Allison Hewitt Is Trapped

by Roux, Madeleine

  Just to the left and around the cash registers is the rest of the store and, more importantly, hundreds of bookshelves filled with books. The nights of unbridled tedium come tearing out of my subconscious. My focus is gone, I can’t concentrate. I need to get the books.

  I set down the full bags. That’s my first mistake. With a quick glance in Ted’s direction I can see that he’s still busy with the cooler, so I jog over to the nearest bookcase and begin shoving books under my left arm, squeezing them against my side. It doesn’t matter what books they are, I just need them all. Dante, de Laclos, Austen, and Dickens—all of them are in my arms and the weight of them, the feel of the new, glossy covers on my fingers is beautiful.

  Then I hear a sound, a terrible, hoarse sound from just to my left and I acknowledge then that I’ve made a stupid mistake. There are three more of them, bigger than Mr. Masterson, and they’ve somehow managed to stop groaning long enough to surprise me.

  Oh fuck, I think, feeling the sweat pop out all over my face and neck. I can’t find the ax. I’ve left it out of reach. It’s back by Ted with the bags of food.

  And everything was going so well.

  I throw the nearest thing, a monster copy of Whitman’s collected works, and it hits a zombie square in the face. It doesn’t stop it but it sure as hell slows it down. The tragedy of it is, I can’t keep all the books in my arms, an unforgivable oversight. I scramble back toward the cash registers and the food, panting like an idiot underneath the sweatshirt around my face. The other two zombies are slow, hungry maybe, and it’s made them sluggish. It’s hot as all hell in there and the sweat is pooling at my temples and dripping down my neck, joining the perspiration on my collarbone and the deafening thunder of my pulse.

  “What the fuck!” Ted screams, yanking me forward by the front of my shirt. I grab the ax and my share of the food bags. We break into a sprint, going back down the stairs. He’s just barely managing to carry the heavy, full bags and the bat but we get down the stairs safely. Neither of us bother to dispatch the monster shuffling toward us from the broken windows, we’re too close, too near to safety. Ted pounds on the door with the bat and I can hear him whimpering inside his head wrap.

  “Where are they? Where are they?” I’m shouting. I don’t know why I’m shouting since Ted is right there in front of me, his black hair trembling above the face wrap. The door isn’t opening, I can’t hear anything inside. I glance over my shoulder and the zombies are right on top of us, grunting and staring and if there was any humor in their eyes, then they’re laughing at Ted and me, who are flailing like idiots against the locked door. That door, that fucking door, the door that kept us safe.

  I drop all the shit in my arms and pick up the ax and swing and swing, blindly, feverishly. There’s blood and gray, smelly globs flying in every direction. I don’t know if I’m chopping up one or two or three of them but it doesn’t matter, I just keep swinging until I hear the sweetest sound in the world: a thump and a click and the door opening for us, just for us. I turn and kick the bags inside. I kick until someone grabs me by the arm and pulls me inside.

  The door shuts and I’m home, safe, alive.

  COMMENTS

  Isaac says:

  September 20, 2009 at 2:24 pm

  If you heard sirens in the area, it’s possible that a police car or a different emergency services vehicle has been abandoned nearby. And if you guys are brave / foolhardy enough you could strike out a couple of blocks. Ambulances carry medical supplies—you haven’t mentioned them so far in your blog, so I assume you haven’t got any, and sooner or later someone is going to get hurt. Firefighters’ jackets would be okay for makeshift armor; thick clothing protects from bites. And of course the police have guns, so any officers who didn’t make it could have pistols or better with them. I know it sounds cold, taking stuff from the dead, but this is life and death.

  Also, I doubt the virus (or whatever) is airborne; you would definitely have caught it from such close proximity to the infected. An exchange of fluids (like a speck of blood landing in your mouth or eyes) is probably what you should watch for. The depressing thing is, it seems despite the zombies, humans are still their own worst enemies.

  Allison says:

  September 20, 2009 at 5:37 pm

  Thanks, Isaac. I’d tell you to be safe but it sounds like you’re more prepared than we are. We’ve got a few first aid kits but nothing substantial. We would strike out but I don’t know how the others would feel about it. Ted might go along but I’m sure Matt would come up with some reason for us to stay inside.

  September 21, 2009—The Botany of Desire

  And now, with absolutely no ado, 5 Things I Would Literally Prostitute Myself For:

  1. A hot shower (At least ten minutes—come on, I’m selling my body here.)

  2. A vegetable. Any vegetable (maybe not beets)

  3. Toothpaste and a toothbrush

  4. A functioning goddamned toilet

  5. A Panzer VIII Maus

  COMMENTS

  Isaac says:

  September 21, 2009 at 12:46 pm

  Add a few pounds of bandages and Neosporin and you’ve just about got my list.

  Allison says:

  September 21, 2009 at 1:09 pm

  You’re thinking too practically, Isaac. This is the end of the world, right? Tanks and toilets, my friend, tanks and toilets.

  Mel says:

  September 21, 2009 at 2:35 pm

  New Orleans gone. Attempting to escape by water and hoping Cuba is untouched.

  D.J. says:

  September 21, 2009 at 3:08 pm

  Is there a way to reverse this? Amputation? Medicine?

  Isaac says:

  September 21, 2009 at 5:59 pm

  I wouldn’t trust it. If someone is infected you should quarantine them or, if you can stomach it, end it for them.

  September 23, 2009—Pandora

  “Good night survivors, Isaac, D.J. and Mel. Good night sun, good night moon, good night laptop, I think we’ll all be gone soon.”

  Nope, nothing, not a drooping eyelid, not even the softest suggestion of a snore. Nothing seems to work, not even a cheerful little lullaby can put me to sleep. I’ve become an insomniac.

  It began innocently enough. It started with a strange coincidence. After Ted and I returned with the loot, we rationed it out. I feel something happening with Ted, something like friendship or solidarity. He didn’t mention my complete lapse of judgment, the lapse that almost led to us being zombie snacks. I don’t know why he did it, but it made me glow a little with relief.

  We’ve worked out the rations to roughly this:

  2 Bags of chips per person per day

  2 Drinks (juice first because of the expiration date) per person per day

  3 or 4 Candies per person per day

  2 Cookies each, to be eaten at the owner’s discretion

  It really isn’t much but it’s the best we can do. There are still a few sticks of beef jerky left in the refrigerator and an old cling-wrapped muffin of indeterminate origin that no one has been brave enough (or dumb enough) to eat.

  After we finished rationing the food we sat down to eat. Ted and I kept mum for the most part. Janette seems extremely fragile these days; she’s never handled gore well, not in books or movies, and so we spared her the details of our expedition. Poor Phil ate in his office still curled up on the floor like a child silently enduring a time-out. He mumbled a quiet “Thank you” when I handed him a bag of Doritos and a soda.

  The rest of us ate at the table, sitting beneath the pale, buzzing glow of the emergency lights, crunching and chewing, each of us wrestling with our own tangled thoughts. Matt has been much more cheerful. I think he feels bad for voting against the mission in the first place and he’s demonstrated what one might almost call “enthusiasm”—or as much as his droopy basset-hound face can muster.

  It was after dinner or thereabouts that I noticed the remarkable thing on the floor. It was wedged beneath
the counters across from the door. At first I thought it might be a packet of papers or an old “Team Work” pamphlet that had been dropped and forgotten long ago. I waited until the others had left the table, separating to opposite corners of the room. Hollianted generally try to keep their distance so they can cuddle and make out in peace. Janette and Matt started up a game of poker with a deck of old cards they had found. Matt was officially out one shirt; it was spattered with grime and zombie juice.

  I pretended to knock the shirt off the counter and bent down, grabbing the thing wedged under the counter and shoving it into my jeans pocket. Matt looked over at me as I put his shirt back on the counter, staring at me as if I were a fly he had just noticed hovering over his head.

  “Sorry. Clumsy,” I think I muttered.

  Matt turned his attention and seething death glare back to the card game, and I grabbed my laptop and shuffled into the safe room. That’s where I am now, my screen propped right next to the television monitor. The store is quieter these days. Whatever commotion Ted and I had stirred up settled, and fewer and fewer hunched figures drift by the cameras.

  And I’ve been too distracted to give them much thought. What did I find in my pocket that night? A book. Miraculously it had made its way into the break room, kicked inside during the scuffle. I must have dropped it just before Matt opened the door and somehow managed to knock it inside. The damn thing made it, the lone survivor, the shipwrecked castaway. This alone might not seem very exciting or remarkable, but when I took the book back to the safe room I couldn’t believe which one it was.

  The Awakening—my mother’s favorite book.

  Elation … Joy … Complete disbelief … Here comes the crazy train, pulling into the station. Toot toot!

  I don’t believe in a higher power, I never have, but I must admit that for a quick, flashing second I felt the presence or maybe the interference of something supernatural. It just seemed too coincidental, too perfect. For a moment, I sat with the book sitting on my open palms, just staring at the cover as if it were an offering, a bowl of blessed incense. From that point on, from the moment the book came into my possession, I stopped sleeping.

  Look, I know this isn’t exactly the hand of God reaching down to give me a sign or something. When I was in grade school my friends and I would play that Ouija board game at sleepovers. We would scare ourselves witless, watching in openmouthed terror as the little pointed marker spelled out D-E-D. Close enough for us, close enough to keep us up all night wondering which of us would die during the night. Years later a boyfriend would explain to me why those board games worked. Tiny, minute vibrations in the fingertips communicated the desired outcome. So your conscious mind might not be thinking G-H-O-S-T but your subconscious is. That’s all it takes to move the marker slowly, slowly, centimeter by centimeter across the board.

  Maybe it was my subconscious at work. Maybe I had grabbed The Awakening, shoved it beneath my armpit and locked on, determined no matter what not to let it go. Either way, divine intervention or trick of the mind, I had the book now. I don’t know why I guarded it so jealously, not allowing the others to see that I had found it. That’s stopped now and they’ve been passing it around for the last few days, taking turns reading and rereading it.

  But the first night I had it, after we had rationed the loot and had dinner, I went to the safe room to be alone with the book. I read it front to back and started over again. Then I began to get drowsy and decided to get some sleep. I drifted off, the neon light of the monitor covered my face and hands as I made a cradle for my head to rest on.

  Maybe the book didn’t start the insomnia, maybe the dream did, but the book started the dream so the exact culprit doesn’t matter. The dream went like this: I was back out in the store with Ted, swinging my ax around and grabbing food. Then something rears up behind me screeching and rasping like a banshee. I turn and it’s one of them, one of the undead, and it looks like it should be Susan but it’s not. It’s my mom and she’s wearing that fucking shirt with the sloppy, little kid handwriting …

  WORLD’S BEST MOM.

  I can’t move. I can’t stop looking at her face but I want to run, get away from those hollow, glaring eyes. They’re not my mom’s eyes anymore. Her hands are clawing at me, the flesh gone, showing the gleaming bone beneath. Her skull is peeking through the sagging holes in her face. She’s bald, of course, the chemo took her hair months ago, and there are garish purple spots all over the top of her head. Her fingers are ripping through my shirt. She’s tearing at my skin but there’s nothing I can do. I can’t kill her, I can’t swing the ax at her neck, I just stop and wait and let her rip me apart.

  I wake up in a cold, shivering sweat. There are little beads of moisture on the counter and the backs of my hands are slippery and wet. The monitor flickers and shifts for a minute and then the camera fixes on Susan’s headless body, still there, still wearing the T-shirt.

  It’s after that, after the dream ends, that I can’t sleep.

  And now, writing this, my hands are shaking because I can’t control my nerves. My eyes hurt and they feel sandy, filled up with grit and blurry from hours and hours spent in the dark, wakeful night. I’m clammy all over and I know it would go away if I could just rest, just sleep for an hour or two but I can’t. Something in my brain won’t let me. I think about sleep constantly and I try to read to stay distracted, to keep my mind off the fact that when evening comes nothing will happen; I’ll close my eyes and feel perfectly, horribly awake.

  It has to stop. If I go on like this much longer I’ll be useless, weak, dull and sick.

  It has to stop.

  COMMENTS

  Isaac says:

  September 23, 2009 at 10:33 pm

  You’re not insane. Stay alert, try to create a routine and stick to it. It’ll be easier on your body if you can find a rhythm. Don’t let your immune system get too weak.

  Mel says:

  September 23, 2009 at 11:20 pm

  Boat leaves today and I’ll be on it. We saw a few of the creatures in the water but they looked slow. I think we can make it. You won’t hear from me again, Allison but I’ll be thinking of you. Goodbye.

  Allison says:

  September 23, 2009 at 11:55 pm

  Good luck on the waves, Mel. Send us a postcard from Cuba and some rum. Lots and lots of rum.

  September 25, 2009—The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

  Knock, knock …

  (Come on, say it.)

  Fine. Who’s there?

  BLAGRRUUGGHHEEEFGH.

  “You’re fucking losing it too, aren’t you?” That was Ted’s enthusiastic response to the joke. I think he laughed though, later, in secret. “First Phil and now you? Do you like stay up all night thinking this shit up?”

  “No,” I replied sheepishly. “Not all night.”

  Sorry. That’s the kind of moronic shit that passes for humor around here these days. It’s bleak. Somewhere between my twentieth bag of Lays and my tenth SoBe, I must have started to get a little depressed. Yes, it’s official. We’ve lost that loving feeling, our chutzpah, our joie de vivre. Not that we were ever chipper about being holed up in a beige corporate break room, but at least there was no complaining, no dull, empty staring.

  I never thought it would get so bad so fast. Janette and Matt have lost their taste for cards and spend their days playing nonsensical word games and endless rounds of Would You Rather. Phil literally will not come out of his office unless it’s to use the bathroom, which brings us to our most recent situation: the house of unspeakable horrors that is our bathroom.

  There is no running water, limited toilet paper and no working ventilation. I’ll let you imagine for yourself what the smell is like because if I try to describe it our tête-à-têtes will come swiftly to an end as I destroy my laptop beneath a fountain of neon orange Dorito vomit.

  Really, we stink.

  It’s something we can no longer blithely ignore, not only because it’s an astro
nomically bad odor that has begun seeping out from under the restroom door, but also because we’re all too crabby and sullen to bother with manners. Between the vicious gas we’re all suffering from and the nearby sulfurous death chamber just waiting to unleash a new round of villainy every time someone needs to take a piss, it’s become a code-red situation.

  Thus, a meeting is called.

  * * *

  “All right, guys,” I say, trying my best to keep a straight face. I’m constantly in danger of bursting into giggles. For one because we’re having a group heart-to-heart about farts, and also because I haven’t slept in days. I’m a giddy, shadowy shell of a human being. I know that the smudges beneath my eyes are beginning to resemble army-issue duffel bags but this matter demands our immediate attention and I’m determined to get it straightened out. I can see Ted is about to start laughing any second so I shoot him a suitably grown-up look.

  “I don’t think I need to point out to everyone how fucking awful it smells in here,” I say, putting my hands on my hips, striking a serious pose. “We need to figure something out because I’d rather be eaten by those god-awful things out there than let this get any worse.”

  “There are the bathrooms out in the hall,” Matt offers, tearing open a bag of Cheetos. He’s looking less like a homeless lumberjack these days.

  “Yes! Exactly my thought! We need to start using them, but wisely, okay? And I know this is gross, but we need to empty the toilet in here. We’ll do it in shifts so no one passes out. There’s a bucket in the maintenance closet at the end of the hall. I don’t think the zombies will mind a little shit and piss so we’ll just toss it out into the store,” I explain. At this, Phil’s head jerks up as if someone’s socked him in the gutsky. “Yes, Phil, what is it?”