Warm Bodies

‘Doesn’t even seem like they’re human remains any more, you know? They’re like aliens or something. Creeps the shit out of me.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s probably ’cause you’re a pussy.’

‘Fuck you. I’m going to take a leak.’

The guard disappears into the dark. His partner stands in the spotlight, pulling his parka tighter as the rain comes down. I’m still walking. I’m not interested in these men; I’m looking for a quiet corner where I can close my eyes and gather myself. But as I approach the light, the guard notices me, and I realise there’s a problem. I’m drunk. My carefully studied gait has been replaced by an unsteady stagger. I lumber forward, my head lolling from side to side.

I look like… exactly what I am.

‘Halt!’ the guard shouts.

I halt.

He moves towards me a little. ‘Step into the light please, sir.’

I step into the light, standing on the very edge of the yellow circle. I try to stand as straight as I can, as motionless as I can. Then I realise something else. The rain is dripping off my hair. The rain is running down my face. The rain is washing away my make-up, revealing the pale grey flesh underneath. I stumble back a step, slightly out of the lamplight.

The guard is about five feet away from me. His hand is on his gun. He moves closer and peers at me through slitted eyes. ‘Have you been drinking alcohol tonight, sir?’

I open my mouth to say, No, sir, absolutely not, just a few glasses of delicious and heart-healthy grapefruit juice with my good friend Julie Cabernet. But the words evade me. My tongue is thick and dead in my mouth, and all that comes out is, ‘Uhhhnnn…’

‘What the fuck—’ The guard’s eyes flash wide, he whips out his flashlight and shines it into my grey-streaked face, and I have no choice. I leap out of the shadows and pounce on him, knocking his gun aside and biting down on his throat. His life force rushes into my starved body and brain, soothing the agony of my hideous cravings. I start to tear into him, chewing deltoids and tender abdominals while the blood still pulses through them — but then I stop.

Julie stands in the bedroom doorway, watching me with a tentative smile.

I shut my eyes and grit my teeth.

No.

I drop the body to the ground and back away from it. I can no longer hide behind my ignorance. I know now that I have a choice, and I choose to change no matter what the cost. If I’m a thriving branch on the Tree of Death, I’ll drop my leaves. If I have to starve myself to kill its twisted roots, I will.

The foetus in my stomach kicks, and I hear Perry’s voice, gentle and reassuring. You won’t starve, R. In my short life I made so many choices just because I thought they were required, but my dad was right: there’s no rulebook for the world. It’s in our heads, our collective human hive-mind. If there are rules, we’re the ones making them. We can change them whenever we want to.

I spit out the meat in my mouth and wipe the blood off my face. Perry kicks me in the gut again and I vomit. I lean over and purge myself of everything. The meat, the blood, the vodka. As soon as I straighten up and wipe my mouth, I’m sober. The fuzz is gone. My head is clear as a glossy new record.

The guard’s body begins to twitch back to life. His shoulders slowly rise, dragging the rest of his limp parts with them, as if he’s being pinched and pulled upwards by unseen fingers. I need to kill him. I know I need to kill him, but I can’t do it. After the vow I’ve just made, the thought of tearing into this man again and tasting his still- warm blood leaves me paralysed with horror. He shudders and retches, choking and clawing the dirt, straining and dry-heaving, his eyes bulging wide as the grey sludge of new death slithers into them. A wet, wretched groan escapes his mouth, and it’s too much for me. I turn and run. Even in my bravest moment, I am a coward.

The rain is in full force. My feet splash in the streets and spatter mud on my freshly washed clothes. My hair hangs in my face like seaweed. In front of a big aluminium building with a plywood cross on the roof, I kneel in a puddle and splash water on my face. I wash my mouth out with dirty gutter run-off and spit until I can’t taste anything. That holy wooden ‘T’ looms overhead, and I wonder if the Lord might ever find cause to approve of me, wherever and whatever he is.

Have you met him yet, Perry? Is he alive and well? Tell me he’s not just the mouth of the sky. Tell me there’s more looking down on us than that empty blue skull.

Wisely, Perry doesn’t answer. I accept the silence, I get off my knees, and I keep running.

Avoiding street lights, I make my way back to Julie’s house. I curl up against the wall, finding some shelter from the balcony overhead, and I wait there while the rain pounds the house’s metal roof. After what seems like hours, I hear the girls’ voices in the distance, but this time their rhythms stir no joy in me. The dance is a dirge, the music is minor.

They run towards the front door, Nora with her denim jacket pulled over her head, Julie with the hood of her red sweatshirt cinched tight on her face. Nora reaches the door first and rushes inside. Julie stops. I don’t know if she sees me in the dark or just smells the fruity stench of my body spray, but something draws her to look around the corner of the house. She sees me huddled in the dark like a scared puppy. She ambles over slowly, her hands stuffed into her sweatshirt pockets. She crouches down and peeks out at me through the narrow opening of her hood. ‘You okay?’ she says.

I nod dishonestly.

She sits next to me on the small patch of dry ground and leans against the house. She takes off her hood and lifts the wool beanie underneath to brush wet hair out of her eyes, then pulls it back down. ‘You scared me. You just disappeared.’

I look at her miserably, but I don’t say anything.

‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’

I shake my head.

‘Did you, um… did you knock out Tim and his friend?’

I nod.

A smile of embarrassed pleasure creeps onto her face, as if I’ve just given her an over-large bouquet of roses or written her a bad love song. ‘That was… sweet,’ she says, holding back a giggle. A minute passes. She touches my knee. ‘We had fun today, didn’t we? Despite a few sticky moments?’

I can’t smile, but I nod.

‘I’m a little buzzed. You?’

I shake my head.

‘Too bad. It’s fun.’ Her smile deepens and her eyes become far away. ‘You know, I had my first drink when I was eight?’ There is just a faint slur in her voice. ‘My dad was a big wine buff and him and Mom used to throw tasting parties whenever Dad was between wars. They’d bring all their friends over and pop a prized vintage and get pretty well toasted. I’d sit there in the middle of the couch taking little sips off the half-glass I was allowed and just laugh at all the silly grownups getting sillier. Rosy would get so flushed! One glass and he looked like Santa Claus. He and Dad arm-wrestled on the coffee table once and broke a lamp. It was… so great.’

She starts doodling in the dirt with one finger. Her smile is wistful, aimed at no one. ‘Things weren’t always so grim, you know, R? Dad has his moments, and even when the world fell apart we still had some fun. We’d take little family salvage trips and pick up the most crazy wines you can imagine. Thousand-dollar bottles of ’97 Dom. Romane Conti just rolling around on the floors of abandoned cellars.’ She chuckles to herself. ‘Dad would have absolutely lost his shit over those back in the day. By the time we moved here he was kinda… muted. But God, we drank some outrageous stuff.’

I’m watching her talk. Watching her jaw move and collecting her words one by one as they spill from her lips. I don’t deserve them. Her warm memories. I’d like to paint them over the bare plaster walls of my soul, but everything I paint seems to peel.

‘And then Mom ran off.’ She pulls her finger out of the dirt, inspecting her work. She has drawn a house. A quaint little cottage with a smoke cloud in the chimney, a benevolent sun smiling down on the roof. ‘Dad thought she must have been drunk, hence the alcohol ban, but I saw her, and she wasn’t. She was very sober.’

She is still smiling, as if this is all just easy nostalgia, but the smile is cold now, lifeless.

‘She came into my room that night and just looked at me for a while. I pretended I was asleep. Then right as