Allison Hewitt Is Trapped (12 page)

Phil, Matt and Janette were playing cards next door. I could hear them through the wall, laughing, shouting, throwing bad hands down on the coffee table. In my memory that sound is muddled and faded, like a television playing in a distant room. Everyone was dedicated to keeping Phil in high spirits, distracting him from the fact that he’d spend his birthday in a gutted, stolen apartment eating a cake made on a hibachi. From down the hall I could hear the Everly Brothers crooning about dreams. Holly and I opened the curtains in the kitchen and living room to let in some of the overcast, milky light. There was a threat of rain in those clouds, a dark heaviness casting long shadows down the street.

“Should I use the whole bag of chocolate chips?”

“Hm? Yeah, go for it,” I said, turning to see Holly holding the open bag above the batter bowl. “But go easy on the walnuts.” Ted spent the morning organizing all of our foodstuffs, carefully putting them together in neat rows, arranging them in a few labeled boxes so we could easily find corn, beans and fruit without searching through the pantry. Holly and I dodged the boxes as we moved around the kitchen. Dapper made himself a nuisance as usual, tangling in our feet as we tried to bake.

Zack joined us to help with the actual baking. We poured the batter into a deep pan and lit one half of the grill, covering the cake with foil and leaving it to cook on the unlit side of the grill. Zack’s theory was that the heat would be just enough to cook the batter without burning the sugar and the foil should keep out most of the smoky flavor. For the next hour we took turns checking under the foil, poking the top with a fork. Despite our best efforts, the damned thing smoked out the entire living room and we waded through a haze of burnt vanilla. In the next apartment they could smell the burning and made a lame attempt to keep it out by taping newspaper over the hole.

There were no birthday candles so we frosted the cake and arranged a ring of candles around the pan. It looked a little black on top but the middle seemed okay. Janette and Matt brought Phil in and we sang “Happy Birthday,” huddled around the candles for warmth. The room was colder than usual and this was about when I noticed the kitchen window was wide open. Someone must have opened it to air out the smoke.

As we sang, I saw Holly was about to cry. That part is strong in my memory right now. It reached me too but I held it at bay, feeling too cold, suddenly too afraid to find the depth of feeling. Phil clasped his hands to his chest, his stained polo shirt replaced with a big zipped-up pullover. We were all wrapped in blankets, a group of mismatched druids holding our sad and arcane ritual, singing and shivering and glowing in the candlelight.

Phil got the first piece. Matt, his droopy basset hound face perking up, chanted “Speech, speech!” but thankfully Phil ignored him. He didn’t need to say anything about the cake, about the sentiments. We could all intuit his gratitude by the big, dopey smile on his face. I wished he would shave—he was starting to look like a caveman. No one had anything to give Phil but we started up another card game. I picked the chocolate chips out of a piece of cake and gave it to Dapper, who ate it all in one bite. Zack, Holly and I sat out. Zack stared at me until I caught him doing it. I didn’t know why he was watching me, why his eyes were so intense, so persistent.

*   *   *

The cake was gone and the first game of poker was over when it happened.

I didn’t see most of it, not really, just a blur, a scream, a crash of dishes and silverware. When I first heard Holly cry out I thought she’d burned herself on the grill, but when I turned to help her, there was something wrapped around her neck, something brown and mangy, like a rotten muffler. Dapper lunged for it, but I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back. If he bit that thing he’d be history too.

But it wasn’t a mink or a fox, it was a squirrel and when it leapt off of Holly it took a trail of blood with it. Without thinking the ax was in my hands and I chased after the thing, cornering it against the couch and the closet. It wasn’t alive, wasn’t normal. I could see the shiny wet skull through the torn fur of its head; both ears were missing, chewed away. The ax took it in the middle, separating it cleanly in half. I took off its head too, just to be sure.

Too much excitement and too many distractions. I never even noticed the window was still cracked open.

I expected more talking, more shouting, but when I returned to the others there was only silence. They’d formed a tight ring around the struggling girl on the floor, the futile clawing at her own neck. It was a small bite, just a little tear in the skin, no bigger than a bad fingernail scratch, but it punctured her veins, and we could all see that. Already her eyes were changing, becoming greenish, her skin molting its healthy pink color.

Ted rushed forward, holding her, whispering her name over and over. I put out my hand. I wanted to pull him back, to save him before Holly took him. But there was no fight in her yet. He stood, pulling her gently to her feet. Holly looked at me. I stared deep into her and watched as she stopped recognizing me, as the cruel unknowing slipped over her face like a Halloween mask. We broke the circle and Ted went past with Holly limping, slumped against his shoulder. I couldn’t see his face; he wouldn’t let me see it.

I offered him the ax. He’d gained a little weight. There was a hardness to his cheekbones and a square, iron set to his jaw; I saw it clearly now. He was growing up right there, right on the stained, faded carpet of a house we didn’t own, in a life we no longer recognized.

I trailed them as they went to the door, out into the hall. The door slammed in my face. None of us said anything, not even good-bye. I worried for a moment that Ted would do something stupid, that I wouldn’t see him again—or that if I did, it wouldn’t be a Ted I knew but a Ted I’d have to annihilate. I almost wanted Zack to put his arms around me, to tell me it’s okay but I knew it wasn’t. I knew everything was completely fucked now.

Then there was that sound like dropping a barrel, followed by a kind of fast, soft crunch. I was at the door when I heard that sound, my palms flat against the wood during what I knew was Ted’s last moment of peace. I looked back at the others. Janette and Matt were clinging tightly together and Phil was at the window, staring at it as if the window itself committed the crime.

He’s done the right thing, I remind myself. He’s one of us. He knows what must be done.

Then there’s a sound I’m not expecting, not hoping for: a cry, a wail, not of sadness but of absolute frustration. Ted opened the door and I was there waiting. I could see his face now—there was nothing left, none of the spry, wicked Ted that lurked beneath the sober, nerdy exterior. It was wiped away, cut off with the same sweep of the ax that ended Holly.

“If any of you want to say good-bye, you should follow me.”

We filed out into the hallway, Dapper included, our heads bowed, our mouths sticky with tears that hadn’t fallen yet and words no one had the courage to speak. Holly wasn’t in the hallway, but there was a fresh stain on the floor and on Ted’s hands. Her sweatshirt hung from the stairwell banister like a wreath of flowers slung around a gravestone.

Ted wasn’t saying anything and I wasn’t sure I could speak, but I took his hand and held it and squeezed it until I could feel him squeeze back.

“It’s not fair,” I whispered. “It’s so fucking unfair.”

Janette began to cry and Phil was sniffling, trying hard to be brave. I don’t know how long we stood there—bowing our heads toward that sweatshirt, waiting like comrades of a fallen soldier, waiting for some sign to go on, that things wouldn’t just end altogether—before we finally found the strength to raise our heads. Part of me wanted it to end, because if someone as sweet and well-meaning as Holly could be destroyed by something so random, so coincidental, then what was the use?

Ted let go of my hand and turned, leading us back into the apartment. That’s when I noticed that Zack hadn’t been standing with us and I couldn’t remember when he stopped being there. I let it go. I let the focus go for one minute and he was gone. I knew something was really wrong when Ted slammed the ax, headfirst, onto the countertop.

“No,” I told him. “No, search, search everywhere.”

He ran out of the kitchen, Phil and Matt sprinting into the other apartment. We were not looking for Zack; we were looking for the boxes, the neatly labeled boxes holding our food. All of the food.

Ted walked into the kitchen, his face blank, bloodless. I could tell from his voice that we’d lost everything.

“There’s something you need to hear, Allison.”

It was the radio: I could hear it trickling out of the bedroom and down the hall. It was The Voice, the stranger I had come to rely on. “—is an alert, be on the alert. He is five-eight, blond, green eyes, about one hundred and seventy pounds. We know him only as Jack. Staffers are reporting stolen goods and equipment.”

“Get your bat.”

“Allison!”

It was Janette, in the living room screaming her head off. Ted and I met her there, armed, red-faced and furious. The space outside the door, in the hallway, was moving, seething. Ted and I hacked our way out into the hallway. It was a goddamned ambush, dozens, maybe hundreds, all of them fumbling up the stairwell toward us. I leaned over the banister, Ted protecting me. At the bottom of the stairs I could see the maintenance room door wide open and more and more undead pouring inside.

“Fucking bastard, fucking goddamned bastard.”
I pushed past Ted and back into the apartment. Janette was crumpled on the floor, curled up, sobbing. Matt and Phil appeared with their golf clubs and Dapper barked and barked, dancing back and forth behind Ted.

“Janette,” I said, going to the window. “Janette! Fucking get up! Get up and get the wine down.”

“The wine?” she stammered.

“JUST FUCKING DO WHAT I TELL YOU!”

Janette scrambled to her feet behind me and I could hear the clink of bottles as she laid them out on the countertop. There were only three, but that should be enough. Out on the street I could see Zack getting away, carrying our things, our food. It was slow going and there might just be a way …

“Bring him the ax, Janette. Ted!” I shouted, going to the wine bottles. “Can you hold them off at the door?”

“Yeah, but whatever you’re doing, hurry it up!”

I could barely hear him over the baseball bat and then the chopping of the ax. Phil and Matt stood behind him, whacking at anything that got too close.

“Janette, I need you to focus, okay? Get these open and pour out as much as you can. Down the sink, get it?”

She nodded frantically, her eyes leaking tears as she took the corkscrew I’d forced into her trembling hands. I slammed open the doors beneath the sink and shoved Formula 409 and Drano and sponges out of the way until I found it hiding in the back: a little silver nugget with a bright-red top. From the linen closet, I grabbed an old fitted sheet. Thankfully we’d kept the lighters in an easy to reach place, and Janette had emptied out most of the first bottle. I grabbed it and shook hard, watching the good pinot noir drip down the drain. Janette went to open more as I tore a long strip of fabric off the sheet. I tore off two more and pulled off the red top on the turpentine. I heard Janette gag from the smell as the bottle was filled halfway, and then the next, and then the last.

“Allison! Come on! Fuck!”

“I’m almost done!” I shouted back, meaning it. I shoved the cloth strips inside and jammed the corks back down onto the bottles.

I ran back to the bedroom and packed up the laptop, nearly dropping it as I shoved it into the carrier and swung it up diagonally across my shoulders. Ted was grunting with effort as I arrived back in the living room, his swings growing more and more erratic.

“Okay, we need to clear a path to the fire escape. I’ve got our retreat covered.”

Ted handed me back my ax and together we mowed down a path. It wasn’t very clear, and more than once I felt my heart fly up into my throat as a hand grabbed my sleeve or shoe. Ted went first with Matt and Phil, Janette sandwiched in the middle carrying my bottles. Matt got one hand on Dapper’s collar, pulling the mutt along. I heard the window open and the clang-clang of their feet on the metal grates of the fire escape. My hands were locked so tightly around the ax I could feel my knuckles creaking with rage. If I didn’t hold it tight, it’d slip right out of my grasp from the sweat. I put the lighter in my mouth, and it was hard to breathe and swing, but I managed. The apartment was filling up and the noise was astounding—screeching and groaning, a whole buffet’s worth of hungry, angry, desperate undead shoving themselves through the door. They were tearing at each other just trying to get to us.

“Okay! We’re out!”

I took the lighter out of my mouth. “Get down the ladder. Go! Go!”

I ducked into the kitchen and out onto the fire escape, keeping the window open. The apartment was filled to capacity now and there were bodies wriggling into the kitchen, mouths hanging open, tongues missing altogether or hanging by a thread of muscle. I’d never made a Molotov cocktail before but I’d seen it on TV and that would just have to be good enough. I lit the first wick and, having no idea how long to wait, tossed it right away. This was both a good and bad decision.

The cocktail exploded somewhere in the living room and the blast was unbelievable. It reached through the kitchen, the heat of it slamming through the window and into my chest. I almost went ass over head off the balcony, but I managed to stumble back up to my feet, my back screaming in pain. There was warmth on my face where the blast licked my skin. I skidded down the ladder and beckoned the others away. I jogged backward a few paces before lighting the second one and hurling it at the window. Fire and body parts shot into the air, cascading over our heads and the retaining wall. We were out behind the store now and the building was beginning to burn.

I remember Dapper whining as he sat at my feet.

“Right,” I said, turning to face the others. I knew I looked crazy because they were gaping at me like I’d completely lost my mind. “Ted, you’re coming with me. The rest of you head for the university. We’ll meet you there.”