Seeking Daylight

by Becky Poirier

  “Dreams can be dehydrating,” he said with a subtle southern accent. I nodded. Looking into his cool blue eyes I could tell that he knew how I felt or at least somewhat. Neither one of us was big on talking, but that didn’t mean we didn’t feel deeply. I looked around to see if Clara and Matthew were still in the room. Thankfully the only witness I had to my meltdown was Frank and I knew he wouldn’t tell anyone.

  “Are the others still cleaning up?” I asked trying to distract from my mortifying situation.

  “I think they’re just about finished. Seth said something about moving the bodies down a few blocks to confuse the beasts.”

  “Seth came by?” I didn’t like the idea of Seth checking up on me. From past experience I knew that I sometimes talked in my sleep, especially when I was suppressing my emotions during the day.

  “Don’t worry you didn’t start talking until after he left.” An instant weight was lifted off my shoulders. “Who is Alex…or was Alex?” I stared at him. He didn’t appear to be the nosy type. He kept out of everyone else’s business, but for some reason he was now very interested in mine.

  “No one you know,” I snapped back.

  “No need to bite my head off girl, I was just trying to figure you out. I’ve been here long enough to figure everyone else out. Take Jane for instance. She cares so much for the boy because she lost her own sons and grandson to the plague. Clara acts like a ditz so that no one expects anything from her. And Seth feels the need to protect everyone because he couldn’t protect his own family. Then there’s you. There’s definitely pain in those eyes, loss. I should know I’ve seen the same look staring back at me from the mirror. You’ve lost someone that meant a lot to you. And when you first came here I thought for sure you’d find your way to the top off the roof and throw yourself off. But then today, you save us all, though I’m sure you don’t like us very much. What made you want to live today when you were ready to die yesterday?”

  “Why do you keep living when you lost someone you loved?” I asked.

  “Because she made me promise, before she turned, not to do anything reckless.”

  “You didn’t end her suffering?” It was probably a rude question to ask. You don’t normally ask someone why they didn’t kill their wife in an everyday conversation.

  He didn’t act offended. He simply smiled and said, “Because she didn’t want me too. She wasn’t afraid of the change and I think everyone should have the choice. Did you end their suffering?”

  I turned away unable to answer the question but the tear that fell down my cheek answered it for me. I wiped it away aggressively and took another swig of water. The memory was still so fresh. I could practically feel the weight of Molly’s body in my arms. I remembered the way it felt as the life slowly drained out of her. Taking in a deep breath I forced the memory back.

  “They asked you to, so you did the right thing.” I looked back into Frank’s kind eyes. It was the first conversation I’d had in days where I actually started to feel a little better. I’d been questioning my choice ever since I’d pumped her full of morphine. She’d begged me too and I hadn’t even hesitated. If it had been me, I would have wanted to die. But this was Molly and she was only twelve. After her life had left her body I’d cried for over an hour wondering if I had waited, if we’d discussed it, maybe she would have wanted to live. For the first time since that awful morning, I didn’t feel guilty about ending my sister’s life.

  “Thank-you,” I whispered to Frank unable to say anything else. He stood up and patted me on the shoulder before he walked away. Of all the people in this place, it had been Frank who I needed to talk to the most. None of the others could understand what I’d gone through. They hadn’t seen it in my eyes, but Frank had. It wasn’t like the others hadn’t experienced loss, everyone had. You couldn’t live in this world now without surviving loss. But not everyone had been faced with such an incredibly difficult choice to make. Frank could have denied his wife’s request and killed her. Others would have. I was sure Nina would have. Frank’s decision, allowing his wife to become one of those things, meant that there was one more demon out there running the streets to be afraid of. He didn’t care about that. He only cared about her wishes.

  The rest of the group had returned less than an hour later. Seth had made sure to come over to me first to assure me that the mess had been taken care of and the that the demons wouldn’t be finding us tonight. They were taking extra precautions tonight though. We wouldn’t be cooking any food. We didn’t want the smell to linger in the air. So we were going to be eating cold canned soup, which they had a lot of. The factory we were living in was after all a canned soup factory. It was convenient and well stocked. The only reason it hadn’t been raided before was because when the plague first became an epidemic people had fled the cities first. It was way more dangerous to be in a city. The smaller towns had been drained of resources first, which was why Molly and I had been doing so poorly when we first met Alex.

  Alex’s face came back into my mind. His beautiful brown eyes staring into mine, had filled me with butterflies. The way his arms had held me that last night we were together, was a moment I thought I’d treasure forever. Now all I wanted was to forget I’d even known him. I quickly pushed the memory away. He already had invaded my dreams. He was not going to take over my waking moments as well.

  My newfound popularity didn’t dissipate like I’d hoped the day’s fatigue would do. Pretty much everyone in the group gathered around me for dinner. They didn’t necessarily try to engage me in conversation, it was more like they wanted to bask in my celebrity. It was weird to say the least and very uncomfortable.

  The only people who didn’t join us were Nina who sat off in the farthest corner sulking and Frank who stuck to his bed. Both Seth and Jane had tried to convince Nina to join us but she wasn’t budging. Even though she had pretty much been proven wrong about the mess being something they couldn’t clean up in time, she was unwilling to admit any fault for her verbal assault on me.

  No one bothered engaging Frank in conversation. I looked over in his direction from time to time. He was watching us intently from the corner of his eye and listening to every word we said. He was smart. Observation was always more telling than conversation. That was what my father had always said. He’d told me you could tell more about a person by their actions and their body language than their words. Often it was what people didn’t say that gave away who they really were.

  I’d been enjoying my role as observer. It had taught me a lot, but the newfound fame was putting all my efforts at risk. It was harder to be the observer when people insisted on being so close to me.

  When Seth declared that it was time to shut the place down for the night, I was actually grateful. It meant I’d have at least an eight-hour reprieve from the others. Normally the group didn’t worry about being quiet until after the sunset but tonight they were taking extra precautions, based on Nina’s paranoia. The metal shutters were closed an hour before sunset and lights out was declared the moment the sun began to fade from the sky. Also to add an extra precaution Wes and Kyle, their two ex-military sharp-shooters, were going to be set up in a hunting blind on the roof. Seth hadn’t liked the idea of having anyone exposed but it was either have the experienced men up there or Nina. And from what I’d seen, Nina wasn’t the greatest shot. She’d only managed to get one round off and completely missed the guy’s heart. If it weren’t for Cletus that guy might have had the chance to fire back on us.

  No one was eager for the early curfew. Despite the fact that most of them had spent the day doing exhausting manual labor, they all looked pretty chipper and alert. Ginger tried to argue the curfew saying that a little quiet chatter wouldn’t do any harm. Nina had shot her a death stare. Seth had appeased Ginger by promising her a special no work and all games day the next day. Apparently that was something they did every couple of weeks. Ginger had accepted those terms and went to her bed.

  I wasn’t feeling the l
east bit sleepy even after having had a less than stellar nap earlier. It was actually getting harder for me to want to sleep with every passing day. The nightmares just got worse with every Rem cycle. I was used to nightmares. They’d been a staple of my childhood and now adulthood. It was just something to be expected of the life we lived. When you were constantly in survival mode, it was difficult to dream happy dreams. I couldn’t remember the last pleasant dream I’d dreamt.

  I lay back staring at the ceiling watching the room grow darker. We only had a few small camp style lanterns lit around the room, to make sure people didn’t trip when they needed to wander to the washroom in the middle of the night. The lanterns barely lit the darkness and gave the room a rather ominous feel. I found myself waiting for something to jump out of the dark even though I knew we were perfectly safe.

  In the past, a situation like this would have had me pacing the room. Even though pacing wasn’t something I could do now, I was still calmer than I should have been. After everything I’d experienced I shouldn’t have felt safe. But I did. I looked past one of the lights and standing sentry just behind the lantern was Seth. He didn’t notice me watching him. I saw him looking all around the room, checking the two exits. He sat down but didn’t close his eyes.

  I knew that he was going to sit like that all night. He may have been sure that they were safe, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. He was the protector of this group. And I felt safe with him in that role, safer than I ever had with Alex. And I’d known Alex a year longer than Seth and he had never made me feel that safe. I may have let Alex take watch duty, but that didn’t mean that I could sleep with him at that post. If it weren’t for the nightmares I would have felt perfectly safe falling asleep with Seth standing guard. He wouldn’t abandon us. He wouldn’t abandon them. You’re not one of them, I scolded myself.

  His eyes continued to follow around the room until they landed on me. I quickly looked away pretending that I hadn’t just been staring at him. I rolled over onto my side facing Matthew. My injured arm was finally starting to feel well enough that I could put some pressure on it. At least I was on the mend. The faster I healed, the quicker I could make my escape. Being around these people was dangerous for me. It was too easy for me to forget why, as Frank had put it, I hadn’t jumped off the roof. I wasn’t living because I wanted to or because I had hope. I was still alive to avenge Molly’s death.

  Matthew snored quietly beside me. The gentle rhythm of his breathing helped clear my mind. My eyelids fluttered despite all my efforts to stay awake. Before I knew it, I was out and dreaming about Molly again.

  We were huddled together in the basement of an abandoned house. We’d locked up the basement door as best we could but we hadn’t had the time to properly secure the place. It was our first night on our own. The death of our parents was still fresh in our minds. Molly hadn’t stopped crying all day. I’d held all my tears back, hoping that when Molly was finally asleep I could release them. Molly was my responsibility. That’s what my mother had told me. She’d made me promise to keep her safe. My sister was only ten and children didn’t fare well in this new world. I was only sixteen but I’d been a mini-adult all my life so I was well prepared for this situation or at least I should have been.

  But that day when we left our home for good, I’d taken our emergency supplies and taken off without a plan. My mother needed us to leave. She didn’t want us around when she ended her suffering. So I’d grabbed what I could, threw it in our old Ford truck, and hit the road. We hadn’t even left the driveway before we heard the gun shot. I’d put a CD on to try and drown out the memories but it hadn’t helped. Molly sobbed the entire way down the old dirt road.

  We’d rarely ventured from our farm. And we’d never left on our own before. I had a map in the middle seat, but it meant nothing to me. I’d always struggled reading maps. It just looked like a lot of information to process and I could never sort out the different squiggles. Molly was the one who was able to decipher it and it had given her something to do. We picked the nearest small hamlet we could find to stay for the night. We knew that the bigger hives were in the cities so we vowed to stick to the rural communities. What we really needed was a full day to scout out the hamlet properly and we’d only had a few hours.

  We picked this home for the supplies that had been abandoned and for the fact that it had no tell-tale signs of hive activity. All we could do was pray that it was safe. Well Molly did the praying. I’d stopped praying years ago.

  We sat on the musty dirt floor with nothing but a tiny flame on an old scented candle to light up the darkness. I’d wrapped the only blanket we had around Molly. It wasn’t big enough for the two of us but she’d insisted on sharing so we cuddled up as close as we could. Molly had cried herself to almost sleep several times until we began to hear the howls. They sent cold shivers running through our bodies. The blanket had no hope of warming us now. I’d emptied the jug of vinegar by the front door and basement door to try and confuse the demons’ acute sense of smell. It was a trick our father had taught us. But we’d never had cause to use it before. The demons never came near the farm. Now we’d find out if it worked.

  Molly leaned in as close as she could to me. Her whole body shook. There was nothing I could do but hold her, to comfort her. I couldn’t sooth her with comforting words, or an old song our mother used to sing because of the excellent hearing the demons possessed. All I could do was hold her close and hope that the howling left the area soon. Molly’s breathing hitched beside me, as she tried to keep her sobs silent.

  I reached out for her hand and held it in mine. She squeezed it tightly and looked into my eyes for reassurance that we would be okay. I smiled back at her hiding my fears well. Her hand felt clammy in mine and so small. It was smaller than it ought to have been. A quiet cry escaped her lips.

  Molly’s image disappeared as did the scene. My eyes burst open to see Matthew silently crying in the dark. I looked down at my hand which was firmly clasping his. It took a moment for me to pull myself back into reality. Matthew’s hand shook in mine and I noticed that his whole body was trembling as he fought to keep his cries quiet. Beside him Jane was snoring quietly and in the distance I could hear the howls of the demons.

  I knew from experience that the demons weren’t close by. Their howls could be heard for miles. It took time to learn but eventually you could tell how close they were by volume of the howl. Matthew clearly hadn’t learned that skill yet. It had taken me a couple of years to master and I had been a teenager. He was only seven. I wanted to reassure him that it was okay, but before I got a chance to open my mouth Seth was leaning down on the edge of Matthew’s mattress to take on that responsibility.

  “It’s okay,” Seth whispered. Matthew jumped at the sound of his voice. His fear intensified.

  “Matthew they can’t hear us,” I reassured.

  Seth smiled at Matthew and nodded in agreement. Slowly Matthew’s breathing slowed as did his grip on my hand.

  “They aren’t near us,” Seth spoke as he sat down at Matthew’s feet. “They’re by the buildings where we left the bodies.”

  “How do you know?” Matthew whispered with a shaky voice.

  “Because they’re not loud enough to be near us,” I interjected. “Trust us. We have experience knowing these things. When they’re close the howls are very loud. So loud they hurt your ears. I don’t know about you but my ears aren’t hurting.” I could have added that the time they were outside the house Molly and I were staying in that the howls were so loud it felt like my ear drums were about to burst. But I didn’t think that would bring him comfort.

  “It’s okay to sleep Matthew. I’m keeping watch and if we needed to take shelter I would wake you. But we won’t need that,” Seth attempted to sooth him. Matthew still didn’t look reassured. I wondered how often he’d experienced the demons being this close in proximity. Matthew answered the question without me having to ask it.

  “The last time I heard
them they took my mom,” he said with a sniffle. From what I’d understood that had been a while ago when he was barely a toddler. For him to still remember that was both impressive and sad at the same time. I fought to keep the tears from surfacing. That was the first time I’d heard a demon howl in person too, the night my father bit my mother. We didn’t even know he’d been bitten while he’d been away from us. And we didn’t know anything was really wrong until he howled. I remembered the fear that shot through me upon first hearing that awful sound. My ears rang for several moments afterwards, making it hard to focus. I wondered if that was why they did it, to distract their prey. To see that awful sound coming out of someone I’d once loved, was beyond description.

  “I don’t think I can sleep when they’re this close,” Matthew said as a tear dropped onto his pillow. He tried to hide his emotions from us. He so desperately wanted to be brave and I could tell he definitely wanted to be brave in front of Seth.

  I reached behind my neck and pulled off the long chain that held my angel locket. As I pulled my hand out of Matthew’s I placed the angel locket in its place. Matthew eyed it curiously. “This was my mother’s. You see the angel?” He nodded. “Well it’s a guardian angel. And whoever holds this locket will be protected.”

  He looked at me sceptically. “Really?”

  “You saw me when I came here. I looked terrible didn’t I?” He didn’t look like he wanted to answer.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen someone in worse shape,” Seth helped out without my asking him too. I shot him a dirty look which made Matthew laugh quietly.

  “Well then you should know Matthew, just based on how I looked that I’d been through a lot.” Matthew nodded again. “Despite all my injuries the angel kept me alive and even guided Seth and Jane to find me.” I knew that it was just a pendant and that when my mother had given it to me it was just a way to comfort me. It had worked. Just holding it close often brought me peace. And I hoped by loaning it to Matthew that I could help him sleep through the night. I looked over at Seth to see if he was going to add anything this time, but he was staring off like he was deep in thought.