“We are right?”
“Yeah! Yes! I just want to think some things over and … writing out my feelings … It really helps, helps me sort out my thoughts. No funny business, I promise.”
“No funny business?” she repeats, intrigued.
“None.”
She comes back an hour later with my backpack. Before opening the padlock she searches through it, taking out anything she thinks might be “funny”—a USB drive, a pocketknife, a hairpin, a CD. I wait on the other side of the room from her to make her feel more at ease and she carefully unlocks the padlock, drops the bag in and slams the door.
“No funny business!” she shouts, rattling the door menacingly.
“Deal. No funny business.”
There’s no outlet and probably no electricity anyway so I’m forced to use the battery conservatively. I only open the laptop to shine it around and check out the cell and to write bits and pieces so I will be able to remember things later. I know now that there might be a way out. Our jailer isn’t terribly bright and that makes me giddy with hope. I shine the screen at Ned’s cell. He’s sitting close to the chains and squints back at me, his blue eyes shining in the glow of the computer. There’s a deep cut over his eye and a bruise along his cheekbone.
“Phase one complete,” I say, grinning. My head is still killing me and the headaches are pretty much nonstop, but this is something to be proud of.
“I can’t believe you,” Ned says, shaking his head. “You’re going to be seriously fucked when they figure out you haven’t had a change of heart. They’ll bash your head in with your own laptop.”
“This conversion thing might not be so bad. I mean, what exactly would a change of heart entail? Fucking you?”
“Ha. Ha.”
“Maybe they’ll find someone dead sexy for their Adam. You never know.…”
“You’ve lost it.”
“Don’t be so judgmental, Ned. We all grieve in different ways. Some of us try to go on living, looking for the good in the bad, relying on the silver lining, and others go fucking bat-shit insane and start an end-of-days cult. Each to their own and all that. Who are you to say they’re wrong?”
“I think your one small victory has gone to your head,” he says, stretching out on the floor.
“Not at all. I mean, what have we learned today? Helga is an imbecile, gullible as all get-out, and willing to bargain with us. I’d say that’s one giant leap for mankind.”
“Yes, and unless you’re freaking MacGyver, that laptop isn’t going to break us out.”
“Baby steps, Ned, baby steps.”
“You know if you do manage to get us out of here, I’ll personally bump off Lydia for you,” he says, laughing and then choking on it when he doesn’t get a response. There’s an unsettling kind of icy blackness that settles in your stomach when you’re reminded of a deep unpleasantness.
“Sorry,” he says.
“It’s fine,” I say, too impatiently.
“We can talk about it. I’m a good listener.”
“We could talk about you and Corie too.”
More silence. Ouch.
“That’s … She’s part of all this, Allison. At this point I’m just hoping there’s enough of the old Corie left to keep my kids safe.” His voice falters on the last word. “Anything more would be miraculous. And anyway I need a distraction from … all that. So you talk.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
Silence. Gradually I hear a soft dripping a few feet away, the plip-plop of a dank puddle forming, the birth of a mold colony. Then, out of the clammy darkness, comes a low whistling, tentative at first and then more confident. The tune is relentless, going ’round and ’round and the words come effortlessly, cruelly, to mind …
Let’s go fly a kite
Up to the highest height!
“Stop that!” I snap, throwing a handy chunk of broken cement at the bars. Ned’s breathy laughter skitters across the damp floor. He’s quiet for a moment and then: “Can I just … Can I say something?” he asks. I hear the rasp of his jeans on the floor as he gets closer to the chain wall separating us. I can’t think of an answer so he goes on. “There’s a wall between us so I’m just going to go ahead and be honest. Lydia’s just a convenient excuse. You were frightened of caring about Collin too much all along.”
“She’s not an excuse, Edward,” I say. “They’re married, you know, bound in holy matrimony and all that?”
“Sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re terrified of losing him.”
“Of course I’m afraid. If you hadn’t noticed, the world is kind of falling to pieces. People die all the time. That’s a little scary. Well, that and he married a complete idiot.”
“How on earth could a man resist an attitude like that?”
“Shut up.”
He’s lucky that chain wall is there. I’d probably have my hands around his chino-loving neck if it wasn’t.
“You’re not even going to put up a fight? Demonstrate a little fire? A little commitment?”
“I can’t commit to a married man. That’s like … I don’t know.… Trying to eat a hamburger on a hot-dog bun.”
“What?”
“Just … forget it, I’m hungry,” I mutter. “What I mean is, there’s nothing to commit to if the man is already committed.… Or something. There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore because he’s not mine, he never was.”
“Committed? His wife is missing for a few freaking weeks and he falls for you? You don’t think that’s a sign of, oh I don’t know, inner-marital turmoil? That doesn’t scream imminent and inevitable divorce?”
“Feel free to jump off that high married-guy horse at any point here.”
“There’s no horse, Allison, not anymore. My wife is … somewhere else.… Someone else,” he says, his voice weaving into the thinness of the air. “And maybe that’s the point. People change. Maybe he and Lydia were already on the rocks. You might have found out for sure if you had bothered to talk to him about it.”
“No, no way! You can’t say put up a fight, demonstrate some fire, and then admit that you’ve given up on Corie—you just can’t!”
“Do you love him?”
“Drop it.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Then stop being such a goddamn fucking pussy.”
“Wow,” I say, colliding into the cement wall at my back. Forget the wall, the chains, the space. I can feel that hit right in the gut. “You’re really getting over your Dadisms, that’s for sure.”
“Am I right?” he asks.
“Sure, yes. You’re right.”
“Then get back to work and get us out of here.”
COMMENTS
Isaac says:
October 27, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Way to keep us in suspense for a whole day. Is there a part 3? There had better be.
steveinchicago says:
October 27, 2009 at 2:06 pm
she likes to torture us, isaac. speaking of, how does it feel to be locked up with dr. phil? and don’t tell me we have to wait another day to find out more!
October 28, 2009—Possession, Pt. III
Baby steps are no longer adequate.
Ned and I have a new friend. Her name is Renny and she is living in my cell now. We are cellmates. She’s a spitfire—loud, opinionated and destined to share in our gruesome fate (I’m not totally convinced they want to kill us, but Ned insists). Renny had the piss-poor luck of wandering into the Black Earth Wives’ compound. I call it a compound because I like to think of them as supervillains in some kind of horrible, low-budget horror film. I keep telling Ned we need to cut off the head of the snake but, biblical allusions aside, he is not amused. When Renny refused to partake in their “prayer service” she was tossed down here with the rest of the garbage. She is an invaluable resource.
“Fucking bitches.”
Those are her first words to me and they hint at a deep and meaningfu
l friendship to come. She has a smooth, dark complexion, high forehead and sharp cheekbones. Her nails are chipped but were once painted fluorescent orange and yellow. Her reddish-black hair is a mess of tight corkscrews that stick out in every single direction, held back by a wide headband. I pat the space next to me and she comes to have a seat.
“What did you see up there?” I ask.
“Other than some crazy bitches? They asked me to pray with them, fine, whatever, I’ll pray if you’re gonna give me a sandwich. They took me to the boiler room and they had cranked up the heat to like a million degrees and made me kneel with them to ‘purify’ me. All right, weird, but whatever. Then it got weird, seriously fucking weird, ya know? They told me I had to fuck some guy and carry his child and continue the legacy of Adam and a bunch of loony shit like that. No thanks, I don’t care if that sandwich is two feet tall, I’m not doing that.”
“He not your type?”
“Nu-uh.”
“Religious?”
“Male.”
Renny shares Ned’s opinion that getting my laptop back is nothing to celebrate. They lack imagination. We pass the time trading stories. Renny worked in advertising, right in downtown Madison. She was on her lunch break when the undead arrived and she tried to leave, joined by a few coworkers. Over the coming days they would get separated and she would wander from house to house, scavenging and using whatever she found to defend herself. She confirms Ned’s story that we’re being held in the basement of a preschool. “Daisies and all that shit on the walls. Something just plain wrong about it.”
* * *
Two days pass. Renny is good company, but Ned is growing more and more distant. I know he’s worried about his kids, about what might be happening to them. No one has come to talk to me about my possible conversion and I think maybe they know I’m a lost cause. But after two days something happens, something that demands action. They come for Renny.
I haven’t known her long but I know she’s a friend worth hanging on to. She has a fighter’s soul, a glint in her eye that can’t be worn down no matter what the circumstance, but they take her. They take her kicking and screaming. It takes three women to yank her out of the cell, one to keep a gun pointed at me and two to handle Renny and her sharp jabs. “You fucking cunts, I will fucking ruin you, just try me, just try and fight me fair!”
She has an imaginative, salty mouth. I can’t let them take someone like her.
“This is it,” I tell Ned as Renny’s voice fades, the last of the echoes reaching us in a quiet, vibrating murmur. “Our time is up.”
“Allison,” he says, but he stops there.
“You know, Ned,” I say, “of all the ways to kill yourself I really think self-immolation is the way to go.”
“Allison.”
“No, seriously. I mean, to me it really says: Hey man, I’m dying … with feeling.”
“I know you don’t want them to take you but even if you did want to kill yourself there’s no way to do it in here,” he says, and sighs in the darkness.
“You’re just not thinking outside the box.”
“I guess you could always hang yourself with the computer cord. It’s useless anyway.”
Ned. Ned you goddamn bloody genius.
“That’s it.”
“What? What’s it? No, don’t even think about it.”
“I don’t mean me, idiot,” I say. “But I promised you we’d get out of here and help your kids and that’s what we’re going to do.”
“What do you mean? With your computer cord? I’m lost.”
“What were you training me for? What were all those hours in the gym about if not this? I’m getting us out of here one way or a-fucking-nother.”
Ned is huffing and puffing, trying to talk me down. I’m grateful for his concern but Renny is in danger now too, and I have a feeling that every moment we waste lessens her chance for survival. And besides, I’m sick of this place, bored to tears, about ready to rip my hair out just for the fun of it. There are only so many games of “I Spy” I can play, especially in the dark.
Ned quiets down after a while, probably convinced that I’ve let the idea go. But I haven’t, not one bit. Helga comes an hour later to bring us food and I’m ready for her, sitting close to the door with my laptop opened. I train my eyes intently on the screen, typing away, muttering and giggling to myself. She sees this and stops just before shoving the plate underneath the door.
“What is that? What are you doing?” she asks, drenching me in the flashlight’s beam. I don’t respond, giggling even more as I pretend to type. She rattles the door, shouting at me.
“You! I told you! No funny business!” she screams, pounding on the door. Next door I can hear Ned shuffling over to the wall. “What are you doing?”
“Funny business.”
A growl starts deep in her throat and builds until she’s floundering for her keys, muttering to herself and at me, cursing me, threatening me. She finally finds the right key and unlocks the padlock, flinging the door open. I scoot back a few feet, shielding the screen from her. I need her to come in close, real close, or it won’t work. She follows, taking the bait, and tries to see the screen. I keep giggling like a maniac and it only makes her madder. For a religious whacko she certainly does have a startling command of inappropriate and colorful language.
She’s right on me now, so first things first. I check for a gun but don’t see one, not in her pocket or tucked into her waistband. She’s a solid linebacker of a woman so they must not have armed her. This is going to be worse, much worse than I thought. When she’s bent over to look at the screen I spring into action, snatching the power cord from behind my back and throwing it around her neck. She straightens up in surprise, staggering backward a few steps. But I’m ready for her, I have been for the last hour, and I jump to my feet, faster, more agile. I grab the other end of the cord and pull, hard, tightening the plastic around her neck.
I hear Ned’s hands hit the wall, his fingers tightening around the chains.
The laptop is open, the screen pointed at us, the pale, stark light falling on our struggle. Helga has almost a foot on me and when she bends over it lifts me right off my feet. My grip is good and strong and I tighten it again, the cord meeting the hard knot of her throat. This looks so much easier in the movies. She decides she won’t throw me off her back that way, so she slams herself backward against the concrete wall.
This is an unfortunate and unexpected turn of events.
My spine shudders as she tries to crush me against the wall, sandwiching me between her sweaty back and the concrete. But I won’t let go and I realize now that who lives and who dies depends on which of us can stick to our guns.
“Allison! Allison, no!”
I can hear Ned screaming wildly, shaking the chains of the wall. His voice is starting to fade, though, as I feel my lungs giving way from Helga grinding me against the wall. My vision is getting bad, blurry, and it’s becoming impossible to breathe. But I imagine my mom, the Post-it note and her face, her voice urging me on, telling me not to quit.
My hands are slipping on the hard plastic cord but it’s not from my sweat. There’s something slippery on the cord, and seeping in around my fingers. I can’t let go, can’t let my grip go for even a second. I pull harder, the last breath in my lungs coming out in one long scream as I feel my fingernails digging deep into my palms. Helga is making this terrible noise, gargling and grunting and flailing back against me. She’s covered in sweat and I can feel the front of my shirt getting soaking wet. It hurts and hurts, my chest aching like I’ve just gone round after round in a boxing ring. My heart and lungs are going to explode any minute, and if I can’t get one more gasp of air, just one, I’ll be dead. Ned’s voice is rising higher and higher and the chains are rattling and rattling …
If only the cord weren’t so damn slippery, if only I could breathe, if only my eyes would hold on for one more second …
Then it all goes slack and dark and I
’m pitching forward. I don’t know if I’m dead or alive, if Helga has won or finally given up. I hit the floor hard, my elbow screaming with a hundred pinpricks as it hits the concrete. Maybe my arm is broken, maybe I’ve finally run out of air …
When I wake up my arm is aching and my head feels like it’s been split open again. I can hear someone crying softly, sobbing.
“Ugh.”
“God!” Ned practically screams. “Fuck! Goddamn it, you’re alive! Damn it, Allison, don’t fucking … God … I thought you were dead.”
“How long was I out?”
“Two minutes maybe.”
I slowly sit up, maneuvering the laptop until I can see what’s all over my hands. It’s blood, tons of it. Helga is on the floor a few inches away, facedown with the computer cord still looped around her neck. I roll her over with my foot and see that the plastic had started to chew into her skin. I wipe my hands off on her sweaty shirt and take a moment to steady myself. My chest still aches but air is getting to my lungs and my pulse is starting to regulate itself.
“I can’t believe it.”
“No shit,” I say, getting shakily to my feet. We need to get going fast before someone comes to check on Helga. I pack up the laptop and wipe the cord off on her jeans. I take the keys and let myself out and then unlock Ned’s padlock. His bright blue eyes meet me at the door. My hands won’t stop shaking.
Ned picks me up and we hug for a long minute, relieved, terrified, his whole big body trembling like mine.
“Let’s go get your kids,” I whisper and together we skulk away into the shadows, Helga’s flashlight in one hand and the ring of heavy keys in the other.
COMMENTS
Isaac says:
October 28, 2009 at 11:07 am
Yes! I knew there had to be more.
Allison says:
October 28, 2009 at 11:45 am
Sorry for the delay. Takes a while to type all that shit up.
Isaac says:
October 28, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Well then type more … and faster!
Andrew N says:
October 28, 2009 at 12:17 pm
No more word from Elizabeth? The ocean seemed feasible but now we’re going to port, maybe for good. I’m afraid of the cold but more afraid of starving on a boat. If we’re lucky we can avoid the crazies hiding out in the woods and the hordes swarming the cities. I wish I could promise to stay in touch, Allison but I think we’re going off the map. When I think of you I’ll imagine you’ve found your mom, that you two are safe and sound.
Allison Hewitt Is Trapped Page 18