Dearly, Beloved (20 page)

“No, not yet. Bram has.”

Gripping her little drawstring purse tightly, Pamela said, “Let me guess—you didn’t tell your father where you’re going. Nora, you’re going to get in trouble again!”

Nora lifted a finger. “You’re assuming things. Papa’s fine with it. Yesterday he actually struck me as sane.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “He was great last night—more like his old self.”

Pam looked at me. “He’s letting her do this?” she demanded. There was a strange, accusing sort of panic in her voice, and I stood up. “Did
you
convince him?”

“Miss Roe,” I tried, glancing around at the crowd. The prerecorded organ music was picking up, a hint the service was due to start soon. The flexible flat screen tapestries displayed upon the walls shifted designs, showcasing the Stations of the Cross. “I didn’t convince anyone of anything. She’s not grounded anymore, and we’re not going alone.”

“I’m right here, guys,” Nora said, annoyed. “Look, Bram promised to help this dead kid. He lost his hand.”

“I’m sorry for that, I am. But let Mr. Griswold handle it. Besides, Lord Lopez might come today, and I don’t know when. You have to be there.”

“Blast, I forgot about that.” Nora sighed. “Look, I can’t hang out at your house all day. If I miss him, we’ll just have to meet up other time. But I’ll go with you after the service. We’ll figure it out.”

Thinking that was the end of it, I moved to escort Nora into the pew. Pamela stood in the aisle for a moment before turning on Nora again, lips pale. “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

Nora lowered her voice. “Pamma, doing what? What’s the matter?”

“I gave you a chance to talk to Lopez, and now you act like it’s an imposition. You’d abandon it to go do … what? Ride around the countryside? With
career criminals
?”

Nora was thrown. “It’s a charity visit. It is the sort of thing the people in this very building have been encouraging us to do since we were
two
. And Samedi and Chase are good people.”

“Last time it was just a
walk
through your neighborhood with lots of
workers
around, when you could have come with me. You said that’s when Mr. Griswold first tried to grab you.” I coughed and looked at the intricate plaster ceiling. “The next day, I lost you. You were taken into the night and I didn’t know if you were alive or dead.”

“What does that have to do with me going on a visit with at least three other people, Pamma? And you don’t even know if this guy is definitely going to show up. I don’t get what the problem is.”

“You don’t get …” Pamela stared at Nora as if the very idea was an impossibility. “You just don’t care, do you?”

“What? That’s not fair,” Nora said, her voice growing chilly.

I finally decided to move forward, placing myself close to the middle of them without stepping between. “Come on. We can settle this later, all right?”

Pamela snapped, “It is
none
of your business! This is about us.”

Chastened, I shut up. Nora was looking at Pam as if she’d punched her in the chest. “I’m not blowing you off completely. But I have to do what I can to help. I’d help
you
if you’d tell me what’s wrong.”

Pam started to say something else—opened her mouth and sort of screwed up her torso, as if winding up for the shot. But instead of following through she turned sharply and stomped off, returning to her family. Nora stared after her, deflated.

Offering my hand, I began, “Nora—”

“No.” She straightened her arms by her sides and moved to
join me in the pew. “Not now. Later.” She sat down, and I followed suit, my eyes on her. I couldn’t tell if it was anger I saw on her face or something else. All the heads I’d blown open over the years, all the missions I’d been on, and I still counted Girl Problems as something out of my league.

Pamela left after the service without saying a word. Nora turned off her phone.

As soon as we returned home, Nora drew inward. I gave her space until late afternoon. When the time finally came to strike out on our errand, she didn’t seem half as eager to go.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked while we waited for the car at the front door. I took her hat from her hands, arranging it upon her bed of dark curls and tying the ribbons beneath her chin. Maybe it was weird, but I liked fussing over her from time to time—buckling her holster, helping her put her things on. It made me feel protective. Hell, it gave me an excuse to touch her.

“I will be,” she said. “I just have to figure out what Pamma needs from me.” She pulled some hair free of the knot I’d tied. “I don’t know what her issue is. She was fine during the Siege. That pretty much set the bar for ‘worst stuff we would ever encounter.’ I’m used to her worrying, but I’m not used to her being … like this.”

“She’s been through a lot. We all have,” I said, before a beep caught my attention. Samedi was ready to go. “C’mon. We can talk about it later.”

Despite the fact that it was flashy, we were taking the Rolls because Sam wanted to put it through a test drive. It was a tight fit, but Renfield was able to share the front seat with Dr. Chase, while Chas and Nora were appointed laps. Nora recovered some of her good mood, joking about wanting to sit on Tom’s lap
with
Chas. Eventually I just made a show of grabbing her and putting
her on my knee, which caused Chas to fan herself furiously and sent Nora into gales of semiembarrassed laughter.

“I’m not seeing this,” Beryl said, shielding the left side of her face with her hand.

“All right. Arms in, safeties on, let’s do this,” Sam said from the driver’s seat.

“Oh,” Beryl said. “We all have weapons, right, children?”

Coalhouse and Chas sang, “Yes, Mom.”

As the car started up, Nora slid onto my lap proper, leaning her head against my shoulder. Good trip so far.

“How far away is this place?” Tom asked.

“More than an hour west of here,” Sam said, eliciting a chorus of groans from those with long legs, myself included.

It was about four-thirty when we hit Highway 2. The drive was pretty enough, and interesting from an outsider’s perspective. I’d been told that land was a limited resource in New Victoria, but each off-ramp we passed seemed to lead either to some small town or gathering of houses, all of them with names like “Sandthorn” and “Appleton”—never did I catch a glimpse of another city. Between these there were almost comically large, inexplicably empty tracts of green, terraformed wilderness, interposed by a few areas of marshland and farmland. Miles and miles of underutilized land, probably controlled by the rich. It was completely unlike the Punk territories. I was reminded how little land my people ended up with, and how brown that land seemed to be sometimes.

Samedi couldn’t get Aethernet or wireless service in his prehistoric tin can, so after a short bout of conversation there was nothing but the sound of the wind to distract us as we drove into the cloud-shrouded setting sun. It looked like rain. I shut my eyes after a while, giving them a rest from their constant struggle to adapt to the shifting light. Thanks to my heightened senses, I could feel the even, slow expansion of Nora’s chest against my
side as she breathed, and I lost myself in it. The sensation of it enthralled me even more once my brain made the connection between its steady speed and the fact that she was currently snuggled up between four zombies.

After a while I felt the car make a turn and heard Chas squeal, her voice distorting somewhat, “We’re on the ro-ad!” Upon first opening my eyes, I couldn’t make out any signs or landmarks—I couldn’t even make out what the road was made of. When my vision adjusted I saw we were cruising over a long ribbon of gravel, nothing but grassland to either side, headed toward a line of trees about a mile off.

“The paper said to ‘look for the light,’ ” Tom said. “I see no light. I see no anything.”

Chas glanced out the window. Clouds started to gather more thickly, the remaining sunlight abruptly fading away. Suddenly she bounced atop Tom and shouted, “Wait! Ov-er there!” I followed her pointing finger. Sure enough, back toward the tree line I could make out an assortment of carriages and tents thrown into silhouette by electric lights and bonfires.

“Still want to do this?” I asked of the car at large.

“If anyone says no, I will
nip
them so sev-ere-ly, I swear to Goood,” Chas grumbled. The last syllable flickered in her newly equipped throat, the sound reverberating, theraminlike.

“Okay, then,” Sam said as he put the accelerator to the floor.

A few minutes later he turned off into a field full of carriages, carts, even monowheeled motorcycles. He found a place to park and we all fell out of the car, unfolding ourselves from one another. Nora and Dr. Chase limped as the blood returned to their legs. Music filtered to us from the area where the tents were set up—pounding, commanding even from a distance. A clap of thunder augmented it.

Looking around, I realized not all of the vehicles I saw could possibly belong to the Changed. In fact there were quite a few
people about—both living and dead. Some, like us, were just arriving. Others were making their way back to the carriages, laughing, seemingly in high spirits. It wasn’t what I expected to see.

Nora opened the trunk, retrieving her cloth-covered basket of offerings before taking my arm. The crew fell in behind us as we moved toward the camp. I could hear Dr. Chase entreating everyone to remain on their guard, and I knew it should be
me
saying that, but—that was before the scene in front of us registered.

“Are you
seeing
this?” Chastity yelled. “Are you
seeing
this, or have I finally made it to heaven? Dying a virgin has totally freaking worked in my favor!”

It wasn’t just a camp we were walking in on.

It was a party for the ages.

The tents marked the outer edge of the campsite, which was located partly within the trees. Above it, tangled within the tree branches, hung a weblike mesh of multihued electric lights, their cords snaking over the grass and terminating at large portable generators. In the very middle of the camp sat a double-tiered stage of new wood, on the lower level of which an all-zombie
band
was currently performing. The deafening music was unlike the complicated, frilly, “high-class” compositions I’d come to expect from New Victorian wireless stations, even the ones that played popular ballads and dance songs for the working-class. It was more like desert rag than anything else, heavy with fiddles and banjos and other things that twanged.

On the upper level of the stage, dead girls with their blouses scandalously unbuttoned and their skirts hiked up were dancing with hand- and armfuls of tiny glass spheres, which they induced, by their sinuous movements, to roll across their bodies. As the stormy weather built I could see the spheres were illuminated from within, their colors constantly shifting. Other zombies, male and female, circulated freely through the crowd, performing
tricks with parasols and cages of mechanical fleas, advertising trinkets for sale, and offering to tell fortunes. A few of the performers wore masks. Colorful, intricate masks—animal and harlequin, plain leather and pearl-encrusted. As if the field was the site of a massive masquerade. My imagination tore off without me, and I found myself wondering what else we might find in the crowd.

I also wondered what we might find back in the parking lot.

Aside from the stage area, there were no clear distinctions between those on display and those watching them. The crowd was enormous, and comprised not only of zombies—there were plenty of living people, men and women, fine and poor. Some were dancing; others had spread blankets out on the trampled grass. A few had been picnicking and were now hurrying to pack up as the sky darkened and the wind threatened, their picnic baskets flawlessly appointed with real china and crystal and silver, not to mention the odd miniature absinthe fountain.

As I considered my next move, one of the drummers released a haunting, mournful cry, and at once it was answered both by his fellow performers and about half the audience. A second cry went out, and a dead man answered its call, ascending the high stage to thunderous applause. He wore his roughly braided hair twisted into a bun atop his head, and had daubed his face with flaky red paint in the shape of a skull.

“I’m Bruno Allende!” the man yelled. He was easily heard over the music, though he didn’t sound like he was wearing a mic. Without wasting another moment, he launched into song. His voice was frenetic and he moved like a caged animal, repeatedly throwing himself at the edge of the stage as if preparing to launch himself into the audience, only to stop just short.

“You wanna control me? Wind me up, watch me go
,

Do what you want, jump when you say so?

Not gonna happen! Never again!

The power is ours now, no need to pretend!”

A hand on my arm roused me from my shocked fascination. Nora reached up and tipped my face toward the edge of the crowd. There, a living girl was dancing with not one but two zombie gents in a way that’d make her father pop a vessel. No one else was paying them any mind.

“What
is
this?” Nora said, eyes wide. “Did you know they’d be having a party?”

My sense of responsibility finally kicked in. I looked around for Dr. Chase and found her standing with Renfield off to the side, both stony-faced. Sam was nowhere to be seen. Before I could say anything, Chase shouted, “We should go! This is some sort of … I don’t know what!”

The music slowed and Bruno sang out, voice roiling with emotion,
“It isn’t over till I say it’s over! The Reaper already left me behind!”

As the music took over again, two gray girls clad in little more than their corsets and bloomers oiled their way across the stage, their bodies rolling in time to the beat. I heard Chas shouting, “I want to do that! Oh, Tommy, I waaant to do that!”