Allison Hewitt Is Trapped

by Madeleine Roux

  I have a feeling this means I’ll see a lot less of Collin and a lot more of Corie and the kids. So after listening to Evan’s spirited, broken recount of their journey to the arena, I join Collin and Ned for target practice. Ned hasn’t shot a gun in years, but the way he picks it back up again tells you he’s a natural. Right away he picks a soda can off of a distant fence and then a baseball tossed into the air. He makes me look like a blind old porch-sitter taking potshots at squirrels. It’s hard not to be impressed, hard not to be swept up by Ned’s tornadolike vortex of affability and well, cool.

  Sadly, I’ve barely seen Ted at all today. He’s become so busy with the nurses and patients at the med tent that I’m beginning to wonder if he’s actively avoiding me. I hope that’s not it. I miss having him around.

  In happier news, Dapper is thrilled that Evan and Mikey have entered his life. The two boys are enamored of the mutt and I think it’s safe to say that the feeling is mutual. And yet with all of this, all this new stuff, I worry a little about Corie. It’s not that she’s fragile, the opposite really, but I know she’ll have a harder time fitting in. The Black Earth Wives have already begun to swarm, cunningly asking for her advice on motherly things when clearly no advice is needed. They’re trying to lure her into their twisted little Tupperware club and I’m afraid it might happen. Collin thinks they’re harmless, that it’s good they try to keep themselves busy instead of letting loss rule their lives.

  Subtle, Collin. Reeeal subtle.

  I’ve been thinking about the nature of potential, about how all of us maybe have the potential to be what Zack was. I know there is a kind of ugliness inside of me—a violence that I never knew existed, that I never had occasion to encourage until I focused all that ugliness on Zack. I try to push that part of me down but then I remember how often it’s saved me and saved Ted. I think that ugliness is in Ted too. He might be a disheveled, good-hearted boy scout on the outside, but inside … inside I think he might be like me. Cold. It hurts to think that I might steal and kill, or that if I’m bitten, infected, I too will become one of those horrible things. All of these potential outcomes are locked away inside of me but now, one by one, they’re beginning to emerge. I wish I had the key. I wish I knew the combination to the lock. I’d close it up forever.

  Collin asks me again if I want to join him and Finn for a drink and this time I accept. I thought maybe he wouldn’t ask me again, but it cheers me up considerably to find that he hasn’t written me off completely. It’s pleasant. So pleasant, in fact, that there’s almost nothing to say about it. Finn is even more fiery and blasphemous when he’s drunk, a whirlwind of curse words and bawdy stories and ginger hair. And Collin? He seems to be one of those people that are simply immune to alcohol. He might have gotten a little rosier, but he stays, as always, a bit of a mystery—reserved and tucked away from us, hiding behind his serenely handsome face. It’s something he’s very good at, I think, presenting the illusion of openness while really concealing most of his personality. I don’t think he has anything to hide. He just prefers to sit behind a shroud of secrecy, silently and comfortably apart.

  When Finn has passed out with his flaming red head on the table, Collin takes me to the radio booth. I see now where his broadcasts came from. He’s been using the glass box over the arena, the booth where the newscasters would call the games. It’s a bird’s-eye view of the Village, and for a moment or two we sit together quietly and watch the darkened camp restlessly sleeping. Every once in a while a flashlight will bounce around the ceiling of a tent, lighting up the colored nylon like a glowworm in a green glass jar.

  There’s a stack of books on the floor by a cushy swivel chair. I pour over the titles, entranced just by the simple act of holding them in my hands. Holding a book is a simple thing, was a simple thing, and now it holds a kind of thrilling magic I never noticed before. Collin tells me the survivors were able to pool the books they had saved and ones they had rescued from the library.

  “Should I read one?” Collin asks, sitting in the swivel chair.

  “Now? It’s so late.”

  “Didn’t you listen late at night? Isn’t that how you found us?” he asks. He’s right, of course, and I nod, chuckling, tickled by the thought of how excited I was about a voice, just a voice.

  “What’s so amusing?” he asks.

  “It’s silly.… No … It’s gross.”

  “What is it?”

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “Yes. Absolutely,” he says, helping me sort through the books. He pauses over Wise Children.

  “I listened to you one night and Zack was there next to me. I thought I was going to … I don’t know, fall for him or something. God. Can you imagine? Can you even imagine being that idiotic?”

  “I can, actually.”

  I wait for him to say more but that’s it, that’s all he’s willing to share.

  “Still,” I say, “that’s not so bad. At least you didn’t marry a kleptomaniac like Zack.”

  “That I know of.” He nods toward the neat stack of books in my hands and I take the seat across from him. I can’t decide. There are too many good ones.

  “Which one will it be?”

  Collin whistles “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” from Mary Poppins while I try to decide; it’s something he does when he’s idle, waiting. I’m a little drunk, so I pick Durrell’s Justine. Collin briefly questions the choice with a raised eyebrow and then takes the book from me anyway. It’s a book for the voice, for the ears.

  “I’m not even going to ask who rescued this one,” I murmur, settling back into the chair like a Persian cat angling for a nice, long nap.

  “It was me, if you must know.”

  “Hedonist.”

  “Mountebank.”

  “Oh!” I cry, feeling the booze. “Good one!”

  “May I begin, or would you like to flirt a while longer?”

  “Sorry,” I say, startled. “Please start.”

  I see then that there’s a ripped page taped to the space above the switchboard. Collin turns a few knobs and clears his throat, scooting the chair closer to the microphone. He begins to speak, slowly and deliberately in that great, rusted old voice of his. He reads from the page.

  “I don’t know how many of you are listening, or how many of you are still trying desperately to survive, but I want you to know this: all hope is not lost. You have somewhere to go, somewhere to seek. It’s late and you feel afraid, hopeless, but don’t despair.” He pauses here in the familiar spiel and looks over at me, smiling faintly. “Why, just a few days ago a woman came to us. She was very nearly killed trying to get here but she made it. She heard us, she persevered, and I’m very grateful that she arrived in one piece. Her name is Allison. And so to honor Allison and her courage, I’ve chosen to read from a book of her choosing this evening. So dear listeners, close your eyes, let the worry drain away and listen, and please do remember: if you don’t like this book, it wasn’t my choice.”

  I scowl and raise my fist and threaten him silently as he chuckles at my indignation. Then he clears his throat again and takes a brief moment to scan the open book in front of him. The room around is so dark, so soft and silent that I can almost hear the deep thunder of his heart. And then, at last, he begins to read.

  After only a moment I begin to feel sleepy. I’m drunk on Collin’s “retirement” whiskey, a fancy bottle he had been saving for many years, a bottle he was hoping to open after his retirement from teaching. That day would have been many years off still, but he was sick and tired of waiting and so he decided to share it with Finn and me. It’s probably the most expensive liquor I’ve ever had, and while it burned on the way down it was a good, satisfying ache, like the first radiant sunburn of summer. I feel warm and ancient and I start to realize that Collin is watching me over the flimsy lip of the book.

  Somehow the radio didn’t quite convey the loveliness of his reading voice. It distorted it, as if all the death and ugliness hanging between
us in space had corroded the quality of his voice until it was a thin imitation. Even then, even with Zack next to me, it had been beautiful; but now, seeing him, being in the same room as the text and the man and the voice, it’s incandescent.

  Potential.

  There are times when our potential grows weary of trembling in shadow and comes suddenly, violently, to the fore. Like a song forced through our pores, or water crashing over a broken dam, that potential arrives, determined, demanding our attention. Maybe there are other things in that locked vault—maybe there’s more than just violence and deception and coldness. Maybe there is radiance, love, a kind of longing that singes you inside.

  I return to my tent giddy, aflame, “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” stuck stubbornly in my head.

  COMMENTS

  Rev. Brown says:

  October 10, 2009 at 11:21 pm

  God Jehovah makes known our potential through His only Son:

  “However, we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the power beyond what is normal may be God’s and not that out of ourselves. We are pressed in every way, but not cramped beyond movement; we are perplexed, but not absolutely with no way out; we are persecuted, but not left in the lurch; we are thrown down, but not destroyed. Always we endure everywhere in our body the death-dealing treatment given to Jesus, that the life of Jesus may also be made manifest in our body. For we who live are ever being brought face to face with death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus may also be made manifest in our mortal flesh. Consequently death is at work in us, but life in YOU.”

  II Corinthians 4:7–12

  Andrew N says:

  October 10, 2009 at 11:45 pm

  Allison,

  I wish you, Ted, and The Village all the best. Finding your words and the stories of fellow readers gives me hope that not all is lost and that humanity will survive.

  After cashing out my stocks at the Dot-Com I was at, I decided to sail around the world. I took my boat out of Newport Beach, California and headed north to Alaska as my first destination. I’m working my way down the pacific coast stopping wherever I can to get fresh supplies. Fresh water is running low. At least I have solar panels to help me out with the electricity. Satellite internet is spotty; I lost the sat-phone in Salem after being chased by Groaners. I haven’t found any other sailors in CB radio range. I keep trying every hour.

  Any other sailors out there, I should hit San Francisco Bay in a few days time. I have enough supplies to last till then; then I’ll need to worry about fresh water.

  Good luck to everyone out there.

  Elizabeth says:

  October 11, 2009 at 12:31 am

  Sailor here, checking in! At the outset, we managed to make it to a sailboat that my boyfriend’s father owns in Newport Beach, CA (hello Andrew!). There are three of us. Me, my boyfriend, and his dad. We tried to get my boyfriend’s mom to come with us, to try to run ahead of the undead masses, but she was always a homebody and took off to “save” her Alzheimer’s ridden mother. We waited for as long as we could at the dock, but she never showed.

  We keep hoping to see someone, anyone, on the seas or alive at the ports, but it looks like even Avalon (on an island) didn’t escape the undead. Maybe a passenger ship transported the undead? Who knows. Maybe we’ll find survivors on the other islands, trapped at campsites. It’s still so risky here to go on land, there are still so many undead waiting for our inattention. I just hope that they can die of hunger. Maybe if they can’t get more of us, it’ll end. Keep posting, Allison. There are other survivors here, maybe more than we think.

  Allison says:

  October 11, 2009 at 9:23 am

  The water sounds like a good choice. You don’t know what it means to me that you all take the time to write, to say that you are finding a way through. Evan and Mikey are enamored of the idea of going to sea. They want to become pirates, “Scrooge of the Zomblies,” as Evan will say, and then Mikey corrects: “Scourge of the Zombies, dodo head.” They’re so young, but already they’re turning into fighters.

  October 13, 2009—Microterrors

  They just keep coming, more and more of them, arriving alone or in clumps, dazed and staring as they’re brought inside. It’s hard not to look at their faces; you see something incredible there, a fleeting look of disbelief as they step inside from the cold. It’s hard to find a minute to get away and write. Collin and Finn insist that every single newcomer is checked for bites, for scratches, for any signs of carrying the danger in here. So far everyone has checked out fine. I can’t imagine having to turn anyone away, to tell them no, I’m sorry, you’re not allowed to be safe.

  But Ted thinks that’s what has to happen now. He’s taken the day off today. He’s been sitting in our tent all afternoon scribbling calculations down in a notebook, his shaggy hair hanging down over his spectacles and nose, making grunting noises of frustration, and erasing furiously before beginning again. It’s difficult to find the old Ted in the new. I know why he’s become this way—he needed a distraction, an activity to throw himself into. Holly, her life, her death, is still terribly near for him. The detailed work of helping people, of suturing wounds and taking down symptoms has saved him in a way, saved him from a long, lonely road traveled in total misery.

  I know he didn’t want to tell me, but he’s so obviously nervous about something. And so I had to ask. Now I wish I hadn’t.

  “It could be anything. We don’t have the equipment to find out where it’s come from or whether it’s just an isolated case.…”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask. Outside the tent I can hear Evan and Mikey chasing Dapper. Their laughter pierces through the incoherent bustling of the villagers. I scoot closer to Ted, trying to catch a glance at his notebook. He pulls the pages toward his body, hiding them.

  “It was just William, that janitor, and we thought it might just be because he’s old. But now there’s someone else, and I’m sure tomorrow it will be another case and then another,” he says, his black brows meeting at the perfect center of his forehead. He shakes his moppy head around, sighing deeply through clenched teeth. He shoves his glasses up the bridge of his nose; I’m worried the damn frames will simply evaporate from all the poking and abuse. “The vomiting, the diarrhea … I think it might be giardia, something in the water. That would explain it.”

  “The water? There’s something wrong with our water?”

  “Think about it,” he says. “The sanitation is getting worse. The more people we pack in here the easier it is for something contagious to spread. And if just one person, just one, gets in and they’re infected, really infected…”

  “That’s impossible,” I snap. “I’ve been helping them check. We won’t let anyone slip by.”

  “What if it’s an animal? What if you can’t stop them?” he asks. He looks at me then, his dark eyes wide and glossy. I know what he’s thinking: it only took a rodent to kill Holly.

  “It won’t happen, Ted. What happened to Holly … it was … it wasn’t our fault. It was a fluke. There’s no one here like Zack. No one would put us in danger,” I say, touching his knee, trying to remind him that we’re friends, that he has a friend. He doesn’t flinch, but I can see his expression icing over.

  “It wasn’t Zack,” he says after a long pause. Someone has tried to mend his glasses; there is medical tape wound around both edges. I can see the electrical tape underneath from previous patch jobs.

  “What? Of course it was. Who else would’ve left the window open like that?”

  “Me. I did.”

  I pull my hand away from him and I feel his eyes sweeping my face. I had always just assumed Zack had opened that window, that he had hoped for something bad to happen. But I suppose it could’ve just been an accident, a careless mistake. I reach for Ted’s hand and he lets me take it. We sit in silence for a moment, not out of reverence, but because I can’t think of a damn thing to say.

  “Are you okay?” I finally ask.

  “Yes,” he say
s. “I’d be a lot better if you would just move on.”

  “Me? What are you talking about?” This conversation isn’t supposed to be about me. I don’t want him to sneak out of this, to turn his back on confronting what I’m sure is an unmanageable burden. He smiles down at his notebook, avoiding my eyes.

  “Zack. It wasn’t your fault. We can trust the people here, Allison. You said so yourself.”

  “I know that.”

  “No, I don’t think you do, because if you did, your damn boyfriend wouldn’t come and ask me for permission to see you.”

  “He—my—what?”

  “Collin stopped me last night on the way back to the tent,” Ted says, still avoiding my eyes. It’s a good thing he is, otherwise I’d burn them right out of their sockets. “He asked if you were … you know, okay.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Yeah. I told him you were fine, just a little shook up from the thing with Zack and that you were worried about your mom. Torn about staying or something. I, uh … I hope that was the right thing to say?”

  “Of course it was. I mean … Shit … It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Stop holding back, Allison,” Ted murmurs, shutting his notebook and shrugging away from me. He gets to his feet and stops before leaving. “Forget Zack and stick close to Collin. There might come a time when this place isn’t safe and when that time comes I want him on our side. I like him.”

  I watch him leave, my mouth flapping like a flag in the wind. “Did it ever occur to you that I don’t like him that way!?” I shout after him, but he’s gone.

  “Like who?”

  An unruly blond head pops into the tent. It’s Evan, his pale eyes dancing. He looks and acts so much like his father it’s almost like talking to a miniature adult. I can imagine this is exactly how Ned looked as a boy: all gristle and fight and bouncy curls.

  “None of your beeswax, Evan, that’s who,” I say, grabbing him around the middle as I leave the tent. He squeals, flailing as I tip him upside down and spin, turning him into an airplane. Mikey, too mature for such shenanigans, watches with his hand resting on Dapper’s head, his disapproving grimace firmly in place. I let Evan land and he twirls a little, his balance shot. Then he collapses in a fit of giggles, prey for Dapper to lick and sniff.