Pillow Talk

Posted on Tue Jun 20th, 2023 @ 12:18pm by Hale Stratton & Alonzo Blazevic

1,194 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Bangor or Bust
Location: Trout Mountain Cabin, Twin Pines at NEOC, Millinocket, ME
Timeline: 26 August 2010 - 12:30 a.m.

Sleep, whatever that was had become a foreign subject to most of the individuals who had become survivors. If you felt comfortable enough trusting someone else to watch over you, to watch over the group, and to be alert enough to wake everyone if need be, maybe just maybe you'd get a few hours of rest in. A full on deep sleep though? An improbability. Alonzo could not help but draw comparisons to horror films, one of his favorites being A Nightmare on Elm Street where teenagers were haunted and hunted in their sleep by the menacing bladed gloved hands of Freddie Kruger.

If only it were Freddie that was out there, outside in the darkness walking around. It was not. It was the reanimated bodies of every day people who no longer had that spark of humanity to them. Mindless, soulless, aimlessly wandering animals who would no sooner tear the flesh from a live deer than rip open the chest of Alonzo or the others.

Alonzo was careful to be as quiet as he could be when he entered the room where Hale was in bed. Why he thought Hale would actually be asleep was beyond him. Of course the military trained man was not going to be asleep. A light rest was as deep of a sleep as a survivor could afford, and the smallest of noise would cause them to stir. Alonzo's weight coming down on the mattress was not going to help matters.

"Sorry," he said as he saw movement from Hale, now fully aware that the man had been awoken or wasn't even attempting sleep. Alonzo was not looking to sleep, but the refuge away from the teenagers was welcomed. "My parents took me away from one warzone as a kid, brought us here to have a better life. American dream and all of that. Now I just look around and see the similar shades of gray. Survivors...refugees, traumatized kids losing their childhood each passing moment."

Showered and dressed in a pair of jeans, Hale lay on his back, hands folded across the hard muscle of his abdomen, and nodded. "I don't have much experience with kids," he said, "well, other than being one." He turned his head to look at Alonzo. "What warzone?"

"My homeland, Hale," replied Alonzo. He had worked so hard as child perfecting English as a second language that it superseded his native tongue by his teens and early adulthood. "My parents and I were refugees from the Bosnian War. We came to this country when I was younger than those kids are out there. I've seen seen death and war, violence and persecution before I even had an understanding of those words."

He was wearing his heart bare and open, something he did not typically do. "It was not easy for my parents to leave, but it wasn’t easy to be Christian orthodox where we were living during the conflict" explained Alonzo.

"I can imagine," Hale said. "That's a rough start for anyone. Where do your parents live?"

"Twenty some minutes out of Bangor in Bucksport. My father is a mechanic and my mother owns a restaurant" he said discussing his parents, a topic he didn't normally bring up in conversation. "They've come a long way. My mother make a wonderful Begova čorba" he added focusing on his mom.

"I'd like to try it some time. I'll eat pretty much anything but I'm useless in the kitchen, no kind of a cook," Hale answered, "so I usually assign myself to cleanup. I'm very good at that." He grinned cheerfully. "The Army drilled that into my head but good."

Alonzo rolled over a bit. "How are we going to keep them safe? The French one is defiant, the one acts like a princess, Ethan is traumatized, and there's too many of them to keep an eye on."

"With luck, the mayor will get them all back to Bangor and it won't be our problem," Hale said. "The French kid doesn't act like any kind of a kid that I've ever met. He's like a little adult who doesn't shave. The princess, and that's a good name for her, is sly and more than a little entitled. The Bangor Wynns. That's not my world," he said, his voice dropping as he thought about the places he'd been and the people he'd encountered, "and I don't care one bit about her status in the social registry."

Alonzo nodded "It probably helps her get things. She's not getting anything here from either of us waving it around. When it comes to René, I think coming from France factors in. They let them do so much so young."

"I grew up the same way," Hale said and then immediately amended that. "Well, not exactly the same. I grew up off grid. I became capable fairly early but ... that never stopped me from being a kid ... or getting into amazing amounts of trouble."

"I'm not sure luck is going to be on our side," confessed Alonzo.

"Me either," Hale said, his voice dropping so that it only reached Alonzo's ears and not the people sleeping in other parts of the cabin. "A part of me thinks this won't end soon or well and I'm afraid to consider what this means for the country, the world even. I'm charged with getting everyone back to their people, to safety, and I'll do that but between you and me, I'm worried."

Alonzo understood the weight on Hale's shoulders. "If you need anything, I'm here. I know I don't have the military experience like you, but I'm more useful than I look."

"I'll remember that," Hale said, smiling faintly, "I learned a long time ago not to judge by appearances." There were things he left unsaid that maybe glittered in the depths of his eyes. Things his soul might long to say, things his brain kept locked behind a barrier in his mind. So, he smiled and let that be his answer.

Alonzo exhaled and sat up from the bed. "However this turns out, it's going to make for one hell of a story" he stated. "Now we just wait to see how bad things get."

"We prepare for how bad things get," Hale corrected. "Preparation is always better."

"To quote a Lion, Be Prepared!" teased Alonzo.

Hale, who never watched television and seldom had the patience to sit through a movie, looked at Alonzo blankly. "Don't know the quote," he said, "but I prefer 'Move swift as the Wind and closely-formed as the Wood. Attack like the Fire and be still as the Mountain'. Sun Tzu."

"Be prepared. Scar, the Lion King" said Alonzo. "We're watching it when we get the chance."

"If you insist," Hale answered, yawning, "but I have to warn you, I don't generally watch television or movies for that matter."

Alonzo smiled. "Good. All the more things to expose you too." It was refreshing to meet someone who wasn't raised glued to a TV. Though Alonzo did look forward to showing Hale some classics.

Alonzo's smile lit one of his own as he answered, "Interesting."

 

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