The Burning World (Warm Bodies #2)(41)

Nora notices this and tries to change the subject. “By the way, Abram Kelvin”—she taps his headrest—“since you seem so eager to get to know us . . . my name’s Nora.”

Abram smiles dryly. “Right. Names. We don’t use them much where I’m from.” He glances at Julie, but she’s looking out the window, traveling dark paths in her mind, so Nora fills in for her.

“That’s Julie. She and your brother were a thing.”

Abram’s smile fades into a distant blankness. He seems oddly uninterested in pursuing that topic, so I take my turn in the introductions.

“I’m R.”

“Art?”

“R. Just the letter.”

He glances me up and down as if having an unusual name suggests physical defects. “Who has a letter for a name?”

I shrug. “I do.”

He holds my gaze for a moment in some kind of trust-testing ritual, then grunts and returns his eyes to the road.

“Who names their kid ‘Sprout’?” Nora says, and we all jump a little when Sprout herself answers:

“I do.”

It’s the first time we’ve heard her voice.

“We named her Murasaki,” Abram sighs. “Then one day I said she was growing like a bean sprout and for some reason she latched onto it.”

Sprout’s face flickers into a grin, showing both rows of teeth and a few gaps, then lapses back into worry.

“Where’s her mom?” I ask, and Julie emerges from her brooding to shoot me a stern glance. I recall a lesson she taught me early in my rehumanization: if a family member is conspicuously absent, never ask where they are. You know damn well where they are.

To my relief, Abram ignores me.

“Thank you, by the way,” Julie says to him, still subdued but recovering. “Never got a chance to say that.”

Abram looks back at her. “Thank you? For what?”

“For getting us out of Goldman. Considering this was happening by our third day”—she flashes her bandaged stump—“I’m guessing we wouldn’t have lasted much longer.”

He turns back to the road, shaking his head, but Julie continues.

“I know you said you had other reasons for ditching Axiom, but you still took a big risk to break us out. If you’d just left quietly you might not be a fugitive right now, so . . . thanks.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” he says with a note of disgust. “Why would I risk my life for some strangers in a jail cell? You had information about my family, Management was about to kill you, it was a good time to make my move.”

Julie lowers her brows. “Hey asshole. I’m not saying you’re a hero. I’m just saying thanks.”

Abram chuckles darkly. “I throw you in jail, watch you get tortured, then drag you out into the wilderness to probably get killed by my employers, and you say thanks.” He shakes his head again. “I shouldn’t have interfered with natural selection. You’re clearly not meant to make it.”

My mind drifts out the window and into the darkness, away from this turbulent chatter. I picture M wandering alone in the forest, gripping his head and groaning as his old self tries to dig a nest in his brain, maybe throwing himself off a waterfall to end the confusion, and a scared, selfish part of me envies him. The simplicity of his struggle. One man fighting one fight: his own. I understand inner conflicts. But to fight for and against other people, to engage with the world outside of me . . . this is a lot more complicated.

I look at Julie in the rearview mirror, hoping to make some kind of meaningful contact, to share a glance that says, What a mess we’re in! but she’s busy glaring out the window, stunned into silence by our driver’s impenetrable shell. I stare for a moment, trying to catch her eyes, and then I notice something in the window behind her head. Two points of light floating in the trees. They blink and flicker, disappear for a moment, then flicker back. Fireflies? Fairies? A memory creeps into my consciousness, not something from the forbidden basement of my first life but a dusty relic from the beginning of my second. I am wandering in the woods alone, dragged on a leash by the hungry brute inside me. I am trying to piece together the nature of reality—what trees are, what animals are, what I am—but reality keeps changing. There are strange things in the woods. Hovering hands and shadows that glow and faces peering from holes in the air. These lights in the window seem to belong to that dream. Floating eyes. The Cheshire Cat. Then they accelerate, they draw closer, and the whine of an engine erases all this whimsy.

Headlights.

“I thought we’d have a bigger lead,” Abram mutters, and guns the truck to speeds that wouldn’t be safe on a major highway, much less this leaf-strewn backroad. I hear the click of seat belts behind me.

Our pursuers gain steadily until I can make out the contours of their much newer, much faster vehicle: a nearly mint Porsche SUV.

“Why do they have a fucking sports car?” Nora squeals. “You’ve worked for them all these years and you’re driving this piece of shit?”

“I need you to shut up now,” Abram says through gritted teeth as he struggles to maintain control of the old Ford. Its creaky suspension fails to soften the constant barrage of potholes, and I feel my jaw rattling. The engine roars like a sick bear.

The Porsche pulls up directly behind us and flashes its high beams, a friendly notice from a concerned fellow driver: Hey buddy, you’ve got a taillight out. Then it rams us.