The Burning World (Warm Bodies #2)(99)

“What did you see?” Sprout asks uneasily.

He doesn’t answer for a moment. He peers ahead into the darkness beyond the flashlight. “A mouth.”

“A mouth?”

“When I got really hungry and lonely, the tunnel would start to look like a big, round mouth with teeth all around it. And I’d imagine it was a monster that was bigger than the universe, and it was going to swallow everything.”

“Jesus,” Nora says. “Can you stop?”

Abram shakes his head as if dismissing some nostalgic indulgence. “But anyway, yes, it’s safe down here. It’s quiet and peaceful, and nobody knows about it, and nobody can get us.”

Sprout doesn’t pursue the topic. She falls back into her usual worried silence.

“Abram,” Nora says warily. “How are those stitches doing? You feeling feverish at all? Dizzy? Delirious?”

“I’m fine, Nora, thank you.”

Nora glances at M with raised eyebrows. Abram’s tone is getting harder to read, his sarcasm less clearly marked. I’m starting to wonder if his joke about swimming was not a joke at all when the tunnel finally begins to incline and the water recedes. The flashlight reveals a station ahead.

“This is our stop,” he says, and we climb a service ladder up onto the platform.

Julie runs the flashlight along the mildewed tile walls, looking for the exit. The beam falls on a bench where a moldy, rat-gnawed pillow rests on an equally decayed blanket. A steady drip splashes into a nearby soup can, which has rusted too much to hold water, and next to that is a sketchbook.

“Come on, no,” Julie mutters. “This can’t be yours.”

Abram stares at the ancient tableau, the sketchbook’s paper reduced to pulp, the drawings washed into Rorschach blots. A choked laugh comes out of him. “Let’s go,” he says, and walks briskly toward a staircase.

We follow him up to a surface-level terminal, dimly illuminated by daylight trickling down the exit stairs. Faded posters sealed in kiosks advertise cell phone providers and insurance companies and other abstractions almost impossible for the modern mind to grasp. All the signage has been edited by spray paint, the arrows now leading to predictably morbid destinations: left to DEATH, right to HELL, and up the stairs to AXIOM. Julie starts to move toward the stairs but Abram holds out a hand.

“Wait.” He opens a door marked STAFF ONLY and steps into what appears to have been a conference room for subway workers. A long table, a whiteboard, a few office chairs knocked over on the floor. I don’t know what Abram was expecting to find, but it’s not here. The only evidence that the room has ever been used is the faint trace of a bleach-resistant bloodstain on the beige linoleum floor.

Abram stares at the stain for a moment, then turns and heads for the stairs.

“Was that the secret meeting room?” Nora asks as he brushes past her. “Is this bad news?”

He ignores her. He breaks into a run. Julie rushes to stay with him, but I sense that his haste has nothing to do with escaping. His expression is mostly anger, a familiar sight on his craggy features, but there’s something else that I haven’t seen.

Grief?

We emerge into daylight in the center of downtown Pittsburgh, and a strange chill runs through me, not from any bleak or horrible sight but from an unnatural lack of them.

The city is pristine.

The streets are clear of abandoned cars, swept of trash and debris—not so much as a fallen leaf in sight. Most of the buildings are freshly painted in calming neutral tones, and those with structural damage from long-ago conflicts are surrounded by scaffolding and vinyl sheeting—they are being repaired, a sight so old-fashioned that I doubt Sprout even knows what she’s looking at. But what renders the scene truly unnerving is its lack of people. It’s a civic engineer’s dream, all gleaming towers and efficient planning with no pesky population to ruin it.

“What is going on here?” Julie mutters, gazing up at the high-rises like a small-town tourist. “Abram?”

But Abram hasn’t paused. He strides toward a thick, Brutalist tower of bare concrete that looks severely out of place in the city’s historic center.

“Hey!” Julie shouts, rushing after him. “What are you doing?”

Despite its ghostly first impression, the city is not quite empty. There are guards at the building’s entrance.

“Abram, stop!”

But it’s too late. Could this have been a trap? Could he have somehow patched his relationship with Axiom and made a deal to deliver us? It’s hard to believe, but he approaches the guards with the confidence of a man who belongs here.

We chase him up the steps. Julie’s gun is out, but using it now wouldn’t change anything. The guards draw their rifles. Abram walks right up to them—they don’t fire. They don’t even speak.

“I need to see Mr. Warden,” he says in a tightly controlled growl. “Branch Manager Warden, where is he?”

The men don’t answer. They have no shade or shelter; the afternoon sun beats down on their faces, but their foreheads are dry. Their pale blue eyes show no sign of discomfort or, for that matter, comprehension. I feel a sick twisting in my stomach, like I’ve stepped barefoot into something unspeakable.

“Is this still the branch office?” Abram demands. I can tell he senses something wrong but he persists anyway. “Is Mr. Warden still branch manager?”