Read Dearly, Beloved for Free Online

Behind him, members of the crew dashed out of the ship with weapons in hand, preparing to take up guard. “Come on, Bram. I need you.”
    I turned around, just in time to get a flash in the face. He’dnearly died, and Mr. Curious was still story-happy. “This report is going to be amazing.”
    “What’s your name?” I managed to grind out.
    “Havelock Moncure,” he said grandly. “Editor and sole reporter for Pheme , the Aethernet’s top rumor rag. You are going to be famous .”
    Wait. This kid wasn’t even a real reporter?
    The boy gasped when I snatched his device away. Opening it, I pulled out its storage card, dropped it on the deck, and crushed it underfoot. I then thrust the thing back into his hands and grabbed his cravat, dragging him close. “I want to know your name because I owe you a card. You stay up here. If I hear about you hounding anyone, I will throw you overboard.”
    That threat worked. The beaten young man nodded furiously.
    I let him go, and followed Evola inside the ship.
    As Evola and the other doctors worked on making room for the newcomers in the med bay, I went to get a head count and see how many needed attention. When I had the chance to continue with the medical training I started back at base, it’d been aboard the Christine , so I knew the ropes.
    Ben and Franco’d already managed to isolate the injured living on A Level; several techs raced past me, headed there. I found the zombies gathered on B Level, most of them shouting or crying hysterically. Inside the metal ship, the noise was incredible. Tom and the others were busy trying to calm them down and keep them together—for the safety of the living staff, if nothing else. They were a ragtag lot—an equal mix of men and women, of all ages, maybe fifty in total. Some were dressed in worn but colorful finery, diaphanous shawls and candy-striped skirts and shiny top hats decked out with feathers and glass jewels. Others wore rattystreet clothes. One man was seated in a wooden cart. For some reason, I could smell flowers.
    The ones contributing the most to the din were two women. They stood in the middle of the crowd, part of it and yet seemingly blind and deaf to it. One of them—tall, with tangled rust-colored hair and a face that could be best described as “mushy”—was taking the other to task. Her back was to me; all I could make out was long hair the color of red wine, part of it twisted up with a silver comb.
    “I told you this would happen! They’re turning against us again. We have to move, we have to protect our own!”
    “This is a misunderstanding,” the other woman replied.
    “What’s going on?” I asked.
    The red-haired woman turned, and I found myself staring at her perhaps longer than I should’ve. Her skin was as pale as marble, her eyes inky and almost unearthly. Her black dress set both off. “Who are you, sir?”
    “Name’s Bram Griswold. I’m here to help.”
    The rusty-haired woman seemed not to notice me. “We weren’t even doing anything for once. No big show, not stealing anything, not running any scams. Just carrying out your little utopian idea. Free clinics. How nice. Until one of them gets freaking ambushed !”
    The woman I’d spoken to lifted a hand. “Claudia, hush.” She returned her eyes to mine. “I’m Mártira Cicatriz. Leader of the Changed. This is my sister.”
    “The Changed?” Tom asked from the edge of the crowd, narrowing his eyes.
    “We’re a group of zombies interested in peace,” Mártira said. “We raise funds, sometimes we picket against anti-zombie injustice. We were providing medicine for the poverty-stricken undead in the Morgue when those people came.”
    “Why were they chasing you?”
    Claudia cut her way in front of Mártira, glaring at me. She wore trousers and a shirtwaist. “Because they were the living . What more explanation do you need?”
    “Claudia.” Mártira shook her head, and tried to engage with me again. “We’d been there not