Allison Hewitt Is Trapped Read Online Free PDF

the table, separating to opposite corners of the room. Hollianted generally try to keep their distance so they can cuddle and make out in peace. Janette and Matt started up a game of poker with a deck of old cards they had found. Matt was officially out one shirt; it was spattered with grime and zombie juice.
    I pretended to knock the shirt off the counter and bent down, grabbing the thing wedged under the counter and shoving it into my jeans pocket. Matt looked over at me as I put his shirt back on the counter, staring at me as if I were a fly he had just noticed hovering over his head.
    “Sorry. Clumsy,” I think I muttered.
    Matt turned his attention and seething death glare back to the card game, and I grabbed my laptop and shuffled into the safe room. That’s where I am now, my screen propped right next to the television monitor. The store is quieter these days. Whatever commotion Ted and I had stirred up settled, and fewer and fewer hunched figures drift by the cameras.
    And I’ve been too distracted to give them much thought. What did I find in my pocket that night? A book. Miraculously it had made its way into the break room, kicked inside during the scuffle. I must have dropped it just before Matt opened the door and somehow managed to knock it inside. The damn thing made it, the lone survivor, the shipwrecked castaway. This alone might not seem very exciting or remarkable, but when I took the book back to the safe room I couldn’t believe which one it was.
    The Awakening —my mother’s favorite book.
    Elation … Joy … Complete disbelief … Here comes the crazy train, pulling into the station. Toot toot!
    I don’t believe in a higher power, I never have, but I must admit that for a quick, flashing second I felt the presence or maybe the interference of something supernatural. It just seemed too coincidental, too perfect. For a moment, I sat with the book sitting on my open palms, just staring at the cover as if it were an offering, a bowl of blessed incense. From that point on, from the moment the book came into my possession, I stopped sleeping.
    Look, I know this isn’t exactly the hand of God reaching down to give me a sign or something. When I was in grade school my friends and I would play that Ouija board game at sleepovers. We would scare ourselves witless, watching in openmouthed terror as the little pointed marker spelled out D-E-D. Close enough for us, close enough to keep us up all night wondering which of us would die during the night. Years later a boyfriend would explain to me why those board games worked. Tiny, minute vibrations in the fingertips communicated the desired outcome. So your conscious mind might not be thinking G-H-O-S-T but your subconscious is. That’s all it takes to move the marker slowly, slowly, centimeter by centimeter across the board.
    Maybe it was my subconscious at work. Maybe I had grabbed The Awakening , shoved it beneath my armpit and locked on, determined no matter what not to let it go. Either way, divine intervention or trick of the mind, I had the book now. I don’t know why I guarded it so jealously, not allowing the others to see that I had found it. That’s stopped now and they’ve been passing it around for the last few days, taking turns reading and rereading it.
    But the first night I had it, after we had rationed the loot and had dinner, I went to the safe room to be alone with the book. I read it front to back and started over again. Then I began to get drowsy and decided to get some sleep. I drifted off, the neon light of the monitor covered my face and hands as I made a cradle for my head to rest on.
    Maybe the book didn’t start the insomnia, maybe the dream did, but the book started the dream so the exact culprit doesn’t matter. The dream went like this: I was back out in the store with Ted, swinging my ax around and grabbing food. Then something rears up behind me screeching and rasping like a banshee. I turn and it’s one of them, one