I woke up to find Lauren wasn’t in the campsite. Everyone was sound asleep in our tight little section. I scanned the area and didn’t see her, so I got up and searched the area. I found her sitting by the lake we swam in yesterday. She traced small patterns on the surface as I watched her for a couple of moments.
“We’re going,” I told her quietly so my words wouldn’t sound like a command.
When we started out, we began to hear shouts and loud noises. Hesitantly, we went over to see what the racket was only to come upon what was left of a city. Some buildings had holes and parts were half missing. People were racing around, acting as if they could die at any minute. There were people punching each other in front of broken windows. Some people were making out in the alleyways. While others were so drunk they were falling over, leaving others to walk over their lifeless forms.
The group turned to glance at me with pure shock in their eyes. The two little ones were trying to figure out what the people were doing. Lauren kept them close to her, and Jill covered their ears as curses were shouted into the air.
“There are people!” exclaimed Mandy.
There were people, about a hundred people. They didn’t look too safe to be around as they were nearly killing each other, but there were people. The seven sins seemed to be hard at work here.
“We’re are staying here,” Lauren’s expression was stern and serious as she growled this at me.
“Why not?”
“Are you even looking at that?” yelled Jill pointing at the crowd.
“We find a room and barricade ourselves in there. We’ll be fine.”
“Are you nuts?” snapped Cole.
Apparently they were taking turns to raise their voices at me.
“We need a break to get back our strength. We’ll get some food. I know we’re low.”
“This place isn’t safe! We could get robbed!” Lauren stressed.
“We could be raped!” screamed Jill.
Lauren gave a slight shudder.
“We’re going there.”
“No we are not!”
Lauren was going to fight me on this one.
“No. We are going. Or else.”
“Or else what?”
Lauren got me there. What could I possibly do to her? Well, what could I do to Lauren without breaking my pact with myself? I picked up Paige and headed down to the town as Lauren held Sean to her chest and the others began to form a tight cluster. Lauren kept yelling behind me to stop, but I wouldn’t. We ran into one of the buildings that might have been an apartment or hotel at one point. There were some people on the floor passed out and some were yelling at others across the halls. I grabbed Lauren’s arm as I dragged them up the stairs ‘til I found an empty room. I pushed them all in and locked the door behind us to the best I could.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lauren said. She was beyond angry.
There was a mattress in the middle of the room, but everything else seemed to be stolen. The bathroom door was hanging on a hinge. There were two windows in the one room of the place we got. One was broken while the other appeared to be stuck open. What did windows matter when you were on the fourth floor, right? It wasn’t like someone could get in that way up here.
“Aaron, you and I need to talk,” she said through gritted teeth.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who was putting efforts into the notion to change their personality. It was obvious by the way she kept challenging me. Lauren dragged me into the bathroom and closed the door the best she could behind us.
“Hey, if you wanted me in the shower with you, all you had to do was ask.”
What’s wrong with a joke to lighten the air?
“Just shut up. You’ve been acting weird today, what’s up?” she asked, poking my chest with a finger.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
She wasn’t dumb.
“We need to take some time off from wandering. At least we know other people are alive.”
“Yeah, we found people alive, the morally corrupt!”
She crossed her arms over her chest while standing in front of the door. I did not have to deal with this argument if I didn’t want too. She should have been thrilled that I was even helping her.
“At least I found a place to stay.”
“We were fine out there!”
“We needed to get off Manson’s radar.”
“We were in the woods!”
“He won’t expect us to be here. He doesn’t know about all of us. We don’t need to be fighting about this. This is for the well-being of the group.”
“The well-being of the group, are you nuts?” Her whole body was tensed as she shook her head furiously.
“Just because you don’t like it here doesn’t mean it’s not right.”
“It’s called your conscience Aaron!” She nearly bit my head off as she spoke. “That tells you when something is not right! Ever heard of it?”
She raised an eyebrow at me.
“Look you’ll have a roof over your head!”
“We’re not safe here! The door barely closes, the windows are broken—”
“We’re too high for anyone to get in through the windows. There aren’t even trees near the windows.”
“That doesn’t explain the door!”
“We’re staying here. If you don’t like it, too bad.” I growled as I towered over her.
She turned her glance—I won. I gave a small smirk for my victory, knowing I still had power over her. I knew it was horrible to say, but I couldn’t help but grin.
I walked out of the bathroom and grabbed the one chair that was in the main room to prop the wooden object against the door under the knob. I turned and moved my arms out to show her how I had fixed the door problem. Lauren just walked past me and stared out of the window. She wrapped her arms around herself. Summer was long gone as November was probably just about to start. I couldn’t believe it had been almost two months since that Labor Day weekend, which had ended so badly. I tried to keep track of the days, though it was getting harder.
A little while later, we ate the last of the food and went to sleep. I figured I would find some food tomorrow. We all squished together on that full mattress very tightly to the point we had to sleep on our sides so we could all fit. Lauren was at one end while I was on the other with everyone else smashed into the middle. We laid like that for two reasons, one so we knew everyone was fine and not going to leave. The second reason, well, she was still very pissed off at me. If I slept next to her, I’d have to sleep with one eye open.