Standing so close to her, I find that I can smell her again. She has wiped much of the black blood off her skin, and through the gaps I can detect traces of her life-energy. It bubbles out and sparkles like champagne, igniting flashes deep in the back of my sinuses. Still holding her gaze, I rub my palm into a recent gash on my forearm, and although it’s nearly dry now, I manage to collect a thin smear of blood. I slowly spread this ink on her cheek and down her neck. She shudders, but doesn’t pull away. She is, at the bottom of everything, a very smart girl.
‘Okay?’ I ask, raising my eyebrows.
She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, cringes at the smell of my fluids, then nods. ‘Okay.’
I walk and she follows, stumbling along behind me and groaning every three or four steps. She is overdoing it, overacting like high school Shakespeare, but she will pass. We walk through crowds of Dead, shambling past us on both sides, and no one glances at us. To my amazement, Julie’s fear seems to be diminishing as we walk, despite the obvious peril of her situation. At a few points I catch her fighting a smile after letting out a particularly hammy moan. I smile too, making sure she doesn’t see me.
This is . . . new.
I take Julie to the food court, and she gives me an odd look when I immediately start moving towards the Thai restaurant. As we get closer she cringes and covers her nose. ‘Oh God,’ she moans. The warming bins in front are frothing with dried-up rot, dead maggots and mould. I’m pretty much impervious to odour by now, but judging by Julie’s expression, it’s foul. We dig around in the back room for a while, but the airport’s intermittent power means the freezers only work part-time, so everything inside is rancid. I head towards the burger joint. Julie gives me that quizzical look again and follows me. In the walk-in freezer we find a few burger patties that are currently cold, but have clearly been thawed and refrozen many times. Dead flies speckle the white freezer floor.
Julie sighs. ‘Well?’
I look off into the distance, thinking. The airport does have a sushi bar . . . but I remember a little about sushi, and if a few hours can spoil a fresh hamachi fillet, I don’t want to see what years can do.
‘God,’ Julie says as I stand there deliberating, ‘you really know how to plan a dinner date.’ She opens a few boxes of mouldy buns, wrinkles up her nose. ‘You’ve never done this before, have you? Taken a human home alive?’
I shake my head apologetically, but I wince at her use of the word ‘human’. I’ve never liked that differentiation. She is Living and I’m Dead, but I’d like to believe we’re both human. Call me an idealist.
I raise a finger as if to stall her. ‘One . . . more place.’
We walk to an unmarked side area of the food court. Several doors later, we’re in the airport’s central storage area. I prise open a freezer door and a cloud of icy air billows out. I hide my relief. This was starting to get awkward. We step inside and stand among shelves stacked high with in-flight meal trays.
‘What have we here . . .’ Julie says, and starts digging through the low shelves, inspecting the Salisbury steaks and processed potatoes. Thanks to whatever glorious preservatives they contain, the meals appear to be edible.
Julie scans the labels on the upper shelves she can’t reach and suddenly beams, showing rows of white teeth that childhood braces made perfect. ‘Look, pad thai! I love . . .’ She trails off, looking at me uneasily. She points to the shelf. ‘I’ll have that.’
I stretch over her head and grab an armful of frozen pad thai. I don’t want any of the Dead to see Julie eating this lifeless waste, these empty calories, so I lead her to a table hidden behind some collapsed postcard kiosks. I try to steer her as far away from the School as possible, but we can still hear the wretched screams echoing down the halls. Julie keeps her face utterly placid during even the shrillest wails, doing everything short of whistling a tune to show that she doesn’t notice the carnage. Is this for my benefit, or hers?
We sit down at the cafe table and I set one of the meal trays in front of her. ‘En . . . joy,’ I say.
She jabs at the frozen-solid noodles with a plastic fork. She looks at me. ‘You really don’t remember much, do you? How long has it been since you ate real food?’
I shrug.
‘How long has it been since you . . . died or whatever?’
I tap a finger against my temple and shake my head.
She looks me over. ‘Well, it can’t have been very long. You look pretty good for a corpse.’
I wince again at her language, but I realise she can’t possibly know the sensitive cultural connotations of the word ‘corpse’. M uses it sometimes as a joke, and I use it myself in some of my darker moments, but coming from an outsider it ignites a defensive indignation she wouldn’t understand. I breathe deep and let it go.
