Dearly, Beloved (27 page)

I stayed by Pamela’s side all day, but by nine o’clock I’d had it. A quick glance outside told me that all of the carriages were gone, which left only one option. Chas and Ren were about, but I had to go higher. I was doing my absolute best to avoid skipping blithely out the door—causing more worry. Papa could keep his mouth shut.

So I climbed the attic stairs to ask Father Isley if he’d accompany me on the trolley. The priest, Company Z’s former chaplain, looked up from his papers when I approached. He was a man who radiated kindness even in death, his features doughy and his eyes warm. A bullet hole marred his cheek. “Of course, child. Where do you need to go?”

“The ships,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I have to. I’ll explain on the way.” I wasn’t about to wait around this time. I’d had it up to my eyeballs with waiting.

Responding to the urgency in my voice, Isley rose and removed his duster and scarf from their nail on the wall. He ran a hand over his thin gray hair before donning both. “At your service.”

Chas volunteered to take my place, and I ducked into Aunt Gene’s room to let Mrs. Roe and Pam know where I was headed—and that it was with an adult. They looked unhappy at the idea but wished me well.

Once we were seated in the EF special service trolley and headed for the surface, I unloaded everything Bram had told me on Father Isley. The priest responded with a low whistle. “I’m rather glad to be going, then,” he said as we neared the gatehouse. “It might prove interesting.”

“To say the least.”

Isley chuckled. “Well, interesting from the point of research.”

“For your book, you mean?” I knew he’d been working on some sort of book about zombie religion.

“Ah, yes. Right now I’m working on a chapter about cognitive dissonance and the phenomenon of postdeath atheism.” And with that he launched into his thesis. His facial expressions were often a tad wobbly, due to lack of muscle control. Sad to say, I didn’t find the talk very interesting.

For the moment, I was fixated on Patient One.

The city appeared unusually quiet and empty as we traveled through—though that was probably an improvement, all things considered. The streets grew darker as we neared the port, the air heavier with the scent of burning coal and oil. Soon I could see nothing but shacks and warehouses, and the occasional night-bound ship. The recycling trawlers, laden with hunks of salvage hacked off of the semicontinent of plastic that had formed in the Atlantic hundreds of years ago, always came into port at night.

We disembarked near the port authority and walked to the docks. Noticing the reporter-thronged barricade, Father Isley removed his checkered scarf and wound it over my hat and the
lower part of my face. I’d been all over the news in December, so it was a good move. He then braved the crowd, allowing me to follow in his wake, my fingers curled into the back of his coat.

As we reached the barricade, Ben Maza caught sight of us. He said nothing, but I could see the recognition in his eyes—and some amusement. He got us through to the other side, and Isley and I hurried on board the
Erika
, passing a few more patches of security along the way. They’d stepped things up.

Inside the ship, technicians and scientists were rushing about like mad. As we passed through, headed for the lower levels, I heard one quizzing a colleague: “Why do you keep personifying the Laz in your hourly reports? It’s not
doing
anything other than existing. It’s not plotting, it’s not attacking, it’s not evil. It’s not
alive
. Why do you keep treating nonliving things as if they have some agency?”

Isley eyed the man, his head pivoting slowly to follow him as we walked. The tech coughed and said, “Right. Carry on, then.”

“Before you do,” Isley said, “we could use directions. Miss Dearly here is looking for her father and Mr. Abraham Griswold.”

The doctor nodded weakly. “Of course.”

He took us down to B Level, where a hospital unit was set up. A few techs waved at us, though their faces looked drawn and worried. From there we went down another level, into the very guts of the ship, passing the engine room and coal bunkers on our way to the makeshift laboratory.

Frankly, I wasn’t sure what we’d find. My shoulders started hunching up as we neared the lab, and I felt Father Isley’s hand settle down between them. “All is well,” he told me as the doctor led us to a heavy door and opened it.

The lab was a large, square room, its walls reinforced with metal shingles. Equipment of the same sort massed in our house, but on a grander scale, was arranged in long, narrow rows that could be traversed by foot or wheeled stool. Large screens had
been hung from the ceiling, the walls left empty for the projection of virtual rat cages. At least thirty government scientists were currently at work, all of them living.

Beneath the nearest math-filled screen sat my father’s assistant, Dr. Salvez. I ran over when I spied him, my footsteps echoing off of the metal floor. He frowned in mild alarm. “Miss Dearly! What are you doing here?”

“I just want to see the others,” I told him. “That’s all.”

Salvez ran a hand over his beard. “They’re in your father’s office.” He gestured to a nearby interior doorway. Isley urged me on, and Salvez added, “I’ll join you shortly.”

This was it.

The dead boys, Evola, and my father were gathered in the office we found beyond the sheet metal wall. The room was long and narrow, and home only to some computer equipment and a single desk, no medical or chemical supplies. When he saw me, Bram came over. He wrapped his arms around me, the edge of the valve installed on his wrist digging into the small of my back. “It’s okay.”

“I know,” I said, trying to play it off as I slid out of his arms and approached my father. He embraced me, too. “Before you start lecturing, I had to come.”

“It’s all right. I’m sorry I haven’t been home.”

“Where’s Patient One?”

“Right behind you.” I turned around, focusing my attention down the length of the harshly lit room. Sitting on a stool in a rectangular metal cage about eight yards away was a stooped, sad figure. He appeared conscious of nothing; he didn’t even look up when the stony-faced soldiers flanking the cage moved preemptively closer.

Slowly, I moved toward the cage. Isley followed. The guards watched us but made no move to interfere. There was a line of red tape on the floor about three feet in front of the zombie’s
improvised cell, and I stopped when the hem of my red dress just touched it.

Whatever I’d been expecting, it wasn’t this depressed, slimy fellow. His skin looked like rain-soaked clay, and his eyes and exposed teeth were stained yellow. His bones were visibly pressing against his flesh in a few places, as if they were actively attempting to burst free. He looked like a zombie who’d been rotting for years, not someone who was recently turned—the closest I’d seen to his level of rot was news footage of Lord Ayles from last December. It looked so painful I had to remind myself that while zombies could feel many sensations, their ability to feel pain was lessened by the disease that’d made them. Not that I should have cared, in this guy’s case.

“Hello?” I tried. He didn’t move.

“He won’t respond,” Bram said, coming up behind us. “To light, noise, anything. I even tried poking him with a stick. The height of scientific research. Nothing.”

Confused, I said, “But he bit those people … do you think he became like this afterward?”

“No idea. Imagine my joy when we got here after being shot at and almost run off the road, and there he is. As forthcoming as a bloody rock. We’re still waiting on the computers. Running some tests. After all this time the police still haven’t managed to figure out
who
he is.”

“He looks so old. The people he bit didn’t look like this, did they?”

“From what I’ve heard, no. It’s impossible for anything to rot that fast.”

“Someone wants him, whoever he is.” Isley made the sign of the cross. “Poor gent.”

I turned fully toward Bram. “Do you really think it was the—”

Bram grabbed my arm and escorted me away from the cage before I could complete my sentence. I held my confusion until we were about halfway across the room. “What?” I whispered.

He cast his eyes back at the cage, where Isley remained, before saying softly, “I haven’t told anybody the Changed might be involved. Not specifically.”

“Why not? On the phone, you said you guys recognized one of the people from the camp.”

“Yeah—
one
of them. We still don’t know if the entire group is involved. Laura swore their group is pro-everybody. I don’t want to send the authorities after innocent zombies—especially ones that have lashed out in fear before. If something goes wrong they might mow them all down, ask questions later.”

My stomach went cold at the idea that I’d almost let everything slip. “Oh God, you’re right.”

“But it’s damn shady. Not just them. We’ll talk about it tonight.”

As I nodded, Salvez entered the room. “Screen, lower,” he said wearily.

“Everything done?” Papa strode away from his desk. Behind him an enormous flat screen dropped down, taking up the entire western wall.

“Yes, and you’re not going to like it. Computer, access file P1-2339A.” Bram and I moved to join the others. Papa put his hand on my shoulder.

The first slide was a set of images captured from a holographic internal scan. “I went over his internals inch by inch.” Salvez moved in front of us, gesturing to the left-hand image. “Several things strike me as very odd. First of all, examine his hips. This is from the rear. Do you see what I see?”

“He’s had bone marrow harvested,” Evola said, his eyes narrowing. “I can see the aspirations.” I looked, and found what he
meant—several tiny little holes, where a needle had drilled into his bone.

“Exactly. Postmortem, too. Notice the lack of any sort of healing.” He gestured upward. “And yet, his vital systems seem beautifully intact, barely rotted. If I didn’t know better, I’d say this shot was of a living man. It’s very odd.”

“What else?” Papa asked.

Salvez pointed to the next picture, which was of one of Patient One’s legs. “Even Miss Dearly should be able to see what’s wrong with this.”

Before I could fire off a snarky comment, I did notice what was wrong. “He has … a …” I pointed at his knee. It didn’t look right; it was strangely bright on the image.

Papa moved forward, his brows lifting. “An artificial kneecap.”

“Yes, and look.” Salvez blew up the image until I could easily see that something had been done to the plastic kneecap itself; it appeared the side had been filed or scraped, and then drilled into. “All identifying markings have been destroyed.”

“Identifying markings?”

“Yes. Artificial body parts, at least those received by the living, are usually chipped and coded for record keeping and safety purposes.”

“Someone didn’t want anyone to be able to use that info to identify him,” Bram said.

“And that is the story of this man’s life!” Salvez started pacing back and forth, images rapidly flickering across the screen. “His teeth? Not his own. Someone yanked out all of this poor man’s teeth and replaced them with artificial ones. Thus, no dental records. I ran his DNA again, and scans of his iris and retina; he doesn’t match up with any records, anywhere. His fingertips—and thus his fingerprints—have been snipped off. Same goes for the soles of his feet. He has no ID chip, and from the level of rot,
I can’t tell if he
ever
did. It’s like he’s been sealed in a vat and hidden underground until now. Oh.” He told the screen to pause on a particular image. “Notice his scalp. Someone attempted to shoot him in the head at some point, and succeeded only in delivering a flesh wound. I think it probably happened a few weeks ago—I’d say a few
months
ago, but that can’t be right. If he’s been around for months, and if he’s given to violence, we would have seen this mutation before now.”

“What all has he
been
through?” I asked, looking back at the prisoner.

“God only knows. There’s absolutely no way to find out who this poor creature is, unless he recovers his powers of speech and feels chatty.” Salvez gripped his head. “I think I’m beginning to lose my mind.”

“You’re still a bit shaken up,” Tom told him. “Buck up. You did great. And insanity isn’t all that bad, you know. Nowadays, I tend to think of stark raving madness as just a really flamboyant survival mechanism.”

Salvez made a face at Tom, and pulled my father and Evola into a conference. The guys and I retreated a few steps, while Isley returned to the cage. “What are we going to do?” I asked.

“Get back to the house. Pull everyone in,” Bram said. “It might seem like we have two different things to worry about, but I’m not convinced they’re not one and the same.”

I lifted my eyes, peeking up at Bram through my lashes. He wore the same worried expression I figured I must. “Do you really think the Changed might be connected to the masked attacks?”

“Let’s get back to the house. Talk.”

“Okay.” I started back down the room. “Father? Ready to go?”

As I came up behind the priest, I could hear him speaking, his
voice low. I soon realized he was either praying or reciting some biblical passage, so I stopped, waiting for a respectful moment to butt in.

“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them,” he pronounced, with an accent of finality.

“Father,” I began, just as Patient One lifted his head. I stopped dead, watching as the prisoner gazed up into Isley’s eyes. His movements were achingly slow, and accompanied by very soft, moist sounds.

“Not lions,” he gurgled. He didn’t stutter, but dragged out his words to the point where they ticked like a reading off a Geiger counter. “He has no lions. No leopards.”

“What?” Isley asked as the guards shakily unslung their rifles and aimed them into the cage. “No, stop!”

“No lions. No leopards,” Patient One said. “The Devil keeps tigers.”