Warm Bodies (11 page)

But we are safe. Julie is safe. We roar past the Arrivals gates, onto the freeway, and out into the wider world while the storm clouds churn overhead. I look at Julie. She looks at me. We both smile as the first raindrops begin to fall.

Ten minutes later, the storm has launched into its big opening movement, and we are getting soaked. The convertible was a poor choice for a day like this. Neither of us can figure out how to put the top up, so we drive in silence with heavy sheets of rain beating down on our heads. We don’t complain, though. We try to stay positive.

‘Do you know where you’re going?’ Julie asks after about twenty minutes. Her hair is matted flat on her face.

‘Yes,’ I say, looking down the road at the dark grey horizon.

‘Are you sure? ’Cause I have no idea.’

‘Very . . . sure.’

I prefer not to explain
why
I know the route between the airport and the city so well. Our hunting route. Yes, she knows what I am and what I do, but do I have to remind her? Can we just have a nice drive and forget certain things for a while? In the sunny fields of my imagination we are not a teenager and a walking corpse driving in a rainstorm. We are Frank and Ava cruising tree-lined country lanes while a scratchy vinyl orchestra swoons our soundtrack.

‘Maybe we should stop and ask directions.’

I look at her. I look around at the crumbling districts surrounding us, nearly black in the evening gloom.

‘Kidding,’ she says, her eyes peeking out between plastered wet clumps of hair. She leans back in the seat and folds her arms behind her head. ‘Let me know when you need a break. You kinda drive like an old lady.’

As the rain pools into standing water at our feet, I notice Julie shivering a little. It’s a warm spring night, but she’s saturated, and the cab of the old convertible is a cyclone of freeway wind. I take the next exit, and we ease down into a silent graveyard of suburban grid homes. Julie looks at me with questioning eyes. I can hear her teeth chattering.

I drive slowly past the houses, looking for a good place to stop for the night. Eventually I pull into a weedy cul-de-sac and park next to a rusted mini-van. I take Julie’s hand and pull her towards the nearest house. The door is locked, but the dry-rotted wood gives way with a light kick. We step into the relative warmth of some long-dead family’s cosy little nest. There are old Coleman lanterns placed throughout the house, and once Julie lights them they provide a flickering campsite glow that feels oddly comforting. She ambles around the kitchen and living room, looking at toys, dishes, stacks of old magazines. She picks up a stuffed koala bear and looks it in the eyes. ‘Home sweet home,’ she mumbles.

She reaches into her messenger bag, pulls out a Polaroid camera, points it at me and snaps a shot. The flash is shocking in this dark place. She grins at my startled expression and holds up the camera. ‘Look familiar? I stole it from the skeletons’ meeting room yesterday morning.’ She hands me the developing photo. ‘It’s important to preserve memories, you know? Especially now, since the world is on its way out.’ She puts the viewfinder to her eye and turns in a slow circle, taking in the whole room. ‘Everything you see, you might be seeing for the last time.’

I wave the picture in my hand. A ghostly image begins to take shape. It’s me, R, the corpse that thinks it’s alive, staring back at me with those wide, pewter-grey eyes. Julie hands the camera to me.

‘You should always be taking pictures, if not with a camera then with your mind. Memories you capture on purpose are always more vivid than the ones you pick up by accident.’ She strikes a pose and grins. ‘Cheese!’

I take her picture. When it rolls out of the camera she reaches for it, but I pull it away and hide it behind my back. I hand her mine. She rolls her eyes. She takes the photo and studies it, tilting her head. ‘Your complexion looks a little better. The rain must have cleaned you up a bit.’

She lowers the photo and squints at me for a moment. ‘Why are your eyes like that?’

I look at her warily. ‘Like . . . what?’

‘That weird grey. It’s nothing like how corpse eyes look. Not clouded over or anything. Why are they like that?’

I give this some thought. ‘Don’t know. Happens at . . . conversion.’

She’s looking at me so hard I start to squirm. ‘It’s creepy,’ she says. ‘Looks . . . supernatural, almost. Do they ever change colour? Like when you kill people or something?’

I try not to sigh. ‘I think . . . you’re thinking . . . of vampires.’

‘Oh, right, right.’ She chuckles and gives a rueful shake of her head. ‘At least
those
aren’t real yet. Too many monsters to keep track of these days.’

Before I can take offence, she looks up at me and smiles. ‘Anyway . . . I like them. Your eyes. They’re actually kinda pretty. Creepy . . . but pretty.’

It’s probably the best compliment I’ve received in my entire Dead life. Ignoring my idiot stare, Julie wanders off into the house, humming to herself.

The storm is raging outside, with occasional thunderclaps. I’m grateful that our house happens to have all its windows intact. Most of the others’ were smashed long ago by looters or feeders. I glimpse a few debrained corpses on our neighbours’ green lawns, but I’d like to imagine our hosts got out alive. Made it to one of the Stadiums, maybe even some walled-off paradise in the mountains, angelic choirs singing behind pearl-studded titanium gates . . .

I sit in the living room listening to the rain fall while Julie putters around the house. After a while she comes back with an armful of dry clothes and dumps them on the love seat. She holds up a pair of jeans about ten sizes too big. ‘What do you think?’ she says, wrapping the waist around her entire body. ‘Do these make me look fat?’ She drops them and digs around in the pile, pulls out a mass of cloth that appears to be a dress. ‘I can use this for a tent if we get lost in the woods tomorrow. God, these folks must have made a fancy feast for some lucky zombie.’

I shake my head, making a gag face.

‘What, you don’t eat fat people?’

‘Fat . . . not alive. Waste product. Need . . . meat.’

She laughs. ‘Oh, so you’re an audiophile
and
a food snob! Jesus.’ She tosses the clothes aside and lets out a deep breath. ‘Well, all right. I’m exhausted. The bed in there isn’t too rotten. I’m going to sleep.’

I lie back on the cramped love seat, settling in for a long night alone with my thoughts. But Julie doesn’t leave. Standing there in the bedroom doorway, she looks at me for a long minute. I’ve seen this look before, and I brace myself for whatever’s coming.

‘R . . .’ she says. ‘Do you . . .
have
to eat people?’

I sigh inside, so exhausted by these ugly questions, but when did a monster ever deserve its privacy?

‘Yes.’

‘Or you’ll die?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you didn’t eat me.’

I hesitate.

‘You
rescued
me. Like three times.’

I nod slowly.

‘And you haven’t eaten anyone since then, right?’

I frown in concentration, thinking back. She’s right. Not counting the few bites of leftover brains here and there, I’ve been gastronomically celibate since the day I met her.

A peculiar little half-smile twitches on her face. ‘You’re kind of . . . changing, aren’t you?’

As usual, I am speechless.

‘Well, goodnight,’ she says, and shuts the bedroom door.

I lie there on the love seat, gazing up at the water-stained cottage-cheese ceiling.

‘What’s going on with you?’ M asks me over a cup of mouldy coffee in the airport Starbucks. ‘Are you okay?’

‘
Yeah, I’m okay. Just changing.’

‘How can you change? If we all start from the same blank slate, what makes you diverge?’

‘Maybe we’re not blank. Maybe the debris of our old lives still shapes us.’

‘But we don’t remember those lives. We can’t read our diaries.’

‘It doesn’t matter. We are where we are, however we got here. What matters is where we go next.’

‘But can we choose that?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘We’re Dead. Can we really choose anything?’

‘Maybe. If we want to bad enough.’

*

The rain drumming on the roof. The creak of weary timbers. The prickle of the old cushions through the holes in my shirt. I’m busy searching my post-death memory for the last time I went this long without food when I notice Julie standing in the doorway again. Her arms are folded on her chest and her hip is pressed against the door frame. Her foot taps an anxious rhythm on the floor.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘Well . . .’ she says. ‘I was just thinking. The bed’s a king-size. So I guess, if you wanted to . . . I wouldn’t care if you joined me in there.’ I raise my eyebrows a little. Her face reddens. ‘Look, all I’m saying –
all
I’m saying – is I don’t mind giving you a side of the bed. These rooms are kinda spooky, you know? I don’t want the ghost of Mrs Sprat crushing me in my sleep. And considering I haven’t showered in over a week, you really don’t smell much worse than I do – maybe we’ll cancel each other out.’ She shrugs one shoulder,
whatever
, and disappears into the bedroom.

I wait a few minutes. Then, with great uncertainty, I get up and follow her in. She is already in the bed, curled into the foetal position with the blankets pulled tight around her. I slowly ease myself onto the far opposite edge. The blankets are all on her side, but I certainly don’t need to stay warm. I am perpetually room-temperature.

Despite the pile of luxurious down comforters wrapped around her, Julie is still shivering. ‘These clothes are . . .’ she mutters, and sits up in bed. ‘Fuck.’ She glances over at me. ‘I’m going to lay my clothes out to dry. Just . . . relax, okay?’ With her back to me, she wriggles out of her wet jeans and peels her shirt over her head. The skin of her back is blue-white from the cold. Almost the same hue as mine. In her polka-dot bra and plaid panties, she gets out of bed and drapes her clothes over the dresser, then quickly crawls back under the covers and curls up. ‘Goodnight,’ she says.

I lie back on my folded arms, staring up at the ceiling. We are both on the very edges of the mattress, about four feet of space between us. I get the feeling that it’s not just my ghoulish nature that makes her so wary. Living or Dead, virile or impotent, I still appear to be a man, and maybe she thinks I’ll act the same as any other man would, lying so close to a beautiful woman. Maybe she thinks I’ll try to take things from her. That I’ll slither over and try to consume her. But then why am I even in this bed? Is it a test? For me, or for her? What strange hopes are compelling her to take this chance?

I listen to her breathing slow as she falls asleep. After a few hours, with her fear safely tucked away in dreams, she rolls over, removing most of the gap between us. She’s facing me now. Her faint breath tickles my ear. If she were to wake up right now, would she scream? Could I ever make her understand how safe she really is? I won’t deny that this proximity ignites more urges in me than the instinct to kill and eat. But although these new urges are there, some of them startling in their intensity, all I really
want
to do is lie next to her. In this moment, the most I’d ever hope for would be for her to lay her head on my chest, let out a warm, contented breath, and sleep.

Now here is an oddity. A question for the zombie philosophers. What does it mean that my past is a fog but my present is brilliant, bursting with sound and colour? Since I became Dead I’ve recorded new memories with the fidelity of an old cassette deck, faint and muffled and ultimately forgettable. But I can recall every hour of the last few days in vivid detail, and the thought of losing a single one horrifies me. Where am I getting this focus? This clarity? I can trace a solid line from the moment I met Julie all the way to now, lying next to her in this sepulchral bedroom, and despite the millions of past moments I’ve lost or tossed away like highway trash, I know with a lockjawed certainty I’ll remember this one for the rest of my life.

*

Sometime in the pre-dawn, as I lie there on my back with no real need to rest, a dream flickers on like a film reel behind my eyes. Except it’s not a dream, it’s a vision, far too crisp and bright for my lifeless brain to have rendered. Usually these second-hand memories are preceded by the taste of blood and neurons, but not tonight. Tonight I close my eyes and it just
happens
, a surprise midnight showing.

We open on a dinner scene. A long metal table laid out with a minimalist spread. Bowl of rice. Bowl of beans. Rectangle of flax bread.

‘Thank you, Lord, for this food,’ says the man at the head of the table, hands folded in front of him but eyes wide open. ‘Bless it to our bodies. Amen.’

Julie nudges the boy sitting next to her. He squeezes her thigh under the table. The boy is Perry Kelvin. I’m in Perry’s mind again. His brain is gone, his life evaporated and inhaled . . . yet he’s still here. Is this a chemical flashback? A trace of his brain still dissolving somewhere in my body? Or is it actually
him
? Still holding on somewhere, somehow, somewhy?