I’m silent. The phone wanders away from my ear. Julie looks at me expectantly.
‘Hello?’ M says.
‘Sorry. I’m here.’
‘Well, we’re . . . here. What now? What should . . . do?’
I rest the phone on my shoulder and look at the wall, at nothing. I look at the papers and plans on General Grigio’s desk. His strategies are all gibberish to me. I have no doubt it’s all important – food allocation, construction plans, weapon distribution, combat tactics. He’s trying to keep everyone alive, and that’s good. That’s foundational. But like Julie said, there must be something even deeper than that. The earth under that foundation. Without that firm ground, it’s all going to collapse, over and over, no matter how many bricks he lays. This is what I’m interested in. The earth under the bricks.
‘What’s going on?’ Julie asks. ‘What’s he saying?’
As I look into her anxious face, I feel the twitch in my guts, the young, eager voice in my head.
It’s happening, corpse. Whatever you and Julie triggered, it’s moving. A good disease, a virus that causes life! Do you see this, you dumb f**king monster? It’s inside you! You have to get out of these walls and spread it!
I angle the phone towards Julie so she can listen. She leans in close.
‘M,’ I say.
‘Yeah.’
‘Tell Julie.’
‘What?’
‘Tell Julie . . . what’s happening.’
There’s a pause. ‘Changing,’ he says. ‘Lots of us . . . changing. Like R.’
Julie looks at me and I can almost sense her neck hairs standing on end. ‘It’s not just you?’ she says, moving away from the phone. ‘This . . . reviving thing?’ Her voice is small and tentative, like a little girl poking her head out of a bomb shelter after years of life in the dark. It almost quivers with tight-leashed hope. ‘Are you saying the plague is healing?’
I nod. ‘We’re . . . fixing things.’
‘But how?’
‘Don’t know. But we have to . . . do more of it. Out there . . . where M is. “Outside”.’
Her excitement cools, hardens. ‘So we have to leave.’
I nod.
‘Both of us?’
‘Both,’ M’s voice crackles in the earpiece like an eaves-dropping mother. ‘Julie . . . part of it.’
She eyes me dubiously. ‘You want me. Skinny little human girl. Out there in the wild, running with a pack of zombies?’
I nod.
‘Do you grasp how insane that is?’
I nod.
She is silent for a moment, looking at the floor. ‘Do you really think you can keep me safe?’ she asks me. ‘Out there, with them?’
My incurable honesty makes me hesitate, and Julie frowns.
‘Yes,’ M answers for me, exasperated. ‘He can. And I’ll . . . help.’
I nod quickly. ‘M will help. The others . . . will help. Besides,’ I add with a faint smile, ‘you can . . . keep yourself safe.’
She shrugs nonchalantly. ‘I know. I just wanted to see what you’d say.’
‘So you’ll . . . ?’
‘I’ll go with you.’
‘You’re . . . sure?’
Her eyes are distant and hard. ‘I had to bury my mom’s empty dress. I’ve been waiting for this a long time.’
I nod. I take a deep breath.
‘The only problem with your plan,’ she continues, ‘is that you seem to be forgetting you ate someone last night, and this place is going to stay clamped shut until they find and kill you.’
‘Should we . . . attack?’ M says. ‘Get you . . . out?’
I put the phone back to my ear, gripping the receiver hard. ‘No,’ I tell him.
‘Have . . . army. Where’s . . . battle?’
‘Don’t know. Not here. These are . . . people.’
‘Well?’
I look at Julie. She looks at the ground and rubs her forehead.
‘Just wait,’ I tell M.
‘Wait?’
‘A little longer. We’ll . . . figure it out.’
‘Before . . . they kill you?’
‘Hopefully.’
A long, dubious silence. Then: ‘Hurry up.’
Julie and I stay up for the rest of the night. In our rain-wet clothes we sit on the floor in the cold living room and don’t say a word. Eventually my eyes sag shut, and in this strange calm, in what may be my last few hours on Earth, my mind creates a dream for me. Crisp and clear, alive with colour, unfolding like a time-lapse rose in the sparkling darkness.
In this dream, my dream, I am floating down a river on my housejet’s severed tail fin. I am lying on my back under the blue midnight, watching the stars drift by above me. The river is uncharted, even in this age of maps and satellites, and I have no idea where it leads. The air is still. The night is warm. I’ve brought only two provisions: a box of pad thai and Perry’s book. Thick. Ancient. Bound in leather. I open it to the middle. An unfinished sentence in some language I’ve never seen, and beyond it, nothing. An epic tome of empty pages, blank white and waiting. I shut the book and lay my head down on the cool steel. The pad thai tickles my nose, sweet and spicy and strong. I feel the river widening, gaining force.
I hear the waterfall.
‘R.’
My eyes open and I sit up. Julie is cross-legged next to me, watching me with grim amusement.
‘Having some nice dreams?’
‘Not . . . sure,’ I mumble, rubbing my eyes.
‘Did you happen to dream up any solutions to our little problem?’