Allison Hewitt Is Trapped (7 page)

It’s cold inside, and filled with the kind of eerie silence that makes you think of ghosts. Nothing happy could’ve happened here. There was never any joy or laughter, not when the feeling of death is creeping and crawling over everything. Even the bright, cheerful yellow paint job can’t keep the chilly fear at bay. I check the cupboards to be sure, but there’s nothing, not even crumbs. Someone has already come and cleaned out the apartment. There’s no food, not the edible kind, and the refrigerator stinks from mold and spoiled milk. I shut it and continue on into a narrow, poky hall. The framed photographs are still there, knocked onto angles, but intact. I try not to look at the posed family photos, the hopeful smiles and cheesy sweaters.

“Fuck,” I hear Ted murmur. I was thinking the same thing. When you live in almost constant fear, your instincts become better, sharper, and you can tell when something is terribly amiss. I get that feeling in the living room walking over the suspicious red stains on the ivory shag carpet, and I get that feeling again when we’ve finished walking through every room and find no one, just mess after mess, open drawer after open drawer, a phone hanging off the line with no dial tone.

We leave that apartment and go out into the hall. Here we meet a few of our undead friends and Ted and I get to practice our golf swings. I’ve never cared for golf much but I could certainly learn to love it. The driver is light but vicious. It takes a hefty chunk out of the first Groaner’s face. I prefer the ax, it’s more reliable, more deadly, but the driver is easier to swing and much less tiring. It’s easiest just to knock them over the banister down onto the stairs below, so we do and listen to the satisfying crunch of their soft bodies hitting the ground floor.

The hall is dark, the walls covered in striped, rose pink wallpaper with a floral border. There are other doors hanging open and a shiver jutters down my spine. I don’t want to go inside them, but I know we should. The first two are almost identical to the other apartment—ransacked, cold, empty and filled with the pervasive fog of troubled souls. There are two apartments left after that, and only one of them has a tightly shut door. We enter the open apartment first.

I thank God for the cold, cold weather.

He’s there, a middle-aged man, probably no more than thirty-five. He is—was—sitting on a rocking chair. It’s oddly placed in the middle of the living room, pushed away from the sofa, entertainment center and grandfather clock. The backside of the chair is red but it shouldn’t be. His head is thrown back, his very dark curls cascading over the edge. I walk closer. Phil and Ted have stopped at the door and I can hear Phil retching in the hall. The man’s neck is open, gashed, not by teeth, not by the undead, but by the clean, sharp sweep of a knife.

“No, this isn’t right,” I say, shaking my head. His eyes are open, staring, milky white where the blue should be. The room is so cold that he hasn’t begun to decompose. The same thought keeps occurring to me every few seconds: even if we clear this place out, even if it’s safe,
how can we live here?

Then I’m running into the hall and vomiting over the staircase. I can’t help it, it’s worse, so much worse than the other things, the walking, unliving things. You can feel him trapped in there, the silent scream, the wide-open mouth begging for life.

“We have to get him out of there,” Ted says. I agree and my esteem for Ted grows a little more as he and I carefully pick up the body, me the feet and Ted the shoulders. We’re not sure where to take it, but we settle on the opposite end of the hall, in a quiet corner by a closet door. He’s heavy in our arms, even without his blood, and I can’t keep my eyes off the raw, red ribbon sewn across his neck. After putting him in the corner we go back in the apartment and find a clean sheet in the man’s linen closet, one of the few things that hasn’t been taken. We put it over him and watch the white speckled fabric settle over his body, shrouding him like a martyr at peace.

I think about the red stains in the first apartment, the ones on the carpet. I wonder where the bodies are.

There isn’t anything to say, so we silently go to the last door, the closed one. It’s locked so I take the knob off with the ax. The windows in the living room are open a little and a murmuring breeze rolls in. It’s chilly here too and again, I’m thankful. There’s another body here, an old, frail woman with hands covered in brown age spots, the skin so ancient it’s stretched across her bones like parchment. She looks happy, okay, sitting on her overstuffed couch with closed eyes and a wan smile. I wonder if she had a heart attack, if she saw the commotion outside, staggered over to the couch and simply died. She’s easier to carry, but so light and fragile I’m worried we’ll crush her into dust. We put her beside the man and cover her too.

Phil keeps a lookout from the door, his baseball bat and gleaming club at the ready.

When we go back in her apartment we find everything where it should be: the china, silverware, pots and pans and towels and bed linens. Everything is very clean but there’s a faint smell of dust, as if all her possessions were old, from a different time. I pick up a piece of junk mail on the front desk. Ms. Jane Weathers. I go into her kitchen and it’s painted bright green. There are a few plants on the windowsill, but they’ve begun to shrivel up and wilt.

When I open up the cupboards beneath her sink I have to keep myself from laughing. I’m trying not to chuckle, I really am, but it’s just too damn much. The apartment could be a model for emergency survival. Poor Ms. Weathers was undoubtedly a product of the “duck and cover,” fallout-shelter-in-your-backyard era. It shows. Ted finds two generators in her coat closet and an ancient AM/FM portable radio with numbers on the knobs that are probably legible from outer space. In the cupboards I find all the canned crap that languishes in the very back of your pantry—green beans, baked beans, peaches, instant mashed potatoes.

“Well, looks like we’re going go be living it up
Leave It to Beaver
style,” I say, holding up a can of creamed corn for Phil to inspect. I can’t remember the last time I ate any of these things, but they all sound better than Cheetos. The apartment is perfect: clean, spacious and well-stocked. I don’t know if we can all fit, or if we should. There are other apartments, but I can’t stop thinking about the bloodstains on the carpet … That apartment is the most logical choice. It has the handy fire escape. We could put a rug over the stains, we could do something …

“Incoming!”

Phil is shouting, and in the doorway he’s whacking away at the shuffling creatures trying to get in. I see a decrepit arm with three fingers reaching in for him and reach the door in time to lop it off. Ted is there, the fire extinguisher puffing away, screaming past my ear. I take a brown paper bag and fill it with canned items and a can opener and rejoin the boys, who have cleared a path back to the apartment with the fire escape. We sprint inside and I push the bag into Ted’s arms. He and Phil go down first and I cover their escape, hacking away at two Groaners who have followed close on our heels. I shut the window on my way out, leaving it open just a crack.

Inside the store it’s quiet, and we move a little more slowly. On the way by the bookshelves I grab a few books and toss them into Ted’s bag. I restrain myself and he pats me on the back. Holly greets us at the door, tears of relief shimmering in her eyes. I never noticed how beautiful she is, how her new haircut shows her pretty face to advantage, how her cheekbones are high and regal. I’m just glad to see they’re all alive and glad to have Dapper dancing at my shins, doing laps around my feet as I take off the head wrap and wipe down the ax and golf club.

“We found some golf clubs in the apartments,” I say in response to their curious looks.

Phil shoots me a grateful glance and we all sit down to a dinner of beef jerky, Pepsi and cold green beans.

Now I’m alone in the safe room. I’m exhausted and so afraid.

The monitors are quiet, everyone is asleep, but I can’t help thinking … Maybe we shouldn’t live in the apartments. It seems wrong somehow, to take over a place we have no claim to, but what choice do we have? The break room is too small and I’m desperate to sleep on a bed again, to feel something soft underneath my head at night, to return to some semblance of civilized life. But something nags.

I don’t know why we feel bound to this place, but it seems impossible to leave.

I turn on the radio we found in Ms. Weathers’ apartment. The batteries are still good. It smells like old, wet books and there’s dust collecting in the knobs and grooves. I tune it around, looking for signs of life but there’s only static, static, static.

COMMENTS

CptCrckpot says:

September 27, 2009 at 7:09 pm

Things aren’t much better in Texas, if you were having any thoughts about trying to make your way here. I’m in an office in an industrial park between Dallas and Fort Worth. I worked the night shift doing customer service for a small company. Things had only just started when I came in to work, not even any mention on the news. I heard some sirens shortly after I got here, and later on I could hear cars crashing and gunshots in the distance, but that was it. Good thing our office is the last one in the last industrial park going north on 360 out of Arlington. I’ve spent the past week just laying low here in the office, and have fortified things as best I can.

Allison says:

September 27, 2009 at 7:34 pm

Captain, we wish you luck. Are there other survivors with you? There’s strength in numbers, so see if you can find some coworkers to help with the fortifications.

Isaac says:

September 27, 2009 at 7:56 pm

Supplies are low here and with winter coming there’s no time to plant anything. I just hope we can hold out on the canned rations we have left. It makes me nervous sometimes, not seeing any of those creatures for days and then BAM, one drifts into the yard and starts pawing at the windows. I’ve got a hunting rifle but I don’t shoot unless absolutely necessary. An ax, as you know Allison, works just as well and doesn’t waste ammunition. Do you have anything to defend yourself with, CptCrckpot?

CptCrckpot says:

September 27, 2009 at 9:03 pm

Not really, no weapons here except some fire extinguishers and letter openers, and the wireless is becoming erratic. I don’t think we’ll have it at all by the end of the week.

September 29, 2009—Little Children

“Couches, windows, actual places to sleep … It’s the best choice, Allison, and you know it. I think we should move upstairs.”

“We have to talk about this, Phil! We have to decide together, as a group. You can’t just decide for us, it’s not a Philtatorship.”

“
What?
”

“It’s from … Forget it. Look, what’s important is that we discuss this like adults.” Phil’s giving me an empty stare. He’s not even listening. “No one is in charge anymore. This is bigger than what you want.”

Something strange has happened. Phil is suddenly a trusted voice of authority.

Ted and I expressed our considerable doubts to each other, our fears that, while the apartments upstairs were nice and a general improvement, we still weren’t sure about making a permanent move. There were more pros than cons to moving, but like me, Ted wasn’t fond of the general malaise of evil that hung around the place. But Phil, the son of a bitch, went right ahead and gushed to Matt and Janette about Ms. Weathers’ apartment. It had a good view of the street, it had generators and silverware and peas!

Matt and Janette, accustomed to taking orders from Phil, jumped on board the train, leaving Ted and I to voice our doubts.

“But it was your idea to take a look around up there,” Matt protests, rolling his eyes at me for probably the fifth time that morning.

“I know that, but you have to understand.… It’s just, I feel like maybe we should talk about it some more, maybe take a vote.”

Conveniently, Phil hadn’t told them about the dead body with the slit throat. I think he may have mentioned something about moving Ms. Weathers out of her apartment, but that didn’t seem to bother Matt or Janette. It was tempting, so very tempting, to let them know that Phil had been ready to abandon us at a moment’s notice. When the scent of freedom was on the air, even briefly, Phil had taken a big whiff, rounded third and dove for home face-first.

I was hoping that they’d go for the vote idea. Holly would vote whichever way Ted did and then we could pronounce a stalemate and stall for a while.

“Fine,” Phil says, throwing up his hands. “A vote it is. All in favor of moving upstairs raise your hands.”

One, two, three and—what’s this?—
four
hands go up. Ted and I whip around to glare at Holly in unison and she takes a step back, shrugging her shoulders. “I just … I think it would be nice, don’t you? I’m sick of it down here.”

I elbow Ted, hard. “Control your fucking woman, dude.”

“Hey!” Holly shouts.

“It was a joke, Holly. Pipe down,” I say, pinching the bridge of my nose between thumb and forefinger. I can hear Phil laughing, chuckling at my frustration. Democracy is overrated. I should’ve just barred Phil in his office. Briefly, I consider telling them about the murdered man in Apartment D but decide against it. I haven’t seen Phil, Matt and Janette this happy since before this stupid shit storm began.

“It’s going to take a lot of work,” I remind them, tugging at my side of the power-struggle rope. This wasn’t going to be easy, but Phil still had a ways to go before the rest of the group looked to him for tasks. “We encountered some Groaners up there so we need to be vigilant. I think we should stick to two apartments, divided up however, but we shouldn’t spread out too far.”

Having won the argument, Phil is practically exuberant as he goes about hauling what’s left of our food upstairs. We organize teams, only one team taking a trip at a time, two people on the lookout while one person carries food or books or cleaning supplies. It takes three trips to get it all upstairs.