When All is Lost

Chapter 8

I found myself in the strange position of, once again, being utterly bored. Given the last week, I should probably have been thankful for the dullness of endlessly staring out onto an empty street. Unfortunately, with boredom came sleepiness and after the third time I nearly nodded off, I let out a string of curses.

I looked down at Chris's watch in the moonlight and wondered how long a shift needed to be before it would be appropriate to tap the next person to take over. With that thought, I got up and quietly walked over to the sleeping group.

Ian had taken my place on the floor and was emitting small snores with his head lulled back and blanket up to his chin. I got as close as I could to him without kicking his feet and reached past him to where my packed sheet rested on the coffee table. Not wanting to linger, I snatched it up and hurriedly backed out of the room.

When I was back in my chair on watch, I let out the breath I'd been holding. My sheet was now only half full as much of its contents had been transferred to Abby's backpack for safer and much more convenient keeping. Owen had grumbled about how only the two of us were carrying goods, but Mark had reminded him that we were the ones who had brought the stuff. Frankly, the argument was a moot point because there wasn't enough to pass around to make it worth everyone wearing sheets.

I pushed the useless flashlight aside and dug around until I found the pad of paper and pencil mixed in at the bottom of the sheet's contents. It was nearly too dark to see what I was writing, but I didn't let that stop me. Flipping to a clean page, I started to write. I wrote down every possible item I thought we might need. Everything from water to weapons. We would have to gather as much as we could in the next few weeks.

Without any warning, the room shook beneath my feet at the same time the sky flashed a brilliant orange.

Holy shit.

The sound hit me next as I registered that I was witnessing some kind of explosion. Due to the flat landscape, it was impossible to see anything other than the dark, billowing clouds of smoke that were illuminated by what I was sure had to be a fire.

It's far away. Relax.

Even still, I turned to look at my group. Only Abby's eyes met mine. She looked alarmed and started to sit up when I shook my head. There was no reason for her to be awake, too. It was frightening, to say the least, but we weren't in any danger.

Yet.

Abby settled back down and I packed up my sheet, no longer feeling an ounce of boredom. As the hours passed and the sun started to rise over the horizon, I counted three other fires that had broken out far off in the distance.

I still had a blanket firmly tugged around me and my eyes glued to the window when Mark woke up.

"Hey," he said quietly as he came over. "Wasn't Owen supposed to take the third shift?"

I shook my head. "It's okay. I couldn't sleep."

Mark followed my gaze to the outside world. His intake of breath was the only indicator that he'd noticed all of the smoke.

"Do you think you could wake everyone up? We should get going sooner rather than later." I kept my voice calm and even despite how I was feeling.

"Yeah." Mark swallowed. "Yeah sure."

It took no more than fifteen minutes to get everyone up and ready to go. What held us up was a worry over the lack of weapons. Luckily, I'd had long hours to think up a solution. Once everyone was awake and out of the way, I flipped the coffee table and stomped on the legs until they broke off. It got me some weird looks at first, but once I laid the legs out along with the knitting needles and mini screwdriver, they caught on.