She followed me upstairs and kept me company while I showered, changed, and scarfed down a lone granola bar. I gazed into our fridge, still full of leftover pastrami, and tried to hold back the rumbling groan in my stomach. At least the brig had real food. I’d be right back to eating this shit within the next five hours.
Wait. No I wouldn’t. If I were going to attempt to stage a revolt that would probably end in me getting blown to pieces, I was going to eat something good beforehand. With that in mind, I went to the cupboard and dug out more of Tony’s canned soup. There was no sense dying on an empty stomach, or a stomach full of pastrami.
After wolfing down the soup, I crouched down in front of Evie again, massaging her ears the way I’d seen Dax do from time to time. “What do you think about talking zombies?” I whispered.
She licked my face, and I remembered why I hadn’t gotten all that into dogs. No matter how sweet they are, their breath stinks.
I still had twenty minutes before I had to leave, so I ran a comb through my hair, then rummaged through my closet. The leather motorcycle jacket I’d found in Astra was still hanging there. It looked worse for wear—the apocalypse is tough on clothing—but it was in one piece, and it would keep me warm.
I put it on, then clipped Evie’s leash to her collar. We stepped outside together.
It all felt strange. Normal. Rows of neatly manicured houses, all of them varying editions of the same four designs. Dead grass in the yard. Picket fences. The perfect little neighborhood, even now.
But there were no children playing outside. The colors seemed drab against the gray sky. The neighbors that I did see wandering around quickly averted their eyes. Maybe I had a terrible expression on my face; I tried to smooth it over, tried to smile.
That made them look away faster.
Evie seemed happy enough. She trotted along, her tail wagging wildly, a big smile on her face. Not for the first time, I wondered about her previous owners. What had happened to them? Had they died and she escaped, or had they set her loose, or…?
Or did she eat them after they died? Is she going to turn into a zombie if…if…
There are some things you just don’t need to know.
We made it to Coup Headquarters, better known as Renati’s house on Candelabra Court, within twenty minutes. Evie kept looking for Dax and Tony, but settled for checking out my expression every now and then.
Was she looking for reassurance? Did she feel the strange quiet in the air?
I knocked on the door.
A moment later Renati opened it. I almost didn’t recognize him without the lab coat; clad in jeans and an oversized flannel shirt, he looked like he belonged in some coffee shop in Seattle, or maybe a Nirvana video. “Good evening,” he said. “Now is the winter of our discontent.”
I blinked at him. “Is it?”
“Is not tomorrow the Ides of March?”
I thought we were well past March, but I guess I could have been wrong. “Doc?” I asked.
“O conspiracy, shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night—”
“Can I come in? It’s cold.” If he was going to recite Shakespeare again, he could do it near a heater.
Somewhat deflated, Renati stepped aside and let me inside. As soon as he spotted the dog, though, he all but squeaked in delight and crouched down to pet her. “You have a dog!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t know you had a dog!”
“I didn’t know it was relevant. Would we not have given experimental drugs to people if you’d known about her?”
He scowled at me, then went back to rubbing her ears. Evie wagged her tail hard enough to thump it against the wall.
“What’s with the Ides of March?” I asked.
“We should have had a password,” he said, straightening up and shutting the door. “And it should have been the Ides of March.”
“There’s three of us, do we really need passwords?” I asked, looking around the house as Renati led me down a corridor and into what appeared to be a study. Bookcases stuffed with books and stacks of paper lined the walls, and heavy, albeit mismatched, wood furniture stood at odds with cozy red couches and a reclining chair. This place looked exactly the way I imagined Renati’s home: comfortable, and probably not updated since the early 1980s.
“The good doctor is taking our little conspiracy group very seriously.” Logan was sprawled across one of the couches. He, too, had a flannel shirt and jeans on, and was playing a video game on his phone. Without the assault rifle and the fatigues, he lost a hell of a lot of the menace I’d come to associate with him.
I tugged at my gray shirt. “Did I miss the memo about matching outfits? Should we get masks, too?”
Evie tugged at the leash. I let go of it, and she wandered over to Renati, sniffed at his feet, and moved on to Logan.
“So,” I said. “Is your house bugged? Because ours was.”
Logan set his phone down and patted Evie’s head. “I had a buddy sweep the place. It’s clean. And my buddy’s CO said he only installed the surveillance stuff in your house right before Tony moved in. Wanted to keep an eye on you guys.”