The Shambling Guide to New York City (24 page)

“How did you know where his word was?” Arthur asked, ignoring Zoë.

“
She
told me. It was under his arm. Zoëtists hide them better now, used to be they’d put it on the construct’s forehead, then wonder why their armies would fall when someone wiped the mark off.”

“Zoë told you where his word was?” Arthur asked, shaking his head.

The old woman looked at him as if he were mad. “No,” she said slowly, as if explaining to a child. “
SHE
told me.
She
has interest in Life. Keep her safe,
she
said. Keep her from getting eaten.” She looked at Zoë fondly.

Arthur met Zoë’s eyes and she shrugged. “I have no idea what she’s talking about. I mean, I know Granny Good Mae, but I don’t know about this
she
person.”

Granny Good Mae cackled. “Just listen. You’ll know.”

She turned and ran, ducking into the alley behind the building.

Zoë picked up the formaldehyde. She shrugged. “Let’s go home.”

Luckily, the cabbie Max didn’t care about human blood on his cab seat. On the contrary, he said, it made the ride more attractive to some of his customers.

“I don’t know what your vampire thinks he can do to save me. I’ve got thirty-six hours, tops,” Arthur said as Zoë tried to wrap her coat around his bleeding arm. She tried to ignore the cut on her own arm that throbbed and leaked blood slowly, making
her hand tacky with it.
Zombie bite worse than a simple cut
, she thought firmly.

“Oh really?” she asked, mostly to keep him talking. “Tell me what happens.”

Arthur’s voice took on an academic quality. “First the wound will fester despite any attempts to keep it clean and infection-free. Within a day high fever sets in to kill higher brain functions. My consciousness checks out fully after thirty-six hours, and my body will die. Then I’ll reanimate, hungry. If I can manage to find food in a legal way, I may gain some of my old personality back. Zombies usually take care of their own. If I just kill, then Public Works will find me soon enough. That is, if you don’t do what you promised and kill me when it’s necessary.”

She poked him gently in the ribs. “Let’s keep the passive-aggressive barbs away from the woman who’s trying to save you, OK?”

They stopped in front of their apartment building. Arthur was able to walk, but seemed too woozy to speak. Zoë got him into her apartment and onto her couch. Then she went to get her first-aid kit.

Granny Good Mae had helped her buy proper things for coterie attacks. Besides gauze and tape and antibiotic cream, she also had bottles of holy water, herbs, and tea. She had no idea what to do with a zombie bite, but she knew that rinsing with holy water was a good step, and then some tea. It wouldn’t help the zombie curse, but it would keep him calm and help the skin heal.

Arthur closed his eyes as Zoë examined his arm. She took some scissors from her first-aid kit and sliced through his coveralls and shirt, leaving it under him. She tried not to wince at the bite, but noticed it didn’t look beyond her skills. There was nothing to stitch up, at least.

Arthur gasped as she poured cold water on him from a bottle. “What is bottled water going to do?”

“Holy water,” she said. “Can’t hurt. May help.”

He hissed as she poured something new on his arm, and it bubbled in the wound. “Peroxide, for germs. Holy water won’t help that.”

Arthur set his teeth as Zoë smeared a warm salve over his wound and packed it tightly with gauze. She wrapped it up and taped it.

“You’re pretty handy,” he said. He started to shiver. “Do you have anything for the pain?”

Zoë plugged her electric kettle into the socket in the living room, made some tea, then helped prop him up to drink. The pinched, pained look in his face eased immediately.

“What is that?” he asked, his voice far away. He dozed off before she could answer.

“Get some sleep. Phil will be back soon,” she said.

I hope
, she added mentally.

Zoë sat on the floor, back to the sofa, shock and exhaustion finally hitting her. She sat for a while to calm herself, then went to change clothes and clean herself up.

“How do you get yourself into these things?” she asked the bathroom mirror, which didn’t answer.

All things considered, that comforted her.

And she realized that none of this was as bad as the night after Godfrey’s wife found out about their affair. The memory came, as always, unbidden, flashes of the bulky feet stomping inside her house, her quietly dry-heaving in the chest in her bedroom. She couldn’t call the police; Lucy was chief. No one would believe her. And even if they did, she knew enough to know that the cops would take care of their own. Lucy was the victim here. Zoë was the other woman.

No. Not anymore.

Zoë pushed the memories down, washed her face and hands, and put a bandage on her arm.

That’s not me anymore.
She looked at herself in the mirror again and was surprised that her eyes were not wide with fear and uncertainty. Tired, yes. Apprehensive. But she was sure of herself for perhaps the first time ever.

She went to sit on the floor beside Arthur and wait for Phil.

The moonlight played on Arthur’s face, which was slack and relaxed, and she admired it as he slept. He frowned, and began to shift around, moaning. Worried he’d injure himself, she took his good arm and shook it gently.

“Wha’?” Arthur woke up with a start, staring at her in fear.

“You’re safe. It’s Zoë, you’re in my apartment, you had a bad dream.”

“Was the dream that I got bit by a zombie?”

“Uh. No. That was real.”

“Interesting use of the word ‘safe,’ then.”

“Well there are no zombies here now, are there?”

“Isn’t a vampire coming over soon?”

Zoë didn’t answer. Under her hand his body vibrated, as if he were prepared to lash out at any moment.

“Are you saving me to make sure I turn?” he asked. His eyes were closed, as if he feared the answer. “Are you trying to help your boss make more coterie? Replace the zombies we exterminated?”

She ran her hand through her hair, smiling weakly. “No, Arthur. We’re not. And you’re not going to turn. Do you not remember?”

“What kind of lies are you accepting from them? If a zombie bites you, you turn into one. It’s that simple. I have about a day left before I die and then reanimate. I’m begging you to kill me. Hell, go to my apartment and bring me my gun—I’ll do it myself.”

Zoë snorted. “Sure. I’ll get right on that. ‘I’m sorry, Officer, I have no idea how my neighbor ended up on my couch with a bullet in his head.’ Now will you let me explain?”

He nodded.

“Good.” She pulled the still-warm electric kettle off her end table and poured hot water into a cup. She helped him sit up, propped him up on pillows, and handed him some bright-yellow tea that looked like Easter egg dye.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a restorative, you drank it more concentrated before. I got it from a Chinese herbalist.”

He sipped it and grimaced. “It tastes like cough syrup.” He breathed deeply and relaxed back on his pillow. “Amazing. What’s in this?”

“I’m surprised you don’t know about it. But we can talk about that later. For now, trust me.” She stared into his eyes, unblinking. “You are not going to die or become a zombie.”

He drained the rest of the tea. “Tell me why.”

“Because Phil will be here soon with a zoëtist he knows. He says the right zoëtist can help this.” She took the empty cup from him, praying what she told him was true.

“I can’t believe this. Zoëtists make zombies, but nothing can reverse the curse.”

She sat down. “You don’t know everything about coterie, do you?”

He tried to shrug but winced as his arm moved. “I suppose
you’re right. But this is one of those basic things you’d think we would have found out about, like how vampires don’t like the sun.”

She watched him for a moment, then said, “Phil is going to ask something from you, you know.”

“If he can save me from this, he can have it.” He paused. “Within reason,” he amended. “Although it’s pretty amazing how priorities shift when you have a festering zombie wound. So can you tell me what the hell was going on? I don’t often find zombies attacking vampires and their thralls.”

“OK, first, I’m not a thrall,” she said, offended. “I’m an employee. We were looking for information on a coworker who had disappeared. The zombies who have been attacking people shouldn’t have needed to, they should have had enough food from his contacts in the city. So we went to see if he had food in his apartment, and that’s when the others attacked us.” She paused, then sighed. “Phil thinks someone is messing with the zombies to take their food and make them revert to shambling monsters. Which is what we saw last night. And from what Granny Good Mae said, I guess that was Wesley.”

“Who’s Wesley?”

“A construct who was created from my ex-boyfriend. It’s a whole thing.” She waved her hand, dismissing the details.

Arthur took a deep breath. “So what do you do with vampires that has you breaking into a zombie’s apartment at night?”

“I’m a managing editor at a publishing company. We’re writing travel guides.” She laughed, a short, bitter sound. “I’ve been on the job since November second. It’s been a little more than I expected, and I expected a lot from working with people who would just as soon eat me.”

“So how’s the book going?”

She frowned. “I’ve been spending my time trying to learn the
coterie lifestyle—
all
the different coterie lifestyles—and then I find out the CR representative in the company is a construct that hates me—and then the zombies start just eating people, which my coworkers say is somewhat odd for them in this civilized age. But believe it or not, the book is moving along nicely.”

Arthur dozed off again, allowing Zoë to nap, sitting up on the floor, back to the couch. She sat bolt upright when the doorbell rang, and she ran to let Phil in. He brought with him a thin white man with slick hair, glasses, and a bow tie.

“This is Benjamin Rosenberg,” Phil said. The man shook Zoë’s hand and smiled. “Internal medicine and zoëtism, whatever you need. Now where is our patient?”

She led them to her sofa, where Ben tut-tutted over the mess, but made appreciative noises at how Zoë had wrapped the wound. He expertly unwrapped it without waking Arthur and examined it.

“Can you heal him?” Zoë asked.

“Oh, my dear,” Ben said without looking up. “One cannot
heal
a zombie bite. But medicine and magic have evolved to where we are able to keep a victim stable for decades, as long as he follows some of the basic instructions.”

Zoë felt cold and relieved at the same time. Arthur would have known if there had been an easy fix to a zombie bite. Why didn’t Public Works know about this? She said, “He won’t like having to deal with the wound for the rest of his life, but it’s better than death. Or undeath.”

Phil raised an eyebrow to her, but she stood her ground. “What? It’s true. If we wanted to be turned, we would throw ourselves at you.”

Ben carried an old-fashioned doctor’s bag and sat it on the floor by the couch.

“You’re going to have to replace this couch. Or get a nice cover,” Ben said.

“Right,” she said, seeing for the first time that her couch cushion was soaked in blood, holy water, and peroxide. “Oh well,” she said weakly.

She and Phil stood with the closed door behind them, watching Ben calmly fix herbs and tiny bones, arrange them all on Zoë’s floor, and say some words over them. It was surreal to see a small Jewish man moan and chant like a hoodoo priestess, but he moaned and chanted with no self-consciousness, and Zoë glanced at Phil. He didn’t look back over at her, his face stony.

At the end, Ben had a mortar filled with a gooey yellow sludge. He unwrapped Arthur’s arm and smeared it on the wound with a gloved hand. Zoë glanced at Phil and noticed his nostrils flaring at the scent of blood.

Arthur’s eyes opened as Ben was re-bandaging the wound. “You have some powerful friends, sir,” Ben said. “You will survive. You might want to take some time off to let that arm heal. Change the dressings after three days. You have enough salve to last you three months, apply daily after the first three days, then come see me after three months. I’ll give you some written instructions before I leave.”

Arthur worked his mouth soundlessly, discovering that his tongue worked. “Did the zoëtist come? Where is she?”

Ben pursed his lips and straightened his tie again. “Zoëtists aren’t all females, sir. I can create golems, constructs, and similar things, but I am also one of the few living zoëtists who can treat early forms of zombism.”

“So… I’m not going to die and come back?”

The man smiled. “No, sir, as long as you follow my treatment plan.”

“So I could still become a zombie,” Arthur said, frowning.

Ben nodded. “If you don’t do as I say. Just like if you don’t follow the treatment plan of eating regularly, you will die of starvation, and if you don’t follow the treatment plan of sleeping regularly, you will go mad. Our lives are full of routines that we must follow to stay alive. This is just one more for you.”

Zoë accepted the written instructions for Arthur, who still pondered this.

Phil escorted the zoëtist to Zoë’s hallway, where they chatted in low voices. The sleeping tea must have been wearing off, because Arthur managed to sit up. He looked at Zoë, who was smiling at him.

He stared at her for a moment, then sighed. “I can’t figure you out, Zoë. Really.”

She laughed. “Not many can. That’s why I am still alive, I think. Now, do you think you can make it to your apartment or do you want to crash on my couch?”

“Bed,” he said, almost longingly.

She helped him off the couch; he was weaker than either of them had expected. “Thank you,” he said. “I mean it.”

“You saved our lives. Or whatever Phil calls his life. Thanks for that,” she replied.

“Part of the job,” he said, then made a pained expression. “Which I have to call into. Man, am I going to be in trouble.”

“For getting bitten?”