The Burning World Read online

  “For those of you listening outside,” Rosso sighs into the mic, “Mr. Balt is visibly tumescent.”

  “Visibly what?”

  “Sit down, Tim. It may be an invasion, it may not. Scouts are on their way to the dome as we speak.”

  Balt looks at Kenerly for confirmation and Kenerly nods. Balt sits down with exaggerated slowness, adjusting his gray fatigues.

  “Could it be the Fire Church?” a man in the crowd asks.

  “Invasions aren’t in their liturgy,” Rosso says. “They’re out to raze cities, not rule them.”

  “What about the old corporate militias?” an elderly woman asks.

  “All the big ones destroyed each other in the Merger War. The survivors choked in the Borough Conflicts. There are no nation-scale forces left in America, as far as we know.” He clears his throat. “But like I said . . . we don’t know very far.”

  The room falls into silence as everyone looks around, hoping someone else has the question or answer that will ease the tension. A few rows back, Ella stands up. “Suppose it is an invasion. Suppose they’ve conquered Goldman and they’re coming for us next. Whoever they are, any group that has a fleet of helicopters probably is nation-scale, and now they have Goldman’s resources too. So if they want this stadium . . . do we really want to fight them for it?”

  “Of course we want to fight!” Balt yelps as if insulted. “The fuck else would we do?”

  “Leave? Go somewhere else and try something new? Like Lawrence said, it’s wild territory out there. There could be fertile land and fresh water. There could be beautiful places to live that aren’t on anyone’s to-conquer list. Why sacrifice our lives for a concrete box?”

  “Because they are outside this box,” Balt says, and I jolt when I notice his finger is aimed at my head. “Yeah, you lanky motherfucker. Thought I forgot about you?” He stands up again; Rosso sighs again. “I didn’t forget, but did everyone else? Did you forget about this rotten piece of shit and all the other flesh-eaters we’ve got hanging around our homes? This ‘cure’ bullshit is . . .” He stabs his finger at me a few times. “Well it’s bullshit!”

  Nora stifles a chuckle. Julie is too busy glaring.

  “The night before they all ‘transformed’ or whatever the fuck you want to call it, this fuckin’ corpse almost killed me and my buddies. Then he went out and fuckin’ ate one of our guys. And now he’s standing here in our fuckin’ meeting hall like a fuckin’ guest of honor.”

  A murmur of agreement runs through the crowd. I feel the focus of four hundred eyes like a laser dot on my forehead. I have to admit, he has a point.

  “I’d like to ‘almost kill’ you too,” Julie snaps, pushing herself off the wall and stepping forward. “I know a lot of people who would. So what?”

  I put a hand on her shoulder but she doesn’t notice it.

  “A lot of shit happened that night,” she continues. “R killed Krauss because Krauss was about to kill him. Everyone in this room has had to kill someone at some point. It happens. So let’s get off the fact that he killed a guy and focus on the fact that he’s a zombie who cured himself!”

  “How?” someone in the crowd shouts. “How’d he do that?”

  “What about the rest of them? How far is it spreading?”

  “How do we know it’s permanent?”

  “Everyone, listen,” Rosso says, but the crowd has reached a boil.

  “What if we leave the stadium and then they all change back?”

  “Yeah, what if it’s a trick?”

  “A trick?” Rosso says incredulously. “Okay, this is—”

  “We don’t know anything about them!”

  “What if they’re faking?”

  “What if they—”

  “People!” Rosso shouts into the mic, and a piercing howl of feedback derails the runaway Q&A as everyone shoves hands against ears. Bob the sound guy winks and gives Rosso a thumbs-up.

  “People,” Rosso sighs, letting the mic fall against his thigh. “These are valid questions . . . some of them. But there’s only one person in this room who might be able to answer them.”

  I scan the crowd, wondering who this mystery sage might be.

  “So if you’ll all kindly shut up a moment . . .” Rosso looks in my direction—no. He looks at me. He holds the microphone out to me. “Mr. R?” he says to me. “Can you offer any insight into the current state of undead affairs?”

  Rosso blurs in my vision and the McDonald’s mural behind him comes into focus. The clown’s small, black eyes. His red-smeared lips. The unfathomable anatomy of Mayor McCheese.

  “R,” Julie whispers, nudging me forward. I step onto the stage and stare at the mic. Its dark barrel is aimed straight at my face. I stare at the mic.

  “R?” Rosso prompts, pushing it closer.

  I take it. “H-hello,” I say, and the sound of my rarely used voice amplified and fired back at me makes my eyes go wide. Imagining it sprayed over the entire stadium into twenty thousand sets of ears makes my jaw fall open.

  “Weapons ready, boys,” Balt chuckles. “Looks like he’s about to convert again.”

  I pull my eyes away from the crowd and all its mistrustful faces, and I look at Julie. Her face contains so many things. Fear, urgency, a little annoyance, but mostly that emotion I’ve come to know as love. Julie loves me. She believes in me, far more than I do in myself. And she wants me to speak.

  My lips brush the mic. An electric spark snaps against them and I jolt back, rubbing my mouth in surprise. “That hurt,” I mumble, accidentally aloud.

  “Sorry, what?” Balt says, cupping a hand to his ear.

  I look up and blurt, all in a rush, “I can’t answer your questions.”

  Not the strongest opening for my great speech of reconciliation. Balt laughs and throws up his hands.

  “What I mean is . . . all I know is . . .” My mind races, searching for words to explain things I don’t understand. “I don’t know what . . . cured us, it was . . . different for everyone, but for me . . . I decided to . . . I wanted to be . . . I just tried to . . .”

  My lips freeze in a slack-jawed O, waiting for the next syllable, but nothing comes. My eyes dart toward Julie. She couldn’t have expected much more from me. We’ve discussed the mystery of the cure many times and have never gotten far, even with her unencumbered articulation. But she still looks disappointed. My big moment onstage, my chance to redeem myself and my fellow former Dead in front of the whole stadium, and my tongue goes flaccid.

  “Well, there you have it, folks,” Balt says. “Now that our resident zombie has cleared everything up for us, let’s dynamite our walls and go dance in a fuckin’ meadow.”

  Rosso walks up, shaking his head, and takes the mic from me. “Okay, honestly,” he says, jabbing a hand at Balt, “who elected this man? What’s your building, Balt?”

  “Twenty-One Cock Street, bitches!” he says in an exaggerated baritone, pumping a fist in the air, and I hear the sound of a crowd hooting somewhere outside.

  “It’s Rooster Street, you idiot,” Julie says.

  Rosso’s face is hidden behind his palm. “I thought we were past this,” he says into his fingers, and the mic barely picks it up. “I thought we were done with brutes.”

  “What’s that, Larry?” Balt says, cupping his ear again. “I’m getting old, my hearing’s not what it used to be.”

  “Blessed are the deaf,” Rosso mutters to no one but himself, “for the loud shall inherit the earth.”

  I can hear a shift in the room’s acoustics as Bob cranks the mics, trying to pick up Rosso’s dwindling volume. Being the pro that he is, he’s raising the room mics instead of the stage, and the small sounds of the crowd become audible: creaking chairs, grinding teeth, heavy breaths. I brace myself to be deafened when Balt inevitably starts shouting again, but just as he’s sucking in a breath to do so, a curious sound appears in the background.

  Three musical tones, followed by a warm, reassuring male voice.


  “Thank you for calling the United States. If you or your township is currently under attack, please hang up and contact your local militia.”

  “The fuck is that?” Balt says, and his voice booms so loud even he cringes. Feedback begins to build in the speakers: a low, threatening hum.

  “Shut it off, Bob,” Rosso says. Bob mutes the PA and the room goes quiet.

  “Please listen to the following options . . .”

  It’s coming from the lobby. Rosso hops off the stage and works his way through the crowd, shoving Balt aside with surprising strength. I go around the stage to join Julie and Nora—their faces are as nonplussed as everyone’s—and we follow Rosso into the lobby.

  “To request military assistance, press one. To report military abuse, press two.”

  On the help desk in the corner of the lobby, on an old black office phone, the line labeled “Goldman” is blinking red. The voice emanates from the phone’s speaker, backed by a faint trickle of music: calming synthesizer chords with occasional glimmers of sax.

  “To report a new hive formation, press three. To report any information on a possible cause or cure, please hang up and call the National Plague ‘Rotline’ at 1-803-768-5463.”

  The recording hisses and hums and wavers its pitch like a reel of tape that’s been looping for decades. Rosso looks bemused, as if this is some inscrutable prank. “Who called Fed 800?” he asks no one in particular.

  “To report threats to or from your regional government, press four. If your state is attempting secession and you wish to request exemption from retributive strikes, press five.”

  “I called Goldman again a few hours ago,” Kenerly says. “The line was still dead but I left it on auto-dial just in case.”

  “How did their HQ line get patched into Fed 800 . . . ?”

  “For infection avoidance tips, press six. To speak to a live representative, press seven. And if you would simply like to be calmed, press eight to be redirected to the LOTUS Feed.”

  The voice goes quiet, leaving only the background music, which has transitioned into a gentle Latin conga rhythm. Rosso looks at Kenerly, shrugs, and presses seven.

  “Due to high national crisis levels and drastically reduced staff, we are experiencing longer than usual wait times. The estimated wait to speak to a representative is—three hundred sixty-five days. We are sorry for the delay. We are sorry.”

  A smooth Spanish guitar riff noodles over fretless bass.

  “Don’t know what I was expecting,” Rosso says. He reaches out to end the call.

  There’s a buzzing noise, then a sharp click.

  “Hello?”

  Rosso’s hand freezes over the button. “Ah . . . hello?”

  “Who is this?”

  “This is Lawrence Rosso at Citi Stadium. Who are . . . who am I speaking to?”

  A pause.

  “This line isn’t set up yet. I can’t answer questions.”

  Rosso glances at Kenerly, then back at the phone. “Is this Goldman Dome headquarters?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I speak to General Cinza?”

  Another pause.

  “Goldman Dome is under new management. Mr. Cinza is no longer with us.”

  “What do you mean ‘new management’?”

  “This line isn’t set up yet. I can’t answer questions. Pitchmen will be arriving at your enclave in one hour to introduce our organization.”

  “What is your—”

  “The pitchmen will introduce our organization. They’ll arrive in one hour. Thank you for calling the Axiom Group.”

  A click. The phone’s red light goes dark.

  Much of the crowd has filtered in from the meeting hall, but despite being packed tight with people, the lobby is completely silent. Rosso’s eyes are on the phone but far away. I look at Julie and find a similar distance in her expression. Most of the faces in the room display simple confusion and unease—darting eyes, wringing hands, questions mumbled to the nearest neighbor—but every fourth or fifth person wears this strange, dreamy stare, like someone plunged into deep childhood reverie.

  “Why do I know that name . . . ,” Julie says, barely a whisper, and the undertones in her voice tell me this is not the pleasant kind of recollection, not the taste of a favorite candy or the first notes of a lullaby but the other kind. The kind that therapists dig out with special dolls.

  And do I feel it? This uneasy nostalgia? I do not. I feel nothing. A cottony white nothing so perfect it’s suspicious, like a plastered-over door with a sign that says NOT A DOOR. A whole new level of numbness.

  “Sounds like a fuckin’ invasion to me,” Balt grunts, unsurprisingly immune to the spell of introspection. “I say we meet ’em at the gate with every gun we’ve got.”

  “Mr. Balt,” Rosso says softly, “you are not a ranking officer so will you please gather your fraternity and return to your building. We’re done here.” He steps back into the hall and addresses the mics. “The meeting is over, folks. Some . . . ambiguous developments are in progress. We’ll keep you apprised.”

  The crowd in the lobby begins to disperse, floating on a tide of anxious chatter. Balt lingers long enough to imply he’s only leaving because he feels like it, but he leaves. Evan and a few other officers remain, waiting for Rosso.

  “One unit outside the gate,” he tells them. “Armed, but nonaggressive. I’ll join you in a moment.”

  Evan gives the traditional Army salute—more of a geeky anachronism the further into history the government recedes—and he and his officers exit.

  After the whitewater noise of a packed house, the community center feels ghostly with only five people in it. Nora spins a rod on the foosball table. The tiny blue men kick wildly, but there is no ball.

  “What is this?” Julie asks Rosso as he stares at the floor. “Who are they?”

  “Axiom was . . . a militia.” I can hear a longer, darker description buried in that ellipsis. His head is shaking subtly. “But it’s gone. It was wiped out years ago, when you were a little girl. There’s no way it could have . . .”

  Ella watches him, her throat slowly constricting. Then a sharp, wet cough erupts from her lungs and she hunches over, inhaling, coughing, inhaling, coughing. Rosso rubs her back. “Where’s your medicine, El?”

  The fit subsides and she straightens, wheezing like she’s just run a marathon. “Left it at home.”

  Rosso glances to the lobby door, then to me, then to Julie and Nora. “Will you girls take her home and make sure she gets her pills? I need to get to the gate.”

  The girls nod and take Ella by the elbows. I move to follow them.

  “R,” Rosso says. “I’d like you to come with me.”

  I look at Julie, then at Rosso, thinking I must have misheard him. “Come with you?”

  “Yes. To the gate.”

  I pause. “Why?”

  “I’m not sure I know why. But I want you to be there.”

  I shoot Julie a desperate look. “There” is the last place I want to be. I want to be back at our house, patching holes and scrubbing floors, sitting next to her on the ratty old couch reading children’s books while she helps me sound out the syllables, watching her cook an omelet and then attempting to eat it, telling myself this is food, this is food, people aren’t food, this is food.

  I want to be alone with her, not in this swarm of fraught and noisy people debating military operations. I’ve just rejoined humanity. Curious George is above my reading level. I’m not ready for this.

  “Go on,” Julie says, her eyes tight with worry. “I’ll find you later.”

  Rosso waits patiently. He knows my fears. We’ve spent many an evening discussing them in his library as he counsels me through my recovery. But there is no sympathy in his eyes today, no comfort, only the steady resolve of a man telling a man what must be done and trusting him to do it.

  I wanted to be human. I wanted to be part of the world. Well, this is the world. Not a cozy cottage—a battlefield. I
thought I’d have more time to brace myself, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my short residency here it’s that nothing ever happens when you’re ready for it. You tell life, “On the count of three!” and it goes on two.

  I pull myself away from Julie and nod to Rosso. We walk toward the gate.

  IT’S LATE JULY, and the average temperature hovers around 120 degrees. Humanity has had a few generations to adapt to the new climate, but everyone in the stadium still drips miserably. My ravaged body has been too busy relearning the more essential functions to bother with sweating, so the heat bakes my unmarinated meat. For once I’m grateful for the crush of the stadium’s slum towers. The five-story apartments of moldy plywood and rusty sheet metal bathe most of the enclave in shade, which turns the oven down to a more livable 100.

  “I wish I could be clearer with you,” Rosso says as our boots slap and peel away from the melting asphalt. The “street” is really no more than a crudely paved footpath, too narrow for us to walk abreast, so I follow behind him and can only guess at his expression. “All I can say is that I believe you’re important.”

  I say nothing.

  “That is to say you represent something important. You and the others like you. And I’m very interested to find out what it is.”

  I remain silent. He glances back at me. “Am I overwhelming you?”

  I nod.

  He smiles and turns back to the path. “Sorry. I’m sure you’re going through enough right now without me dumping some half-baked hero’s journey in your lap.”

  “I’m not important,” I say to the back of his head. “I’m . . . impotent.”

  “Why do you say that, R?”

  I hadn’t intended to elaborate, but something in the soft sincerity of his tone makes it bubble out of me. “I can’t read. I can’t speak. My fingers don’t work. My kids won’t stop eating people. I don’t have a job. I can’t make love. Most people want to kill me.”

  He chuckles. “No one said life is easy.”

  “Does it ever get easier?”

  “No.” He looks back at me again. “Well, in your case, maybe a little. But I wouldn’t wait around for it. The day you solve your last problem is the day you die.”