Dearly, Beloved (30 page)

“That’s why we take matters into our own hands!” Hagens
shouted. “Starting now. In Mártira and Claudia’s memory, we free the zombie known as Smoke. It was Mártira’s final wish. He’s too precious to leave in human control. We take him north and form our own tribe! We’re already dead—what have we got to lose?”

“Mártira! Claudia! Martyrs for the cause!” Mr. Invierno yelled.
Lied
.

Even in my benumbed, grief-stricken state, I knew they were all going to tell the same lie. They would make it so no one would believe me, even if I dared to speak. It was like I’d never been in the tent at all. The Changed were apparently content to have Hagens as their leader. So many of them were new, they didn’t know any better—they only knew that Mártira had taken them in, loved everyone, and that her kindness had gotten her killed. Hagens could do anything she liked.

God, what were they going to do? What was
I
going to do?

That night the music was angry. That night the living who tried to join in the festivities were turned away, shadowed by the dead until they got back into their carriages and took off. Everyone was bitter, raging, full of fire.

If I felt anything at all, it was fear.

Unable to sleep, unsure where to go, I walked. I knew I ought to keep walking, leave the camp behind, but I also knew I wouldn’t get very far on my own. The dead around me danced, and ballooned their collapsed lungs to sing and scream, and played cards and knife games to forget, and I walked, seeing nothing, hearing nothing.

At least, not until I saw the three young zombies from the night before. The ones who’d come with Mr. Griswold. Perhaps it was the girl’s metallic voice, the sleekness of the noseless boy’s head, or the sturdy size of the short-haired, one-eyed lad that caught my attention, I don’t know—but my dead heart contracted as I recalled Hagens’s anger at them and those with them.

A forbidding feeling took hold of me. They had to get out of here. It wasn’t safe for them. And if Mártira had been alive, she would have told them so. She, who had saved so many.

The girl and the shorter boy were engrossed by the performers on the stage, but the taller boy was actively surveying the crowd. He wore a hearing aid hooked over his left ear and he kept reaching up to scratch at it, as if it bothered him. It was him I decided to approach. “Pardon me?”

He looked down at the sound of my voice. His one good eye was a warm shade of brown, which the glare from the glittering lights turned into gold. “You.”

Without thinking, I half bowed my head. “Yes. I was there last night … when Hagens …” Just saying her name made my voice seize up.

“Yeah, I remember you.” He didn’t look at his friends, but stepped forward, forcing me to move back. He was quite wide and well muscled. “Laura, right?”

“Yes,” I told him as I tripped on my hem. I caught myself before I could stumble and shut my eyes, launching into it. “But that’s not important. You have to go. At least, if your friend is here, the girl with the black hair—she has to go. Now.”

“Go?” I opened my eyes and saw that the boy was staring at me intently. “Why?”

Picking up my skirt, I lowered my voice and took a risk. “Because Hagens is in charge now. And …” How could I put it? “Hagens doesn’t like her.”

His expression altered, becoming more serious. “What happened?”

“Bad things,” was all I could think of to say. In my own voice, I could hear the tears that would never fall. “You should all go. Just go. You’re in danger.”

The boy held steady for a moment, before leaning very close to me. “Listen,” he said, and something in his voice compelled
me to. “We’re here to figure a few things out. We actually need to talk to Hagens. If you honestly think she’d shoot us on sight, we’ll leave, and owe you a big one. But if there’s a chance we can meet up with her, we have to take it. Maybe you can help us.”

“Coalhouse?” The short boy came to join us. “What’s up?”

“Today, she …” I clamped my jaw shut. I didn’t want to say it. I was afraid it would come back to haunt me.

“Waaarn us about who?” the girl asked, stepping up beside the other male zombie.

“Hagens,” Coalhouse said, his eye never leaving my face. The tall girl hushed.

There were too many people. Too many strangers. I didn’t want to deal with this—I’d just wanted to whisper my warning and run. “I hate her for all she’s done and wants to do,” I said, keeping my phrasing vague, like Mártira had taught me to do when being interrogated by the cops. My books and her stories had always helped with that skill. It felt weirdly theatrical; I was filled with the sudden desire to laugh derisively at myself.

Coalhouse nodded slowly. “Okay, then. Good.”

“But you can’t do anything tonight.” I rubbed at my cheek. “Trust me. You should just leave. I greatly fear for your friend …”

“She’s not here,” Coalhouse assured me. “Neither is Griswold. It’s just Tom, and Chas, and me.”

“What about the road attack?” Tom looked at me, his gaze sharper than Coalhouse’s. “We were attacked on the road near Drike’s earlier. Your people have anything to do with that?”

They knew. They’d been there. “They’re not my people,” I said, putting no heat into the words. He seemed to understand, uttering a curse.

“Do you know why they were sent?” Coalhouse asked.

“To get Smoke. Hagens wants him back for some reason.”

“Smoke?” Chas wondered.

“The prisoner with the new illness.” I decided I had to tell.
“Today she was talking about getting the black-haired girl, too, trading her for him. Or her father. I’m not sure.”

“Getting Nora?” Tom asked, his black eyes widening. “Jesus.”

Chas looked to the camp, her eyes narrowing. “We can’t take them alone.” She returned her attention to me. “Come with us. We’ll geeett you out of here.”

For an instant, I thought of going with them—then I recalled Dog and Abuelo, and all the people Hagens had lied to, and I knew I couldn’t leave them. Not without knowing for certain I could come back. And I couldn’t tell the entire camp, not without throwing it into chaos, possibly turning it against the three offering me their help. “I can’t. Go. Come back with more people. I could help you then.”

“Okay.” A pause, and Coalhouse added, “Thank you.”

“C’mon, man. We can cut through those trees. We gotta get back.”

I watched the other zombies as they walked away, their feet heavy on the grass and fallen leaves. After a few seconds I found myself standing alone, feeling hollow.

What had I just done?

Fueled by a sudden fear, I hurried across the field, doing my best to skirt the crowd. I wasn’t a strong runner in death; my legs were slow to listen to my brain. Once in the tent, I threw myself onto my pallet and buried my face in my pillow, my heart and mind a mess of turbulent, unconnected feelings and thoughts. Above all, I thought perhaps I’d made a monumental mistake. I didn’t know for certain whether those people were potential allies or something else. Not without Mártira to put it in words I could understand, to guide me through it.

She was gone. She was really gone, and I felt like I couldn’t move, couldn’t think. I just wanted to close my eyes and join her. Even Claudia. I would have given my own pathetic second life to have Claudia back.

Later that night, they fed the bodies to the flames. Mártira’s body popped and sputtered—undignified sounds, sounds she never should have made. Even when she drank my diseased blood she was neat and dainty about it. Bruno and several buskers stood at the open tent door to view the pyre, terror or dark anger muting their lips. I could feel Bruno’s eyes on me.

I stared beyond them, my own rotting eyes calling magical shapes out of the raging fires, wondering if I would ever see Coalhouse and the others again—and unsure if it even mattered.

I wished desperately that the flames were eating me instead.

The next day, Patient One still wasn’t talking. Not so much as a gurgle. So, crossing over to the
Christine
, I sought out zombies to interview. There were plenty receiving care that day, but none had anything to tell me concerning people in bird masks.

When I got the call around 10:00 P.M. telling me the crew was already back at the house, I was prepared for yet another brush with too little information. It seemed like they’d just left. I borrowed Salvez’s carriage for the ride, already disappointed.

Due to the forever rerouted traffic patterns in the city, I had to detour by the Morgue again. It looked even more desolate by night, with lights and oil drum fires few and far between. As I idled at a red light, my attention was caught by a pair of zombie children sitting by the park’s wrought-iron fence, which was shingled with ragged protest signs. They were playing with some sort of toy, taking turns aiming it at each other, but I couldn’t make out what it was. It didn’t look like a toy gun.

“We have to rethink almost every law on the books,” the talk show host on the carriage wireless said. “Take marriage, for example. Does living death officially sever a couple, as in, ‘till death do us part’? Are the children of dead parents legally orphaned,
and does that mean the state should send them to orphanages? What about homicide—can you technically ‘kill’ someone who’s already dead?”

A delivery van passed by, bathing the dead children with light for an instant.

A soldier. They were playing with a toy soldier.

In my current frame of mind, I found this fact more pathetic than enraging. The kids didn’t know any better. I couldn’t help but be reminded of everything I’d done, though. The fact that just yesterday I’d had to cap a zombie in the head.

When I’d first been ushered into Company Z and taught how and what to shoot, I quickly learned to process the guilt caused by killing people so like myself—for in a way, they weren’t like me. We’d always targeted the insane zombies, the hosts, the ones who either embraced or were engulfed by their cannibalistic desires. While I’d argue for their humanity until the day I truly died, they were helpless in the face of their disease. That’s what I’d always told myself, so I could sleep at night. That we had no choice. That, in a way, to dispose of them was a mercy.

That justification was hard to extend to my fellow high-functioning zombies, however—especially now that the vaccine was out. Honestly, I could sympathize with Hagens, with the fury she directed at the living. The extermination order had been the last resort of a living populace staring infection and death in the face, and the army wasn’t a monolithic evil—I knew that. Dearly proved that, Lopez proved that, Norton’s men proved that. Yet, while I didn’t condone Hagens’s views, I could
understand
them.

The light turned green and I shook myself free of my ruminations. I took my foot off the brake, and the carriage started to inch forward.

That’s when a black shape flew in front of the carriage, a brown one shadowing it. I nearly collided with the brown thing, and it
stopped with its hands on the carriage hood, glaring at me through the windshield. It was a young dead man in a leather duster, his shoulder-length dishwater hair pinched into a ponytail, his skin yellow and his lips black. A second later he raced away, and I turned to gape after him.

He was chasing a mask.

I was fifth in line at the light, so contributing to the pursuit in the carriage didn’t even occur to me. Instead I abandoned the vehicle and ran out on foot. I wasn’t sure where I was going, what had gotten into me—I only knew that I had to follow. Maybe seeing the other boy running had triggered some instinct to join the hunt, the chase.

All three of us dodged traffic across two streets, shot down an alley. The other zombie was slowing. He said nothing to me until I caught up with and surpassed him, at which point he yelled, “Get him!”

I was trying. The mask was fast, his long black coat billowing out behind him. Pushing myself on, I felt my body weakening, my muscles loosening, my joints grinding. I was doing horrible damage to my body.

That didn’t matter, though. Not when a mask was actually within my grasp.

The mask darted through a narrow archway, and I turned just in time to see him leap down into a recessed area of the street. It wasn’t the sewer, but it was close. “See you later, deadmeat!” the mask panted, voice like a robot’s.

Launching myself at him, I found myself shut out by the slamming of an iron door. It was locked. I couldn’t beat my way in.

Damn it all
.

As I stood there, trying to recover, the other boy caught up to me. “Did he get away?”

“Yeah.” He took his turn to indulge in a curse, casting his arms down angrily. “Did you see him hurt a living person?”

“Living?” the boy demanded, turning to me. “Those guys’ve been kidnapping zombies from the Morgue for weeks! The cops won’t believe me—he was my proof!”

The guy’s name was David Braca. Former laborer, current hobo, and fountain of information.

I did the only thing I could do. I took him home.

Upon entering the house, we found the younger half of the household, minus Renfield, seated on the wide front staircase. Nora and Pamela were in their dressing gowns and lacy caps, and when they noticed the strange male zombie, they both ducked behind the closest clothed person they could find.