding like she felt—adrift and unmoored.

  She picked up the Scotch, meandering through the bedroom and down the stairs to the kitchen. She stood in the center of the room. Delilah whimpered in the hallway. She jumped at the knock on the front door, watching Delilah, compact and solid, barking as she ran to the door. When the door swung open, Rocco filled the doorway, illuminated from behind by the overhead porch light, just like Mario had been in her dream.

  “Tucci?”

  “Go away,” she said.

  “Jesus,” he said. Ignoring her, he came inside. When he reached her, he grimaced. He took the bottle from her and said, “How fucked up are you?”

  “Just…go away.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  She backed up until she bumped against the sink, then slid to the floor. “Why did you make me choose?”

  Rocco shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it over a chair. Then he sat down beside her, his hands resting on his bent knees.

  “Why does it matter?”

  “I screwed up,” she said, beginning to weep. She was tired of holding it in, tired of its weight. “I screwed everything up. I pushed him away, and now he’s gone.” She took a shuddering breath. “I can never fix it. You made me choose, and I…”

  The last tissue-thin shred of resistance dissolved. She’d fought it so hard. Raged and stoked her anger so diligently, and now it was gone, leaving nothing but ruin in its wake. She’d chosen Doug, not Mario, and she couldn’t pretend that she didn’t know why.

  “I said so many terrible things to him, Rocco,” her admission low in her throat, wanting to stay there. “Things you can’t come back from.”

  “You mean Mario.”

  Her nod was punctuated by a fresh burst of tears.

  “Tucci,” Rocco said. “Mario loves you. I know he does. What could you have possibly said to change that?”

  A fresh wave of misery washed over her, amplified because she was drunk. If she told Rocco what she’d said, and why she’d said it… If she told him what she’d done, he would hate her, too. She knew it; she knew he would. How could he not?

  “Miranda.”

  She looked at Rocco, her attention thoroughly snared
, because he never called her Miranda. His dark-brown eyes were filled with concern, overflowed with a well of compassion so deep that he reminded her of Father Walter. He pushed her hair out of her face, more gently than she would have thought possible for a man so big and gruff.

  “You have to trust somebody, Miranda, because whatever’s going on with you, it’s eating you up inside. I can see it. River can see it. Phineas can see it. Anyone who knows you can see it… Alec can too. Whatever it was, whatever you did or said, telling me is not going kill you. And it’s not going to change my opinion of you. Trust me on this.”

  Stay or go? She stood on a threshold, knowing she had to choose. Afraid to move forward, but not wanting to stay where she was. Not wanting to keep doing this.

  “I, I,” she said haltingly. “We— he asked me what I was thinking, when I went with Doug that night. When Jeremiah bit me. And when I said there was no way I could know what might happen, he said that was the point.”

  She stopped, taking a gasping breath. She had started; there was no going back. She couldn’t stop now, and she wanted to. Even though Rocco had said whatever she told him wouldn’t change his opinion of her, it would, and she’d lose him, too.

  “I accused him of not being there, of leaving me. Of leaving us.” Without realizing it, her hand slipped down to rest below her belly button. And he—” Her voice dropped to a whisper, so low that Rocco had to lean in to hear her. “He said if anyone left the baby behind, it was me.”

  She could barely see, her tears fell so fast and thick. She leaned over her knees, unable to speak through the garrote of pain twisting around her throat.

  Rocco’s hand rubbed her back up and down, slow and steady. “He shouldn’t have said that, Miranda. It wasn’t fa—”

  “And I said…”

  She moaned, her stomach roiling so hard she knew she was going to throw up. She looked up at Rocco, her breath coming in shallow gasps.

  “I said what did he care? That he had three kids, he’d just abandoned ours faster.”

  “Aw, Miranda,” Rocco said softly, his voice overflowing with gentleness. “You didn’t mean that.”

  She put her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands, knowing she couldn’t go on. Knowing it would be so much easier to just lie down and die. Her stomach hurt from sobbing, her heart pulverized, as if Rocco had jumped up and down on it instead of sitting beside her, being kind.

  “I didn’t think. Doug even said something and I blew him off. I was still thinking I’d have an abortion… It didn’t seem important. Then everything changed but it was too late. I just didn’t know it.” She wiped at her tear-stained face. “It’s my fault that the baby died. It’s all my fault. We both knew it, and I couldn’t stand that he knew.”

  Rocco pulled her to him, rocking her while she sobbed into his chest, while she wailed like a forlorn child, while her body convulsed with the grief and shame of having made the wrong decision and blamed the wrong person. The storm of emotions rocked and battered and consumed, shook her in its powerful jaws. Eventually, she couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t want to raise her head. Didn’t want to see the look on Rocco’s face. She felt him twist around and saw his arm reach up to the sink above them from the corner of her eye.

  “Here,” he said, pushing a dish towel at her.

  She took it, still crying, and blew her nose. Her sinuses felt filled with cement. She wrung the dish towel in her hands, tears leaking from her eyes like they had when she’d been pregnant and her hormones had run amok. She didn’t want to hear what she expected him to say, to hear him agree with her, but she wanted to get it over with. Then she’d know where she stood.

  “Do you—”

  “Shh,” Rocco said.

  When she opened her mouth again, he said, “Just sit with this, okay? That was a lot to get off your chest.”

  Miranda slumped, defeated. Rocco’s arm across her shoulders shifted, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, it bent at the elbow, and very lightly he stroked the top of her head. It didn’t escape her that he was petting her like a dog, but it felt comforting. Right now, she needed comfort, more than anything else in the world. They sat that way, in silence, letting everything settle while Rocco stroked her hair. Delilah had sidled up on her other side and lay her head and paws on one of Miranda’s feet.

  “Listen to me, Miranda,” Rocco said softly after some time had passed. “I want you to listen to me very carefully, okay? Because what I’m going to tell you is real important.”

  She nodded.

  “What happened to your baby wasn’t your fault.”

  Miranda shook her head and opened her mouth, but Rocco pointed his finger at her.

  “Nuh-uh,” he said gently. “It’s my turn to talk.”

  When she obeyed, he continued.

  “You really fucked up,” he said, but not unkindly. “You went outside that night because it’s what you do. You didn’t stop to think about how things might have changed for you, but that doesn’t make what happened after your fault.”

  “But Doug—”

  “Shh,” Rocco said, the sound sharp, but the look in his eyes, the slight upward quirk at the corners of his mouth, betraying only compassion. “My turn, not yours.”

  When she nodded, chastened, he continued. “You’re like me. When bad things happen, you act. Most people aren’t like that. Most people…fear gets the better of them, even if they want to do the right thing. But they can’t, they don’t, not when it matters.”

  Miranda took a shaky breath.

  “What matters now, one of the things, anyway, is what you do going forward. Because you got a hard lesson, Miranda. Real hard. Even though your instinct is to act, you gotta think, too. You gotta use that brain that God gave you, that I know is in there,” he said, tapping her head lightly with a finger. “Take just a second to ask yourself, ‘Should I be doing this?’”

  “You didn’t ask yourself that question,” he said. “You made the mistake of not thinking it through. That’s all. And yeah, you lost the baby because of that mistake, but that’s all it was. That’s all you did. The only thing you did was make a mistake. Jeremiah’s the one who tried to escape. Jeremiah’s the one who manipulated Courtney, who was just a dumb kid, and she died because of it. Jeremiah is the one who bit you. Maybe he didn’t know he could get you sick and turn people into zombies. Maybe he did, and he was just saving it for a rainy day.”

  Rocco shrugged. “He’s the reason you got sick, Miranda. He’s the reason you went out there in the first place. He’s the reason your baby’s heart and legs and arms were deformed, and why he was going to die no matter what you did next. All of that is on him, not you.”

  Miranda whimpered, the ultrasound image of Tadpole’s malformed limbs emblazoned in her brain, flashing at her like neon. But also the swell of his cheek, and the curve of his perfect little head.

  “Can I talk now?” she asked miserably.

  “Yeah,” Rocco said, giving her shoulders a squeeze.

  “He needed me so much, but it felt like he was pulling me under while he drowned. I could see how much he needed me but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t…be kind, and he was so kind to me. Even though he knew it was my fault, he was kind, and it pissed me off so much. I was so angry that he wasn’t angry with me. I felt like I was drowning in it, and if I didn’t let it out, it was going to suck me under, too. I felt so awful, and alone, and he didn’t seem to blame me, no matter what I did or what I said. So I blamed him for all of it. And now…”

  Rocco squeezed her shoulders. “You don’t know what Mario knew or what he thought unless you asked him, which you didn’t. What he said during an argument doesn’t count. You weren’t in your right mind, Miranda. People grieve in different ways, at different paces. Even without all the extra stuff you had going on, they aren’t always compatible.” He paused, then said, “My twin sister died when we were fifteen.”

  Miranda looked at him, horrified. To lose a sibling was bad enough, but to los
e your twin had to be so much worse. He’d never said anything about it.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too. Rosie was my best friend. After she died, it all fell apart. My parents split up. My mom got remarried too fast and guess what? It didn’t work out. My dad had a falling out with his sisters over the goddamned headstone. It was all so stupid.” He laughed without mirth, sounding incredulous, the look on his face like that of a child adrift and alone. “My family turned into a war zone. I went to live with my nana eventually, after my folks split up, ’cause I just couldn’t take being in that house.”

  He sighed. “Years later, when I was in grad school, I was talking about it with a professor of mine. He told me something that helped a lot. He said, ‘Your family was a wounded animal after your sister died, but none of you knew it. A wounded animal doesn’t act rationally; it just tries to protect itself. No wonder your family imploded.’”

  “It all made sense to me after that,” Rocco said, his voice soft. “Maybe if we’d all been kinder to each other we might have made it through, but we were all wounded animals trying to survive. Your little family was too.”

  “Because of me.”

  “No,” he countered. “Because of Jeremiah. Your mistake kicked it off, but the rest isn’t on you. It’s not.”

  She wanted to believe him so much it ached, but how could he be right? And even if he was, what she’d said and done to Mario was unforgivable.

  “I could see how hard it was for you to open up, Miranda. To let yourself want your baby. It would have been easier to get rid of it, and probably smarter, too, with the world we live in. But you took a chance on loving him, on opening yourself up to that, even though it scared the shit out of you. I was real proud of you.”

  She started weeping again. She hadn’t realized that somehow, Rocco knew. He tousled her hair and pulled her close.