The boy is in the airport. The hallways are dark, but he’s not scared. He runs through the shadowed food court, past all the unlit signs and mouldy leftovers, half-finished beers and cold pad thai. He hears the rattle of a solitary skeleton wandering in an adjacent corridor and quickly changes course, darting around the corner without pausing. The Boneys are slow now. The moment the boy’s dad and stepmom first came back here, something happened to them all. Now they wander aimlessly like bees in winter. They stand motionless, obsolete equipment waiting to be replaced.
The boy is carrying a box. It’s empty now, but his arms are tired. He runs into the connecting overpass and stops to get his bearings.
‘Alex!’
The boy’s sister appears behind him. She’s carrying a box, too. She has bits of tape stuck all over her fingers.
‘All done, Joan?’
‘All done!’
‘Okay. Let’s go get more.’
They run down the corridor. As they hit the conveyer, the power comes back on and the belt lurches under their feet. The boy and the girl are running barefoot at the speed of light, flying down the corridor like loping deer while the morning sun drifts up behind them. At the end of the corridor they nearly collide with another group of kids, all holding boxes.
‘All done,’ the kids say.
‘Okay,’ Alex says, and they run together. Some of the kids still wear tatters. Some of them are still grey. But most of them are alive. The kids lacked the instinctual programming of the adults. They had to be taught how to do everything. How to kill easily, how to wander aimlessly, how to sway and groan and properly rot away. But now the classes have stopped. No one is teaching them, and like perennial bulbs dried up and waiting in the winter earth, they are bursting back to life all on their own.
The fluorescent lights flicker and buzz, and the sound of a record needle scratches onto the speakers overhead. Some enterprising soul has hijacked the airport PA system. Sweet, swooning strings swell into the gloom, and Francis Albert Sinatra’s voice echoes lonely in the empty halls.
Something wonderful happens in summer . . . when the sky is a heavenly blue . . .
The dusty speakers pop and sizzle, short out and distort. The record skips. But it’s the first time in years this place’s inert air has been stirred by music.
As the kids run to the Arrivals gate to get fresh boxes, fresh rolls of tape, they pass a pale figure shambling down the hall. The zombie glances at the Living children as they run past, but doesn’t pursue them. Her appetite has been waning lately. She doesn’t feel the hunger like she used to. She watches the kids disappear around the corner, then continues on her way. She doesn’t know where she’s going exactly, but there’s a white glow at the end of this hallway, and it looks nice. She stumbles towards it.
Something wonderful happens in summer . . . when the moon makes you feel all aglow . . . You fall in love, you fall in love . . . you want the whole world to know . . .
She emerges into the waiting area of Gate 12, flooded with bright morning sunlight. Something in here is different than before. On the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the runways, someone has taped small photos to the glass. Side by side and stacked about five squares high, they form a strip that runs all the way to the end of the room.
Something wonderful happens in summer . . . and it happens to only a few. But when it does . . . yes when it does . . .
The zombie approaches the photos warily. She stands in front of them, staring with mouth slightly agape.
A girl climbing an apple tree. A kid spraying his brother with a hose. A woman playing a cello. An elderly couple gently touching. A boy with a dog. A boy crying. A newborn deep in sleep. And one older photo, creased and faded: a family at a water park. A man, a woman and a little blonde girl, smiling and squinting in the sun.
The zombie stares at this mysterious and sprawling collage. The sunlight glints off the name tag on her chest, so bright it hurts her eyes. For hours she stands there, motionless. Then she takes in a slow breath. Her first in months. Dangling limply at her sides, her fingers twitch to the music.
‘R.’
I open my eyes. I am lying on my back, arms folded behind my head, looking up at a flawless summer sky. ‘Yes?’
Julie stirs on the red blanket, scooting a little closer to me. ‘Do you think we’ll ever see jets up there again?’
I think for a moment. I watch the little molecules swim in my eye fluids. ‘Yes.’
‘Really?’
‘Maybe not us. But I think the kids will.’
‘How far do you think we can take this?’
‘Take what?’
‘Rebuilding everything. Even if we can completely end the plague . . . do you think we’ll ever get things back to the way they were?’
A lone starling swoops across the distant sky, and I imagine a white jet trail sketching out behind it, like a florid signature on a love note. ‘I hope not,’ I say.
