Speechless

Chapter eight

I woke up screaming. The first thing I saw was Jason running into the room. "What happened?" He asks me. I feel the wet tears along my cheeks again, and I just shake my head, the lump in my throat makes myself unable to choke out any words. I hate crying. I've been doing it much more often now, too. Jason comes and sits beside me, I sit up and criss-cross my legs and put my head into my hands. I then feel Jason's strong hand rubbing me along my back, comforting me while I sob. "Shh," Jason whispers. "It's okay," I could tell by his voice he was tempted to add "beautiful" after that, but after my outburst the other day he decided better to not say that.

I sit up straight and take a deep breath. I promised myself in my mind that I would not cry again. Crying only wastes time and messes up my vision, causing it to go blurry and not be able to see clearly. No more crying, I think. "I'm okay now," I assure Jason.

"What was it? Nightmare?" Jason asks. I nod ever so slightly.

"It was Jim again. This is my second nightmare of the moon and his death. I don't know how to make them stop," I say. Jason looks down at the floorboards and continues to rub my back,

"I don't either," he adds. We, again, sit in silence. Silence is becoming our best way of communicating. "We should leave," he says.

"What?" I asks, wiping the tears from my cheeks.

"This house, it's safe for now, but what about if a heard comes along? Then what? Nothing is boarded up, all we have is locked doors and windows. Yeah, we put a table in front of the door, but we don't have much. We need a place that's already safe," he explains. I nod in agreement and get up. As I reach for the door handle I pause,

"But let's not stray far, we don't want to be stuck when it's dark without shelter. But grab the green bag and let's go," I say as I then exit to downstairs. I wait for Jason downstairs for a brief moment, but I look at the knick-knacks and the pictures on a small round table. I see a family of four, a mom and dad, who are both wearing overalls, and two kids, a boy and a girl, who look roughly the same age and are wearing plaid button down long sleeve shirts. They all were smiling, their farm house that we are staying in as the background of the picture. I wonder who took it. I think. Maybe there's a fifth family member, or just a professional photographer. But then I remember The Gone that talked to me in this house, an older male from the looks of it, who was wearing torn overalls and working gloves. I suddenly couldn't look at the picture anymore.

That's when I heard Jason coming downstairs, he had his green bag in hand. "You alright?" He asks.

"Yeah," I lied. I couldn't get the thought of that man out of my mind. How would he know that there's a cure if he's only been here for this whole time? I was assuming that The Gone that spoke to me was the same man from the photo. While I pondered this, we walked out the door with all of our supplies and started down a direction we hadn't gone before. We walked in silence for a while, like usual. There wasn't much to see or do, not any Gone around, and if we came across one it was in the distance to the point where we couldn't smell it or hear its moans. It was actually somewhat boring. I finally decided I needed to know more about these people that aren't dead. "Hey Jason," I started.

"Yeah," he said. We both stopped walking and faced each other.

"You keep going and I'm going to go this way for a second," I told him, pointing back to where I had seen one of The Gone earlier.

"You're not serious, Aubrey," Jason says.

"Yeah, I am," I tell him.

"How will I know if you're safe and how will we get back to each other?" He asks me. That's actually a really good question.