Allison Hewitt Is Trapped (13 page)

“But … where are you going? You have to come with us,” Janette said, still clutching the third bottle to her chest.

“Ted and I have some unfinished business to look after,” I told them. I shook Matt’s hand and then Phil’s. “You’ll be fine, I know you will. It’s not far. Take care of that bottle, Janette. Use it if you have to. Take Dapper with you, okay?”

Janette nodded, but I could see the look in her eyes. She was thinking: ten blocks,
ten blocks
, that may as well be in Sri Lanka. Trembling, she dragged Dapper away. He didn’t want to go with them but I knew it was safer. I knew I wasn’t in my right mind right then.

Ted and I circled around the retaining wall, giving the building a wide birth. The crackle of fire reached the street level. The entire top floor of the apartments was ablaze, the smoke and flames twinkling in the windows. The street was almost empty, littered here and there with debris, scorch marks and brown, faded bloodstains.

Sure, Zack had a good head start on us but he was slow, weighed down, and we knew what direction he was headed. He wouldn’t come back to the apartments and he wouldn’t go near the university. There was no catharsis, no time to mourn Holly or to worry about the others. Ted and I were light on our feet, armed, and pushed forward by something terrible, something consuming. And both of us were burning for a fight. We were out now and there was no stopping us. Zack was out there, yeah, but so was my mom and now was my chance to find her once and for all.

COMMENTS

Isaac says:

October 6, 2009 at 11:21 pm

Allison I know you’re pissed but be careful. Don’t get reckless or we’ll never hear from you again.

Brooklyn Girl says:

October 6, 2009 at 11:56 pm

Isaac is right. You’re grieving, you’re afraid but you have to keep your head screwed on tight. Tell Ted I know his pain. We sent one of our own to his maker and it was the best choice I’ve made in a while. Keep yourself safe, Allison, and post again soon.

October 7, 2009—Things Fall Apart, Pt. II

We headed east pursuing Zack, jogging down the right lane of Langdon.

“What do you think he’s got? Ten minutes? Fifteen minutes on us?” Ted asked.

“Ten,” I replied. “I’d put it at ten.”

He had just ten minutes, but ten minutes could make all the difference. If he was smart he wouldn’t slow down even with the precautions he put in place. I hoped that he underestimated us, that he slowed down to a walk as soon as the apartments were out of sight. They were still burning behind us, the black smoke thickening the atmosphere.

“So what’s the plan if we
do
catch him?” Ted whispered. We were trying to keep a low profile, which meant soft voices and soft feet. There weren’t many Groaners about, just a few lost Floaters drifting around in the alleys. As we headed away from the city center the roads got a little clearer, less cluttered with cars and Vespas and bicycles.

“I don’t give a shit about the food, Ted. I just want to teach this asshole a lesson. But safety first, okay? We don’t know if he managed to get a weapon. Play it like we want the food back, that it’s all we’re interested in.”

“You really think he’ll believe that?”

“No, but it might be enough to get him to come in close—close enough.”

We were about to dodge around a charred SUV when I saw it. It was pearly brown, wedged near the blackened tire, dusted with soot. Ted stumbled to a stop when he saw me go over to the tire and kneel. I picked it up, the leather purse cool and smooth in my hands.

It was my mother’s.

“There’s no way,” Ted said, reading my face. “She wouldn’t get this far off Main Street.”

“Maybe not. But if they were chased…”

There was nothing around the SUV or the purse or the tire, just scarred road and ash. I kept expecting to find blood or some sign of my mom but it was just the purse, abandoned, seemingly without a fight. I could see that Ted was impatient, waiting, but I had to know. Inside the purse her wallet was missing. There was a hairbrush, a pack of gum, a few coins and a blue Post-it note stuck to the bottom lining. I took it out carefully, recognizing her handwriting at once.

Aunt Tammy

Fort Morgan

Liberty Village

Liberty Village was underlined twice and the handwriting was sloppy, rushed. The word Tammy was smudged and runny.

“What does that even mean?” Ted asked, peering over my shoulder.

“Aunt Tammy lives in Fort Morgan. No idea what Liberty Village is,” I replied, trying hard to hold back the cold knot in my throat. If I breathed, if I swallowed too hard, I’d cry. I stood, holding the purse and the note. “She must have heard from Tammy. Maybe that’s where they’re headed.”

“I thought they were going to the apartments.”

“So did I,” I said, frowning. “But maybe they wanted to take us to Fort Morgan. Maybe that’s where she’s going now. Jesus, they got so close. Just a few blocks more and…”

“Allison…”

“I know,” I said, looking up. Ted was half-poised to run, his arms flexed, trembling. I put the Post-it in my pocket and shouldered the purse. There was no sign of my mom or her companions, no indication of what direction they’d gone. I had to make the call. Ted would never do it for me.

“Zack first,” I told him. “Then the campus. They might have gone there if they were ambushed.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Let’s go.”

We glanced down each alley, making sure he hadn’t dodged off the main road. The buildings were so dilapidated, so hollow that it was unlikely he’d stop here. If he did, we’d have spotted him through the broken, empty windows. Ted and I sped up again, unwilling to tire.

When we made it about eleven blocks from the apartments, we reached a dead end, literally. Right in front of us was a cemetery, a quiet little plot with maybe sixty or so tombstones. In silence we slowed to a stop, standing just in front of the low, wrought-iron fence. It would be easy to jump, but neither of us made a move.

“It’s not like
Night of the Living Dead,
they’re not going to jump out of the graves,” I told him, but there was no confidence there, no authority. Ted nodded and looped a leg over the fence, dropping down on the other side.

“Allison,” he murmured, but he didn’t need to. I’d seen it too. In the distance, across the field of speckled headstones and weepy, low-hanging trees: a flash of brown, of yellow. It was Zack, his afghan and the boxes. He paused beneath a tree, bent double, catching his breath probably. Lucky for us, running with your arms full of twenty-pound boxes is exhausting work.

I lifted a finger to my lips and we slid across the graveyard together, soundless shadows whispering across the spongy ground. The ax felt heavier in my grasp, as if it were asking me to take a moment and consider my actions. I was wary of every twig, every crisp leaf, afraid that one snapping branch and Zack would be off and running. The tree he slumped against was probably ten yards off, so Ted and I slunk around to the left, trying to keep the trunk of the tree between us and Zack. The problem with an ax is that it’s a short-range weapon; you have to get in close, real close. Suddenly I was wishing I hadn’t given Janette that last cocktail. I couldn’t think of anything more satisfying than watching Zack go up in a crackling blaze of flames.

And of course I nearly botched it, stepping on a wayward twig just a few feet from the tree. Zack’s head snapped up and around. The boxes dropped out of his hands as soon as he saw us and he was off, sprinting across the northern edge of the graveyard. All sense of stealth abandoned, Ted and I pursued, chewing up the ground, closing the gap until Ted, springing forward, managed to trip him up. His legs tangled and he fell, tumbling forward, making a few rotations on the ground before trying to get up and keep running. But it was too late. We had him.

Ted stopped him with a preliminary whack to the ribs. Zack crumpled on the ground at our feet, panting and holding his hands up in defense. He stared up at us, his eyes wild with terror. He could see things more clearly now, he could see who we were and what we were prepared to do.

“Please!” he cried, crab-walking away from us. Ted cracked him fast and hard on the knee to slow him down. “God! Just! I’ll do whatever you want, take the food! Take it! Jesus—I’m sorry, okay? I’m so sorry.”

“No you’re not. Not yet.”

His right foot came away at the ankle. It only took one sweep of the ax. There was so much blood, more than I expected, and it rushed out in jerking sprays, pumped hard by his racing heart. He could hardly shout but he started in on gibberish, stringing nonsense together as he tried to flail out of our reach. We let him go a few feet, watching him squirm away like a centipede missing its tail.

“Turns out you’re a star, Zack … or Jack—which is it? We heard all about you on the radio, about how you stole from the university, from a
relief effort
,” I said, catching up to him. There was nothing more for him to do, nowhere to go. “What the fuck is wrong with you? We’re all in this together, you
motherfucker
.” I punctuated that last word with his other foot. I could see he was about to pass out so I put the ax down. Ted tapped his cheek with the end of the bat.

“We’re going to leave you now, Zack. I do hope you remember my face when they come for you.”

Ted and I turned to go, silent, bound by a deep, profound loathing for what we’d just done. But as hard as I try, there’s no regret to be found. I can still hear him muttering “Please, please” over and over again as he lay in the tall, dead grass.

We didn’t make it ten feet before we realized our serious mistake. I was beginning to understand what made these things tick, and fresh blood certainly does seem to have the same effect as a church bell. They’d been called, summoned, driven out of hiding by the scent of Zack’s suffering. It made the bombardment in the apartment look like a trip out for ice cream.

They came surging toward us from every surrounding block. There was no cover, no way out, just a solid sea of these things lurching toward us. I knew that even if we managed to cut through the first few lines we didn’t have the coverage to make it safely through to the street.

Behind us, Zack was dying, really dying, becoming one of them. He wouldn’t get far without feet, but it didn’t make me feel any better about our predicament. The graveyard suddenly smelled like a graveyard should, wet and sandy and sweet with too much decay. Ted and I stood back to back, waiting, letting them come. It began to rain; the clouds opened up and let loose.

I briefly thought about climbing a tree, waiting there for help, but I knew it was easier to face them this way than to sit up in a tree like an idiot, waiting for a rescue party that doesn’t exist. I looked at my mom’s purse and hugged it close to my chest.

“It’s been real, Ted,” I said. “I promise, if you go first I’ll finish you off.”

“Thank you. It’s been a pleasure, Allie.”

I felt calm, secure in the knowledge that at least I might go down swinging, struggling. I wouldn’t starve to death in a break room or get scurvy and waste away in a university gymnasium, I would die on my feet and with Ted. And maybe my mother was already gone. Maybe I had found the last clue to her existence. I felt like I could breathe again, like I could see the end and it really wasn’t so bad. But I did wish for my mom, to see her one last time.

Just as I was starting to get real comfortable with the idea of dying, just as the groaning and scraping had reached its peak, I heard an earsplitting racket from the street. Gunfire, tons of it, spray after spray of bullets. I covered my ears, deafened. The heads and bodies surrounding us exploded, turned to liquid ash by the unbelievable firepower going off in every direction. Through the haze of vaporized goo and tissue I could see a big black form, a truck, and hanging out the back a figure. The truck smashed through the nearest line of Groaners, splattering them across our shoes. It was a truck all right, a gutted Land Rover with a cargo net for a ceiling. I couldn’t imagine what kind of mental case drove this thing, but I found out soon enough when the man hanging off the back jumped down to us. He fired off a few rounds into the Groaners creeping up behind Ted and me. I was too stunned to move, awed by the miraculous arrival of these two angels.

“They okay?” the driver shouted, jumping out.

“Seems so,” the other said, yanking off his mask. They were both dressed in black fatigues and flak jackets. Soldiers, maybe. The nearer one had a blue and red patch on his right sleeve with a crown and a bird. He had flaming red hair and a ginger beard and pale, pale blue eyes. He looked at both of us, his brow furrowed.

“May I ask what you two kittens are doing out here?”

I opened my mouth to grunt out an answer, but from behind us came a terrified scream. It was Zack, still alive, pulling himself toward us, scooting along on his elbows. The red-haired man took one look at the ax in my hand and Zack’s missing feet and grabbed me by the wrist. It felt like my arm was going to come right out of its socket as he pushed me toward the truck.