‘I want to join Security,’ I announce. My voice is solid now. My face is hard.
Rosso lets out a slow breath and sets his book down. ‘Why, Perry?’
‘Because it’s the only thing left worth doing.’
‘I thought you wanted to write.’
‘That’s pointless.’
‘Why?’
‘We have bigger concerns now. General Grigio says these are the last days. I don’t want to waste my last days scratching letters on paper.’
‘Writing isn’t letters on paper. It’s communication. It’s memory.’
‘None of that matters any more. It’s too late.’
He studies me. He picks up the book again and holds the cover out. ‘Do you know this story?’
‘It’s Gilgamesh.’
‘Yes. The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest known works of literature. Humanity’s debut novel, you could say.’ Rosso flips through the brittle yellow pages. ‘Love, sex, blood and tears. A journey to find eternal life. To escape death.’ He reaches across the table and hands the book to me. ‘It was written over four thousand years ago on clay tablets by people who tilled the mud and rarely lived past forty. It’s survived countless wars, disasters and plagues, and continues to fascinate to this day, because here I am, in the midst of modern ruin, reading it.’
I look at Rosso and don’t look at the book. My fingers dig into the leather cover.
‘The world that birthed that story is long gone, all its people are dead, but it continues to touch the present and future because someone cared enough about that world to keep it. To put it in words. To remember it.’
I split the book open to the middle. The pages are riddled with ellipses, marking words and lines missing from the text, rotted out and lost to history. I stare at these marks and let their black dots fill my vision. ‘I don’t want to remember,’ I say, and I shut the book. ‘I want to join Security. I want to do dangerous stuff. I want to forget.’
‘What are you saying, Perry?’
‘I’m not saying anything.’
‘It sounds like you are.’
‘No.’ The shadows in the room pool in the lines of our faces, draining our eyes of hue. ‘There’s nothing left worth saying.’
I am numb. Adrift in the blackness of Perry’s thoughts, I reverberate with his grief like a low church bell.
‘Are you working, Perry?’ I whisper into the emptiness. ‘Are you reverse-engineering your life?’
Shhhhhh, Perry says. Don’t break the mood. I need this to cut through.
I float there in his unshed tears, waiting in the salty dark.
Morning sun streams through the balcony window of Julie’s bedroom. The green constellations have faded back into the blue sky of the ceiling. The girls are still asleep, but I’ve been lying here awake for all but a few uneasy hours. Unable to stay motionless any longer, I slip out of the blankets and stretch my creaky joints, letting the sun baste one side of my face then the other. Nora sleep-mumbles a bit of nursing jargon, ‘mitosis’ or ‘meiosis’, possibly ‘necrosis’, and I notice the dog-eared textbook resting open on her stomach. Curious, I hover over her for a moment, then carefully lift up the book.
I can’t read the title. But I immediately recognise the cover. A serenely sleeping face offering its throat of exposed veins to the viewer. The medical reference book, Gray’s Anatomy.
Looking nervously over my shoulder, I whisk the heavy tome out into the hallway and start flipping through its pages. Intricate drawings of human architecture, organs and bones all too familiar to me, although here the filleted bodies are shown clean and perfect, their details unblurred by filth or fluids. I pore over the illustrations as the minutes tick by, racked by guilt and fascination like a pubescent Catholic with a Playboy. I can’t read the captions, of course, but a few Latin words pop into my head as I study the images, perhaps distant recalls from my old life, a college lecture or TV documentary I absorbed somewhere. The knowledge feels grotesque in my mind but I grasp it and hold it tight, etching it deep into my memory. Why am I doing this? Why do I want to know the names and functions of all the beautiful structures I’ve spent my years violating? Because I don’t deserve to keep them anonymous. I want the pain of knowing them and, by extension, myself: who and what I really am. Maybe with that scalpel, red hot and sterilised in tears, I can begin to carve out the rot inside me.
Hours pass. When I’ve seen every page and wrung every syllable from my memory, I gently replace the book on Nora’s belly and tiptoe out onto the balcony, hoping the warm sun will grant some relief from the moral nausea churning inside me.
I lean against the railing and take in the cramped vistas of Julie’s city. As dark and lifeless as it was last night, now it bustles and roars like Times Square. What is everyone doing? The undead airport has its crowds but no real activity. We don’t do things; we wait for things to happen. The collective volition bubbling up from the Living is intoxicating, and I have a sudden urge to be down in those masses, rubbing shoulders and elbowing for space in all that sweat and breath. If my questions have answers, they must certainly be down there, under the pounding soles of those filthy feet.
I hear the girls chatting quietly in the bedroom, finally waking up. I go back inside and crawl under the blankets next to Julie.
‘Good morning, R,’ Nora says, not quite sincerely. I think speaking to me like a human is still a novelty for her; she looks like she wants to titter every time she acknowledges my presence. It’s aggravating, but I understand. I’m an absurdity that takes some getting used to.