Isaac Marion - Warm Bodies - A Novel

‘Living!’ he sputters. ‘Eat!’

I shake my head. ‘No.’

‘Eat!’

‘No!’

‘Eat, fucking—’

‘Hey!’

M and I both turn. Julie has stepped out from behind me. She glares at M and revs the trimmer. ‘Fuck off,’ she says. She links an arm into my elbow, and I feel a tingle of warmth spreading out from her touch.

M looks at her, then at me, back to her, then back to me. His permanent grimace is tight. We appear to be in a stand-off, but before it can escalate any further the stillness is pierced by a reverberating roar, like an eerie, airless horn blast.

We all turn to the escalators. Yellowed, sinewy skeletons are rising up one by one from the floors below. A small committee of Boneys emerges from the stairs and approaches me and Julie. They stop in front of us and fan out into a line. Julie backs away a little, her bravado flattening under their black, eyeless stares. Her grip on my arm tightens.

One of them steps forward and stops in front of me, inches from my face. No breath wafts from its hollow mouth, but I can feel a faint, low hum emanating from its bones. This hum is not found in me, nor in M, nor in any of the other flesh-clad Dead, and I begin to wonder what exactly these dried-up creatures really are. I can no longer believe in any voodoo spell or laboratory virus. This is something deeper, darker. This comes from the cosmos, from the stars, or the unknown blackness behind them. The shadows in God’s boarded-up basement.

The ghoul and I are locked in a stare-down, toe to toe, eye to eye socket. I don’t blink, and it can’t. What seems like hours pass. Then it does something that slightly undermines the horror of its presence. It raises a stack of Polaroids in its pointy fingers and begins handing them to me, one by one. I’m reminded of a proud old man showing off his grandkids, but the skeleton’s grin is far from grandfatherly, and the photos are far from heartwarming.

Off-the-hip shots of some kind of battle. Organised ranks of soldiers firing rockets into our hives, rifles popping us off with precision, one two three. Private citizens with their machetes and chainsaws hacking through us like blackberry vines, spattering our dark juices on the camera lens. Monumental stacks of freshly re-killed corpses, soaked in gasoline and lit.

Smoke. Blood. Family photos from our vacation in Hell.

But as unsettling as this slide show is, I’ve seen it before. I’ve witnessed the Boneys performing it dozens of times, usually for children. They drift around the airport with cameras dangling from their vertebrae, occasionally following us on feeding trips, lingering in the back to document the bloodshed, and I always wonder what it is they’re after. Their subject matter follows a precise theme that never varies: corpses. Battles. Newly converted zombies. And themselves. Their meeting rooms are wallpapered with these photos, floor to ceiling, and sometimes they drag in a young zombie and make him stand there for hours, even days, silently appreciating their work.

Now this skeleton, identical to the rest, hands me these Polaroids slowly and civilly, confident that the images speak for themselves. The message of today’s sermon is clear: inevitability. The immutable, binary results of our interactions with the Living.

They die / we die.

A noise rises from where the skeleton’s throat would be, a crowing sound full of pride and reproach and stiff, rigid righteousness. It says everything it and the rest of the Boneys have to say, their motto and mantra. It says, I rest my case, and That’s the way it is, and Because I said so.

Looking straight into its eye sockets, I let the photos fall to the floor. I rub my fingers against each other as if trying to brush off some dirt.

The skeleton does not react. It just stares at me with that horrible, hollow stare, so utterly motionless it seems to have stopped time. The dark hum in its bones dominates everything, a low sine wave prickling with sour overtones. And then, so abruptly it makes me jump, the creature pivots away and rejoins its comrades. It barks out one last horn blast, and the Boneys descend the escalator. The rest of the Dead disperse, sneaking hungry glances at Julie. M is the last to go. He scowls at me, then lumbers away. Julie and I are alone.

I turn to face her. Now that the situation has settled and the blood on the floor is drying, I’m finally able to contemplate what’s happening here, and somewhere deep in my chest, my heart wheezes. I gesture towards what I assume is the ‘Departures’ sign and give Julie a questioning look, unable to hide the hurt behind it.

Julie looks at the floor. ‘It’s been a few days,’ she mumbles. ‘You said a few days.’

‘Wanted to . . . take you home. Say goodbye.’

‘What difference does it make? I had to leave. I mean, I can’t stay here. You realise that, right?’

Yes. Of course I realise that.

She’s right, and I’m ridiculous.

And yet . . .

But what if . . .

I want to do something impossible. Something astounding and unheard of. I want to scrub the moss off the Space Shuttle and fly Julie to the moon and colonise it, or float a capsized cruise ship to some distant island where no one will protest us, or just harness the magic that brings me into the brains of the Living and use it to bring Julie into mine, because it’s warm in here, it’s quiet and lovely, and in here we aren’t an absurd juxtaposition, we are perfect.

She finally meets my eyes. She looks like a lost child, confused and sad. ‘But thanks for uh . . . saving me. Again.’

With great effort, I pull out of my reverie and give her a smile. ‘Any . . . time.’

She hugs me. It’s tentative at first, a little scared, and yes, a little repulsed, but then she melts into it. She rests her head against my cold neck and embraces me. Unable to believe what’s happening, I put my arms around her and just hold her.

I almost swear I can feel my heart thumping. But it must just be hers, pressed tight against my chest.

We walk back to the 747. Nothing has been resolved, but she’s agreed to postpone her escape. After the messy scene we just caused, it seems prudent to lay low for a bit. I don’t know exactly how much the Boneys will object to the irregularity Julie represents, because this is the first time anyone has challenged them. My case has no precedent.

We enter a connecting hallway suspended over a parking lot, and Julie’s hair dances in the wind whistling through shattered windows. Decorative indoor shrub beds have been overrun with wild daisies. Julie sees them, smiles, picks a handful. I pluck one from her hands and clumsily stick it in her hair. It still has its leaves, and it protrudes awkwardly from the side of her head. But she leaves it in.

‘Do you remember what it was like living with people?’ she asks as we walk. ‘Before you died?’

I wave a hand in the air vaguely.

‘Well, it’s changed. I was ten when my home town got overrun and we came here, so I remember what it used to be like. Things are so different now. Everything’s gotten smaller and more cramped, noisier and colder.’ She pauses at the end of the overpass and looks out the empty windows at a pale sunset. ‘We’re all corralled in the Stadium with nothing to think about but surviving to the end of the day. No one writes, no one reads, no one really even talks.’ She spins the daisies in her hands, sniffs one. ‘We don’t have flowers any more. Just crops.’

I look out of the opposite windows, at the dark side of the sunset. ‘Because of us.’

‘No, not because of you. I mean, yeah, because of you, but not just you. Do you really not remember what it was like before? All the political and social breakdowns? The global flooding? The wars and riots and constant bombings? The world was pretty far gone before you guys even showed up. You were just the final judgement.’