An Unlikely Ally

Chapter 3 - All quiet in Pawling

John awoke groaning, his sleep was intermixed with nightmares, compounded by his terrible sleeping arrangements. With a sigh he rested his head back down onto the pillow, he didn't want to get up today. Both by disrupted sleep and by fear of the creature.

He looked at his watch and noted that he missed several of his alarms, it was already 11:02 am. What could I possibly do today? I got food for two weeks, water for three, I could just stay in here.

This new idea started seeming more and more appealing in his head, but as he lay there, the moments going by, he checked his watch again. 11:05 am.

Ugh, I wish I could just skip time, I will have nothing to do for several days, in this small room.

This was indeed true, John lacked any form of entertainment, a complete foresight as he was intent on food and supplies, but forgot the need to fill gaps in his schedule. John leant over and grabbed his pen, twirling it as he also fished through the pile of belongings and gear for his notebook. He drew up some matrices and started noting down his supplies, starting with the canned goods and water.

After a good hour and a quarter of noting things down and calculating nutrition information, alongside rough estimates of his intake, he concluded that he would have enough food for fifteen days and water for twenty-one. He smiled to himself proudly, having drawn the maths from the classes he generally flunked in high school, however, it started to fade when he realised he burnt up the only task that he could do.

Maybe I should do a diary? Keep things in chronological order, so I can refer to them in the future, and so others after me could too.

But that last statement didn't sit well, he didn't want to think about the implications of someone finding his diary without him being present to tell instead...

With that he stood up, body complaining a bit with a few creaks, stretching and popping his knuckles. He was going to go stir crazy if he sat here, he was never good at sitting still anyway, so this was quite bad for him. Maybe if I sneak to the library next door, I can find a good book or something? Maybe.

John wanted to air on the side of caution, but being cooped up might not fair well either, really he just wanted an excuse to go outside, despite the harrowing encounter from yesterday. With that he stood up, did his daily routine, dry shower and teeth, scoffed down a tin of chilli tuna and put on a new pair of clothes, however, this sparked a new thought. How the hell am I going to wash dirty laundry? With that, John let out an inaudible groan and slumped back in bed. That was indeed going to be an issue, he needed to watch his sanitation and prevent fungal infections and sickness.

Stuff it, issue for another day, I got plenty of fishing shirts. Once more John stood up with hast and stepped outside the door before another issue came to mind, before taking on a stealth-focused stance and carefully walking outside. He winced with every second step, his food was still tender from the cut, so he did his best to tread lightly. He turned left outside the door and crept over the footpath into the car park of the conveniently placed library. There were only 3 cars, a small yellow sedan and two grey SUVs, and no bodies either which was a plus. He made his way to the couple steps to the brown wooden door, he hesitated as he tested the handle, it didn't move to cause him to tense as it made a slight clunk sound, metal on metal. However this was too quiet to be heard from far, so John changed his strategy, he looked around at the windows, non were open. He was about ready to give up and try and find a backdoor, but he instead carefully stood up on the railings of the steps to look into the windows from a higher perspective, seeing a bronze latch on the closest window.

Wait... They aren't locked, just a latch on the frame, which might be in a recess on the window itself, these are old windows, and I can clearly see a gap. Maybe something can go between...