Not long after we’d left the bakery, our sled needed to be refueled and I got out to fill the tank. Ell was fast asleep, and I didn’t want to wake her, so I signaled Stone and Mia, stopped, and began the process as they shined a circle of light on me. It kept the monsters at bay, but it didn’t stop them from taunting us. I knew this because when I poured gas into the tank, a soft voice drifted my way.
It was Mikey’s.
“You let me die, Grady. You weren’t fast enough… Why, man? Why couldn’t you have saved me? Are you gonna let my sister die too? What about Mia? Is her baby gonna freeze to death?”
I had no answer for these questions, and I ignored the voice as best as I could. But I will admit this: my hands were shaking so badly when I dumped the gas, I spilled a good amount down the front of my coat.
With the tank now full, I rushed back to the safety of the cab, Mikey’s laughter following until I slammed the door shut.
Chewy looked curiously out of the windshield. His eyes were wide and wet and his head was pointed to the left, where that false voice had come from. The poor dog let out a soft whimper.
I stroked his back with a gloved hand, glad that Eleanor hadn’t so much as stirred, and I whispered, “I know, boy, I know. I miss him too.”
I remember being constantly tired. I mean, beyond exhausted. No longer near the safety and warmth of the church, the nightmares reappeared as soon as I closed my eyes. So, naturally, I avoided sleep as much as possible.
How many days had passed since we left Mikey at the church was unknown to me, because the days and nights blended together already. Add to that how I never slept more than an hour or two in one go, and my concept of time was completely obliterated. In fact, aside from knowing the storms and the monsters had arrived on July 4th, I was almost clueless as to what the date was at any given point after the Fourth. Not that it mattered much. Rest would come when we were safe, and we weren’t safe yet.
This lack of sleep meant I took as many watch shifts as I could while the others slept. I knew if I was up and armed with light, I wouldn’t allow my eyelids to get heavy. Doing so would not only put myself in harm’s way, but my loved ones too. And all I cared about was keeping them safe. Because I couldn’t bear to lose another person. I would cut off my eyelids before I let that happen.
Our shelter on this night was an abandoned schoolhouse; it was the lone annex of a larger high school somewhere near the border of Ohio and Kentucky, if the few road signs we saw on our way here were to be believed. The place was a relic, but old architecture proved to be the most effective in preventing the monsters from getting in. Brick, stone, small windows, heavy doors of solid wood or steel—those were all ideal.
The schoolhouse stood three stories high. Scuff marks of generations past scarred the yellow tile beneath our feet. The whole place smelled of dust and old books, a scent I liked much more than the cold.
We stayed on the lowest floor, which appeared to be a condemned dungeon and not a place fit for kids. Down there, exposed pipes ran along the walls in every direction. There were two bathrooms, a storage closet full of cleaning supplies and toilet paper, and no windows in sight. I walked along the other floors, finding nothing of use. They housed classrooms with many windows and fewer escape routes. The Dungeon offered us the protection from the elements—and the monsters—we needed.
Ell, Stone, and Mia were all sleeping as I sat on one of the yellow steps, thinking, with Chewy stirring at my feet. Not much to do but think when you were on watch. Think and try to keep yourself awake. So I thought, and the thoughts were bad, as usual.
I thought of losing Jonas, then Helga, then Mikey—all in horrible, tragic ways. I thought of the mother I grew up without, and how she wanted to be a writer, and how she had wrote that wonderful story about a childhood dog coming back to life to offer the now-adult owner much-needed closure, and how I had kept a copy of that story in my wallet despite knowing it word for word, and how I no longer had that story because, when the blizzards began, I lost it. I thought of my father and how he died of a heart attack. I thought of the boy I couldn’t save from the fire who haunted my mind before the snow fell, and who haunted my reality after.
I thought of all these things, and I remained awake. Maybe I’m crazy for doing that. I mean, I had books in my backpack. I could’ve read those, kept my mind occupied. But whenever I cracked one open, the wind would screech and the old building would groan like a dying leviathan, and any chance I had of concentrating on the words vanished.
My only option was to let those terrible thoughts run their course. After all, they were full of nightmare images, and nightmares were insomnia fuel, weren’t they? I clung to the bad, and because of that, my heart continued to beat.
I leaned forward and patted Chewy over the blankets covering him. One ear twitched, and he looked at me with a slitted eye, letting out a soft whimper.
“It’s all right, buddy. It’s all right.”
But was it? Before we lost Mikey, I wasn’t so…down, I wasn’t so…afraid. Was I?
Oh, how the times had changed.
I stood and stretched. Walking around kept the blood flowing, and that helped keep the exhaustion at bay. I
