The Burning World (Warm Bodies #2)(97)

“Okay,” Julie says, “so the bridge is guarded by Axiom soldiers. That’s . . . good?”

“Better than an empty city,” Abram says, already moving toward an exit ramp that curves under the bridge. “The coup could still be building.”

“Abram,” Julie says, and he stops, turns. “You really think this is happening?”

“I know it was happening. I think it still is.”

“And you really want it to? You want to take down the people who raised you?”

Abram chuckles. “Look, if you think I have any love for the Axiom Group just because they ‘raised’ me, you don’t know me or the Axiom Group. It doesn’t operate on love, it’s a business. It’s an exchange of services. It gives you comfort and security, you give it everything else. And it stopped paying its end.”

He starts walking again. “Besides, if anybody raised me, it wasn’t Executive. It was the guys we’re going to see.”

The air is cool under the bridge, shaded by the looming expanse of steel girders. Behind one of the support pillars, in an unlikely corner where only a city worker would ever think to look, there is a tiny steel door in the concrete wall. He opens it and gestures to the darkness inside.

“What is this?” Julie says.

“Access shaft to the subway tunnels. They’ll take us under the river and right up into the branch campus.”

M is shaking his head. “Nope. I won’t even fit.”

“Rub some grease on you,” Abram says. “You’ll fit.” He holds his hand out to Julie. “Mind giving back the flashlight you stole from me?”

She pulls it out of her pack and clicks it on, aims it into the doorway and nods. “Lead on.”

He sighs. “You’re just all flint and leather, aren’t you? I bet you gave Perry a hell of a headache.”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about Perry.”

“Is that how he died? Did you bitch him to death?”

“Shut up,” she snaps, the whites of her eyes expanding, and her gun arm rises.

Abram puts his hands up, startled by her response. “All right, all right.”

She jabs the flashlight at the door. “Let’s go.”

“Going.”

He takes Sprout’s hand and disappears into the shadows. Julie follows him, Nora and I follow her, and behind us, M grunts and curses his way through the doorway. The flashlight’s beam diffuses against the concrete, dimly illuminating a staircase so steep it’s almost a ladder.

“Daddy,” Sprout says, “are we going home?”

“This place wasn’t our home, little weed,” Abram says. “We don’t have a home.”

“When do we get to have one?”

Silence.

“Can we build one?”

Silence.





MY PRISON.

The floor of my cell is an impressionist painting of stains, and since food is only served in the mess hall, these can only be bodily fluids. I feel them under my palms when I push myself up, greasy and sticky, and when I lower myself down, I can smell them: salty and meaty and sickly sweet, a putrid cologne of human depravity.

“How many are you up to?” Paul says from the cell across the hall.

“Not counting.”

“Then how do you know when you’re done?”

My arms burn and tremble. My stomach feels taut enough to snap. Sweat pours from my face, adding fresh brine to the soup on the floor, which I force myself to inhale, savoring the raw disgust. This is what we are, I repeat to myself with each breath. Blood and piss and come.

“I just know.”

Scrub us away. Bleach us white.

“I’m glad you’re with us, R—,” Paul says, smiling. “It takes hard men to believe the truth. It takes strong warriors to fight God’s war.”

But I’m not thinking about God’s war. I’m thinking about mine. I want to punish my weak flesh. I want to become strong so I can hurt whoever deserves hurting. These simple exercises won’t make me a warrior, but the men in the yard might. War criminals, militia chiefs, rogue assassins, so amused by the boldness of this skinny country kid that they’re only too happy to teach me a few tricks. My body bears the marks of their generosity. My face is purple, my knuckles are red, and my muscles were burning before I even began this set, but I’m not done yet.

“They preached hard doctrine at the Fellowship,” Paul is saying from somewhere far away, “but even there, no one had the balls to really live it. To take it all the way to its conclusion like they do in the Middle East. We have to be willing to burn for the truth.”

How I know I’m done is when I find myself facedown on the filthy floor, my mutinous muscles refusing all orders, my mind empty of everything and surrounded by clouds of glittering blackness. I use my last remaining calorie to roll onto my back so I can watch the colors spin in my vision.

“These bars can’t hold a fire,” Paul says, his voice filling with inspired fervor as he watches my suffering. “When we get out of here, we’re going to round up the others and finish our work.”

The lock clicks; the door slides open. A scarred, leathery face appears above me, then the door slams shut. My eyes remain fixed on a rare ceiling stain. Blood. Must have been quite a spray. Pencil to the jugular, perhaps.