The Burning World

Julie leans against the colt’s shimmering chestnut neck and rests her cheek on his mane as I lead him back to the barn—

  Wake up, a man shouts into my ear.

  I squirm and try to shut him out, whoever he is, this horrible alarm dragging me into this horrible morning. Snooze, snooze, please snooze.

  We stroll hand in hand toward the farmhouse, and it’s warm and full of history; it has been in my family for generations, handed down to me by my father, who was kind and courageous, who instilled nothing but hope in his son and never once told him that only God could love his filthy human heart.

  The music stops.

  My eyes snap open.

  A man and a woman are watching me from across a small table. Another man is standing next to me, pressing a live wire into my ribs, which explains why my back is arching and my wrists are straining and why I’m tied to a chair with a length of coaxial cable.

  The man removes the wire and I go slack.

  “You’re quite the deep sleeper!” the woman in the yellow tie says, like a mother chiding her teenage son.

  “We apologize for any discomfort,” the man in the blue tie adds.

  The man in the black tie returns to his seat.

  I really am dead. I’m surrounded by faces that I’ve seen bloodied and charred on the ground. What unjust afterlife is this, that I have to share it with these obscene creatures?

  “We’re glad you’re awake,” Yellow Tie says, reaching toward me and placing her palm on the table, a gesture evoking intimacy and trust. “We have a very exciting offer to share with you.”

  Of course it’s not really Yellow Tie. Not the one I saw with a pole through her head, anyway. Longer nose, thinner lips. But the differences in her features vanish into the sameness of everything else: her clothing, her posture, her empty cardboard earnestness. Blue Tie’s hair is lighter, his chin sharper, and Black Tie is less bulky, but they are the same three people, as if their bodies are originals but their souls are copies.

  My eyes dart around the room. All the lights are broken except one fluorescent tube buzzing overhead, bathing the pitchmen in a pale, unforgiving light that highlights the seams between their makeup and their flesh.

  And what are you kids supposed to be?

  We’re human beings. Trick or treat!

  The room is dark, but I can see that I’m alone with these creatures. “Where’s Julie?” I ask Yellow Tie. I don’t sense any particular authority structure, but it seems to be her role to tell people things they want to hear, and I want to hear that Julie is safe, even if it comes from the world’s least trustworthy mouth.

  The mouth smiles blandly. I try to stand up and realize my ankles are tied to the legs of the chair.

  “We apologize for any discomfort,” Blue Tie says again. “Unfortunately, due to recent difficulties, we do need to keep you restrained at this time to ensure the safety of Axiom employees.”

  “Where is Julie?” I shout at him, but the cold plastic smiles they’re all wearing tell me I won’t get far talking to them like people. I’m not having a conversation; I’m watching a commercial.

  “No doubt you’re aware of the terrible tragedy that took place in the stadium,” Blue Tie says, switching to his grave and reverential face. “Improper storage of expired munitions led to an explosion that took nearly a hundred lives, including those of the enclave’s central leadership.”

  “Fortunately,” Yellow Tie chimes in like they’re singing a duet, “the Axiom Group was right next door, ready to assist our new west coast neighbors. Working closely with Citi Stadium’s existing Security and Medical teams, we have been able to contain the damage and provide aid to the victims.”

  “You did this,” I mumble, looking at the table. “Everyone will know you did this. They’ll fight you.”

  The peculiar sensation of reliving a moment from a dream. A memory of a conversation that never happened.

  Trust me, kid. I know my business.

  “We have offered some of our best people to fill the holes in Citi’s management,” Yellow Tie says, “and its remaining members have been very receptive to our help.”

  I begin to shake my head, my arms flexing against the cables.

  “Where we are encountering some difficulty,” Blue Tie says, “is with the non-living population of the stadium and surrounding area.”

  I stop shaking my head and look up.

  “Since arriving on the west coast,” Yellow Tie says, “we have encountered a puzzling—a puzzling—” She blinks. “Thing. A puzzling thing.” Her smile falters for the first time and her expression crinkles into something like discomfort.

  Blue Tie steps in to rescue her. “We have encountered non-living persons who are non-standard. Who do not—who show puzzling signs of—” He grimaces and lowers his head.

  “Life?” I offer.

  “We have encountered unknowns,” Yellow Tie blurts.

  Blue Tie’s head rises again. “We have encountered unknowns. They behave differently. We have been unable to predict their responses, and this poses a danger.”

  “The Axiom Group wants to help,” Yellow Tie says. “We want to provide security to this region and to the entire world.”

  “But security is impossible when unknowns exist,” Blue Tie says. “Security is impossible when hundreds of thousands of unknowns exist.”

  Silence. Yellow Tie and Blue Tie both watch me with pained expressions. Absurdly, I find myself glancing at Black Tie for guidance, but he continues to be little more than statuary.

  “What do you want with me?” I finally snap, and it’s like pushing a skipping record needle back onto its groove. Their smiles blink on again.

  “You’re like them,” Yellow Tie says, and slides her palm across the table again, not quite touching me. “But you’re different. You influence them.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “It’s widely known that you instigated this deviation,” Blue Tie says. “You caused these unknowns to appear.”

  “I didn’t do anything. It just happened.”

  Yellow Tie leans toward me, fixing me with a look of intimacy that suggests it’s time to brush aside the posturing and be real with each other. “We need your help,” she says softly. “We want everyone to be secure in their places. We want to eliminate confusion. But we’re finding it difficult to communicate the benefits to these non-standard individuals. They are unnaturally resistant to our help.”

  Her face is about two feet from mine, eyes big and imploring. I notice that her makeup goes all the way down her neck and I wonder if it covers her whole body, bronzing her veiny breasts and smoothing her withered holes. A scent like overripe pineapple wafts up from beneath her collar.

  “Corpses know what death smells like,” I say, staring her in the face. “Your cheap perfume can’t hide it.”

  Her expression holds for a moment. Then it flashes into a smile. Black Tie steps around the table and shoves the wire into my neck.

  “Unfortunately,” Blue Tie says as I convulse, “if you are unable to recognize either the rewards of working with us or the risks of refusing, coercion does become necessary at this time.”

  “If at any time during this interview you would like to accept our offer,” Yellow Tie says, “simply say ‘yes.’ ”

  Electric shock is a strange pain. At this voltage, very little physical damage is occurring, but my nerves still throw a tantrum. My muscles clench into knots, fire erupts in my joints, my bones tell my brain they’re being shattered, and my brain itself complains of hot coals and daggers. But when Black Tie removes the wire, there’s no harm done. No blood no foul, as they say in sports.

  Fascinating.

  The pitchmen watch me and wait. I sit in my chair, looking idly around the room. They frown, and Black Tie pokes the wire into my throat.

  My neck tendons bulge. Bolts of pain flash up and down my spine and I swear I can feel my brain heating up like meat in a microwave. But I watch all this suffering from my hotel balcony, taking f
ootage from afar with an expensive zoom lens. The pain is real. I’m aware that I’m in agony. But I just don’t care.

  Black Tie removes the wire and Blue and Yellow watch me expectantly.

  I shrug.

  “This display of endurance is unnecessary,” Blue Tie says through his glued-on grin. “You cannot outlast your interview. It will continue until we reach one of two possible outcomes.”

  “One outcome is you assisting us,” Yellow Tie says.

  “The other is you dying.”

  I shrug again. “Been dead before. It’s not so bad.”

  Their smiles falter. I enjoy about three seconds of triumph, then the pitchmen cock their heads, listening. I hear a commotion through the wall behind me, a clatter of furniture, a muffled shout. The pitchmen regard me like cheery mannequins, wordless and motionless, as if waiting for something.

  Through the wall comes a high shriek of pain mixed with indignant fury. “Fuck you! Fuck you, you dressed-up sacks of shit! You Botoxed babyfuckers!”

  Julie.

  I lurch against my bonds, trying to turn the chair around. “Julie! I’m here!”

  Another scream, less rage this time, more pain. No words.

  “What are . . . doing to her?” I growl at the pitchmen, all my hard-won fluency melting away in the heat of panic.

  “We are making her a comparable offer,” Yellow Tie says.

  “Does she share your ambivalence toward discomfort?” Blue Tie asks me.

  Julie’s scream rises higher and higher and then breaks off, collapses into a sob.

  My eyes squeeze shut. I see fireworks. I see fire. I see flames roaring from rooftops, kids running from schools. I see rapturous faces watching the flames, watching me, hands clapping, applauding, eyes glittering in the orange light, and a bottle in my hand, a flaming rag stuffed into it—

  I see a cheap plywood casket descending into a hole in the ground, a preacher sprinkling platitudes into it like piss into a toilet while fools watch and pretend to weep—

  I see a blond woman in a forest, bruised and bloody, eyes full of loathing as she presses my gun to her forehead—

  I open my eyes.

  Julie is tied to a chair by my side, our shoulders almost touching. She is looking at me with a kind of bleakly apologetic smile, breathing hard, her eyes red and wet.

  “Hi, R,” she says.

  Her face is spotted with small bruises. Her lower lip is cracked and puffy. On the side of her neck just above the clavicle, precisely my favorite place to kiss, the skin is mottled with the bluish brown of an electrical burn.

  I feel the TV cables cutting into my ankles and forearms. I hear the chair creaking under the strain.

  “Stop,” she says gently. “I’m okay. Don’t give them what they want.”

  “Unfortunately,” Blue Tie says, “we do need to continue the interview at this time.”

  “Remember,” Yellow Tie says, “if at any time you would like to accept our offer, simply say ‘yes.’ ”

  Black Tie sticks the wire into the burn on Julie’s neck.

  “Stop it!” I scream as she writhes against her bonds. “Stop!”

  “If you would like to accept our offer, simply say—”

  “We can’t . . . do what you want!” I sputter, choking on my tongue. “Even if . . . wanted to . . . can’t! We don’t control the Dead!”

  “Our reports show that you are viewed as leadership figures by the non-living population,” Yellow Tie says. “We look forward to working with you toward a greater mutual understanding.”

  “Yes!” Julie growls through clenched teeth as she writhes in her chair. “Yes!”

  Black Tie removes the wire from Julie’s neck and she slumps over, gasping.

  “You agree to assist us?” Yellow Tie asks, her smile radiating goodwill.

  “Yes,” Julie wheezes.

  I stare at her, unsure what to feel.

  “You are aware, of course,” Blue Tie says, “that these interviews will remain available to you throughout our partnership. If at any point your cooperation wanes, they will resume.”

  “We believe in ongoing commitment to excellence,” Yellow Tie says. “ ‘Yes’ should be more than just a word.”

  “Oh,” Julie says, straightening up in her chair. “Well in that case, no.”

  Yellow Tie tilts her head and pouts like a disappointed mother.

  “We apologize for our failure to communicate effectively,” Blue Tie says.

  Black Tie sets the power cord down and opens a case full of electrician’s tools.

  “Julie,” I plead with her, though I don’t know what I’m pleading for. Do I want to give in? Do I want to do my best to help them own the Dead along with the Living? How much of the world would I burn to keep Julie safe?

  “It’s okay,” she says. “We’ll be okay.”

  Black Tie pulls out a pair of cable shears. He sets them on Julie’s lap and pries open her fist, forcing her fingers flat against the chair’s arm.

  “No,” I say. “No. No. Julie, I can’t . . .”

  “R, listen to me,” she says, her voice beginning to tremble. “I’m not going to help them. That’s my choice. So no matter what they do to me . . .”

  Her eyes dart toward her hand as Black Tie spreads her fingers out and picks up the shears. They dart back to me, wide with panic. “No matter what they do to me—”

  She shrieks. The tip of her ring finger falls to the floor. One unique print, one yellow-painted nail, rolling across the filthy floor and vanishing beneath a locker.

  My mind becomes a furnace of incoherent horror. “Stop!” I scream at Yellow Tie. “I’ll do it! What do you want me to do, I’ll do it!”

  “R!” Julie snaps savagely. “You don’t get to surrender for me! It’s my choice and I’ve fucking made it!”

  Black Tie moves the shears further up, toward the base of the finger.

  “You don’t always have to keep me safe,” she says, her voice suddenly soft, and she somehow manages a smile. “That’s not why I love you.”

  A tiny sound, like the snap of a fresh carrot.

  Blood on Black Tie’s shirt, an artful splatter that looks just like one of Julie’s paintings, she’s embarrassed by all her work but she singles that one out for scorn, a silly attempt to be Jackson Pollack, she calls it, I don’t care that it’s derivative, I appreciate the form, the bright colors, the passion in the wild swings of her brush—

  I break the front legs off my chair and lunge into Black Tie and knock him to the floor and head-butt him over and over; his nose breaks, his eye socket breaks, I’m going to do this until everything breaks, until both our heads merge into one mass of bone fragments and pulp—

  He stabs the power cord into the base of my skull and this time I feel it. True pain, up close and intimate, bursting out from the core of my brain and crackling through my eyes and teeth. I have tumbled off my balcony and into the muddy streets, and the locals are swarming over me with clubs and knives and fists, hissing, Welcome, foreigner. Is it everything you hoped?

  I see Julie high above me as I writhe on the floor. Warm drops of her blood fall on my face like tropical rain, and behind her agony, I see sadness. I see grief. I see our tender little dream receding into blackness.

  FACES DRIFT PAST ME as I float through my delirium. I see the pitchmen, their grins gone, their expressions slack, communicating with each other through small gestures and occasional grunted vocalizations. I see Julie being carried away by a man in a beige jacket. I call out from somewhere in the darkness and grasp around frantically, trying to find my body in all these suffocating shadows. I succeed in jerking my limbs and emitting a faint groan, and the man in the beige jacket turns around. At the end of my blurry tunnel of vision, I see the face of an old friend.

  Perry’s eyes are troubled and he shakes his head as if to say, Don’t panic. It’ll be okay. And for some reason, I believe him. I stop thrashing. I watch the ghost of the man I killed carry away the body of the w
oman we both love, and I sink back into the shadows.

  • • •

  “Can you hear me . . . look up . . .”

  A soft, smoky voice, imperfect in pitch but rich in timbre.

  “The clouds are lifting . . . the window’s open . . . time to grow a pair of wings . . .”

  The tune is familiar. The words, doubly so. Lines from a film merged with melody from a memory. A girl in a field. A man reaching out to her from miles away.

  “Look up . . . look up . . .”

  I open my eyes and look up. Julie smiles down at me. My head is resting on her lap and she is stroking my hair with her right hand. Her left hand lies limp on her knee, wrapped in bloody gauze.

  “Lazy boy,” she murmurs. “You’ve been getting a lot of sleep lately. Feel refreshed?”

  I drag myself upright and then collapse against her shoulder as my head pops like a water balloon, gushing agony into every corner of my body. My brain. That lump of boiled hamburger that I’ve protected for so long, the only part I ever considered worth the effort. How can it possibly be functioning through pain like this?

  “I guess that’s a ‘no,’ ” Julie says. She runs her fingers through my hair again, gently massaging my scalp. It helps.

  We are sitting on a tile floor against a tile wall in a dark, sour-smelling room. The only light comes from a flickering bulb in the hall outside, leaking into our cell through the door’s barred window. We’re in jail. A couple of young deviants caught tearing up the town. Drinking. Smoking. Heavy petting at the drive-in.

  “Are you . . . okay?” I manage to croak as I crawl back into my body.

  She chuckles. “What’s left of me is. Our hosts were kind enough to stitch up the stump, which I guess means they’re not planning to kill me yet. Hooray.” Her fingers trace around the burn on the back of my skull. “What about you?”

  I pull myself upright and stare at nothing, waiting for the damage report. My body feels raw, dried out, like all my joints and muscles have been lightly seared. Waves of nausea wash over me, followed by an undertow of feverish heat. And of course, my head. The steady throb of blood pounding against constricted vessels, squeezing against my sinuses, crushing my eyes in their sockets.