Lay Your Love

Chapter 10: The Quiet City 1.pt

                                                                           ( 3 Days later )

The past three days have been spent rather calmly, despite the inevitable stress and uncertainty of Hillary's soldiers. It's been quiet and soldiers inside the hotel have somewhat regained their sleep schedule and the sick ones have had the time to rest up. One of whom being Tom. Who had spent the first two days completely knocked out, due to the fever. But on the third day, Tom had gotten compelled by Hillary and Lans to finally get up. Of course, This wasn't without a lot of complaining from his side, but a small jab from Hillary about how he looked and smelled made him definitely get up.

Today a few small groups of soldiers will be sent out to look around the abandoned city, generally just to find supplies and a lookout. Currently, Tom watched as three groups left from the rundown hotel Hillary and Randall had made the rest of the soldiers stay inside the hotel. Hillary had stayed behind to watch over the soldiers, while Randall joined one of the three small groups. Tom noticed firsthand how Hillary always made extra sure where he was. It aggravated the Brit but he couldn't do anything anyway. He knew why Hillary was paranoid with him, the past few weeks have been.... tense between them. But at the same time, Tom had felt like he was losing control over something.

Something else has also happened, yes he had a fever when they got to the hotel. But Tom has also been throwing up and loss of appetite. Lans had wanted to check on Tom but Tom refused him. Tom blamed all of his symptoms and sickness on something else. But today the pain was somewhat gone.

Tom sighed as he looked out the window another thing had also happened, winter. That bitch winter. Not even as a child did Tom ever like snow, or christmas for that matter. It was always fucking cold and people were happy for no god damn reason, he just didn't get the hype as a child nor does he now.

There was at least a 10-centimeter thick layer of snow outside and the whole outside was just different shades of white. Tom also realized how ungrateful he had been when there were still people around who shoveled snow, the roads were all just covered in snow now. He would never admit it out loud but he sorta missed the annoying Christmas decorations his old town would put up just so the roads wouldn't look this fucking depressing. That was the only good thing about christmas, the lights and shoveled snow. Tom pushed himself away from the window opting to look around in the hotel instead.

Most of the hotel had already been searched out and cleaned out a bit. Randall even got the boiler room running. But the water was still cold, never going up into too comfortable temperatures. But Tom won't complain, a shower was a shower, but since the first two days, the boiler room has been used as a water supply. Randall had warned that with the snow and all that the water inside the pipes might freeze and they won't be able to get any. Tom opted to go to the kitchen of the hotel, they found out that the kitchen used gas ovens. But Hillary and Randall took the gas cans and placed them inside the jeeps for future use, currently three of the gas cans were used as a source of heat throughout the few floors that they were allowed to use. Electricity was all gone and no one seemed to be an electrician, so nothing on that front.

So in other words, they lived like homeless people.

Tom walked into the main hall and looked around, Lans was with the sick, injured, and the other medics. Njord was also kept there. Gene and William left with Randall and the other soldiers. Flin and Kevin were just slacking around, Tom decided to go to them.

As Tom approached them he saw that Kevin had a stack of cards in hand and looked up at Tom. "Oh! Tom, haven't seen ya in a while, your head alright now?" Kevin teased as Flin gave him a harsh nudge on the shoulder. "Wanna play with us?" Flin questioned putting an arm around Kevin. Tom sighed and plopped himself down on the floor next to them.