by A. M. Geever
Her shoulder and back hurt again. So did her head. She ran her hand up her skull. The lump, while sizable, was not nearly as bad as she’d expected. She concentrated on the pain, breathing it in and out, so she would not have to think about Connor. She wasn’t ready for that. She couldn’t say how long she lay there, alone with her breath and discomfort. It might have been minutes or hours. A gentle knock on the door broke her reverie.
“Come in,” she croaked, her mouth feeling dry and sticky all at once.
The door opened, filling the room with the smell of melted butter. Father Walter held a plate of buttered toast in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. He pushed the door shut with his elbow—how he had opened it with full hands a mystery. No matter what the situation, no matter how desperate the crisis, Walter Brennan believed a cup of tea would make things seem a little better. The funny thing was that it usually did.
“How are you feeling?” Walter asked as he set down the plate.
He handed Miranda the teacup, which forced her to sit up so she could hold it properly. He raised the blind halfway and opened the window a few inches to let in the fresh air. It smelled of jasmine, heavy and cloying. He reached behind her to rearrange the pillow so she could lean against it. Then he pulled out the desk chair, turned it around so it faced her, and sat, waiting.
She looked at Walter for a moment. She knew he was here to talk about Connor, but she did not want to. Thinking about him would make her head hurt worse. “Do we have to talk about this now? I don’t think I’m up for it.”
“I only asked how you’re feeling, Miranda,” Walter chided gently.
“You never just ask how I’m feeling.”
She thought he would try again, but instead, he reached into his blazer pocket and pulled out two small brown bottles and set them on the nightstand.
“Ellen brought over your prescriptions. She said to take the antibiotic with food and to be careful with the painkillers since you have a concussion. You’re only to take them if you absolutely need to.”
Miranda reached for the bottles and took her pills. Now that she was out of her Zen trance, a painkiller fit the bill. She didn’t spare its effects on her concussed brain a thought. They sat in silence as she drank her tea and ate her toast. Walter had gone heavy on the butter, just how she liked it. She kept her eyes on her teacup, blowing on the hot beverage and watching the ripples play across the surface. She breathed in the steam with its scent of cream and honey.
“How long have you known he was alive?” she eventually asked, never taking her eyes from her cup.
“A few years,” Walter replied.
“And it never occurred to you that I’d want to know?”
“Of course I knew you’d want to know, but what purpose would it have served?” Walter asked, not unkindly.
She opened her mouth to protest, but he continued.
“He was thousands of miles away, Miranda, and could have been killed at any time. He shouldn’t be here; he was supposed to stay where he was. But even if I had known he was coming, I wouldn’t have told you in case he didn’t make it.”
“It’s not your job to protect me!”
She spat the words like they burned her mouth. Her eyes filled with tears and her mouth started to pucker. She looked away, trying not to cry. She hated crying in front of people, but sometimes that didn’t seem to make a difference.
Walter leaned forward and caught her chin with his hand, turning her face toward him. His calm hazel eyes looked into her angry blue ones.
“It is my job to protect you, Miranda, and I won’t apologize for that.” Walter released her chin and sat back in his chair. A steely silence filled the room. After several minutes Walter bowed his head and pursed his lips. “There’s something I need to ask you.”
Miranda looked up from the still warm cup in her hands. “You never just ask how I am,” she said. Even to her own ears, she sounded petty and childish.
Walter ignored the jibe. “Connor’s been working on something for us, something important. I’ve been planning to ask for your help when we’re ready. We both know he’s here for you, Miranda. And his cousin, but mostly for you.”
Miranda rolled her eyes. “Oh, we do, do we? And you know this because of your vast stores of relationship experience? What do you want me to do?”
“I need you to settle whatever there is to be settled between you.” Walter’s eyes bored into her head like a drill. “If we succeed, it will change everything, but we’re only going to get one chance. We cannot fail, which is why I need you. Your expedition made it to the reactor at Rancho Seco when no one else could. I know I can depend on you and I know you’ll get it done or die trying. I need to know if you can put everything with Connor aside and work with him. It won’t be for long, but I can’t have either of you distracted. There’s too much at stake.”
He knew how to pique a girl’s curiosity. She had to give him that.
“What are you talking about? Why all the cloak and dagger?”
Walter’s face became serious. Whatever he was about to tell her was big.
“We’ve broken the monopoly on the vaccine.”
Miranda looked at him in disbelief.
“Bullshit.”
Walter began to laugh.
“Shit, Father Walter.” Miranda started laughing too. “You almost had me for a second.”
“No, really, it’s true,” he insisted, grinning.
It wasn’t his words as much as the lack of a flinch followed by a dismayed lecture about her language that killed her smile.
“Henry is dead, and Mario betrayed us,” she said. “The Council and GeneSys have the vaccine, not us.”
“Henry didn’t die,” Walter answered. “We staged the crash and got him to Santa Cruz. He’s been there ever since, reconstructing his and Mario’s work.”
“But…that’s impossible. GeneSys did the genetic testing. It was Henry’s body in that car.”
“We had help with that, Miranda. We’ve been producing post-bite for over a year now, tiny amounts at first. We still haven’t cracked the preventative vaccine, but Henry says he’s very close. Any day now.”
“And you’re going to just start handing it out? That will start a war with the City!”
Walter shifted in his seat and leaned forward. “Let me explain,” he began. “You know Henry was convinced the City Council would try to kill him and Mario once the development of the preventative vaccine was announced.”
“Yeah, and they did try, right after they and Mario reneged on sharing the vaccine with everyone.”
“We staged Henry’s crash, but he couldn’t get any of the data out. He had to start all over again when we got him to Santa Cruz. Just getting him an adequate lab took over a year. He started with post-bite. He said it would be the easier of the two.”
Miranda sat silently, trying to absorb this new information. It had been so chaotic then, with the pitched battles after Mario’s defection. An ideal time to slip away unnoticed.
Walter continued. “By the time Mario reached out to us to broker the Agreement, Henry was beyond the Golden Gate.”
Miranda’s chest contracted and her stomach flipped. Still, after all this time. “You make it sound so noble, ‘broker the Agreement.’ Fucked us over is more like it.”
“Whatever else he did, Mario saved us with the Agreement,” Walter said softly, his expression acknowledging the fact that she didn’t want to hear it. “We couldn’t have beaten the City then. We didn’t have the leverage we do now with the Missions and the Farm. And we didn’t come out of it empty-handed, Miranda. Everyone in the Valley at the time got the vaccine, and it gave us time to regroup and figure out a way to turn things around.”
Miranda took a deep breath. She could not stand hearing him defend anything that Mario had done, even obliquely, and especially when it was true. Noble Prize winning Stanford professor Henry Chan, one of the world’s most distinguished virologists, and Mario Santorello, his former stud
ent, founder of GeneSys and biotech wunderkind, cracked the zombie virus. She remembered the excitement and hope, how proud she had been of Mario when he burst into the Farm to tell her. The vaccine was supposed to save the world but instead became a precursor to betrayal and depravity. She knew Walter believed anyone could be redeemed, but she didn’t. Not anymore.
“So what’s the rest of the plan?” she asked after giving herself a mental shake. She had wasted enough time trying to understand why Mario had done what he had. She was damned if she would go down that rabbit hole again.
“We’ll be shipping the post-bite vaccine and the data to make it soon. Hopefully we’ll have the preventative by then, but if not, we’re still going to move forward. Ships will sail to different locations on the North and South American coasts, and I want you on one of them. There are labs ready to go. That’s what Connor and one of the people with him have been doing: finding sites and equipment, finding scientists to do the work. We’ll be using the missions as starting points to retake territory and start vaccinating. That’s what you’ll be doing. If you’re in, that is,” he said, smiling. “By the time the Council and GeneSys find out what’s going on, it will be too late. The genie will be out of the bottle.”
“But there are billions of zombies out there. Are we supposed to kill them all?”
“I know it seems impossible, but what else can we do?” Walter replied. “We kill them all, and it will take a very long time. There are people out there, Miranda, but they’re too vulnerable and isolated to do anything on their own. When they hear what we’re doing—and they will—they’ll find us. They’ll join us, and the days of the Council will be numbered. I don’t know how long it will take, but we will rid the world of zombies, God willing.”
Miranda looked at Father Walter, who had given her refuge when the world ended. He was more of a father to her than her own had ever been. Walter had been there when she needed him. He had never let her down. She wanted so much to believe what he was telling her, to believe she was hearing a plan that could be realized, not a delusional pipe dream.
“You are one crazy-ass optimist, Father Walter,” she said finally. “You’ve either gone batshit crazy or you’re going down in the history books as the guy who pulled humanity’s ass out of a sling.”
“Ach, Miranda, your language! You’d make a sailor blush, you would.” Walter shook his head as if he could dislodge the profanities from his ears. “Anyone as smart as you should have a better ability to express herself.”
“I do. Swearing is just more fun.”
Walter looked at Miranda narrowly, his expression halfway between amusement and exasperation. “So I take it you’re in?”
“You bet I’m in. Worst case scenario, I get a high school named after me.”
“And you can you work with Connor?” Walter persisted, more serious. “You can settle whatever you need to settle?”
“Already done. You can count on me.”
Walter stood, then bent to kiss the top of her head. “I can always count on you. You’re a good girl, Miranda.”
“I’m twenty-nine years old!” she protested, laughing. “When do I stop being a girl?”
“Never, as far as I’m concerned. You’re a youngster compared to an old man like me.”
Miranda threw back the afghan and began to get up.
“Where do you think you’re going? You have a concussion. Doc said you’re to rest.”
“Are you serious? There must be a zillion things to do.”
“We have six weeks, give or take, before we’ll be ready to go. There’s nothing for you to do just now.”
“You tell me the most exciting news I will ever get and I’m supposed to lie here in bed?”
“I suppose not,” Walter allowed. “Unless you want Doc making good on the psych ward.”
Damn. He had her there.
“I forgot about that. You don’t really think he’d do it, do you?”
“You can never be too careful where Doc is concerned.”
Miranda sighed, annoyed and frustrated. “Fine. I’ll stay here, doing nothing.”
“I’ll put out word to leave you be,” Walter replied, looking far too pleased with her predicament for Miranda’s liking. “Try to rest, a ghrá, even if you can’t sleep.”
She smiled when he called her by the Gaelic endearment that meant “my love.” The first time he had done so, as she lay injured in the Cowell Health Center following an expedition that had gone very wrong, she had asked what it meant. After explaining its meaning, Walter had shyly confessed it was what his grandmother had called him.
Walter stopped at the door when she asked, “How long have you known he wasn’t a priest?”
He turned back to face her. “Before, Miranda. I knew before.”
Miranda absorbed the news for a moment. “What am I supposed to say to him? ‘You dumped my ass to be a priest, but it’s nice to see you again? Guess the whole God thing didn’t work out?’”
Walter smiled. “You’re asking for wisdom from my vast stores of relationship experience, are you? Why don’t you see what he has to say?”
“What if I don’t want to hear it?”
“Trust your instincts, Miranda. They’ll never steer you wrong.”
She considered his advice for a moment, then slumped against the pillow in resignation.
“You need to rest, Miri, and you don’t need to figure it out today.”
Another quick smile and he left. Miranda set her empty teacup on the nightstand and took another pain pill. Probably not so good for her brain, but she wasn’t taking it to feel high. It might stop her mind racing. She burrowed under the covers and wondered who was watching Delilah, realizing too late she should have asked Father Walter to bring her up.
“A world without zombies,” she whispered. She surprised herself by being unable to envision it. She had lived over half of her life in that very place but it felt like a fairy tale. A world without zombies was on par with girls who desired nothing more than to meet their handsome prince, by glass slipper or dwarf or True Love’s First Kiss and live happily ever after.
Fairy tales are pretty but they never come true, no matter how much you want or wish it, she thought drowsily. A wave of sleepiness caressed her as the painkiller kicked in, pulling her down, down, down.
We might as well be off to see the Wizard.
10
It was too weird, all of it, like being in a time warp. Phones, cars, electricity. People didn’t shut and lock doors and forget to turn the lights off when they left a room. It wasn’t as if things hadn’t changed; of course they had. Just not enough. It creeped Connor out.
“What are the crosses for?” Seffie asked.
They stood in front of the Mission Church. Two clusters of simple wooden crosses were staked on either side of the central walkway that led to the entrance.
“Oh,” Connor said, looking more closely at the names painted on them. “The ones here on the right are for the Salvadoran Jesuit martyrs.”
“Martyrs?” Seffie’s voice brimmed with skepticism.
“As in died for a cause, yes. The ones with S.J. after their names were Jesuit priests who taught at the University of Central America in El Salvador. The other two crosses are for their housekeeper and her daughter. The Salvadoran military murdered them.”
“Huh,” Mike said. “That’s pretty harsh.”
“This other group is also priests,” Seffie said, having moved away to inspect the other cluster of crosses. “They have the S.J., too. What does S.J. mean?”
“S.J. is for Society of Jesus, the name of the Jesuit order,” Connor explained. “I don’t know these names except for Gilbert Martinez. He led SCU before Father Walter did. These must be the people killed when the City attacked SCU.”
Seffie nodded. “That was about the vaccine, right?”
“Yeah,” Connor replied. “The Jesuits said they wouldn’t supply the City with food from the vertical farms if they reneged on the vacci
ne being free. The City had a huge crop failure that year, so they attacked the Jesuits. The raid didn’t succeed, but things got out of hand.”
“Doug, Father Doug, was telling me about it last night,” Mike offered, his voice tinged with amusement. “He said your girlfriend was a big part of the reason it failed.”
Connor rolled his eyes. Mike had been teasing him without mercy since hearing about his dramatic reunion with Miranda.
“She’s not my girlfriend, and yes, that’s what I heard, too. Apparently, Doug was no slouch himself.”
Mike ignored Connor’s deflection. “But you’d like her to be your girlfriend. Don’t lie, Connor. God hates a coward.”
Connor shot him a disgusted look. “You suck, Mike.”
“You got him!” Seffie crowed, giving Mike a high five. Mike’s friendship, including his many amusements at Connor’s expense, seemed to be the only thing that smoothed out Seffie’s abrasiveness.
Connor endured their combined laughter. “So, do you two want the campus tour or not?”
“I’m only teasing, man; don’t be so defensive,” Mike snorted, then added, “Tthe ladies don’t like it.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” Connor deadpanned.
“These roses are great,” Seffie said, stopping to smell a flower at one of the hundreds of rose bushes that lined the paths. “And they’re everywhere! I’m surprised they kept them. They must use a lot of water.”
“I don’t think they use that much,” Connor answered. “Besides, they’re kind of a tradition. Anyone who’s been here remembers the roses.”
Connor led them under the long wisteria arbor adjacent to the Mission Church. There were bullet holes and scorch marks, but not one new beam.
“What is it?” Mike asked him.
“I don’t see any beams that look like replacements,” Connor said.
“So it hasn’t changed much.”
“No, it hasn’t,” Connor replied, uneasy. “All these gardens were lawns before, and nothing was fortified like it is now. A few buildings are gone. But no, it’s so much like I remember that it’s kind of creepy. It’s almost like the ZA didn’t happen here.”