What is left of us? the ghosts moan, drifting back into the shadows of my subconscious. No countries, no cultures, no wars but still no peace. What’s at our core, then? What’s still squirming in our bones when everything else is stripped?
By late afternoon, we’ve come to the road once known as Jewel Street. The school buildings wait for us ahead, squat and self-satisfied, and I feel my stomach knotting. Julie hesitates at the intersection, looking pensively towards their glowing windows. ‘Those are the training facilities,’ she says. ‘But you don’t want to see in there. Let’s move on.’
I gladly follow her away from that dark boulevard, but I stare hard at the fresh green sign as we pass. I’m fairly sure the first letter is a J.
‘What’s . . . that street called?’ I ask, pointing to the sign.
Julie smiles. ‘Why, that’s Julie Street.’
‘It used to be a graphic of a diamond or something,’ Nora says, ‘but her dad renamed it when they built the schools. Isn’t that sweet?’
‘It was sweet,’ Julie admits. ‘That’s the type of gesture Dad can manage sometimes.’
She takes us around the perimeter of the walls to a wide, dark tunnel directly across from the main gate. I realise these tunnels must be where sports teams once made their triumphal entries onto the field, back when thousands of people could still cheer for things so trivial. And since the tunnel on the other end is the passage into the world of the Living, it seems fitting that this one leads to a graveyard.
Julie flashes an ID badge at the guards and they wave us through the back gate. We step out onto a hilly field surrounded by hundreds of feet of chain-link fencing. Black hawthorn trees curl towards the mottled grey-and-gold sky, standing guard over classical tombstones, complete with crosses and statues of saints. I suspect these were reappropriated from some forgotten funeral home, as the engraved names and dates have been covered over with crude letters stencilled in white paint. The epitaphs resemble graffiti tags.
‘This is where we bury . . . what’s left of us,’ Julie says. She walks a few steps ahead as Nora and I stand in the entry. Out here, with the door shut behind us, the pulsing noise of human affairs is gone, replaced by the stoic silence of the truly dead. Each body resting here is either headless, brain-shot, or nothing but scraps of half-eaten flesh and bones piled in a box. I can see why they chose to build the cemetery outside the Stadium walls: not only does it take up more land than all the indoor farmlands combined, it also can’t be very good for morale. This is a reminder far more grim than the old world’s sunny yards of peaceful passings and requiem eternum. This is a glimpse of our future. Not as individuals, whose deaths we can accept, but as a species, a civilisation, a world.
‘Are you sure you want to go in here today?’ Nora asks Julie softly.
Julie looks out at the hills of patchy brown grass. ‘I go every day. Today’s a day. Today’s Tuesday.’
‘Yeah, but . . . do you want us to wait here?’
She glances back at me and considers for a moment. Then she shakes her head. ‘No. Come on.’ She starts walking and I follow her. Nora trails an awkward distance behind me, a look of muted surprise on her face.
There are no paths in this cemetery. Julie walks in a straight line, stepping over headstones and across grave mounds, many still soft and muddy. Her eyes are focused on a tall spire topped by a marble angel. We stop in front of it, Julie and I side by side, Nora still lingering behind. I strain to read the name on the grave, but it doesn’t reveal itself. Even the first few letters remain out of reach.
‘This is . . . my mom,’ Julie says. The cool evening wind blows her hair into her eyes, but she doesn’t brush it away.
‘She left when I was twelve.’
Nora squirms behind us, then wanders away and pretends to browse the epitaphs.
‘She went crazy, I guess,’ Julie says. ‘Ran out into the city by herself one night and that was that. They found a few pieces of her but . . . there’s nothing in this grave.’ Her voice is casual. I’m reminded of her trying to imitate the Dead back in the airport, the overacting, the paper-thin mask. ‘I guess it was too much for her, all of this.’ She waves a hand vaguely at the graveyard and the Stadium behind us. ‘She was a real free spirit, you know? This wild bohemian goddess full of fire. She met my dad when she was nineteen, he swept her off her feet. Hard to believe it, but he was a musician back then, played keys in a rock band, was actually pretty good. They got married really young, and then . . . I don’t know . . . the world went to shit, and Dad changed. Everything changed.’
I try to read her eyes but her hair obscures them. I hear a tremor in her voice. ‘Mom tried. She really did try. She did her part to keep everything together, she did her daily work, and then it was all me. She poured it all into me. Dad was hardly around so it was always just her and the little brat. I remember having so much fun, she used to take me to this water park back in—’ A tiny sob catches her by surprise, choking off the words, and she covers her mouth with her hand. Her eyes plead with me through strands of dirty hair. I gently brush it out of her face. ‘She just wasn’t built for this f**king place,’ she says, her voice warbling in falsetto. ‘What was she supposed to do here? Everything that made her alive was gone. All she had left was this stupid twelve-year-old with ugly teeth who kept waking her up every night wanting to snuggle away a nightmare. No wonder she wanted out.’
‘Stop,’ I say firmly, and turn her to face me. ‘Stop.’ Tears are running down her face, salty secretions shooting through ducts and tubes, past bright pulsating cells and angry red tissues. I wipe them away and pull her into me. ‘You’re . . . alive,’ I mumble into her hair. ‘You’re . . . worth living for.’