by A. M. Geever
Miranda bunny-hopped to the ladder and called above deck. A minute later, Mario peered down.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
He nodded. “The rest of you have been out cold most of the day.” As she opened her mouth, he added, “I got some sleep, don’t worry.”
“Is Connor feeling better?”
Mario shrugged. “Dunno.”
“I’ll check on him.”
But she just stood there, looking up at Mario. For years, without even knowing it, she had felt like a planet knocked off its axis, spinning out of kilter. Now she didn’t.
Shyly, she smiled. “This is much better.”
Her stomach began to quiver, but it wasn’t the unwelcome motion of the sea. A frisson of worry percolated inside her, warning that as much as she loved Mario, she could not afford to trust him.
Mario grinned. “It is.”
Miranda tamped down her anxiety. “I’m going back to sleep after I check on Connor. I won’t puke if I’m sleeping.”
“I’ll be up here,” he said, then raised his head and squinted his eyes at something she could not see. “I gotta get that. Dream sweet.”
Holding on to things to spare her knee, Miranda limped over to where Delilah lay. Connor was not out here, so he must be in the fore cabin. When Miranda brushed past her, Delilah began to whine.
“Quiet, Liley.”
She pushed the door open and stepped through. The cabin was tiny, just two feet between the narrow berth and the closet opposite, and maybe nine feet long. Connor lay on the berth, his head toward the bow. Miranda let go of the door, which swung shut behind her. The portholes in the narrow V-shaped cabin offered scant light. Connor’s wheezy, congested breathing sounded terrible. Whatever he had must have settled in his lungs. Maybe the antibiotics they had would work for Connor, too.
“Connor?”
She turned on the reading lamp on the wall above him. Connor lay on his side, his back to her.
“Connor?” she said again, touching his shoulder. “How are you feeling?”
Connor stirred. “Like crap,” he whispered. He coughed wetly and rolled onto his back. On the other side of the door, Delilah began to growl. When the light shone on Connor’s drawn face, Miranda froze. Icy shock coursed through her veins, so overwhelming she felt dizzy.
She knew if she touched his forehead that his flushed face would not feel feverish, but cool. His sunken eyes were wreathed with bruise-dark circles. Labored breaths passed over his peeling lips and chattering teeth. Already he looked diminished. He coughed again, but it wasn’t just wetness she heard. A wheeze, almost a moan, hummed beneath the sound, undergirding the cough like subfloor.
Connor had been infected by a zombie.
His symptoms were classic. So was Delilah’s reaction, which hadn’t registered with everything else going on: the shelling, the ambush, the bite Mario received. The infection should have overwhelmed Connor’s immune system quickly, but it hadn’t. Somehow, impossibly, he had been dying by inches.
“That bad?” he wheezed, struggling to keep his eyes open.
Miranda opened her mouth, but nothing came out. How could this be? Connor would never hide a bite from them. He might hate her right now, but he would never endanger her like this.
He doesn’t know, she realized, a coherent thought penetrating the maelstrom raging inside her brain. She looked around the room for a weapon. Connor’s clothes, boots, and holster sat in a jumble on the floor beside the berth. She ripped the pile apart, but neither his assault rifle nor his handgun were there.
Doug stowed all the weapons in the cockpit, she remembered, heart sinking into her stomach.
Miranda straightened up and pivoted to the door, the stab of pain in her knee barely registering through her fear. She had to get out of the cabin. She would get Mario and Doug, and they would take care of Connor together.
She jumped when Connor’s hand clasped her wrist.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, pulling away, but his grip tightened.
When Miranda turned back, Connor stood inches from her, swaying with the motion of the waves beneath their feet. The labored breathing had ceased. His face no longer looked flushed. His skin seemed to sag from his skull, sunken cheeks grotesquely overemphasizing the bones above. His clouded eyes bored through her, devoid of human sight, of everything that made him Connor.
Only hunger remained.
Miranda shoved, pushing him back into the berth. She twisted away as he fell, trying to break free, to reach the doorknob just a few feet away, but Connor’s grip on her wrist tightened. He dragged her to the floor, smacking her knees against the side of the berth.
Eldritch moaning filled her ears. Delilah’s barking grew more furious on the other side of the door. Connor yanked her hand toward his snapping teeth. She reached out with her free hand, desperation blocking out everything but the will to live. Her hand raked against something pliable, but sturdy. She grabbed it and swung, smacking the side of Connor’s head with the combat boot she now held. She hit him again, full in the face.
Miranda snatched her wrist away, stumbling backward along the berth. She reached behind, feeling for the doorknob, afraid to turn her back on him. Connor lurched upright and lunged, grabbing her by the waist. The impact knocked her on her ass and slammed her against the door. She writhed against him, screaming, kicking her legs to avoid snapping teeth.
She folded the boot’s pliable leather over her hand and shoved it in Connor’s mouth. Bright bolts of pain detonated her fingers now trapped between layers of leather and teeth. Delilah barked and voices shouted. The door nudged against her, but hers and Connor’s weight held it shut.
She pushed her hand trapped inside the boot against his face, bucking against him as he straddled her. His arms began to pull her closer in a grotesque pantomime of sex.
She had to get him off her. She pushed harder with the hand trapped inside the boot, trying to make space between them. The door bucked against her back, almost shoving her into his arms.
“Stop!” she cried, panicked.
She felt the door shudder. Miranda dug her other hand under Connor’s knee and pushed. Relieved of some of his weight, she bent her own leg, pulling her foot to her buttocks to get it flat on the floor. Then she heaved and shoved, pushing off her foot. She roared as she flipped Connor away, but the hand still trapped in his mouth pulled her with him.
Sprawled almost astride him, Miranda grabbed Connor’s hair with her free hand and smashed his head against the floor. The grip of his teeth on her trapped hand stayed vise-tight. Using hands free and trapped she pulled his head toward her and pounded it into the floor. He thrashed beneath her as she pummeled his head over and over. Bloodcurdling moans, banging, shouting, snarling, a ratcheting sound as familiar as it was irrelevant, melded into white noise.
She felt bones crunch with every impact. Black puddles oozed beneath them, spattering her arms. A sour, cloying smell filled her nose as she hammered Connor’s head off the floor.
“Miranda, stop! He’s dead!”
A hand touched her shoulder. She struck out blindly, twisting away. Mario stood in front of her, an axe in one hand. Doug was just beyond, a shotgun hoisted to his shoulder. Half of the door had been hacked away and from somewhere behind Mario and Doug, Delilah’s barking filled the cabin.
“Miri, it’s me. You’re okay.”
Miranda looked into Mario’s anxious face, finally comprehending that he wasn’t a threat. Her hand had come free, revealing crooked, broken fingers. She looked at Connor sprawled beneath her, as if seeing him for the first time. He lay still, his eyes filmed gray, brains spilling out from his battered skull.
Connor had turned, and she killed him. The horrifying knowledge blossomed in her brain, unfurling like a flag in the breeze. Connor, who had loved and come back for her. Who she had loved once, and if things had been different, might have loved again.
She had killed Connor.
A low howl, like an in
jured animal might make, filled the cabin. Even after she realized it was coming from her, she couldn’t stop.
58
They moored in a cove the night before because of the storm. Mario thought they would reach Puget Sound in ten days but warned it might take longer because of the weather.
Miranda sat in what she called the corner, a metal seat built into the corner rail by the swim platform. It was gray again, windy and cold. If the clouds above made good on their threatening color, it would rain soon. The weather was a bummer since she felt less nauseous up on deck, but it was too cold to stay out for long. She was not sure of the time but knew it was early.
“There you are.”
Mario’s head appeared at the top of the ladder from below deck. Holding two steaming mugs in one hand, he climbed into the cockpit. A moment later he joined her, handing off a mug which she took awkwardly on account of her splinted fingers. She took a deep breath, inhaling the coffee’s heady vapor.
“This boat is ridiculous. It has coffee,” she said. “You’re gonna have to drink this, though. I’ll just barf it up.”
“This is a yacht, not a ‘boat,’” Mario said, grinning. “We’re headed for Seattle, coffee capital of Before. Your stomach needs to get with the program. How’s your knee?”
“Still fucked, thanks for asking. How’s your bite?”
Mario pulled up his pant leg. The bite was almost completely healed.
“Nice of them to give real antibiotics. I guess they believed Doug’s story.”
“Father Walter, killer priest,” Miranda snorted, laughing.
Mario budged her over with a nudge of his hip so they could share the seat. He drank their coffee, the silence companionable.
After a while Mario said, “I’ve been thinking.”
“About?”
“Connor.”
He watched her closely, trying to gauge if it was okay to continue.
“And?”
“I think he was infected by that scratch. His chain mail had a chink on the elbow, the same one that looked like the infection point.”
Miranda shivered. She could still see the spidery black streaks that had radiated from the scratch on Connor’s elbow. Mario and Doug had not wanted her to look at his body, but she had overruled them. She needed to know.
“I knew someone who turned, a long time ago,” she said. “His family swore up and down that he was never bitten, that he just got sick. I thought they were lying.”
Mario nodded. “Connor was sick those last twenty-four hours. I thought he was just exhausted like the rest of us but now… He was definitely sick. If he was infected by a scratch, it would take longer to build a high enough viral load to overwhelm his system.”
“He only had the first shot,” Miranda said bitterly, more to herself than Mario. “We left before he could get the second one, but it never occurred to me because he wasn’t bitten.”
Mario sighed. His hand lighted on the back of her neck, thumb stroking her skin. “It’s not your fault, Miranda. Even if we’d had post-bite with us, he didn’t know he’d been infected. We wouldn’t have known to give it in time.”
“I know it’s not my fault,” she whispered, the sudden pressure of tears prickling at the corner of her eyes. She could still feel his skull cracking in her hands. She kept reminding herself that it hadn’t been Connor, that the zombie hadn’t been him. It didn’t help.
She swiped at the tears sliding down her cheeks. “I’ll be okay. It’s just…”
A loud yawn preceded Doug’s head appearing at the top of the ladder from below deck. His hair stuck out in every direction.
“Hey, lovebirds,” he drawled. “Who’s making breakfast?”
A flush of heat made Miranda’s face burn. She still felt shy about Mario. He felt as familiar as her favorite pair of jeans, but she was not used to it, this ‘them’ that had so abruptly reasserted itself. Part of her was still afraid to trust it.
Her retort was good-natured. “The joy you get from teasing me means I never make breakfast again.”
Doug grinned, a wicked gleam in his eye. “So you keep me up all night with those”—his fingers made air quotes—“‘pillow fights’ going on in your cabin but I have to cook?”
“Oh fuck you, go make breakfast,” she snapped.
Doug laughed so hard that he cried. Whether his own jibe or that she had taken the bait again amused him more, Miranda couldn’t tell.
“I’m just saying, don’t shoot the messenger,” Doug said, sounding insincerely aggrieved as he disappeared below deck. “I really hope you’re planning on getting an annulment, Mario, or at least a divorce,” he called up to them. “Because otherwise, the pair of you are definitely going to Hell. I gotta say something cause you know Walter. He might fire me if I don’t.”
They looked at one another, chagrined.
“He’s never going to stop,” she said.
“He’s happy you’re happy, but pass up an opportunity to harass you?” Mario sighed, sounding anxious as he continued. “We’ve been off the grid so long… If we’re lucky, the Jesuits still control Seattle University but with everything that’s happened who knows? We need somewhere to go to ground, and a good lab.”
“If my knee is better by then. I don’t know why I keep letting these priests talk me into this shit.”
“It’s the guilt,” Mario said, laughing.
His piercing brown eyes were so beautiful it almost took her breath away. Miranda forced herself to speak, to say it.
“This scares me,” she whispered, feeling small and childish, hating that she felt so exposed and vulnerable.
Mario’s fingers traced lightly across her chin. “I know. I keep thinking to myself, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’”
A startled peal of laughter erupted from her belly. When she could speak again, she gasped, “That’s reassuring.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking sheepish. “But it’s true.”
Miranda looked at his fading smile, the way it transformed his face, how the crow’s feet around his eyes tempered his intensity.
“You can’t decide things behind my back, or think you know better. This has to be different.”
“It will be,” he said.
“I can’t do it again, Mario. I can’t decide to trust you and—”
“This food won’t eat itself,” Doug called from the galley. “And your dog needs to pee!”
Mario helped her up and wrapped her in an embrace. The wind whistled over their heads, then lulled. The shrill cry of seagulls carried over the water as Jeremiah’s muttered ravings filtered up from below deck.
“I won’t let you down this time, Miri,” Mario said fiercely. “I promise.”
She didn’t know if the love she felt for him, so urgent and needful, was good or bad. It just was, like the sun or time or weather. It could not be controlled or explained or avoided. She had tried that already—it didn’t work. Father Walter had told her to trust her instincts, that they would never steer her wrong. Right now, they were screaming at her to let him in and hang on, even though it felt like jumping off a high-wire knowing there was no net, when it hit her: love is always a leap of faith.
Miranda loosened their embrace enough to look at him. As she smoothed Mario’s wind-whipped hair away from his face, she took a deep breath.
“I’m going to hold you to that.”
* * *
THE END
Keep reading for a sneak peek at Damage in an Undead Age, the second installment of the Undead Age series.
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Damage in an Undead Age - Book 2 of the Undead Age Series. Read it now!
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About the Author
A.M. Geever lives in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, birthplace of the modern zombie genre. She credits her love of all things zombie to her older brothers, whose influence in books, music, and film continues to this day, although her tolerance for puns and movies that are “so bad they’re good” is a whole lot lower than theirs. The idea of becoming a zombie because her car runs out of gas gets her to the gas station when she would rather not bother, and she thinks she has a good chance of surviving the Zombie Apocalypse if she can make it the eighth of a mile to Mueller’s house—otherwise she’s probably toast. Love in an Undead Age is her first novel.
Acknowledgments
There are so many people to thank for their help and support throughout the ridiculously long time (seven years!) that it took me to write this book. Infinite love and gratitude to:
My parents, Eamon & Teresa Geever, for their love, support, example, and encouragement, even if neither of them read this book because zombies are not their cup of tea. Ah well… I’m only sorry that you are not here to see the finished product, Mom. My parents taught me what is important in life: be kind and fair, show up, family is everything, don’t take life too seriously, try not to judge until you’ve walked in that other person’s shoes, and get a good therapist when you need one. But the number one lesson was to work your ass off to fight for justice and equality. They are the only foundation of a truly civilized society, and when regular people work together to make them a reality, we can make the seemingly impossible happen and hold the powerful accountable.
Hugest thanks in the world to my brothers and sisters: Patrick & Marie Geever, Teri Geever & Joe DeSantis, Mick & Nadini Geever, Mary Geever & Bob McNorton, Valerie Lally, Lucy Geever & Laurence Goodby, Joe & Popie Geever, Molly Geever, and Justin Geever & Lauren Millar. My nieces and nephews, who have all been so enthusiastic: Jodi Geever-Ostrowsky & Ben Ostrowsky, Colin, Maxine & Lorelei Geever, Devin Geever (dying was completely bad form, you little fucker, and yes, I based Doug on you), Rachel McNorton & Bill Brandt, Jess McNorton & Andrea Wiernik, John DeSantis, Michael DeSantis, and Owen Geever. I love you all and really am lucky to have the best family in the world.