Dearly, Beloved by Lia Habel Page A

panting, I hurled my weapon against the wall and sat down. I drew my knees up under my skirt and wrapped my arms about them, beforehiding my face in the cool folds of fabric. Even if I was immune to the new strain, that didn’t mean I was special. All things considered, I was just as vulnerable as the next person. The same as anyone else. No better. No safer.
    And grounded. Pfft . I thought I’d left things like that behind with knee-length skirts and pigtails.
    I fervently wished I were back in the jungle, with Bram at my side—a messed-up version of Tarzan and Jane. Innocent, in a way. Primed for adventure. Free.
    My version of safe.

“Once upon a time, there was a pretty little girl named Calendula,” I whispered as I drilled my fingernails into my own flesh.
    It didn’t hurt.
    I’d been picking for hours at the tips of my shoulders and finally managed to scrape out enough skin to create little divots. Slowly, carefully, I began to worm my index fingers inside—deeper, deeper. I looked to my right and watched my nail cutting the flesh, my cuticle disappearing, the wormlike wiggling of my fingertip beneath my skin. Beside me in the living room loft, Dog laid his head on my pile of water-stained fairy-tale books and princess novels, sadly stroking his new wrist stump.
    Below us, people were shouting.
    “Fourteen!” Claudia yelled. “Fourteen zombies killed or arrested today! Arrested …  pah . We all know the living will execute them in the end. The only reason they’re still alive is because of those zombies on the docks!”
    “Who were working with the living to aid us.” Mártira’s voice was full of pain. “There was no reason for what happened today. None.”
    “None? They attacked because they were in danger. They used the weapons they had. They did what zombies do !”
    “You say that as if it’s a good thing , Claudia. The dead can make the choice not to attack the living, if they’re still capable of making choices. We can help them make that choice.”
    “Hagens is still out there,” someone else said; a safecracker named Joe. “Other people are still out there. And all of this was caused by Smoke? That slimy pyromaniac? What if they do trace him back to us, come lookin’ for more info about him? Or think the rest of us have that new strain, too? Wipe us out?”
    “Exactly!” Claudia said.
    “All because you’ll take in any stray zombie what comes.” Joe sounded exasperated. “Like they’re hungry kittens.”
    In the loft, Dog moved closer to me. I wasn’t sure if it was in response to the mention of Hagens or Smoke—we both feared the former, but only Dog disliked the latter. About a month ago Smoke, mostly silent and horribly rotted, had followed Mártira back to the den after one of her first free clinic attempts in the Morgue, along with a handful of other homeless zombies. Hagens found us soon after. I’d thought him frightening only in appearance until hearing about how he lashed out during the riot, and still found it difficult to conceive of the poor man as evil. True, now we knew that a different sort of sickness had made him, but he never seemed different. He’d been quiet. Maybe a little secretive. And there was nothing wrong with that.
    We all had our secrets.
    Sliding my fingers back out—my flesh suckled at them—and patting Dog’s side, I reached for the packet of seeds sitting on my bedroll. A whole packet—a gift from Abuelo, who found it in the trash. Amazing what people threw away.
    “Forget Smoke,” Claudia said. “Mártira, because of you, the core of our gang has survived. You talked about us being an all-zombie gang before, a force to be reckoned with.” Her voice cutthrough the air. “We can’t continue to take in orphans and raise money to throw away on water. If we’re going to make a difference, we have to step it up. They’re attacking our people! We should strike back, like we used to!”
    “They don’t mean you,” I assured Dog as I