Getting Up Before Dawn

I’m once more out in the city, walking across the block towards my car. Or, well, technically I suppose it is my roommate’s car. We both drive it, but technically he owns it. I feel a pit sinking in my stomach, growing heavier with each step I take down the street. Like I know what’s going to happen. Like I know that something is going to happen. But, in the moment, I can’t quite come up with a sensical why. Turning to my right, I continue down one of the city’s central, east-west thoroughfares towards the lot I am parked inside. Halfway down the block is when I remember the why. This has all happened before. I remember it at the same time as chaos breaks loose. The street beside me violently erupts with flames. The building across the street shatters outwards in several sections, then with a creaking begins to collapse downward. Down towards the flaming road. Not that I care all that much at that moment. Not after the First explosion. Because, as the street erupted violently, not only does it engulf the road in flames, but those flames also wash over me. My vision, my body, my soul. Burning away my everything. Leaving behind this broken shell. It doesn’t actually hurt at first. It just feels a little warm, then cold. Not cold, numb. The shock and suddenness of it all kept me standing. I try my best to continue my walk to the car. The glass from the skyscraper bursts out, spreading out across the area. It peppers me as I attempted to walk forward. I can feel as each of the tiny shards of glass slide smoothly into my burnt skin. I lose balance and fall down to the ground. The world moves slow as I fall. I can feel the burns as the wind rushes past to make room for my falling form. Despite everything moving so slow, I can see the pavement coming at full force towards my body. I brace myself for the impact. Not that it’ll help. I don’t remember it helping much. After what feels like the most painful year of my life, I hit the ground.

With a start, I bolt awake. Running my hand over my skin, I feel the long healed, scarred burns. It isn’t new. Just a nightmare. Another nightmare. A warped memory. Whatever they want to call it. Taking several breaths, to try to calm myself. Bring my heartrate back down. Turning over in my cot, I close my eyes and try to get back to sleep. The chill of the winter bites at me, even through my blankets. I try my best to push it out of my mind. It’s still dark outside, and being up once again before dawn might reinforce some kind of impression about me in everyone else here. Turning a few times in my cot with my eyes pressed shut, I try to find a warm spot. Any position of my body that would feel warm. There isn’t one, no matter how hard I try. And my mind doesn’t stop churning. After several minutes of trying to get back to sleep, I resign myself to the fact that I’m just going to be awake now.

Pulling myself out of my cot, I begin to quietly make my way across the dormitory room to the adjoining kitchen. In the other cots, the rest of this small group lay, still asleep. All except Cecilia. Her cot’s empty. Stupid morning people. She’s probably out running. Just to taunt those of us with normal sleep and exercise habits. In the room we’ve retrofitted to act as our kitchen, I check on the fireplace. It’s down to embers, barely even warm. I can’t help but groan a little, though knowing the time I do so quietly. Leaving the cold fireplace open for expediency’s sake, I head out of the kitchen. Heading out to the covered porch-like open area, I check on the wood supply. We’ll need a new bunch of logs in a few days, but it seems like we should be good for the moment. Grabbing an armful of logs, I head back inside. The insulation in the walls does help keep the heat from the old fire in, as well as the winter cold out. Though, not well enough to feel much relaxation coming back inside. I carefully stack the logs in the fireplace, leaving two to the side for continued use. I put some crumpled up sheets of paper and a handful of broken twigs into the middle, and light them. I watch, pushing things around slightly, until I see the first hint of the logs themselves catching alight. The moment I do, I step away.

As I’m heading all the way outside this time, I bundle up with some of our communal cold weather gear, hanging on several different racks by the back door. The only door we really use. After getting bundled up, I walk out. Outside, I start rolling the empty barrel with me as I walk. All the way down to the river. Well, I say all the way down, it’s really only about a three minute walk. We need the water. I need the water. Because coffee grounds need water to make the brain-wakey juice. The walk, probably at least partly because of the dream I’d just had, takes a bit longer than that. I walk carefully, keeping my head on the swivel. I’d like to think my dreams are some weird, supernatural warning system, rather than simply the terrible parts of my brain deciding to screw with me. I know it’s definitely just my brain making my life worse, but I’d like to think otherwise. So, keeping a careful eye out, I roll the empty barrel slowly all the way to the river.

At the river, I uncork the barrel and shove it down under the water, the opening facing downstream. I always do that. Don’t know whether it sciences right, but it makes me feel like the water’s less contaminated, because it’s not being pushed directly into the barrel. Does mean it takes a beat or two longer to fill up, but it’s not like I’m in a rush. And if Cecilia gets back before we have water, that’s her problem. Maybe it’ll teach her not to go for runs before dawn. Also, if only a couple extra beats after a run are what makes her change her ways, that’d be a real impressive lack of discipline for someone who goes running every day before the sun is fully visible.

Once it’s full, I cork the barrel once more and begin the much harder walk back to the building. Much harder, both because it’s almost all uphill on the way back and because I now am rolling a barrel filled to the brim with water. The extra weight and extra pressure of gravity working against me make this trip rougher. Fortunately, because I’m so focused on moving the barrel and not collapsing in the middle of my walk, I don’t feel the need to keep my eyes out for non-existent dangers around each corner. So, all together, it only took a tad longer to get back than to get back home. Carefully, I maneuver the full barrel into our covered patio-like area. Pouring a bit of the water into one of my mostly clean metal buckets sitting by the door, I bring said bucket of water inside.

This time, it feels warm entering our home. The open flame is raging well enough. That’s why I don’t close the doors when I’m not using the stove-top area. However, I need to boil the bucket of water to make my coffee, so placing the bucket on the top of the fireplace structure, I close the door and lock the vent in the fully open position. As the water boils, I get everything else ready to make a pot of coffee. Or, well, a bucket of coffee. I pull out a collection of mugs for other people who wake up, too. Get the old, overused oven mitt out and at the ready, as well as one of the many pot tops that looks roughly the right size. Measure out the amount of coffee grounds for slightly less than the bucket’s amount of water. Roughly. I’m sure there is some ideal ratio, but since I never know exactly how much water there is, everything is just eyeballed anyways. I can see the boil become rolling, so I head over with the oven mitt, pot top, and my grounds. Dumping the grounds into the bucket, I quickly place the top onto the bucket and pick it up by the handle. With the oven mitt, of course. Just because I have all the burns on my skin already doesn’t mean I want to burn myself even more. Placing the covered bucket of boiling water on the counter, I open back up the fire to the building.

As I wait for the coffee to finish its brewing, the sun finishes rising. Which means two things are bound to happen, almost on a schedule. First, stumbling out from the dorm room, Nick groans and mutters something about needing to get water. Then, noticing me, he shakes his head and sits down. “You good?” he asks.

I shrug. “As good as I always am,” I reply without saying much. He knows the basics. I mean, when we started making this work, I was in near constant pain and my skin was still peeling away constantly. Then I add, “Coffee’s in three minutes or so.” He nods.

Then, almost immediately before the coffee is ready, Cecilia returns from her run. “Thanks for picking up the water, Nick,” she says as she grabs a water glass.

“Not me,” Nick admits.

Cecilia looks at me. “Sorry. Thanks for getting the water, Kyle.”

I smile as I open up my coffee bucket to check on it. “I didn’t do it to enable your terrible habits.”

“You call keeping in shape a terrible habit?” she asks with a slight grin.

I pour myself a mug of coffee. “At five in the morning? Definitely.”

“That’s an exaggeration. It was like five-thirty when I left,” she insists as she heads out to the patio-like area and fills her glass with water.

I pour a mug for Nick as well, bringing it over to him. “Anyone else awake?” I ask him as I hand him the cup of coffee.

“Awake? Yes. Functional or about to come out here? I doubt it. You should re-cover it,” he answers. He gets why I was asking. Taking a sip of my coffee, I head back over to the bucket of coffee and put the ill-fitting lid back on top of it. Should help keep it warm for a bit, at least. And if anyone complains, they can start making their own dang coffee in the morning.

Cecilia returns, sipping her water. I gesture towards the coffee, but she shakes her head. She’ll have some later, probably, but not while she’s hydrating post-run. “So,” I begin to ask, “Your run take you by anyone new?”

She furrows her brow and shakes her head. “Why? Do you honestly still expect new people to show up?”

I sigh. “Probably not. I doubt the Event was localized. But this is still a pretty big city, with easy access to mostly fresh water. I wouldn’t be surprised if people from other affected areas found their way here.”

She shrugs. “I guess I just figured they’d’ve already come if they were going to, you know?” She looks at Nick curiously.

Nick shrugs as well. “I don’t know how people think,” he replies, drinking his coffee. Then, he continues and utterly disproves his initial point. “But Kyle’s right, we really oughta keep an eye out. It takes time to travel, if this isn’t localized. And in the next meeting between homes, that’s the sort of info that can earn us a lot of good will. Especially with Dan and his batch of assholes. And we could use their access to fresh meat. Unless you guys have gotten a taste for our squirrel stews.”

I smile as I drink my coffee. “Just you wait for tomorrow, I think I’ve come up with a nice spice blend that’ll work great in our squirrel stew.”

Cecilia, also smiling, looks over at me and jokes, “How, exactly, is it going to do that?”

My smile grows wider. “By overwhelming any taste of squirrel within.”