I’ve been dreading this moment, but I knew it would come. I roll my pants up and push my leg between the seats, resting my boot on M’s knee.
Hidden in such a seldom observed spot, it took me a long time to discover. Even naked in the shower, marveling at my resurrected body, I overlooked it. I had always assumed I died of natural causes until the first time I undressed in front of Julie. At first I took her little gasp for admiration of my endowment and I experienced a brief rush of confidence. Maybe I’ll be good at this. Then I realized what had really caught her eye, and the first of our many attempts at intimacy wilted.
Abram doesn’t gasp, but his face looks a little tight as he comprehends the circular wound on the back of my calf, the unmistakable twin rows of punctures, dried out but never healed.
“I don’t know if I have a soul,” I say. “But I know I’m not gone.”
M pulls up his T-shirt, revealing his cratered landscape of sutured bullet wounds. “What he said.”
Abram’s eyes rove over our bodies, cataloging our many scars in a suddenly changed context. As evidence, it’s not incontrovertible, but it’s compelling. Why would anyone lie about being Dead?
“The cure is real,” Julie says. “It’s not a trap. They’re not hibernating. They’re coming back.”
Abram returns his eyes to the road and doesn’t speak. I can’t decode the emotions on his face; there are too many at once.
“The Dead at the airport are stuck in between,” Julie continues. “They might try to kill us, they might not. But if we stay out here in the open, your friends definitely will.”
Abram has stopped obsessively checking the mirror, perhaps no longer worried that we’re being pursued, perhaps just assuming we are. He stares straight ahead, watching the control tower rise on the horizon.
“If we can hide out until our trail goes cold,” Nora says, “we might have a shot at losing them.”
“And even if they do track us to the airport,” Julie adds, “they’d be crazy to go in after us. They’ll see the place swamped with zombies and assume we’re dead. Just like you would.”
Abram’s face is stiff and blank, watching the airport exit approach, and although it was my idea, I hear the coward in me praying he won’t take it. My memories of the airport are as dark as my memories of the torture chamber, and far more numerous. I might prefer capture over facing this place again. But the light on the tower blinks a comforting rhythm, a beacon of premature hope and renegotiated dreams, and Abram takes the exit.
IT WAS A PERFECT DAY to save the world!
R and Julie ran hand in hand down the bright green slope, their cheeks rosy, their eyes sparkly, laughing melodiously while birds fluttered around them and the sun grinned overhead. The airport shone like a pretty pearl in the valley below. It was full of zombies walking with their arms out in front of them, bumping into each other and wheezing “Brains!” like funny old grandfathers.
“We’re going to fix them!” laughed Julie.
“We’re going to cure the plague!” crowed R.
“Love conquers all!” declared the sun, sunnily.
R and Julie skipped into the airport with a gang of their best friends. Some scary Boneys tried to stop them but R and Julie held hands and a cloud of pink hearts turned the Boneys into butterflies.
“You’re not so scary now!” said Julie, and everyone laughed.
R and Julie’s friends ran around the airport playing pretty music and sticking pretty pictures on the windows and telling the zombies to cheer up, and the zombies said, “Let’s be people again!” and their gray skin turned pink and their gray eyes turned blue and all the boys fell in love with the girls and everyone got married.
“I had a change of heart!” said Julie’s father.
“I’m not really dead!” said Julie’s mother.
“I’ll always love you no matter what,” said Julie, gazing into R’s beautiful blue eyes, and they kissed, and all their friends applauded, and it was a perfect day.
And then the power cut out. The lights went dark. Frank Sinatra slurred to a stop—something wonderful happens in summerrrrr—and R blinked a few times and noticed that his old friends were ripping out his new friends’ throats and his new friends were shooting out his old friends’ brains and the airport’s beige carpet was turning black and red. R saw his old wife hiding in the back, he watched his kids pick up a severed arm with looks of horror and hunger, he saw the panic in the faces of the Living and the confusion in the faces of the Dead, and R and Julie ran away from that bad place, wondering, Were we dreaming?
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