by Lia Habel
“Yeah.” I turned my own attention to the Erika. “And speaking of that mess, I’m going to go get an update.”
“Okay,” I said, thunking a blank leather journal on the edge of Ren’s cluttered computer desk. “The Dearly House Exit plans.”
Renfield Merriweather peered at the tome. Skinny in life, he’d become a scarecrow in death, all elegant half-revealed bones and long limbs. He wasn’t nearly as hardy as the other dead boys, which was why he almost always stayed behind as base support, wherever that base happened to be. He found his spectacles on the desk, somewhere amidst all his mixed-tribe gadgets and computer equipment. “Why hasn’t Griswold had me digitize this? I could cross-reference maps, databases …”
“He prefers to work it out on paper.”
“Benighted fool.” Ren, NV that he was, loved his tech. Although he shared the guest room with the other lads, his computers and toys had come to dominate one side of our attic—the other side belonged to the dead priest, Jacob Isley. Surrounded by stacks of papers and books, Isley was still solidly asleep on his cot, stretched out like a body on a mortuary slab. Cats lounged everywhere. Isley had a thing for them, and took in as many strays as he could.
“No time for names. We need to double-check the carriage situation, the weapons situation. We follow this, we can all get out of here in under ten minutes if it comes to that.” I’d decided that I couldn’t spend my time moping. I needed to work, to contribute.
“Has everyone else been informed? From a logistics standpoint, that should be our first concern.”
“Everyone except the sleeping wonder there. Chas should be up soon. She wanted to tell her mom.” Looking to his computer array, I found myself staring unfeelingly at the steam-holographic projector I’d once seen him use to play Aethernet chess with Vespertine Mink. “The others went to the boats. Which is precisely where I want to be. If things go wrong—” I pressed my lips tightly together before anything else could slip out.
“I don’t think that would be very wise, Miss Dearly. We don’t know if our assistance is even required.”
Tearing my eyes from the desk, I said, “I hate sitting around and waiting, though. I don’t know about you, but it makes me go insane.”
“Yes, I figure I’m already more insane than not.” Ren’s posh northern accent only augmented his sarcastic delivery.
“I am not in the mood for jokes! Remember the last time this happened? When I was at Z Beta Base and no one would tell me anything, no one would let me go anywhere or help …” That was a big part of it. Logically I knew I had no reason to leave the EF, but I loathed being kept on the sidelines.
“We’d probably create more problems if we did go.” Ren brushed a few curly auburn locks out of his face. “Look. Are you afraid this development will make the living want to round up the dead again?”
Ren was incredibly observant for a dead guy who needed glasses. I nodded once.
“Well, keep in mind that some of our people fought for their dead. They didn’t hunt them down and kill them indiscriminately, like the Punks. No one’s called for the new pro-zombie Prime Minister to step down, have they?”
“No. Not yet.” I had to keep reminding myself of that. “I just don’t like this. Only a few months ago the government tried to kill every dead person. Permanently.”
“I know. Zombies have every reason to be distrustful of the authorities. But those of us who have a firm grasp on reality know that we need to keep our wits about us.”
Opting not to say anything, I opened the book, my stomach still in knots. I could only pray that Renfield and Dr. Chase were right—that cool heads would actually prevail. They had, for a while. There was hope, just … no certainty.
Not like we hadn’t played with those odds before.
Before I could do anything else, Chastity Sweet appeared in the doorway. She was a tall dead girl with bleached-blond hair, blue-tinged skin, and a silvery metal jaw covered with hand-carved designs, a prosthesis designed for her after she lost hers during a mission for Z-Comp. Uttering a strangled sound to get our attention, she unhooked a digidiary from her leather belt and opened it, holding it up so we could read the screen. Her throat had been crushed during the battle with Averne back in December, and her spelling hadn’t improved much since then: Mom wok up n turned on the news n there are fites going on in the city. Beside the note, she’d drawn a little mushroom cloud with a frowny face.
Its eyes were X’s.
So much for cooler heads.
Once the news broke about the new riot taking place on the docks, everyone in the house knew they would have to work together to keep me corralled. It was the only way.
As soon as Aunt Gene’s former butler, Matilda, woke up, Dr. Chase stationed her at the front door. Matilda didn’t seem to mind. The poised, ebony-skinned woman was content to sit on the floor in front of the door with a lap desk and a toffee bar, going through the household bills.
“Have you seen the letters your aunt’s creditors have been sending?” she asked me absently one of the times I edged into the foyer to glare at her.
“No, and I don’t want to.” Aunt Gene had gotten us into massive debt before her disappearance. I supposed I should count it as unfinished business, but the fact that she was most likely dead sort of wiped the slate clean.
Alencar, the chauffeur, manned the back door. He bowed whenever I walked past. Dr. Chase and Renfield insisted on shadowing me, so I kept moving, pacing. As I did, I turned my cell phone over in my hands. Bram had bought both of us phones back in February for my birthday—a gift that was extremely practical, and thus extremely Bram. His was plain and grudgingly used; mine was a minisculpt, black, shaped like a mermaid hugging her tail against her head. Bram wasn’t currently responding. My father hadn’t answered any of my emails in days, and every time I tried to call him, I got a busy signal.
For hours I remained in a state of infuriating helplessness, practically a prisoner in my own home. I knew the others weren’t trying to be cruel, that they only meant to protect me. But in moments like this, I understood what Bram and I were up against. The riot two weeks ago had been the turning point for me, when I finally got that the real enemies we were going to have to face weren’t Wolfe and Averne, but Time and Fear. How little time I would have with him, and how fear could cut that even shorter. More than just being with him—I wanted to stand beside him on the front lines. I’d gotten a taste of freedom last winter, and it almost physically hurt to have to return to my old life of manners and rules.
I wanted my new life back.
Eventually Dr. Chase and Dr. Samedi sought me out, and found me walking in circles in one of the long back hallways, underneath one of my father’s favorite mythological murals. “There you are, Miss Dearly. Baldwin and I are going to install Miss Chastity’s voice box.”
This was enough to get me to look up from my phone. “I thought it wasn’t finished yet?” Sam had been toiling over her artificial voice box for months now.
“Funny thing. I mentioned how much better it’d make me feel if Miss Chastity could talk, given all that’s going on.” Dr. Chase glared at Dr. Samedi. “That’s when he chose to inform me it’s actually been completed for almost a month. He was enjoying the quiet. I’ve already boxed his remaining ear.”
Samedi slipped a hand into his chestnut hair and adjusted his stitched-up head slightly, tweaking it to the side. The zombie’s skull was full of hardware that allowed his brain to communicate with a thick metal collar installed around his neck, permitting his body to move even when his head was severed from it. A tremor zipped down his spine, and he narrowed his gray-lidded, feminine eyes. “Thank you. You just admitted that if I do go deaf, it’s only because external forces are constantly assaulting me.”
Dr. Chase shook her head and looked at me. “Would you like to help?”
In spite of everything, I found myself asking excitedly, “Really?”
Just then my phone rang. I looked down to find that it was P
amela Roe, my best friend. “Is it Dr. Dearly?” Samedi asked.
“No. Pam.” I didn’t have to say anything else; the two adults nodded and saw themselves out. “You okay?” I asked upon opening the phone.
“Yes.” Still, Pamela sounded nervous. “You’ve heard about the new strain? I’m just calling to let you know I probably can’t get down there today.”
“Yeah. Sorry I didn’t call sooner, myself.”
“Dr. Evola hasn’t been home.”
“He’s probably working overtime.” He’d been rooming with the Roes ever since the Siege, preferring to stay closer to the hospital ships. “Look, why don’t I come over there?”
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but no way in hell, Nora. The city needs time to calm down. Dad won’t let us leave the house.”
“That’s why I’ll come to you.”
“Not a good idea. And your father wouldn’t like it.”
“Who said I’d tell him?” She made a disapproving noise in response. “Besides, Pamma, not even the ravenous dead can stand between you and me.”
“Don’t remind me. And don’t you dare. Please give me one less thing to worry about.”
Rolling my eyes heavenward, I said, “Fine. Anything I can do for you from here? Otherwise, I’m going to help the docs with something.”
“No, there’s nothing you can do. I’ll call you if there is. I’ll text you later anyway.”
Frustrated anew, I hung up and considered just leaping out a nearby window and running for the surface. My imagination extended this little adventure to include clobbering an army man, donning his uniform, and marching toward the nearest disaster.
In the end, for Pam and Papa, I went in search of Dr. Chase.
It turned out that “helping” didn’t add up to much more than handing the engineers tools. It was hard to be contented with that, but I tried.
Chas was set up on the desk in my father’s dark, masculine study. Every lamp in the place was positioned about her, since the windows were still boarded up. The initial phases of the “operation” involved cutting into her throat and scraping and snipping all the ruined flesh away. Samedi let her keep her digidiary, and she occasionally wrote things like, Dont u think I need that? or Tckls! in response to his actions. After perhaps forty minutes, the device itself—a curious golf-ball-sized construct of metal and wire—was popped into her neck.
Admittedly, watching Baldwin and Beryl at work was absorbing. The first time I met them I’d been told they were an amazingly inventive team, and they truly did seem to function like two bodies sharing a single mind. He could make a suggestion and she’d already be halfway done with it, reaching for a spot welder or twisting a plastic cap into place. Occasionally they would murmur together like two soothsayers puzzling over a goat’s entrails, completing each other’s sentences.
“Stitch or staple the remains of her trachea …”
“… bottom should replicate a ring of cartilage, I thought. Stability. No more smoking for you, young lady.” Sam leaned back, tucking his scalpel between his lips. Sterility wasn’t a concern when operating on the undead, obviously. “All right. Speak.”
“I’m no-ot a do-og, you kno-ow,” Chas responded, her first words since the battle in Bolivia. Aside from sounding somewhat computery, it was definitely her own voice, only healthier than I remembered it. She seemed to speak somewhat laboriously, though, her neck and chest rolling noticeably as she fought to get the words out. She moved to sit up, and Beryl aided her.
“Chas!” I hopped up and wrapped my arms about her shoulders from behind. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”
“Tell … me ab-out … it.” I could see the muscles of her throat flexing as she remembered how to use them.
Samedi shooed me out of the way so he could study his handiwork. “There. Let’s get the wires in, and then I think the best way to close this up would be to install some small D-rings along either side of the incision and have her lace it up until the skin stretches to accommodate the new hardware. Then we can put in a permanent suture.”
“I think you’re right,” Dr. Chase said. “Miss Dearly, can you hand me the pliers?”
Chas turned excited eyes on Sam. “Like a … neck corset? No, I’m keep-ing the … lacing! I can use different … colooored … rib-bons!”
As Samedi reached past me for an additional bit of wire, I heard the sound of the front door opening, followed by the unmistakable voices of the undead boys. Without waiting to see if anyone else had heard, I raced for the door and down the hall. It seemed like it took an hour to reach the foyer, when in fact it took only seconds. “Guys!”
Bram was at my side before I could say another word. I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed as hard as I could. He curled his huge hand around my head, guiding it to his chest, and I took advantage of the opportunity to rest my eyes and lean against him, if only for a brief moment—had we been alone, I would have happily remained there. “Everyone good here?” he asked.
“Yes. What’s going on?”
“The usual.” He urged me back, his hands on my shoulders. “City’s in an uproar again, troops and cops are spread thin. Never enough of them.”
“Great.” I stepped away a few beats later, a proper young lady once more, and turned my attention to Coalhouse and Tom. “Are you guys okay?”
“Oh yeah,” Tom said, his peeved tone belying his words. “Just disappointed that alcohol doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to anymore, that’s all.”
“Your girlfriend’s in surgery,” I told him. “Sam’s done with her voice.”
Tom’s bald eye ridges jumped in surprise, his lips splitting into a sharklike grin. Coalhouse chuckled. “Really? This I gotta see.”
Something in his sentence set the other two off, because their expressions transformed from “there’s no place like home” to “oh, hell no” in the space of two blinks. “You know, you only see with one of those lumps in your head,” Tom said. “Maybe you should give the other to me for safekeeping.” He extended a hand, frowning.
“That was not acceptable, what happened back at the docks,” Bram said to Coalhouse.
“Can we talk about this later?” Coalhouse asked, glancing uneasily at me.
“No. We talk about it now.” Bram pointed at his useless eye. “I don’t care if you wear it when things are quiet, but you’ve got to take it out whenever there’s the chance of action. You knew this back at base.”
“But this isn’t Z Beta. There are people on the streets, they’ll see me …”
“You’re a zombie. If you’re not missing body parts, you’re doing it wrong!” Tom yelled. “You put us in danger today. And it’s because you care what you look like?”
“Danger?” I asked, only to be ignored.
“Oh, and he didn’t?” Coalhouse pointed angrily at Bram. “Like he didn’t flip out?”
“What?”
My tone of voice was enough to arrest them, to stall their dispute. Still, they all had that funny, stiff “zombie pack” posture—like their bodies were ready to throw down if dominance needed to be physically established, even if their minds had yet to consciously go there. I’d seen it before.
Bram cleared his throat. “We’ll get into it later. Go see Chas.”
“Guess I’m not the only immature one, huh?” Coalhouse said, before stomping in the direction of the hall. Tom shook his head, then followed.
“Immature?” I asked once they were gone. “What’s the matter?”
“Let’s just say that I’m more pessimistic now than I was this morning.” Bram reached for me again. “I’m glad you didn’t come. I would have been worried sick.”
I pushed his scarred hand away in annoyance. “Talk.”
With a rumble, he said, “We had to take on some zombies, okay? Back up the army. Thankfully, it didn’t turn into a bloodbath.”
“Oh God.” Cue me immediately feeling like a jerk. “I’m so sorry.”
Bram shrugged, though I could
tell he was still troubled. “Let’s get everyone settled and then we’ll talk. We’re safe, that’s what matters.”
Respecting this, I gave up. Even though I still had questions, suddenly I wasn’t half as worried as I had been. The Punks could take over the world with giant mechanical dinosaur clowns and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash. No matter what might be happening, no matter how many fires might be burning, being with Bram always seemed to make things at least feel better.
He was okay. He was here. He was home.
Now I just needed my father.
“We can’t do anything right now. I went over to the Erika and spoke to Salvez already.”
“I swear, if I hear that phrase one more time …” I kneeled on my chair. “Anyway, what did Salvez say?”
“Like Dr. Chase told us—the Laz has mutated.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“I wish I knew, Nora.”
It was dinnertime, and Bram was trying to get some food in him—the usual. Tofu. Protein used to trick his body into thinking it was getting the flesh it wanted, mixed with a digestive enzyme since his stomach no longer worked. Between statements, I gave him five chews. Under the kitchen table Dad’s Doberman pinscher, Fido, begged.
“You didn’t see Papa at all?”
“No. I asked for him, but got the runaround. Like usual. Every time I go over there lately, he’s busy. I feel kind of shut out of the research side of things.”
“Is it dangerous there? Should we be worried about him?”
“I told you about the living mob and the zombie attacks. We left once it got calmer and more army reserves arrived. See? I’m not holding anything back this time.”
“I want to see him, Bram.” I leaned my elbows on the table and fixed my gaze on one of the household signs Dr. Chase had used her talent with calligraphy to create: ZOMBIE-ONLY SILVERWARE GOES IN THE CANISTER. “I just want to know that he’s safe.”
Bram chewed five times. “Give him more time. The news just broke earlier today.”
“I know. And I know that he has the world on his shoulders. That’s why I’ve tried to be respectful. But Bram … I can’t do this anymore.”