|
|
||||||||
View the profile of Erica Rackham
| Erica Rackham, 5. And Into the Fire | Written: 2010-07-09 15:25:06 |
It doesn't get any easier. |
|
I spent my senior year of college in Barcelona as an exchange student. I shared an apartment in the Barri Gòtic with Ivette and Pilar, two Spaniards who were also attending the Universitat de Barcelona. The three of us, along with my friend Mattie whom I had met at U.C., were sharing a table on the sidewalk outside Café Turin, a popular nightspot right on the Plaça de Catalunya where it met the Carrer de Pelai. It was past midnight and we were drinking, talking and people-watching. Even at that hour the café was overflowing and throngs of pedestrians filled the street in front of the café and the plaza beyond. Ivette disapproved of Mattie’s choice of our meeting place. “You know,” she said, “we can walk two or three blocks and we’ll be in a real place. The drinks are cheaper, it’s much less crowded, and there’ll be local people. No one from Barcelona comes to this bar—just tourists.” Our waiter appeared suddenly behind Ivette, startling her, and Mattie suppressed a smile. He set our drinks down and we ordered banderillas and Ivette ordered Pimientos de Padrón. I felt a need to defend Mattie. We both were Americans and although she was bubbly and from a wealthy family, Mattie hadn’t made many friends in Barcelona. “It’s not only tourists here,” I said. “I recognize people from our classes sitting inside.” “Yeah,” Mattie agreed, holding up her phone. “You know Paulo from Span Lit? I’m chatting with him now. Besides, I don’t care if it is touristy—I like it here. It feels like the center of the world.” “What do you mean?” asked Pilar. Mattie gestured at the tables packed in around us, at the people jamming the wide sidewalks. “Look around. If you were to dream about ‛The Center of the World,’ it’d look something like this, wouldn’t it?” “So,” said Pilar, “In your dreams ‘The Center of the World’ has a Hard Rock Café across the street?” “Everything has a Hard Rock Café across the street,” I said. Ivette was unconvinced. “Those boys in there aren’t here because this is a good place; they’re here because foreign women are here.” “Mattie does have prosaic tastes,” I observed. “Pardon me, your Highness.” “I’m sorry, Mattie. I didn’t mean it like that—I wasn’t criticizing.” “Relax. You’re so sensitive and empathic and shit.” “You mean ‘empathetic.’ I’m sensitive and empathetic.” “And shit,” added Ivette. Mattie rolled her eyes. “What ever. Want me to spill this drink on you?” “No tenéis los huevos,” I replied. “But in fairness to Ivette, shouldn’t I feel guilty that my Dad sent me to Europe for a year and here we are sitting in a tourist bar, speaking only English and drinking American beer?” Pilar examined a bottle. “Heineken is American?” “Isn’t it?” I heard a hideous scream from the street. I looked up, alarmed. “Oh! Did a car hit someone?” No one else seemed to have heard it. “Hmm? I don’t think so,” replied Pilar. Ivette scowled as Mattie typed away on her phone. “Mattie, why are you texting this boy when he’s sitting there in person, five meters feet away.” I looked out into the Plaça Catalunya for the source of the scream, but people crowding the sidewalk blocked my view. “So, what’re you all doing tomorrow?” asked Mattie. Ivette looked away from her. The crowds on the sidewalk momentarily parted, allowing me to see a man in the street, staggering toward the sidewalk. I glimpsed red blood on white fabric. I gasped. “Guys, there’s been an accident—someone’s been hurt.” “What’re you now? A doctor?” asked Mattie. “Erica and I are going to Barceloneta,” said Ivette. “Pili, you’re sure you can’t come?” “I told you; I have a paper.” The crowd closed again, so I stood up to see. An older man staggered in the street. His neck was bent at a bizarre angle and the blood staining the front of his white button-down shirt appeared to be from his mouth. A young man with a backpack slung over one shoulder stepped up to help, and the injured man fell into his arms. They appeared to be hugging each other and the injured man had his face buried in the young man’s shoulder—tucked into his neck. Then I heard a new scream. I saw more blood and I felt dizzy, so I sat down again and gripped the arms of my chair. “But it’s the weekend! Can’t you finish it Sunday?” “I wish I could go, but trust me—I wouldn’t be any fun. I need to get it out of my life.” It sounded like more than one person was screaming. I looked at the three of them. “Erica? You’re still coming, right?” “Can’t you hear that? Something bad is happening,” I said. Mattie looked at me intently. “Don’t worry. It’s a long way off.” “What?—what’re you talking about?” “Barceloneta is a beach, right? That sounds fun. Mind if I tag along?” she asked. I tried to convey my incredulity with my tone. “Are you insane? Someone should call the police. Let me borrow your phone.” As I said the word ‘police,’ I realized that I heard sirens wailing in the distance. The three of them laughed in unison. “What do you imagine the police are going to do?” asked Ivette. “Just give me a damn phone,” I begged. Ivette and Mattie smiled indulgently and Pili gestured at the plaza. “It’s much too late for that—mira.” I looked toward the street. “Oh, my God,” I said. People were moving across the plaza toward us and those on the sidewalk were being attacked with inhuman brutality. A tide of shrieks, violence, and bloodshed flowed in toward the café from the Plaça Catalunya, then I heard screams from the Carrer de Pelai to right as well. Panic shot through the crowd and people near one source of violence tried to run, only to crash into other fleeing people. The crowd was too thick. A sweating, wide-eyed woman rammed our table and nearly overturned it and my glass smashed on the sidewalk. “Be careful! You’re going to get us cut off,” Ivette admonished. “Come on, I really want to go,” said Mattie. Pilar looked at Ivette with a smirk that Mattie didn’t seem to notice. “Don’t be so standoffish, Ivette. Let Mattie take my place.” “It’s not my decision: it’s Erica’s trip,” Ivette said in resignation. Mattie didn’t wait for my response. “The weather’s supposed to be perfect. Can you imagine what the beach will look like tomorrow morning with all these people? It’ll be amazing. Oh. Someone needs to lend me a suit.” Shouting and crying people were swirling around us and I felt as though our table was a stone parting fast current. Then the source of their terror came into view: hundreds of assailants—many of whom were horribly injured—had formed a disordered mob that drove the fleeing crowd in front of them as it advanced. I watched terrified people being overcome, watched attackers fall on their victims, or pull them to the ground and rip their flesh with their teeth. I wanted to run, but I felt paralyzed from fear. I closed my eyes. “It’s not so bad. Don’t be such a baby,” I heard Ivette say. I felt Pilar’s hand on mine; her voice was consoling. “I like Erica’s one-piece—very chaste. But Erica, you’re aware that on the beaches here you’re the only woman under forty wearing a top?” Mattie pounced on a chance to ingratiate herself to Pilar and Ivette. “Erica told me that she won’t go topless because she’s afraid of someone taking and posting pictures. She told me: ‘that’s just what I need following me for the rest of my life—topless photos from my youth on Facebook or Webshots or whatever.’ That’s what you said, didn’t you Erica?” “Erica? You’re considering a career in politics? Or in the Church?” chided Pilar. It got quieter. The screams were becoming less frequent and were being replaced by grunts, moans, low wails, and the sounds of messy chewing. A Fatboy Slim song with a maddeningly repetitive lyric came blasting over the café’s speakers. I felt something jar the table and I cried out and opened my eyes. A woman in a halter top and jean skirt had her back toward me. She was bent forward, gripping Mattie’s forearms with both hands, feeding on the flesh under Mattie’s eye. Mattie turned slightly to use her free eye to look at me. “Poor Erica. These Europeans don’t understand what living in America is like. It’s very puritanical,” she said. Our waiter returned with a tray, but there was nothing on it. He shuffled up to our table and dropped his tray on the sidewalk where it clattered loudly. He put one hand on Ivette’s forehead and pushed her head back, and he pinned her with his other hand on her chest. The waiter sank his teeth into Ivette’s neck, and soon rivulets of blood ran down across her décolletage, down to stain her khaki blouse. “Puritanical?” asked Pilar. “Puritano,” explained Ivette. She gurgled as her throat filled with blood. The music echoed across the plaza. “Waking up to find your love's not real,” was the interminable refrain. “I can’t stay here,” I said. I looked into the café. Both walls facing the streets were interspersed with tall, arched openings and each opening was fitted with glass doors that were all folded open, leaving the entire café open to the wide sidewalks where the tables were placed. Pilar followed my gaze. “This place would be a nightmare to barricade, wouldn’t it?” Mattie read from her phone as she was being consumed. Fresh blood ran down her arms, onto her hands, staining her phone’s keys and smearing its display. She looked up with a distorted smile. “Erica, there’s a guy over there that really really wants to talk to you. What should I tell him?” I couldn’t bear to look at what was left of her face, so I turned toward the café. It was Chauncey, of course. He was sitting at a table and he turned to look at me. The wound that had killed him was no longer bleeding and he was dressed in the ruined clothes he had been wearing when he was first injured, when the others had carried him unconscious on a makeshift stretcher back to Eugene General. Tissue was torn away and underneath ripped skin I could see his clavicle. Chauncey stood and walked toward our table. He spoke, but he was too far away for me to hear what he was saying. His skin was gray and his lips were bluish from blood loss. But his eyes were the same as the day we had met. “Please don’t get up, Erica. I really like you like this,” he said. I didn’t remember falling asleep, but bronze light penetrating my closed eyelids released me from my dreams. I gasped and sat up, only to be brought short by my left hand which was cuffed to the thick steel leg of the hulking food preparation island. As the reality of my situation crashed down on me and the intensity of the nightmare faded, the nightmare somehow seemed preferable. Last night, the young man with dark hair (the others had referred to him as ‘Dale’) had wordlessly dragged two shipping pallets next to the island and covered them with dusty cardboard sheets: my bed for the night. Then Nash had ordered me onto the pallets. I had reluctantly obeyed and he had locked the handcuffs, tested them by jerking them painfully, and pocketed the key. I hadn’t protested because my faculties had been overcome by my exhaustion and by Nash’s intimidation, but in the light of day it seemed incredible that I had bent to his will so easily. Before the outbreak, there wasn’t a man on the planet that could make me do a thing I didn’t want to do. Not my father, no one I’d ever dated, not Chauncey—no one. And yet, there I was. Amazing. I was alone again. I couldn’t think of anything else to do with my hand cuffed near the floor, so I sat there and studied the room. Sunlight filtered through dirty skylights filled the warehouse, and high up on the longest two walls a line of windows ran the building’s length. The room seemed smaller in the light. Someone had covered the windows with brown paper, so the light from the windows on one side of the building was mellow and burnished bronze. A shaft of brighter sunlight slanted down through the empty frame in the ceiling to make an oblique shape on the trash covered floor. The ladder was gone: only a yellow nylon rope dangled through the skylight frame to heap in a tangle amidst the floor’s debris. I was thirsty, hungry, and desperate to bathe. I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I had felt any dirtier. Before the outbreak, perspiration (from a run or a hard workout, for example) had somehow seemed healthy; wholesome and clean. Maybe it was the association of my workout with the shower that inevitably followed. But now I could smell myself, and worse, I could smell Brenda’s body odor on the shirt that she had given me. Last night, Brenda had handed me a powder blue tee-shirt from her duffel. I remembered feeling grateful as I took the shirt, turned away from the men, and quickly pulled it on. But when I tuned back to face them, Nash and Lloyd had looked at me and laughed, and a strange smile was on Brenda’s face. I looked down at the shirt again, just as I had the night before. Across the shirt’s chest was a large silver appliqué with one word in a stylized logo. ‘PORNSTAR’ And just as they had last night, my teeth clenched in frustration. Nash, laughing, had said “Damn, Bren. You’re giving that shirt away? I liked it on you. It seemed to suit you somehow.” “Hate for you to hear this, Brenda, but she fills it out better than you did,” added Lloyd. Brenda ignored them both and I had looked at her hopefully. “Don’t you have anything else?” She paused before answering. “Sorry, your Highness. The fall fashions haven’t arrived yet. Besides, beggars can’t be choosers, right?” I wondered how long I had been sleeping, wondered how the others had managed to leave without waking me. For the first time in weeks, I felt rested. I sat and thought and tried to massage my aching shoulder. I was gratified and more than a little surprised to have survived my escape from the hospital and my night on the streets, but as time passed, I wondered what I had accomplished by coming to this place just to have these barbaric people abandon me, shackled, in a ruined building. I mused that being eaten alive would have at least been quick and therefore preferable to a lingering death from thirst. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Did they leave me because they considered me a burden? It was no wonder, really. From the first moments of the outbreak up to the present, futility and helplessness had become my normal emotional state, my raison d’être. As this uncomfortable realization took root and blossomed, I tried to focus my thoughts on something productive. I tried to calculate the hour from the angle of the sunlight shining down through the opening in the ceiling. There was all the time in the world to figure it out. Light shining straight down would have meant noon, I surmised, but from the angle of the light alone, I had to admit that I couldn’t even tell dawn from early evening. I guessed that the light’s bronze hue made it late afternoon, but I doubted myself, wondering whether the brown paper on the windows was tricking me by altering the light’s color. My stomach growled, and hunger brought a wave of nausea, along with a rising tide of self-pity. “And so the end begins,” I said aloud. I languished on the pallet in my filthy clothing, my chin propped on my knees, and I swore to myself that if I somehow managed to get free, I would never again allow myself to feel this way. Admittedly, my oath was conditional—I couldn’t imagine how I would ever free myself—but the promise was real. I swore that I would uphold it, should I by some miracle get an opportunity to earn my freedom. I considered what I could have done differently, but nothing made any sense. Shackling me and leaving me to die seemed too cruel to comprehend. Couldn’t they have simply told me that I had to go? Perhaps they felt that I’d have been unwilling to voluntarily leave, given my refusal last night to go even after Nash had threatened me with his pistol. Perhaps they didn’t want to waste a bullet. Or were they planning to return? From my knees, I craned up to look at the top of the two food preparation islands. Both were still strewn with gear: unzipped duffel bags, backpacks, clothing, sleeping bags. So, they were coming back. And they didn’t want to kill me, but they didn’t want to let me go. I should have seen it coming. It was obvious that Nash and Lloyd were capable of it. I doubted that the one they called Dale would join in, given the choice, but I had no way of knowing and I didn’t feel particularly fortunate. Nash was a few years younger than me, and was tall and athletic. I had no hope of preventing him from doing anything unless he made a mistake, displayed some vulnerability, or gave me a chance to run. Lloyd was much older and overweight, but he was also muscular, and seemed hardened. And they both were armed, of course. I doubted that I could fight either of them off. Certainly not both of them. Would Brenda help them or me? Again, I had no way of knowing, but I felt as though my luck was finally running out. As I sat there and mused about what was likely to happen when they returned, the injustice of it—and the feeling of being trapped—ignited a surge of primal rage that threatened to grow into uncontrollable claustrophobic panic. I braced my feet on the island’s frame, and using both hands, I futilely tried to bend the thick steel leg. Then, from a crouch, I struggled to lift the entire island so that I could slip the handcuff free, but the thing was huge, solid, immobile. I tried to break the cuff by pulling with all my strength until I couldn’t bear the pain of it cutting into my wrist. Eventually, defeated, I sat down again and tried to control my breathing. I tried to think of what I could do to help myself. I felt thick-headed and utterly helpless, but I remembered my promise to myself and I swore that no matter what happened, I would fight them. I needed a weapon. A knife, at least. With luck, I could hide the knife and hopefully hurt at least one of them. If worst came to worst, a knife made suicide possible, assuming I could bring myself to do it. I got to my knees again to ransack the island’s drawers. I reached as far as I could and some drawers were empty or missing, but I found vegetable peelers, measuring cups and measuring spoons, basters, spatulas . . . the drawers were crowded with a bewildering variety of culinary utensils that were all rendered useless in the post-apocalyptic age. There were plenty of forks and spoons, but all the knives and can openers were gone. I found one paring knife with a two-inch blade and I pocketed it. Buried in another drawer I found a wicked-looking two-foot-long barbecue fork. It was too big to conceal in my pocket, so I hid it underneath the island and made sure that I could reach it from my bed. One of the vegetable peelers had a narrow point. I took it and compared its point to the keyhole on my handcuff. The point was too large to fit, but it gave me the idea to pick the lock with a fork or skewer or some other implement. As I studied the handcuff’s keyhole, I noticed a small silver key on the concrete floor. I picked the key up and tried to insert it into the handcuff’s keyhole. It fit perfectly. I turned the key and the handcuff opened. |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
(you mut be logged in to comment)
Take on the undead hordes now at Urban Dead