Love in an Undead Age, A.M. Geever [best contemporary novels txt] 📗
- Author: A.M. Geever
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The infirmary reminded Miranda of a frontier cabin, with its whitewashed wood plank walls and cozy pot-bellied stove. Frontier except for the salvaged modern windows overlooking the walkway outside. At the other end of the mobile home-sized building, several young women were filling a round wooden bathtub that sat next to the wood-burning stove with steaming water.
Delilah was freed from the sling on Miranda’s back. Miranda felt as if she might float away now that the squirming pit bull no longer weighed her down. Mario took Delilah out to do her business and stretch her legs. He had been reluctant to leave Miranda alone but relented when Delilah began to whine and paw at the door. The Prophet’s Guard accompanying Mario had kept a healthy distance from them.
When Mario returned, Bethany took him to the examination area near the door. Miranda was led behind a large curtain that divided a row of cots.
“There you go,” said Pamela as she helped her into a chair by the cots. The slight teenaged girl had been assigned to look after Miranda. “Let me pull this curtain and I will get you undressed.”
Pamela tapped a steaming pail of water next to Miranda’s feet with her toe and grinned. “I kept some of the hot water for you before the other girls put it all in the tub.”
While Pamela set about undressing and bathing Miranda, Miranda set about feeling ridiculous. After a few minutes, she began to relax. The water was scented with a fragrant herb and the light lather of the homemade soap and soft washcloth felt wonderful against her skin. She could hear the low murmur of Mario’s voice answering the healer’s questions.
To just sit and be taken care of felt like such an indulgence. Between the pleasurable sensations of the warm cloth caressing her skin and the lack of an imminent threat to her life, a bone-crushing weariness descended. Miranda let Pamela’s word wash over her and had begun to nod off when a bolt of lightning-sharp pain shot up her leg. Pamela’s face turned up, her brown eyes contrite.
“I barely touched it.”
“It’s okay,” Miranda assured her.
“How many children do you have, Miss Miranda?” Pamela asked. She moved the washcloth over Miranda’s other leg with practiced ease.
“None.” Miranda yawned.
“No children?” Pamela lowered her voice. “Is it that you cannot? How old are you?”
“I’ve never tried, and I’m twenty-nine,” Miranda answered, amused by the girl’s lack of tact.
“Then not too old,” Pamela said, sounding satisfied.
“I guess not.”
“I will be fifteen soon,” Pamela said, her voice brimming with excitement. “Once I am married, I will have many children, the Prophet be praised.” The girl wrung out the cloth and set it aside. “All done.”
Pamela allowed Miranda to dry herself while she fetched a long tunic from a hook and helped Miranda up from the chair and into the garment. Pamela shifted Miranda to a cot and cleared away the pail.
“Thank you,” Miranda said when Pamela returned. “Whatever’s in the water smells wonderful.”
“The water is scented with sage and lavender. Sage is the Prophet’s favored scent, and lavender is mine.” Pamela inspected Miranda for a moment. “Your hair is red?”
“Yes,” Miranda said, trying to keep her eyes open. At this rate, she would be asleep by the time the healer examined her.
“Why is it shorn?”
Miranda ran a hand over her head, as if to confirm the state of her hairstyle. “I buzzed it off so there’d be nothing for a zombie to catch hold of. It was as long as yours before that.”
“But you will grow it long again, surely?”
Miranda shrugged.
“You should,” Pamela offered, with an assurance far beyond her years. “The Prophet teaches that a woman with shorn hair is like a flower that has not yet blossomed.”
“Thank you, Pamela, that will be enough.”
Bethany, the healer, spoke sharply as she walked up behind the girl. “You should be helping the others, not idling here.”
Pamela flushed a deep scarlet, mumbled an apology, and scurried away.
“I’m sorry about that,” Bethany said, her voice more indulgent now that the girl was out of earshot. “That one will talk you to death if you let her. Let’s see what’s going on with this leg of yours.”
Miranda pulled the tunic up. She answered the questions asked of her and tried to not wince or whimper. As thankful as she was to be out of danger, Pamela’s questions made her uneasy. The sooner they were out of New Jerusalem, the better.
Finn led Connor and the others farther into the village. The density of the village increased until they came to a wide plaza. Across the plaza stood the largest building Connor had seen thus far. The murmur of raised voices from inside the building pierced the silence. Finn stopped just outside the building’s wide doors. In the light of the torch illuminating the entrance, Connor could see a life-sized outline of a man, arms raised overhead in supplication, painted on both doors.
“Follow me.”
Finn opened the door. The warmer air inside the building enveloped Connor like an embrace. A raised dais illuminated by hurricane lanterns was on the far side of the one-room building. In the rest of the space, where people were crammed into rows ten deep, the hurricane lamps were turned low. There must be three hundred people here, Connor thought. When Finn stopped and leaned against the back wall, Connor and his companions did as well. It wasn’t the first time Connor had stood at the back for church.
The slender man on the dais held his arm out to the gathering. He looked taller than Connor but shorter than Doug. One look at his pointed cheekbones, sharp nose, and golden eyes told Connor all he needed to know of who Finn’s father was.
“…reveling in the life of an unrepentant sinner. We could not believe Our luck, to live where We did, when city after city had fallen! You would think the end of the world would have caused Us to reflect, to re-evaluate Our life, but We did not.”
“God All-Father, save us,” the people answered.
The man on the stage continued with the ferocity of a carnival huckster. “We were foolish enough to think Our life, the life of an unrepentant sinner, would continue as before. But the Heavenly Father had other plans for Us.”
He stopped and looked down for a moment. When he looked back up the crackle of energy that raced through the gathering raised the hairs on Connor’s arms.
“Criminals such as We were rounded up, beaten until We could hardly walk, and thrown beyond the barricades. It’s funny,” he said, sounding amused. “How a person can summon strength they never knew they had when it is their own life on the line. We limped a little faster than the others, but not quick enough. We escaped the Hollow Men that attacked Us, but We were bitten many times. We locked Ourselves inside a building and waited to die, to turn.”
Suddenly, the room was filled with upraised voices, calling out to their Prophet. Under the cover of all the noise, Doug leaned over to Connor and said, “This whack job actually thinks he survived an untreated zombie bite.”
“Does it surprise you,” the Prophet demanded fiercely. “That a sinner might be saved by God?”
More cries from the crowd: “All-Father Be Praised this, God All-Father’s Judgment Save Us that.”
“Nothing to do with this,” the preacher said, jabbing his finger into his chest, “this meat, saved Us. We huddled in the corner, waiting to die, when We saw a book.” Jeremiah held aloft a worn Bible. “It made no sense to Us so We threw it aside and slept, such was Our pride! When We woke again Our fever raged worse than before. We glanced at the book that lay open beside Us and the scales fell away from Our eyes.”
The entire congregation said, “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.”
Connor realized he held his breath. The man who stood before them was mesmerizing. And completely insane.
“It was as if the words jumped off the page! They demanded Our attention! We realized that the Hollow Men were not a disease, not an epidemic,” the Prophet continued, his eyes fever bright. “They were the judgment of God the Heavenly Father.”
Again, the congregation answered him. “For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
“Humanity had turned from Him. We worshipped the false gods of science and money. We had forgotten that We are only shells for the piece of the Heavenly Father that dwells within Us. ‘He sees every hidden thing, all of it written in His books of life and death.’ When He withdrew from humanity, only empty husks remained.”
“He did not withdraw from you, Pappa,” a high voice, a child’s voice, called out.
“But He did! He did! Don’t you see, My little one?” The Prophet stepped off the dais and walked over to a small boy seated on
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