Allison Hewitt Is Trapped

by Roux, Madeleine

  “What?” he hisses, trying to grab my wrist. I tiptoe out of his reach. “No you won’t! Allison, come—Allison!”

  “I’m coming out!” I scream, trying to top the sound of burning metal and gunfire. The shots slow down and then stop. “Don’t shoot! I’m coming out!”

  “Hold your fire!”

  I carefully step out from behind the pickup, holding my hands in the air as a sign of surrender. I’m not absolutely positive they won’t gun me down anyway, but something tells me they want to say their piece. A little spray of dirt goes up at my feet, accompanied by the fut-fut-fut of a rifle.

  “I said hold your goddamn fire!”

  I take a big gasping swallow, forcing myself to keep going. In front of me, there are three cars lined up with the burning Humvee several yards away from the others. If only it had been a little closer the explosion might have caused a domino effect. The interior of the Humvee is still burning, the black smoke churning into the air above the other cars. I say cars, but they’re more like modified Jeeps. The tops are gone and they’ve been painted matte black. There’s an insignia painted on each hood, the design clumsily transferred by hand and already beginning to fleck and fade.

  “Don’t shoot!” I shout again and my voice cracks. “I’m not armed.”

  “Citizen! Drop the ax!”

  The man calling to me is standing up, his head poking up above the roll cage of the Jeep. He’s got an enormous, bushy black beard and very red lips. There’s a floppy canvas hat with a camouflage print on his head and a semiautomatic aimed right at me. I take a few more steps forward and then slowly, slowly crouch down and drop the ax into the dirt.

  “You killed two of my guys,” Black Beard shouts, running the back of his hand under his nose. I can feel the pressure of their weapons, the heat of eight or nine guns aimed at me. Aimed to kill.

  “You fired first,” I call back. I don’t even know if these are bad men, but I suspect they are. They would have gunned us down, killed people they might have instead had as allies. I look at their faces, at their intense, angry eyes and wonder, who is the enemy?

  “Where’s the doctor?”

  “We have him,” I say and shout back over my shoulder, “Julian! Wave at the nice men!”

  A hand pokes out from behind the tailgate, Julian’s hand. It wiggles back and forth like a puppy tail.

  “Look, citizen,” I say, close enough now that I don’t need to shout, “we can do this like civilized human beings. There are innocent people here—if you let them go then I’ll give you the doctor. I think it’s a fair trade. Those people had nothing to do with it. I’m the one who rescued him.”

  “Like civilized people, eh?” Black Beard says, chuckling. There’s a thin trickle of snot caught in his mustache. I can’t stop staring at it. “I think it’s a little late for that. We want what’s ours. Our val-ya-buls.”

  The wind shifts, pouring the black smoke over the Humvee’s hood and right into my eyes. Lovely.

  “Like I said, no one else needs to get hurt,” I say slowly, taking the opportunity to get a little closer. I scan the Jeeps: two men in the first car, three (including Black Beard) in the middle one and two in the third. Now I know. Now I know … If only there were more bullets. “I’ll get him for you, okay? Just … don’t shoot anybody. I’ll get your valuables.”

  “You best,” Black Beard says, grinning again with a shark’s mouth. “You best.”

  I walk backward, never letting my eyes leave the Territorials. I can’t imagine this is all of them. There must be more at the Walmart, but it doesn’t matter. They’ve played their hand and now it’s time for me to lay down my cards too.

  When I reach the pickup truck, Julian is ready with an ice-cold, petulant glare.

  “Shhh,” I whisper, kneeling down next to him. “Calm down. I’m not actually handing you over.”

  “Then what was all that about?” he hisses, shoving his face close to mine.

  “I needed to see how many. We’re going to have to get creative. Just stay here and for fuck’s sake, don’t throw any of those things while I’m out there. When you hear a commotion, see if you can take out one of the cars. After that, you go with the others in the opposite direction. Opposite direction, got it?”

  “We don’t have anything to fight with, they’ll flatten us.”

  “No they won’t. Just trust me, you’ll see. Do you have the bag?”

  He hands me the plastic bag and I maneuver around until my right side is close to him. “Hold my pocket open.”

  “Yeah. Sure,” he says, smiling sadly. “Nice try.”

  “Look, baby, if I wanted you to grab my crotch I’d just fucking ask.”

  Julian pulls open my jean pocket and holds it, his fingers still encased in the work glove. His hand is trembling badly. The wind is strong now, whipping at our clothes and hair but the powder is safe, undisturbed.

  “It’s okay,” I tell him. “It’s okay.”

  With a deep breath I take the baggy and set it into my pocket, making sure the opening is facing up. It’s difficult to do with the clumsy fleece gloves, but there’s no time to make mistakes, or to hesitate.

  “There,” I say, and Julian lets go of my pocket. I take the gun from the tailgate and tuck it into the back of my waistband, tugging down my sweatshirt until I’m sure it’s concealed.

  I look at Julian, at the forlorn little smile that still puts dimples in his cheeks. I can’t tell if he’s going to cry or punch me. There’s something different about him, something vulnerable. I can almost see what he might have been like as a kid, as an infant. And I feel that way too—innocent and scared and on the cusp of doing something I abhor.

  “I have to go,” I say. “Please get out of here. Please keep my friends safe.”

  “I’ll see you again.”

  “Yeah,” I tell him. “You will.”

  I leap out from behind the pickup and walk toward the Jeeps, fast, picking up speed, striding as quickly as I can without running. I pass the ax and let it lie. They see it on my face. I know they see it. The passenger in Black Beard’s car shifts, squinting at me through the windshield. It feels like walking across a border, entering into a new land with new rules.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Black Beard shouts, scrambling to get a good aim on me. “Not so fast.”

  “Calm down. Jesus. He won’t come,” I say, stone-faced. I’m at the driver’s side of Black Beard’s Jeep and he’s dropped down to see me face-to-face. “If he won’t come then I’ll just bring you to him. It’s only fair.”

  “You’re cold,” Black Beard says, appraising me with new admiration. He puts up a hand and the rest of the men seem to relax. “You’re damn cold.”

  “He’s a one-armed doctor. What the fuck am I supposed to do with a one-armed doctor anyway?”

  This is what we do in the name of survival. This is who we are now.

  “Do you like Captain America?” I ask conversationally as Black Beard gets out of the Jeep. I hold the door for him and move, just a little, so that I’m between him and the car. “I imagine you do.”

  “What the hell are you going on about, bitch?”

  “I’m not a big fan myself, but I remember this one scene in a Spider-Man comic—I’ll never forget it. He said, ‘When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world: no—”

  Bang—bang!

  “—you move.’ ”

  No more bullets, time for the big finish. I dip my hand into the baggy, digging in and grabbing as much powder as I can before flinging it at Black Beard. It hits him in the face, the eyes, crackling like a bag of Pop Rocks, the flesh bubbling and rupturing. I kick him too, right in the stomach. It’s a heartwarming Steven Seagal moment. The other men are scrambling to get a shot off without hitting their fearless leader, who is screaming and clutching his melting face.

  It’s too late.

  I’m in the Jeep, sho
ving it into reverse and slamming on the gas. The radio blasts to life, which certainly doesn’t help the fact that I already feel like my heart is going to explode. I kill the radio as the Jeep speeds directly backward. I jam on the brakes and turn it ninety degrees, heading the other way. I’m sure they all experience a moment of panic, a moment where they wonder whether to pursue the refugees or me. They choose me.

  Three people dead so ten others can live—eleven if I somehow manage to make it out alive.

  The gunfire follows, hitting the frame of the Jeep, singing like xylophone mallets against the metal. I hear the Molotov cocktail hit but Julian misses, and the two cars stay on me, not far enough behind. I pull the baggy of lye out of my pocket and toss it out the window; I throw the gloves out too. Now I just need to find that movie theater.

  “Just there. It’s on the other side down the frontage road, maybe half a mile away.”

  Where is the fucking thing? I careen around a corner, taking it hard to avoid a stalled minivan in the road. The dead Territorial in the passenger seat bounces against the window, a single bead of blood dripping down from my bullet hole in his forehead, his skull slamming into the glass. The semitrucks are on my left and I glimpse the door where I sneaked in to get Julian. I check the rearview mirror; one of the cars is lagging behind, one of the back tires sagging. Julian’s cocktail must have sent a screw or two into that tire and now they can barely keep up with their comrades.

  The Walmart seems to go on forever, the road curving tightly around the back of it. It’s a divided road, a concrete strip down the middle with trees and shrubs planted at two-foot intervals. Through the bare trees I see the edge of the Walmart and then a stretch of road and an intersection. There are cars strewn across the road haphazardly, like a deck of cards dropped and scattered on the floor. My chest is aching but I don’t know if it’s from my cracked rib or my heartbeat. There’s nothing left to do but carry on, go forward, bring these violent Neanderthals to their knees.

  A bright marquee shoots up behind a strip mall. The sign is navy blue and yellow, announcing some movie that looks more like a fill-in-the-blank SAT question than an advertisement. Most of the letters are missing, too many to even make a guess at what movie it might have been. I try to step harder on the gas, but I’m already pushing it into the floor. That’s when I hear it, the groaning and swearing in the backseat.

  I really need to work on my aim.

  He sits up and comes for me as we make the movie theater parking lot. The lot is full, as if everyone has come out for an exciting new blockbuster. I get the feeling Maria is right; acres of cars out here means hundreds of people—undead people—in there.

  The Territorial in the back grabs for the steering wheel with one hand and for his gun with the other. I duck my head, staying low as we fly down the open lane leading toward the theater. At this speed, we’ll hit the doors in about a minute. There’s the sound of automatic guns nailing the Jeep from behind and a sickening jolt as one of our back tires is hit. When he can’t reach the steering wheel he goes for my neck, his fingers slipping on my throat, wet with his own blood. As much as I struggle, he keeps scratching at me, clawing. We have to make it, we have to keep going …

  I elbow the guy, aiming for his face but hitting his shoulder instead. The gun goes off, and judging from the close little zip, less than an inch from my head. The theater looms up ahead, the marquee disappearing as we pass beneath the embellished overhang. There’s no time to stop this guy, no time to fight back. I snap my seat belt into place and watch the doors coming straight at us, watch the Jeep on our tail get closer and closer.

  I keep my eyes glued to the odometer and watch the needle climb.

  45 mph … 50 mph … 55 mph …

  The impact sends me rocking forward, the air bag deploying against my cheeks as the doors to the theater implode against the Jeep. The Jeep seems to jump upward, the back tires lifting a few feet off the ground before slamming back down onto the concrete. It hurts, but I’m alert enough on impact to look up and see the Territorial sail out of the backseat like a missile, smashing through the windshield and into the lobby. Glass rains down on the hood, piling up against the shattered windshield. It’s hard to move, and it feels like I’ve had a deep tissue massage with a baseball bat, but I wriggle out of the seatbelt and—after snatching the gun off the dead Territorial beside me—fall hard against the door, tumbling out into the darkened lobby.

  The groaning, the outright desperate moaning, sounds more like a bacchanalian orgy than a horde of hungry undead. It’s as if they come from the very walls, shuffling up the corridors, oozing out from every open door and archway. The smell is downright spellbinding.

  There are already so many of them. They’ve been locked up in here for weeks now and whoever hasn’t been devoured has been turned into an emaciated shell of a human being with dead, staring eyes and a slavering, open mouth. The guard is probably dead or dying, but they descend on him at once, covering him like a swarm of hungry flies.

  I stay close against the Jeep just as the other car slams into the doors, spinning out and coming to a stop against the concession counter. We’ve made enough noise now to alert the rest of the theatergoers, so I limp away from the Jeep, ducking beneath a mangled door. I glance over my shoulder to see the other Territorials being pulled from the wrecked car. It almost seems right, grotesquely poetic in a way, feeding monsters with monsters.

  There is an unforeseen complication, of course, the fact that I’m now without a vehicle and the other car will catch up eventually. I stray to the left side of the parking lot, ducking behind abandoned cars to keep out of sight. The undead in the theater make quick work of the Territorials and soon come streaming out of the lobby, one unbroken chain of starving, desperate zombies heading right for me.

  I can outpace them for a while, but my chest is starting to hurt in earnest and I must have sprained my ankle because it feels twisted, full of pins and needles. The gun in my waistband is down to two bullets, not nearly enough to stem the onslaught of undead just ten yards or so behind me. But I know that this has been enough, that Renny, and Ted, and Julian and the others will have time to get away. I know that even if I don’t make it back to the camp, the others now have a fighting chance.

  The third Jeep finally makes the scene, rolling into the parking lot, slowing down as they presumably take note of the carnage in the lobby and the remarkably orderly line of undead beelining for yours truly.

  They start to shoot at the undead, drawing their attention, which takes a little pressure off of me, but doesn’t do much about the closest zombies that follow doggedly, determined, unhindered by human exhaustion or pain. Breathe, I command, breathe deeply.

  My ankle is slowing me down, giving me a bad limp, and I’ve only made it halfway across the parking lot. How long can I keep this up? How long before I trip or collapse or run into more rednecks with guns looking for their friends?

  Up ahead I can see the frontage road and the divider filled with decorative trees. I’ll be out in the open there and an easy target but I’m not sure where else to go. I make the road, huffing and puffing like a marathon runner, dragging my ankle, biting down on my lip to keep a lid on the string of expletives I’m dying to scream. There’s a glimmer of silvery gray up ahead and a sound like a dying engine trying like hell to stay alive.

  I shield my eyes to stare at it and watch it approach but I don’t dare slow down. I can hear the undead, they’re close, so close … I take the pistol and fire but the clip clicks back at me, empty.

  The car horn sounds, making me jump, and I look up in time to see Renny come screeching by, creaming the undead following me. She’s all business, shouting something at the man in the passenger seat. The door opens with a ding-ding-ding and Julian pulls me inside, grabbing me around the middle with his good arm and shutting the door before I can even catch my breath and look around. Renny stomps her foot on the gas pedal and we leave the movie theater behind.

  I can ha
rdly hear anything over the sound of my own labored breathing and the sedan’s puttering engine. This is when I notice that not only does my ankle feel like it’s about to fall off, but my face is wet and it’s not from crying.

  “Jesus, look at you,” Julian says. I try to sit up, try to crawl off of his lap, but Ted is still lying down in the back, Dapper is on the floor next to him, and there’s nowhere for me to go. Ted looks so peaceful back there. Quiet. Sedate. Julian takes his sleeve and wipes at my face. It stings.

  “I drove the Jeep into the movie theater,” I say.

  Julian pulls something out of my hairline. It feels like a red-hot needle sliding out of my scalp. “Fucking ouch! What the fuck?” A sharply-tapered piece of bloody glass comes away in his hands.

  “Can you breathe?” he asks, frowning at me.

  “Sorta,” I mutter, struggling again. “Can I sit up?”

  “Yeah, but take it easy.”

  Julian was right. (Under no circumstance am I to be quoted on that.) I need a break from all this.

  Julian shifts to the side, making a small space for me to wedge into. He pulls down the visor and flips open the mirror so I can see my reflection. There are nicks all over my face and a drip of blood falling down my forehead where he took out the glass shard. Wrapping around my neck is a distinctly warlike handprint in blood. I look down and find glass trapped in my sweatshirt pocket and in the cuffs of my sleeves. Glass everywhere, cuts everywhere. Blood everywhere …

  Dapper sticks his head into the front of the car and licks at my cut-up hand. He noses my palm, letting me know he’s glad to have me back.

  “And the others?” I ask, trying to straighten out my ankle.

  “They … won’t be joining us. They want to stay,” Julian mutters.

  “What? Stay? Stay where?”

  “They’re going to my brother’s farm, north a ways. They were only staying behind because of me and now that I’m okay … Renny told them about Liberty Village, and we offered to find them a car, but they want to stay.”

  “Your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world: no, you move.”