Dearly, Departed

by Lia Habel

  “I guess,” he said, voice a bit shaky.

  “Are you all right with this?” I asked Michael.

  He tightened his bag around his body and nodded.

  I turned Isambard around and made him look at me. “I’m scared, too, all right? But we have to do this. We’d want someone to do it for us.”

  It took him a moment, but my brother nodded his head. Once.

  “Okay. Here we go.” And with that, I jumped. I ended up tumbling onto my side on the next building over, but it wasn’t all that bad. Michael joined me, landing catlike on his feet. He helped me catch Isambard, who jumped like his life depended on it, and as if the cavern he was crossing was ten feet wide.

  One down, ten to go.

  By the time we got to the building next to the emporium, I felt like one giant adrenaline-filled bruise—but we’d done it. That was the hardest jump, the equivalent of jumping off a shed. I landed right on my rump, and I knew sitting was going to be painful for a month afterward. But at least I hadn’t landed on my back.

  There were no zombies on the roof, at least not yet. Michael and Issy helped me up, and we hurried to the flat door set in the roof. It led us into a crawl space containing a set of hinged wooden stairs that we had to push out ahead of us until they finally cleared the ledge, falling with a clatter into the room below.

  I heard a shout from beneath and knew we must have startled Vespertine. “It’s us!” I called out.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” she said, appearing at the bottom of the retractable steps as we climbed down.

  The upper floor of the emporium was a workshop, with long tables full of rough wooden shapes that would one day be carved and molded into instruments. Tools lined the walls, and a thin veil of sawdust covered the floor. “How on earth did you get here?” I asked Vespertine as Michael folded the stairs back up. “Where’s your family?”

  Her eyes cut to my lower half. “I’ve no idea. I might as well ask you where your sanity is. I have officially seen all of you that I ever wish to now, Roe.”

  Shame pricked at my cheeks again. “Don’t evade the question, Miss Mink.”

  Vespertine stepped back and smoothed her gown down in front. It was finely made—everything about her was finely made. Her dress was of thick cobalt blue silk trimmed with subtle gold lace, and about her throat was a golden chain choker set with an enormous peacock-colored pearl. White pearl combs held her blond hair back, and she wore several golden rings. She’d had her bangs cut since the PM’s public address. “My mother and Miss Perez fled to the country a few days ago,” she said simply. “I decided to remain here.”

  I gaped at her. She was wearing three times my father’s yearly income, and she did not have a brain in her head. “Why?”

  Her gray eyes narrowed. “I don’t really think it’s any of your business.”

  “Oh, I think it is,” I said, feeling myself growing uppity. “Seeing as we’re going to the trouble of saving you, when we were perfectly fine on the roof of the church. Nora’s coming for us.”

  That got her. “Miss Dearly is alive? You’ve spoken to her?”

  “That she is.”

  Vespertine looked at Michael and Isambard, her lips pursed. “All right. I’ll buy that. Now, enlighten me. What is going on? Because that thing out there was crawling up the side of the building toward me …”

  Michael gave her the five-sentence rundown. “A fluid-borne disease made the dead come back to life. They like to attack the living. There are hundreds of them out there. The only way to kill them is to get them in the head with a weapon. There’s a good chance we’re all going to die.”

  Vespertine was quiet for a moment before saying, with her usual coolness, “That will be engraved on a plaque someday, sir. I vote you Poet Laureate of the Undebuted Set.”

  “It’s a long story. We’ll explain later.” I glanced around. “I guess we’re going out the back door. We should find another rooftop to wait on.”

  “Where?” Michael asked.

  Vespertine looked at the bow strapped between my shoulders and asked, “Can you still use that thing? You beat me at the last competition.”

  “Absolutely, I can use it.”

  “How many arrows do you have?”

  “Five.”

  Vespertine folded her arms. “Sounds to me like we’re heading for the sporting goods store, then. They should have guns there, too … hunting rifles.”

  “Anything here we can use as a weapon?” I asked.

  She nodded and pointed at one of the walls. There, arranged by size, were strings—everything from synthetic catgut to piano wire. She walked over and took a pair of plastic handles from one of the shelves. She then removed a piece of piano wire from a hook, threading each end through one of the handles. She pushed a button on each handle, causing the piano wire to wind up within them. When she was done, she had a sort of wire jump rope. She tugged on the ends to test it.

  “Garrote,” she said when she caught me looking.

  “I don’t think you can strangle the dead.”

  Vespertine lifted one perfectly groomed eyebrow and said, “Perhaps not. But with a bit of effort, I might be able to cut their heads off.” She turned and grabbed two hammers off the wall, tossing one to Michael and the other to my brother.

  Isambard was staring at her, and almost caught the hammer with his face.

  “Nice,” I admitted. “Now let’s go.”

  We headed downstairs. The ground floor of the emporium was done in the Belle Epoque style, with fifteen-foot ceilings, intricate tile floors, and vast pastoral murals on the walls. Pianos, violins, cellos, and other stringed instruments were displayed on rotating plinths. Gas fed the enormous crystal chandelier overhead, providing the room with warm, flickering light.

  “For the record,” Vespertine said, voice distant, “this building is my family. It is the only thing I’m loyal to. My adoptive father, Lord Mink, is the only person who has ever loved me, and he’s made it abundantly clear that in his continued absence, I am the acting head of his business.”

  I was honestly shocked by this. “You’re adopted? I never knew that.”

  Vespertine continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “So, I have devoted myself to this store and to our family’s legacy. My mother loves me no more than a statue could, and that hussy she flits about with can burn in hell.” She turned and waved to the back door. “But enough about me. This way, ladies and gentlemen.”

  “All righty, then,” Isambard said, ducking down beneath one of the leaded glass windows.

  We listened at the back door but heard nothing. Michael slowly opened it, just a crack, to peek out. He shut it after about two seconds. “I don’t see anything. Which way are we headed?”

  “Up that side street out there,” Vespertine told him. “It’s just a few blocks straight in that direction.”

  “Yeah, it seems like they’re only now starting to wander,” I said. “They were pretty much staying in a crowd before. They’re attracted by signs of life.” I tapped Michael’s shoulder. “Maybe we should just stay here until they definitely breach the shop.”

  “No,” Vespertine said sharply. “First of all, who can say that the backstreets will be empty then? And secondly, the sooner we leave, the sooner those disgusting things will go elsewhere, and leave the shop in peace.”

  “Miss Mink, your shop can burn in hell for all I care.” Her feline eyes wanted to roast me, but I turned away. “However, your first point is valid. Come on, out we go.”

  “You first,” Vespertine said. Isambard stepped behind her.

  Michael nodded and said, “On three, then. One, two … three!”

  He opened the door and we ran for it. It was dark, the streetlights fewer and farther between off the main avenue. My body ached as I pounded after Michael, second in line. Vespertine and Isambard were content to bring up the rear.

  For once in my life I was somewhere near the top of the pecking order. So long as I could avoid being eaten, I was oka
y with that.

  “Yes, Major. Yes …”

  We’d only been on the water a few minutes. The deadmeats were still forming themselves up into their usual squadrons, and the techs were still setting up the med bay, crashing their crash carts into one another and tripping over wires.

  But I could sense that something was wrong.

  I marched along the first level, peering into the rooms I passed. In my ear, the voice of my commander hummed like an angry wasp from a steel-plated miniature com unit.

  “Bloody hell.” Major Sweeney’s voice trailed off. I could hear people talking behind him. He must be in a war room somewhere.

  “What is it?” I inquired as I opened another metal door and looked behind it.

  “The dead are starting to stray away from the main drag,” he relayed. “It’s going to be messier than we thought.” He had a deep voice, and the sigh that followed sounded like a muted foghorn. “Damn the Ayleses. Damn them.”

  “I always told you that their pro-zombie agenda would come back to bite them.”

  “It ends tonight.”

  Finally, people were smartening up.

  Where the hell was Griswold?

  “Any updates to our mission, Major?” I asked as I paused and ran a hand through my hair. “Our communications room should be up and running in a few moments.”

  “No. I’ll be in touch if there’s anything to update. Major Sweeney, out.”

  I pulled the chip out of my ear and caught a passing zom by the shoulder. “Where’s Griswold?”

  The dead man shrugged. I cursed and picked up the pace.

  “Griswold?” I asked of every dead person I passed. “Where’s Griswold?”

  None of them knew. It wasn’t long before I realized I hadn’t seen any of his little friends, either. It took me a while to dredge their names from my memory. My mind was currently a tornado of information.

  “Todd?”

  “I’m looking for Private Gates. No?”

  “Look, has anyone seen Sweet?”

  Ben Maza gave me a confused look. “Sweet? I’m not familiar with him, Captain.”

  “Her. You know, Sweet.” He shook his head at me. I slapped the side of the hallway with my hand and roared, “Chastity Sweet! Girl! Dead! Sweet!”

  Ben’s expression jerked a bit. “Her last name is Sweet? Chastity Sweet?” Behind him, one of the men on his squad snickered.

  They weren’t on the ship.

  I left before I could decide to rip Ben’s head off. I made my way to the communications room in a fog. At first it was profound, temple-pounding anger that blinded me to my surroundings.

  Then it was fear.

  What was Griswold doing? What did he know? Did he know anything? What had he told the girl?

  When I got to the room, I found that a map of the Territories had been thrown up on the big screen. Our boat was a little red blip on the sea, headed for Nicaragua. The wave of undead in New London was indicated by green arrows. On either side of the screen, dead techs were busy setting up more equipment.

  I sat down in the chair that’d been dragged out of storage for me, and forced myself to breathe. It wasn’t coming undone. Not yet. Griswold had probably made his squad sit this one out as some form of protest. I’d worry about them later.

  I’d kill them later.

  The chip in my hand buzzed to life again. “Captain Wolfe?”

  I slipped it back into my ear and looked at the screen. “We’re up in the com room, Major,” I muttered.

  “This is for your ears only,” he said.

  “Dead, out.”

  The technicians saluted and departed. I waited until I was alone before informing Major Sweeney, “Done.”

  “Update,” he said. “The Punk commanders we’ve been working with are no longer playing ball. They’re going after the zombies on their side of the border with extreme prejudice. Fires are already going strong in Brunswick.”

  I congratulated myself. “Great.”

  “There’s more. In response, Parliament has given the military leave to wage war against the zombie plague as we deem fit and proper. Come 0600 hours, we’re to exterminate all infected, including red-light troops. You have until then to do as much mopping up as you can.”

  I stood up slowly. My entire torso felt numb. “Care to repeat that, Major?”

  “All undead are to be exterminated, by order of General Patmore.”

  “And who is he getting this order from?”

  The silence that followed this question told me that Sweeney knew exactly what I was asking. “The Prime Minister has nothing to do with this. And he doesn’t need to. It’s become clear that he has a major conflict of interest, embodied in the continued existence of his father. This is about the common good, here.”

  I picked the chip out of my ear, my hand shaking.

  “Are you there? Captain, respond!”

  They were finally doing it. After all these years. They were finally going to kill them all. Dearly wasn’t here to plead their case any longer.

  It was all coming undone.

  I crushed the chip beneath the heel of my boot and stumbled from the room. “Ready an escape boat,” I croaked to one of the corpses waiting outside.

  The zombie stood up and eyed me with surprise. She was a narrow woman with a hole where her nose should be and a sleek, neat bob. “Sir?”

  “You heard me. I need to return to Z Base. Get me a boat. Do it now, woman!”

  My heart felt stretched tight and thin. I gripped one of the metal railings to steady myself.

  I needed a bargaining chip.

  I had to figure out where Dearly’s brat was.

  “Plan A?” Bram asked.

  Behind us, Renfield was delivering orders, his voice grown newly bossy. It was a good thing Tom’d been assigned hard labor—the work kept him quiet. I could see him cutting his eyes at Renfield occasionally and waggling his head in a mocking fashion, his skin alive with pumpkin orange firelight.

  I looked out the window. We were rising quickly, the ground sinking away from us like a stone from the surface of a pond. A few moments before I’d heard the rush of compressed gas from the storage units and the stretching of the air bag. The gas was fed into the bag through plastic piping embedded in the nano-fiber ropes that attached it to the ship—at least, that’s how it’d been explained to me. Bram seemed to be making a special effort to feed me terms and definitions. I suppose he felt he had a lot to make up for.

  But I didn’t hate him. I wasn’t even angry at him, not anymore. The situation was too big to feel anger about—for really, even if he had told me, what could either of us have done?

  “Plan A is to simply fly in over the church and pick them up. As our esteemed elders used to say, Duh,” I replied, coming back to myself.

  “Okay.” He then gave a general call for “Contingencies?”

  “You and your contingencies.” Okay, maybe I was annoyed, still.

  “It’s just good sense, Nora.”

  I sighed. “I know. I’d just … I’d just like, once, for everything to go smoothly.”

  “Chances of that happening?” Bram said, training his eyes on mine. “Slim to none.”

  I felt my head nodding so minutely, it might’ve been the motion of the ship. He was right. He was telling me like it was, too, and I appreciated that. “We should call before we land, to make sure they’re there. If they’re not … well, I know the city fairly well. We should be able to direct them to a landmark, at least.”

  “What if they can’t get to it?” Bram challenged me.

  I looked to the window again, as if I could see the city out there already. “We can’t get the ship close to the ground in the city unless we aim for a park. We’d have to land in a park, or on a really big rooftop.”

  “Okay, so our potential points of entry are parks and roofs.” Bram turned his attention to Renfield. “Rooftops are probably best. Less chance of contact.”

  “I can work with that.”
/>
  And thus it began. Bram quizzed us all. What would we do if the dead were on the rooftops? What about a huge crowd of them in the streets? What if one of the people we were headed for happened to be injured? I didn’t see the point of it, and observed more than I participated, but the others shot answers right back at him. I’d grown used to viewing my newfound companions as rather jovial sorts, but this was apparently their way of shifting into a military mind-set. Bram was excellent at it, calling them out on inconsistencies, challenging their ideas, but somehow managing to never belittle them.

  Tom’s ideas aside (“We can land the airship on them! Ten points for each!”), we settled on our plan: keep in contact with Pam, meet them at the church or a convenient high point somewhere close to the edge of the city, and take right off again.

  “And Ren …” Bram turned to him again. “What do we do if the military has men in the air? We’re not exactly cleared to fly.”

  Renfield grinned brightly and pushed a lever down. “We let them eat our exhaust.”

  The only reason I remained near the window was because my fists were already curled around the steering wheel. Bram had let go in order to pace around and play Socratic Method with his team, and he and Chas were flung to the back of the hold. Tom caught himself on the side of the furnace just in time. I couldn’t hear anything at first over the roaring wind and screaming engine parts, but I swear Renfield was cackling.

  “Holy hell!” I shrieked.

  “Throttle it down!” Bram yelled from the back of the ship.

  “Never!” Renfield called back. “Time is of the essence, yes? We’ve got a nice tailwind here!”

  “Yes, but we need to be able to steer!” Chas shouted.

  The steering wheel was vibrating in my hands, and my body shook in sympathy, my teeth knocking together. “Needs to be slower, needs to be slower!”

  “It’s a straight shot northwest, how hard can it be?”