Warm Bodies (16 page)

Lurking behind a stack of crates in the AstroTurf backyard, I hear voices inside the house. I close my eyes, luxuriating in their sweet timbres and tart rhythms. I hear Julie. Julie and another girl, discussing something in tones that jitter and syncopate like jazz. I find myself swaying slightly, dancing to their conversational beat.

Eventually the talk trails off, and Julie emerges onto the balcony. It’s only been one day since she left, but the sense of reunion that surges in me is decades strong. She rests her elbows on the railing, looking cold in just a loose black T-shirt over bare legs. ‘Well, here I am again,’ she says, apparently to no one but the air. ‘Dad clapped me on the back when I walked in the door. Actually clapped me on the back, like a fucking football coach. All he said was, “So glad you’re okay,” then he ran off to some project meeting or something. I can’t believe how much he’s . . . I mean, he was never exactly
cuddly
, but . . .’ I hear a tiny click and she doesn’t speak for a moment. Then another click. ‘Until I called him he had to have assumed I was dead, right? Yeah, he sent out the search parties, but how often do people really come back from stuff like this? So to him . . . I was dead. And maybe I’m being too harsh but I absolutely can’t picture him crying over it. Whoever told him the news, they probably clapped each other on the back and said, “Soldier on, soldier,” and then went back to work.’ She stares at the ground as if she’s seeing through it, down into the hellish core of the Earth. ‘What’s wrong with people?’ she says, almost too quiet for me to hear. ‘Were they born with parts missing or did it all fall out somewhere along the way?’

She is silent for a while, and I’m about to show myself when she suddenly laughs, closing her eyes and shaking her head. ‘I actually miss that stupid . . . I miss
R
! I know that’s crazy, but is it really
that
crazy? Just because he’s . . . whatever he is? I mean, isn’t “zombie” just a silly name we came up with for a state of being we don’t understand? What’s in a name, right? If we were . . . If there was some kind of . . .’ She trails off, then stops and raises a mini-cassette recorder to eye level, glaring at it. ‘Fuck this thing,’ she mumbles to herself. ‘Tape journaling . . . not for me.’ She fast-pitches it off the balcony. It bounces off a supply crate and lands at my feet. I pick it up, tuck it into my shirt pocket and press my hand against it, feeling its corners dig into my chest. If I ever return to my 747, this memento will go in the stack closest to where I sleep.

Julie hops onto the balcony railing and sits with her back to me, scribbling in her battered old Moleskine.

Journal or poetry?

Both, silly
.

Am I in it?

I step out from the shadows. ‘Julie,’ I whisper.

She doesn’t startle. She turns slowly, and a smile melts across her face like a slow spring thaw. ‘Oh . . . my God,’ she half giggles, then hops off the railing and spins around to face me. ‘R! You’re
here
! Oh my
God
!’

I grin. ‘Hello.’

‘What are you
doing
here?’ she hisses, trying to keep her voice down.

I shrug, deciding that this gesture, while easy to abuse, does have its place. It may even be vital vocabulary in a world as unspeakable as ours.

‘Came to . . . see you.’

‘But I had to go home, remember? You were supposed to say goodbye.’

‘Don’t know why you . . . say goodbye. I say . . . hello.’

Her lip quivers between reactions, but she ends up with a reluctant smile. ‘God, you’re a cheeseball. But seriously, R—’

‘Jules!’ a voice calls from inside the house. ‘Come here, I wanna show you something.’

‘One sec, Nora,’ Julie calls back. She looks down at me. ‘This is crazy, okay? You’re going to get killed. It doesn’t matter how changed you are, the people in charge here won’t care, they won’t listen, they’ll just
shoot
you. Do you understand?’

I nod. ‘Yes.’

I start climbing up the drainpipe.

‘Jesus, R! Are you listening to me?’

I get about three feet off the ground before I realise that although I’m now capable of running, speaking and maybe falling in love,
climbing
is still down the road for me. I lose my grip on the pipe and fall flat on my back. Julie covers her mouth, but some laughter slips through.

‘Hey, Cabernet!’ Nora calls again. ‘What’s going on? Are you talking to somebody?’

‘Hang
on
, okay? I’m just doing a tape journal.’

I stand up and dust myself off. I look up at Julie. Her brows are tight and she bites her lip. ‘R . . .’ she says miserably. ‘You can’t . . .’

The balcony door swings open and Nora appears, her curls just as thick and wild as they were in my visions, all those years ago. I’ve never seen her standing, and she’s surprisingly tall, at least half a foot above Julie, long brown legs bare under a camouflage skirt. I had assumed she and Julie were classmates, but now I realise Nora is a few years older, maybe in her mid-twenties.

‘What are you—’ she starts, then she sees me, and her eyebrows go up. ‘Oh my holy Lord. Is that
him
?’

Julie sighs. ‘Nora, this is R. R . . . Nora.’

Nora stares at me like I’m Sasquatch, the Yeti, maybe a unicorn. ‘Um . . . nice to meet you . . .
R
.’

‘Likewise,’ I reply, and Nora slaps a hand over her mouth to stifle a delighted squeak, looks at Julie, then back at me.

‘What should we do?’ Julie asks Nora, trying to ignore her giddiness. ‘He just showed up. I’m trying to tell him he’s going to get killed.’

‘Well, he needs to get up here, first of all,’ Nora says, still staring at me.

‘Into the house? Are you stupid?’

‘Come on, your dad’s not back for another two days. Safer for him in the house than on the street.’

Julie thinks for a minute. ‘Okay. Hold on, R, I’ll come down.’

I go around to the front of the house and stand at the door, waiting nervously in my dress shirt and tie. She opens it, grinning shyly. Prom night at the end of the world.

‘Hi, Julie,’ I say, as if none of the previous conversation happened.

She hesitates, then steps forward and hugs me. ‘I actually missed you,’ she says into my shirt.

‘I . . . heard that.’

She pulls back to look at me, and something wild glints in her eyes. ‘Hey, R,’ she says. ‘If I kissed you, would I get . . . you know . . . converted?’

My thoughts skip like a record in an earthquake. As far as I know, only a bite, a violent transfer of blood and essences, has the power to make the Living join the Dead before actually dying. To expedite the inevitable. But then again, I’m fairly sure Julie’s question has never,
ever
been asked before.

‘Don’t . . . think so,’ I say, ‘but—’

A spotlight flashes at the end of the street. The sound of two guards barking commands breaks the night quiet.

‘Shit, the patrol,’ Julie whispers, and yanks me inside the house. ‘We should get the lights out, it’s after curfew. Come on.’

She runs up the stairs and I follow her, relief and disappointment mixing in my chest like unstable chemicals.

Julie’s home feels eerily unoccupied. In the kitchen, the den, the short halls and steep staircases, the walls are white and unadorned. The few pieces of furniture are plastic, and rows of fluorescent lights glare down on stainproof beige carpets. It feels like the vacated office of a bankrupt company, empty echoing rooms and the lingering scent of desperation.

Julie turns lights off as she goes, darkening the house until we reach her bedroom. She switches off the overhead bulb and flicks on a Tiffany lamp by her bed. I step inside and turn in slow circles, greedily absorbing Julie’s private world.

If her mind were a room, it would look like this.

Each wall is a different colour. One red, one white, one yellow, one black, and a sky-blue ceiling strung with toy airplanes. Each wall seems designated for a theme. The red is nearly covered with movie ticket stubs and concert posters, all browned and faded with age. The white is crowded with paintings, starting near the floor with a row of amateur acrylics and leading up to three stunning oil canvases: a sleeping girl about to be devoured by tigers, a nightmarish Christ on a geometric cross, and a surreal landscape draped with melting clocks.

‘Recognise those?’ Julie says with a grin she can barely contain. ‘Salvador Dalí. Originals, of course.’

Nora comes in from the balcony, sees me with my face inches from the canvases, and laughs. ‘Nice decor, right? Me and Perry wanted to get Julie the
Mona Lisa
for her birthday because it reminded us of that little smirk she’s always – there! Right there! – but, yeah, it’s a long way to Paris on foot. We make do with the local exhibitions.’

‘Nora has a whole wall of Picassos in her room,’ Julie adds. ‘We’d be legendary art thieves if anyone still cared.’

I crouch down to get a closer look at the bottom row of acrylics.

‘Those are Julie’s,’ Nora says. ‘Aren’t they great?’

Julie averts her eyes in disgust. ‘Nora made me put those up.’

I study them intently, searching for Julie’s secrets in their clumsy brushstrokes. Two are just bright colours and thick, tortured texture. The third is a crude portrait of a blonde woman. I glance over at the black wall, which bears only one ornament: a thumb-tacked Polaroid of what must be the same woman. Julie plus twenty hard years.

Julie follows my gaze and she and Nora exchange a glance. ‘That’s my mom,’ Julie says. ‘She left when I was twelve.’ She clears her throat and looks out the window.

I turn to the yellow wall, which is notably unadorned. I point at it and raise my eyebrows.

‘That’s, um . . . my hope wall,’ she says. Her voice contains an embarrassed pride that makes her sound younger. Almost innocent. ‘I’m leaving it open for something in the future.’

‘Like . . . what?’

‘I don’t know yet. Depends on what happens in the future. Hopefully something happy.’

She shrugs this off and sits on the corner of her bed, tapping her fingers on her thigh and watching me. Nora settles down next to her. There are no chairs, so I sit on the floor. The carpet is a mystery under ancient strata of wrinkled clothes.

‘So . . .
R
,’ Nora says, leaning towards me. ‘You’re a zombie. What’s that feel like?’

‘Uh . . .’

‘How did it happen? How’d you get converted?’

‘Don’t . . . remember.’

‘I don’t see any old bites or gunshot wounds or anything. Must’ve been natural causes. No one was around to debrain you?’

I shrug.

‘How old are you?’

I shrug.

‘You look twenty-something, but you could be thirty-something. You have one of those faces. How come you’re not all rotten? I barely even smell you.’

‘I don’t . . . um . . .’

‘Do your body functions still work? They don’t, right? I mean, can you actually still, you know—?’

‘Jesus, Nora,’ Julie cuts in, elbowing her in the hip. ‘Will you back off? He didn’t come here for an interrogation.’

I shoot Julie a grateful look.

‘I do have one question, though,’ she says. ‘How the hell did you get
in
here? Into the Stadium?’

I shrug. ‘Walked . . . in.’

‘How’d you get past the guards?’

‘Played . . . Living.’

She stares at me. ‘They
let
you in?
Ted
let you in?’

‘Distrac . . . ted.’

She puts a hand to her forehead. ‘Wow. That’s . . .’ She pauses, and an incredulous smile breaks through. ‘You look . . . nicer. Did you comb your hair, R?’

‘He’s in drag!’ Nora laughs. ‘He’s in Living drag!’

‘I can’t believe that worked. I’m pretty sure it’s never happened before.’

‘Do you think he could pass?’ Nora wonders. ‘Out on the streets with real people?’

Julie studies me dubiously, like a photographer forced to consider a chubby model. ‘Well,’ she allows, ‘I guess . . . it’s
possible
.’

I squirm under their scrutiny. Finally Julie takes a deep breath and stands up. ‘Anyway, you’ll have to stay here at least for tonight, till we can figure out what to do with you. I’m going to go heat up some rice. You want some, Nora?’

‘Nah, I just had Carbtein nine hours ago.’ She looks at me cautiously. ‘Are you uh . . . hungry, R?’

I shake my head. ‘I’m . . . fine.’

‘’Cause I don’t know what we’re supposed to do about your dietary restrictions. I mean, I know you can’t help it, Julie explained all about you, but we don’t—’

‘Really,’ I stop her. ‘I’m . . . fine.’

She looks uncertain. I can imagine the footage rolling behind her eyes. A dark room filling with blood. Her friends dying on the floor. Me, crawling towards Julie with red hands outstretched. Julie may have convinced her that I’m a special case, but I shouldn’t be surprised to get a few nervous looks. Nora watches me in silence for a few minutes. Then she breaks away and starts rolling a joint.

When Julie comes back with the food, I borrow her spoon and take a small bite of rice, smiling as I chew. As usual it goes down like styrofoam, but I do manage to swallow it. Julie and Nora look at each other, then at me.

‘How’s it taste?’ Julie asks tentatively.

I grimace.

‘Okay, but still, you haven’t eaten any people in a long time. And you’re still walking. Do you think you could ever wean yourself off . . . live foods?’

I give her a wry smile. ‘I guess . . . it’s
possible
.’

Julie grins at this. Half at my unexpected use of sarcasm, half at the implied hope behind it. Her whole face lights up in a way I’ve never seen before, so I hope I’m right. I hope it’s true. I hope I haven’t just learned how to lie.

Around 1 a.m., the girls start to yawn. There are canvas cots in the den, but no one feels like venturing out of Julie’s room. This gaudily painted little cube is like a warm bunker in the frozen emptiness of Antarctica. Nora takes the bed. Julie and I take the floor. Nora scribbles homework notes for about an hour, then clicks off the lamp and starts snoring like a small, delicate chainsaw. Julie and I lie on our backs under a thick blanket, using piles of her clothes for a mattress on the rock-hard floor. It’s a strange feeling, being so utterly surrounded by her. Her life scent is on everything. She’s on me and under me and next to me. It’s as if the entire room is made out of her.