Allison Hewitt Is Trapped (21 page)

“Where
am
I?”

“Troy, tiny future human. What’s left of it.”

A long shadow accompanies the booming voice and when I turn, there’s a man behind me, a circular shield obscuring half of his bulk, a sharp sword clenched in his other hand.

“As in
Trojan Horse
? That Troy?” I can barely hear my voice. There’s a noise building up ahead near the broken wall, a wild thrashing that’s quickly, alarmingly building to a crescendo. I don’t know where to look but I keep my eyes firmly on the soldier, on the tall, crested bronze helmet and the hazel eyes that peer back at me.

“I went back in time?”

“I would not assume so,” he says. “It is not uncommon for a warrior in doubt to be visited by a guide of sorts. I myself have communed with the goddess Athena and she, in her unfathomable wisdom, continues to watch over me.”

“Athena? That’s hard-core.”

“It is what?”

But I don’t have a chance to answer, not now. The wall of smoke breaks suddenly and a trickle of soldiers rushes out toward us, racing down the sloping bank just in front of the wall. By contrast, these fellows are almost familiar, comforting—the bony knuckles, the ragged faces and panting groans: undead, dozens of them, armored and breaking away to shamble toward us. Their bronze helmets bob on what’s left of their heads, their cuirasses dangling at awkward angles, ill-fitting on the decomposing chests and shoulders. As they draw closer, the soldier at my side shoves something into my hand. It almost has the same heft as an ax but it’s a sword, long and razor sharp.

“And are those Trojan zombies?” I ask, strategically taking a step back. He can take the first few. He looks capable enough.

“They would appear to be, yes,” he says, raising his shield just a little.

“Am I drunk?”

For a quick second he looks harder at me, squinting past the bronze nosepiece of his helmet. “Probably.”

He takes a fast, exacting swing at the first undead soldier, taking its head clean off. Like a butcher performing his daily chores, like a man practiced and not possessed, he dismantles soldier after soldier, mowing down the line with lightning-fast precision.

“You’re fast for an old dude.”

“Forty-five!” he roars, going in for another decapitation. “And fit as an ox.”

“It’s all that olive oil, I bet. And lugging that shield around all day. Coming up fast on your left.”

He whirls, cutting the oncoming zombie cleanly in half at the waist, performing a quick spin to slam his shield into the one trailing immediately behind. “Thank you, small human. Some assistance, if you would!”

“Anytime,” I say, swinging the sword experimentally. It’s heavier than my ax, but the blade and handle have a nice balance. There are only a few stragglers left, but I’m out of breath as they fall, crumbling onto the stained dunes. The soldier takes a few steps forward and lowers his shield. It’s quiet for the moment, but the restless smoke cloud up ahead tells me it’s not quite over. I look at his footsteps in the sand next to mine.

“Jesus, you are huge.”

My bare foot takes up about a quarter of the mark left by his sandal. I fit my foot into the impression, like a kid slipping her baby toes into her father’s loafers.

“Or perhaps, strange future human,” he says, laughing with the bass bravado of thunder, “you are very small.”

“I know I’m going to regret asking this, but who are you?” The desire to see his face and to recognize him brings me a few steps closer. His heavy cape was once the color of fresh cream but now it’s ragged and torn, the designs along the edges obscured by a gritty mixture of blood and sand. The soldier reaches up, plucking the heavy bronze helmet from his head. When he turns I feel a pang of recognition, in the same perplexing way a rabbit senses danger or a newborn senses its mother. The man’s face is long, weathered and deeply scarred, with a patrician nose that looks as if it’s been broken and reset many times. His solemn hazel green eyes are surrounded by dark, feathery lashes.

“Odysseus,” he says gently, looking at me as if it’s glaringly obvious. “King of Ithaca.”

The desire to simultaneously wither, die and crap my pants is compelling, but so is the desire to maintain a fleeting iota of dignity. I’m hallucinating, badly, and either my high school health teacher said something about not mixing prescription meds and alcohol or those Lorazepam were past their expiration date. It beats moaning about Lydia, I guess.

“So you’re my totem, then?”

“Guide.”

“Right, that. So do you have some advice for me now or how does this work? Do I need to spill some lamb’s blood?” I ask, hesitating in his shadow. He moves aside, giving me a clear view of the Trojan wall and the ash cloud and what I suspect is another wave of undead waiting in the veil of smoke.

“We fight,” he says. And as if on cue, more armored undead emerge, tumbling over the dunes as they amble toward us. “We fight until you are too exhausted to think.”

“That can’t be right.”

But they’re on us, groaning and screeching their nerve-jarring, wailing song. Odysseus bellows with laughter, jamming his helmet back onto his head. He slows down, letting me take on more of the undead, purposely sidestepping them to make sure I’m up to bat. I quickly learn that I’m hopeless with the heavy sword so I take up a shield too, hoping to deflect the onslaught of clawing hands. The horde in front of us is growing and now they’re arriving in a constant stream. Their shrieks drown out the crashing of the waves behind us.

“Where is everybody?” I shout over the hacking and groaning.

“Gone,” he says. “All gone. They’ve gone back to their homes, to their wives and families and kingdoms.”

“But not you?”

“No, not me. Not yet.”

For a moment it’s tempting to fill him in on the impending ten-year gauntlet he’ll be running soon. But then I catch a glimpse of his sword, flashing with godlike celerity and accuracy, and wisely reconsider. And I suspect he knows. I suspect maybe that’s why he’s lingering here on this deserted beach, doling out life lessons to a drug-addled, heartbroken bookstore clerk from the future.

This is when I discover that he’s right. It
is
exhausting and my mind is blank. I’m failing, floundering and he saves me more than once, leaping to intercept a zombie that I’ve neglected to see. The armor makes them difficult to dismember, but I’m learning to find the weakness, to aim carefully for the vulnerable necks.

When the last of the horde is laid out on the ground I’m out of breath, sweating in torrents that gather at my temples and collarbone. Odysseus pats me on the back and it takes all of my strength to keep from sprawling forward into the sand.

“Ease up, man,” I say, standing up and panting for breath. “That fist of yours is like a goddamn bulldozer.”

“Explain this to me,” he says, turning to face me, ripping off his helmet again. “This dozer of bulls.”

“It’s not important,” I say, waving him off, watching sweat fling from my fingers to his cuirass. “Sorry. It’s so hot. Can we just get on with the guidance thing?”

“You should be honored,” he says gruffly. “To fight at my side, to fight in the blood and footsteps of Greece’s finest warriors—this, fragile human, is to live!”

“Yeah, La’chaim.”

“Very well, I can see you are sapped of strength,” he says. For a moment he looks away. When he turns back I can’t help but gasp, staggering away from him as shock, like a cattle prod to the chest, steals all thought of rebuttal or speech. His face is transforming, the nose and mouth sloughing off like a papery mask. And now it’s Collin staring down at me, a bronze helmet tucked under his elbow, a sword gripped in his bloody hand. The eyes. The eyes are still the same.

“You’re leaving me, aren’t you?” he asks.

“What? No! I mean, I might have to, I don’t know,” I mumble, trying to look away. Is being stumped by your own subconscious a sign of latent schizophrenia? “I just don’t know if I can stay here, not with your wife—it’s … humiliating. I want you to myself. I’m selfish. I can’t help it.”

“Do you think you’re ready to leave? Do you know what’s out there?” he asks, gesturing to the battlefield, the dunes, and the pile of broken, undead bodies. “Where will you go?”

“My mom,” I reply. “I need to find her. I’ve waited here too long. I waited so I could stay with you. But now…”

“Now you want to leave me.”

“No, goddamn it, no I don’t,” I say, stabbing the sand with my sword, “but the things you said, that you couldn’t imagine life without me, that’s all worthless now. Seeing you with her … I can’t deal with it. It’s just too much—people are dying, the world is unraveling, my mom is missing and now
this
. I don’t want to leave you, I want you to leave Lydia. You can’t expect me to stick around and watch you two together.”

“I see,” he says, nodding gravely. “There was love between us, yes?”

“Of course there was.”

“And now it’s gone?”

“Not for my part,” I whisper. “But my part doesn’t matter now. I can’t have her looking at me like I’m some kind of cockroach. I won’t be a burden.”

When he looks at me again it’s bracing, the kind of frank reassessment that never feels good. It’s like a test and, as he gazes at me and his lips twitch downward, I know I’ve failed.

“I don’t have to tell you to be careful, and if you think this is an escape, then by all means, go.”

The sand seems to shift beneath my feet and I struggle to stay upright. My head is pounding or it’s the waves or thousands of urgent feet heading our way. The smoke is everything now, smearing out the wall, the sky, the ground and him, taking him away.

“When you start a journey,” he says, “and you cannot know the obstacles, the only way to persevere, to stay alive, is to have a home.”

I can no longer see my hands or my toes. The gathering gray and black mass is overtaking us, choking the air. Before it wipes him out completely I see his face, his sad, forgiving smile as he looks at me, looking as if it’s the very last time.

“Do you have a home, Allison?” he asks. “Do you have a home?”

COMMENTS

Isaac says:

October 20, 2009 at 11:26 pm

I … Wow. What is there … I mean … What can I say to that?

Allison says:

October 20, 2009 at 11:50 pm

How about: Go easy on the crazy pills?

Isaac says:

October 20, 2009 at 11:59 pm

Yeah. That just about covers it.

Isaac says:

October 22, 2009 at 2:09 pm

Allison? Any news? Please tell me you’re not hanging with ancient Grecian warriors again. Don’t mess around with those pills.

steveinchicago says:

October 22, 2009 at 5:29 pm

getting worried over here. you okay, allison?

Norway says:

October 25, 2009 at 9:47 am

No word for days. : (The radio silence is killing me. Did something happen to you?

steveinchicago says:

October 26, 2009 at 6:14 am

RIP.

October 26, 2009—Possession, Pt. I

“Ugh. Not good. Head not good.”

“Yeah, on second thought I don’t think those pills were the best idea.”

Ted’s blurry face stares back at me the morning after my little time-traveling adventure in ancient Greece. Seeing a friend doesn’t help, not at all, and the coffee he shoves into my hand helps only marginally more.

“Thanks, Ted,” I mumble, a searing white light flashing across my eyes. “You are officially the worst drug dealer in the history of bad drug dealers.”

“Are you okay? You were saying some trippy shit.”

“Not important,” I tell him, sticking my nose deep into the Styrofoam cup. “Never will you speak of this. Coffee now all that matters. No food, not yet. There is … another Skywalker.”

That morning—once the hangover dissipates—I discover a new feeling, a feeling I soon realize I have to get used to: the bleakness of an inmate confined to a prison.

And I have to apologize to you all for the long gap in updates. I didn’t mean to make you worry. I promise there was a good reason. Well, not a “good” reason per se, but a reason all the same. I’ll try to describe the events of the last week with clarity and detail but some information is lost forever, lost to memory, and it has nothing to do with expired meds.

*   *   *

As you can imagine, the arrival of Collin’s wife threw a bit of a wrench into my plans for a normal life. Whatever sickness had been ravaging our survivors only worsened with the arrival of Lydia and her companions. They’re a ragtag bunch with no real connection to each other—a lawyer, a gardener, an accountant—just a shared goal of surviving long enough to reach the campus and the arena. They too heard the radio broadcast and supposed the worst when the transmissions stopped coming. Without Lydia and her dogged persistence, they might never have arrived at all.

Lydia’s a tall, voluptuous Amazon of a woman with arrow-straight silvery hair and a free, artistic face. The first thing that came to mind when I saw her was “too much”—too much hair, too much woman, too much ice, like a curvy snowwoman with a thin, straight mouth and a shiny sheet of thick hair.

I tried not to form a negative opinion of her, I really did, I tried to remain objective, but objectivity in this case is pretty much impossible. She either intuited something had happened between Collin and me, or she just plain doesn’t like me. Have I mentioned the Sith can use the Force too?

Our first interaction was awkward and strained and, happily, took place far away from Collin. Lydia singled me out among the individuals in charge. She found me arguing with a handful of Black Earth Wives as they tried, again, to protest Collin’s leadership.

“Hello,” she said, dragging her hand across her face to clear the hair from her eyes. She is, I think, close to Collin’s age. She has a dramatic way of speaking, giving each of her words equal and melodic weight, putting on an unintelligible, watery accent from God knows where.

“Hey,” I replied, hoping I sounded as distracted as I felt.