The Burning World (Warm Bodies #2)(62)

“What’s wrong, R?” Julie says.

M is giving me a look that I don’t like. Something like empathy. As if he understands. But he doesn’t understand. I don’t understand.

“I don’t know,” I tell Julie. My eyes fall to the ground. “I don’t know.”

Abram resumes walking.

“We need vehicles,” Julie says, touching my shoulder. “We’re not going to find anything if we stay up in the clouds.”

I nod.

“If you’re scared,” Nora calls back to me, “just picture yourself on a bad-ass hog, wind in your hair, bitch on your back. We’ll get you some cool shades and a tattoo.”

I expect M to join in with a quip, tousle my hair, and call me a little girl, but he’s still giving me that sad, knowing look. Anger overcomes my fear.

“Let’s go.”

“We’ll keep our eyes open,” Julie says, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “It’ll be fine.”

I feel a surge of disgust for her all-purpose platitudes. She has no idea what I’m afraid of; what makes her think it’ll be fine?

We walk down into the black city, and though it was razed years ago, I swear I can still smell the acrid perfume of a thousand burned things.





THE SUN.

It soaks into my arms and legs and face, filling my cells like warm water balloons. Its heat radiates from the tar paper shingles and soaks into my back, saturating me from every direction. I am lying in the crook of the roof, next to the chimney, hiding. No one knows I can climb the oak outside my bedroom window and jump here from its branches. Most seven-year-olds couldn’t, but I’m different. I’ve been practicing a long time.

I have my toys with me. Two plastic men. One is a good guy, a hero. I can tell by his big jaw and flat haircut. The other is a monster. I don’t know what kind of monster but he is ugly and his skin is blue, so he is bad and I make him fight the hero. They stand on my chest, poised to attack.

“I will kill you!” the monster says in a shrill snarl.

“Not if I kill you first!” the hero says in the closest I can get to a baritone.

Far out in the yard, near the woods, I hear my father shouting something over and over. It’s probably my name. It has the blunt cadence of my name, but it’s distant and inconsequential. The violence in his voice is softened by the warm air. I can almost imagine he’s looking for me because he wants to give me a present.

I mash the figures together into a frenzy of battle. Plastic fists clatter against plastic jaws.

? ? ?

I stretch the balloon’s ring and slip it over the faucet. I turn on the water and watch the balloon swell.

“Who you gonna hit with these?”

I look up at my father. His huge, meaty face. His hands thick and callused from decades of brutal labor.

“Paul,” I say.

He pulls one of the finished balloons out of the bag on the counter and squeezes it. “It’s warm.”

I nod.

“You trying to give him a nice bath? Use cold water.”

“Why?”

“Getting hit isn’t supposed to feel good. It’s supposed to make him scream.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how games work. Winning is supposed to feel good and losing is supposed to hurt. What’s the point of being a winner if losers get to feel good too?”

He hands me a fresh balloon. “Use cold water.” He opens the freezer and sets a tray of ice cubes by the sink. “And a few of these.”

? ? ?

I stare at the beige carpet, looking for patterns in the stains as the youth pastor harangues us with harsh truths.

“Don’t let the long hair fool you, he’s not some peace-and-love hippie. Luke chapter twelve: ‘Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.’ He didn’t come to make friends. He’s got fire in his eyes and a sword in his mouth and he came to cut the world in half.”

Stacks of chairs with purple cushions. Folding tables. Pale fluorescent lights. Monday through Saturday, the hotel rents out this shabby conference room for political rallies, corporate training sessions, and the occasional flea market or gun show. On Sundays it belongs to a few dozen families who set up guitars and mics and hang a vinyl banner that reads HOLY FIRE FELLOWSHIP.

“He came to divide!” the pastor shouts into his mic, pacing back and forth in front of thirty squirming teens. “Brother from brother. Wheat from chaff. Saved from damned. He’s here to draw a line. Which side will you be on when the Last Sunset comes?”

I force myself to look up from the floor and face his fevered gaze.

“Maybe you think you’ve got plenty of time to decide. Maybe you like living in this cesspool so much you want to hit snooze and tell God to come back later. Maybe you think if you do enough good works, if you feed enough refugees and build enough schools and recycle enough pop cans, you can make God change his mind.” He shakes his head, and his voice drops to a low simmer. “God doesn’t change his mind. You can’t put out his fire. It’s coming to burn away this twisted world, and I don’t know about you, but I’m praying for it to hurry up. I’m soaking my house in gasoline.”

? ? ?

The skeletons of Helena, Montana, loom over me, charred rafters stabbing at the sky like the ribs of ancient animals. Bits of charcoal fall onto my upturned face and I wipe at them, drawing smudges that revert my faintly pink skin to gray. I see clean white siding superimposed over the houses’ black frames. Neat vegetable gardens under jungles of ivy. Children riding bikes through the glass-strewn streets. Voices in the silence.