Survivor Song(68)
Natalie stands in profile. Her respirator mask is gone. She spits out random, monosyllabic vowel-based sounds. She paws through the dresser’s dwindling set of knickknacks, small porcelain animals and dolls, and she smashes them into the walls and floor.
Ramola turns on the ceiling light; only one bulb of the two within the domed fixture works. She nearly tiptoes into the room while saying, “Natalie, let’s get you in bed, all right? Have a lie-down. You need rest.”
Natalie pushes and rocks the dresser front to back, front to back, spilling the remaining figurines. The top drawers slide open and closed like loose, wagging tongues.
Natalie turns toward the doorway, toward Ramola. Saliva drools in a thick line from her bottom lip and chin. Above her top lip is a mustache of accumulated white foam. Her eyes go lidless they open so wide. They are the glistening, reasonless eyes of lunacy, of vacancy and the transformed, of the werewolf and the vampire and the zombie and all the other monsters centuries of folklore and myth have attempted to ascribe to the rabid human face.
Natalie exclaims, “Oh!” and smiles, but it’s not a smile. Her head tilts forward, pulled by the same new gravity drooping her shoulders and pulling her chest into kyphosis. Her facial muscles spasm and quake, her lips fissure, upper lip lifting into a V over an exposed canine. She rushes at Ramola, angrily shouting.
Ramola holds up her hands and drifts backward toward the doorway. Before she can say anything more than her name, Natalie is on top of her. She grabs a fistful of Ramola’s left sleeve and pulls her arm toward her open mouth. Ramola bends her knees, dropping her weight, which straightens her arm and allows her to squirm it out of the coat. She pops back up and spins, attempting to free her other arm as well. Caught mid-turn, Natalie two-handed shoves her between the shoulder blades. Outsized and outweighed, Ramola is sent tumbling into the hallway, careening into the wall and landing awkwardly on her right side. Her shoulder absorbs the brunt of the collision with a spike of bright pain.
Natalie lumbers into the hallway and kicks Ramola’s left leg, mid-thigh, a direct hit but on the muscle and without much leverage behind it. Next, she tries to stomp down on Ramola’s knees but misfires, throwing herself off-balance, tilting her weight. Forced to put her hands on the wall to catch herself and recalibrate, Natalie gives Ramola an opening.
Ramola scrabbles onto her feet and sprints down the hallway, to its other end. She pauses in the entryway at the chairlift and bottom of the stairs where most of the contents of Josh’s pack remain on the floor. Natalie gives chase but she is breathing heavily and moving slower, her quick-burst attack already depleting her body’s energy and strength reserves. At least, Ramola hopes that’s the case.
Ramola briefly considers running upstairs, but without knowing the layout she fears being trapped. She also doesn’t want Natalie falling or hurting herself or the baby climbing up and down the stairs. Instead she hangs the loop of rope off her barking right shoulder and grabs the roll of duct tape. She waves her hand in a come-here gesture and she talks in the calmest voice she can manage, telling Natalie it’s time to go to bed, time for rest.
The sound of Ramola’s voice has the opposite of the intended effect. Natalie clambers down the hallway that is either shrinking or she is filling, roaring more nonsense, the nonwords an aural virus, infecting Ramola’s head with a near-blinding fear. Moving too slowly initially, Ramola bumbles into the kitchen, her feet sputtering on the linoleum. Regaining some of her composure, she darts through the room and into the hallway. Backtracking to the rear of the house, Ramola runs at full throttle to expand the distance between her and Natalie.
Returning to the bedroom, Ramola leaps onto the bed and crab-crawls into its middle, crouched but with her legs coiled under her. Her first attempt at opening the duct tape goes awry as the tape sticks to her latex gloves. She tears off a strip and the gloves, tosses them into a dark corner. She rips open another length of tape, leaving one end attached to the roll.
Natalie billows into the room, screaming between gasping breaths. She knocks into the bed with both legs, as though not realizing she can’t pass right through it. She leans and stretches and reaches for Ramola, opening and closing her mouth.
Ramola ducks and pivots, avoiding Natalie’s grasping hands, scooting back toward the far side of the bed, but hoping to stay close enough to lure Natalie to lean and extend further.
Softly, Ramola says Natalie’s name again and tells her to lie down. Natalie snarls, shouts, “Never leave!” and lunges with her right arm. She falls onto the bed, hands first, holding her torso up as though preparing to do a modified push-up. Ramola slaps and sticks the tape to the back of Natalie’s right wrist and then quickly slides backward and off the bed. She sprints around the perimeter of the frame to the other side, coaxing herself to move faster. While Natalie is distracted by the tape and still bent forward, Ramola lowers her left shoulder and slams into Natalie’s backside.
Natalie pitches onto the mattress, landing on her left shoulder, and rolls onto her back. Her lower legs dangle off the bed. Ramola is fortunate that Natalie went left instead of right, as the duct tape is not trapped under Natalie’s body and is still attached to her wrist. Ramola quickly cocoons Natalie’s wrists and hands together. Natalie kicks out at Ramola but doesn’t land a solid blow. When she tries to sit up without the aid of her hands, she falls back to the bed with the slightest nudge. Ramola ties off one end of the rope between and around Natalie’s taped wrists. She loops the rest of the rope around the closest bedpost, making a pulley, and hauls in rope until Natalie’s arms are hoisted over her head, then she ties it off.