As planned, I leave my laptop to charge at one of the generators and go to Collin’s tent at nine. I feel like a crook, tiptoeing through the deadened air, the cold just beginning to creep back in over the sleeping, sweaty bodies sprawled out in tents and sleeping bags. I can almost feel a hundred pairs of watchful, suspicious eyes on me as I navigate the labyrinth of tents.
His tent, not surprisingly, is black and lit up with the gently muted glow of an old-fashioned lantern. When I climb inside I can smell the slowly melting beeswax rising in thin, black stripes from the flame. The floor of the tent is a mess of pillows and old blankets and an open sleeping bag. It’s not a very big tent so I sit close to him, cross-legged and growing extremely warm from the lantern.
“Thanks for coming,” he says, his voice just above a whisper.
“It’s no problem,” I reply.
It was a bit of a dilemma getting dressed for this. It’s not a date so there’s no use looking nice, but I didn’t want to show up in pajamas. I settled on a long-sleeve thermal T and my usual pair of jeans. Collin is out of his fatigues and it’s rather nice to see him in a soft button-down open over a T-shirt.
“It’s a bit cramped in here,” he says, laughing quietly. “I didn’t think it right to take one of the big tents just for myself.”
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “It’s a big upgrade from snoring and dog, I promise.”
“I think I owe you an apology,” he says, grinning in a way that makes his dimples stream down his face toward his jawline.
“I was just about to say the same thing.”
“Really? What on earth are you sorry about?”
“I should’ve come to see you sooner. To talk.”
“About what exactly?” he asks and the dimples vanish into his frown.
“I just … I’ve been distracted lately, and sad, I guess. I keep expecting my mom to show up, but she hasn’t so then I get to thinking that maybe I should leave and go look for her.” Deep breath.
“Is that everything?”
“And I should have told you that you make me a little nervous,” I say, feeling my throat grow dry and lumpy. “It’s nothing you did, not anything bad. I just thought maybe I should, ya know, not try to move in on you.”
It sounds even worse than it looks. My words are so jumbled up and ridiculous that I cringe even as they fall out of my mouth. I’m a goddamn adult and I can’t even say what I mean to say, which is obvious, because Collin looks befuddled. I scrunch up my face, preparing for the big one, one end of the knot that’s been living in my gut for days now. “It’s your wife. It weirds me out. It weirds me out that you lost her. It just seems wrong and too soon … and weird.”
“You mentioned the weird bit.”
“Sorry.”
“A few times, actually.”
“Yeah.”
“Allison,” he says, and it’s not a voice coming through a radio but a voice right there next to me, close and warm and skimming across my forearms. He puts a big, heavy hand on my knee and I can feel his palms sweating even through my jeans. “Is that all?”
“Is that all?”
“I don’t want you to worry about her or about me, okay? I’m older than you are, Allison, I’ve seen a lot more than you have. I can safely say that there is nothing in my life that even begins to compare to this monumentally fucked-up situation. I can question it, I can hate it, I can rage against it all I like, but the fact remains: this is who we are now. I don’t need to tell you that every day here is fleeting, every moment a gift. I shouldn’t have to prove to you that I’m capable of making up my own mind. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes.”
“What am I saying?” he asks, fixing his hazel eyes on me in the semidarkness. His face doesn’t look so unreadable now, as if he’s stripped away part of the armor that held him at a distance.
“You’re saying I should stop being such an idiot, that I should stop overthinking every shit, piss and breath I take from now on.”
“Right.”
“So … It’s not weird?” I ask, noticing then that his knee is touching mine. I’ve almost forgotten that we’re surrounded, hemmed in on every side by people just like us—survivors, humans.
“It’s not weird,” he says.
“It’s not weird.”
I don’t return to the other tent for hours. It’s nice to think that I have two tents now, that I can have two homes. I think maybe I’m a bit of a nomad now. I think perhaps we all are.
COMMENTS
Dave in the Midwest says:
October 14, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Please … does ANYONE have any information on reversing this? My son was infected and I’ve … well … he’s safe. He can’t hurt anyone else but I know he’s suffering. He’s just so delusional and angry; he never says a word just deep growls when I come close to him. But I’m sure this isn’t permanent. It just can’t be. Can someone please offer any advice??? I’m posting this anywhere I can find help.
Logan says:
October 14, 2009 at 10:27 pm
You have to let go. Don’t think. Don’t fret. Just get rid of him.
Isaac says:
October 14, 2009 at 11:53 pm
He’s not your son anymore. It’s time to let him go.
October 16, 2009—Invisible Monsters
“Have you boiled that? Did you double-check the expiration date?”
It’s become a script, the magic words I mutter over every cup of water we distribute and every package of soup we give away. Mostly my questions are met with grunts or sighs.
“I know you’re hungry, but if it’s expired you can’t eat it.”
“My kid is starving!” they say, clutching the Ramen or beets, hanging on desperately.
“I know that but it’s not safe. Young kids are especially susceptible. They can get sick and die. You have to take precautions, you have to boil everything.”
More and more survivors are becoming ill. I don’t know if Ted was right, if it’s coming from the water or from something else. Maybe some of the food has gone rancid or there’s a flu going around, and we’re all in a panic trying to track down the source, the cause.
I feel now as our ancestors must have felt at the beginning, that water is the greatest of treasures, the mother nurturing the cradle of life. Water, the most valuable possession on our planet, the thing that sustains us, fuels us, and helps us grow—it is now under suspicion. I feel fine, most of us do, but those who are ill wail and wail all day long, singing their suffering to the rest of us, making us feel guilty for having our health.
How could I leave this place? And yet, how can we stay? I look at Evan and Mikey, boys who have barely begun to understand the world—are we endangering them just by spending another day in this crowded, surging, bulging refugee camp? The survivors arrive in a constant stream, not always a strong current, sometimes only a trickle, but constant nonetheless. They are straining our resources—no, the resources are for them too—but soon the supplies will be spread so thin that no one will have much of anything.
Maybe this is the excuse I needed all along. I’ve waited too long to go after my mother. I shouldn’t have waited at all.
I boil my water twice, sometimes three times before drinking it, and after every sip I begin to feel sick, not from illness but from fear.
Poisoned. Poisoned from the inside out … I will not let that be my fate, not after so many days of hard-won survival. I will devise a plan, a solution, no matter how many hours of sleep I must lose, or meals I must skip. This is our fortress, our safe haven and a threat is a threat whether it comes from outside or within.
It’s time to go. Maybe I should pry Collin away from this place, or knock him over the head and just drag him out. Then we could look after ourselves. We could go it alone and I could find my mom. It’s useless to speculate but I can’t help … I can’t help but wonder.
COMMENTS
Dave in the Midwest says:
; October 16, 2009 at 7:08 pm
With provisions gone, there isn’t a lot left for me. My son … my poor son … I never thought he would survive this long after becoming infected. I realize now that I won’t live to see him saved. I can only hope that someone else will save my boy.
Once I realized what I needed to do, it became very easy to finalize my plans. As I mentioned, there isn’t anything left anymore. No more food. No more water. Just the persistent angry moaning of my son and the gnawing knowledge of my failures grinding at my brain. There aren’t many people that will truly understand what I have to do, but I have to give my son every chance to live long enough for someone to find a cure. Maybe if he’s the strongest of the infected. Maybe if he can live the longest he will have a chance to be cured. Since I am lost, I can only hope my gift to him will give him that chance.
Please. Find a cure. Find a way to save my son. Don’t let my sacrifice be an empty one. I do not hesitate anymore. I will release my son and let him draw strength from my body. Thank you all for fighting on.
Allison says:
October 16, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Dave, I sometimes think you’re braver than all of us. I beg you to reconsider: Don’t prolong your son’s pain. Either let him go or finish him off. You have to remember that he’s not living right now, he’s dying over and over again every day. The choice is yours but please, think about it.
Isaac says:
October 16, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Allison is right. You have to stop thinking about yourself. Think about him. Do the right thing and end it.
October 19, 2009—The Awakening
“Let’s just go, today, right now!”
“I can’t go, you know that. I have a responsibility to these people, Allison.”
I feel like we have this conversation every morning. Collin won’t budge but sometimes it’s as if I can see him imagining an escape, the two of us together on the road, and his face softens. Then we’ll hear someone calling for him and the look will disappear.
“I’m really good at road trips,” I say, sweetening the pot with an arm around his waist. “You’re not even a little interested?”
“You know it’s tempting and you know that I can’t.”
I see now that my hopes of escape, of happiness, were foolish.
Everything that we have done, all of the scrimping, struggling and railing has been nothing at all, just flailing, beating our heads against a solid iron wall. No matter what we do, what we try, something will undermine our efforts. So we redouble, we swear up and down that we will do whatever it takes, whatever we possibly can until we’re too exhausted to go on. Maybe we should just stop prolonging the inevitable loss. Maybe we should fling the doors open and let our fate come marching in.
We’ve tried to switch people over to rainwater but now the rain won’t come. Thick, silent clouds hang over us, teasingly holding over our heads what we need most of all. Sleep is out of the question, since the arena is now filled with coughing and groaning every hour of every day. The sick get sicker, the strong—which are few—get stronger, and we watch our once-peaceful, hopeful village turn into a refugee camp plagued with failing health and dying spirits. We are all too busy just keeping things from falling apart that no one has the time or energy to send out broadcasts; our one reliable entertainment is gone, replaced by constant toil. There are no spare tents anymore, so people sleep on the floor, on top of sleeping bags or piles of moth-eaten blankets. Our food supply is stretched to its absolute limit and many of us eat less than we should so that the very ill can regain some strength.
And on top of all that, the Black Earth Wives have begun to challenge Collin’s leadership. They insist he’s driving the camp into the ground, imposing too many rules, keeping people from food that is rightly theirs, letting in riffraff instead of guarding the villagers. All of the calm debate in the world won’t drown out their cries for new leadership, a new regime. He tries to keep order in the only way he knows how: keeping us safe, fortifying the perimeter, listening to problems and mediating and keeping the Black Earth Wives as quiet as possible. It’s not persecution, it’s just good management.
The ire of the Wives seems to extend to me simply by my being associated with Collin. They know, of course, that he and I have become very close and I’m sure they know that I sleep almost exclusively in his tent each night. I don’t know what to tell them, how to react. On the one hand I realize they have a right to be upset that the arena has overreached its capacity, but I also think they should offer a workable solution instead of complaining and spreading gossip.
I’ve suggested to Collin, more than once, that we pack up and leave. “If they want to take over so badly then let them,” I said. “Let them find out what an exhausting, thankless job it is.”
But he won’t give up on us, even now as everything seems to go wrong.
* * *
Today Ned and I had the unenviable task of resolving the sanitation problem. With all the vomiting and diarrhea, the toilets are in no way usable. With Finn standing watch, Ned and I dragged Port-o-Potties over from the tennis courts, lining them up just outside the arena. Keeping them outside is more dangerous but we decided it was better than having the smell and germs inside. Ned’s brutal workout sessions must be paying off; dragging the johns over wasn’t difficult in the least. Ned’s tan is fading. Too much time indoors, living under artificial lights, living in the gloom.
Since our chat, Corie has been doggedly avoiding me. She suspects, I think, that I’m so firmly on Ned’s side there’s no point in even trying to win me over. She’s wrong, though. I’d be more than willing to listen to her side of the story if she were prepared to give it. But she’s chosen her side, and even though she doesn’t rage against Collin as viciously as the other Wives, I can see in her slumped posture, her vacant eyes, that she’s allied herself with them completely. I don’t even know why she does it; I think maybe the presence of so many women acts like a shield. In their tight circle she can hide from all of us, especially from Ned.
And all the while Ned is fearfully silent. He refuses to talk about her involvement with the Wives, but I often catch him staring at his wife. I wonder if they’ve argued or if she’s given him some sign that their life together is over.
Dragging Port-o-Potties around was just the beginning of my day. Ned and I assisted Ted with some of the sickest patients. They seem to have some kind of terrible influenza or stomach infection. They can’t keep food down and when they do, it seems to cause them a lot of pain. After that, I worked with Evan and Mikey on their Halloween costumes.
Halloween is Mikey’s favorite holiday and the boys insisted that we begin constructing their costumes early. Apparently, Ned began a legacy of constructing elaborate outfits for his boys; last year Mikey was a Transformer and the eyes of the mask actually lit up. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that there wouldn’t be much candy, that no one else would bother getting dressed up. I’m hoping I can come up with a costume to at least keep the fantasy of normalcy going for a minute or two.
Mikey wants to be Zorro, so we’re making him a cape and mask out of an old tarp and some basketball jerseys we found in the basement. Dapper will be playing his trusty steed. Evan couldn’t decide between a pirate and Wall-E, and was heartbroken at the idea that he would have to choose. Despite his older brother’s mocking, we decided to combine the two and make him Pirate Wall-E. His costume will mainly be made of cardboard boxes, soda cans, rubber plumbing tubes and a bit of jersey—for the eye patch, of course.
It’s no light-up Transformer, but it will have to do.
After helping the boys with phase one of costume construction, I put in a bit of time at the door checking in new arrivals. The people that come now are the worst we’ve ever seen, so starved and terrified that they can only mumble incoherently as we ask them to step behind a curtain and remove their clothing. Spending so much time with Evan and Mikey has shed light on a rather alarming trend: there are almos
t no very young or very old people. Everyone here seems to be between the ages of eighteen and sixty. Evan and Mikey are two of only a handful of young children, and I can only picture six or seven elderly folks that are still around. It makes me afraid that there will be no generation to follow us, no one educated enough to face our problems with fresh, new ideas.
What will become of us?
* * *
I hadn’t eaten since the morning so Collin and I took a break from line duty and ate together in his tent. Even there, comforted by his presence and the privacy of the tent, the outside world persists, invades. The sounds of coughing, hacking, wheezing follows you everywhere, reminding you that there are people all around you in agony. After sharing a can of soup and some granola bars, we went outside to shoot targets.
In the brisk, October chill he told me about how much he missed teaching, how he missed his classes and grading assignments. He even missed dealing with the most insufferable members of the faculty.
“I would trade everything for just one last day as a teacher,” he says, reloading a clip for me. “A day where I knew I had to savor it, had to pay attention to every detail.”
I’m expecting that faraway look to come into his eyes but it never does. He seems relaxed around me now, his lined face resembling something peaceful. And then he’s quiet before adding, “But then again, I might never have met you. Life would have gone on as it always did—placid, complicated in the human way we like to complicate things. We might never even have met. Strange, isn’t it? I can’t imagine life without you.”
“That’s not strange,” I tell him. “That’s totally awesome.”
There’s no point in using targets anymore for practice. Instead, Collin takes me to the edge of the fence and I shoot at the Floaters wandering in the mist. I’m getting better at hitting moving targets, but Ned’s and Collin’s proficiency puts me to shame. I take the ear off of one Groaner who’s gotten the brilliant idea of charging the fence.
Allison Hewitt Is Trapped Page 15