The Burning World (Warm Bodies #2)(59)

I step into the aisle and she brushes past me. “Julie,” I say, but she disappears into the bathroom without looking back.

I stare at the closed door. This isn’t the first time I’ve tripped over Perry’s life, but she usually lets it go with an awkward change of subject. Was there something more in that stolen memory?

“I miss airplanes,” Julie says.

“Me too,” Perry says.

“Those white lines . . . the way they made designs in the blue? My mom used to say it looked like an Etch A Sketch.”

And there it is. A wound within a wound. Her dead mother’s words pulled from her dead lover’s memory.

I close my eyes and sink low in my chair, releasing a weary sigh. I don’t have to be a monster to hurt people. I can do it gently, with a single careless breath.

Julie stays in the bathroom longer than it takes to use the bathroom. When she finally comes out, she avoids my gaze, but I still notice the wetness in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I say as she slides back into her chair. “I didn’t . . .”

“It’s fine.” She shakes her head and wipes her eyes on her sleeve. “I had a mom and she died. It was almost eight years ago. I can’t be falling apart every time something reminds me.”

I can hear the effort this hardness requires.

“It’s just . . . the questions. Not knowing what really happened.” Her eyes begin to dampen again and she looks out the window to hide them. “There was no note . . . no good-bye. We assumed she knew what would happen, going off alone at night, but what if she was just that naive? What if she really thought she’d make it to Detroit, join the Remakers, live the life she always—” Her voice cracks and she sits in silence for a moment. “Doesn’t matter, I guess. Either way, she left us. I just wish I knew why, because I keep running it through my head . . .” Her voice drops lower, almost inaudible. “And it’s like it’s not finished. Like she’s dying over and over.”

I’m not sure if she’s talking to me anymore. She might be talking to the clouds, those elusive cirrus wisps that look distant even up here. Suddenly, she laughs. “She could still be out there!” It’s a bleak sound, a forced signal of levity that barely escapes her throat. “All we found was her dress and some . . . some of her. For all I know she could be out there roaming the country with a gang of zombie moms.” She flashes me a smile that’s meant to show she’s joking, but it’s not even close to convincing. “That’s how it works, right? Sometimes they take years to rot?”

I give her an ambivalent nod. She’s not wrong. I’m proof of that. But the hope I see in her eyes, despite her efforts to hide it, looks too desperate. Too hungry. And it feels dangerous to feed it.

She turns back to the window. “I know,” she mutters like she’s listening to my thoughts. “I know it’s stupid. It’s just something I think about.” The clouds seem to drift away from us, dissolving into that unmapped blue landscape. “I’ve been missing her a lot lately.”

My response must be delicate but words are crude tools, prone to breaking what they’re meant to repair. So I keep my mouth shut. I lay a hand on her back and leave it there. Minutes pass in the soft roar of engines and air. I feel her breaths slow, her muscles soften. I feel her fall asleep.

? ? ?

I have no idea what time it is, but after everything we’ve endured, it hardly matters. The sleep debt demands payment. Even Abram appears to be dozing, slouched low in his chair with the autopilot on. I feel the exhaustion as much as anyone, but my brain still hasn’t found its off switch. I roam among the sleepers like a ghoul in a graveyard.

M gives me a feeble nod as I pass him. He looks even paler than he did when he was All Dead; it seems he’s alive enough to get airsick. Nora is slumped in the chair next to him, snoring the ravenous snores of a sleep-starved woman finally feasting. I try not to feel jealous.

I slide open the door of the rear bathroom and look down at what’s left of my family. Two young corpses tied up with belts. Alex sits on the toilet seat. Joan’s feet dangle off the edge of the sink. They look up at me with big, mournful eyes, like caged puppies who don’t know what they’ve done wrong. I can’t take it.

“Stay,” I tell them as I unbuckle the belts.

They nod.

“Promise you’ll stay?”

They nod.

“Say it. Say you promise.”

They nod.

I remember watching them laugh and play like real children in that golden hour when all it took to raise the Dead was a smile and some pretty pictures. I remember the lengthy sentences that tumbled from their mouths in those days. This is our friend, Joan said, introducing me to one of the airport kids whom I’d probably met and forgotten a hundred times, a boy whose charcoal skin was starting to turn brown. He doesn’t remember his name yet, so he’s going out to look for it.

I counted the syllables in that sentence and told Joan it was her new record. I remember it clearly because it was a record she never broke.

“Hungry,” she says, and snaps her teeth.

I shut the door.

? ? ?

Abram senses me lurking in the cockpit doorway and wakes from his nap. His face is Perry’s reflected in a dirty mirror, and I remember Perry’s white pilot uniform covered in blood while the plane hurtled toward the ground.