The Cure for Sleeping

Chapter Eight

Josh makes a good attempt at raising the spirits in the room, but we're still as tense as... a bunch of teenagers hiding in a church during the apocalypse. Thea, Noah and I are too wound up for polite conversation from our near escape, and Hazel just seems to be naturally silent. As the night stretches into morning, Josh's grin winds tighter like someone's twisting a screw. I'm just waiting for his eye to start twitching. Or maybe he'll launch into a group sing-along as a last ditch effort to raise morale.

At around ten in the morning, they start moving. Thea goes around extinguishing candles, blowing each out with a soft exhale through pursed lips. With the boarded up windows, the only light coming through is in thin slants through gaps in the barricade. Josh pins thin sheets up over these, and the church is plunged into a quiet darkness. It wraps around me like a blanket.

"We sleep during the day, when we can." Noah is stretched out on his back, chest rising and falling gently as we watch the others.

"Why is that?"

"The Insomniacs are more dangerous at night. We can't see them, but they can see us. We used to keep normal schedule, but one broke into our hideout when we were sleeping. Thea shot him, but it scared us. So now we're nocturnal."

"Seems like a better idea than I mine." I say. Noah peeks at me from the side of his eyes.

"Which was?"

"I loaded up on caffeine until I could see sound to stay awake. It did wonders for my reflexes, though. I was jumpier than a pogo stick." That had been forty-eight hours of chaos. I ended up so paranoid that the pigeon outside my window was going to betray my location to the Insomniacs that I threw stones and screamed bloody murder at it until it flew away. Not the best way to stay hidden.

"Jumpier than a kangaroo?" The corner of Noah's mouth twitches up, but he otherwise keeps a straight face.

"Jumpier than an American after meeting a drop bear for the first time." I twist a curl around my fingers, feigning nonchalance.

"A what?" Noah's turned towards me now, incredulous.

I grin.

Sleeping arrangements turn out not to be particularly complex. Josh grabs a pile of blankets and crashes where he stands, a tumble of flung out legs and blond hair in the middle of the church aisle. Within minutes, he's snoring. Thea rolls him not-so-gently onto his side with a toe, and settles herself underneath a boarded-up window. She sleeps curled up like a cat, one hand against her cheek. Noah fell asleep the moment I stopped talking to him, dropped in the middle of the dais. His face is soft and relaxed, glasses discarded in his lap. I throw another blanket over him as I walk past.

Finally, I settle in myself. Curled up in a corner, facing the church's entrance, I build a nest out of the scratchy woollen blankets. I'm just getting comfortable when Hazel perches next to me, quiet as a wraith.

She doesn't speak at first, and I don't either. Minutes tick by as I try to ignore the presence next to me, to try and fall asleep.

"You know that had to do it, right? To kill that man." Her voice is quiet but certain.

I say nothing.

"The gang would have killed Noah and kept Thea as a prize. Even if the Insomniacs ran each and every one of them down, they deserved what they got."

I roll to face her. Hazel's eyes are open, and she lies perfectly still. "No one deserves to die like that. Scared and bloody and helpless." Just like the man with the limp.

"Do you really believe that?" Hazel's doesn't sound haughty anymore. Just curious.

It takes me a long time to speak, to give her an honest answer. When I do, my voice is no louder than the hush of wind outside. "I don't know. Not as much as I used to."