Allison Hewitt Is Trapped by Madeleine Roux Page B

immediately in front of the fire escape is wide open. Not a good sign. Whoever lived inside must have tried to escape, and why would they do that if they were tucked away safe and sound in their apartment?
    Once Ted and Phil are on the escape with me I peek inside the window. I’m looking in someone’s kitchen. It’s been totally ransacked. The drawers and cupboards are open or yanked down onto the linoleum; silverware and plate fragments litter the ground and countertops, and the refrigerator door has been propped open. Not seeing any immediate danger, I climb inside and then open the window wider for Ted and Phil. They struggle through the small opening, sighing and grunting as they wedge themselves through the window.
    It’s cold inside, and filled with the kind of eerie silence that makes you think of ghosts. Nothing happy could’ve happened here. There was never any joy or laughter, not when the feeling of death is creeping and crawling over everything. Even the bright, cheerful yellow paint job can’t keep the chilly fear at bay. I check the cupboards to be sure, but there’s nothing, not even crumbs. Someone has already come and cleaned out the apartment. There’s no food, not the edible kind, and the refrigerator stinks from mold and spoiled milk. I shut it and continue on into a narrow, poky hall. The framed photographs are still there, knocked onto angles, but intact. I try not to look at the posed family photos, the hopeful smiles and cheesy sweaters.
    “Fuck,” I hear Ted murmur. I was thinking the same thing. When you live in almost constant fear, your instincts become better, sharper, and you can tell when something is terribly amiss. I get that feeling in the living room walking over the suspicious red stains on the ivory shag carpet, and I get that feeling again when we’ve finished walking through every room and find no one, just mess after mess, open drawer after open drawer, a phone hanging off the line with no dial tone.
    We leave that apartment and go out into the hall. Here we meet a few of our undead friends and Ted and I get to practice our golf swings. I’ve never cared for golf much but I could certainly learn to love it. The driver is light but vicious. It takes a hefty chunk out of the first Groaner’s face. I prefer the ax, it’s more reliable, more deadly, but the driver is easier to swing and much less tiring. It’s easiest just to knock them over the banister down onto the stairs below, so we do and listen to the satisfying crunch of their soft bodies hitting the ground floor.
    The hall is dark, the walls covered in striped, rose pink wallpaper with a floral border. There are other doors hanging open and a shiver jutters down my spine. I don’t want to go inside them, but I know we should. The first two are almost identical to the other apartment—ransacked, cold, empty and filled with the pervasive fog of troubled souls. There are two apartments left after that, and only one of them has a tightly shut door. We enter the open apartment first.
    I thank God for the cold, cold weather.
    He’s there, a middle-aged man, probably no more than thirty-five. He is—was—sitting on a rocking chair. It’s oddly placed in the middle of the living room, pushed away from the sofa, entertainment center and grandfather clock. The backside of the chair is red but it shouldn’t be. His head is thrown back, his very dark curls cascading over the edge. I walk closer. Phil and Ted have stopped at the door and I can hear Phil retching in the hall. The man’s neck is open, gashed, not by teeth, not by the undead, but by the clean, sharp sweep of a knife.
    “No, this isn’t right,” I say, shaking my head. His eyes are open, staring, milky white where the blue should be. The room is so cold that he hasn’t begun to decompose. The same thought keeps occurring to me every few seconds: even if we clear this place out, even if it’s safe, how can we live here?
    Then I’m running into the hall