The Burning World (Warm Bodies #2)(72)

She looks at me like I’ve asked if water is wet. “Of course I’m not sure. I just . . .” She turns and looks out a window, her face tinting red in the dying light. “I have a good feeling.”

“Why?”

“Because my mom . . .” She watches the clouds, a flock of little cumuli grazing beneath us. “My mom was half-Icelandic. She spent a couple years in Reykjavík, before she met Dad. The way she talked about it . . . the culture and the politics . . . it sounded like things just made sense there. I could never figure out why she came back.”

“Maybe because it wasn’t her home.”

She glances back at me with surprise and a little annoyance, but I push ahead.

“Leaving now . . . feels like giving up.”

“On what?” she says sharply. “What do we have here? That shitty house?”

I flinch. I can tell she feels the sting too, perhaps sharper than she expected. But she fights it.

“What do we have?” she persists. “The fucking stadium? Cascadian pride?”

“The people.” I hold her gaze, trying to tether her fluttering thoughts. “Ella, David, Marie, Wally, Taylor, Britney, Zane—”

“I know their names, R.”

“So are we going to leave them all with Axiom? Are we going to run away?”

The look she gives me makes me feel like a bully. Like I’m popping her balloons and pissing on her picnic. But I’m only quoting what she told me a few days ago, when she was quoting what I told her a few months before that. We keep tossing this bit of truth back and forth like it hurts to hold on to it.

She gives her head a hard shake as if to clear it of thoughts and returns to her seat. Nora’s siege of the cockpit is already under way. I’m glad Julie chose to stay out of this one.

“What part of ‘explorers don’t return’ did you not understand?” Abram says, waving the Almanac. “Iceland’s probably one giant hive by now.”

“Who has a better chance of resisting a plague than an island? They probably closed their borders at the first reports.”

“Are you bullshitting me or yourself? Borders don’t matter to the plague. They got it on the Space Station for Christ’s sake.”

Julie jumps up. I sigh.

“Iceland was different,” she says, poking her head into the cockpit entryway. “They did everything different. They wouldn’t have collapsed like we did.”

“Are Icelanders not human? What did they do so different?”

“While we were busy with Civil War Two, they were perfecting renewable energy, food production, pouring resources into education and culture—they weren’t collapsing, they were thriving.”

“So you’re a history buff. Then you know they were halfway underwater when we heard from them last.”

“Yeah, and they were building a sea wall!”

Nora quietly slips out of the crossfire, giving me an I tried shrug as she returns to her seat.

“You know Canada is exed,” Julie continues, picking up steam. “So is Mexico and probably South America. Think outside the hemisphere!”

Abram stands up and moves toward her. Julie backs out of the cockpit doorway, tensing into an uncertain defensive stance, but he brushes past her, steps into the bathroom, and starts urinating.

Julie folds her arms over her chest and glares at his back through the door. “Are we having a literal pissing contest right now?”

Abram lets out a weary sigh as he finishes up. “Listen, you beautiful sunbeam . . .” He steps out of the bathroom and flops down in the front row, looking up at her. “I’d love to believe there’s a beacon of civilization out there waiting for us to find it. But if there’s a beacon, why can’t we see it? Why doesn’t anyone know?”

“You think the last stable country in the world is going to advertise itself? And have all the fuckup countries coming around looking for a couch to crash on?”

Abram seems to consider this.

“They’re probably just waiting for the right time. Building up their resources, developing a plan.”

He nods abruptly and stands up. “Okay, sure. Iceland sounds good.”

Julie’s rebuttal freezes on her lips and she cocks her head, startled into silence.

“And Toronto’s on the way there,” he continues, pushing past her into the cockpit. “So if we don’t find what we need in Toronto, then we’ll talk about going abroad. Okay?”

He sounds so sincere that he must not be. But if his sincerity is sarcastic . . . is his sarcasm sincere? I wonder if he even knows.

He returns to his seat and Julie returns to hers, looking off-balance.

“Hey!” M shouts toward the cockpit. “How much longer?” He’s still blinking sleep out of his eyes but already gripping his armrests.

“Tomorrow,” Abram shouts back.

M grumbles a few curses, pressing deeper into his seat.

I squeeze Julie’s knee, another attempt at comfort, but she is lost in thought and doesn’t seem to notice my efforts. So I turn to the window.

The view is not what it should be. There should be lights down there. Even in remote lands there should be a few specks, then glittering lines and clusters, earthly constellations that finally converge into the ecstatic galaxy of a city, pulsing and boiling with life.