I just keep staring at this one woman, this woman with a blank face and mean, twisted hands and the way she holds the table like it’s her sworn duty. And I can smell Ned and hear Renny swearing under her breath and see this stupid woman with her ugly, stupid flannel shirt and it makes me think of Matt. Of all people, at the moment of my death, I didn’t think it would be Matt, the assistant manager, the nerd with his conspiracy theories and his flannel shirts and his maddening death glares.
Matt.
And it hits me. So simple, so stupidly simple …
“You!” I shout, pointing at Sadie or Sally. “Tell me, are those the damned?”
“Yes, the damned, of course they are. The damned!” she screams.
“And if you were to be one of them, would you then be damned too?”
“You can’t save yourself, girl. Judgment is now.”
“Really? Well, good job. You win at the judgment game, I guess.”
“Win? This is the wrath of God Himself, not a game!”
I stumble a few feet toward her, hoping and hoping for one last chance. It’s a long shot, but anything is worth a try with bonfire looming and a flood of undead monsters bearing down on you and your friends.
“You’ve killed us all,” I say, throwing up my hands. I point at the edge of the bonfire where a few undead are still smoldering. “The ash.”
“What? What ash?”
“Their ash, you moron. The damned. Don’t you know even the first fucking thing about … about anything? Just breathing it in, getting their tissue in your lungs is enough. You haven’t just damned us, you’ve damned yourself.”
It takes a moment, but the idea dawns on her and her face, her once-smiling face, falls.
“I don’t believe you,” she says, raising an eyebrow. The gun is leveled at my face and I can feel the sweat falling down my temples in fat, splashing beads. Ned is close, so close …
“Ouch!” he shouts. To be fair, I did stomp on his foot. But then he smartens up, catches my meaning, and stays doubled over. Then he begins to moan, clutching his head, covering his ears and then lurching forward, spitting up on the floor. He’s not half bad at it. Renny joins in, bless her, and clutches her throat, her eyes rolling back, showing the whites as she grunts and spasms.
“Look!” I bellow, letting the fear shake my limbs. “Look what you’ve done!”
“No!” she screams, her eyes wild as she gapes at Ned, who has gone so far as to scratch at his own pretty face, writhing on the floor. I make a mental note to alert the Academy. I smell an Oscar, or maybe that’s just the stink of burning zombies. “It can’t be! It can’t! Oh Jesus, oh Lord, how could you abandon me, how?”
She’s begun to cry, to sob, and I know that now is my chance if ever there was one.
“No,” I say, taking a step toward her. “You abandoned Him.”
The shotgun is in my hands and it feels good. All the lessons, all the target practices come flooding back in one racing, heated rush of adrenaline. My fingers know what to do, they know how to cradle the weapon, how to aim and squeeze the trigger and brace for the recoil. It kicks like a goddamned stallion on steroids, but I stay steady. My chest is so sore and achy that it’s tempting to drop the gun. The noise is amazing, like a rocketship firing directly out of my ear.
Her face is gone, most of it anyway, but the look of surprise and horror stays on what’s left of it.
Ned is lightning fast, smart, and takes the gun out of my hands and begins to fire, not randomly, but carefully, taking out the closest undead and then firing warning shots at any Wives that get too close. Their aim is terrible and the smoke is so thick that they can’t get a decent shot off anyway. There’s no longer an L.L.Bean poster boy standing next to me, he’s a soldier. Renny and I vault over the tables and run for Evan and Mikey, sweeping them into our arms without a thought. The doors are already open and we run into the hall, gasping for cleaner air. I turn, looking for Ned and see that he’s trying to drag Corie away from the undead, away from the gunfire and the smoke. But she won’t go; she’s dug her heels into the floor. I see it in her face, in her posture.
She’s made her decision.
* * *
A lot of the rest is fuzzy, a blur. I know we ran, I know we could hear the undead on our heels, chasing us, following us through the halls. I know the pure rush of relief carried me through, keeping me from collapsing from exhaustion and pain. And I know Renny took the laptop bag for me, wore it and kept it safe, unburdening me as we ran through the school. We found Dapper in an art classroom on the other side of the building, hungry, scared, but ready with a wagging tail for us.
And I know that when we got outside we went immediately to the stolen van. I remember lying down on the backseat, Dapper licking my hands and face, Mikey and Evan sitting in silent shock in the seats nearby. And finally, I remember the sound, the cry of anguish as Ned rounded the corner that would take us home, to the arena, to Collin and Ted and Finn. It made me sit up, that sound, it made me forget the pain for a moment.
We looked together, no one saying a word. We looked at the campus, at the arena, in flames.
COMMENTS
Isaac says:
October 28, 2009 at 7:23 pm
It’s good to finally hear the whole story. And I know the feeling, Allison, that “what now?” feeling. We had to torch our barn last night. A whole herd of Groaners showed up. I think the cold is making them desperate. We cornered them in the barn and there was no other way … We burned it. It feels like a loss. There was food in there, a lot of it and now everything is just a little bit harder. So you’re not alone, you’re not the only person asking: “What now?”
steveinchicago says:
October 28, 2009 at 7:55 pm
that’s rough. you make it out and the arena is gone? you okay otherwise?
Allison says:
October 28, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Hey thanks you guys. It is rough but what isn’t? We’ll manage. We’re going to regroup and come up with a way to go forward. If nothing else now’s a good time to check out Colorado.
October 29, 2009—Into the Wild
I update now when I can, where I can, in the little moments between the long stretches of panic and fear. I apologize if I worried some of you; without the arena, without generators, without a steady connection to the outside world, my resources become more and more limited and I update as soon as we come across a weak wireless signal, a momentary flickering.
But once again this becomes more than just a rundown of events, a laundry list of troubles and thoughts; it becomes a way for me to work out what exactly I need to do. It was not an easy decision and in a way I know for certain that I’m being selfish. But this is what I need. This is what must happen in order to guarantee my sanity and, just maybe, my safety.
This decision came after the shock of discovering our home, our HQ, had been destroyed. We didn’t even bother trying to get close. It was clear from a distance that surviving the inferno and seething mass of undead was extremely unlikely. And so we turned around, went back, drove aimlessly until a vehicle approached, rumbling out of the smoke and ash that has become our everyday atmosphere. This is no longer a city, but one giant oven churning out black plumes of smoke and the smell of decay.
They came at us and for a moment I didn’t believe my eyes. I recognized the vehicle and I remembered with perfect clarity the first time I saw that truck. I was so relieved to see it again, a gutted truck and a uniformed driver behind the wheel. And Collin. We rendezvoused in a park, or what was once a park, a big open space to keep an eye on any encroaching undead. The lake is nearby. I can smell the faintly fishy, sandy scent of the water. There’s a pavilion in the distance and a charming bridge with white railings. The park feels familiar, but most of the street signs are gone, mowed down by cars or mangled by falling traffic lights.
Even there, in the park among grass and trees and little brightly painted benches, the stench of death and suffering persists. All of
us tumbled out of the van and I, without thinking, ran straight to Collin.
It didn’t enter my mind that, technically, I had lost the right to care for him. He hugged me, hard, and picked me up off the ground. Maybe he forgot too.
The truck emptied out: Ted, Finn and, yes, Lydia too.
It’s not that I hoped she wouldn’t survive the blaze in the arena, I just had stopped thinking of her altogether. After Ned reminded me that I had a responsibility to Collin to stop acting like a complete baby, I sort of stopped remembering Lydia existed, which was, admittedly, a mistake. To find her there, her spine rigid, her cool eyes distant and staring, it filled me with sudden anger. Sudden and stupid anger. She survived too, as I did, and she has every right to demand respect for that. No one’s knack for survival is better or more impressive, but that doesn’t mean I was happy to see her.
“You have no idea,” Ned was saying, shaking Ted by the shoulders, jostling the poor kid’s glasses. “You have no idea, man, how glad I am to see you guys again.”
“Let me guess,” Ted replied. “The Wives?”
“With a vengeance,” I answered, pulling Renny toward them by her bicep. “This is Renny. She’s good people.”
A quick round of introductions and we were moving on, planning, scheming, thanks to Collin and his laser-guided ability to coolly assess sticky situations. It turns out the Wives that stayed behind at the arena caused just enough trouble, just enough confusion to distract the people keeping watch on the entrance. Unsurprisingly, this allowed one, just one, infected person to slip by. That was all it took. The violence, the death rippled through the arena before Collin and Finn could find the infected person and quarantine them. The Black Earth Wives panicked, tried to set the undead on fire and ended up torching the entire arena and everyone inside, which—sadly enough—was actually the best thing that could happen. Collin and Finn did their best to keep the fire and the undead contained, but some, they admit, probably escaped.
And while they’re explaining this to us, telling their story after we tell ours, I can’t help but stare up at the trees around us. Everything is scary now, anything could be a source of trouble, of injury or death. But there are just a few birds up there, scattered among the bare branches, their feathers ruffled up around their heads to keep out the cold. I wonder if maybe they forgot to migrate, if all hell breaking loose on the human side of things meant they just plain forgot. Maybe the ecosystem is fucked forever. Maybe these birds will be the last of their species, letting the hours pass by, letting humanity tear itself apart under their quiet watch. I think of being an undergrad, of Biology 101 …
Yet, second only to habitat loss, the introduction of nonnative or “exotic” species is a major threat to biodiversity. These species are often invasive creatures that adversely affect the habitats they enter ecologically, environmentally, or economically …
“Something up there?” Ned whispers, leaning over. Finn is going on about the gun, about how many they lost, how many had to be left behind.
“G-God?” I stammer. “Is that you?”
“Ha. Ha. What do you see?”
“A robin maybe, maybe two or three,” I say. “I can’t tell.”
“American robin. The state bird,” he replies. He’s weary, it shows in his bloodshot eyes. I can hear it in his voice too. I can still smell the smoke from the fires in the preschool cafeteria and the underlying bitterness of burnt human hair and flesh. He needs a bath, badly.
“Yeah?” I ask.
“Yup,” he replies, then nods discretely toward Lydia. “Do I need to worry or are you gonna be okay?”
“What? Oh, you mean the state bitch? Yeah, I’ll manage.”
“Allison.”
“I’m over it.”
“I hope not,” he says.
“We managed to save a few tents,” Collin says. I begin to pay attention, knowing that the birds have a better chance of making it through this than we do. They’ll manage. “We should find a safe place for tonight and then think about where we want to go.”
I hang back with Renny, Ned and his kids while Collin and Finn take the truck to scout for a good place to pitch the tents. Everyone is slumped, exhausted, and I have a feeling we won’t be going far, not tonight. Evan and Mikey are quiet, too quiet for little kids. I can tell they’re wandering through a fog, lost without their mother but transfixed by the terror they only just escaped from. Ted comes to stand by me, leaving Lydia alone, dangling there like some aloof and much-feared CEO facing down a boardroom of strangers. Ted takes my hand and squeezes it, flipping his dark hair out of his face and away from his glasses as he takes a good long look at me. I can see him noting the blood on my clothes, on my hands and in my nails.
He pulls me into a hug and I wince.
“You get hurt?” he asks in a low tone. His dark smudges of eyebrows knit over the top of his glasses.
“I’ll be okay, just a scuffle,” I reply.
“A real bloody scuffle?”
“You could say that.”
“Hey, you don’t have to talk about it. Not if you don’t want to,” Ted murmurs. I can tell he’s hurt by my silence. He kicks at the dirt with the toe of his Chuck Taylor.
“I’ll tell you later,” I tell him gently. “I just don’t want to think about it right now.”
It’s freezing out and we huddle together. With a little grimace of satisfaction I note that Lydia is cold too but no one invites her to join us. It’s official. I’m a monster. Still, when you’re already freezing it’s not exactly appealing to invite the ice queen over to huddle. I’d rather sleep in a graveyard.
As we stand together shivering, I can’t escape the feeling that I’ve been to this park before. It makes me wonder if I’m near my house, if my mom is close by, holding out in our basement with a crowbar and some canned food.
Collin and Finn return in ten minutes, cutting the engine with a big, dramatic swivel of the truck. They hop out, Finn’s red head bobbing behind Collin’s dark one, and gesture in the direction of the hill behind us. It’s not terribly steep but it’s clearer at the top. An October fog is beginning to roll in, carrying with it a mist that digs down right into your bones. I can’t wait to lie down, to rest, to cuddle up with Dapper and catch whatever sleep I can. No one questions Collin and Finn’s decision. It seems like a sound judgment call and none of us have the energy to argue. My ribs are killing me and I can feel the fatigue dripping down into my legs, my knees, my toenails.
We pile into the van and Ned drives us up the hill. Renny plays Rock, Paper, Scissors with the boys and, after a minute or two, they seem to be returning to their old selves. From over their shoulders I give Renny a thumbs-up.
We leave behind the fog but it follows, creeping up the hill inexorably, swallowing up the trees and happy-colored benches. It obliterates any sign of the road, of the way we came.
There are three tents and I push aside my pain long enough to help get them set up. Lydia, Collin and Finn take one, Ned and his kids take another and Ted, Renny and I take the third. They’re not huge but the three of us manage to arrange ourselves comfortably. It’s snug and Dapper doesn’t help the situation, but we’re all glad for an avid foot warmer, even if he does smell a bit like corn chips.
Just as Dapper begins to snore gently, something hard taps against my knee. Sitting up, I see a smooth, bright handle resting against my leg. Ted smiles crookedly at me, his blush hidden by the chilly darkness. It’s hidden, sure, but I know it’s there.
“What’s this?” I ask, leaning to grab it with an ache shooting through my side.
“Just an old friend. I thought you might like to have it.”
It’s my ax, a bit singed, but otherwise whole.
“Ted … I … But you didn’t know I would—”
“Of course I knew,” he says, chuckling. “I knew it’d take more than a few cranky housewives to take you out. Besides, nothing’s gonna keep you from finding your mom, right?”
“I’m flattered.�
�
“It’s nothing.”
“No, really, it means a lot.”
He lays back down, still smiling, and I turn onto my side but it hurts. Everything hurts. I finally settle on my back, punching the sweatshirt I have for a pillow into a little square. I shove it under my neck for support but it’s useless. Sleep doesn’t come, doesn’t even whisper at me from afar. I wait a while, wait until I’m certain Ted and Renny are asleep.
C-six, H-six benzene, A-G-two-O silver oxide, C-U-Fe-S-two copper iron sulfide …
When I get up and stumble over the dog, Ted mumbles in his sleep. “I just have to pee,” I whisper and he goes quiet again.
Outside it’s freezing and I take the sweater-pillow and pull it on. Autumn is slipping away from us and now it’s cold in earnest. It was bound to happen and I can’t help but feel even more helpless against the constant march of danger that comes toward us, inch by terrible inch. If we aren’t ripped apart by monsters or murdered by our own kind then we’ll die of the cold, or of hunger, or of some disease that will steal our strength, our lives and, in the end, our dignity.
No wonder I can’t fucking sleep.
I walk to the topmost point of the hill, the point where it begins to slope back down toward, what? A pool? Some fences? The fog has let itself out and now it’s just a sparkling, silvery mist below us. The moon is bright and the sky is almost clear, just a few smudgy clouds gliding across the stars. There are the very last remnants of crickets and it seems amazing they haven’t died off yet. How can their little cricket bodies go on? How can they stand the cold?
The hill spreads itself out at my feet, the grass shining and wet and glittering with hundreds of tiny ice crystals. We’ll wake up under a frost with our breaths painting milky shadows across the tent walls … But sleep … I don’t know if I can manage it. Even if my chest stopped aching, even if my body felt fine, I don’t think my thoughts would allow me to rest.
Allison Hewitt Is Trapped Page 20
