Free The New Hunger by Isaac Marion

he?”
    Nora doesn’t answer right away. She is in good shape, but the hill is steep and stealing her breath. “Remember when we stayed with Auntie Shirley on our way out here?”
    He watches the pavement under his feet. “Yes.”
    “Remember how when she got bitten, she just stood in the kitchen all day, washing the dishes over and over?”
    “Yes.”
    “And she didn’t try to eat Mom until three days later?”
    “Yes.”
    “Sometimes when people turn into…‘zombies’ or whatever…it takes a while for them to figure out what they’re supposed to do. Maybe their personalities don’t disappear right away, so at first they’re just confused, and they don’t know who they are or what’s happening to them.”
    Addis is quiet for a while, digesting this. “So why is that one following us?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe ’cause his girlfriend wants to eat us. Or maybe just ’cause I was the last person he saw before he died.”
    Addis smiles. “Maybe he likes you.”
    “Maybe the girl likes you.”
    His smile vanishes.
    • • •
     
    By the time they reach the hill’s main thoroughfare, Broadway Ave, the sun is on its way down. Nora realizes they must have slept a lot later than she intended. She can’t remember if they ever actually slept the night before. The days of scheduled meals and bed meway down. times feel like ancient myths. She struggles to remember the color of her mother’s eyes.
    They have entered a neighborhood that looks like it was once vibrant. Colorful storefronts with artful graffiti, concert posters smothering every pole, and dozens of stylishly dressed corpses littering the streets, their scooped-out skulls brimming with rainwater.
    Nora opens her mouth to tell Addis not to look at them, then realizes how absurd that is. She lets him quietly absorb the massacre, hoping he will somehow process all his horrible experiences without too much damage. That he will find a way to bathe in poison without letting it inside.
    “Look!” he says, pointing toward the park on the other side of the street. “A swimming pool!”
    The park is huge, and may once have been beautiful. Rolling hills of grass, now overgrown with weeds. Tall, elegant lamp posts, now rusted. Its towering central fountain still produces a trickling stream where it must have once cascaded. The stream flows into a shallow pool less than a foot deep and fully accessible, none of the usual municipal railings and warnings, as if the city actually wanted people to play in it. Perhaps that headless couple holding hands in the bus stop used to sit on the benches here and watch their toddlers splash. Perhaps the college kids now feeding flies in the street used to get drunk and lie on their backs in this pool late at night, staring up at the stars, dreaming big dreams for themselves and for each other. Nora is going to cry again. This fucking city. This fucking world. When will she harden to it?
    She watches Addis peel off his shoes and socks, sweaty and filthy, spotted red from bleeding blisters. She watches him cool his feet in the algae-slimed water. She wants to join him—she is drenched in sweat and the summer air seems to ripple around her in little pulses—but she needs to stay ready. They are not safe.
    “Oh! Fuck!” she gasps as Addis palms a huge spray of water down the front of her tank-top. Addis almost falls over laughing.
    “You ass hole!” she snaps, but she can’t hide the smile on her face and Addis keeps laughing. She whips off her shoes and runs into the pool. Addis squeals and flees. Nora kicks water at his back as he hops out of the pool and sprints off into the shaggy grass.
    “Hey!” Nora shouts. “Come back!”
    “Can’t catch me!” he giggles, and keeps running. Nora can see in the blurring speed of his feet that he’s beyond her discipline. The feeling of running barefoot in a field of grass, tendons flexed tight, feet bouncing off the ground like springs. Like running on a beach.
    She lets