Rowan Steele - The Dying Light

But, Jack suspected this was only the beginning.

He wondered how she hold up.

She pointed toward her mouth and Jack nodded curtly.

“Did you see anything?” she asked in an urgent whisper.

“No. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing out there,” he said.

She seemed to blanch at that statement but quickly recovered.

“We’re only going to stay here till dawn, right?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Good. I don’t feel safe here,” she said.

“Me either, but it’s the best we have,” he replied, moving inside the shack.

It was a tight space, probably designed for tools and storage, and not two fully grown adults.

In fact, it was even closer quarters than the elevator had been and just as dark, but they would make do.

“You try to get some sleep,” Jack said.

“And what about you?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“No,” she said. “You sleep. I’ll watch.

“Do you have any idea what you’re looking for?” Jack asked.

“No. But I think I’ll be able to figure it out.”

Jack shrugged, though he knew the woman couldn’t see it. “Suit yourself,” he said.

One of the greatest benefits of his former career was having developed the ability to fall asleep anywhere. Jack took advantage of that and lost himself in the oblivion of sleep.

It was too dark for Cassandra to see anything. She doubted she could see more than five feet in any direction. Still, as she had said to the man, she stayed awake, kept watch as best she could.

The shack was not solidly built, and through the gaps in the wood she looked, trying to catch watch of anything before it sprang up on them.

She had talked a good talk, offering to stay awake because it seemed only fair. The man hadn’t really slept, and she had.

Now, though, she wondered if she had made a mistake.

She could tell from his even breath that he was sleeping, and for some reason, even though he was there, that made her feel more alone.

Though she told herself not to, she couldn’t stop her mind from going back to the courthouse, those soldiers who had taken her car, the awful, eerie walk to through that abandoned house.

Something terrible was happening.

She knew that deep in the very fiber of her body.

All she could do right now was focus on what was in front of her. And, at least for the foreseeable future, what was in front of her was what had a day ago seemed impossible. A bike trip back to her family home to escape something that she didn’t understand and didn’t know that she wanted to.

Even though she had seen these things with her own eyes, her mind still tried to reject them.

She kept thinking back to that elevator, the courthouse. She knew she would see the blood-smeared marble of the courtroom hall. See the splashes on the ground that she knew had once been people. Only begin to imagine what had made them that way.

It was too much to fathom, yet something she couldn’t ignore.

And, worst of all, she knew this would not be short-lived.

She’d always had a belief that things weren’t as fragile as people liked to think.

She was no Pollyanna, of course. She wouldn’t have been able to do her job for as many years as she had and still be naive. Some of the things she saw, thing she heard about, still made her ill with the evil of them.

But this, such awfulness and on such a large scale, it was more than she could fathom. She’d have to get over it soon though.

Her survival depended on it.

She flinched when she heard something outside. A twig snapping perhaps.

She froze, bracing her hands on either side of the shack walls.

She thought about waking up the man, debated whether she should or shouldn’t.

But, in the next moment she felt his fingers close around her arm.

She shifted, looked in the direction of where she knew he was even though she couldn’t see him.

He squeezed tighter and then let go. In the next breath, she felt him move.

He moved slowly, silently, in a way that was almost inhuman.

He hadn’t completely closed the shack door when he had come in, so Cassandra assumed he was headed toward it. But she couldn’t see, and lack of that input made her emotions run higher.

Her heart was again pounding, the noise loud enough to drown out everything around her.

She dared not move though. She was too terrified to even swallow. So, she just stayed where she was, waiting, wondering what was going to happen.

It was so dark, her eyes may as well have been closed, but she kept them open, unmoving, not even blinking.

She felt like she was out of time and space. Just suspended, balanced on the edge of terror, afraid she was on the verge of slipping off.

When something touched her, she almost screamed, but in the next breath she realized that it was the man.

“It was a rabbit,” he whispered.

Cassandra sighed, but there was no relief in it. Rather, it was simply the only thing she could do to relieve the tension she felt.

“You can sleep,” the man said.

“No,” she whispered, knowing that falling asleep would be the absolute last thing she’d be able to do.

“Try,” he said.

Cassandra didn’t respond, but she closed her eyes, willing sleep to come.

It didn’t.

Jack stayed up the rest of the night, certain that the woman wasn’t sleeping but not sure what to do about it, and then reminding himself that there was nothing he needed to do about it because she wasn’t his problem.

His problem was there would be many more nights like this, and there was very little chance that they would all turn out so well.

Out in the world like this, they were exposed. A part of him understood that being that way was unavoidable. But, if they were going to be out there, they needed at least some measure of protection.

Which meant they needed to get gear.

And gear meant people—something Jack hoped to avoid.

But when the sun finally crested the horizon, he had made his decision.

He didn’t too much enjoy being a sitting duck, and last night had only been a powerful reminder of that fact.

So they’d have to get supplies.

Jack looked over at the woman.

“You can stop pretending to be asleep now,” he said.

She sat up instantly and flashed him a tight smile. “I wasn’t pretending. I was trying,” she said.

Despite himself, Jack smiled but then was immediately serious.

“It’s time for us to go,” he said.

“Thank God,” she explained.

“You may not be so excited when you hear the plan,” Jack said.

She looked at him, frowned, and then shook her head.

“I need to handle something first, and then we’ll talk about it,” she said.

Jack lifted a finger to still her when she reached for the shed door and then moved in front of her and pulled it open.

He looked out quickly, saw only the cool mist of the early morning over the beautiful rolling countryside.

It was just the kind of peaceful natural environment that Jack ordinarily loved. But now, in the thickness of the morning fog, in the shadows of the stately trees, all he saw was danger.

“You take the left side. I’ll take the right,” he said.

The woman frowned but then began to move and circled the shack.

Jack went to the other side and handled his business and less than two minutes later they met at the front of the shack.

She had begun uncovering the bikes, and Jack moved silently to help her.

“So, what’s the plan?” she asked as she pulled on her helmet.

Jack’s body was stiff from spending a night in that shed, and he could feel the ache in his muscles from the long bike ride the day before. He could only imagine how much worse it was for her, but she didn’t make any mention of it, so Jack didn’t ask.