The Burning World (Warm Bodies #2)(51)

The kids look slightly healthier, with only one or two depressions visible on their skin. I assume this means they lack their mother’s resolve and have been finding Living flesh to eat, but then I notice the cookie in Joan’s hand and the cheese stick in Alex’s. Both are barely nibbled, but the effort is apparent, and effort is almost everything.

“Eat?” I say to my wife, pointing to the snacks.

She shakes her head, and this time the emotion is clear: shame. You can lead a corpse to food but you can’t make it eat. The will is strong but the flesh is delicious. And so on.

I glance over my shoulder, then hold out my hands. “Wait here.”

I tiptoe back to row 26 and shake Julie’s shoulder. She groans and tries to wriggle away from me.

“Julie,” I whisper. “Wake up.”

Her eyes open a crack, glaring at me sideways. “What.”

“My wife and kids . . . they’re here.”

She pulls herself upright, blinking the sleep away. “Here? In the plane?”

“Don’t know what to do.”

She slides out from under Sprout and carefully lays the girl’s head on the seat. We rush back to the restrooms where my perfect little nuclear family is eyeing Nora’s sleeping form with unmistakable yearning.

“Nora,” Julie says, nudging her shoulder.

Nora snaps upright, restraining her shock as she registers the newcomers. “Were they about to eat me?”

“No,” I say, then falter. “Maybe. But they really don’t want to.”

“Are these . . . your kids?”

“Uh . . . yes.”

“Hi, kids,” Nora says neutrally, then looks at their mother. “And you?”

“She’s R’s wife,” Julie says with a faint smile.

Nora sighs. “Great. A fucking love triangle.”

“It was . . . an arranged marriage,” I mumble.

“What’s your wife’s name?”

“Don’t know.”

Nora considers this, then nods. “Okay, so maybe no love triangle.”

I squirm. My wife squirms. I look at the floor and she looks out the windows. Then she grabs our kids’ hands and lumbers toward the exit.

“Hey!” Nora calls to her, getting out of her seat and taking a few steps down the aisle. “I was just playing!”

But there was something more than offense in my wife’s expression. I look out the window. The empty expanse of the tarmac has become a sea of gray faces.

The plane is completely surrounded by the Dead.

“That can’t be good,” Julie says, following my gaze. She runs back to check on Sprout.

I remain transfixed by the crowd. Even in the heyday of this hive, I never saw this many gathered in one place. The Boneys’ church services came close, but there were always those who found fiery sermons of wordless clicks and hisses to be an unengaging experience, no matter how charismatically the Boneys delivered them, so the assemblies never drew more than half of the airport’s population. The mob gathered here today has to be all of it.

And yet despite its resemblance to a mobilizing army, I don’t sense hostility. Most of them aren’t even looking at the plane. They face north, toward the airport’s entrance, toward the city, and they wait.

The plane’s door squeals open and shuts with a bang. I hear the lock mechanism snap into place. Abram strides down the aisle, his rifle at the ready, chest heaving like he’s coming out of a long sprint.

“They’re coming,” he says between breaths.

“We know,” Julie says. “We can see them.”

“Not the Dead.” He scoops Sprout up from her chair and moves to the emergency exit row, shutting all the window shades as he goes.

“Axiom?” Nora says, not wanting to believe it. “How the hell did they find us so fast?”

“Porsche probably had a tracker somewhere, but I figured the jamming would kill the range . . .” He slams the last window, plunging the cabin into gloom. “Doesn’t matter. They’re here.”

“How many?” Nora says, her face hardening as she grabs her rifle from the overhead bin.

“Too many.” He drops into the window seat with Sprout on his lap and grips his rifle with white knuckles.

“What’s going on?” M yawns, stepping through the first-class curtain. No one answers him.

“So what’s your plan, then?” Julie says with rising panic. “Just sit here and hope they don’t check the only intact plane on the runway?”

He raises his window shade an inch and peers out at the swaying horde around us. “My plan is to sit here and hope your friends remember how much they like human flesh.”

I raise my shade halfway. Like iron filings drawn toward a magnet, the crowd is orienting stiffly in one direction: toward a service gate at the north end of the tarmac. The gate slides open and five beige SUVs roll through it. Then they stop. No doubt they expected zombies. What they probably didn’t expect was a semi-organized army of them.

The Dead still don’t appear hostile. They cock their heads, uncertain, uneasy, like abused dogs sniffing a stranger’s hand, wondering if it will stroke or strike. And I see my family among them. Joan and Alex and my nameless wife, huddled at the back of the crowd, waiting for these newcomers to express their intent.