Isaac Marion - Warm Bodies

She rolls her eyes and resumes eating. The second earbud is still sitting on the table. Without looking up from her plate she casually offers it to me. I stick it in my ear, and the voice of Paul McCartney drifts into my head, singing all those wistful antonyms, yes/no, high/low, hello/goodbye/hello.

‘You know John Lennon hated this song?’ Julie says as it plays, speaking in my direction but not really addressing me. ‘He thought it was meaningless gibberish. Funny coming from the guy who wrote “I Am the Walrus”.’

‘Goo goo… g’joob,’ I say.

She stops, looks at me, tilts her head in pleasant surprise. ‘Yeah, exactly, right?’ She takes a sip of the beer, forgetting the imprint of my lips on the bottle, and my eyes widen in brief panic. But nothing happens. Maybe my infection can’t travel through soft moments like these. Maybe it needs the violence of the bite.

‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘it’s a little too chipper for me right now.’ She skips the song. I hear a brief snippet of Ava Gardner singing ‘Bill’, then she skips a few more times, lands on an unfamiliar rock tune, and cranks the volume. I’m distantly aware of the music, but I have tuned out. I watch Julie bob her head from side to side with eyes closed. Even now, here, in the darkest and strangest of places with the most macabre of company, the music moves her and her life pulses hard. I smell it again, a white glowing vapour wafting out from under my black blood. And even for Julie’s safety, I can’t bring myself to smother it.

What is wrong with me? I stare at my hand, at its pale grey flesh, cool and stiff, and I dream it pink, warm and supple, able to guide and build and caress. I dream my necrotic cells shrugging off their lethargy, inflating and lighting up like Christmas deep in my dark core. Am I inventing all this like the beer buzz? A placebo? An optimistic illusion? Either way, I feel the flatline of my existence disrupting, forming heartbeat hills and valleys.

‘You need to corner sharper. You keep almost running off the road when you turn right.’

I crank the skinny leather wheel and drop my foot onto the accelerator. The Mercedes lurches forward, throwing our heads back.

‘God, you’re a leadfoot. Can you go easier on the gas?’

I come to a jerky stop, forget to push in the clutch, and the engine dies. Julie rolls her eyes and forces patience into her voice. ‘Okay, look.’ She restarts the engine, scoots over and snakes her legs across mine, placing her feet on my feet. Under her pressure, I smoothly exchange gas for clutch, and the car glides forward. ‘Like that,’ she says, and returns to her seat. I release a satisfied wheeze.

We are cruising the tarmac, taxiing to and fro under the mild afternoon sun. Our hair ruffles in the breeze. Here in this moment, in this candy-red ’64 roadster with this beautiful young woman, I can’t help inserting myself into other, more classically filmic lives. My mind drifts, and I lose what little focus I’ve been able to maintain. I veer off the runway and clip the bumper of a stair-truck, knocking the Boneys’ church circle out of alignment. The jolt throws our heads to the side, and I hear my children’s necks snap in the back seat. They groan in protest and I shush them. I’m already embarrassed; I don’t need my kids rubbing it in.

Julie examines our dented front-end and shakes her head. ‘Damn it, R. This was a beautiful car.’

My son lunges forward in another clumsy attempt to eat Julie’s shoulder, and I reach back and smack him. He slumps into the seat with his arms crossed, pouting.

‘No biting!’ Julie reprimands, still inspecting the car’s damage.

As we circle back towards our home terminal, I notice the congregation emerging from a cargo loading gate. Like an inverted funeral procession, the Dead march out in a solemn line, taking slow, plodding steps towards the church. A clutch of Boneys leads the pilgrimage, moving forward with far more purpose than any of the flesh-clad. They are the few among us who always seem to know exactly where they’re going and what they’re doing. They don’t waver, they don’t pause or change course, and their bodies no longer either grow or decay. They are static. One of them looks directly at me, and I remember a Dark Ages etching I’ve seen somewhere, a rotting corpse sneering at a plump young virgin.

I break away from the skeleton’s hollow stare. As we cruise past their line, some of the Fleshies glance at us with uninterest, and I see my wife among them. She is walking alongside a male, her hand woven into his. My kids spot her in the crowd and stand up on the back seat, waving and grunting loudly. Julie follows their gaze and sees my wife wave back at them. Julie looks at me. ‘Is that like… your wife?’

I don’t respond. I look at my wife, expecting some kind of rebuke. But there is almost no recognition in her eyes. She looks at the car. She looks at me. She looks straight ahead and keeps walking, hand in hand with another man.

‘Is that your wife?’ Julie asks again, more forcefully. I nod. ‘Who’s that… guy she’s with?’ I shrug. ‘Is she cheating on you or something?’ I shrug. ‘This doesn’t bother you?’

I shrug.

‘Stop shrugging, you asshole! I know you can talk; say something.’

I think for a minute. Watching my wife fade into the distance, I put a hand on my heart. ‘Dead.’ I wave a hand towards my wife. ‘Dead.’ My eyes drift towards the sky and lose their focus. ‘Want it… to hurt. But… doesn’t.’

Julie looks at me like she’s waiting for more, and I wonder if I’ve expressed anything at all with my halting, mumbled soliloquy. Are my words ever actually audible, or do they just echo in my head while people stare at me, waiting? I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I’m drowning in ellipses.

Julie watches me a moment longer, then turns to face the windshield and the oncoming scenery. On our right: the dark openings of empty boarding tunnels, once alive with eager travellers on their way to see the world, expand their horizons, find love and fame and fortune. On our left: the blackened wreckage of a Dreamliner.

‘My boyfriend cheated on me once,’ Julie says to the windshield. ‘There was this girl his dad was housing while the foster homes were being set up, and they got blackout drunk one night and it just happened. It was basically an accident, and he gave me the most sincere and moving confession of all time, swore to God he loved me so much and would do anything to convince me, blah blah blah, but it didn’t matter, I kept thinking about it and running it through my head and just burning with it. I cried every night for weeks. Practically wore the binary off all my saddest Mp3s.’ She is shaking her head slowly. Her eyes are far away. ‘Things are just… I feel things so hard sometimes. When that happened with Perry, I would have loved to be more… like you.’

I study her. She runs a finger through her hair and twists it around a little. I notice faint scars on her wrists and forearms, thin lines too symmetrical to be accidents. She blinks and glances at me abruptly, as if I just woke her from a dream. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this,’ she says, annoyed. ‘Anyway, lesson’s over for today. I’m tired.’

Without further comment, I drive us home. I brake too late, and park the car with the bumper two inches into the grille of a Miata. Julie sighs.