Damage in an Undead Age

by A. M. Geever

  A tiny smile snuck through before she could school it away. Another uncomfortable silence filled the space between them.

  “I’m sorry about the other day, Miri. I—” Doug sighed and shook his head. “I really lost my temper. It was the wrong— I’m sorry.”

  She could see his apology was sincere. She would be sincere, too. It was only fair.

  “You meant what you said, every word. When you said shame on you. When you accused me of abandoning him. When you said fuck understanding me and my,” she paused, wanting to get it right so the knife would twist for him like it had for her. “‘Pain and disappointments.’ You meant every word.”

  Doug’s mouth compressed into a hard line as she spoke. Anger flashed in his eyes.

  “I said a lot of things. Poorly. You’re not being fair to Mario or yourself, and you’re going to regret it.”

  She met his gaze evenly, clenching her tongue between her teeth so that her temper did not get the better of her. There were so many things she wanted to say, words that would fly as true and sharp as arrows because she knew Doug’s soft spots.

  “Duly noted. And it’s none of your goddamn business.”

  She turned on her heel so he wouldn’t see the tears that sprang to her eyes. Her chest hurt so much it felt like a heart attack. She wanted to lean on someone, anyone, but something held her back.

  “You’re doing a really good job of alienating the people who love you, Miranda.”

  Doug’s words froze her in place. For a split second she almost turned back. Almost let him see that she was afraid to admit what she had done, and that running from it was poisoning her. That it was seeping through her veins and burrowing into her brain and whispering in her ear so insistently that her head felt like an echo chamber of blame and recrimination.

  The white-hot misery of what she had lost, and what it had cost, fear of having more scorn heaped upon her, stopped her. Who could she trust if one of the people she had trusted most had used what he knew against her? She wouldn’t roll on her back like a dog expecting a belly rub so Doug could kick her again.

  She latched onto the anger roiling inside her, as dangerous and devastating as a neutron bomb. She pulled the door open and fled, before she exploded and leveled everything in sight.

  “It’s such a relief to have everything we need from Jeremiah,” Alicia said brightly.

  Miranda only half listened to Alicia’s prattle. Alicia had seen her walking down the BSL-3 hallway with Delilah and cornered her. Miranda had taken this route because she could avoid Mario and Doug, who were in the lobby. She could have kept going, but she liked Alicia, and it felt like she had fewer friends by the minute.

  “We’ve even identified the mutation that causes the repellant effect in people with AB-negative blood,” Alicia continued. “That’s why Rich repels them, too. But AB-negative is like, less than one percent of the population. That’s why it doesn’t happen in most people.”

  “Strange that there are so many of us here.”

  Alicia’s brow furrowed. “It is. The probability of that is, wow. Super low. I don’t even want to speculate without doing the math first.”

  “Yeah, super low.”

  Alicia crouched and scratched Delilah under her chin. “Who’s a good girl? Who’s a good girl?”

  Alicia laughed when Delilah began to give her kisses. Miranda’s nerves jangled at the grating, high-pitched sound. She mumbled a goodbye and turned toward the lobby. Seeing Mario and Doug could not be worse than listening to that laugh.

  She walked through the lobby, not acknowledging Mario, Doug, or Skye, even though Skye waved. From the corner of her eye, she saw Delilah detour to Mario, tail wagging furiously. By the time Miranda reached the doors, Delilah had rejoined her.

  She pushed the door open and stood on the stoop, tipping her face up to the sun. The macaques chittered, a cry of warning traveling over the grounds. Delilah raced after the nearest one, chasing it up a tree. A moment later, she whimpered while standing on her hind legs with her front paws on the tree trunk, her head cocked to the side as if she was trying to figure out how the monkey had gotten away. Now at a safe distance, the macaque turned back and hurled insults.

  God, I love that dog, Miranda thought.

  The sunshine warmed her face, its soft caress soothing her frayed nerves. She remembered thinking that Mario’s hand on her cheek felt the same way once, like sunshine. She waited to see if the memory stirred anything, but it didn’t. A wisp of annoyance, but that wasn’t what she had been wondering about.

  “Liley, come!”

  Miranda turned left, toward the pond. Ahead, she saw Rich and Mathilde. Rich looked gaunt, with hollows under his cheeks. He leaned on his wife’s arm, but his color was getting better. They were deep in conversation with one another. Then Mathilde looked forward and smiled at Miranda, raising her hand in greeting. But Rich looked at Mathilde, his face in three-quarter profile. His love for his wife lit his face from inside, so complete and incandescent that Miranda’s breath caught in her throat. She remembered Mario looking at her like that, but she couldn’t remember how it had felt. She pushed the thought away, frustrated with herself for having it in the first place.

  “Hey, guys,” she called.

  “Hey, yourself,” Rich said when they drew near and stopped.

  “It’s good to see you up and about.”

  “It’s good to be up and about.”

  “Though we are going back so you can rest,” Mathilde said, sounding worried. “You are already tired.”

  “I am,” Rich agreed.

  “We were very lucky,” Mathilde said to Miranda. She shuddered, fear flashing over her face.

  “It’s all right, ma chere,” Rich said softly. His drawl did not accommodate the proper French pronunciation all that much, which somehow made the pet name even sweeter. Mathilde bit her lip and nodded, blinking back tears.

  “I hear you’re a repeller,” Miranda said, trying to lighten the mood.

  “I am indeed,” Rich said, smiling. “AB-negative. Used to be only the blood bank was interested in me. Who would have thought?”

  “I thought it was just because I’m such a bitch,” Miranda said.

  Mathilde laughed, and Rich joined her, but reluctantly. Miranda suspected it rubbed the wrong way against those Southern manners his mother had instilled in him.

  “I’ll see you both later,” Miranda said. She watched them go, a gentle yearning swelling in her breast. Then she looked down at Delilah. “I need to make a stop before we go to the pond, Liley.”

  The pit bull looked up at her and groaned.

  “Oh, please.”

  She changed direction and headed for the brig lab. After submitting to a pat down, she entered the lab that housed Jeremiah’s cell. Jeremiah sat on the floor, his back against the wall. As usual, he was reading a book. When she got close, she saw it was an old friend.

  “Still reading Jack Reacher.”

  Jeremiah’s gold eyes flicked up from his book before he resumed reading.

  “Not even a hello?”

  He ignored her, but she could wait. Contrary to popular belief, she could be very patient with the right incentive. She sat down at the table and chair. The log book and a pencil were on the desk, to keep track of what they did with the prisoner. When he was fed, when he bathed, when he got outside to stretch his legs, which was never.

  That’s a Mitsubishi pencil, she thought, noticing its shiny maroon finish. Someone had just sharpened it, the tip pristine. Skye had been right. The Mitsubishi graphite didn’t smudge, and it held a point a lot longer, too. She still had the ones that Skye had given her, but she swapped it out with the pencil in her back pocket anyway.

  “Your attempts to provoke Us are pointless, Sister Miranda.”

  She looked up. “It speaks.”

  “We would speak more if We thought you were ready to hear Our Truth.”

  “Still obedience and submission?”

  His mouth settled
into a hard line. It was so easy. Too easy. No sport in it at all.

  “You should not mock that which you do not understand.”

  Her annoyance flared. “You’re nothing but a delusional, sleazeball rapist. And murderer. And probably more that I haven’t witnessed.”

  She had taken to calling this building the zoo because every time she was at the Institute, she stopped by to poke the bear. And thought about how she would kill him. But some days, like today, it felt so pointless. Killing him wouldn’t change anything that mattered. When she thought of him being a wild animal that didn’t know any better, that had no say about being caged and deprived of its freedom, she knew these visits were cruel—and not just to Jeremiah. But wild animals weren’t sickos, just wild, with different needs and motivations than those of humans.

  She could see Father Walter shaking his head, telling her this wasn’t good for her mental health. Like I have good mental health. Father Walter would say that she should give up this pointless obsession. That it wouldn’t make her feel any better. Wouldn’t change things.

  He would be right of course. He usually was. It didn’t stop her getting annoyed at his imaginary side of the conversation. Except that he was right, even if he wasn’t really here sitting across the table from her. Tormenting Jeremiah had felt so good at first, but the feeling lessened with every visit. More often than not afterward, she thought of Sister John Ignatius, her ancient and soft-spoken sixth grade religion teacher. Sister John Ignatius, who used to say that Jesus was big on forgiveness, so they should be, too. She said forgiveness was more about you than the other person. That it set you free of whatever wrong that person had done you, while wanting revenge kept the violation and harm alive. According to Sister John Ignatius, forgiveness broke that poisonous connection and any power it had over you.

  She never met anyone like you, Miranda thought as she studied Jeremiah. But still, she wondered… What was he, really? An insane man, a sick man, who thought he was God’s messenger. Who thought he was God’s corporeal embodiment, like Jesus had been, but as unlike Jesus as water was to dry, desert earth. What was he but another thing this world had broken? What small, soft dreams had he once held close, only to have them smashed to pieces because some asshole changed a gene in a tomato so a corporation could sell its poison at a better profit margin?

  You could forgive him, Sister John Ignatius whispered in her ear.

  Miranda looked around the room, just to make sure no one else was there. The idea was startling. She could forgive him for being insane and killing her friends. For killing her child. She could snap in two the power he held over her. The power she let him have, that she handed to him on a silver platter.

  The idea made her insides quake. She could choose to forgive him. It would never change how he had wronged her. She would never be able to forget. But she had the power to forgive him instead of hating him, and maybe the crushing pain of what he had done to her would ease just a little bit. She wasn’t foolish enough to think it ever would go away. But maybe it wouldn’t feel like it did now, like it would kill her. Maybe, if she truly believed that God’s grace was undeserved and freely given, even to her, even after all the mistakes and trespasses she had made, as Connor had once assured her it was, maybe she could begin to heal.

  She looked down at her scuffed boots, a sudden head rush making her feel light-headed. She could choose to forgive Jeremiah and walk away from this. A lightness began to fill Miranda’s chest. She could leave this madman behind her and get on with her life.

  “We hear you have recently suffered a loss, Sister Miranda.”

  Miranda’s head whipped up, the lightness in her chest replaced by cement. Adrenaline flooded her body, making it hum.

  “What did you say?”

  Jeremiah rose to his feet and approached the bars, the Jack Reacher book still in his hand.

  “We offer Our condolences. The loss of a child is particularly cruel. It is a loss of possibility. Of what might have been.”

  She could feel that her face had gone slack with shock. Blood pounded in her ears. Her pulse sped up.

  “Who told you that?”

  Jeremiah set his free hand on the cell bar. “Your pet name for the child was…Tadpole?”

  Freezing, dark fear engulfed her, followed by a rage like she had never felt before. She faced him through the bars, just inches away. She didn’t remember walking to his cell.

  “Who told you that?”

  He smiled at her, sickly sweet, but underneath she saw the venom.

  “I am the God All-Father on Earth. There is nothing We do not know about Our Chosen. And you are one of Our Chosen, Sister Miranda. We have foreseen it.”

  To her right, the lab door opened.

  “Miranda, back up,” the guard said. “You’re not allowed within arm’s reach.”

  Jeremiah’s golden eyes held hers like a high-tension wire, megajoules of electricity sparking between his insane gold and her horrified cornflower blue.

  “We never meant your child any harm.”

  “Shut up,” she hissed. “Shut the fuck up!”

  She heard the guard say something, but his voice was far away.

  “Who told you,” she demanded again. Her breath rasped in her chest, fast and shallow. “Who was it?”

  “Miranda,” the guard said again.

  Finally, Jeremiah let the smirk show in his smile.

  “You will have Our child one day. We have foreseen that, too.” His smirk transformed into a salacious leer. “You will submit to Us. You will find fulfillment in Obedience, in pleasing Us. You will serve Our carnal desires and your eagerness to pleasure Us will redeem you.”

  Miranda recoiled. From his lecherous grin and golden eyes that burned with insanity. From his sick, twisted vision for her. From his hateful words and sneering superiority and his impossible knowledge of her pregnancy and the hopes and dreams she had imbued it with.

  Deep in her belly, an eruption of hurt and pain engulfed her, sending its scorching lava coursing through her veins. She reached through the bars, grabbed a handful of his hair, and slammed the side of his head against the unyielding steel.

  Jeremiah’s triumphant, crazed laughter echoed off the walls. The guard at the door shouted. Miranda could see him coming for her from the corner of her eye, but he moved in slow motion. Jeremiah’s mocking mouth contorted with laughter. The force of his head slamming into the bars had cut him, and blood trickled down his face.

  She whispered, her lips brushing his ear, “Did you foresee this?”

  Surprise, then shock, flashed in his golden eyes as she jammed the sharp pencil into his neck. He started to flail, fingernails scratching her face, panic and fear filling his eyes. She stabbed as many times as she could, like a prisoner with a shiv, before the guard could drag her away. Blood gushed from Jeremiah’s neck in pulsing spurts, hot against her hands, spraying her face.

  She stabbed until his cries became mangled gurgles, until the pencil snapped. Jeremiah sagged against the bars, shallow breaths still rasping in and out. She let go of his head, and he fell to the floor, bloody foam bubbling on his lips.

  Voices and shouts filled the hallway. She looked over at the guard who had cautioned her, blood dripping from her hands. He had backed into the hallway. Miranda laughed when she realized it was the blood. Everyone on-site knew it was contagious.

  “You’re all so afraid of it,” she said, her laughter from the fear on the guard’s face sounding unhinged, even to her. “His blood can’t hurt me anymore. It’s already taken everything.”

  She felt hands on her shoulders and was steered, unseeing, out of the room, out of the building, into the bright sunshine. Delilah barked, circling Miranda with teeth bared. Fur bristled down the pit bull’s back, her pink nose crinkling at the coppery scent of Jeremiah’s blood.

  Then she was in the parking lot, and Mario stood in front of her, holding her face in his hands. A fierce protectiveness filled his eyes.

  “What d
id he do to you? Did he hurt you? Miranda!”

  She pushed Mario away. Why did he still care? Why did he care when she didn’t? Then Doug was beside Mario, out of breath, his face flushed and eyes flashing, and Skye just behind him.

  The macaques screeched. Their shrill cries echoed off the building, hurting her head. Delilah began to whine while people shouted and ran, amplifying the chaos raging inside her head.

  Doug said, “Miranda, what happened?”

  She looked at Mario. His dark-brown eyes brimmed with anxiety, glowed with the need to make whatever was wrong right.

  “I did what I said I would do.”

  Mario took a half step back. “Oh, Miri.”

  Miranda looked to Doug, who watched them, confused.

  “I said I would kill him. And I did.”

  43

  “They’re leaving soon,” Rocco said.

  Miranda nodded.

  “You’re gonna say goodbye, right?”

  Miranda rolled her eyes as she looked out the window.

  “Yes, dad. I’m going to say goodbye.”

  Rocco nodded, satisfied, and sat back in his chair. The early morning sunshine poured through the windows of the nearly empty dining hall. Six weeks since the attack on LO, Rocco was still on the mend. That had not changed him being an early breakfast patron. Miranda didn’t sleep well lately, so every morning she joined him.

  “Because if you weren’t going to see them, I was going to tell you that you owe me.”

  Miranda chuckled. “You are such an asshole.”

  Rocco smiled. “’Cause you do.”

  “I know,” she said. “And if I didn’t, you’d remind me.”

  Rocco had mitigated the fall-out of murdering Jeremiah and seemed intent on good-naturedly holding it over her head forever. With Skye leaving LO to join Doug and Mario on their journey to San Jose, the consensus at LO was that Rocco was the person who should be in charge, at least until the community decided how to govern itself. While Jeremiah had not had any advocates invested in him personally, Miranda had murdered him. Enough people knew about it that there had been dissension about how to respond. One faction figured they had gotten what they needed from Jeremiah and one less psycho in the world could be overlooked. The other faction thought there had to be consequences or LO might end up as lawless as so many other places.