The Burning World (Warm Bodies #2)(118)

An obscure piece of trivia flickers into my head. Another little piece of the puzzle that is the woman I love: studies have shown that swearing has an anesthetic effect.

Swearing eases pain.

The elevator dings. The door opens. Black Tie releases Julie and she collapses against me in an awkward heap. I can’t embrace her so I improvise, pressing my chin onto the top of her head. “Are you okay?” I whisper.

She nods feebly, rubbing her head against my chin. Her breath is warm on my throat.

“If you’ll follow us now,” Yellow Tie says, beckoning us out of the elevator, “we’ll transfer you to Executive and they’ll be happy to help you.”

We stumble out into an apartment whose stark contrasts give it the aura of an art installation. Perhaps some heavy-handed commentary on consumerism or the emptiness of wealth. Much like the lobby below, the loftiest residence in the western hemisphere has let itself go. Its sleek leather furniture is stained and cracked, its white marble countertops are dulled by dust, and the pale oak floors are marred by a trail of boot scuffs leading deeper inside. A bowl of what may have been fruit is now a bowl of dried rot, just one of many graveyard aromas that abuse my nose. But it’s the faintest of them that disturbs me the most: cigarette smoke. Or rather, human flesh putrefied by it.

He’s here.

After all those years, he’s still here. Waiting for me. Crawling up from my basement.

Atvist.

The name forces itself into my thoughts, gnawing at my identity like the one my parents gave me, that strange little noise that began with ‘R.’ What if he says it aloud? What if he releases it from the confines of my head and makes it real, along with the rest of the dark life we shared?

Will it overwrite me? Will I disappear?

I feel a jab in my back and I lurch forward; I hadn’t realized I’d stopped walking.

There are strange signs of violence in the apartment. Chairs are knocked over, books shredded and strewn about, and what looks like claw marks in the drywall. It would not surprise me to learn that my grandfather owned a pet bear. All the light fixtures are shattered, and although the huge square windows provide plenty of exposure, the apartment is thick with gloom. The sun has slipped behind a dark cloud rolling in from the ocean. The windows creak in the wind.

The pitchmen drive us along the boot scuff trail—apparently the only trafficked portion of the entire sprawling penthouse—until we come to the living room. I remember this room. I remember the fireplace with its flawless, axe-chopped cedar logs, never lit. I remember the grand piano that dominated the space like a glossy black sculpture, never played. I remember sitting on the couch sipping old Scotch and listening to him pontificate while beautiful women clung to our arms, never named.

Do you ever get tired? I would ask him sometimes. Do you ever wonder what we’re working toward?

And he would laugh and say, No.

We sacrifice so much for it, I would say to him after a few drinks as my world blurred around me. Our own lives and others’. Do you ever ask yourself why?

And he would laugh and say, Because we can. Because if we don’t, someone else will. Because it’s how the world works.

The piano is dusty but still pristine. The logs have grayed but still look ready to warm this marble crypt if anyone cared to light them. I remember these fixtures. What I don’t remember is the white curtain running from wall to wall, dividing the space in half like an opulent hospital room.

“Executive would like a word with you,” Blue Tie says again, and he and Yellow Tie move ahead of us, placing their backs to the curtain. I expect them to sweep it open with melodramatic flair, revealing Atvist and his board members at their long black table. But the pitchmen just stand there. The light behind the curtain casts amorphous shadows against it. And then:

We know who you are.

Bees in my hair. Mosquitoes in my ears. A nest of baby spiders bursting open in my brain. I am used to hearing voices, but this is different. This is not my conscience or my past or any ghost I’ve absorbed. This is from outside.

We know what you did and we want you to undo it.

The last time I heard a voice like this, I didn’t know if it was real or my own projection. In the midst of those grim moments outside the stadium, surrounded by armies of skeletal horrors, it didn’t much matter. The voice ranted and raved and spewed its rhetoric and I did my best to ignore it while I smashed its grinning skulls. But the terror in Julie’s eyes removes any comforting ambiguity. This voice is real.

You will give us what we want or we will find ways to take it.

It has all the mindless confidence that I remember, the droning boredom of foregone conclusions, but there is a new edge to its timbre. A raspy overtone of aggression.

Him.

It took us centuries to build our machine. It was perfect. It kept people safe by feeding them to us. And you broke it.

“R, what is this?” Julie whispers, pressing her hands to the sides of her head.

You confused people. You told them to look for things that don’t exist. You confused the plague, corrupted its function, and now the world is filling with people who have no place. People who don’t fit in our mouth. And they are scared and we are hungry.

It’s him, but he’s just one voice in a choir—or perhaps a crowd, because it’s more noise than harmony, a million blustery old men shouting over each other until their voices merge and average out, all their cultivated sophistries finally melting into truth.