by A. M. Geever
Kendall glowed under her praise, like a child who had pleased his favorite teacher. He was so attention-starved, and clearly suffering from extended solitude. Solitary confinement, really, despite the luxe trappings. She had a sneaking suspicion that he hadn’t been super skilled with people at the best of times, never mind expressing himself well to strangers after an extended period of time alone. Perhaps she’d been a little too hard on him last night. She should give him the benefit of the doubt, especially now that sugar and chocolate had been thrown into the mix.
Alec joined them, sauntering in from the dining area.
“That’s an incredible library you’ve got there, Kendall,” he said. “Have you read it all?”
Again, Kendall blinked like an owl. “All the print books, yes, but not the e-books. There are over ten thousand of them. I’m still working my way through.”
“I’m impressed,” Alec said, taking what had been Kendall’s seat without realizing it. He looked at Rich. “There’s a lot of non-fiction there. Some of those history and philosophy books are not easy reading.”
Kendall stood by the couch, looking awkward and out of place.
“Sit with us, Kendall,” Miranda said, gesturing to the cushion between her and Phineas. “He can move his feet.”
Kendall started to blush. Phineas jumped to the center spot, next to Miranda.
“Take mine, Kendall,” he said. His voice became teasing as he leaned against her. “I wanna sit next to my best girl.”
Miranda shook her head and jabbed him with her elbow, nudging him away to create a more reasonable space between them. She put a square of the chocolate in her mouth, letting it melt on her tongue, the silky feeling warming her like a long-lost friend. Oh my God, she thought. She’d forgotten how buttery it tasted, even with the slightly bitter undertaste because this was the fancy seventy percent cacao stuff. She waited until the taste faded into a memory before taking a sip of the coffee, knowing she needed to keep the grimace off her face. To her surprise, the coffee was good. Really good. She’d put in a lot of milk and sugar, but even so, that usually wasn’t enough. Kendall sat at the other end of the couch, his blush beginning to fade.
“Don’t mind Phineas,” Rich said. “He’s annoying, but he’s harmless.”
Miranda said, “This is really good. I don’t usually like coffee, but I like this.”
Kendall looked at her, stricken. “You don’t like coffee? I would have made tea.”
“Honestly, this is—”
“You don’t have to drink coffee. If you don’t want.”
“This is very good,” she assured him. “I’m glad I kept my mouth shut. I wouldn’t have tried it otherwise.”
“I can still make tea,” Kendall said weakly.
Oh boy, she thought. She glanced to Alec, who shrugged.
“Kendall,” she said. She waited until he looked at her. Glanced at her, really, before looking back to his feet. “Thank you.”
He said nothing, just blinked like an owl.
An awkward silence descended before Rich said, “What were you reading in the library, Alec?”
“I browsed, mostly.”
The conversation turned to the books in the library. Once the topic of conversation changed from being about him, Kendall relaxed. Miranda slurped down her coffee and fixed another. She really needed to not be buzzed for this.
“You know who tells good stories?” Phineas said. He patted Miranda’s knee. “This lovely lady. In fact, there are a few really good ones about the two of us.” His voice was suggestive, and the merriment that danced in his eyes made Miranda laugh so hard she almost spit out her coffee.
“Are you talking about the time I left you with a broken leg and told you we’d go on a date not in your lifetime, or the time I told you that you are, in fact, way too young for me?”
Everyone laughed, even Kendall, though his was tentative. His eyes darted from person to person anxiously, like he wasn’t sure he was participating in the conversation at an acceptable level.
“I’m gonna wear you down one day,” Phineas said, undeterred.
“Dream on.”
She glanced at Kendall and was surprised to see that his eyes had narrowed. He looked at Phineas, the vibe distinctly unfriendly.
“Do you ever think about going outside?” Alec asked.
“Me?” Kendall squeaked, looking at Alec as if he’d just suggested he cut off his head. “No, it’s dangerous. And I’m…not much of a fighter.” His voice trailed, embarrassment filling his face. “That’s why I built this place,” he continued, a touch of smugness creeping into his voice. It made him sound more like the asshole Miranda had spoken with last night, the one who thought he’d been smarter than everyone else.
“I can teach you that stuff,” Alec said, as if it was the best idea he’d ever had. “I was a reporter. If I can learn, you can, too.”
Kendall didn’t say anything. He stole glances at Alec, surreptitiously appraising his body as if he were checking him out as a romantic prospect. He might be, Miranda realized, except Kendall’s reaction to her suggested otherwise.
“Would you like to come back with us?” Rich asked. “You must miss people. We don’t have to tell anyone where you came from.”
Kendall picked at the seam of his jeans. “I’m not sure…”
His voice was high and sounded not panicked, but definitely uncomfortable, and high on the discomfort scale at that. They’d make the same offers of assistance and friendship no matter what. Even though the guys were only asking questions and making offers that were low stakes to them, Miranda could see that they were frightening for Kendall to contemplate. She frowned at Rich and Alec, giving her head a subtle shake.
“I haven’t seen a movie, like in a theater, in years. I wouldn’t mind watching one,” she said to Kendall. “If you’re up for it.”
Kendall nodded. “Sure, I’ll turn the system on.” He practically jumped up and ran from the lounge.
“I’m going to go to the bathroom and grab a snack first. I’ll be right there,” Miranda called after him.
“He is one weird dude,” Phineas said when Kendall was out of earshot.
“He’s not weird,” Miranda said. “He’s just not used to people.”
Rich sighed. “I guess we overwhelmed him. That wasn’t my intention.”
“Thinking about learning to fight and go outside was probably too much at the same time,” Alec said. He looked at Miranda, a twinkle in his eye. “He seems to have taken a shine to you.”
She stood, picking up the tray that held the accoutrements for her coffee. “Try not to be fourteen, Alec.”
“I keep telling her what a babe she is, but she doesn’t believe me,” Phineas said to Alec. “My girl doesn’t realize she’s a stone-cold fox.”
“I am not your girl,” Miranda said, walking to the kitchen.
Their teasing made her uncomfortable. She didn’t want some needy, reclusive, tech gazillionaire mooning after her, and she didn’t need them encouraging him. She stopped in her tracks and turned around. “You guys are coming to watch the movie, right?”
“I’ll come,” Rich said.
“Are you sure, Rich? Three’s a crowd,” Alec asked. That sly smile played at the corners of his mouth. He looked at Miranda and winked, then looked back to Rich. “You don’t want to be cramping your man’s style.”
“Yes, he does,” Miranda said.
“Ah, well.” Alec sighed. “Your romantic assignation will have to wait, Ms. Levi.”
He shot her such a devilish grin, his Rs rolling so much he sounded like he was purring. She felt her cheeks flame with heat. Of all the times to blush… Now he’d never stop.
“Her last name is Tucci,” Phineas said to Alec.
“Oh, is it?” he said, all innocence. “My mistake.”
She turned on her heel, heading for the kitchen. He is trouble, she thought, wondering exactly what kind of trouble Alec might be.
“Take him.”
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Her annoyance bubbled over into anger.
“No.”
Mario glared at her. “Take the baby, Miranda. You have to. He’s yours.”
But she didn’t want to take the baby. She wanted Mario to keep the wriggling bundle wrapped in the blanket that he held out to her. Chubby pink arms waved from within the blankets, and tiny dimpled fingers flexed, catching nothing but air.
“You never wanted him,” she spat, so angry she could barely speak. “You never wanted him, and now you’re giving him to me?”
Mario sighed. He had that impatient look on his face, the one that set her teeth on edge.
“Look, Miranda,” he said, his tone reasonable. “This is your baby, and you have to take him. That’s all there is to it.”
He thrust the baby against her, her arms instinctively catching him as Mario dumped him against her.
“You never loved him! You never cared! You never wanted him,” she shouted, so angry she felt like a bomb about to explode.
Mario didn’t answer. He just stood there, looking at her impassively. The baby wriggled against her, mewling. She pushed the blanket away from his face and gasped. The world around her warped and stretched, because it wasn’t her baby. It wasn’t even a baby, like Mario had insisted, but a zombie. Black veins spider-webbed its gray, translucent skin. Clouded eyes roamed in directions they shouldn’t in the little eye sockets. It mewed and gurgled, clutching at her with emaciated, rotten fingers.
She flung it away, recoiling, and stumbled back against a dresser. She hit the corner, causing her hip to flare with pain. The zombie baby writhed on the floor.
“What are you doing?” Mario cried. “You killed him!”
She turned her head, catching sight of herself in the mirror, and froze. The reflection wasn’t her. But it was, she realized, just not the her she was used to, because of the blackened, split lips, and the gray skin sagging away from the bones of her skull, the hollows under her cheeks and eyes, exaggerated to the point of gauntness. Spidery lines of black streaked her neck and face. Her eyes were cloudy, but she could still see. She was looking at a zombie, but she still felt like herself.
Mario crouched on the floor, moaning as he rocked the small bundled figure.
“Miranda, you killed him.” He looked up, his anguished eyes meeting hers. “You killed our baby. Look at yourself! This is all your fault.”
She looked at herself in the mirror, then touched her hands to her face. Her skin felt spongy. She pressed her finger against her cheek and it poked right through, like it was a piece of cotton candy. The hard enamel of her teeth clicked against her fingernail.
“I’m a zombie,” she whispered, terror sucking her breath from her lungs.
“Why did you do this?” Mario said. “Why did you kill the baby?”
She looked at him, stunned that he hadn’t seemed to notice that she was a zombie. On the outside, anyway, because she still felt like herself on the inside. Is this what they were? Was the person still inside, watching helplessly as the zombie it had become devoured the living? She looked down at the tiny figure bundled in the blankets at Mario’s feet. It was moving, and it wasn’t a zombie. She could see the chubby pink arms, the dark-brown eyes, the rounded cheeks and toothless smile. Mario hadn’t noticed that the baby he kept insisting she’d killed was alive.
She opened her mouth to tell him, but all she could manage was a moan. Low and deep and like no sound she’d ever made before. It sighed out of her mouth. She never stopped to take a breath between one moan and the next. He still didn’t understand, still didn’t see that the baby was alive. She raised her arm to point, but her stomach felt so hollow that she couldn’t remember why she’d raised her arm in the first place. Hunger gnawed her insides, strong and sharp and so painful—too painful to bear. She couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten. All she knew was that she was ravenous.
Mario still shouted at her, but she could barely hear him. The baby was still on the floor and had kicked itself out of the blanket. Her hunger intensified a millionfold. It felt like it would swallow her whole. And the baby was beautiful…so pink and plump. It smelled like ambrosia. How had she never noticed before? She stumbled to Mario and the baby, falling to her knees.
“All of this is your fault,” Mario said.
She leaned closer, the smell of her baby sweet, like a soft summer day when the sun is warm. She leaned closer, her lips brushing his warm, butter-soft cheek, and opened her mouth.
* * *
She woke choking and gagging on her terror. She didn’t know what was wrong, what was so frightening, only that she was so afraid she didn’t dare open her eyes. Tears leaked from beneath her closed eyelids, making cold tracks down her temples. Her heart pounded like a bass drum, the vibrations of every thump rumbling through her body. She hocked like something was caught in her throat, until finally, whatever it was that had been clogging her windpipe suddenly wasn’t. Blood roared in her ears, drowning out everything but the rumbling beat of her heart.
She jerked and cried out when something touched her hand, before realizing it was only Delilah snuffling and licking, whining as if to comfort her. If Delilah’s here, it must be okay, she thought, beginning to cry harder. I must be okay, I must be okay, I must be okay, she repeated, trying to work up the nerve to open her eyes, for terror still lingered at the edges of her consciousness, reluctant to release its hold.
When she finally cracked her eyes open a full minute later, by just the barest of slits, her lungs had almost quit shuddering when she drew in a breath. The thump of her heart had faded enough that the blood it pumped wasn’t the only thing she could hear and feel.
The curved concrete ceiling was above her. The indirect lighting glowed along the base of the wall like a nightlight. She was still in the bunker. She sat up, pulling her knees to her chest, as the dream rushed back. She gagged, as if to spit out the chunk of the baby she had torn off with her teeth. Her chest swelled with heartache, the pain so sharp and deep that she could feel it turning to pulp. Her head felt like it could split as easily as an overripe melon falling to the ground. She pressed her forehead into her knees, holding them tight, and rocked in place.
It had been so vivid, so real, almost more than the waking world. She’d only had a glass of wine with dinner, since they were leaving in the morning. She’d had a hard time getting to sleep, and now, the dream. The nightmare, she thought, wondering why she always thought of them as dreams. Dreams were supposed to be good. They sustained you through the hard times with the promise of better things to come. Nothing about these were what dreams were supposed to be, but still, that’s always how she thought of them.
She took a deep breath, then lifted her head and scrubbed her face. She squinted at her watch: 4:13 a.m. Almost four hours of sleep, which wasn’t good, but wasn’t horrible, either. They were leaving in a few hours and she couldn’t sleep now. Wouldn’t even try, for fear of what might be waiting for her.
She climbed out of the bed and pulled on one of the nice bunker tee shirts and a pair of yoga pants. She like how the soft, stretchy fabric of the yoga pants hugged her curves, and the V-neck of the shirts showed off the swell of her breasts. She spent practically her entire waking life—and sometimes her sleeping one—dressing for utility and safety because of zombies. It was nice to dress for something else. It was nice to show off her curves and remind herself that she was still desirable enough to catch the eye of most anyone, despite everything that had happened in the past year. Not that there had been anyone since she and Mario split up, but there could be, if she wanted.
She took Delilah to the small garden dome, where Kendall had said it would be okay for her do her business. She went to the kitchen to grab a snack—milk chocolate. She’d been eating the chocolate—dark and milk—nonstop, along with drinking the wine. Like a junkie on a bender, she gobbled it down until it almost made her sick. How Kendall’s hadn’t spoiled, she didn’t know and didn’t care.
Chocolate mel
ting on her tongue, she headed for the large garden dome. She hoped Kendall wasn’t there. She could creep away if he was, she supposed, and go back to the small one, but she liked the big one better. It felt less subterranean, which was probably why Kendall favored it, too. She just wanted to sit where it was green and try not to think about the dream. Sometimes, she was so angry at Mario when she woke up that it took all day to let it go. The anger she’d felt after losing the baby, her fury at Mario that she still didn’t entirely understand, would be there, resurrected as if it hadn’t begun to take any time off. Other times, like now, she was just massively freaked out. Dreams like the doozy she’d just had, the ones where she woke scared out of her mind, stuck around—sometimes for days—like the worst hangover ever. They unnerved her, leaving her jumpy as a cat.
She took a deep breath as the air turned moist in the garden dome. Earth and green and moisture—the best smell there was. She could tell immediately that Kendall was present. He had a habit of talking to himself, and she could hear his voice. She already talked to herself, just not as loud as Kendall did, so no weirdness points there.
A recording began to play. She signaled Delilah to stay. Kendall stood at the potting table working on another set of small plants. The recording wasn’t instrumental, just voices. She couldn’t pick out the words; it was another language, Latin maybe? He sang along, his voice, a rich, bright tenor, and surprisingly expressive. Despite the fact that it didn’t look like anything had been done to improve the acoustics, the music filled the dome without echoing. The voices soared—soprano, tenor, alto, and bass—intertwining like intricate lace. The melodies and harmonies rose and fell, their counterpoint to one another perfectly balanced as they moved together before separating, only to join and coil around one another once more, like lovers.
Miranda stood, transfixed, listening to angels, because this was how they sounded—just like this. They had to sound like this, because she couldn’t imagine anything more beautiful than what she was hearing right now. She closed her eyes, listening to Kendall’s voice rise and fall along with the others, with a grace so light, so tender, so transcendent, her heart ached. She didn’t know when she began to weep, unable and unwilling to move or wipe away the tears, or anything else that might break the spell of this magic she had stumbled upon.