When All is Lost

Chapter 13

Hope was all I had left. I clung to it desperately. I would find Chris. I would go east and find my mom and my sister. We would survive. We would rebuild.

Even with those thoughts in my mind, I couldn't form them into words. I couldn't argue back. It was because I knew deep down that, to some degree, Ian was right. Nothing about our lives over the last few months really felt like anything beyond existing from one moment to the next. It was a perpetual pause before we faced our end, and as I sat in a relic of our former world, the reality of it all came crashing down.

My little bubble of safety was thoroughly popped. Faced with the brutal truth left me with a new perspective on the last few months. I was content being bored because it kept me naïve to this. To the horrific fact that our society had kept its people dumb and docile, completely under their thumb, in order to maintain a dangerous façade of control. Now, with the loss of the fantasy, we weren't prepared to face what had always been just a hair's breadth away – chaos.

"It's your turn to be on watch," I said, slapping the knife down on the arm of Ian's chair as I got up and moved over to the couch. Ian simply shrugged, not bothering to argue with me. If he could tell that his words had gotten to me, he showed no sign of it other than the stiffness in his posture.

Whatever.

I settled in and pulled the thick duvet cover over me. Rolling my face into the decorative pillow, I took a deep breath and took in the faint smell of a woman's floral perfume. With an internal groan, I shifted the pillow off the couch, opting to use my arm instead.

The position put a strain on my slowly-forming scar and I shifted again so I was on my back. I tried closing my eyes, but just like when I was on watch, the silence started to get to me. There was something eerie about it that set my teeth on edge. Maybe it was because of the size of the rooms or maybe it was just my head taking me on a trip, but each of my breaths seemed to reverberate around the space.

Stop it.

I tried readjusting again but it devolved into fidgeting as I was unable to get comfortable. My thoughts drifted to Abby and it suddenly became harder to breathe. Nothing could have prepared her for this world or the death she endured. I started hearing her gurgle and slapped my hands over my ears in a sad attempt to make it stop.

Fuck.

Taking a deep breath, I made myself count down from ten. I kept at it, over and over again. It didn't make the sound stop, but I eventually felt myself relax enough to drift off into oblivion.

---

Oblivion turned out to be more like short spurts of brief unconsciousness broken up by repeated attempts at being on watch. Neither Ian nor I could seem to sleep in that house, so we kept switching positions. For an hour I'd be on the couch, then he'd give it a go to no avail. By sunrise, we were both miserable and exhausted.

To make the day worse, we came to the decision to cut our food intake down to once a day. If we were smart and careful, we would be able to make our food and water last for at least a time. It was a dangerous but necessary gamble. With it just being the two of us, we were left with few other options.

We set out in a stiff silence with empty bellies, as ready as we could be for the long trek ahead. The first two hours were spent focusing only on the road ahead of us. For the most part, it was quiet as we continued south. Every once in a while we could hear what might have been people, but the sounds never got close.

"How's your cut?" Ian asked as he stopped and waited for me to catch up.

My sluggish pace stemming from the awful night's sleep was slowing me down more than I cared to admit. Our goal was to reach where Chris had last been seen by the next night and I was determined to keep to the plan.