I raise my eyebrows, full of questions that I’m afraid to ask.
She massages her forehead and lets out a slow breath. ‘Can you go find the gas by yourself, R? I need . . . to think for a minute.’ She doesn’t look at me as she speaks. Tentatively, I reach out and put a hand on her shoulder. She flinches, then softens, then suddenly turns and embraces me hard, burying her face in my shirt.
‘I just need a minute,’ she says, pulling away and recovering herself.
So I leave her there. I find an empty gas can in the garage and begin working my way around the block, looking for a vehicle with a full tank to drain. As I kneel beside a recently crashed Chevy Tahoe with the siphon tube gurgling in my hand, I hear the sound of an engine starting in the distance. I ignore it. I focus on the taste of gasoline, harsh and astringent in my mouth. When the can is full I walk back to the cul-de-sac, closing my eyes and letting the sun flood through my eyelids. Then I open them, and just stand there for a while, holding the red plastic can like a belated birthday gift. The Mercedes is gone.
Inside the house, on the dining-room table, I find a note. Something is written on it, letters I can’t assemble into words, but next to it are two Polaroids. Both pictures are of Julie, taken by Julie, with the camera extended at arm’s length and pointed at herself. In one of them, she is waving. The gesture looks limp, half-hearted. In the other one, she is holding that hand against her chest. Her face is stoic, but her eyes are damp.
Goodbye, R, the picture whispers to me. It’s that time now. It’s time to say it. Can you say it?
I hold the picture in front of me, staring at it. I rub my fingers on it, smearing its fresh emulsion into rainbow blurs. I consider taking it with me, but no. I’m not ready to make Julie a souvenir.
Say it, R. Just say it.
I set the picture back on the table, and leave the house. I don’t say it.
I begin walking back to the airport. I’m not sure what’s waiting for me. Full-death? Quite possibly. After the commotion I caused, the Boneys might simply dispose of me like infectious waste. But I’m alone again. My world is small, my options are few. I don’t know where else to go.
The journey of forty minutes by car will be a day-long trip on foot. As I walk, the wind seems to reverse direction, and yesterday’s thunderheads creep back onto the horizon for an encore. They spiral over me, slowly shrinking the circle of blue sky like an immense camera aperture. I walk fast and stiff, almost marching.
I walk off the freeway at the next exit and climb into a triangle of landscaping between the road and the off ramp. I crash through the brush and duck into the little cluster of trees, a mini-forest of ten or twelve cedars arranged in a pleasing pattern for overstressed commuter ghosts.
I curl into a ball at the base of one of these trees, achieving some degree of shelter under its scrawny branches, and close my eyes. As lightning flickers on the horizon like flashbulbs and thunder rumbles in my bones, I drift into darkness.
I am with Julie on the 747. I realise it’s a dream. A real dream, not just another rerun of Perry Kelvin’s syndicated life. This is coming purely from me. The clarity has improved since the blurry sludge of my brain’s first attempt back in the airport, but there’s still an awkward, shaky quality to everything, like amateur video to Perry’s slick feature films.
Julie and I sit cross-legged, facing each other, floating above the clouds on the plane’s bright white wing. The wind ruffles our hair, but no more than a leisurely ride in a convertible.
‘So you dream now?’ Julie says.
I smile nervously. ‘I guess I do.’
Julie doesn’t smile. Her eyes are cold. ‘Guess you had nothing to dream about till you got some girl problems. You’re like a grade-school kid trying to keep a diary.’
Now we’re on the ground, sitting on a sunny green suburban lawn. A morbidly obese couple barbecues human limbs in the background. I try to keep Julie in focus.
‘I’m changing,’ I tell her.
‘I don’t care,’ she replies. ‘I’m home now. I’m back in the real world, where you don’t exist. Summer camp is over.’
A winged Mercedes rumbles past in the distant sky and vanishes in a muffled sonic boom.
‘I’m gone,’ she says, staring me hard in the eyes. ‘It was fun, but it’s over now. This is how things go.’
I shake my head, avoiding her gaze. ‘I’m not ready.’
‘What did you think was going to happen?’
‘I don’t know. I was just hoping for something. A miracle.’
‘Miracles don’t exist. There is cause and effect, dreams and reality, Living and Dead. Your hope is absurd. Your romanticism, embarrassing.’
I look at her uneasily.
‘It’s time for you to grow up. Julie has gone back to her position, and you will go back to your position, and that is the way it is. Always has been. Always will be.’
She grins, and her teeth are jagged yellow fangs. She kisses me, gnawing through my lips, biting out my teeth, gnashing up towards my brain and screaming like a dying child. I gag on my hot red blood.
My eyes flash open and I stand up, pushing dripping branches out of my face. It’s still night. The rain is still pummelling the earth. I step out of the trees and climb up onto the overpass. I lean against the railing, looking out at the empty freeway and the dark horizon beyond it. One thought pounds in my head like a migraine of rage: You’re wrong. You f**king monsters are wrong. About everything.
Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse a silhouette on the other side of the overpass. The dark form moves towards me with steady, lumbering steps. I hunch my muscles together, preparing for a fight. After wandering alone for too long, the unincorporated Dead will sometimes lose the ability to distinguish their own kind from the Living. And some are so far gone, so deep into this way of life, they just don’t care either way. They will eat anyone, anything, anywhere, because they can’t fathom any other way to interact. I imagine one of these creatures surprising Julie as she stops the Mercedes to get her bearings, wrapping filthy hands around her face and biting down on her slender neck, and as that image ferments in my head, I prepare to tear this thing in front of me to unrecognisable shreds. The primordial rage that fills me every time I think of someone harming her is frightening. The violence of killing and eating people feels like friendly teasing compared to this consuming bloodlust.