Silent Nights

Sleep eludes me. When I first laid down just after sunrise I’d been exhausted. I’m still exhausted, but the events of the morning keep running through my head.

I should have realized something was wrong. I must have missed something. Was he already drinking when I came in this morning? I didn’t notice, but that doesn’t mean anything. He’s always drunk anymore. Was. He was always drunk. What was he thinking? If he wanted to kill himself there were easier ways to do it, if that was even what he was doing. What else could it have been?

I can still see his face, destroyed and ripped to bloody shreds. I pull one of the pillows over my face. It still smells like him. I just need to sleep. I roll onto my back with a groan. The sheets tug at the gauze on my leg. I lift the blankets to make sure it didn’t come loose before letting the blankets drop back to the mattress.

I guess that guy- Drew- saved my life. You don’t aim at something you’re not willing to shoot. I know that. But would he have actually squeezed the trigger? There’s no way of knowing now. I wish I could have done something differently. If I could have stopped him myself, he would probably still be alive. If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candy and nuts… The phrase comes out of nowhere. Something my grandmother used to say, I think.

I wipe a hand over my face and glance at the old-fashioned alarm clock on the bedside table- half past ten already. If I’m not sleeping I should be doing something useful. I consider getting up, but that means interacting with those strangers.

Sleep sounds like a better plan. I’ve been awake since yesterday afternoon, and as soon as the street clears I should get moving. There’s no reason to stay here. I picture the map in my head. I’ve gone through most of the houses on this side of the river already. They’re all pretty much empty, and I haven’t had much luck downtown either. We would’ve had to move soon anyway.

It’s always a pain finding a new location, though. Places that got hit early on are the best. A lot got left behind in the first rush out of town. I’ll have to look at the state map, find somewhere remote but still within an hour or two of a bigger city. I make a mental list of all the work I have to do, hoping to bore myself to sleep.

Packing up this house is the first priority. The last two moves were made under duress, but this time I can afford take my time. The crowd outside isn’t an immediate threat right now, and if that changes I can just set off the car alarm again. That’s something I’ll be sure to set up again. It actually might be the easiest part of setting up another house like this. Abandoned cars are a dime a dozen anymore.
It’s the rest of the house that took work. Once I find a good house- something central, inconspicuous, and without a lot of external damage- the real work begins. I’ll have to barricade the front door, cover the windows on the ground floor, set up the getaway vehicle out back. It took almost a week here, and that was with help.

There’s a thump from down the hall, like someone dropped something. I sit up and stare toward the door. I hear a few muffled curses and wonder what they’re doing. I can’t believe I just left three strangers to wander around my house unsupervised. I should probably care more about that, but what could they do? They seem harmless enough. Granted they wanted me to give up my primary weapon, but it’s not like I don’t have more stashed in every room.

I should probably make some attempt at being hospitable, though. I haven’t been around other people much lately. In fact, they’re the first people in months that haven’t tried to kill me. Maybe I should bring them with me, but do I trust them? I don’t know anything about them.

This time something crashes to the floor just outside the door. I throw off the covers and get up. I can’t sleep anyway, and now I want to know what the hell they’re doing out there. Are they trying to get us all killed?