The Burning World (Warm Bodies #2)(83)

“Storyboards?”

“Storyboards.”

He resumes sawing. A breeze whistles through holes in the terminal building, harmonizing with his saw.

“I haven’t watched a movie in ages,” Nora says with a melancholy smile. “Not since I was a teenager.”

“What was the last one?”

She thinks for a moment. “Return of the Living Dead?”

M chuckles.

“I know. Wasn’t my choice. I lost my taste for zombie flicks when they became real life, but I was in a prison pit and the guards were watching it, so . . .”

The sun has begun its descent, casting the airport in a surreal red-orange glow. Julie sits just outside the invisible border of the group’s company, beyond the range of conversation, staring into the rippling city. She hasn’t said a word since her last argument with Abram. I wonder what she’s thinking. I wonder if the dreams that trouble her are anything like mine.

“So tell me about your sketches,” Nora says, watching M cut his way toward her. “I’m curious.”

He completes the cut and the square drops out. It produces an eerie wobbling noise as he hands it down to Nora.

“Piano,” M says, staring into the plane’s exposed guts. “Loved playing piano.”

“Really!” Nora says.

He starts cutting another square. “Family was surprised too. Said I was too big for it. Said I looked like a circus ape.”

Nora is quiet.

“Never liked sports much,” he says over the whine of his saw, adding a gruff stiffness to his voice. “But in my family, big guys were wrestlers. So I wrestled.”

Fine bits of metal rain down from his saw, piling on the ground next to Nora. He glances down at her. “You should move. Don’t want to get it in your hair.”

She scoots out of the way. She watches Julie for a moment. “You okay, Jules?” she calls across the awkward distance.

Julie nods without turning around. It’s not reassuring. Nora raises her eyebrows at me and I realize I’ve been put on boyfriend duty. I approach my girlfriend, unsure of what I might be dealing with, and sit down next to her.

“Julie?”

“I’m fine,” she says. “Just thinking.”

She keeps the side of her face to me; I can’t quite get a look at her eyes.

“About what?” I ask, and cringe at how trite it sounds. Hey Julie, whatcha thinkin’ about?

She shakes her head as if to warn me off this ill-advised reconnaissance mission. I shut my mouth.

“What was your family like?” Nora is asking M. Their conversation seems safe enough, so I return to it, keeping Julie in my periphery.

“Mom left early. Grew up with Dad and two brothers. Don’t remember their names yet.”

“And I’m guessing they all died?”

She says it absently, twirling a bolt between her fingers. M stops sawing and looks at her, a small smile on his big lips. “Um . . . yeah. Probably.”

Nora nods. The typical modern family: deceased.

M finishes the cut and climbs down from the landing gear, drops the second square on top of the first: new windows for our battered aircraft.

“What about you?” he says, settling against the tire next to Nora.

“My family?”

“Yeah.”

Her gaze drifts out into the city to join Julie’s. Broken buildings. Buried streets. Ruins rippling in the queasy orange haze like a fever dream of loss.

“Never had one,” she says. “I grew out of the ground.”

Julie stands up. Her back is to me; I can’t see her face. Just her hair whipping in the wind.

She starts walking.

“Julie?” I call after her.

She keeps walking.

“Jules!” Nora shouts. “Where are you going?”

“Need to piss,” Julie replies, but the flatness of her voice sets off my alarms. I catch up to her as she enters a narrow alley, hidden from the sun and piled high with sand drifts like a pyramid burial shaft.

“Julie.”

She keeps walking.

“Julie, talk to me.”

I touch her back and she flinches, wrapping her arms around herself while continuing to walk. “I’m seeing things, R,” she says in a plaintive whimper, and I realize with a jolt that she’s crying. I try to put my hand on her shoulder but she pushes it away and keeps walking.

“What are you seeing?”

She shakes her head and clutches her elbows, looking disturbingly unwell. “Something’s wrong with this place.” Her voice trembles. “I can see through it. Like it’s watery soup. And my . . . my dreams are in there.” She raises her head, looking toward—or through—the distant buildings. “The monsters, the men. And my—”

She stops. She finally looks at me. “Am I awake?”

“Yes, Julie, you’re awake. Please, just . . .”

I make one more attempt to touch her. She turns around and runs.

? ? ?

Her muscles are young and alive, but my legs are twice as long. I follow at a light jog as she scrambles through the tangled streets, as she glances left and right like a lost hiker trying to find the trail. I let her run until I hear her breath starting to whistle, then I put a hand on her shoulder and squeeze firmly.