Allison Hewitt Is Trapped (40 page)

But since The Outbreak things had stabilized. Stabilized. That’s the word the street pamphlets liked to use—“the situation has stabilized.”

“Stabilized, my ass.”

The man who had gotten in line behind me had read the pamphlet over my shoulder. He had a strong Polish accent. I gave him a wan smile. “Could be better,” I said with a shrug, “could be worse.”

The first Tuesday of every month, a caravan of trucks snaked into the one gated entrance to the city. They lumbered over to the old Pike Place Fish Market, now strictly a vegetable and food market, and dumped whatever produce they had managed to grow. The lines on Tuesdays started forming at four or five in the morning, winding up and across the cobbled avenue leading down to the market, hundreds, thousands of people huddled together in the pink dawn glow, bags and baskets tucked under their arms.

The crowd was getting louder, rowdy, everyone in line shuffling anxiously, ready to get going and start their day.

“Fucking Rabbits. They haul ass out of Citadel yet?”

I jumped, nearly dropping the street pamphlet. It was Carl, my boyfriend. He wrapped me up in a hug and I was grateful for the warmth. Carl, my boyfriend. Carl my boyfriend who was supposed to be watching Shane. I whirled on him.

“What are you doing here? Where’s Shane?”

“Don’t sweat it. Shane’s with my friends.”

“
Which
friends?”

Carl shrugged, his lanky shoulders flying up around his ears like a pair of bony wings. “Dave and Jill,” he said. “They’re cool. They work over in Queen Gardens.”

“I don’t care where they work, Carl, I don’t know them. You can’t just leave Shane with strangers—he’s not a Cuisinart!”

Shane is shy, bookish. He doesn’t like strangers. He barely tolerates me, his own flesh and blood.

Carl heaves a dramatic sigh, his deep-set brown eyes rolling a complete three-sixty. I fold up the pamphlet and swat him hard on the shoulder with it.

It’s hard to stand still knowing that Shane is being watched by strangers. Trust is a commodity these days, and one I’m generally short on. I feel suddenly claustrophobic, short of breath.

“Here,” I say, shoving the market bag at Carl. “You stay and get the food. I’ll go back to Shane.”

“He’ll be fine.”

“He better be.”

The ration papers are in my pocket. They state, in slanted handwriting, that Shane and I, making up a family, are entitled to two bags of mixed vegetables, fruit, and a packet of dried fish. These are in exchange for the beets and cabbages our family garden contributed to the city’s food supply.

“Use my papers and yours too,” I add. “They’ll be more than enough for the month.”

Shane and I don’t need much and with Carl’s rations coming in too, we eat pretty well. I turn to go and Carl grabs me by the forearm.

“I
said
they’re my friends. What’s the problem?”

“Just get the groceries, okay?”

I didn’t feel like arguing with him, not just then, not when poor Shane was probably curled up in the fetal position, convinced that he’d been abandoned again. Shane is my sister’s eight-year-old; she and her husband were on a bus when The Outbreak hit downtown. They never made it home and
voilà
, just like winning a twisted game show, I became a mother to a quiet little nerd with sunshine curls and a gap-toothed smile.

Even more people are out and about as I half-run up 1
st
Avenue. There are dark, burnt-out storefronts on either side of the road and a rundown strip club with greasy windows and sun-bleached posters. The main market still functions as a market, but for basic things now—blankets and clothing and food and a few real gems, like booksellers and wine dealers. The Outbreak hit us in September. By early November, alcohol and books were at a premium.

I turned right, going more steeply uphill, away from the waterfront and toward the apartment. Most things change, but some things never did. The Olympic Mountains loomed over the Citadel, rising out of the fog, silent, stoic watchers that, on a daily basis, managed to remind me that enduring was possible.

My whole body, sensing trouble, sped up. A nasty idea had occurred to me: Carl didn’t have friends, Carl had customers. He dealt mainly in knives, self-defense junk, and he had a knack for finding army surplus all over town. Carl kept the knives elsewhere but the only people I’d ever seen him hang around with were in some way tied to his business. I didn’t like his business, but it brought in extra food, a lot of it, and you just didn’t complain about that sort of thing.

A prickly heat began rising out of the back of my scarf. Fumbling with the keys, I flung open the front door and raced through the sand-colored empty lobby, down the hall and up the back stairs. Our apartment sat right at the top, around a bare two-by-four doorway, close enough to hear the neighbors troop up and down day and night. The door to our apartment was shut, a good sign, but the queasy feeling in my stomach didn’t ease. Inside it was dark.

I dropped my portfolio with a thud on the hardwood floor.

“Shane? Shane? It’s not a joke. Come out here.”

There was a faint tinkling sound, like a distant jingle bell. To the right, the apartment housed a cramped kitchen. Even in the semi-darkness I could see a cupboard door inch open. I grabbed the edge and yanked.

“Shane! Oh God, Shane.” I pulled him out of the cupboard, brushing the stray rice off of his little shoulder, and gathered him up in my arms.

“Are they coming back?” he asked in a tiny voice.

“Is who coming back?” I asked. “Carl’s friends?”

“They’re not friends,” he whispered.

“Did they hurt you?” I asked.

“They’re not friends,” Shane said again.

A flicker of a shadow passed over his face and I heard a quick intake of breath from behind us. But there was no time to react, not with a kid in my arms and my heart rate just starting to slow. Something hard and sharp hit the top of my head. I felt Shane slip and my body tip forward and the ground come for me like a swiftly rising tide. But it wasn’t quite enough.

“Hit her again.”

It was Carl saying this. Carl speaking, my Carl, telling someone to knock me out. Shane’s pale blonde head flashed in front of me. I turned, stumbling out of the kitchen and pushing past the blurry stranger who had struck me. A black ink spill was falling over my eyes, dripping down like a liquid curtain. But I had enough of my wits to lash out with my arms, reach blindly for my nephew. He screamed. Shane never screamed—he protested from time to time quietly in his meek, middle-aged toddler manner, but never raised his voice above a thoughtful murmur. There was probably blood on me. Blood would make him scream.

Carl stood in the hallway, his tall, rangy body framed by the open doorway. I fumbled toward him, batting, my legs failing just in time to send me pitching forward. Carl and I tumbled out into the corridor.

“Hit her again. Jesus Christ. Hurry up!”

He slammed into the wall and grunted the air out of his lungs; my fists balled up and pressed against his chest. I grabbed him by the collar of his coat and shook and then pulled. But gravity and my aching head won, and I fell forward again, my weight sending us both toward the stairwell and the wide open arch of two-by-fours. Nothing stopped us. The stairs were suddenly there, plummeting downward, steeper than I remembered. Carl went down first, me on top, and I felt every hard crack against his spine as we toppled and rolled. Everything spun as we finally found the bottom and Carl’s neck, encouraged by my weight, crashed into the baseboard. The last thing I heard was a sound, an unmistakable, biological crunch as vertebrae met wood.

And then nothing and a deep tugging feeling in my chest, like I was being dragged down, like I was drowning.

For my family

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ALLISON HEWITT IS TRAPPED
. Copyright © 2010 by Madeleine Roux. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roux, Madeleine, 1985–

  Allison Hewitt is trapped : a zombie novel / Madeleine Roux.—1st ed.

          p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-312-65890-8

1.  Young women—Blogs—Fiction.   2.  Zombies—Fiction.   3.  Blogs—Fiction.   I.  Title.

  PS3618.O87235A79 2011

  813'.6—dc22

2010037783

First Edition: January 2011

eISBN 978-1-4299-9033-2

First St. Martin’s Griffin eBook Edition: January 2011