Dearly, Beloved (55 page)

Mr. Roe ran over and grabbed his daughter by the elbow, urging her back. She didn’t fight him, but continued to stare at the prone Michael with a terrifying intensity. I was honestly scared. And impressed.

“Enough of this. Everyone ask their final questions.” Lopez finally strode across the room, reaching down and hauling Michael up by his collar. Danger clouded his usually tepid voice like water louching absinthe. “I’m taking him to the police.”

“You don’t dare!” Michael yelled. “My father will end you if you do!”

Lopez turned Michael around and eyed him steadily, silently. Behind the gentleman’s normally kind eyes glittered something unspeakably cold. “You think I fear your father? Oh, young man. You have so much to learn.”

“Wait.” Tom stepped forward. “The other members of this thing. Make him write a list. His dad’s rich, yeah? If he manages to get it covered up, we’ll need the other names.”

“They cover their faces!” Michael argued. “I don’t know any of them!”

“Do you want to be the only one who goes down?” I demanded. “Don’t you at least want to give up some details? Because I don’t think you’re man enough to take all of the responsibility for this.”

At this, Michael paused, his eyes agonized. In the end I was right. On my dead mother’s stationery, rescued from a seldom-opened writing desk in the corner, he wrote out what he could remember of the letters he’d been sent. He didn’t know any names, or how many Brothers were out there—a fact that chilled me.

“What about the ‘Green Jacket’ you mentioned?” I asked, studying the page.

“I don’t know who he is.” Suddenly, Michael reached out and grabbed my hand. Disgusted, I cast it off and backed up. “I did it for you, Miss Dearly. Like I do everything for you.”

“You’re sick in the head,” I announced. “You are ill. You need help.”

My words seemed to cut him to the quick. Five minutes later, after making a copy of the written information, Lopez escorted him out of the parlor. Even from the back, Michael looked broken, frightened.

Good
.

Havelock shut off his recorder, thanking us profusely for “the story of his career” and refusing the money Ren offered to cover the chip Bram still owed him. He took photographs of the pages instead, and agreed not to leak any details about us in exchange for first rights to any other Murder members we caught.

When he was gone, I spoke. “I’m sorry for all of this. What can I do?”

Mr. Roe took a while to respond. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Miss Dearly.” He looked at his weeping wife. “And there’s nothing you can do. But at least we know.”

“What do
we
do now?” Mrs. Roe asked tearfully.

“Go to Marblanco,” Pamela said, turning to look at them. “For my sake, as well as yours. I’m sick. I have nightmares. I can’t do this anymore. I want to get out of the city, at least for a while—please. Look at what’s happened.”

Before her father could say anything, I added, “If Lopez will let me, I’ll go, too. We could ask him later.” I glanced at Dr. Chase, who smiled knowingly. “Papa’s going to insist I get out of the city for a while, after all this.”

Mr. Roe took a moment but nodded. I moved to hug Pamela, and I could feel the physical relief this small motion caused. She clutched me back, her arms weak.

If we were going anywhere, we were going together.

For the first time since sniffing out Nora back at base, I hunted another being by using my in-death “gifts.” I hated doing it—nothing like scenting someone like a dog, turning your head at every noise like a parrot to make you feel inhuman—but I had no other options.

Driving in the dark with the lights off, practically creeping, I sought Coalhouse. After an hour I came upon a place where the railroad tracks crossed a country road. A series of painted steel signs told me where it led—to a Territorial park including something called the Cave of the Glowing Skulls. Sounded like the sort of place a desperate zombie would head for. Hell, if I’d been in the same condition, I probably would’ve gone there to get my mope on, too. On a hunch, I decided to go for it.

My hunch served me well. After another half hour I picked up Coalhouse’s trail, the faint odor of a passing dead body. I followed it off the main road and onto a series of narrow back roads that eventually turned into hiking trails, necessitating the abandonment of his carriage. My farm boy powers of observation took over, and I noticed places where the ground had been disturbed,
branches broken. I took my rifle with me, as well as a first aid kit and a flashlight I found in the glove compartment, and marched into the trees.

Morning was threatening by the time I found the infrastructure leading to the cave. The entire area’d been landscaped for tourists, with informational booths and catwalks everywhere. There were no day-trippers to be seen, but Coalhouse’s scent was strong. After drinking from a nearby river and splashing some water over my neck, I followed it to a lee in the rocky terrain. Another sign told me that it, small and insignificant as it appeared to be, was the entrance to the actual cave.

Given my track record with mines, I was reluctant to enter. I took a few seconds to compose myself before making my way inside.

“Coalhouse?” I shouted, flicking on the flashlight. The light bounced off of a series of unremarkable rocks. Tramping farther in, I soon came to a metal walkway with railings, which I followed into a chamber rife with long, slick deposits of calcite. “Anybody home?” I could hear something scuffling, rough, far off. Could be rats, bats—could be my friend. Steadying myself on the catwalk, I kept going.

The first skull I saw startled me, my light calling its shape out of the darkness unexpectedly, making it appear to shine. Then I found another, and another. Soon I was passing one every few feet, as well as an assortment of other human bones. According to the signs outside, the remains of these people were ancient, pre–ice age, more rock now than anything human. The thought crossed my mind that bone really
was
no more than rock to begin with, that we were all built from the inside out like living statues, like animated clay. God, death was starting to make me morbid.

“Bram?”

Turning on the catwalk, the beam from my flashlight fell on
the half-empty face of Coalhouse. “There you are,” I said reflexively, before my voice dropped into a well of silence. I wasn’t sure what else to say.

Coalhouse was in the same boat. His clothing was torn and dirty, and he appeared to be unarmed. He stood before me, wordless and weary, his right arm slack. In his left hand he held a flickering lighter.

“Are you hurt?” He shook his head. After a beat I tried, “Are you ready to come home?”

I might’ve rattled off a list of insults at him, he looked so wounded by my question. “I can’t.”

“Sure you can.” I bent down and placed my gun on the catwalk. “You think I’m here to do a citizen’s arrest or something? I just came here to find you.”

Coalhouse watched me as I straightened up, his lips quivering. “No.” His lighter died and he tried to get it started again, eventually cursing and hurling it to the floor of the cave when it wouldn’t. Laying his hands over his face, he pleaded, “Please tell me Nora’s all right. I’m so sorry …”

“I wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t. It’s okay.”

“Thank God.” Lowering his hands, he glanced aside, one of the skulls catching his attention. “You know how they say skulls grin? They don’t.”

“Coalhouse …”

“They look broody. Don’t they? They look like they’re stuck thinking forever.” He reached out and gripped both metal catwalk railings. “I don’t want to think anymore. About anything. I was wandering, trying to figure out how to go back and fix what I did, and it’s like my mind froze.”

I didn’t like where this was going. “You don’t have to think right now. You just have to come with me.”

“Where?”

“Back to the city. Everything’s okay. Nora’s safe, Patient One’s safe. None of our people got hurt.”

At Nora’s name Coalhouse stepped forward. “I didn’t take her. I swear. And I didn’t mean to shoot her. At least believe me when I say that!”

“Shoot her?” This was news to me—news that put my back up. “Tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know,” Coalhouse moaned, pacing away from me again. “I just wanted to prove I was capable. Go big like you have, get the girl, save the day. I was going to make Hagens tell me everything. And then she did, and I had this mad idea that if Smoke was killed, everything would stop. No one would have him to argue over anymore, least of all someone we don’t know …”

“Explain that to me. Nora started to.”

“Hagens said someone tried to get her to hand over Smoke weeks ago. That they were going to take out Company Z if she didn’t. That they knew things about Z-Comp they shouldn’t.” He went on, building his story, layering details upon unbelievable details.

The fact that Nora’d been injured was horrific, but at least she was safe. I concentrated on that for the time being. “We need to move on this. Together.”

“Together? You don’t need me. No one does.” Coalhouse turned back, his eye feverish. “The soldiers caught up to us once, talked to Laura and the others. I told them I was Z-Comp, but they didn’t believe me. They didn’t want to know anything about me.”

That had to sting. I knew there was nothing I could say, right then, to make up for that.

“And the Punks … the Punks burn their dead. So I can’t go home. No one wants me, I don’t belong anywhere. I help people,
and they forget about me. Or I fail. I’m completely useless. I can’t even shoot straight anymore.”

Shutting my eyes for a few seconds, I tried to think of how to phrase it. “Coalhouse, our home is here now. Our family is here.”

“
You
say that. You have Nora. Tom has Chas. I don’t have anybody.”

“You have me. I’m your friend!”

“You didn’t believe in me.”

“I do now!” He looked up. “You were right, back when I wanted to call the cops and you wanted to keep going after the Changed. You were
right
. And the only reason I’ve ever been able to do ‘big things’ is because you guys have been with me!” I looked at him anew. “I won’t leave any of you behind.”

Coalhouse seemed to hover before me, the beam of my flashlight encircling his torso and face without illuminating his legs. After a long moment of consideration, he said, “Then help me.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“Kill me.”

The first aid kit slipped out from under my arm and bounced across the catwalk. The shock of his words seemed to lock my joints. “What?”

Coalhouse reached up to finger his loosened eye, and remembered it was gone. Slowly, he sank onto the catwalk, the railings shuddering. “I don’t want to think anymore. All I think is bad stuff, horrible stuff. Like how I’m going to rot more, become even uglier. How even though I feel like it sometimes, I’m not really alive. And I get angry at Tom, how everyone seems to think I should smile and pick myself up and show the living I’m just peachy … when I’m not. And I remember all the bad stuff I’ve done, and how useless I am, and it just replays over and over. I can’t
stop it
. It feels like I’m going crazy, and if I’m going crazy, then I’m dangerous and I have to die.”

I moved haltingly forward, limping around the first aid case and my gun. I sat at Coalhouse’s side and put an arm around him. “We’ll get you some help.”

He shook his head and lowered it to his knees. “I keep messing things up. I’m not even worth the powder to blow me to hell. I’d probably even mess up at shooting myself in the head. I just want it to be over.”

“You can’t think like that.” I looked into the sockets of a nearby skull, as if it might have any ideas. “We all have to keep going. All we have is each other.”

“I keep failing, though. So if I know I’m going to mess up, why not just … accept it? Why can’t I give up, if that’s what I want?”

All I could think to do was tell him the truth. The same truth that had gotten me to the doorstep of Company Z two years before, tired and devastated and lonely and ready to tear my own dead flesh off my bones, reject it, cast it away like garbage.

“You’re right again.” He looked up at me. “You always have that option. It’s the worst option in the world, but it’s the only one that’s always there. So there’s no reason to do it right this instant.” The flashlight started to fade, and I shook it. “What might not be there are the chances you have right now. If you can hold on another hour, another day—if you can live one more good, honorable
minute
—those are victories. And they open up the whole world.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“That’s what Dr. Dearly said when he found me.” The flashlight recovered. “I’ve never told anyone this, but … after leaving the farm, I was ready to kill myself. So I couldn’t hurt anyone. I was going to throw myself off a cliff and pray it was enough to break whatever I’d become. I was right on the edge, leaning forward, when Dearly and his men came out of the trees.”

He didn’t respond. I wasn’t sure if I should count that as promising or disappointing.

“Coalhouse, you have the chance to come home today.
No one hates you. No one’s afraid of you. Nora understands. Everyone else will understand, too.”