Reckoning in an Undead Age

by A. M. Geever

  Rupert and Adam, whose voice Doug hadn’t been able to place outside, looked at him blankly. Adam looked to Rupert, unsure what to make of Doug’s declaration. A second later, Rupert’s booming laugh filled the kitchen.

  “Ha! That’s a good one! Of course she is!” Still chuckling, Rupert said to Skye, “I thought Doug’s formation was too short. Well, it was too short, but never mind. He never misses a chance to pull my leg. A real joker, this one.”

  Doug stared at Rupert, stunned. Of all the reactions he’d envisioned, this had not been one of them.

  “No, no, Rupert,” Doug said. He chanced a quick glance at Skye. “She really is my girlfriend. I’m leaving the priesthood.”

  Rupert looked at Doug, then Skye. He opened his mouth, then closed it. Then he said, sounding annoyed, “Well, of course she is. I told Walter your formation was too short, but did he listen to me?”

  Skye squinted up at Rupert. “I hope you won’t hold it against me.”

  “What?” Rupert said, sounding genuinely surprised. “You seem perfectly lovely, my dear.” He flapped his hand at Doug. “I always knew this one wasn’t going to last.”

  Doug felt a little light-headed. Not from relief, but because he’d been holding his breath without realizing it. He exhaled heavily and took a shallow breath. He saw Tessa lean in to Mario and say softly, “Pay up.”

  “That went better than I thought it would,” Doug said. “You kind of freaked me out by laughing, Rupert. I figured you’d flip out, not think it was a joke.”

  Rupert almost cracked a smile. “It’s too late, and I’m too old to get worked up over the state of your vows. That’s between you and God, and thank God for it! Like I have the time or energy to deal with your…” He waved his hand at them in a vague sort of way without bothering to finish his sentence.

  “I told you,” Skye said, giving Doug a smile, and goddamn if she wasn’t prettier than ever.

  “There are more important things going on,” Rupert said. If Doug hadn’t known better, he’d have said Rupert’s tone was testy, and given that it was Rupert, that would be an entirely reasonable assumption. But it was more than that. Rupert looked anxious, as if he wasn’t happy to the bearer of the news he had for them.

  Rupert pulled out the free chair at the table and sat, motioning for Doug to do the same. He leaned in, his eyes serious.

  “Has Adam told you the situation here?”

  “No,” Doug said.

  “We know Dominic ended up on top with the Council, but that’s all,” Mario added.

  “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you,” Rupert said, clearly distressed. “But SCU has fallen.” He paused at the gasps, and Doug’s cry of ‘What?’ before continuing. “The City attacked the night you left, but we repelled them. They tried again two months later, and we repelled them then, too, but the third time…” He shrugged. “They sent us packing. Killed sixteen priests. The rest are in hiding like we are, or locked up.”

  “What?” Doug said, horrified. He could feel the blood draining from his face. The Jesuit community wasn’t that big to begin with. Sixteen dead? “Who?” he asked, then added, feeling as if the floor was opening up below him, “Was Walter one of them?”

  “No, no,” Rupert said. “Walter went into hiding, but they caught up with him last month. There’s a trial happening now, a real dog and pony show. We’ve been trying to come up with a plan to get him out because there will only be one verdict—guilty.”

  “Jesus,” Mario said. “How long do we have to get him?”

  “A week, at most,” Rupert answered. “We’re finalizing the details of a rescue now.”

  “Who’s in charge of it?” Doug demanded, fear thrumming through his body like a storm on high seas. “Where are they holding him?”

  “I’m running the rescue op,” Adam said. “Walter is at the Westin hotel.”

  “They’re not using the county jail anymore?” Doug asked.

  Adam shook his head. “All the ‘high value prisoners’ are at the Westin or the city jail. There was a problem at the county jail a few months back. Zombies got in and…” He shrugged. “It was a bit of a shit show, from what I hear. Besides, downtown they can walk him to the plaza, make a real production of it.”

  “Zombies got into a jail?” Tessa asked, sounding incredulous.

  “The county jail is outside the walls,” Doug answered. “To keep people from trying to escape.”

  “Jesus,” Tessa whispered, looking horrified.

  Skye looked at him in frank disbelief. “I believed you when you said things were bad here, but…” She shivered as her voice trailed away.

  “What about my family?” Mario asked. “Where are they?”

  Rupert looked to Mario, his mouth twisting into a pained frown. Doug watched the color drain from Mario’s face.

  “Your family’s okay, Mario,” Rupert said. “But your brother took them back to Palo Alto and moved into your house with them. His husband is with them, too. Emily’s under lock and key, the children a little less so, from what we can tell.”

  Mario’s head dropped into his hands. “I knew it,” he said softly, venomously. He looked up, his eyes blazing with murderous anger. “I knew he’d do something.”

  “We’ll get them out,” Doug said, willing Mario to believe him. “You can’t run off and do something stupid, Mario. We’ll get them out, but we’ve got to be smart about this. All of it.”

  “Of course we will,” Skye said. She reached over and took Mario’s hand in her own. “Your brother didn’t succeed at home. He won’t here, either.”

  Mario didn’t say more, but Doug didn’t care for the look in his eye. He hadn’t really believed it when Mario had threatened to kill his brother before, but looking at him now, he wasn’t so sure.

  Turning to Rupert, Doug said, “Tell us everything.”

  Mario climbed the stairs to the bedroom where Violet slept, a plan already taking form. He looked at his watch: almost two in the morning. What he wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep, but that wasn’t an option anymore. He knew Doug would be pissed when he discovered what Mario planned to do, but he had to do it, and do it now. Waiting wasn’t an option he could live with.

  But there was one thing he needed to do first.

  He walked down the dark hallway to the room where Violet slept and eased the door open. The nightlight by her bed cast distorted shadows that ended almost where they began along the edge of the small circle of light. Violet lay on her stomach, thumb in her mouth. She’d started the thumb sucking after he’d tried to leave her behind at the Castello. Mario didn’t care about the thumb sucking, but what it signified—regression from him almost leaving her behind. With a little luck and lot of consistency, he’d do his best to help her feel more secure.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and took a moment. Long dark lashes dusted the edge of her closed eyes like a fringed fan. Lightly, he set his hand on her shoulder, felt the warmth of her sleeping form, but didn’t lean over her.

  “Violet,” he said, his voice low. “Violet, wake up.”

  Violet opened her eyes, then bolted upright. He’d found out the hard way, with the crack of her head against his cheek or forehead, that most of the time she woke up completely, immediately, and ready to flee.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. Everything’s okay,” he said. She looked at him and yawned. Mario took her small hand in his. “I have to go out for a little while. I probably won’t be back until late tomorrow night. Maybe even after you’ve gone to bed, but I don’t want you to worry.”

  She cocked her head to the side, looking worried anyway. “Where are you going?”

  “I have to go see my other kids, your brothers and sisters. The ones you haven’t met yet.”

  She frowned. “They can’t come here?”

  Mario shook his head. “Not right now. That’s why I have to go to where they are. Doug and Skye will take care of you until I get back.” Violet’s eyes began to fill with apprehension. Mari
o squeezed her hand. “I’m not leaving you behind, sweetheart. That’s why I woke you up to tell you.”

  She didn’t say anything for a few moments, then said, hope and fear mixed together, “Are you really coming back?”

  Mario sighed, the leaden feeling of failure blooming inside his chest. He’d made his share of parenting mistakes, but never as badly as he’d screwed up with Violet. He gave her the only answer he could, along with a silent prayer that it would be the truth.

  “I’m really coming back.” He almost said I promise. It was on the tip of his tongue, pounding against the inside of his teeth, but he couldn’t do that to her. He added, “And if for some reason I don’t, it’s not because I didn’t try, or because I don’t want to, but because I can’t.”

  She looked up at him, her face pensive.

  “What is it?”

  “You’d rather be with your own little girl.”

  He shook his head. “No. I want to be with both of my little girls,” he said, tapping the tip of her nose on ‘both.’ “I want all of you together right now, but that’s gonna take a little longer. I love you as much as I love Michael and Anthony and Maureen. As much as I loved Silas. You’re all my kids.”

  “Really?” Violet whispered.

  The tentative hope he saw in her eyes and heard in her voice, that she was as loved as he said, made Mario’s heart ache.

  “Really.” He forced himself to smile, hoping it would reassure her. “You need to go back to sleep now.” Violet lay back against the pillow. Mario pulled the sheet and blanket up, and retucked her into bed. “I’ll wait until you fall asleep,” he said. “And if you’re sleeping when I get back, I’ll wake you up so you know I’m here.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Will you say the good night again?”

  The good night Violet wanted had evolved over the years. Some of it was from he and Emily, some from the kids. He didn’t remember which one of them had added the last bit, probably Michael, the musician. It didn’t matter who had added what. What made it special was that it was theirs. And now it was Violet’s, too. He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. Softly, he recited the words in her ear.

  “Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite. Peace, I love you, and all that jazz.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Mario leaned the bike against the garage wall and pulled the person-sized door that opened to the side yard shut. He’d lost it when he first saw the bikes in the garage, for Silas had wanted one so much. But time and necessity were cruel taskmasters, forcing him to shove it aside and save the sadness for later. Tonight, he had a task to do.

  “You know this is a bad idea, right?”

  Mario took a deep breath, trying to tamp down his body’s fight or flight response, for the voice had startled him. Doug stood in the shadows.

  “I have to make sure they’re all right.”

  “You’re going to get caught, Mario.” The urgency in Doug’s voice implored him to reconsider. “You’re smarter than this.”

  “They’re my kids and their mother. I have to see if they’re okay.”

  “You won’t even get close.”

  “Doug, I have to try.”

  Silence fell between them.

  After half a minute, Doug said, “What am I supposed to tell Violet?”

  “I just told her.”

  Doug’s breath came out in a long, peevish sigh. “Well. You’ve thought of everything.” He gripped Mario’s shoulder. “Good luck, idiot. Don’t get caught or eaten. Or shot.”

  With a bravado he didn’t feel, he said, “I’ll do my best.”

  Two hours later, the long expanse of the Dumbarton Bridge was behind him. Mario had heard it was tricky in the daytime; it was a damn sight trickier at night. The bike’s gears ticked as he navigated across the Bayshore Freeway onto University Avenue. He could hear the moans of zombies in the distance. The white lights along the top of the outer north wall of New Palo Alto looked like the edge of an elevated landing strip. He knew the no man’s land between the inner and outer walls would be as bright as day. Lighting along the outside of the outer wall was enough to see if zombies approached, but would expose him as well.

  He slowed when he crossed the intersection at Cowper Street. His house was almost two miles down Cowper. If he could ride the bike straight there, it wouldn’t even take ten minutes. He pedaled through the ruins of Palo Alto’s old commercial strip, passing restaurants and clothing stores, cell phone vendors and the Apple Store. God, he’d hated the Apple Store…always so busy that it felt like a circle of hell.

  He ditched the bike at the intersection with Bryant Street. If he managed to pull this off, it would be waiting for him when he returned. He walked down the dark road, toward the concrete wall with its bright strip of lights. He pulled a baseball cap from his back pocket and slipped it on. It wasn’t much, but it would shield his face a little.

  When it came to security, Mario had to admit that New Palo Alto mostly had its shit together, but that didn’t mean there weren’t chinks. The settlement’s walls took the path of least resistance, built along streets and freeways, but there were two places where only a single wall had been built. The stretch along the Bayshore Freeway was a single wall because of the wetlands on the other side.

  The other place where there was a single wall was because of a unique feature: the emergency evacuation exit. That exit was a tunnel large enough for a semi to drive through at the north end of Alma Street, built under the wall. Nothing could get through its blast doors, so Mario wouldn’t go near it. The single wall started three blocks northeast of the exit, along Emerson Street. A regular, vehicle-sized emergency exit had been built into that section of the single wall and was sheltered from view where the inner and outer walls merged. The idea was someone could get outside quickly in case the blast door controls had to be operated manually from the outside. Why it was three blocks away, Mario didn’t know. He’d never gotten a straight answer to that, and figured someone had fucked up and then decided to pretend it had been the plan all along. It was blocked by a bunch of shrubs on the inside ‘to keep it low profile,’ which would render it difficult to use at best, but whatever—it had been built before his time there.

  The chink wasn’t this second, secret emergency exit as much as who knew about it. Only Security and Council members living in New Palo Alto were supposed to know of its existence, but human nature being predictable, spouses and other romantic partners knew about it, too. Mario had told Emily immediately after learning of its existence, and insisted she learn how to monitor it. It had freaked her out at first, but there was no way he was going to keep an escape route from her.

  Security hadn’t wanted any civilians knowing about this smaller emergency exit, but members of the Council were used to getting their way. The ensuing half-assed solution that left everyone unhappy had been to make the alarms on that door so sensitive that they sent false breach warnings all the time. Mario had been the only Council member who really paid attention to it in addition to the three dedicated security guys. They did their job well but considered the door glitchy. Glitchy didn’t instill a sense of urgency in anyone, just annoyance, which Mario knew firsthand. The whole thing was stupid, an accident waiting to happen, but wasn’t that the story of every impenetrable fortress until it fell?

  Mario had put a back door in the access code system for this door, one only he and Emily knew about. He figured his chances were fifty-fifty that anyone had found it. Assuming no one saw him, if he did set off any alarms, it would be put down to glitching.

  Two blocks away he stopped, hiding behind the corner of the ruin that had been Whole Foods Market. The zombie moans seemed louder, but he wasn’t sure if it was real, or if he was just amped on adrenaline. Blood pounded in his ears as he watched and waited. Figures moved along the line of lights at the top. He checked his watch and settled in. After half and hour, they hadn’t deviated from walking by every five minutes. They’d shortened the patrol interval since he
’d left, probably because of all the recent fighting with SCU. He sidled along the building, staying in the shadows. The block after this one had been razed, so once he reached the corner of the building he either ran for the wall or fell back. He figured he had two minutes, maybe, to get inside before the next patrol might see him.

  His breath rasped in and out of his lungs as he watched the next set of head and shoulders walk along the top of the wall. As soon as they vanished from sight, he

  sprinted for the door. Almost immediately, he heard a shout. Fuck, he thought, but kept running. Then the ground around him seemed to erupt, tiny puffs of earth exploding around his feet. He ran, not allowing himself to think about the bullets whizzing around him. A few seconds later, he slammed into the wall. The bullets stopped, the shallow angle of the junction of the outer and inner walls offering a sliver of shadow. Mario sidled over to the keypad, knowing in his heart that it was over. He tapped in the code and pressed enter, expecting nothing to happen.

  The door began to slide open. He squeezed through almost before there was enough room and lunged for the red button that would stop the door opening all the way. Then he pushed it again, and the door closed.

  Already he could hear voices getting closer, and the pounding of boots. Maybe they’d changed the protocol for how many people responded to the alarm. He sprinted down the dark street ahead of him, hard breaths scraping in and out of his lungs. Halfway down the block, he pushed his way through a high boxwood hedge. He gripped the top of the fence behind it and jumped. Pain ripped through his right calf. He grunted, hoisting himself up, and grabbed the limb of an overhanging tree.