I
WE EMERGE FROM THE FOREST like remnants of an earlier age, man and woman, dirty and bloody, clothed in tattered rags. Below us is the city. The suburbs where we once tried to start a life. The urban center beyond it, a mirage of crumbled buildings rippling on the horizon.
“So this is home?” I wonder aloud.
“Well…” Julie squints. “It’s the closest thing we’ve got.”
We descend the hilltop, following the same trail that brought us through the woods. Julie recognized it as a route once used by the stadium’s salvage teams, safer and more direct than the highway, and we have indeed reached Post in half the time I expected. Just enough time to make a plan.
At the bottom of the hill, we’re greeted by the familiar ruins of our old neighborhood, and I’m about to indulge in some sweet nostalgia when I notice the smell. I glance at Julie; her wrinkled nose says she smells it too.
“Wow,” she mumbles. “I don’t remember it being this bad.”
“It wasn’t.” I sniff the air, detecting faint notes of pollen and rosemary, but mostly rotting flesh. And then I notice we’re being watched.
Every window. Every room. Every home in the neighborhood is filled with silent, motionless figures, like the world’s dullest block party. Rounding a corner to the main thoroughfare, we find that the gathering has spilled out into the yards. There are thousands of Dead here. Perhaps tens of thousands. Mostly Dead, Nearly Living—whatever their level of life, the important thing is they’re not trying to eat us. They watch us with muted curiosity in their monochrome eyes, a hint of childlike wonder like we’re a two-person parade.
“B has new friends,” Julie whispers.
I glance into our neighbor’s open door and see him sitting exactly where we left him, ensconced in his easy chair in front of his TV, watching the flickering gibberish of the LOTUS Feed. But he’s not alone now. His house is full.
Ands ours has a few guests, too. A young couple sits on our couch, staring through the hole we never finished patching. A man stands in our kitchen, slowly pouring one of Julie’s beers into the sink and watching the foam like it’s a miracle. We move through the house carefully, trying not to disturb whatever strange process they’re in, but Julie draws the line at the four boys huddled around the bedroom dresser, digging through her underwear.
“Okay guys, can we get a little privacy?”
They turn toward us. One of them looks down at the bra in his hand, then at Julie, then back at the bra.
“Out!” she barks.
They shuffle out. The boy keeps the bra.
Julie locks the door behind them and leans against it. “Okay. So you’re sure this will work?”
I answer without hesitation. “No.”
She sighs. “Let me rephrase it—you’re sure there’s some chance it will work?”
I think for a moment. “Yes. Some chance.”
“Good enough.” She looks me up and down and smiles. “Well, handsome, this should be a lot easier than your last makeover. All you need this time is a shower.”
I look down at the metal briefcase in my hand. I have this weapon today because of the man I once was. That wretch carried it across the country and left it for me in the woods. A corner of my mouth quirks at the thought: he was searching for BABL too.
Very carefully, I set the briefcase on the floor. Does age make a bomb less likely to go off, or more? Will anything even happen when I press its trigger? A question for Huntress Tomsen, if we can find her in the city. If she’s even there. If any of our friends are even still alive. We are entering a world of ifs, but I prefer it to a world of dismal certainty.
I enter the bathroom. I peel the clothes off my body. This shirt, these jeans—they were new when we left this house a few weeks ago. Now there’s little left of them, but each rip and stain is a story. Holes from a bombing, burns from torture, blood from carrying a wounded friend, mud from digging a grave…enough stories for a very long book.
I look in the mirror. My stubble is almost a beard now. It doesn’t quite fit the character I’ll be playing, but it’s the most visible sign that I’m no longer lifeless, and I can’t bring myself to shave it.
I step into the shower and pull the chain. Up on the roof, a valve opens in a tank, and collected rainwater sprays from the shower head, steaming with the sun’s heat. It’s my one real contribution to the building of this home, and a comforting reminder that sometimes my plans do work.
I close my eyes and let the rain strike my face. I don’t notice that I’m not alone until I feel Julie’s hands on my chest, her naked body soft against my back. I watch her hands rub away the stubborn grime that covers me like a second skin. Will this be our only moment? Our one chance to enjoy such simple sweetness? Will we ever return to this house and the life we hoped to build?
Ungrateful questions. Insults to a generous universe. I won’t reject a gift because it isn’t two gifts.
I turn around and pull her against me. Her skin is smooth, despite all her scars. I kiss her lips, her neck, her breasts, sucking rainwater off her skin. We let friction do its wondrous work. Our bodies scrub each other clean.
“Don’t think of it as an Axiom uniform,” Julie tells me as I stare at my old clothes laid out on the bed—my graveclothes, as I once called them. The gray shirt, the red tie, their high-tech fibers as eerily well-preserved as the body they once clothed. “Think of it as that fashion statement you always wanted to make.”
“That you always wanted me to make.”
“R,” she says, picking up the shirt and slipping it over my shoulders, “these were your clothes. You said you designed them, didn’t you?”
With difficulty, I nod, straining to connect the lines between my disparate lives.
“So reclaim them. Make them mean what you want them to. And when we’re done…we can fucking burn them.”
I see the wretch standing in the shadows at the top of the basement stairs. He thrusts out his filthy, blood-smeared hand.
I grit my teeth and shake it.
I put on the shirt. The pants. That garish red tie, the color of power, fire, hunger—everything I thought a strong leader needed—but also love, passion, the will to act. A color with many shades.
Julie straightens the knot and brushes my shoulders. She steps back and glances me over. “Okay. So we’re doing this?”
My mind floods with images of failure, all the many ways my plan could get her killed, and I fight the doglike reflex to bury the things I love. Since the day I met Julie, I’ve been trying to keep her safe. But what I’ve come to realize is that Julie will never be safe, because she doesn’t want to be. She wants to fight hard and love hard and eat life raw and bleeding. So I won’t try to keep her out of danger. If it’s time for war, I won’t hold her back. I’ll charge in beside her and make sure we win.
“R?” she says. “Are you ready?”
I nod.
She opens her mouth for her favorite correction but I beat her to it.
“I’m ready,” I say loudly. “I am so fucking ready.”
She grins. She hands me my briefcase. We go to work.
WE
NORA REMEMBERS when this room was not a prison cell. It’s emptied out now, a bare plywood cube, but under the Grigio administration it was a Security barracks, and after Grigio, during those two short months of thrilling uncertainty, it was a rehab room for the Nearly Living. A place where they could share fears and ask questions, where they could get counseling from someone reasonably well-versed in the very new field of undead psychology. Nora wonders what happened to those aspiring humans, those “uncategorized Dead.” Were they incorporated into Axiom’s glorious new society of smiling corpses? Or were they promptly liquidated? Nora isn’t sure which answer she hopes for.