Dearly, Departed

by Lia Habel

  My chest felt constricted, like someone was hugging me far too hard. I nodded. I had something to tell him, too, and I wasn’t exactly sure how.

  I liked him.

  I liked him a lot.

  I followed him to the gate and through a small door for personnel that passed through the compound. Night was deep now and the trees had become malevolent, many-armed shapes on the horizon. He took me down a dirt path to an open area studded with trucks and tanks and other equipment.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked.

  “Privacy,” he said as he kept walking.

  We stepped around a heavy transport unit, and all of the vast speeches I’d been composing in my head petered out when I saw the airship.

  “Oh!” I moved toward it. “I’ve never seen one of these in person!”

  “Never?” Bram sounded like he didn’t believe me.

  “Never! We use zeppelins, but not things like this. The piratey kind. The actual ships.”

  He laughed, although the sound lacked the richness it had before. This subtle little thing bothered me. “Not all air sailors are pirates.”

  “I know, it’s just …” I turned to look at him and held out my hand. He hesitated a moment before taking it, and he didn’t grip it as fervently as he had earlier. I had the sudden idea that he was going to reject me, or run away from me, and without even thinking about it I tightened my hold on his fingers and pulled him up the gangplank. I took a breath. “We need to talk.”

  “Yes, we do.” He was starting to sound frightened, and that made me nervous in turn. “Nora—”

  “I’m sorry.” I stepped onto the deck and turned around to look at him, while he was still low enough on the plank to look me directly in the eye.

  He stared at me for a moment. “For what?”

  “I’m sorry,” I sighed. “For the whole … head thing … back there. I mean, I’m sorry I put my head on your chest. I don’t know why I did that.”

  Bram didn’t move, his other hand resting on the ramp’s railing. “Oh,” he said at last, and my stomach lurched. I felt like I’d ripped his heart out and shown it to him. That wasn’t what I meant!

  “I mean …” Here goes. “I think you’re … amazing. Where I come from, the boys just sort of want you to sit there and look nice. They figure they know what you want, or they just don’t care what you want. But you don’t act like that … you respect me. You acknowledge me. And I’ve been under so much stress, and your chest was just there, and it suddenly looked like the nicest pillow in the entire world.”

  “Nora—”

  “I know we’ve only known each other a week, and there are other things to worry about just now, big things. But what I’m trying to say is that I shouldn’t have done that whole head thing, but … but I wanted to do it, and …” I buried my hands in my skirt. “I’m sorry. You’re going to think I’m creepy. I’ll shut up now.”

  I heard Bram climbing up the gangplank and approaching me. I lifted my head, though it felt like I was balancing an anvil atop it. He stopped in front of me. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, either. “Creepy?” He laughed, shortly. “Nora, you’re making my decade, here.”

  I felt a flutter of hope in my breast. “I just never thought I’d actually want to be around a boy, before. It’s kind of weird.”

  Bram regarded me with soft eyes. He took a deep, chest-expanding breath, and when the air came out, he said, “I’m dead, Nora.”

  I’d known this was going to come up, either from him or someone else. “It’s hard to think of you as dead when you laugh with me, walk with me, smile at me …”

  He shook his head, some of his hair coming to rest before his eyes. He didn’t brush it away. It shadowed his face, made him look sad. “I’m dangerous.”

  “Oh, and other people aren’t?” I heard the growing temper in my own voice. “You’ve spent the last week convincing me that you’re not a monster, and now you’re going to make like you are? Don’t try to pull that. Men turn on their wives of twenty years with hatchets, men … men go insane and murder their children. Everyone is capable of becoming dangerous, going mad. What makes you so different?”

  “Different?” He took a step closer and grabbed my wrists before I could back away. “Do living men have dreams about people dying? Do they occasionally get the urge to chase you? Do they—no matter how well they repress it, no matter how well-behaved they are—always have in the back of their mind the idea that your flesh would be the best thing they ever tasted?”

  I held my ground. “Probably not,” I replied. “But I have dreams about people dying. I’ve been so angry that I couldn’t think straight. I know what it’s like.”

  He let go of me, his expression folding into confusion. I slowly reached up and touched his bottom lip. He flinched away, but I persisted. “Go ahead. If you’re so out of control, go ahead. This isn’t my shooting hand.”

  Bram folded his arms over his chest. He didn’t fight it as I traced his lips, his chin, the top half of his throat. He did catch my hand before it ventured any lower, though. My tongue flattened against the roof of my mouth as I kept my eyes on his, letting him do what he wanted.

  He kissed my satin-robed wrist, over the glove’s buttoned opening, and dropped my hand.

  In that moment, I found him fully, absolutely beautiful. The way he kissed me was so honest; the way he stood there, calmly embodying his own space, was attractive in that it simply was. He just was, when he shouldn’t be.

  “I dream of my father’s death all the time,” I told him, breathless from what he’d just done. “I watched it. It would have been cruel not to watch it, when he had seen my birth, and so much of my pain. And I know what it’s like to have thoughts you can’t control. Just before I came here my Aunt Gene showed me how badly she’s managed my family’s money … she’s ruined me. I was so, so angry that I didn’t know what to do. But I didn’t do anything horrible. And I won’t. That’s the difference. But you must do the same thing countless times every day. You’re so strong, Bram, and I really admire you for that.”

  His hand came for me again, and I welcomed it. He touched my cheek. His fingers were cold and dry, as always, and I found the sensation strangely enticing. “I wouldn’t even be around very long. I would rot to pieces in front of you.”

  I cringed. How could his touch be so tender, and his focus still be on denying me this? “How long does anybody ever have anyone? I had my mother for nine years, my father fifteen. There are no guarantees in life.”

  Bram turned his back on me and approached the wheel of the ship, draping himself over it with a sigh. He turned his attention to the sky. I looked up, in turn, for guidance. This whole situation was exasperating.

  I almost fell backward where I was standing.

  “Oh, look at all the stars!” I had never seen so many in my life. The sky was festooned with them, like the spangles on my borrowed black fingerless gloves.

  Bram’s voice was full again, and low. “That’s one thing they always tell us about you Victorians—that your cities are so bright at night you can’t see the stars. That the Vics deny their children such a simple thing.”

  I argued, “You can see some—not all, but some. The brightest. And where I live, they reflect them on the screens above, so that even those deep underground don’t have to be without.”

  “They aren’t real, though.” He straightened up and came closer to me. “That freaked me out, when we came to get you. All those trees, that sky, and none of it was real.”

  I felt my blood rising, and opened my mouth to lash out with something like, So, how many human sacrifices have you attended? … when I realized the humor of the whole situation. It was one of those moments where things in your atom-sized corner of the universe make sense, where you are utterly at peace and somewhat smug.

  “You’re right,” I laughed. “I’ve been trained, all my life, to expect natural things to appear in unnatural forms.”

  Bram loo
ked at me as if I had lost my mind. I suppose it was payback for how I must have looked at him the first time we met. “What are you laughing at?”

  “This!” I spun around before him, on a lark. “All of this! You know …” I stopped, my skirt moving still, and leaned closer to him. “We never would have met if you hadn’t become a zombie. You’re a Punk, I’m a Victorian … but here we are, united in death.”

  Bram laid his hands on my shoulders and looked at me. I wanted him to try and kiss me. No way was I going to slip him the tongue, but I wanted him to do it, just to show me that he wanted it, too. I wanted just that much validation that I was not babbling on like a complete loser.

  He pushed me back. “Nora …”

  I would have thought I had more pride, but I pressed it. “Bram, please …”

  He shook his head. “I have to tell you something now.”

  “I know you want something like this. In time. Bram, you said you were waiting for the right girl … couldn’t I be her? I mean, not right now, but maybe. We shouldn’t even be talking about this, but we are, so let’s just finish—”

  “You are!” he suddenly roared. I backed up of my own volition, startled by the outburst. His voice sounded almost primal. “You are, in ten thousand ways! I’ve never done anything like this before, I don’t know …” He pushed his hair back and took to pacing. “But Wolfe is right. I’m not the right guy for you. I know that I could never be everything … anything you need.”

  My corset suddenly felt oppressively tight, the fabric-covered steel digging into my ribs. Bram opened his jacket. His waistcoat flashed red beneath, like he’d been stabbed and bled. “But … I’ve had the time of my life, pretending. Thank you for even letting me.”

  “Bram, no, it wasn’t—”

  “Will you just let me get it out, already?” He stopped in his tracks, facing away from me.

  I held my breath. I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to run away and hide myself in my father’s bedroom and cry my lungs and eyes empty. But I stayed.

  “Nora …” he began. His tone had utterly changed. Within the space of thirty seconds he’d become a defeated man. “You were right. There are things we haven’t told you—things I haven’t told you. Wolfe ordered me not to tell you. He said that if I did he’d send me away, and I didn’t want to leave you alone here. Hell, I didn’t want to leave you. The moment I saw you on the street, I fell for you; I would have done anything to stay with you. He told me they were taking care of it … but they’ve failed.”

  He did like me. But now I didn’t feel like crowing. “What?” I asked.

  “Please,” he said, closing his eyes. “Please, please don’t hate me. I didn’t mean to keep you in the dark. This is all my fault. I’m so sorry …”

  Now I was honestly terrified. Had they found my father? Was he dead? “What is it, Bram?”

  He moved his fingers, slightly, as if counting to five. “The undead have taken over the EF.”

  I had absolutely no basis from which to comprehend this statement. “What?”

  He looked at me, and I saw how serious he was. “It was the Grays. I mean, it had to be. They locked down the Fields, sent live men in to fight them … but they’ve won.”

  I still wasn’t on board yet. “The undead are in New London?” I could barely hear my own voice.

  Bram punched the railing. “I don’t know how bad it is,” he growled. “Wolfe didn’t tell me.”

  The sound of that punch rocketed my body through space and time to the present. It took my brain two seconds to see the entire thing play out. I fell to my knees on the deck. “Oh my God,” I whispered, unable to think of anything else to say.

  Bram came closer and reached out for me, but I clawed my way back from him. “Don’t touch me!” I heard myself shriek before the tears started, and then there was nothing but my chest shaking, my eyes burning, splinters of wood catching on my gloves as I pounded on the deck of the ship. I’d been thinking of Pamela constantly since my abduction, knowing that she must be going through hell—but now I had visions of her and her family being hunted, being eaten, and it was enough to nearly kill me.

  He didn’t listen to me. I came to when I felt him clutching me against his solid chest, restricting my spasming body. I writhed against him, but he was far stronger, and soon I was weeping on his shoulder, my arms around him.

  “I’m so sorry, Nora, I’m so sorry,” he kept saying, his lips near my ear, his hand in my hair.

  “Pam,” I gasped. “My friend Pam. She’s up there. I have to help her. I have to go, now.”

  He shook his head, his nose brushing my earlobe. “We can’t, Nora. It’s suicide.”

  “I have to go now!” I sobbed.

  “The army won’t go with us, and they won’t come after us!” Bram sounded so helpless, and I hated it. If he was helpless, we were lost. “What about your father? What if your friend is already gone?”

  I tried to fight my way back to control. Bram slid his hands over the sides of my neck and tipped my face up as I took cleansing breaths. What about my father? There was no trace of him. But Pam—Pam, I knew, had been alive and well when I was taken. There was a better chance of her being safe now than him. “She has a mobile phone. We can call her. Just let me call her, like I’ve been saying!”

  I swallowed my own tears. Bram was already standing up and helping me to my feet.

  This time I didn’t mind that he pulled me along, because I didn’t think I could walk on my own. He took me not to the med facilities or Wolfe’s quarters, where I would have guessed we’d find communications equipment, but to one of the barracks. I didn’t question this. He finally stopped at a door and knocked.

  Renfield opened it.

  And immediately shut it again.

  “Ren, this is not a drill! This is important!” Bram shouted.

  The door opened once more, and Renfield stepped back shakily. He was still dressed in the brown sack suit he’d worn to the party, although now he was wearing black leather gloves. He hadn’t worn them before. “What is it?”

  “We need to get on the Aethernet,” Bram said, slamming the door shut after we stepped in. “Go to the lab, ask Doc Sam where Wolfe put your equipment, and get it set up. Bring Sam with you. It’s urgent.”

  Renfield glanced at his desk. “I … already have.”

  Bram looked surprised. “You mean you’ve been breaking the rules all this time?”

  “Yes.” Ren sounded worried.

  “Good.” Bram guided me to the bed.

  Renfield’s room looked like it had been built out of antique nondigital books. Hundreds of them. They were neatly stacked, floor to ceiling, on every available surface. They even made a little fortress around the bed. Bram pushed a pile over to clear the way for me.

  Renfield slid his hand over his face. “Don’t ruin the Sanctum Sanctorum!”

  “It’s your bed, and her knees are going to give out,” Bram argued. He was right. I sat down weakly. My heart was going a million miles a minute and my vision was blurry. Not so blurry that I couldn’t see Ren’s desk, though.

  The guy’s bedroom was a communications center.

  There were several computers there, open-work models with their wires and drives exposed. A few parts were made up with scrap from old machines. Most interesting of all, though, was the steam holographic projector. If I’d been in better emotional condition I’d have jumped up to coo over it, but for now I stayed where I was.

  The Punks didn’t want our holographic technology, but they’d achieved something like it through the use of steam. Ren’s was a tabletop model, a brass column with a space between the top and bottom plates. Showers of steam jetted down from the top one, and the bottom one responded with concentrated jets of air. Between the two, misty, semisolid images could be projected. Sensors allowed one to interact with them as well.

  I could see vaporous images in it even now. A young woman’s hand, wearing several rings, including the traditional bow-shaped r
ing sported by Victorian girls whose parents would choose their future mates for them, hovered over a chessboard. He was playing Aethernet chess with someone.

  “I know, I know,” Ren was saying as he punched rapidly at the old typewriter keyboard he’d modified to fit into his system. “I know I’m not supposed to be on. But there’s no voice chat with this one, I swear, and I’m using about nine thousand proxies so they can’t tell where I’m coming from. It’s just chess.”

  “Renfield, I really, really did not come here to yell at you, but I’m starting to feel like I should,” Bram said, out of patience.

  The girl in the steam moved her bishop, and the move sprung up on Ren’s screen. He sat down and typed back, “Have to go now, my apologies. Save game?”

  A second later he got his response. “Of course. Have a good night. Stay safe.”

  He shut off the program, and the cloudy chessboard evaporated. Renfield peeled off his wet gloves. “Now, what can I do for you?” He looked at me, and that’s when he got it, I think, his eyes widening a bit. “What’s wrong?”

  “You know about the Grays in the EF?”

  “Of course,” he said penitentially. “Salvez told me.”

  “Wolfe says they’ve taken over,” Bram said.

  Renfield’s hands slowly migrated to his lap. “My word.”

  “We need to see if we can get in touch with Nora’s friend in New London. If she’s still alive …” Bram looked to me. “What do you want to do?”

  I pressed my palms together. Now was not the moment to break down. I’d had plenty of chances to do that over the last week—why should now be the time? I had to keep going. “Go after her.”

  Bram nodded slowly, and turned his eyes back to Ren. “If she’s still alive, we’re going to go in the Black Alice to get her.”

  Renfield gaped at him. “You do realize that might be the death of you.” He looked at me, and said, tone again apologetic, “I mean no offense, nor is it my intention to make light of the situation. But it’s the truth.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Bram said. “Guess we’ll just have to deal with it.”