The Burning World (Warm Bodies #2)(61)

“How long are you going to stand in the hall?” he says, and shoves me down the stairs.

? ? ?

“Hello? R? You still with us?”

Julie is leaning over me, giving my cheek tiny repeated slaps. I blink and sit up, eyes darting. “What’s . . . where . . .”

“Wow,” she says, stepping back, “when you sleep, you sleep.”

Everyone is standing in the aisle, watching me, some with concern, some with impatience. I glance out the window—we’re on the ground.

“What’s happening? Where are we?”

“Helena,” Abram says. “Need to pick up a few things.”

“And Marcus needs to puke,” Nora says, giving M a light elbow to the stomach. He glares at her.

They all start to file out. I stand up but don’t follow them. I’m disoriented, unsure if I’m still dreaming.

“Are you okay?” Julie says. “You were sleeping, right? That wasn’t another of your little fugue states?”

“I don’t . . . I’m not sure.” The plane is now empty except for the two of us. “We’re in Montana?”

She smiles. “It’ll make more sense when you finish waking up. Let’s go.”

I glance toward the rear restroom.

“They’re fine,” she says. “I told them where we’re going and they said they’d stay.”

“They said?”

“Well, they nodded.”

She turns to go and I follow her, my head still spinning but starting to slow down. The plane is parked in the middle of a runway, far from the airport terminal and any potential inhabitants it may be harboring, so we exit through the cargo bay. A narrow staircase in the midsection leads to the lower deck, a cold, musty underworld that I never dared to explore during my tenancy. I don’t know what I imagined lurking here, but the only horrors I detect are a few spiders.

The cabin’s refined interior gives way to the industrial rawness of the cargo bay, then a hydraulic ramp leading down to the runway. The feeling of solid ground under my feet steadies me a little. I glance back at the open ramp and feel the instinct to lock it, like this commercial airliner is the family sedan parked in a bad neighborhood.

And just how bad is this neighborhood? I see no movement in the terminal’s windows or on the tarmac around it. Just acres of bleached concrete, dust and leaves. Perhaps this airport wasn’t consumed by plague like Post’s was. Perhaps this place fell to something else.

“Wake up, Archie!” Nora yells back to me. “Let’s move!”

As I turn around, Abram points a small device at the back of the plane. The ramp rises and clicks shut.

Keyless entry. Nice to know my plane has all the late-model luxuries—and that I’m not the only one with uneasy feelings as we march toward this silent city.

? ? ?

Our group resembles a ragged military platoon, everyone walking with weapons at the ready. M and Abram carry theirs in the poised stance of disciplined soldiers while Nora and Julie’s swing against their thighs with easy confidence. The only element that doesn’t fit the picture is the half-blind little girl trailing behind her father. And me, as always.

I look at my hands. They’re steadier. I should tell Abram I’m ready for that pistol. I don’t.

“What are we doing here?” I mumble into Julie’s ear.

“Apparently Abram has some transportation stashed in town. They grew up here, him and Perry.”

I look into the pale horizon beyond the airport. Endless hills of rust-hued dust and stiff, woody shrubs that scrape your calves like cat claws when you try to run away from home wearing only your swim trunks—

I miss a step. My boots scuff on the asphalt. I rub at my forehead then quickly look up. No one is watching me. I can see the outskirts of the suburbs rippling in the heat like a mirage, or a memory from a night of hard drinking.

“So this is the town you were trying to leave?” Nora asks Abram. “When your family got attacked?”

Abram keeps walking.

“And you said Perry was five, so this was . . . a long time ago?”

“Your point?”

“Well . . . what makes you think your bikes are still here?”

“Because it’s not the kind of place that attracts looters.”

As we get closer, the heat ripples begin to clear, and the city comes into focus.

Black.

Everything is black. Black skeletons of houses burned down to their frames. The bricks of old buildings blackened like charcoal briquettes. Even the streets are black; melted rubber and soot from a hundred burned cars. The only splashes of color are the grass and vines overtaking the ruins, feeding on the city’s carbon-rich corpse.

“Let’s go back,” I hear myself saying.

Julie glances over her shoulder at me. “What?”

“We shouldn’t be here. Let’s go back.”

The distress in my voice catches the group’s attention and they pause their march, waiting for me to elaborate.

“Not safe,” I mumble.

“It’s a pile of ash,” Abram says, tossing his palms out. “Nothing and nobody. What’s safer than that?”

My eyes wander through the charred landscape ahead. Every single building. Even the ones separated by spaces too far for the fire to have jumped. A fire with a purpose. A fire with friends.