Love in an Undead Age, A.M. Geever [best contemporary novels txt] 📗

sat back in his chair. A steely silence filled the room. After several minutes Walter bowed his head and pursed his lips. “There’s something I need to ask you.”

Miranda looked up from the still warm cup in her hands. “You never just ask how I am,” she said. Even to her own ears, she sounded petty and childish.

Walter ignored the jibe. “Connor’s been working on something for us, something important. I’ve been planning to ask for your help when we’re ready. We both know he’s here for you, Miranda. And his cousin, but mostly for you.”

Miranda rolled her eyes. “Oh, we do, do we? And you know this because of your vast stores of relationship experience? What do you want me to do?”

“I need you to settle whatever there is to be settled between you.” Walter’s eyes bored into her head like a drill. “If we succeed, it will change everything, but we’re only going to get one chance. We cannot fail, which is why I need you. Your expedition made it to the reactor at Rancho Seco when no one else could. I know I can depend on you and I know you’ll get it done or die trying. I need to know if you can put everything with Connor aside and work with him. It won’t be for long, but I can’t have either of you distracted. There’s too much at stake.”

He knew how to pique a girl’s curiosity. She had to give him that.

“What are you talking about? Why all the cloak and dagger?”

Walter’s face became serious. Whatever he was about to tell her was big.

“We’ve broken the monopoly on the vaccine.”

Miranda looked at him in disbelief.

“Bullshit.”

Walter began to laugh.

“Shit, Father Walter.” Miranda started laughing too. “You almost had me for a second.”

“No, really, it’s true,” he insisted, grinning.

It wasn’t his words as much as the lack of a flinch followed by a dismayed lecture about her language that killed her smile.

“Henry is dead, and Mario betrayed us,” she said. “The Council and GeneSys have the vaccine, not us.”

“Henry didn’t die,” Walter answered. “We staged the crash and got him to Santa Cruz. He’s been there ever since, reconstructing his and Mario’s work.”

“But…that’s impossible. GeneSys did the genetic testing. It was Henry’s body in that car.”

“We had help with that, Miranda. We’ve been producing post-bite for over a year now, tiny amounts at first. We still haven’t cracked the preventative vaccine, but Henry says he’s very close. Any day now.”

“And you’re going to just start handing it out? That will start a war with the City!”

Walter shifted in his seat and leaned forward. “Let me explain,” he began. “You know Henry was convinced the City Council would try to kill him and Mario once the development of the preventative vaccine was announced.”

“Yeah, and they did try, right after they and Mario reneged on sharing the vaccine with everyone.”

“We staged Henry’s crash, but he couldn’t get any of the data out. He had to start all over again when we got him to Santa Cruz. Just getting him an adequate lab took over a year. He started with post-bite. He said it would be the easier of the two.”

Miranda sat silently, trying to absorb this new information. It had been so chaotic then, with the pitched battles after Mario’s defection. An ideal time to slip away unnoticed.

Walter continued. “By the time Mario reached out to us to broker the Agreement, Henry was beyond the Golden Gate.”

Miranda’s chest contracted and her stomach flipped. Still, after all this time. “You make it sound so noble, ‘broker the Agreement.’ Fucked us over is more like it.”

“Whatever else he did, Mario saved us with the Agreement,” Walter said softly, his expression acknowledging the fact that she didn’t want to hear it. “We couldn’t have beaten the City then. We didn’t have the leverage we do now with the Missions and the Farm. And we didn’t come out of it empty-handed, Miranda. Everyone in the Valley at the time got the vaccine, and it gave us time to regroup and figure out a way to turn things around.”

Miranda took a deep breath. She could not stand hearing him defend anything that Mario had done, even obliquely, and especially when it was true. Noble Prize winning Stanford professor Henry Chan, one of the world’s most distinguished virologists, and Mario Santorello, his former student, founder of GeneSys and biotech wunderkind, cracked the zombie virus. She remembered the excitement and hope, how proud she had been of Mario when he burst into the Farm to tell her. The vaccine was supposed to save the world but instead became a precursor to betrayal and depravity. She knew Walter believed anyone could be redeemed, but she didn’t. Not anymore.

“So what’s the rest of the plan?” she asked after giving herself a mental shake. She had wasted enough time trying to understand why Mario had done what he had. She was damned if she would go down that rabbit hole again.

“We’ll be shipping the post-bite vaccine and the data to make it soon. Hopefully we’ll have the preventative by then, but if not, we’re still going to move forward. Ships will sail to different locations on the North and South American coasts, and I want you on one of them. There are labs ready to go. That’s what Connor and one of the people with him have been doing: finding sites and equipment, finding scientists to do the work. We’ll be using the missions as starting points to retake territory and start vaccinating. That’s what you’ll be doing. If you’re in, that is,” he said, smiling. “By the time the Council and GeneSys find out what’s going on, it will be too late. The genie will be out of the bottle.”

“But there are billions of zombies out there. Are we supposed to kill them all?”

“I know it seems impossible, but what else can we do?” Walter replied. “We kill them all, and it will take a very long time. There are people out there, Miranda, but they’re too vulnerable and isolated to do anything on their own. When they hear what we’re doing—and they will—they’ll find us. They’ll join us, and the days of the Council will be numbered. I don’t know how long it will take, but we will rid the world of zombies, God willing.”

Miranda looked at Father Walter, who had given her refuge when the world ended. He was more of a father to her than her own had ever been. Walter had been there when she needed him. He had never let her down. She wanted so much to believe what he was telling her, to believe she was hearing a plan that could be realized, not a delusional pipe dream.

“You are one crazy-ass optimist, Father Walter,” she said finally. “You’ve either gone batshit crazy or you’re going down in the history books as the guy who pulled humanity’s ass out of a sling.”

“Ach, Miranda, your language! You’d make a sailor blush, you would.” Walter shook his head as if he could dislodge the profanities from his ears. “Anyone as smart as you should have a better ability to express herself.”

“I do. Swearing is just more fun.”

Walter looked at Miranda narrowly, his expression halfway between amusement and exasperation. “So I take it you’re in?”

“You bet I’m in. Worst case scenario, I get a high school named after me.”

“And you can you work with Connor?” Walter persisted, more serious. “You can settle whatever you need to settle?”

“Already done. You can count on me.”

Walter stood, then bent to kiss the top of her head. “I can always count on you. You’re a good girl, Miranda.”

“I’m twenty-nine years old!” she protested, laughing. “When do I stop being a girl?”

“Never, as far as I’m concerned. You’re a youngster compared to an old man like me.”

Miranda threw back the afghan and began to get up.

“Where do you think you’re going? You have a concussion. Doc said you’re to rest.”

“Are you serious? There must be a zillion things to do.”

“We have six weeks, give or take, before we’ll be ready to go. There’s nothing for you to do just now.”

“You tell me the most exciting news I will ever get and I’m supposed to lie here in bed?”

“I suppose not,” Walter allowed. “Unless you want Doc making good on the psych ward.”

Damn. He had her there.

“I forgot about that. You don’t really think he’d do it, do you?”

“You can never be too careful where Doc is concerned.”

Miranda sighed, annoyed and frustrated. “Fine. I’ll stay here, doing nothing.”

“I’ll put out word to leave you be,” Walter replied, looking far too pleased with her predicament for Miranda’s liking. “Try to rest, a ghrá, even if you can’t sleep.”

She smiled when he called her by the Gaelic endearment that meant “my love.” The first time he had done so, as she lay injured in the Cowell Health Center following an expedition that had gone very wrong, she had asked what it meant. After explaining its meaning, Walter had shyly confessed it was what his grandmother had called him.

Walter stopped at the door when she asked, “How long have you known he wasn’t a priest?”

He turned back to face her. “Before, Miranda. I knew before.”

Miranda absorbed the news for a moment. “What am I supposed to say to him? ‘You dumped my ass to be a priest, but it’s nice to see you again? Guess the whole God thing didn’t work out?’”

Walter smiled. “You’re asking for wisdom from my vast stores of relationship experience, are you? Why don’t you