Warm Bodies Page 0,35

I feel a lurch as we swap places. Perry glances up at him - at me - frowning.

'Come on, corpse, not now. This is the first time I met Julie's father and it's not going well. I need to focus.'

'It's going fine,' Julie tells Perry. 'This is my dad these days, I warned you about him.'

'You better pay attention,' Perry says to me. 'You might have to meet him someday, too, and you're going to have a much harder time winning his approval than I did.'

Julie runs a hand through Perry's hair. 'Aw, babe, don't talk about the present. It makes me feel left out.'

He sighs. 'Yeah, okay. These were better times anyway. I turned into a real neutron star when I grew up.'

I'm sorry I killed you, Perry. It's not that I wanted to, it's just -

'Forget it, corpse, I understand. Seems by that point I wanted out anyway.'

'I bet I'll always miss you when I think back to these days,' Julie says wistfully. 'You were pretty cool before Dad got his claws into you.'

'Take care of her, will you?' Perry whispers up to me. 'She's been through some hard stuff. Keep her safe.'

I will.

Mr Grigio clears his throat. 'I would start planning now if I were you, Perry. With your skill set, you should really consider Security training. Green shoots coming through the dirt are all well and good but we don't strictly need all these fruits and vegetables. You can live on nothing but Carbtein for almost a year before cell fatigue is even measurable. The most important thing is keeping us all alive.'

Julie tugs on Perry's arm. 'Come on, do we have to sit through this again?'

'Nah,' Perry says. 'This isn't worth reliving. Let's go somewhere nice.'

We're on a beach. Not a real beach, carved over the millennia by the master craft of the ocean - those are all underwater now. We're on the young shore of a recently flooded city port. Small patches of sand appear between broken slabs of sidewalk. Barnacled street lamps rise out of the surf, a few of them still flickering on in the evening gloom, casting circles of orange light on the waves.

'Okay, guys,' Julie says, throwing a stick into the water. 'Quiz time. What do you want to do with your life?'

'Oh, hi, Mr Grigio,' I mutter, sitting next to Julie on a driftwood log that was once a telephone pole.

She ignores me. 'Nora, you go first. And I don't mean what do you think you will end up doing, I mean what do you want to do.'

Nora is sitting in the sand in front of the log, playing with some pebbles and pinching a smouldering joint between her middle finger and the stub of her ring finger, missing past the first knuckle. Her eyes are earth brown; her skin is creamy coffee. 'Maybe nursing?' she says. 'Healing people, saving lives . . . maybe working on a cure? I could get into that.'
Chapter 10

'Nurse Nora,' Julie says with a smile. 'Sounds like a kids' TV show.'

'Why a nurse?' I ask. 'Why not go for doctor?'

Nora scoffs. 'Oh, yeah, seven years of college? I doubt civilisation's even gonna last that long.'

'Yes it will,' Julie says. 'Don't talk like that. But there's nothing wrong with being a nurse. Nurses are sexy!'

Nora smiles and pulls idly at her thick black curls. She looks at me. 'Why a doctor, Pear? Is that your target?'

I shake my head emphatically. 'I've already seen enough blood and viscera for one lifetime, thanks.'

'Then what?'

'I like writing,' I say like a confession. 'So . . . I guess I want to be a writer.'

Julie smiles. Nora tilts her head. 'Really? Do people still do that?'

'What? Write?'

'I mean, is there still like . . . a book industry?'

I shrug. 'Well . . . no. Not really. Good point, Nora.'

'Sorry, I was just . . .'

'No, I know, but you're right, it's dumb even for a fantasy. Colonel Rosso says only about thirty per cent of the world's cities are still functioning, so unless the zombies are learning how to read . . . not a great time to get into the literary arts. I'll probably just end up in Security.'

'Shut the fuck up, Perry,' Julie says, punching me in the shoulder. 'People still read.'

'Do they?' Nora asks.

'Well, I do. Who cares if there's an industry behind it? If everyone's too busy building things and shooting things to bother feeding their souls, screw