City of Whispers (City of Whispers #1) Read Free

fun.”
    Beth and I always slept in shifts, but it was
difficult. As scared as I was, lying down and purposefully going to sleep
wasn’t easy. Even knowing that Beth was up keeping watch barely helped.
    Every single noise brought me wide awake. Sometimes
I’d whisper to Beth, “Did you hear that? Are you sure it wasn’t at the window?
Are you sure there wasn’t just a scratching sound at the door?” She’d whisper back
that I was being paranoid…as if she didn’t do the same thing when it was her
turn to sleep.
    By the time it was my turn to sit up, I was exhausted
from the effort spent trying to sleep. There was nothing to do but sit up in
the dark, clutching my hatchet and a stake.
    There was no T.V., no radio, and despite the blackout
curtains, I didn’t feel very comfortable lighting candles to read by. So mostly
I just sat there, trying to remember song lyrics, my favorite stories, or just
counting the different noises I heard.
    I’m not from New
York. I’m from Virginia.
It actually gets dark in Virginia
and thus, I always found darkness to be necessary precedent to falling asleep.
    When I moved to New
York, I complained to no end about the noise and the
bright lights—hence the blackout curtains in my apartment.
    After we lost power, I longed for the bright lights to
come in through the little crack above the stress bar in my window. But the
city was pitch dark except for the occasional fires in the street and some
fools who ran around with flashlights. I don’t know if they thought they would
save the city from the vampires or they were being sneaky by looting at night,
when no sensible people would dare leave whatever safe haven they had found for
themselves.
    Sometimes, despite my terror, I would start to drift
off, and then a scream or something breaking in the street would wake me.
Sometimes, Beth imagined she heard something and woke me asking if I was still
awake, and if I had heard something at the door.
    “Of course I’m awake and I didn’t hear anything, and
if I did that was just the building settling. Go back to sleep.”
    I heard noises inside my building too. I heard people
yelling, running, and loud crashing sounds.
    One night, while I was up sitting watch, I heard a
woman’s blood-curdling scream come from the apartment next door. I had almost
gotten used to screams, but this being right next door made me bolt upright out
of my exhausted stupor.
    Beth was beside me in about half a second with a
handful of stakes. I couldn’t move.
    “Tell me I just had a nightmare,” Beth whispered.
    “ Shhhh , no, it was next
door.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yes I’m sure, be quiet.”
    After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably
only a few seconds, the screaming came again. This time it was more drawn out.
Whoever, or whatever was in the apartment must have caught her.
    There was a big racket, so maybe the woman was
fighting it off, but I couldn’t tell if she was winning or losing.
    “Do you know her?” Beth whispered.
    “No,” I hissed back. “Now shut up .”
    Neither one of us suggested going over to help.
Neither one of us made a move toward the door. The only plan I was hatching was
how to keep Beth from doing something stupid in case she felt inclined to go
help. I didn’t have to worry. She was probably having the same thoughts I was,
though we never spoke about it.
    I just kept praying that whatever it was would go
ahead and finish the woman off and put her out of her misery. As I had told Beth, I didn’t know the woman next door.
In fact, I didn’t know a single person in my building except the super. I
suspected he was long dead anyway since the heat was off. He was a nice old man
and he kept the boiler lit well into the warmer spring months when it was
completely unnecessary. I was sure he would have done so even in the middle of
a vampire epidemic, unless he had been killed.
    The commotion next door didn’t last very long, for
which I was grateful. But, it