Damage in an Undead Age

by A. M. Geever

  The smell of coffee wafted close. He looked up to see Alicia walking his way, from the hallway below the main staircase where she had set herself up with a room and a study.

  “Finally calling it quits?” she said. She carried two mugs. When she reached the table, she set one in front of him. “I don’t know how they still manage to find coffee, but I’m glad we have it. Thought I’d bring you some if you were still working. If you didn’t want it, I’d drink it myself.”

  Mario inhaled the nutty, spicy aroma, a little dizzy from the mini head rush it gave him, then took a sip. It felt like liquid gold on his tongue. It was caffeinated, he could tell immediately. But he was so freaking tired he could drink a gallon and still sleep.

  “What are you still doing up?”

  “Reading, but I’m going to bed soon, too.”

  Mario took another sip of coffee, then yawned widely.

  “What are you reading about?”

  “Oh, a lot of things… Just trying to figure out what could break the log jam. Stem—” She stopped abruptly and shrugged. “It’s hard to know what will be the thing we need. We’ll figure it out eventually.”

  “Stem cells will definitely help if we’re still stuck when the baby arrives,” Mario said. “We’ll have plenty then.”

  Everyone who knew tiptoed around the baby, as if mentioning anything about pregnancy or fetal development would upset him. Alicia looked troubled before she schooled her face into a bland expression.

  “What?” he said.

  “Nothing.”

  He didn’t believe her. He raised his eyebrow. “What is it?”

  She scowled, looking reluctant. After a minute of him giving her the stink eye, she said, “Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

  Alarm scraped at the base of skull. Faint, like it was miles away, but it was there. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Just something I’m working on. You’re too tired right now—overtired,” she said, her voice firm. She tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “You’ve been up almost twenty-four hours. Get some rest. I’ll tell you about it in the morning.”

  The alarm was on the same block now, and it was deafening. “What is it?” he demanded.

  She looked at him, plainly trying to make up her mind. Then she sighed. “I did a blood draw every day when Miranda was sick, and I found something.”

  Mario remembered Alicia doing that. Barely.

  “The sicker she got, the more pronounced the anomaly became. I ran every assay I could think of, but I couldn’t identify it. Remember the freezers in the lab by the first monkey enclosure? The ones still running because the backup was solar-powered?”

  “Yeah,” he said softly, bewildered by the pivot she had taken, but knowing in his bones it was bad.

  “One had mice and macaque zygotes and embryos at different stages of early gestation. I…” Her voice became reluctant. “Thawed some. And when I exposed them to Miranda’s blood—”

  Her mouth twisted down. She didn’t want to tell him what was next, and Mario suddenly knew that he didn’t want to hear it. He felt like he’d been gut punched so hard he’d throw up.

  Alicia visibly pulled herself together. “I exposed them, macaque and mouse embryos both. After a few days I could see it in both species, and I had a better idea of what to look for.” She took a deep breath. “Because it was pretty clear that we’re dealing with a teratogen.”

  For one beautiful moment, her words didn’t compute. Then horror engulfed him. Mario felt light as air, like he might come untethered from his body.

  “Tera— what the fuck are you saying, Alicia? You must have contaminated the sample, or—”

  She leaned forward and put her hand over his, her eyes full of pity.

  “The developing limbs were malformed on every single fetus,” she said softly. “Once I knew what to look for—”

  “No.”

  Pictures of babies with stumps of arms and legs filled Mario’s brain. Smiling babies in bassinets, still too young to be teased and ridiculed. Little girls with ribbons in their hair whose truncated arms extended past the short, puffy sleeves of their dresses and ended in hands that were babydoll small, or not there at all. Little boys in their Sunday best, Brylcreem in their hair, whose shirt sleeves and pant legs were pinned back because they were not needed. Children whose parents had lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis and Sputnik’s launch, who saw a wall divide Berlin and President Kennedy’s assassin murdered on live TV. Parents whose children were too young to understand that the drugs given to their mothers for morning sickness had done them this terrible harm.

  Children who never needed shoes, who couldn’t walk or run. Children who would never survive in the world Mario lived in.

  “I want to see the dataset,” he said. “We have to run it again.”

  Gently, Alicia said, “I’ve already done it twice. I’m not wrong.”

  “I’m running it again,” Mario said through gritted teeth. “You must have made a mistake.”

  “You’ve never doubted me before,” she said, her face pinched with puzzlement and sympathy.

  Anger swept over him, a brush fire fanned into an out-of-control wildfire almost instantaneously. Mario slammed his hands on the table, hard enough to tip over the cups of coffee.

  “It’s never been my child before! I don’t need your pity, Alicia. I need you to admit that you’re wrong or shut the fuck up.”

  Alicia flinched away, her eyes wide. Her mouth formed a perfect O of shock.

  “I’m so sorry. I know how much you and Miranda want this baby.”

  Mario felt hot tears run down his face, insatiable grief starting to suck him under until something Alicia had said clicked into place.

  “You want the stem cells,” he said, his voice rising, the booming accusation echoing off the tiled walls and terrazzo floor. “I’ve only just found out she’s pregnant,” he said, shouting now. “And you’ve already moved on to an abortion and harvesting the stem cells?”

  Alicia sat frozen in place, like a rabbit in the path of a wolf. The guy on watch covering the back door had already started walking over but kicked it up to a jog.

  The metal back of the chair Mario had been sitting in felt cool against his hands, then sailed across the lobby and crashed off the wall. The table flipped under his fingertips. The impact from another chair jolted up his arms when he slammed it off the side of the staircase.

  “No,” he shouted with every strike, the jolt of impact traveling up his arms becoming softer as the chair fell apart.

  He stood in the atrium, his chest heaving, his heart pounding, adrenaline overloading his system. And grief, burying him beneath it like an avalanche.

  One of the watchmen stood between him and Alicia, arms out to the side and behind him. A protective posture, to shield her from harm. Where the hell had he been when Miranda and the baby had needed protection?

  “Hey, James,” Rich said, his soft drawl almost musical. “I’m not sure what’s wrong with y’all over here, but how ’bout you tell me about it?”

  Rich held his hands palms up and waist high in front of him. A placating gesture that invited Mario to calm down.

  “I have to tell Miranda,” he said.

  His legs almost gave out, picturing the hope in her eyes snuffed out because of what he had to tell her. Mario searched for Alicia. She stepped out from behind the watchman and crossed to him. Her face was pinched with sympathy as she took his hand in hers.

  “I have to tell her,” he said again. “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “We’ll do it again, okay? We’ll run the tests again and see. Another week or two won’t matter.”

  A sob welled in Mario’s chest. Their tiny, little baby…

  “Okay,” he said, all the fight draining from his body.

  Mario could feel the eyes of every person in the atrium on him. The silence closed in, heavy and suffocating. Rich’s posture was still alert, but his eyes reflected that the worst had passe
d. The storm was over.

  “Let’s get you into bed, okay?” Alicia said, as if she were talking to a small child. “You’re dead on your feet. Get some sleep. We’ll look at the data and run a new assay again tomorrow.”

  “I’m sorry, Alicia,” he whispered, ashamed. Alicia was his friend and his colleague. He had focused his fury on the messenger, not the message.

  Alicia put her hand on his cheek. “It’s okay, James. It’ll be okay.”

  He shook his head, felt tears in his eyes. “No,” he said. “No, it won’t.”

  30

  Miranda held Doug’s hand to her belly. Tadpole kicked. He looked up at her, smiling.

  “You’ve got a soccer player on your hands, Miri.”

  She nodded. “I have to count them. He barely kicked all day yesterday. I was getting a little freaked out. But as soon as I went to eat dinner, he started kicking up a storm.”

  They started down the path through the Big Woods again. Delilah trotted ahead of them, stopping to smell things and peeing to mark the spot. Doug was going to help Skye with her rock-climbing class. Miranda needed to take Delilah on a walk, so she tagged along. If Commander Smith was at the Nature Center, she could thank her for making the ultrasound machine a priority. River had told her this morning that repairs on the one brought back a few days ago were underway. They’d need to wait for Mario in any case. It was too scary to do it without him if—

  Friendly Universe, she reminded herself.

  Doug said, “It’s nice to see you happy, Miri.”

  “Believe it or not, Skye’s book helped.”

  Doug laughed out loud. “You chose the friendly Universe, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she said, feeling embarrassed.

  Doug shook his head, grinning. “Never thought I’d live to see the day that you, of all people, would read a self-help book, never mind take the advice.”

  Miranda shrugged. She had worried herself sick about the bite, about how she could still repel zombies and what it might mean for Tadpole. Skye had been downright pushy when she told her to read the book, the kind of self-help crap Miranda hated, but she read it. She would have done anything to distract herself from the never-ending disaster scenarios her brain kept concocting for the two weeks since she had returned to LO. Most of the book was annoying as fuck, except for the part about choosing what kind of Universe you lived in—friendly or unfriendly.

  Miranda shrugged. “I thought it was stupid at first, to be honest, but then it hit me that I got to choose. And if I get to choose, I figured fuck it, I’m choosing friendly. If I’m going to have a baby, I want it to live in a friendly Universe even if this particular world has gone to hell.” She sighed. “It’s totally cheesy and don’t you dare tell anyone, but it helped.”

  “I’m glad,” Doug said. “And you are having a baby. It just kicked me.”

  “Speaking of Skye,” she said, a teasing note in her voice. “How’s that going? You two are pretty sickening. I threw up in my mouth a little yesterday.”

  Doug shot her a dirty look before kicking at the dirt path as they walked. “I think it’s going okay.”

  Something about his tone…the uncertainty in it. Miranda’s mouth fell open.

  “You haven’t told her yet.”

  “Not in so many words,” he said, sounding like a kid admitting that he had not done his homework.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “I don’t want to rush her, since Brock,” he said, looking unsure.

  “Oh my God,” Miranda said as it dawned on her. “You’re nervous.”

  “Of course I’m nervous! It’s like I’ve made just one New Year’s resolution: Change Whole Life.” Doug sighed. “I’m really out of practice.”

  Miranda suppressed a grin. This was not the pre-priesthood player she remembered.

  They left the Big Woods and entered the Nature Center. Miranda looked around for Delilah, who flashed past her into the lobby. Miranda caught a glimpse of caramel-colored fur as it disappeared into the Community Room where the rock-climbing classes were held. Delilah loved to ‘help’ with the kids’ classes. The kids loved her, petting and wrestling with the pit bull while waiting for their turn to climb, so it worked out.

  “Don’t get too distracted by those soulful glances and not-really-by-accident touches. Your inattention might kill the wee rock climbers,” Miranda said.

  Doug flipped her off as he headed for the gym.

  “It’s like shooting fish in a barrel,” she said to herself.

  A voice behind her said, “Miranda! I’ve been looking for you.”

  She turned to see River coming through the Nature Center’s entrance. LO’s doctor looked excited.

  “The ultrasound is working,” River said. “D’you want to see Tadpole?”

  Excitement hit Miranda in a rush. She had expected to feel scared about the ultrasound with all the uncertainty from being bitten, but she wasn’t.

  “Really?” she asked. “Like, now?”

  River nodded, grinning.

  It took Miranda a second to answer. She had not expected the ultrasound to be ready this week, never mind right now.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I do,” she said, then her enthusiasm tempered. “But I should wait for Mario. He’s coming here later today.”

  Except she didn’t want to wait. She didn’t want to wait one more second.

  “Of course,” River said, nodding.

  Miranda took a moment to make sure she wasn’t just being impatient. Mario would want to know as much as she did that everything was okay. He wouldn’t mind if she didn’t wait.

  “You know what,” she said, making up her mind. “Let’s do it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Miranda nodded, a nervous thrill running through her. “Yeah. I want to know for sure that everything is okay. And I want to see my little guy.”

  “Okay,” River said, smiling broadly. “Let’s do it.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Miranda lay back on the examination table in River’s office, a swirl of excitement with just a tiny speck of nervousness filling her. She was going to see Tadpole. Her heart sped up at the idea of seeing the blurry image of her unexpected baby who had changed everything. He had opened her up to possibility again, to the idea that this world could be more than a series of endless losses and disappointments. Being with Mario again had started it. Knowing how rare the second chance they had been given was, and how effortlessly they had come back together, had made the chink in her armor that led to today. But Tadpole was the reason she could believe in a friendly Universe, and believe that this time it would be a happy ending.

  River dribbled lubricant onto Miranda’s belly and wiped it around. Behind her professional doctor face, Miranda could see excitement in River’s dark eyes.

  “The definition might not be as clear since we aren’t using KY Jelly,” River said. “But we’ll still see the big stuff.”

  Miranda nodded, too nervous to speak. The cool metal of the sensor slid over her belly, accompanied by the mechanical wub wub wub of the ultrasound machine. An arc of static-like snow filled the black computer monitor hooked up to the ultrasound.

  “There’s the head,” River said.

  Miranda followed the line of River’s pointing finger. The rounded white rim of Tadpole’s head filled the right side of the screen.

  “Oh my God,” she said softly, tears filling her eyes. The baby’s head moved, its tiny profile coming into view. “Is that his nose and chin?”

  “It is,” River said. “Head size looks good.”

  Miranda gasped, tears blurring her vision completely. “Really?”

  “Let’s see if he’s really a he.”

  Miranda wiped her eyes, which were riveted to the monitor. The slim white bone of the baby’s shoulder and upper arm appeared. She could see his bent elbow and started to laugh.

  “Huh,” River said softly.

  River’s voice was off. Miranda dragged her eyes from Tadpole to look at River. Ri
ver’s eyes had narrowed, and her lips were pursed.

  “What’s wrong?” Miranda asked, cold dread falling on her chest.

  “Nothing,” River assured Miranda, her brow smoothing out. “I’m gonna poke you a little and see if we can get the baby to move for a better view of his arm.”

  Miranda looked at the monitor again, her brow knitted as she tried to beat back her panic. River pressed on her belly, and the baby stirred, his arm poking out past his torso.

  His little forearm almost waved, ending in a tight fist, and Miranda relaxed. River continued to move the sensor, and Tadpole’s legs became more defined.

  Miranda said, “Are his legs folded back?”

  When River didn’t answer, Miranda looked at her again. There was no mistaking it this time. River’s forehead was creased, her eyes narrowed. She looked unhappy with what the monitor was showing her.

  Dread, cold and heavy, filled Miranda’s veins.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m a little concerned about his leg length,” River said softly, almost to herself.

  Miranda looked back at the monitor, squinting to see it more clearly. Tadpole moved his leg. The bone of his thigh was straight and easy to see, his knee was bent, but his lower leg looked—

  “What’s wrong with his leg?” Miranda said, panic gripping her chest. She could hardly breathe enough to speak.

  River didn’t answer. Miranda looked at Tadpole’s arm again. It wasn’t right, either.

  “That’s not a fist,” she said, her voice, her whole body, trembling. “I thought… River, where’s his hand?”

  Tadpole moved his head so that his face looked toward the monitor. Miranda could see the darker gray depressions of his eyes, the soft swell of his cheek. Then he kicked. For the first time she could see the motion that accompanied the shove against the inside of her abdomen, but his leg…

  Her voice was a whisper, fear sucking the air from her lungs. “Why can’t I see his feet?”