Warm Bodies wb-1

by Isaac Marion

  ‘It was sweet,’ Julie admits. ‘That’s the type of gesture Dad can manage sometimes.’

  She takes us around the perimeter of the walls to a wide, dark tunnel directly across from the main gate. I realise these tunnels must be where sports teams once made their triumphal entries onto the field, back when thousands of people could still cheer for things so trivial. And since the tunnel on the other end is the passage into the world of the Living, it seems fitting that this one leads to a graveyard.

  Julie flashes an ID badge at the guards and they wave us through the back gate. We step out onto a hilly field surrounded by hundreds of feet of chain-link fencing. Black hawthorn trees curl towards the mottled grey-and-gold sky, standing guard over classical tombstones, complete with crosses and statues of saints. I suspect these were reappropriated from some forgotten funeral home, as the engraved names and dates have been covered over with crude letters stencilled in white paint. The epitaphs resemble graffiti tags.

  ‘This is where we bury… what’s left of us,’ Julie says. She walks a few steps ahead as Nora and I stand in the entry. Out here, with the door shut behind us, the pulsing noise of human affairs is gone, replaced by the stoic silence of the truly dead. Each body resting here is either headless, brain-shot, or nothing but scraps of half-eaten flesh and bones piled in a box. I can see why they chose to build the cemetery outside the Stadium walls: not only does it take up more land than all the indoor farmlands combined, it also can’t be very good for morale. This is a reminder far more grim than the old world’s sunny yards of peaceful passings and requiem eternum. This is a glimpse of our future. Not as individuals, whose deaths we can accept, but as a species, a civilisation, a world.

  ‘Are you sure you want to go in here today?’ Nora asks Julie softly.

  Julie looks out at the hills of patchy brown grass. ‘I go every day. Today’s a day. Today’s Tuesday.’

  ‘Yeah, but… do you want us to wait here?’

  She glances back at me and considers for a moment. Then she shakes her head. ‘No. Come on.’ She starts walking and I follow her. Nora trails an awkward distance behind me, a look of muted surprise on her face.

  There are no paths in this cemetery. Julie walks in a straight line, stepping over headstones and across grave mounds, many still soft and muddy. Her eyes are focused on a tall spire topped by a marble angel. We stop in front of it, Julie and I side by side, Nora still lingering behind. I strain to read the name on the grave, but it doesn’t reveal itself. Even the first few letters remain out of reach.

  ‘This is… my mom,’ Julie says. The cool evening wind blows her hair into her eyes, but she doesn’t brush it away.

  ‘She left when I was twelve.’

  Nora squirms behind us, then wanders away and pretends to browse the epitaphs.

  ‘She went crazy, I guess,’ Julie says. ‘Ran out into the city by herself one night and that was that. They found a few pieces of her but… there’s nothing in this grave.’ Her voice is casual. I’m reminded of her trying to imitate the Dead back in the airport, the overacting, the paper-thin mask. ‘I guess it was too much for her, all of this.’ She waves a hand vaguely at the graveyard and the Stadium behind us. ‘She was a real free spirit, you know? This wild bohemian goddess full of fire. She met my dad when she was nineteen, he swept her off her feet. Hard to believe it, but he was a musician back then, played keys in a rock band, was actually pretty good. They got married really young, and then… I don’t know… the world went to shit, and Dad changed. Everything changed.’

  I try to read her eyes but her hair obscures them. I hear a tremor in her voice. ‘Mom tried. She really did try. She did her part to keep everything together, she did her daily work, and then it was all me. She poured it all into me. Dad was hardly around so it was always just her and the little brat. I remember having so much fun, she used to take me to this water park back in—’ A tiny sob catches her by surprise, choking off the words, and she covers her mouth with her hand. Her eyes plead with me through strands of dirty hair. I gently brush it out of her face. ‘She just wasn’t built for this fucking place,’ she says, her voice warbling in falsetto. ‘What was she supposed to do here? Everything that made her alive was gone. All she had left was this stupid twelve-year-old with ugly teeth who kept waking her up every night wanting to snuggle away a nightmare. No wonder she wanted out.’

  ‘Stop,’ I say firmly, and turn her to face me. ‘Stop.’ Tears are running down her face, salty secretions shooting through ducts and tubes, past bright pulsating cells and angry red tissues. I wipe them away and pull her into me. ‘You’re… alive,’ I mumble into her hair. ‘You’re… worth living for.’

  I feel her shudder against my chest, clinging to my shirt as my arms surround her. The air is silent except for the light whistle of the breeze. Nora is looking our way now, twisting a finger through her curls. She catches my eye and gives me a sad smile, as if to apologise for not warning me. But I’m not afraid of the skeletons in Julie’s closet. I look forward to meeting the rest of them, looking them hard in the eye, giving them firm, bone-crunching handshakes.

  As she dampens my shirt with sadness and snot, I realise I’m about to do another thing I’ve never done before. I suck in air and attempt to sing. ‘You’re… sensational…’ I croak, struggling for a trace of Frank’s melody. ‘Sensational… that’s all.’

  There’s a pause, and then something shifts in Julie’s demeanour. I realise she’s laughing.

  ‘Oh wow,’ she giggles, and looks up at me, her eyes still glistening above a grin. ‘That was beautiful, R, really. You and Zombie Sinatra should record Duets, Volume 2.’

  I cough. ‘Didn’t get… warm-up.’

  She brushes some of my hair back into place. She looks back at the grave. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a wilted airport daisy with four petals remaining. She sets it on the bare dirt in front of the headstone. ‘Sorry, Mom,’ she says softly. ‘Best I could find.’ She grabs my hand. ‘Mom, this is R. He’s really nice, you’d love him. The flower is from him, too.’

  Even though the grave is empty, I half expect her mother’s hand to burst out of the earth and grip my ankle. After all, I’m a cell in the cancer that killed her. But if Julie is any indication, I suspect her mother might forgive me. These people, these beautiful Living women, they don’t seem to make the connection between me and the creatures that keep killing everything they love. They allow me to be an exception, and I feel humbled by this gift. I want to pay it back somehow, earn their forgiveness. I want to repair the world I’ve helped destroy.

  Nora rejoins us as we leave Mrs Grigio’s grave. She rubs Julie’s shoulder and kisses her head. ‘You okay?’

  Julie nods. ‘As much as ever.’

  ‘You want to hear something nice?’

  ‘So badly.’

  ‘I saw a patch of wild flowers by my house. They’re growing in a ditch.’

  Julie smiles. She rubs the last few tears out of her eyes and doesn’t say anything more.

  I peruse the headstones as we walk. They are crooked and haphazardly placed, making the cemetery look ancient despite the dozens of freshly dug graves. I am thinking about death. I’m thinking how brief life is compared to it. I’m wondering how deep this graveyard goes, how many layers of coffins are stacked on top of each other, and what portion of Earth’s soil is made from our decay.

  Then something interrupts my morbid reflections. I feel a lurch in my stomach, a queer sensation like what I imagine a baby kicking in the womb might feel like. I stop in mid-step and turn around. A featureless rectangular headstone is watching me from a nearby hill.

  ‘Hold on,’ I say to the girls, and begin climbing the hill.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ I hear Nora ask under her breath. ‘Isn’t that… ?’

  I stand in front of the grave, staring at the name on the stone. A queasy sensation of vertigo rises through my legs, as if a vast pit is opening up in front of me, drawing me towards its edge with
some dark, inexorable force. My stomach lurches again, I feel a sharp tug on my brainstem… I fall in.

  I am Perry Kelvin, and this is my last day alive.

  What a strange feeling, waking up to that awareness. All my life I have battled the alarm clock, pummelling the snooze button over and over with mounting self-loathing until the shame is finally strong enough to lever me upright. It was only on the brightest of mornings, those rare days of verve and purpose and clear reasons to live that I ever sprang awake easily. How strange, then, that I do today.

  Julie whimpers as I extract myself from her goosebumped arms and slip out of bed. She gathers my half of the blankets around her and curls up against the wall. She will sleep for hours more, dreaming endless landscapes and novas of colour both gorgeous and frightening. If I stayed she would wake up and describe them to me. All the mad plot twists and surrealist imagery, so vivid to her while so meaningless to me. There was a time when I treasured listening to her, when I found the commotion in her soul bitter-sweet and lovely, but I can no longer bear it. I lean over to kiss her goodbye, but my lips stiffen and I cringe away from her. I can’t. I can’t. I’ll collapse. I pull back and leave without touching her.

  Two years ago today my father was crushed under the wall he was building, and I became an orphan. I have missed him for seven hundred and thirty days, my mother for even longer, but tomorrow I will not miss anyone. I think about this as I descend the winding stairs of my foster home, this wretched house of discards, and emerge into the city. Dad, Mom, Grandma, my friends… tomorrow I won’t miss anyone.

  It’s early and the sun is barely over the mountains, but the city is already wide awake. The streets are crawling with labourers, repair crews, moms pushing knobby-tyred strollers and foster-moms herding lines of kids like cattle. Somewhere in the distance someone is playing a clarinet; its quavery notes drift through the morning air like birdsong, and I try to shut it out. I don’t want to hear music, I don’t want the sunrise to be pink. The world is a liar. Its ugliness is overwhelming; the scraps of beauty make it worse.

  I make my way to the Island Street administrative building and tell the receptionist I’m here for my seven o’clock with General Grigio. She walks me back to his office and shuts the door behind me. The general doesn’t look up from the paperwork on his desk. He raises one finger at me. I stand and wait, letting my eyes roam the contents of his walls. A picture of Julie. A picture of Julie’s mother. A faded picture of himself and a younger Colonel Rosso in proper US Army uniforms, smoking cigarettes in front of a flooded New York skyline. Next to this, another shot of the two men smoking cigarettes, this time overlooking a crumbled London. Then bombed-out Paris. Then smouldering Rome.

  The general finally sets down his paperwork. He takes off his glasses and looks me over. ‘Mr Kelvin,’ he says.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Your very first salvage as team manager.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Do you feel ready?’

  My tongue stalls for an instant as images of horses and cellists and red lips on a wine glass flicker through my mind, trying to knock me off course. I burn them like old film. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good. Here is your exit pass. See Colonel Rosso at the community centre for your team assignments.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ I take the paperwork and turn to leave. But I pause on the doorway threshold. ‘Sir?’ My voice cracks a little even though I swore I wouldn’t let it.

  ‘Yes, Perry?’

  ‘Permission to speak freely, sir?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  I moisten my dry lips. ‘Is there a reason for all this?’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘Is there a reason for us to keep doing all these things? The salvages and… everything?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand your question, Perry. The supplies we salvage are keeping us alive.’

  ‘Are we trying to stay alive because we think the world will get better someday? Is that what we’re working towards?’

  His expression is flat. ‘Perhaps.’

  My voice becomes shaky and very undignified, but I can no longer control it. ‘What about right now? Is there anything right now that you love enough to keep living for?’

  ‘Perry—’

  ‘Will you tell me what it is, sir? Please?’

  His eyes are marbles. A noise like the beginning of a word forms in his throat, then it stops. His mouth tightens. ‘This conversation is inappropriate.’ He lays his hands flat on his desk. ‘You should be on your way now. You have work to do.’

  I swallow hard. ‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’

  ‘See Colonel Rosso at the community centre for your team assignments.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  I step through the door and shut it behind me.

  In Colonel Rosso’s office I conduct myself with utmost professionalism. I request my team assignments and he gives them to me, handing over the envelope with warmth and pride in his squinty, failing eyes. He wishes me luck and I thank him; he invites me to dinner and I politely decline. My voice does not crack. I lose no composure.

  Marching back through the community centre lobby I glance towards the gym and see Nora staring at me through the tall windows. She’s wearing snug black shorts and a white tank top, as are all the pre-teens on the volleyball court behind her. Nora’s ‘team’, her sad attempt to distract a few kids from reality for two hours a week. I walk past her without so much as a nod, and as I start to push the front doors open I hear her sneakers slapping the tile floor behind me.

  ‘Perry!’

  I stop and let the doors swing shut. I turn around and face her. ‘Hey.’

  She stands in front of me with her arms crossed, her eyes stony. ‘So today’s the big day, huh?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘What area are you hitting? You got it all planned out?’

  ‘The old Pfizer building on Eighth Ave.’

  She nods rapidly. ‘Good, that sounds like a good plan, Perry. And you’ll be all done and home by six, right? ’Cause remember we’re taking you to the Orchard tonight. We’re not letting you spend today moping alone like you did last year.’

  I watch the kids in the gym, bumping-setting-spiking, laughing and cursing. ‘I don’t know if I’ll make it. This salvage might go a little later than usual.’

  She keeps nodding. ‘Oh. Oh, okay. Because that building is crooked and full of cracks and dead ends and you have to be extra careful, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She nods towards the envelope in my hand. ‘You checked that yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Well, you should probably check it, Perry.’ Her foot taps the floor; her body vibrates with restrained anger. ‘You need to make sure you know everyone’s profiles, strengths and weaknesses and all that. Mine, for instance, because I’m on there.’

  My face goes blank. ‘What?’

  ‘Sure, I’m going, Rosso put me on yesterday. Do you know my strengths and weaknesses? Is there anything on your agenda you think might be too hard for me? ’Cause I’d hate to jeopardise your very first salvage as team manager.’

  I rip the top off the envelope and start scanning the names.

  ‘Julie signed up, too, did she mention that?’

  My eyes flash up from the page.

  ‘That’s right, fucker, will that be a problem for you?’ Her voice is strained to breaking. There are tears in her eyes. ‘Is that a conflict at all?’

  I shove open the front doors and burst out into the cold morning air. Birds overhead. Those blank-eyed pigeons, those shrieking gulls, all the flies and beetles that eat their shit — the gift of flight dumped on Earth’s most worthless creatures. What if it were mine instead? That perfect, weightless freedom. No fences, no walls, no borders; I would fly everywhere, over oceans and continents, mountains and jungles and endless open plains, and somewhere in the world, somewhere in all that distant untouched beauty, I would find a reason.

&
nbsp; I am floating in Perry’s darkness. I am deep in the earth. Somewhere far above me are roots and worms and an inverted graveyard where the coffins are the markers and the headstones are what’s buried, piercing down into the airy blue emptiness, hiding all the names and pretty epitaphs and leaving me with the rot.

  I feel a stirring in the dirt that surrounds me. A hand burrows through and grabs my shoulder.

  ‘Hello, corpse.’

  We are in the 747. My piles of souvenirs are sorted and arranged in neat stacks. The aisle is softened with layers of oriental throw rugs. Dean Martin croons on the record player.

  ‘Perry?’

  He’s in the cockpit, in the pilot’s chair with his hands on the controls. He’s wearing a pilot’s uniform, the white shirt stained with blood. He smiles at me, then gestures at the windows, where streaks of clouds flicker past. ‘We are now approaching cruising altitude. You’re free to move about the cabin.’

  With slow, cautious movements, I get up and join him in the cockpit. I look at him uneasily. He grins. I rub a finger through the familiar layers of dust on the controls. ‘This isn’t one of your memories, is it?’

  ‘No. This is yours. I wanted you to be comfortable.’

  ‘Is it your grave I’m standing on right now?’

  He shrugs. ‘I suppose. I think it’s just my empty skull in there, though. You and your friends took most of me home for snacks, remember?’

  I open my mouth to apologise again, but he shuts his eyes and waves it away. ‘Don’t, please. We’re past all that. Besides, that wasn’t really me you killed, that was older-wiser Perry. I think this is mostly junior-high Perry you’re talking to, young and optimistic and writing a novel called Ghosts vs. Werewolves. I’d rather not think about being dead right now.’

  I eye him uncertainly. ‘You’re a lot more cheerful here than in your memories.’

  ‘I have perspective here. It’s hard to take your life so seriously when you can see it all at once.’

  I peer at him. His reality is very convincing, pimples and all. ‘Are you… really you?’ I ask.