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.
I wait to go on the last team, lingering in the safe room. We have to say good-bye to these monitors, these little beacons of information. Dapper is whining and hungry and I know he doesn’t want to leave the break room. I should be more confident, more optimistic, but it all feels too hasty. This is how mistakes are made, I keep thinking, this is how we end up cornered and fighting for our lives.
Hollianted and I will be taking one apartment, the other three are inhabiting the other. They’re right next to each other, so I take the initiative and take the ax to the drywall. It takes a few hours on and off of work, but eventually Ted and I have got a respectable hole straight through the shared wall. We have no phones, no walkie-talkies and we need a reliable way to stay in touch across the apartments.
There are several things preoccupying my mind, but one in particular: it makes me sincerely nervous that I still haven’t found the source of the wireless. With Ted and a golf club, I scoured every apartment looking for the router. I’ve come to the conclusion that it might be in the maintenance area midway between the store and the apartments, the sort of no-
man’s-land at the bottom of the stairwell. We’ve decided to leave exploration of that room for another day; it’s likely to be very dark and cold and we only have a few candles and one flashlight. Luckily, Ms. Weathers kept a healthy supply of batteries around. We hope this will be enough to power the flashlight and the radio indefinitely.
And there’s something else that worries me: as soon as we arrived and started settling in, Dapper began barking and growling, turning in circles and baring his teeth. Ted and I are trying to keep the nervous, meaningful glances to a minimum, but we couldn’t help a shared moment of anxiety when we noticed Dapper’s strange behavior.
* * *
And so we’ve moved upstairs. In a way, it was easier than I expected. Matt, Janette and Holly took the journey well and they really didn’t have to see much of anything. We told them to keep their eyes forward but I’m sure they glimpsed the trail of carnage in the back storeroom. Most of the undead were still cleared out from our adventure the other day. They’ve each been given a golf club which, in a matter of hours, ended up coming in handy.
Moving apartments wasn’t nearly enough excitement for one day.
Not three hours after we’d handed out the golf clubs, I hear a scream come from the other apartment. There are many kinds of screams—horrified screams, pain screams and surprised screams. This was one of the latter. I peek through the jagged hole in the wall to see Janette covering her mouth, her golf club on the floor and a man I’d never seen before kneeling there with his hand rubbing his forehead.
Hollianted and I sprint into the other apartment, where Phil and Matt are just coming on the scene too. The man isn’t dead and certainly isn’t undead, but he does have a reddening bump on the right side of his forehead.
“Who the fuck are you?” I ask, in what I believe to be a remarkably calm voice given the circumstances.
“Jesus, I was thinking just the same thing!”
Ted is raising his golf club up over his head, winding up for a big, brain-bashing swing. The stranger flinches, covering his blond, curly head with both arms.
“Don’t! Fuck, don’t hit me again. I’m not armed.”
Phil races forward to confirm this, lamely patting the stranger down, mimicking whatever he had seen them do on Law & Order. When he steps back, he nods solemnly, giving a little comical grunt of acquiescence. I ignore this and put myself between Ted and the newcomer.
“Why the hell were you hiding in a linen closet?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest. He’s still kneeling on the ground, which is good. It makes me think he at least recognizes who has the upper hand here.
“I live here,” he retorts with a laugh of disbelief. “But I heard all these noises and voices so I got scared.” He swallows a big lump in his throat and glances to his left. Something is wrong. An idea comes to mind and I know I have to get him alone.
“What’s your name?” I ask, trying to sound gentle.
“Zack, my name is Zack, but we can’t stay here. There’s a—”
“We’ve cleared them out, checked everywhere,” I interrupt him, widening my eyes to let him know that whatever it is he wants to say, he’ll have to save it.
“Apparently not!” he mutters, rubbing the bump on his head.
“This is really your apartment?” I ask.
“Not this one, Apartment D. It’s my brother-in-law’s place,” Zack replies. I look at Ted. D is where we found the man in the rocking chair.
“So why are you in here then?” I ask.
“I couldn’t … I couldn’t stay there! Not after—”
“They got your brother-in-law,” I finish for him. He squints at me, tilting his head to the side. I can hear Phil squishing around on the carpet behind me, fidgeting. Through the hole in the wall I can hear Dapper yowling. I don’t want the others to know about the man in the rocking chair. It won’t help anything to put them in a panic.
“Can you stand?”
Zack nods slowly and then digs his heel into the carpet, lifting himself to his feet with one strong push. He stands and looks around at all of us, his eyebrows meeting over his anxious gaze.
“I guess we can’t kick you out, seeing as how you live here and all.”
“Um, Allison, could I have a word?”
“Sure, Ted.”
He hands the golf club to Phil wordlessly. I follow him to the master bedroom and he shuts the door. His hair is getting in his eyes again so he pushes it away and glares at me.
“What?”
“You know what. We can’t take him in. It’s out of the question.”
“Really? And why is that?”
“We don’t know anything about him. For all we know he could’ve killed that guy!”
“His own brother-in-law? And why would he stick around? Murderers generally don’t hang around after they kill somebody. I mean, serial killers like the attention and stuff but that’s totally different. Not to mention, he was hiding in the linen closet. If he was gutsy enough to slit someone’s throat, why would he hide from us?”
“Because he’s outnumbered? Because we have a dog? Any number of reasons!”
“It just … It just doesn’t seem right to kick him out. How can we do that? You know as well as I do that he’d probably die out there on his own,” I explain. “And besides, do you really want to make enemies?”
“We know there are other people out there. We know that now, you said it yourself. Those people, whoever, on your, whatever…”
“Blog?”
“Yes. Look, if we didn’t know there were other survivors then maybe it would be different, but the way things are … I just think it’s a bad call.”
“Our food supply is better, we have room. I can’t in good conscience send someone out to their death,” I say. I lean forward and grab Ted around the collar and yank him toward the window. The chintz curtains are closed so I push them back. “Look. Look at it down there. There’s nothing left. Where would he go? We can’t be barbarians, Ted, we just can’t. What if it was you hiding in that closet? Or my mom? When things get back to normal little acts of kindness will add up.”
“Jesus, you sound like my girlfriend.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” I shout. I’m losing my temper; I try to breathe. Just a few deep breaths and everything will be easier to handle …
“You just want him around because he’s good-looking.”
“I—what? Are you completely insane? What does that have to do with anything?” The deep breaths aren’t working now, nothing is working …
“Well if it turns out we need to repopulate the Earth he’s a big upgrade from Phil.”
I don’t mean to, I don’t think I even wanted to, but I slap Ted, hard, right across the face. He reels back, holding his cheek, his glasses askew.
“When have I ever made a decision out of purely selfish motives, Ted? Do you think that by only considering myself we would be where we are now? Do you? Answer me.”
“It was a stupid thing to say. I’m sorry.”
“He stays. Get it? He just … He just fucking stays.”
I leave Ted behind, letting him hold where it smarts. There’s something ugly inside of me, it’s not just my temper. It’s something worse. I can feel all of the questions, all of the doubts, swirling into one terrible mass of anger. It’s too much to handle, too much for one person. And it’s worse because I know if my mom were here she could help. She would know what to do. She was always so strong, so put together … She would know just what to say to me. Maybe my instincts are wrong and maybe Ted is right, but I’ll be damned if I start acting like nothing and no one else matter. It all matters, every little last vestige of humanity matters now. The books, the radio, the people … We have to carry it forward.
In the living room they’re still standing around, useless, staring at Zack like he’s Zombie Santa Claus just fallen out of the chimney. I push through them, through the wall of Janette and Matt, and take Zack by the wrist.
“Everybody, this is Zac
k. Zack, this is Janette, Matt, Phil and Holly, and the guy in the other room is Ted. I’m Allison. It’s good to have you with us.”
Zack is staying in our apartment because the suspicion and dislike rolls off of Matt in a pungent, snappish wave. Ted is doing his very best, but I know he’s swallowing his pride and his frustration. Holly, of course, is affable and kind. She’s an asset to us, I can see it now. When everyone else refuses to smile or laugh, Holly is a bright ray of sunshine bouncing down the halls. She’s even begun an art project in the living room of our apartment, something to make it look a little cheerier and more like home.
Zack has volunteered to sleep in the bathtub with some pillows and a comforter, which gives me the bedroom all to myself. I can hear Zack’s elbows bumping the walls next door, and Dapper is stretched out on the end of the bed, but otherwise I have solitude, a quiet place to write and rest. Hollianted use the hide-a-bed out in the living room. I think they’re grateful for the privacy and I envy their relationship. I hate that Ted is a little bit right. I’m lonely, and he can see it. Maybe everyone can see it.
COMMENTS
Brooklyn Girl says:
September 29, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Bed Stuy still here. We’ve managed to block the stairs to our apartment and use the fire escapes to go out for supplies. So far the fires have managed to burn away from our block, but the smoke is making visibility horrible. You don’t see the things until they’re right on you. We’re raiding the bodega down the block tonight. Keep the faith.
Allison says:
September 29, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Thank god. I thought NYC would be the first to go. Is Manhattan history?
Rev. Brown says:
September 29, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Let your faith be your shield! Your arms will tire, your blades will dull, but the Lord’s light will carry you past harm.
Be not afraid! His righteous judgment has fallen on this world of sodomites and non-believers, and only we, the faithful, will be taken up to heaven after he has culled this herd. As the dead marched on Jerusalem when Jesus was hung upon that cross so too do they march on us in this final hour.
Allison Hewitt Is Trapped Page 6