“Welcome to Goldman Dome,” Not-Perry says. “Keep moving.”
Unlike Citi Stadium, this place makes no attempt to mimic the layout of a real city. No miniature high-rises jutting into open space. No open space at all—Goldman’s “architects” appear to have filled every cubic foot of the dome with structures, all merging into one crooked, creaking mass that extends from the ground to the distant curve of the ceiling. The street we’re on appears to be the only exterior path, cutting a line through the grotesque honeycomb from one end of the dome to the other. Pedestrians peer down at us from the web of dizzying catwalks that connect the two halves of the hive.
But no alarm. No floodlights. No arrest orders barking from a Jumbotron.
“They sent me to bring you in for another interview,” Not-Perry says as he leads us down the street toward a row of sunken parking spots like the garage of a cheap apartment complex. “I took their walkies and locked them in their office, but they’ll get out and call it in and the dome will shut down. We’ve got maybe five minutes.”
He unlocks one of the pickup trucks—a beat-up old Ford with a gray primer paint job and a well-stocked gun rack. Julie starts to open the passenger door but Not-Perry holds out his hand. “No. All of you get in the bed.”
“Why?” Nora says.
“There’s some rope back there. Tie your wrists and pretend you’re zombies.”
“God damn it!” Julie suddenly shouts, snapping out of her trance. “Who are you?”
He sees the flinty glint in her eyes and realizes she has reached her limit. She won’t be going anywhere until she gets an answer. “Abram Kelvin,” he says. “I’m Perry’s brother.”
Julie stares at him, eyes flicking over his features, scanning. “Perry didn’t have a—”
“Look, I told you my name, we really don’t have time for the rest of this chat right now. Get in the fucking truck.”
He hops in and slams the door. I climb into the bed and after a moment the women follow me. We wrap the rope around our wrists in a few loose coils and lie down on the rusty metal like bundles of firewood. I am the only one who’s particularly pale, but their abundance of clotted wounds and bruises make up for their lack of pallor. In this dim underworld light, they’ll pass.
The truck lurches out of the garage and I watch the dome’s upper reaches scroll past me. A guard on one of the lower catwalks looks down, sees the truck’s cargo, and spits. His sickly green phlegm splats an inch from my ear.
“Almost there,” Abram calls back to us through the rear window. “Shut up and be Dead.”
I turn to face Julie. Our eyes are inches apart as our heads bounce against the truck. I wonder if she remembers what I taught her about zombie mimicry on our first foray into the airport, ages ago when life was simple, just me and her and a few comical corpses.
“Don’t overdo it,” I whisper to her as the truck slows to a halt under a glaring streetlamp. “Just act unnatural.”
I hear a door open and footsteps approach the truck. “Position and SSN?”
“Large transport pilot, acquisition assistant, guest combatant hospitality host,” Abram replies. “078-05-1120.”
“Assignment?”
“Three uncategorized Dead to Incinerator 2.”
I struggle not to react to this. Bundles of firewood indeed. I know burning the Dead is standard practice; I’ve seen oozing mounds of us doused in oil and turned into bonfires, a procedure the Boneys were fond of documenting in order to remind any deviators of their place in the natural order. But for a brief moment, this appeared to be changing. Goldman’s people were watching the situation in Citi with great interest. They were observing our integration with the Living, and as Corridor 2 neared completion and the merger neared signature, it seemed a real possibility that the change would spread. Can it be snuffed so easily by a few small minds with big guns?
“Pretty long haul for just three corpses,” the guard says. “You got room for a dozen in there.”
“Management’s rushing disposal for uncategorized. Worried about it spreading.”
The guard leans over to look at us, a scruffy man in a beanie and blue flannel instead of the beige Axiom jacket. One of Goldman’s original guards. “Zombies turning peaceful?” he says, studying my face. “You’re worried about that spreading?”
“They’re not ‘turning peaceful,’ they’re going into stasis. The plague’s evolving deception tactics. We don’t know where it’s going, so we’re playing it safe.”
“By burning them all?”
“Look, if you have problems with your enclave’s new guidelines you can take it up with Management but right now you need to open this gate so I can do my job, all right?”
The guard squints at me. I snap my teeth and release a soft, understated groan, the voice of a tortured soul trapped in a rotting body. It’s a role I’ve been researching for years, and perhaps I bring a little too much pathos to it, because the guard’s face contorts with guilt.
“You’re gonna burn them alive?”