Dearly, Beloved by Lia Habel Read Free Book Online

color. Where did you get it?”
    The girl looked afraid, almost abashed, as if the situation was her fault. “A living person sold it to us. A lot of it—all he had. Mártira used almost all of the money we’d saved up to buy it. We’ve been going to the Morgue and giving it away.”
    The back of my neck tingled in anger. “Snake oil. Someone’s selling the undead fake drugs.”
    Evola took a cleansing breath. “Apparently.” He tossed the vial into a biohazard bin and told the dejected Laura, “Never you mind. We have plenty. And for the record, people pay what they can here. I’ve used my own money to get zombies their meds.”
    Laura appeared confused. “But Claudia said the living and the feds wouldn’t help us …”
    “Miss Claudia was wrong. Bram, hand me the usual cocktail?”
    Laura looked at the floor and lapsed into silence as I went to work. After a few minutes she asked, almost as if she couldn’t believe it, “You’re really a living doctor for the dead?”
    Evola finished Dog’s injections and grabbed a needle, threading it as he spoke. “Mmm. Only recently earned the title, but yes. Around here they call the surgeons and doctors who work directly on the dead ‘techs,’ as opposed to all the doctors who work behind the scenes on zombie research.” He started stitching up the tiny hole in Dog’s neck. “Few years ago I was studying to become a plastic surgeon, and putting myself through school by working for a funeral home. Sounds morbid, but my area of expertise was reconstructing corpses of people who’d had nasty deaths. Helps the family. Company Z recruited me before I was finished with my education. I was that good at mashing flesh together into something resembling a human being. A regular prodigy.”
    “So you weren’t scared when you saw the dead moving?”
    “Oh, first time I screamed like a girl.” Evola grinned at Dog. “But then I saw people I could help. Also, a way out of my mortuary insurance payments. Anyway, Mr. Dog, let me wrap up the hand so you can take it. Maybe later on we can mount your own skin on the prosthesis. You’ll look good as new. You’ll be Cyborg Dog! Stalwart defender of the playground!”
    Dog actually smiled.
    When we rejoined the rest of the “Changed,” it was to find the group newly somber and uncommunicative. Tom and Coalhouse must’ve broken the news. By noon they were anxious to get offthe boat, and insisted that we allow them to gather abovedecks. We’d cleaned up and medicated as many as would let us, and an inspection of the group reassured us of the fact that no biters had gotten on board, so we let them.
    The biters were still being cleaned up down on the dock, put in irons and led away. There were a few the army didn’t bother with right away, and I knew they had to be dead. The sight of their prone bodies occasioned whispers and sobs among those remaining. I hoped they were all victims of the living, as horrible as that idea was—I didn’t want to think that Tom or I had killed any.
    Once the army finally fortified the barricade, the Christine lowered her gangplank. The undead disembarked as soon as it was safe for them to do so.
    Mártira came to thank me before departing. “Laura told us Dog should expect to hear from you. Ours is the large house on Ramee Street. You are always welcome.”
    “Come on . We need to go ,” Claudia called to her. She was waiting with Laura and Dog by the gangplank. Laura had her arms wrapped self-consciously through the vines growing around her waist. Coalhouse was standing a short distance from her, practically drinking her in with his eye.
    “Same here,” I told Mártira. “I’ll be in touch. And if you could tell us where you found that grifter …”
    “It’s in the past. We’ll just be wiser next time.” She shook her head. “The medicine hawker scammed us, yes, but perhaps he had a family to feed. A sick mother. I’ll never know. He was a traveling man, and I dealt with him