Chapter Thirteen #4
When a stout former woman in a museum uniform lurches from a corner, I yank Everett up a short flight of steps and into the cab of the Jupiter steam locomotive.
Try as she might, she cannot climb the three steps to reach us, or open the gate to the cab, either.
A simple poke in the heart, and she’s down before the adrenaline even reaches my bloodstream.
Two more guards follow, to the same end—no steps, no latches, no handles.
If a zombie has to do more than shuffle along a flat plane of existence, it’s out of luck.
“This is weirdly comforting,” Everett says, watching the fourth and final guard face-plant beneath the Jupiter’s pistons. Now that the wing is cleared of threats, Everett begins to loosen up more, too, slipping behind the wheel of a curvaceous 1948 silver sedan and tipping an imaginary hat to me.
“Ma’am,” he greets me from the rolled-down window, before stubbing out a fake cigarette. “Don’t blame me for this zombie apocalypse, I voted for Marilyn Monroe.”
I laugh as I board a real-deal Conestoga wagon, though I didn’t understand a thing he just said and won’t ask, either. I’m too busy admiring the sturdy wooden bench and struts. Find some mules, and this wouldn’t be a bad option if my rig gives out.
The hour passes in a blur of Americana, the occasional zombie guard, and bizarrely, stuffed animals, once we make our way next door to the Natural History Museum.
“It’s like a zoo. That’s dead.” I frown at the tiger snarling down at me, its pounce as frozen in place as the door guard who did not check my bag, despite what the signs said. “Is everything here already dead?”
“Yep, pretty much.” Everett walks up behind me, the warmth of his body touching me, even though he doesn’t. It raises the small, soft hairs on my neck, the skin behind my ears tingling. I’m struck with the desire for him to hug me again, but from behind.
With sex.
“Well, maybe not everything,” he says, his voice its own tickle against my cheek.
I turn to question him, stopping when I realize that any more would put his lips in kissing distance.
He seems to be thinking the same thing as his gaze moves from my mouth to my eyes.
For the first time since we left his sister’s house, he smiles, really smiles, a genuine, hopeful thing, and my insides flutter as if my organs are trying to flirt with him, too.
“Come on.” He scoops Chicken up to his shoulder and takes my hand, and together we walk past tall giraffes stooped low, bowing zebras, a harassed-looking hippo.
All animals I’ve seen in books and pictures, but never in person.
Here, stuffed and on display, they seem both realer and more fantastical than they’ve ever been.
This lion that once prowled the savannas of Africa, now gutted and made to pose like a king over this exhibit.
It stares out with large, decorative black eyes that someone put there. Because it was their job.
Growing up in isolation may have made me weird, but what is these people’s excuse?
We don’t stop until we reach the entrance of the Butterfly Pavilion. There are no guards on duty here, so there’s no reason to let go of each other’s hand. Everett hangs on tight as he holds the first door open for me, then the second.
And then, there’s life. Beautiful life.
Banks of tropical flowers bloom from the low beds, with hundreds of butterflies floating above them or perched on their leaves, the iridescent blues and blacks and yellow-golds of their wings blinking open and closed like eyes.
Winking at us. It steals my breath, watching them boldly dance across the air of this little secret paradise made just for them.
“They don’t know anything,” Everett murmurs as a large monarch flits around our heads.
And it’s simultaneously the most comforting and the saddest truth I’ve considered today.
Here in this enclave, there is no world-destroying virus, no zombie apocalypse, no horrors come nightfall.
Just butterflies, creatures that nature made beautiful in the hope that it would protect them somehow.
They don’t know, and they don’t have to, and I’m seized with bittersweet jealousy that Everett and I don’t have that luxury.
A slow hiss surrounds us as the misters come on, spritzing purple orchids and bell-shaped bulbs of flowers I’ve never seen before, filling the air with a gossamer cloud of water.
Everett leans his face up to the delicate mist settling on us before turning to face me.
His eyes grow wider as his smile blooms, and he reaches his free hand gently, gently upward.
At first, I think he’s going to caress my cheek, and suddenly my heart aches for him to touch me like that, gentle and lovely and as unconcerned with what’s outside as these butterflies are.
But his hand reaches past my cheek up to my hair.
The lightest touch, then he pulls away, a vibrant blue butterfly perched on his finger.
“They think you belong here.” His face is dreamlike through the mist between us. Framed by tiny rainbows and clouds of butterflies. “The most beautiful of all their flowers.”
The grand blue butterfly flits away, unconcerned, and Everett tugs me closer by our still-joined hands.
I lift my chin, willing him to forget everything I ever said about boundaries and survival, willing him to claim this moment for us and these carefree butterflies instead. His eyes sparkle with pure mischief.
“Come on. Let’s go play astronauts.”