Free This World We Live In (The Last Survivors, Book 3) by Susan Beth Pfeffer Page B

summer. We were in South Carolina, I think. There were a half dozen of us, and we saw a man lying on the side of the road.
    You could tel right away his leg was broken, and he was screaming in pain."
    "Did you do anything?" I asked.
    "There was nothing we could do," Syl said. "Even if we'd set his leg, we couldn't carry him with us. If you can't keep up with a band, you get left behind.
    People died al the time, but mostly when they were dying, they were quiet or moaning. This guy must have broken his leg right before we saw him. He was going to lie there on the side of
    was going to lie there on the side of
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    the road for days before he died. He knew it. We al knew it. Eventual y he'd pass out, but until then he was going to scream because he was in agony and because he knew he was going to die."
    "And you left him there?" I asked.
    "One of the guys I was with said we should put him down," Syl said. "Maybe someone else did. We didn't stick around to find out."
    "Did you ever tel Matt that story?" I asked.
    "No," Syl said. "I haven't thought about it in months. It was the way your bike was overturned that made me think of it. One of the guys I was with took the bike and rode off. If you had a bike, you didn't stay with people who were walking."
    "Would I have gotten left behind?" I asked. "I mean, after a fal like I took just now. If I couldn't keep up with everyone else?"
    "Oh yeah," Syl said. "Sure. But you would have found another group in a day or so. There were always groups of people to grab on to."
    I hated the story of the guy with the broken leg, but I kind of liked the image of al these groups wandering around together. When you've shared a room with the same three people for months, fresh faces sound appealing.
    We walked in silence for a while, and I fantasized about a group of good-looking guys and me. It's a good thing I have a permanently gray complexion or else Syl might have noticed how hard I was blushing.
    Mom wasn't too happy when she saw how I looked, but she found some peroxide and cleaned my palms and knees. Suddenly, I was six years old again and had fal en off my bike.
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    She was glad for the books, though, and Syl appreciated the blue jeans. Jon didn't say anything about the air freshener, so maybe ocean breeze isn't his favorite.
    May 28
    The worst night I can remember in ages.
    I've been having nightmares for a couple of weeks now, ever since I got lost. Horrible dreams about the mound of bodies. A lot of times I see us in the mound, or I think I'm with Mom and then I look around and there's the mound and I have to climb on top of it to find her.
    Twice I had dreams that I was in Mrs. Nesbitt's house after she died, and I'm looking around for things and wherever I turn, there she is. Both times I woke up thinking Mrs. Nesbitt was stil alive, and I had to remind myself that she was dead and I had gone through her house, with her body lying on her bed, and that I had believed at the time it was okay to do that.
    One dream I had was so much like a horror movie, it was almost funny. Mrs. Nesbitt and I were playing tennis (which is a funny thought right there), and I looked up at the stands and everyone watching the match was dead. Nobody I knew, though. They al looked like ghouls.
    I don't know if I've been in a bad mood because of the nightmares or if I'm having the nightmares because I'm in a bad mood. Probably both. I know I haven't been sleeping wel , and that hasn't helped.
    But last night I had nightmare after nightmare. I don't know if I ever woke up. It felt like one dream led directly to another. In one I was going through someone's house and I opened a closet door and piles of corpses fel out. Then I was in the same house and I opened a different door and the 90
    dead people were al people I knew. Then I saw Mom sitting in a rocking chair, and she said, "Don't look at me like I'm dead," only she was dead.
    But then I had the worst dream--maybe the worst dream I've had in my life. I was