. cheesy . . . but in a sweet way. More like how he really was.' She glances at the cover page again. 'He started it less than a year ago. I had no idea he was still writing.' She flips to the last page. 'It's not finished. Cuts off in the middle of a sentence. "Outmanned and outgunned, certain of death, he kept fighting, because - "'
She rubs her thumbs into the paper, feeling its texture. She puts it near her face and inhales. Then she closes her eyes, closes the manuscript, and reties the yarn. She looks up at me. I am nearly a foot taller than her and probably sixty pounds heavier, but I feel small and featherweight. Like she could knock me down and crush me with a single whispered word.
But she doesn't speak. She sets the manuscript back in the drawer and gently slides it shut. She straightens up, dries her face with her sleeve, and embraces me, resting her ear against my chest.
'Thump-thump,' she murmurs. 'Thump-thump. Thump-thump.'
My hands hang limp at my sides. 'I'm sorry,' I say.
With her eyes closed, her voice muffled by my shirt, she says, 'I forgive you.'
I raise a hand and touch her straw-gold hair. 'Thank you.'
These three phrases, so simple, so primal, have never sounded so complete. So true to their basic meanings. I feel her cheek move against my chest, her zygomaticus major pulling her lips into a faint smile.
Without another word, we shut the door on Perry Kelvin's room and leave his home. We descend the stairs past beleaguered teens, past tossing and turning kids, past deeply dreaming babies, and out into the street. I feel a nudge low in my chest, closer to my heart than my belly, and a soft voice in my head.
Thank you, Perry says.
I would like to end it here. How nice if I could edit my own life. If I could halt in the middle of a sentence and put it all to rest in a drawer somewhere, consummate my amnesia and forget all the things that have happened, are happening, and are about to happen. Shut my eyes and go to sleep happy.
But no, 'R'. No sleep of the innocent. Not for you. Did you forget? You have blood on your hands. On your lips. On your teeth. Smile for the cameras.
Chapter 16
'Julie,' I say, bracing to confess my final sin. 'I need . . . to tell you . . .'
BANG.
The Stadium's field halogens flare like suns and midnight becomes daylight. I can see every pore in Julie's face.
'What the hell?' she gasps, whipping her head around. A piercing alarm further shatters the night's stillness, and then we see it: the Jumbotron is aglow. Hanging from the upper reaches of the open roof like a tablet descending from Heaven, the screen plays a blocky animation of a quarterback running from what appears to be a zombie, arms outstretched and clutching. The screen blinks between this and a word that I think might be:
BREACH
'R . . .' Julie says, horrified, 'did you eat someone?'
I look at her desperately. 'No ch . . . no choi . . . no choice,' I stutter, my diction collapsing in my state of panic. 'Guard . . . stopped me. Didn't . . . mean. Didn't . . . want.'
She presses her lips together, her eyes boring into me, then gives a single shake of her head as if banishing one thought, committing to another. 'Okay. Then we need to get inside. God damn it, R.'
We run into the house and she slams the door. Nora is at the top of the stairs. 'Where have you guys been? What's going on out there?'
'It's a breach,' Julie says. 'Zombie in the Stadium.'
'You mean him?'
The disappointment in her reply makes me wince. 'Yes and no.'
We hurry into Julie's bedroom and she turns out the lights. We all sit on the floor on the piles of laundry, and for a while nobody speaks. We just sit and listen to the sounds. Guards running and shouting. Gunfire. Our own heavy breathing.
'Don't worry,' Julie whispers to Nora, but I know it's for me. 'It won't spread much. Those shots were probably Security taking them out already.'
'Are we in the clear, then?' Nora asks. 'Will R be okay?'
Julie looks at me. Her face is grim. 'Even if they think the breach started from a natural death, that guard obviously didn't eat himself. Security will know there's at least one zombie