Dearly, Departed

by Lia Habel

  “No one came out. They must’ve known I was still there. At one point, though, my little Emily ran out with that teddy bear, her bear, and put it on the porch. Anyway, Mom yanked her back in and screamed at her not to go anywhere near the door, to leave it alone. After dark I crawled up to the porch and got it.

  “I knew … it was her goodbye gift. And so … I left.”

  I lifted my eyes from the photo. Nora was looking at me, through me, her eyes intensely bright. I hadn’t meant to make her feel even worse. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, no … it’s not your fault,” she whispered. “I’m the one who’s sorry.”

  I snapped my diary shut and stood up. “That’s enough about me for tonight.” I laughed, a bit darkly. “It’ll give you nightmares. I’ll come for you about eight tomorrow, Nora.”

  She nodded wordlessly. When I got to the door and glanced back, she was still sitting there.

  “Don’t forget to wind the clock,” I reminded her as I shut the door.

  Henry came after nightfall, as I requested.

  Averne was with him.

  Averne shoved Henry violently into the hut. I rose quickly from my bed and thankfully was able to catch his arm in time to help him maintain his balance.

  “I want you to know,” my captor said, “that I’m watching you. No tricks.”

  “None,” I lied, looking squarely at him. “But surely you must see the value in leaving a fresh man to guard and assist me.”

  “I do. But I also know that fresh men are tricky.” He glared at Henry, who shrank away from him. “I expect a report. An honest report. You have plenty of parts that can be harmlessly disconnected now—while you watch.”

  “O-Of course.”

  With that, Averne turned and tramped off. We both remained silent, listening to his footsteps retreat.

  Henry turned to me. “I would n-never do that to you.”

  “I’d hoped so,” I said, as I sat on my bed. Maneuvering around the crates with my crutch was proving difficult. “You’re just in time.”

  I reached beneath the mattress and pulled out a small Baggie. I’d long ago started a habit of carrying a week’s supply of the medication designed to prolong our brain tissue at all times, as my brain was my most treasured possession. I’d have to split the shots with my new friend now, but they’d help.

  “What’s that?”

  “Medicine, Mr. Macumba. I haven’t time to tell you everything right now, although I know you’re dying for an explanation. Sorry, terrible joke, there.” I unwrapped a preloaded syringe, tapped it, balanced it. I pulled my cuff back to access my valve and gave myself half. Henry watched, transfixed.

  “Once we get you back to base, I’ll install one of these in you,” I told him. I indicated that he should sit down on the bed and give me his arm, and he did so. “Until then, we’ll try to get a bit into your body. Might not help, but it can’t hurt.”

  “All right.”

  I injected him. I was always amused when the recently revitalized winced at a shot. True, their nerves were generally more sensitive than those of the older stiffs, but most of it was just learned behavior.

  “Hold your arm up,” I said, pushing on it. Henry did so.

  “You’re so c-comfortable with all this,” he remarked. I noticed that his speech had greatly improved. The dog growled and circled at the length of his chain.

  I nodded. “It’s my life now.”

  “Who is that m-man? Averne?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.” I glanced to the boxes. “I know nothing about him.”

  “He’s crazy,” Henry said, rubbing his other hand over the elbow of his uplifted arm. “You sh-should hear him in the long building, rant … ranting.” He stood. “Are you going to m-make the vaccine?”

  “I would sooner carve my own guts out,” I said as I struggled to my feet. I propped my crutch against a crate and reached into it, drawing out a tissue-wrapped glass vial. “Besides, as you so eloquently put it, he’s crazy. I can’t perform genetic engineering with a bunch of chemistry supplies. Even if I could, without computer models to check my work, the vaccine would likely kill everyone we’d inject it into.”

  Henry uttered a foul word then, and I couldn’t help but smile. “Oh, that you don’t stutter on.”

  He gestured impatiently. “Well, what are you going to d-do, then?”

  “Something that chemistry supplies are very good for.” When he gave me an odd look, I unwrapped a Bunsen burner and twirled it in the light. “Making bombs.”

  Henry proved to be a good assistant, so long as I remembered to fully describe what I wanted him to do. As we worked together into the night, he told me of his family in Shelley Falls—all gone now—with the attitude of a man who had always been very aware of the treasures he possessed, but had not yet realized what he had lost.

  I remembered that feeling all too well.

  By the time dawn was starting to stain the sky pink, we had several sealed vials of nitro ranged in a row. I looked upon them fondly.

  “Mr. Macumba,” I said, “unchain the dog, just in case.”

  By now the dog had grown used to us, and it sniffed at Henry cautiously when he approached. Henry loosened the chain from the metal tie thrust into the ground, rather than put his fingers too near the dog’s maw. The dog didn’t run away, but sat down and waited expectantly. It seemed unsure whether it was supposed to take advantage of its sudden freedom.

  “The name of the game is not escape,” I told Henry as I pulled on my torn jacket. “The goal is to create a distraction, and get to the broadcasting equipment in the main shelter. If we can get a signal to my base, we can wait it out here.”

  “Wh-what about the … the vehicles?”

  This caught me off guard. “I’m sorry, the what?”

  “You ha-haven’t seen all of the base?”

  I shook my head.

  Henry offered me his arm to lean upon and nodded at the door. I obliged him. He guided me outside, into the cool morning air. Torches had been lit around the perimeter of the fort, and bonfires were blazing within it. Hopping along on one leg was tiring, even with his help, but thankfully he only took me past a few huts before drawing to a stop and pointing into the distance.

  “Can you … see?”

  I looked. It was hard to see, at first, for my eyes were still adjusting, and the relative darkness, in spite of the fires, seemed unrelenting. Eventually my brain managed to piece together what I was looking at, calling shapes out of the shadows.

  Averne’s little army had about twenty rusted tanks at its disposal. They were of a variety of makes and models, some of them refurbished with parts from old trains and plows and other heavy machinery. I was amazed.

  I was not, however, terribly hopeful.

  “The only problem with that is if we take one, there are plenty left to chase us with. And they will chase us. There’s no way we can just sneak one of those out.” I steadied myself. “I still think we should try for the radio first. But if we need to … you are right. We can run for these.”

  “Wh-what about the others?” he asked shakily as I urged him to turn around and head back to our hut.

  “If you have to kill anyone, kill Averne. As far as I’ve seen, he has no living men left—only the dead.” Once we reentered the hut, I sat down heavily on the bed. “And unless they have their wits about them, the dead are not the most loyal of soldiers. They’ll be too busy with the fire anyway.”

  Henry fixed his eyes on the vials, which lay flat upon one of the crates on a piece of toweling—I had been unable to find a stand amidst the equipment. I took two of the vials and wrapped them in cotton wool, tucking them into my jacket’s interior pocket. I took the syringes from beneath the bed and put them into the pocket on the opposite side.

  “I’ve n-never killed anyone b-before,” Henry breathed. Desperation had entered his voice.

  Oh, God, not now.

  “I just … l-let me … th-think it out. I … I n-ne
ver …” He moved slowly toward the crate, seeking support.

  I reached out and tried to catch his elbow. “Henry, calm yourself.”

  He wrenched his arm away from me, his eyes shooting downward to mine. His face blossomed into an expression of pure horror as he saw me for what I was and realized fully what he had become.

  In my research, I have found that beyond mere acceptance of the fact that one has died (“I’m dead? This would explain why my heart isn’t beating. This makes sense.”), there is a second crisis that must be overcome. This moment surrounds you, like a shattering crystal, with a thousand questions and sensations. You realize you can no longer truly feel your body. You realize that your own flesh is dead, decaying, something you should regard as diseased and disgusting. The hunger truly strikes you then, and the fear of that hunger. Your life, to be trite, flashes before your eyes.

  Henry couldn’t have picked a worse time to have his existential meltdown.

  “Henry, listen to me.”

  “No! No, I’m fine!” He grasped at nothing, his hands flopping about in the air, before, to my horror, he grabbed the nitro. I could hear the vials tinkling against one another in his trembling grip. “I’m fine, I just need a moment to th-think about this …”

  “Henry … no. Henry, no. Put them back down.”

  He obeyed me, but not in the manner I’d intended. He decided, for whatever reason, to move the nitro to the edge of the bed. I hurriedly stood up and struggled away. Even as he rattled the vials together in his sudden fit, he looked like he was trying to keep himself together.

  I knew that wasn’t a good sign.

  “I’ll put these … put these here. Away. So I can sit down. I just need to think, to think …”

  I turned around just in time to see one little vial starting to roll away from the pack.

  Rather than try to catch it, I caught Henry’s collar and yanked him toward me.

  The explosion was massive. The dog went tumbling out the door with a yelp and tore off running, chain dragging along the salt. Henry and I were both thrown to the ground; the contents of the crates became projectiles. Only by pulling Henry to myself and scrambling beneath the fallen debris was I able to save us from serious injury.

  Henry was screaming, clawing, acting out of terror and instinct and pain. I patted my chest, relieved to find that the vials I had hidden there were still intact. I then turned my attention to the man writhing against me.

  “Sara! Saraaaa!”

  “It’s all right. Henry, calm down. It’s all right. You’re here, you’re here—look at me, now, and be strong. You must get through this. You must!” If we were to have any hope of trying again, he had to. But my heart was already sinking fast. “Come on. Pull yourself together. We have to move!”

  Before we could do that, however, our coverings were pulled back and the angry light of the fires raging around us suddenly intruded. I felt a boot against my head, and then nothing at all.

  Just a few hours after the Prime Minister’s address, a new phrase started scrolling by on the news tickers and booming from the mouths of the talking heads: “biological warfare.”

  There was still no video of the Elysian Fields—only the excited faces of the reporters as they described how the complex was going into complete lockdown, with no one permitted in or out. Eventually, footage appeared, of red-coated soldiers entering the Fields and securing the ruined gates. Displaced residents formed massive lines outside City Hall, begging for aid and information. They were the lucky ones. Horrific tales circulated about those trapped inside, condemned by virtue of where they were standing at the time the order went out and the soldiers marched in.

  Most people were outraged over this turn of events, but it didn’t matter. Those in power had their plan, and they were sticking to it. General Giles Patmore himself went on the air that evening to explain that during the attack, the Punks had apparently released some sort of virus or bacterium that was making people terribly ill—killing them. The goal was to keep the disease, whatever it was, from spreading aboveground. He said they were going to implement quarantine and keep troops down there until everyone who would die had.

  The city was electric. People thronged the streets, pubs, and tea parlors to gossip, and as the gossip trickled down to the younger set, Isambard and his pay-as-you-go phone faithfully reported on what was being said. Some of the stories making the rounds were pretty wild—especially those told by refugees from the EF. Someone, somewhere, had started a rumor that the infected were attacking people and eating their flesh. Mother wouldn’t let him finish reading that series of texts aloud, thank goodness.

  My father, who got his gossip through the bakery, thought that stories like this were caused by mass hysteria—meaning everyone was going a wee bit crazy, all at the same time. That might explain it. But something told me to keep my ears open.

  The next morning, I was allowed to leave the house to pick up our daily groceries, as Isambard claimed that he had a sour stomach. I figured he’d stayed up half the night texting under the covers, but I didn’t argue—I was desperate to get some fresh air.

  My mother made me wear her long black mantilla, a veil of lace and netting, to keep up appearances. The sky was gray, and I thought I smelled snow on the air. Snow was very rare in New London, and when it did appear, it made everyone nervous.

  The streets were thick with refugees. Some were looking for work, others for a place to stay. Some just walked, having no idea where else to go. Their eyes were haunted, to a man. It was spooky, making my way through a crowd full of ghost-shackled people who barely noticed me.

  I purchased what I’d been sent to get from the little open-air market about a block from our house. The stall workers eyed the refugees with distrust. I wondered how overblown the rumors were becoming, how much damage they might be doing.

  As I tucked the last paper-wrapped parcel into my basket, Ebenezer Coughlin set up shop on the corner. Mr. Coughlin was a busker, and a very talented one. He played a flat instrument with strings crisscrossed down the length of it, a Mink creation. Vespertine might be a loathesome creature, but her family was known for the stringed instruments they created, and it was impossible to deny the quality of their sound.

  He drew the bow in a serpentine pattern over the strings, stirring the notes together into one sweet chord. I stopped to curtsy on my way past. “Good morning, Mr. Coughlin.”

  He let the bow lie on the instrument and tipped his hat to me. He only had one arm. “G’morning, Miss Roe.”

  I glanced around. Refugees were resting under the awnings of the market stalls that had not yet opened. “Going to play today?”

  He shrugged, and set his hat down on the ground. “Seems like the best thing to do. World needs a little more music than usual today, by my reckoning. Might help calm people down.”

  I couldn’t help but smile a little. “Wise of you, sir.”

  “Eh, I didn’t get this gray hair for nothing.” With that, he took his seat and began to play. I put the last of the money I’d been given for groceries into his upturned hat and continued home.

  Isambard had left for school by the time I got back. Mom accepted the basket from me and put it aside, then took me by the arm. The mantilla slipped off my left shoulder.

  “Let’s get you fixed up.”

  “Fixed up?”

  “Yes, for young Mr. Allister’s visit.”

  A thousand words bounced about in my brain. I let only one of them out. “Oh.”

  Twenty minutes later I was standing in my room, in the lavender dress again, as my mother adjusted the fall of the fabric and primped my hair and stroked my eyebrows into place. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on how nice it felt to be touched by my mother’s familiar hands. But I couldn’t shut my mind off.

  Quietly, I asked, “Are you excited that he asked to come over?”

  I opened my eyes. Mom had paused, her hands in my hair. Her expression was unreadable. “Why do you ask that?” />
  “Because … I want to know what’s expected of me. You told me before that I should concentrate on things like this, but it’s all so confusing.”

  She sighed and let go of me. She walked over to the vanity and picked up a blue ribbon. “We truly thought about whether we ought to send you to that school.”

  I was confused. “St. Cyprian’s? Why on earth wouldn’t you?”

  “Because, Pamela, it’s resulted in this. You’re too low-class by birth to ascend far, and now too well-educated to be happy here.”

  “Mother, I’m happy here. I love all of you.”

  She shook her head and moved before me, sliding the ribbon around my neck. “Trust me, Pamela. You know that your grandfather was a ditch-digger. I married up. I’ve played this game before, though never on the level that you will have to. And you have no choice—you have to play. If you do not try to rise above your station, you will be kicked down. You can either make some sort of gain, or have much taken from you. That’s what you must realize … that’s what I try to call your attention to.”

  As she tied the ribbon in a bow, my eyes fell on my archery trophies, and I understood exactly what she was talking about. I had a lady’s education to live up to now. Even if I actively chose to remain in the gutter, the stars would always be watching me.

  “As for Mr. Allister’s calling … I am excited. I would be excited if any young man asked to come and see us, Pamela. You’re entering that period of your life now.” She looked to the window. “I won’t lie. I pray every night that you will make a good marriage. But I don’t want you to think that I would have you make any marriage.”

  I bit my inner cheek. “Isambard said—”

  “Isambard needs to learn when to keep his mouth shut,” my mother said firmly. “Even when he speaks truth, he does not speak it in wisdom. And this is not the time to be thinking of such things, regardless. All of our thoughts are with Nora, and those in the streets … as they should be.”

  I looked to my hands. “But Mr. Allister’s still coming over.”