Warm Bodies Read Online Free PDF

coy smile. ‘No,’ she says, and returns her attention to her work.
    ‘What are you writing about?’
    ‘Nooot tellinnng.’
    ‘Journal or poetry?’
    ‘Both, silly.’
    ‘Am I in it?’
    She chuckles.
    I lace my arms around her shoulders. She burrows into me a little deeper. I bury my face in her hair and kiss the back of her head. The spicy smell of her shampoo—
    M is looking at me. ‘You . . . have more?’ he grunts. He holds out his hand for me to pass it. But I don’t pass it. I take another bite and close my eyes.
    ‘Perry,’ Julie says.
    ‘Yeah.’
    We are at our secret spot on the Stadium roof. We lie on our backs on a red blanket on the white steel panels, squinting up at the blinding blue sky.
    ‘I miss airplanes,’ she says.
    I nod. ‘Me too.’
    ‘Not flying in them. I never got to do that anyway with Dad the way he is. I just miss airplanes . That muffled thunder in the distance, those white lines . . . the way they sliced across the sky and made designs in the blue? My mom used to say it looked like Etch A Sketch. It was so beautiful.’
    I smile at the thought. She’s right. Airplanes were beautiful. So were fireworks. Flowers. Concerts. Kites. All the indulgences we can no longer afford.
    ‘I like how you remember things,’ I say.
    She looks at me. ‘Well, we have to. We have to remember everything. If we don’t, by the time we grow up it’ll be gone for ever.’
    I close my eyes and let the scorching light blaze red through my lids. I let it saturate my brain. I turn my head and kiss Julie. We make love there on the blanket on the Stadium roof, four hundred feet above the ground. The sun stands guard over us like a kind-hearted chaperone, smiling silently.
    ‘Hey!’
    My eyes snap open. M is glaring at me. He makes a grab for the piece of brain in my hand and I yank it away.
    ‘ No ,’ I growl.
    I suppose M is my friend, but I would rather kill him than let him taste this. The thought of his filthy fingers poking and fondling these memories makes me want to rip his chest open and squish his heart in my hands, stomp his brain till he stops existing. This is mine .
    M looks at me. He sees the warning flare in my eyes, hears the rising air-raid klaxon. He drops his hand away. He stares at me for a moment, annoyed and confused. ‘Bo . . . gart,’ he mutters, and locks himself in a toilet stall.
    I leave the bathroom with abnormally purposeful strides. I slip in through the door of the 747 and stand there in the faint oval of light. Julie is lying back in a reclined seat, snoring gently. I knock on the side of the fuselage and she bolts upright, instantly awake. She watches me warily as I approach her. My eyes are burning again. I grab her messenger bag off the floor and dig through it. I find her wallet, and then I find a photo. A portrait of a young man. I hold the photo up to her eyes.
    ‘I’m . . . sorry,’ I say hoarsely.
    She looks at me, stone-faced.
    I point at my mouth. I clutch my stomach. I point at her mouth. I touch her stomach. Then I point out the window, at the cloudless black sky of merciless stars. It’s the weakest defence for murder ever offered, but it’s all I have. I clench my jaw and squint my eyes, trying to ease their dry sting.
    Julie’s lower lip is tensed. Her eyes are red and wet. ‘Which one of you did it?’ she says in a voice on the verge of breaking. ‘Was it that big one? That fat fuck that almost got me?’
    I stare at her for a moment, not grasping her questions. And then it hits me, and my eyes go wide.
    She doesn’t know it was me.
    The room was dark and I came from behind. She didn’t see it. She doesn’t know. Her penetrating eyes address me like a creature worthy of address, unaware that I recently killed her lover, ate his life and digested his soul, and am right now carrying a prime cut of his brain in the front pocket of my slacks. I can feel it burning there like a coal of guilt, and I reflexively back away from her, unable to