“I think we’ve seen enough of whatever that was. I’m sure we’ll have the Feed back online in—”
A young man in a beige jacket walks up to the officer, looks him in the eyes, and snatches the remote out of his hand. While the officer gapes at him, the young man clicks the TV back on and looks up, ignoring his father-boss’s reddening face.
Gael can hear his own heartbeat as a parade of horrors marches across the screen. The hurricane that ejected him from New York suddenly seems like an act of providence.
When the tall man starts speaking again, Gael leans close to Gebre and whispers, “Don’t we know him from somewhere?”
Angry murmurs begin to rise from the troops as the camera zooms in on a metal box full of bones.
“What the fuck is this?” someone demands, but the officer offers no answer. His outrage is cooling into fear.
The man who called himself “R” walks away from the box. The camera follows him, revealing three more people: the brown woman from earlier in the feed, a bald, bearded giant, and a short, hard-looking girl with wild blond hair—Gael’s eyes go wide.
“Lynda’s Diner!” Gebre whispers to him. “The utopians!”
Gael remembers. He remembers the blond one diving into their debate with savage passion, her blue eyes sparking like an overloaded electrical socket about to catch fire. The man sitting next to her didn’t say a word the whole time. But now…
“We have the vocabulary for bigger thoughts. Beautiful, intricate thoughts made of many words. Maybe some we’ve been thinking for a long time but have been too scared to say aloud.”
His eyes are brown, but they flash with that same furious spark. And…are they brown? It’s probably just the bad video, but Gael could almost swear their color is fluctuating.
“We don’t need their world anymore. We have the materials to build a better one. All we need is the courage to start working.”
The camera pans a little farther, and Gael sees one more person hiding against the wall.
He stifles a joyful scream.
“Oh my God!” He manages to bring it down to a yelp, digging his fingers into Gebre’s shoulder. “Do you—”
“I see him,” Gebre says with a radiant grin.
The boy’s strange yellow eyes look into the camera as it pans past him. Gael wouldn’t be surprised if the boy can see him too.
“Kick their asses, Rover!” Gael blurts.
Gebre pumps his fist. “Woo!”
No one shoots them for their outburst. More and more soldiers are letting their guns wander off their targets. Without any signal or instruction, the crowd in the community center begins to tighten around the men in gray ties, the line between captor and captive rapidly blurring.
“I’m sure their troops are on their way right now,” R says with a quick glance toward the door, “so before they shut me up, I have one more thing to say…”
I
JULIE IS STARING AT ME wide-eyed like she’s witnessing a miracle, and maybe she is. I have said more in these three minutes than in my entire second life. No careful reserve, no self-conscious minimalism—I am cracked open. The words pour out of me without review or revision, rushing up from some deep, warm spring in my center.
“…all we need is the courage to start working,” I finish, and Julie’s mouth curves up into a silent laugh, half amusement—which I fully deserve for my shameless grandiloquence—and half genuine amazement.
She mouths Holy shit, and I can’t resist a grin.
Then I remember where I am and what I’m doing, and the fear sobers me up.
“I’m sure Axiom’s troops are on their way right now,” I tell the camera, the country, the world—no, keep it simple. Just a camera. Just Julie smiling behind the viewfinder, snapping Polaroids of me in an abandoned house. Just her and me.
“…so before they shut me up, I have one more thing to say. A word for the Dead.”
I take a deep breath.
“You don’t have to be what you are. Even the Dead can heal. I’m…I’m Living proof.”
Julie rolls her eyes, still smiling.
“And so is he.”
I point to M. He waves.
“And so is he.”
I point to Nora’s little brother and he presses his back against the wall as if uncomfortable with the attention.
“And so are the hundreds of former Dead who have been living in this stadium. Because nothing is absolute. ‘The way things are’ changes when we do.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see one of the other cameras nodding vigorously. Remote applause from our friend in the basement? Or a signal to wrap it up? It occurs to me that Tomsen probably isn’t one to keep an eye on the clock. She might stay at the controls to the very end if I’m still talking when the bomb goes off. I could have done without this extra pressure for my first public speaking gig…
“Look at this,” I tell the camera, pulling my pant leg up, and the camera pans down to it. “This was my first infection.” The camera rises as I pull aside my shirt collar. “And this was my second.”
I can’t see the wound, but I’ve seen plenty others like it. I’m looking at one right now, that dark pit on Addis’s shoulder, raw flesh dried up but never healed. It’s a mirror image of mine.
“The first bite took my first life. This one tried to take the life I’m living now. I didn’t let it.”
I glance at Julie. She has stopped laughing.
“Some people think the plague came from outside, like a foreign invader. They think it can be stopped with walls and guns and quarantines.” My voice has begun to tremble again. “But I think it comes from inside, and everyone’s infected. I think we’re born with it and we die with it and we’re never truly cured.”
I turn away from the camera and look at Julie, starting to believe my fantasy that it’s just me and her. “But that doesn’t mean it has to kill us!” I feel a pang in my chest, like the pluck of a piano wire strung between my ribs. A euphoric laugh bubbles out of me and tears dampen my eyes. “We don’t have to let it win.” I feel the world growing softer and quieter as warmth spreads through me. The cavernous dome shrinks to an intimate place, a secret. “We can fight it and hold it off,” I whisper to Julie, and there are tears in her eyes too. “Maybe just long enough to live a good life.”
I hear her voice as if from far away, and something in it troubles me. Something in her face isn’t right; there are more tears than there should be. The warmth in my chest is hot now, burning, and I look down and see that my gray shirt has turned the same color as my tie.
I look up again. Julie’s eyes are an open sky, boundless, fathomless, terrifying, beautiful.
I fall asleep.
WE
THE STADIUM had other gathering places, like the community center and the square, but the Orchard was the only place that didn’t have a purpose. It hosted no meetings, it stored no supplies, it served no function except to nudge people together and invite them to feel good.
Within six days of the stadium’s new management, the Orchard was rebranded as an emergency shelter. Nearly a third of the stadium’s buildings are now emergency shelters, though there is nothing particularly safe about them. Just a sign on the door indicating this is where you should wait while forces bigger than you determine an outcome.
Naturally, the alcohol is gone. The bar is buried under supply crates, though a few visible graffiti carvings hint at a messy human history. The TVs, however, were allowed to stay, because from their perches in the corners they shower the shelter’s patrons with Axiom’s stream of consciousness.