in about two weeks.

CHAPTER SEVEN: CRUMBLING

"Do you know i would break beneath the weight
of the goodness, love, i still carry for you?
That I'd walk so far just to take
The injury of finally knowing you?"

Hozier
[Unknown / nth, from Unreal Unearth]

The morning was always the worst part of pulling a night watch. Those last couple of hours, when the sun would start to rise, were the ones where the weight of being up and on guard for the whole time with no rest was crushing. She had never gotten used to it; her thoughts running a marathon in her head never helped either. As she heard noises of the others getting up, her posture relaxed.

Tom was the first to come out of the door. "Good morning sunshine. Chill night?"

"Eh," she grunted, dragging herself inside, bumping into the man, who was still standing in the door frame.

"Did I do something wrong? Genuine question."

Sophia sighed loudly. "No, Tom, not everything is about you. Crazy, right?"

"Alright grump, did a dog chew on your new shoes?"

"I am exhausted," she shouted, enunciating each word. "And for the love of God, stop with your freaking rhetoric and talk like a normal person. Jesus Christ."

There was a pause, during which the two looked at each other. 

"I am honestly impressed that you managed to use the word rhetoric correctly, considering you forgot how to say shovel yesterday."

Without saying another word, the woman turned around, got into the room, and slammed the door shut.

"Wasn't she being weird today?" remarked Tom, still turned to her direction.

Marc and Anna, who were once again awkwardly spectating from the side, looked at each other. Then, the young woman replied: "She seemed the same as usual, to me."

"How would you know, you've known her for a day... Marc?"

"Well, I don't know... isn't the night guard a little hard for her? I think she told me something like that once."

The man scoffed, and went out.

He always had a knack for overthinking, it was his specialty. He also had good intuition, making him right a significant amount of times, enough for him to justify never stopping. Growing up he'd gotten calmer; the Infection brought all his bad habits back, including that one. 

He reviewed the interaction over, and over, and over again, trying to figure out what was wrong with it, even writing it down to make sure he remembered it to the last minute detail. For starters, she didn't ignore him to go straight to sleep like she usually did when after the nights. Not only she talked back, but also lingered and then prolonged the conversation. Was it possible that, for the first time in so long, she wanted to talk to him?

Since the other two didn't interrupt him, he was able to get lost in his lucubrations, until – think of the devil – Sophia came out of the house. It was way too early for her to be up. Of course, she looked even more miserable than before.

"Why aren't you sleeping?"

"I couldn't."

"Sure you haven't tried hard enough?"

She sighed. "What the hell does that even mean?"

"Just saying. I need you to rest if we want to go to the mall. Can't stand you when you're too tired."

"I can't stand you all the time, and somehow I still manage to do what I need to do."

"Ouch, I walked right into that one."