If he could sever the need for sleep from him like a dead, mangled limb, Sawyer would happily do it with whatever rusty serrated blade he could find. He’d bleed out for such a gift; to be free of the bomb in his skull waiting to go off as soon as he was vulnerable. As soon as he was weak.
And he was never weaker than he was while sleeping. He was more afraid of sleep than he was of either the living or the dead. It was the only time where he couldn’t tell the difference between the two.
Of course he couldn’t be free of it, anymore than he could shed his own skin, and every day he’d watch the sun start to fall behind the horizon like the axe of an executioner swinging down to the chopping block. But he resisted the need with a stubborn will that he knew, he knew defied logic. The more exhausted he was, the harder it was to stop the flashbacks and hallucinations; the less sure he was that he – that any of it, this place, this life – was real, and that he wasn’t still drowning back there in that fucking desert. It was such a thin line between then and now, and so easily blurred…
But he couldn’t bring himself to peacefully succumb, pushing himself instead until he was so tired that sleep came instantly, concussing him into oblivion. There was no headlong plunge into the dark, nothing to swallow him whole. He only slept in brief snatches, a handful of hours here and there when he had no other choice – usually when Maya forced him, as no one else could.
Naturally, she won the argument about who would take first watch tonight. Normally he would have put up more of a fight, but it had been two days since he last slept, and they both knew it was starting to catch up with him. So he did as commanded, and collapsed on the bed of the first apartment they cleared.
He fell asleep instantly. And the nightmare waiting for him saw its chance to strike.
There was nothing special or remarkable about this one. Some half-buried memory of Afghanistan unearthed and corrupted by more recent horrors. A boy he killed unthinkingly, caught in the crossfire of a shootout between his unit and local insurgents, resurrected into a grotesque walker with snapping teeth and clawing hands. Hollow eye sockets, rotting skin, a putrid smell that couldn’t possibly be a dream, it had to be real.
First there was only the instinct to get it off of him. He kicked and shoved, thrashing with animal strength. But he knew there was only one way to put this boy down for good. In the dream, he reached for a stray pipe to bash in that soft, pulpy skull. In reality, his hand closed around an antique bedside clock set in marble, heavy enough to surprise him and pull him out of sleep, and hurled it abstractly through the air.
His eyes, already wide open, snapped into focus just in time to watch the missile sail directly towards Maya’s head. His only thought, somewhere between the unfinished shout of “SHIT, LOOK OUT –”, was that if the blow didn’t kill her outright, it would settle for caving in her face.
A split second. That’s all she had to move out of the way, and hundreds of thoughts rained down in her mind as the clock flew in the air.
She wasn’t afraid. She’d already been through things like these with Sawyer, but she’d quickly learnt to stay close to doors at all cost.
In that split second, she remembered one of the first times she’d tried to wake him up. She could still feel his hands around her throat; his fingers had pressed hard against her skin and she had almost passed out by the time he had snapped out of it. It still amazed her how, with his strength, she hadn’t suffocated earlier.
Her body almost mechanically threw itself sideways, in the opposite direction of the clock. THUMP! Her skull hit the corner of a dresser and she heard the clock hit the floor with a loud crash, her head thumped hard and her hair felt as though it were soaking. She hoped it wasn’t blood, maybe she was just feeling things.
The brunette pushed herself up, balancing on both legs before holding onto the furniture to regain herself.
It hurt, but not as much as she thought it would or as it did when she hit it.
I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. She kept repeating this to herself, although a small groan escaped from her mouth.
Maya turned to look at him in the bed. The sweat, the panic in his eyes. It wasn’t new, but it still hurt seeing him that way.
She shuffled back to the previous room, her hands blindly looking in her bag for the bottle of water she kept there. The floor creaked as she made her way back to Sawyer, bottle in hand.
“Here,” the girl muttered, handing the bottle to him, before sitting on the bed. Then the pain hit her on her side, the one she’d thrown herself on. She winced but tried not to let it show. He’d just woken from one of the nightmares. Right then, he needed her, not the other way around.