Dearly, Beloved (14 page)

Now I just had to figure out how I was going to deal with everyone else.

Isambard was dying, and I couldn’t help him.

At the bottom of a coal bunker encrusted so thickly with soot that it felt like a forest floor, I held my little brother and wept because I couldn’t help him. He was curled up in pain, and the most horrible thing was how tightly he tried to cling to me even as his body began to weaken—how hard he fought not to leave me. I wanted to scream at God and Evola and Coalhouse, wanted to rage and hurt and kill
—anything
to convince
someone
of the sheer unrelenting unfairness of it all, that a boy so willing to fight for his life stood absolutely no chance of winning.

But I couldn’t help him.

Then we were in a lifeboat, one so flimsy that I felt certain we would sink like a stone into the choppy black sea if God forgot to hold us up. I covered Isambard with my body, praying without ceasing that the New Victorian troops wouldn’t spot him, wouldn’t shoot him, all because of what he had become.

Isambard begged for his mother. But I was not his mother, and I couldn’t tell him what would become of her—not only because I was still crying so hard I couldn’t speak, but because I didn’t
know
.

“Mom! Mom!”

Suddenly I rocketed awake, gasping for air. My heart was racing, aching, my senses overwhelmingly sharp—the weight of my clammy nightgown like a thousand pinpricks, the air so heavy I felt like an artifact buried in clay. Even the darkness seemed to have color, my vision was so vivid.

“I’m safe,” I chanted. It came out like a puppy’s midnight cry for its mother. “I’m safe. I’m home. I’m safe.” I tried to ignore the sound of my own heart, the sting in my chest, the tingling numbness running up and down my left arm. I knew it would go away eventually. I had to keep telling myself that.

As usual, I sought a distraction. I strained my hearing into the darkness, hoping I hadn’t woken anyone up. I was always afraid the screams I heard in my dreams were my own—my imagination cannibalizing the very terror it created. I didn’t want to frighten my parents. A small and selfish part of my soul craved their concern, but in the end I had to acknowledge that they’d been through hell, too. It was only right to try and make life as easy as I could for them. Even if I suffered for it.

Sometimes I felt stretched so thin that I wondered if there was anything left of me.

I didn’t hear anything. Once I thought I could manage, I slowly climbed out of bed and stood there in the dark with goose bumps rising on my skin, balancing on my heels to keep my toes off the floor. How did Nora deal with this? She’d been through just as much as I had. How did she handle it?

Even though she’d been grounded a few days ago—not to mention the fact that my clock said it was 3:12 A.M.—I dug my phone out from under the pile of books on my vanity and sent her a message. I needed to talk to
someone
.

Is everything okay?

Yes. Are
you
okay? When I am definitely not?

Telling myself she wouldn’t respond, I got to work changing my nightgown. The thought entered my head that I could go downstairs and have a taste of wine, but I dismissed it. I still felt guilty for using alcohol to get to sleep back in December.

My phone beeped. I jumped, before calming myself down and picking it up.

Yeah. Are you? Trouble sleeping?

She was awake. I sat down on my bed and smiled a little. It meant a lot to me that she’d understood, even if she didn’t know the whole story.

Yes.

Her response was almost instantaneous.

TELL ME ABOUT IT. ;P

I covered my mouth with my wrist to hide my laughter. I didn’t have to respond; she kept texting. She was probably going insane in the house.

Really, email me and tell me about it. Hid phone and digidiary under my mattress. Papa clueless.

Dr. Chase snores. This is her: -_- o O (ZZZ)

Can you come over and help me with the Gene thing this week? Papa might let you.

4 days and 20 hours. ;P Gotta hide phone again. <3

I put my own phone away and took a cleansing breath. “I’m safe. It’s okay.”

The squeaking of a hinge in the night argued against my mantra.

Gathering my nightgown off the floor, my heart ticking like an old clock, I tiptoed to the door to listen. Someone was walking the hallway outside, their footsteps scraping slowly in the direction of Isambard’s room. Had I awoken Issy? Had he come to check on me and then retreated? He’d told me his hearing was much sharper now—that the Lazarus wanted him to stalk his prey by sight and sound and smell. Maybe he’d heard me talking to myself.

I knew exactly how to open my door so it wouldn’t make any noise. Poking my head into the hall, I listened. If he was awake, I could talk to him.

But instead of Isambard’s footfalls, I heard a voice. Mother’s.

My beleaguered heart sinking, I walked toward Issy’s room, keeping to the wall. Aside from Mom’s voice the house was so still that I could hear the sticky sound made whenever one of my bare feet left the wooden floor.

Issy’s door was open. I peered around the corner, holding my breath. Mom was standing over him as he slept, dead to the world. Her hands were held before her body, and her torso rocked back and forth on her hips like part of a hinged Punch and Judy doll.

“Heavenly Father, be merciful,” I heard her whisper. “Heavenly Father, please, cure Isambard, I know You can cure him. I know You can bring him back to life, as You did Your son, Jesus. As You did the real Lazarus.”

Cupping my hand around my mouth, I leaned away from the door and let my shoulder blades hug the wall. I willed myself not to cry.

“Death is nothing to You, Lord. I trust, I have faith. You are all powerful, all merciful.” She was starting to sob, her words tangling in her mouth. “Please, cure my son,
please
.”

I couldn’t take any more. I ran back to my room, my heels never touching the ground. Shutting my bedroom door, I backed up to my bed and allowed gravity to take over, ending up supine atop the blankets.

Only then did I let myself weep for my poor mother, my brother, and all we had known.

The next morning I
felt
like a zombie.

Midway through a morose breakfast, during which Mom kept cutting up a slice of apple into smaller and smaller pieces for Isambard, Dr. Evola opened the front door. “Just me. Headed upstairs to die now,” I heard him say as he shut and locked it behind him.

Mom and Dad left the table and moved to the foyer. The minute they were gone I stood up. Isambard made furious, whooshing arm movements at me, bidding me to go eavesdrop. I did, moving as close as I could to the dining room door without being spotted.

“Are you well, Dr. Evola?” I heard Mom ask.

“Not truly at death’s door, not yet,” he responded. The cherub-haired, monocled Charles Evola normally spoke in such young, chipper tones—but not today. “It’s a madhouse over there.”

“You’ve been gone so long!”

“I couldn’t leave.” I heard him put down his bag. “Most of our living volunteers quit, as well as some of the living staff. They’re afraid of the new strain. We’ve been scrambling since.”

“Is there any news?”

“Not that I’ve heard. Dr. Dearly’s never available when I go over—only a man named Dr. Salvez. Plus I’m a tech, not an epidemiologist. I don’t understand half the stuff they deal with anyway.”

“We’re glad you made it back safely, at any rate,” Dad said.

“Thanks. It means a lot to me—especially the fact that you let me stay here. If you’ll pardon me, though, I would love to get a shower. Then I’ll collapse. If I take up your couch for the next twenty hours? I apologize in advance.”

“I’ll leave your plate in the oven, Dr. Evola.”

“Mrs. Roe, I love you. I’d duel your husband for you, but I’m pretty sure he’d annihilate me. There wouldn’t even be enough left to reanimate.”

The sound of feet on the stairs told me that Dr. Evola was headed up. I took my seat just before Mom and Dad walked back in.
Good or bad?
Isambard mouthed at me, as he scraped the apple bits off of the table and onto the floor.

I waggled my hand at him to indicate,
So-so
.

Isambard used his ignorance to advantage, asking about Dr. Evola as my parents sat down. Dad answered his questions, and I let my mind wander again. That the very people who’d been so eager to help the dead before were now turning tail was deplorable. I almost thought of volunteering, but I wasn’t that ambitious, or that willing to leave the safety of my house. My conscience called this cowardice, and I agreed with it. But fear won out.

“Pamela?” my mother said, calling me back to reality.

“Yes?”

“Would you mind going to the market for me today? I didn’t get the chance this morning. And can you manage alone?”

My heart stopped. My father gave up speaking to Isambard and looked at Mom curiously. “Alone, dear?”

“Things are calmer today. It’s not far.” Mom’s voice softened, and she didn’t meet our eyes. “I don’t want to risk … with the anti-zombie … Issy …”

“Yes,” I told her, before her unfinished sentences could linger long in the air, unacknowledged. “I’ll go.”

“No. I can do it,” Dad said. “Or keep an eye on things so you can, Malati.”

My nerves started buzzing at the thought of going outside, but I had to shake my head. “No. You have work. Mother has things to do. I can go. I’ve gone hundreds of times.” After what I’d seen a few hours ago, I had no choice but to do whatever my mother wanted. Even if it terrified me.

I had to be strong for her. For all of them. There was no point in pretending I could ever do otherwise. I now knew that in keeping my mouth shut, I’d made the right choice.

The market near our house was busier than I was used to. I kept my head down, concentrating on remaining calm as I stood in line at each of the usual stalls, which were almost exclusively staffed and patronized by living people. Soon my basket was heavy with fruit and vegetables, the smell of hot straw filling my nose as the sun rose higher in the sky and beat down on my bonnet. I’d done well. I’d gotten through without incident.

But I lost it just as I was getting ready to go.

In order to exit the market area, I had to walk through a narrow brick archway. Standing to one side of it, newly arrived since I’d passed under it on my way in, was a zombified busker with a dancing parrot on a leather lead, playing a fiddle and singing an ancient song, his voice sad and low.

“If she’d been a colonel’s lady
,

I could not have loved her more
.

But she was the ratcatcher’s daughter
,

And I not long for shore.”

It wasn’t the song. It wasn’t the fact that his dirty hat was upturned, awaiting the generosity of passing strangers. It wasn’t the
sight of the bird’s dull, tattered feathers as it shuffled back and forth.

It was the fact that I’d never seen the man before in my life, and he was standing in what my mind still viewed as Ebeneezer Coughlin’s spot. And he was dead. His skin was melting away from his muscles, discolored and sickly-looking. His teeth were stained, his eyes turning to pools of jelly in his sockets, like solidified tears. And I loved my brother, I loved my friends, but in that second all I could see was the decaying busker and his spiritless parrot, and on the street beyond him, more dead people. And in the city beyond them, in the New Victorian Territories, in the world, more dead people, some that would hunt and claw and bite, and I could do nothing to stop it … and it was
Mr. Coughlin’s spot
, where he’d played his instrument with a single arm and amazing skill. Mr. Coughlin, who’d died even though I tried to help him, and killed the zombie that had bitten him, and gone to jail for it, and oh … 
God
. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t
fair
 …

The basket slipped from my fingers, landing beside my feet with a squeaky, uneven bounce. I knew I was hyperventilating. I tried to breathe slowly, shutting my eyes, my nose burning as tears fought for escape. I had to breathe. I had to get home. I was turning into a mess, right where everyone could see.

“Miss? Miss!”

I forced my eyes open. A man stood before me, his face vaguely familiar—but I couldn’t place him. Panic gripped me anew. I was having a meltdown, and now a strange
man
was speaking to me, when I had no chaperone, no one to defend me.

The man looked about and then offered me a gloved hand. “I know this is highly irregular, but perhaps you’d do me the favor of accompanying me off to the side?” His voice was deep and warm, his accent aristocratic.