Dearly, Beloved (7 page)

For hours I remained in a state of infuriating helplessness, practically a prisoner in my own home. I knew the others weren’t trying to be cruel, that they only meant to protect me. But in moments like this, I understood what Bram and I were up against. The riot two weeks ago had been the turning point for me, when I finally got that the real enemies we were going to have to face weren’t Wolfe and Averne, but Time and Fear. How little time I would have with him, and how fear could cut that even shorter. More than just being with him—I wanted to stand beside him on the front lines. I’d gotten a taste of freedom last winter, and it almost physically hurt to have to return to my old life of manners and rules.

I wanted my new life back.

Eventually Dr. Chase and Dr. Samedi sought me out, and found me walking in circles in one of the long back hallways, underneath one of my father’s favorite mythological murals. “There you are, Miss Dearly. Baldwin and I are going to install Miss Chastity’s voice box.”

This was enough to get me to look up from my phone. “I thought it wasn’t finished yet?” Sam had been toiling over her artificial voice box for months now.

“Funny thing. I mentioned how much better it’d make me feel if Miss Chastity could talk, given all that’s going on.” Dr. Chase glared at Dr. Samedi. “That’s when he chose to inform me it’s actually been completed for almost a month. He was enjoying the quiet. I’ve already boxed his remaining ear.”

Samedi slipped a hand into his chestnut hair and adjusted his stitched-up head slightly, tweaking it to the side. The zombie’s skull was full of hardware that allowed his brain to communicate with a thick metal collar installed around his neck, permitting his body to move even when his head was severed from it. A tremor zipped down his spine, and he narrowed his gray-lidded, feminine eyes. “Thank you. You just admitted that if I do go deaf, it’s only because external forces are constantly assaulting me.”

Dr. Chase shook her head and looked at me. “Would you like to help?”

In spite of everything, I found myself asking excitedly, “Really?”

Just then my phone rang. I looked down to find that it was Pamela Roe, my best friend. “Is it Dr. Dearly?” Samedi asked.

“No. Pam.” I didn’t have to say anything else; the two adults nodded and saw themselves out. “You okay?” I asked upon opening the phone.

“Yes.” Still, Pamela sounded nervous. “You’ve heard about
the new strain? I’m just calling to let you know I probably can’t get down there today.”

“Yeah. Sorry I didn’t call sooner, myself.”

“Dr. Evola hasn’t been home.”

“He’s probably working overtime.” He’d been rooming with the Roes ever since the Siege, preferring to stay closer to the hospital ships. “Look, why don’t I come over there?”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but no way in hell, Nora. The city needs time to calm down. Dad won’t let us leave the house.”

“That’s why I’ll come to you.”

“Not a good idea. And your father wouldn’t like it.”

“Who said I’d tell him?” She made a disapproving noise in response. “Besides, Pamma, not even the ravenous dead can stand between you and me.”

“Don’t remind me. And don’t you dare.
Please
give me one less thing to worry about.”

Rolling my eyes heavenward, I said, “Fine. Anything I can do for you from here? Otherwise, I’m going to help the docs with something.”

“No, there’s nothing you can do. I’ll call you if there is. I’ll text you later anyway.”

Frustrated anew, I hung up and considered just leaping out a nearby window and running for the surface. My imagination extended this little adventure to include clobbering an army man, donning his uniform, and marching toward the nearest disaster.

In the end, for Pam and Papa, I went in search of Dr. Chase.

It turned out that “helping” didn’t add up to much more than handing the engineers tools. It was hard to be contented with that, but I tried.

Chas was set up on the desk in my father’s dark, masculine
study. Every lamp in the place was positioned about her, since the windows were still boarded up. The initial phases of the “operation” involved cutting into her throat and scraping and snipping all the ruined flesh away. Samedi let her keep her digidiary, and she occasionally wrote things like,
Dont u think I need that?
or
Tckls!
in response to his actions. After perhaps forty minutes, the device itself—a curious golf-ball-sized construct of metal and wire—was popped into her neck.

Admittedly, watching Baldwin and Beryl at work was absorbing. The first time I met them I’d been told they were an amazingly inventive team, and they truly did seem to function like two bodies sharing a single mind. He could make a suggestion and she’d already be halfway done with it, reaching for a spot welder or twisting a plastic cap into place. Occasionally they would murmur together like two soothsayers puzzling over a goat’s entrails, completing each other’s sentences.

“Stitch or staple the remains of her trachea …”

“… bottom should replicate a ring of cartilage, I thought. Stability. No more smoking for you, young lady.” Sam leaned back, tucking his scalpel between his lips. Sterility wasn’t a concern when operating on the undead, obviously. “All right. Speak.”

“I’m no-ot a do-og, you kno-ow,” Chas responded, her first words since the battle in Bolivia. Aside from sounding somewhat computery, it was definitely her own voice, only healthier than I remembered it. She seemed to speak somewhat laboriously, though, her neck and chest rolling noticeably as she fought to get the words out. She moved to sit up, and Beryl aided her.

“Chas!” I hopped up and wrapped my arms about her shoulders from behind. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”

“Tell … me ab-out … it.” I could see the muscles of her throat flexing as she remembered how to use them.

Samedi shooed me out of the way so he could study his handiwork. “There. Let’s get the wires in, and then I think the best
way to close this up would be to install some small D-rings along either side of the incision and have her lace it up until the skin stretches to accommodate the new hardware. Then we can put in a permanent suture.”

“I think you’re right,” Dr. Chase said. “Miss Dearly, can you hand me the pliers?”

Chas turned excited eyes on Sam. “Like a … neck corset? No, I’m keep-ing the … lacing! I can use different … colooored … rib-bons!”

As Samedi reached past me for an additional bit of wire, I heard the sound of the front door opening, followed by the unmistakable voices of the undead boys. Without waiting to see if anyone else had heard, I raced for the door and down the hall. It seemed like it took an hour to reach the foyer, when in fact it took only seconds. “Guys!”

Bram was at my side before I could say another word. I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed as hard as I could. He curled his huge hand around my head, guiding it to his chest, and I took advantage of the opportunity to rest my eyes and lean against him, if only for a brief moment—had we been alone, I would have happily remained there. “Everyone good here?” he asked.

“Yes. What’s going on?”

“The usual.” He urged me back, his hands on my shoulders. “City’s in an uproar again, troops and cops are spread thin. Never enough of them.”

“Great.” I stepped away a few beats later, a proper young lady once more, and turned my attention to Coalhouse and Tom. “Are you guys okay?”

“Oh yeah,” Tom said, his peeved tone belying his words. “Just disappointed that alcohol doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to anymore, that’s all.”

“Your girlfriend’s in surgery,” I told him. “Sam’s done with her voice.”

Tom’s bald eye ridges jumped in surprise, his lips splitting into a sharklike grin. Coalhouse chuckled. “Really? This I gotta see.”

Something in his sentence set the other two off, because their expressions transformed from “there’s no place like home” to “oh, hell no” in the space of two blinks. “You know, you only see with
one
of those lumps in your head,” Tom said. “Maybe you should give the other to me for safekeeping.” He extended a hand, frowning.

“That was not acceptable, what happened back at the docks,” Bram said to Coalhouse.

“Can we talk about this later?” Coalhouse asked, glancing uneasily at me.

“No. We talk about it now.” Bram pointed at his useless eye. “I don’t care if you wear it when things are quiet, but you’ve got to take it out whenever there’s the chance of action. You knew this back at base.”

“But this isn’t Z Beta. There are people on the streets, they’ll see me …”

“You’re a
zombie
. If you’re not missing body parts, you’re doing it wrong!” Tom yelled. “You put us in danger today. And it’s because you care what you
look
like?”

“Danger?” I asked, only to be ignored.

“Oh, and he didn’t?” Coalhouse pointed angrily at Bram. “Like he didn’t flip out?”

“What?”

My tone of voice was enough to arrest them, to stall their dispute. Still, they all had that funny, stiff “zombie pack” posture—like their bodies were ready to throw down if dominance needed to be physically established, even if their minds had yet to consciously go there. I’d seen it before.

Bram cleared his throat. “We’ll get into it later. Go see Chas.”

“Guess I’m not the only immature one, huh?” Coalhouse said, before stomping in the direction of the hall. Tom shook his head, then followed.

“Immature?” I asked once they were gone. “What’s the matter?”

“Let’s just say that I’m more pessimistic now than I was this morning.” Bram reached for me again. “I’m glad you didn’t come. I would have been worried sick.”

I pushed his scarred hand away in annoyance. “Talk.”

With a rumble, he said, “We had to take on some zombies, okay? Back up the army. Thankfully, it didn’t turn into a bloodbath.”

“Oh God.” Cue me immediately feeling like a jerk. “I’m so sorry.”

Bram shrugged, though I could tell he was still troubled. “Let’s get everyone settled and then we’ll talk. We’re safe, that’s what matters.”

Respecting this, I gave up. Even though I still had questions, suddenly I wasn’t half as worried as I had been. The Punks could take over the world with giant mechanical dinosaur clowns and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash. No matter what might be happening, no matter how many fires might be burning, being with Bram always seemed to make things at least
feel
better.

He was okay. He was here. He was home.

Now I just needed my father.

“We can’t do anything right now. I went over to the
Erika
and spoke to Salvez already.”

“I
swear
, if I hear that phrase
one more time
 …” I kneeled on my chair. “Anyway, what did Salvez say?”

“Like Dr. Chase told us—the Laz has mutated.”

“There’s more to it than that.”

“I wish I knew, Nora.”

It was dinnertime, and Bram was trying to get some food in him—the usual. Tofu. Protein used to trick his body into thinking it was getting the flesh it wanted, mixed with a digestive enzyme since his stomach no longer worked. Between statements, I gave him five chews. Under the kitchen table Dad’s Doberman pinscher, Fido, begged.

“You didn’t see Papa at all?”

“No. I asked for him, but got the runaround. Like usual. Every time I go over there lately, he’s busy. I feel kind of shut out of the research side of things.”

“Is it dangerous there? Should we
be
worried about him?”

“I told you about the living mob and the zombie attacks. We left once it got calmer and more army reserves arrived. See? I’m not holding anything back this time.”

“I want to see him, Bram.” I leaned my elbows on the table and fixed my gaze on one of the household signs Dr. Chase had used her talent with calligraphy to create: ZOMBIE-ONLY SILVERWARE GOES IN THE CANISTER. “I just want to know that he’s safe.”

Bram chewed five times. “Give him more time. The news just broke earlier today.”

“I know. And I know that he has the world on his shoulders. That’s why I’ve tried to be respectful. But Bram … I can’t
do
this anymore.”

Looking into Bram’s eyes, I could see that he understood. “I’m getting to that point myself. Somehow I’ve ended up a grunt on the ground again. Still fighting people. But I am
not
army anymore. Don’t want to be. Problem is, now is not the time to pitch a fit about it. We’ve got to stick together. Do what needs to be done.”

Putting my head in my hands, I tried to think. Bram patted my
back, wiped his mouth, and said, “Look, I did get some info.” Lifting my head, I saw that he was cleaning off the fork and knife he’d used to eat with. “Here—I get to do the medical briefing this time.”

“Go for it.” It was better than nothing. I pillowed my cheek on my folded arms, turning my head to watch.

“So, you know the illness that makes zombies is fluid-borne, and caused by prions.”

“Yes.” I knew that prions were proteins, technically the same as other proteins already located in the human body—simply shaped differently, and thus diseased. They were wont to bend healthy proteins to look just like them, causing a deadly chain reaction that, in the case of the Lazarus, reanimated the dead.

Bram held up his knife and fork. “So imagine these are prions. They’re made of the same stuff—both metal, in this case—but they’re different shapes.” He stuck the tip of the knife through two of the fork tines. “Let’s say the knife is the ‘bad’ one. So the knife sticks to the fork, and reshapes it. The fork turns into the knife.” He spirited the fork under the table, leaving the “new” knife. “And it goes on to stick itself into another fork and change it, etcetera, etcetera. Eventually the infected person hits the ground—and in the case of the Laz, sits up again.”

“And we’re all terribly grateful for that.”

Bram chuckled, and brought the fork back out. “Now, proteins are made of amino acids. The way the antibodies created by your father’s vaccine are supposed to work is …” He used the fork to spear a leftover glob of tofu—just on two tines. “They stop up the gap by sticking to a specific amino acid chain. They plug up the hole.” He mimed the tip of the knife trying to connect to the fork and encountering the blasted tofu. “The bad one can’t bond with the good one, so infection can’t take place.”