The Burning World (Warm Bodies #2)(96)

“You told me how they left you,” I remind her. “That night at the bar?”

She turns her trapped-animal gaze on me.

“You’ve lost everything Julie has. So . . . would you do this?”

She seems to break down a barrier within herself, the outer layer of a many-walled city. “It’s different,” she says, exhaling the debris in a small sigh. “Julie loved her parents. They were good people who got crushed by circumstances. Mine . . .”

Her face trembles as if with effort, like she’s climbing over something in her head.

“Mine left”—another spasm—“me.” Another deep breath. “They left me. To die. And they were assholes from the beginning. So what is it you’re asking? If I found my parents alive, would I hijack a plane and fly across the world to save them?” She lets out a dark chuckle that sounds more like a snarl. “Fuck no. I’d have a hard time not killing them myself.”

I notice M moving his hand toward Nora’s shoulder, then reconsidering, retreating.

“But I’m a coldhearted bitch,” she continues with forced flippancy. “I’m all up in Buddha’s ass with that non-attachment shit. Love nothing, mourn nothing, you know? Jules is different.” She watches Julie walk, just a few inches taller than her prisoner’s daughter. “She’s been through hell and she’s got iron skin, but under that? She’s all gooey pink.” She smiles fondly as Julie lets the gun sag to her side, barely even trying anymore. “And I love that about her. Sometimes I even envy it. It takes crazy courage to let yourself feel that much. But yeah . . .” She sighs. “Sometimes it’s a problem.”

“You’re not that different,” M says very quietly.

“What was that?” Nora says, cocking her head like she didn’t hear, but the spike in her tone reveals otherwise.

“You’re not as cold . . . as you think.”

“Well that’s an interesting theory, but you don’t really know anything about me do you?”

M doesn’t reply, but he holds his gaze.

“Cut the chatter,” Abram calls back to us. “We just entered the branch perimeter. Wake up and watch for patrols.”

I glance around. There is no visible border, no apparent change in the cityscape, but we must have crossed some landmark that only a local would recognize. A distant part of me is disappointed in the lack of human presence so far. I was looking forward to seeing what an un-exed city feels like. Even a city controlled by Axiom would feel more real than the human zoo of Citi Stadium. But we have been hiking through Pittsburgh for over an hour—roaring into town on the bikes like unconvincing Hells Angels was quickly ruled out—and we have yet to encounter another person.

This is what the early days looked like, says a memory drifting up from my basement, like a disturbed child muttering in the dark. Cities bled out as humanity fled from itself, dispersing across the country with the absurd hope that isolation was the cure, that their shadows wouldn’t follow them. But we did. We followed them everywhere.

“You said it’s been a year since you’ve been here?” Julie asks Abram.

“That’s right.”

She looks from building to empty building. “And there were people then?”

He walks another block before replying. “They must have condensed. Moved everyone downtown.”

How often does prey outrun the predator? The predator is designed to win, and if it didn’t usually do so, if the business of eating the weak did not net a profit, it would fold, and there would be no more predators. But there are always predators. No matter how bare the fields get.

Whoever you are, I tell the melancholy drone, shut the fuck up. And to my surprise, it obeys, leaving a reverberation of resentment in the silence. It’s just me now, watching the ghostly towers of Pittsburgh drift past.

I wonder how many people are in my brain. Perhaps each day births a new version of me with its own thoughts and feelings, thousands of homunculi stretching back from today to yesterday to adolescence to infancy, all stuffed into the same head to argue and jostle for position. It would explain a lot.

? ? ?

Abram is leading us toward the river, which flows around and into downtown, backed up from the overfilled ocean until it spills over its banks and turns parks into ponds. The only visible way across the sea is a single bright yellow bridge.

“I’d just like to point out,” Nora says, “that us walking over that bridge is about as stealthy as a parade.”

“Trust me,” Abram says.

“Now why would I do that?”

Abram stops at the bridge’s entrance and slips his backpack off his right shoulder. He digs around in it using only his right arm, keeping his left limp at his side, but he still winces from the movement. I notice Julie wincing along with him. I’m about to offer him some help when he finds what he’s looking for and straightens up. He points the binoculars toward the end of the bridge, then lets out a relieved puff of breath and hands them to Julie. “Okay. I was right. They just moved downtown.”

Julie looks, nods, and passes the binoculars to me, like we’re a group of tourists taking turns at the view scope. I see office windows. Birds in flight. Julie’s head as a yellow blur. Then I find the bridge. The magnification places me at the far end of it, about fifty feet from six men in beige jackets, standing at slouchy attention with rifles against their thighs.