The walking dead

When Diane Coles heard the creaking footsteps in the hallway outside the

bedroom, she knew it was one of them coming to get her. She sat up in bed and

screamed so loud it hurt her ears, but this didn’t scare away the intruder. The

footsteps got louder, and then the doorknob rattled and the door shook. Oh, God,

this was it, the moment she’d feared since she’d left New York and moved back

in with her parents in Grosse Pointe. He—well, if it was a he—was going to

break in and kill her. She had no idea how many of them there were. She knew

there were at least a few, including her best friend—well, former best friend—

Olivia.

Still shrieking, she grabbed the nearest object, a lamp, yanking the cord out of

the wall. Yeah, like a lamp would protect her. Still, she raised it above her head,

ready to fling it at whoever, or whatever, came inside.

“Diane, what’s going on? What’s wrong? Diane, open this door right now …

Diane.”

It took a few seconds before it registered that it wasn’t one of them after all; it

was just her mother.

“Diane, can you hear me?”

“I’m fine, Mom,” Diane said, aware of her pulse pounding as if she were in an

all-out sprint.

“You can’t stay in there all day again,” Barbara Coles said. “This is ridiculous.

You have to get on with your life.”

Diane remained with the lamp above her head for several seconds, then

replaced it on the night table. She lay down again in bed and pulled the blanket

up to her chin.

“Diane, will you please open the door?” Barbara shook the door a few more

times.

“I’ll be right down, Mom.”

“What?” Barbara asked.

“I said I’ll be right down.”

Diane heard Barbara let out a long, frustrated breath, and then her fading

footsteps as she marched downstairs.

Diane had been lashing out at her parents since she’d moved home, and she

felt bad about it. She was thirty-two years old, but lately she’d been acting like a

spoiled, angry fourteen-year-old. She’d thought moving back home would make

her feel safe, protected, but if anything, being isolated in a small space had

increased her paranoia.

If she knew who exactly was after her, it would make things a little easier—at

least she’d know whom to avoid—but it really could be anyone. Maybe it was

the dark-haired guy in the black Honda that had been parked in front of her

parents’ house the day before, or that older blond woman in the Delta terminal at

LaGuardia who’d stared at her weirdly. Or maybe it was the very old guy, maybe

ninety years old, who’d grabbed her in front of the apartment in the East Village

one evening and said with a foreign accent, maybe German, “You must leave,

before it’s too late.” The way the guy had looked at her with his intense dark

eyes had scared the crap out of her. Before she could ask him who he was or any

other questions, he ran away, with surprising speed for such an old man. Maybe

he was one of them, or maybe there were others she didn’t know about, but now

she was certain of one thing—she wouldn’t be able to avoid them forever.

Her parents, meanwhile, had no idea about the danger she was in, or the

possible danger they were in. It would be so much easier if she were able to open

up about it, get some genuine support, but she knew they wouldn’t believe her.

They’d have the same reaction as the police; they’d think she was crazy,

disturbed, making it all up. Besides, they were getting older—both in their

midsixties—and she didn’t want to cause them any stress, especially since her

father had had bypass surgery recently. So Diane had no choice but to keep all

the stress to herself, and it had been taking its toll. She was losing weight and

couldn’t sleep, and her thoughts were so scattered it was hard to focus on

anything.

She’d considered leaving Grosse Pointe, but where else would she go? If she

stayed with another friend or relative, in Michigan or some other part of the

country, she’d be endangering someone else, and she didn’t have money to travel

far or stay in a hotel. In New York, she’d been making decent money as a

publicist for a financial services firm, but with rents the way they were, she had

been barely able to saveSo, for better or worse, Diane was stuck at her parents’ house. During the

nearly three weeks she’d been here she hadn’t gone outside at all. Her parents

thought she was depressed—which was probably at least partly true—but as far

as they knew she’d moved home because of a bad breakup with Steve, a jerk

lawyer who’d dumped her with a text message, and because “the whole livingin-the-city thing just wasn’t working out.”

She shuddered as the memory nudged into her consciousness, but she refused

to let her mind fully go there. Denial was her new mantra. Maybe it was a

dysfunctional coping mechanism, but it had been working so far; after all, at

least she wasn’t in a mental institution. She wanted to believe that if she didn’t

think about what had happened in New York, the experience would eventually

vanish, like a bad dream. Or, maybe if she just stayed in bed and hid her head in

the darkness under her pillow, like she’d done when she was a kid on days she

didn’t want to get up to go to school, they wouldn’t be able to find her and she

would be safe, protected. The flashbacks—in vivid, horrifying detail—were still

coming, though, but it had been only a few weeks. Maybe one day she’d wake

up and it would all be gone, forgotten completely, as if it had never happened.

She couldn’t wait for that day.

Sitting at the edge of her bed, leaning over and kneading her scalp with her

fingers obsessively, she’d never felt so out of control. She wondered if this was

what insanity felt like. She didn’t think she was insane, but wasn’t that part of

the definition of insanity? Didn’t all insane people think they were sane? She

was definitely acting insane—staying in bed all day, neglecting her appearance

and hygiene, starving herself, virtually paralyzed by extreme paranoia. She had

to admit, when she analyzed her behavior this way, as an outsider would, she

didn’t seem like a portrait of sanity. While she thought she had a very good

reason to be behaving the way she was, if she was insane how could she trust her

thoughts? Maybe nothing had happened to her in New York—maybe it seemed

like a nightmare because it had been an actual nightmare, or some kind of

hallucination. It was true she’d been under a lot of stress lately and had never

really adjusted to life in the city. Maybe the breakup with Steve had been the

thing that had put her over the edge.

As she continued to rock back and forth, kneading her scalp with her

fingertips, she whispered repeatedly, “New York never happened, New York

never happened, New York never happened…”

Gradually, she started to believe that there was at least some chance that she’dmade it all up, had had some kind of psychotic break, which gave her more hope

than she’d had in days. Insanity was a good thing. Insanity could be cured.

Insanity would mean that she could get through this. If she just pushed herself, if

she stopped being the victim, she could snap herself out of this before it was too

late and it took over completely.