“We’ve never said that. That’s not why we’re here.”
“Your neighbor ‘B’ is a flesh-eating corpse. You’re sharing this neighborhood with hundreds of flesh-eating corpses, and you don’t even lock your door.”
“They don’t eat flesh anymore. They’re different.”
“You don’t know what they are. Just because they’re . . . confused right now doesn’t mean they won’t suddenly remember their instincts while you’re sleeping.” His eyes flick toward me, then back to Julie. “You don’t know what they’re going to do. You don’t know anything.”
Julie’s face hardens and her spine straightens. “Believe it or not, Evan, you’re not the first person to tell us the world is dangerous. We’ve heard about a million reasons why we should be afraid. What else do you have to offer?”
Kenerly says nothing.
“We know it’s not safe out here. We’re aware of the risks. We don’t. Fucking. Care.”
Kenerly shakes his head. The door bangs shut behind him.
Julie’s steely posture softens and she sags back into the couch, arms crossed over her chest.
“Well said,” I tell her.
She sighs and gazes at the ceiling. “Everyone thinks we’re crazy.”
“They’re right.”
I’m just being playful, but her face clouds over. “Do you think we should move back?”
“I didn’t mean . . .”
“Nora’s there. She doesn’t seem to mind living in a vault.”
“Her job is there. Ours is . . . here.”
“But what are we really doing out here? Are we doing anything?”
The contrast between these fragile questions and her rousing rebuttal to Kenerly reveals something I’d hoped wasn’t true: I’m not the only one harboring doubts. I’m not the only one wondering what’s next. But the correct response appears on my tongue, and I say it. “We’re spreading the cure.”
She stands up and paces in a circle, twisting her hair around her finger. “I thought I knew what that meant, but after that mess at the airport . . . and B hasn’t improved . . .”
“Julie.” I reach out and grab her hand. She stops pacing and looks at me, waiting. “No moving back.” I pull her down onto the couch beside me. “Move forward.”
I’ve always been a bad liar. I’ve never been able to say white when I’m thinking black, but the gray sludge of half truth must be within my range, because Julie smiles and dismisses her anxiety, and the moment is over. She tilts her chin up and closes her eyes. This means she wants me to kiss her. So I kiss her.
She notices the hesitation. “What?”
“Nothing.” I kiss her again. Her lips are soft and pink and they know their business. Mine are stiff and pale and have only recently learned what they’re for. I press them against hers and move them around, trying to remember how this works as she leans into me with escalating ardor. I love this person. I’ve loved her since before we met, years of stolen memories stretching back to our first glance in a crumbling classroom. Julie dug me out of my grave. Being near her is the greatest privilege I’ve known.
So why am I afraid to touch her?
She pushes harder and kisses deeper, trying to jump-start my passions, and I know I’m supposed to keep my eyes shut but I steal a glance. This close, she’s just a blur of pink and yellow, an impressionist painting of a beautiful woman. Then she pulls back to catch her breath, and her face comes into focus. Her short blond hair, choppy and wild like windblown feathers. Her fair skin lined with thin scars. And her eyes—blue again. That impossible golden gleam is gone.
I remember the shock of it as I pulled away from our first kiss in that mystic moment on the stadium roof. An unearthly, inhuman hue, bright yellow like sunlight, a visible confirmation of whatever had happened inside us. We never once spoke of it. It was too strange, too deep, like a truth from a dream that dissolves on contact with words. We kept it inside, but it faded anyway. We watched it go over the course of a few days, standing in front of a mirror together and wondering what it meant. Hers returned to blue; mine shuffled colors for a while before settling on brown. There is very little evidence of whatever magic changed me, and there are days when I’m not sure anything really happened, nights when I expect to wake from this pleasant daydream and see a piece of meat lying next to me, eat it like I eat everything, and wander back into the dark.
I fight the urge to push her off me and run to the basement. There’s a dusty bottle of vodka down there that has an extinguishing effect on the wildfire of my thoughts. But it’s too late for that. She unbuttons her shirt. I slide it off her shoulders. I listen to her rapid breaths and try to read the emotion in her eyes as I prepare for another attempt to be human.
The phone rings.