The Burning World (Warm Bodies #2)(94)

Julie flinches. I suspect it’s been a while since Nora has failed to be on her side. Julie turns her attention to the yellow paper, almost hiding behind it, and I read over her shoulder.





Julie lowers the page. “This was two years ago. You’d think we’d have heard something.”

“Come on,” Nora says. “Two years ago we didn’t even know Axiom still existed. Pittsburgh could be a full-blown rogue state by now.”

A moan drifts from the rear of the plane and Julie’s head snaps toward the sound. Near the restrooms, chained to a chair, the remains of her mother are waiting. For what, exactly, I don’t know, and I doubt Julie does either, but I can see the emotion flooding her face, cold and wet and overwhelming.

“We can’t,” she murmurs, her eyes glazing. “We have to get her help.”

“We will, Jules,” Nora says. “But what do you really think she’d want you to do right now?”

Another long, pitiful moan, so different from her earlier snarls of mindless hunger.

“Julie,” Abram says, and she jolts at the sound of her name. “I know why you’re doing what you’re doing. I’d do the same thing. But if you ever meant a word of all that save-the-world talk, you’ll let me land this plane. Because we’re about to fly past your first real chance to do something.”

Julie squeezes her eyes tight, clearing the mist, and stands up. “Land it,” she says, but her voice is lacking any rebel fervor, more a surrender than a command. She’s already walking toward the rear of the plane. “Mom? Are you okay?”

I follow her quietly, keeping a respectful distance. Her mother sits in the aisle, slouching on the floor. A length of cable runs through her collar and around the posts of a headrest, giving her a few feet to move around, and Joan and Alex sit just outside her range, watching her warily.

“Scary,” Alex says, widening his eyes at me.

“Sad,” Joan says, regarding Audrey with precociously deep empathy. “She’s . . . very sad.”

Their bells jingle. My kids have collars too. I found them in some pet carriers and decided the bells’ warning would be sufficient security for these gentle young corpses. Abram was in no position to object this time.

“We’re going to land in Pittsburgh, Mom,” Julie says, sitting cross-legged in front of her. “They say there’s a resistance there. We’re going to see if we can help.”

Audrey’s hands lie palms-up on the floor in front of her and she stares down at them, slack-faced.

“Do you remember trying to help, Mom? Do you remember how much you wanted to make the world better?”

Audrey rocks back and forth, her filthy hair dangling into her eyes.

“Mom? Do you remember anything?”

Audrey lunges and snaps her teeth an inch from Julie’s face. Julie jumps up and back, her lips trembling. Audrey is looking right at her. The Dead’s emotions are hard to read, even for their fellow Dead, but if I had to guess, I’d say the look on Audrey’s sallow face is bitterness. The deep, singular hurt of someone who has tried to do good and been punished for it.

“Why do we keep doing this?” I demand of my mother as she peels potatoes for tonight’s vat of communal stew. “What’s the point of helping people if the world’s going to burn anyway?”

I can no longer spare her. My confusion has grown too big to be restrained by kindness; it lashes out heedlessly, beating my mother down.

“Are we winning points with God? Is he even keeping score? Won’t it all go back to zero when he resets the world? There won’t be any record of what we’ve done here, Mom! Why are we doing this?”

“I don’t know!” she screams at me, and the peeler falls to the floor. She is crying. She has been crying for a while; her face and neck are wet with it, but her back was to me and I couldn’t see. “I don’t know, you cold, logical thing. I don’t know.”

I back out of the kitchen, my anger and confusion mixing with guilt, forming still harder alloys.

Wiping at her eyes with a callused hand, my mother bends down and picks up the peeler—

Julie is looking at me. What has been on my face? How much have I revealed? I feel gravity weakening as the plane begins its descent, thinning my body’s connection to solid things.





WE


THERE ARE NO MORE ROAD games in the van. No more lively debates or pop rock on the stereo. Just uneasy silence. The boy sits on the bucket between the two seats, his sunglasses somewhere in the back, lost under bags and boxes. He keeps his gaze straight ahead as Gael and Gebre steal sideways glances at him. He is not bothered by their curiosity or even their fear. He would answer their questions if he could answer his own.

“One thing I can say for sure,” Gebre says as if concluding a long discussion in his head, “you talked. I definitely heard you talk back there. So it is safe to assume you understand us, yes, Rover?”

“He could be deaf,” Gael says.

Gebre considers this a moment. He hands the cracked iPod to Gael. “Play something kids hate.”

Gael spins the wheel and clicks. A cherubic falsetto rises over plodding drums and bittersweet strings.

“No, no,” Gebre says with a grimace. “I said something kids hate, not something every sane person hates.”