Then the stench hit me and sent me reeling back, gagging. Afraid that I was about to find another corpse, I dropped my backpack outside the door and yanked a small cloth mask out of one of the cavernous pockets of my cargo pants. This wasn’t the first time I’d had to deal with stench. In a world where almost everyone was dead, you had to find ways to keep the odour at bay. My method was a strip of cloth soaked in the strongest perfume that I could find.
I dove into the stinking gloom and looked around. Thankfully, I didn’t find another body, just one little glass jar sitting open beside an old computer. It was a very, very rancid jar, that presumably had once contained some kind of pickle. Now, after a decade’s worth of decomposition, the olfactory nightmare had sprouted fungus almost ten centimetres high. Suddenly feeling amused, I briefly considered keeping it to try and harvest penicillin.
I didn't, of course. The smell was just too horrifying. Instead, I yanked open a window and dropped the doom-pickle into the long grass below, careful not to break the glass or make a sound.
Beyond the office, I spotted a second doorway. I went over to open it and found a set of stairs leading up into semi-darkness. From within one of my many pockets, I drew out a torch and clicked it on, then scampered up the stairs as quietly as I could. One of them creaked ominously underfoot, making me flinch. As unlikely as it was that anyone was alive up there, you never knew. I hadn't survived this long by being careless.
At the top of the stairs, another door opened onto a small, dusty landing, decorated by ancient furniture and lit from above by a little rectangular skylight. Another piece of art hung on the wall; this time, it was a painting of a beautiful landscape, a quaint little village bustling with life. I stopped, and stared. It took me a minute to recognise that it was a painting of Ohaupo township, the way it had been before the plague came and turned this lovely place into a ghost town.
God, how that brought back memories.
Chapter Four
December, 2013
The drive south felt like it was taking forever, with a nervous eight year old constantly begging for attention. Where were we going? How much longer would it be? Why weren’t we going home? It seemed like Skylar had a million questions.
She was driving me crazy, but I was worried about her. She was my baby sister, after all. I was ten when Skylar was born, an unexpected burden on a family that had been perfect just the way it was. My parents had only planned on having one child, and I remembered listening to them argue when they found out that Mum was pregnant again. A second child interfered with all their plans for the future, their financial stability and their hopes for my education.
I had been too young to understand the problem; I was intrigued by the idea of having a baby to play with. The arguments continued right up until the day that Skylar was born, but once they saw her little face, they couldn't help but fall in love with her. The burden of a new baby became a blessing.
Just not right now.
"Skye, please shush." Mum was eternally patient when it comes to her kids, but even she was getting frustrated. The stench of fear in the car was so thick that you could cut it with a knife. The three of us were jammed into Mum's tiny hatchback, while Dad followed behind in his bigger sedan. Her logic didn't make any sense to me, but for some reason Mum insisted that we travel with her, while Dad carried the supplies and the cat in his car. I realised that she was feeling extra protective, and that her maternal instinct had gone into overdrive the moment that her babies were threatened.
I was upset, and Mum knew it. My parents had insisted that I not contact anyone, not even my best friend Katie, or Harry, my boyfriend. I wasn’t even allowed to check if they were okay, and it was driving me crazy. Normally I was willing to accept that Mum and Dad knew best, but in this case I thought it was completely unreasonable. They’d even had the nerve to take away my cell phone.
"But Mum, I need to pee!" Skye whined from the back seat, dramatically clutching at herself as though that would make her plea look more genuine and urgent.
"Just hold on a couple of minutes longer, there's a petrol station right up the road." Mum’s voice carried an element of frustration, but she struggled to stay calm and reasonable. "You don't want to pee in the bushes like Mushkin, do you?"
Mushkin was our elderly tabby, who had a bit of a bladder problem.
"Mum, Mushkin doesn't pee in the bushes; he pees on the little rug by the door," Skye said matter-of-factly, with admirable wit for one so young.
"He does what now?" Mum exclaimed and glanced back over her shoulder at Skylar. "Damn, I was wondering where that smell was coming from, but I could never find the source."
"Language, Mother," I said dryly.
My mother shot me a dark look, but it didn’t last for long.
"Honey, I need you to help me. Please?" This time, her tone was one of earnest appeal.
She sounded exhausted, but concern for my friends made me tense and angry. Although I knew it was petty, I decided that the silent treatment was in order and said nothing.
"Sandy, please? I can't do this by myself. I know you're angry at me, but we’ll talk about everything later, I promise. We’ll work everything out, but we shouldn’t discuss it in front of Skye."
Mum was pleading pathetically, and trying to appeal to my good-natured side. It worked. I was not made of stone, even when I was annoyed at her. I sighed and looked at her.
"Fine, but I'm holding you to that promise. What do you need?" I asked gruffly, doing my best to maintain my show of being the injured party.
"Send a text to your father. Tell him we need to stop at the next town for a rest," she answered. With one hand on the steering wheel, she fumbled in her purse for my phone and then offered it back to me.
I hesitated, staring at it as if it might explode in my hand. "But I thought you didn't trust me?"
The wounded look that she gave me made me immediately regret saying it.
"I do trust you, honey. There are just some things that we need to keep to ourselves. Promise me you won’t text, call, email or Facebook anyone without my permission, okay?"
"What about Twitter?"
"No, no twitting either."
"Tweeting, Mum. The verb is tweeting."
"Well, whatever it is, none of that. Promise me." She suddenly reached over to grab my hand; her palm was sweaty and tense. That broke the last of my resistance. I couldn’t stay mad when she was trying so hard to be brave for our sake. I had been trying to gloss over the seriousness of the situation to make it seem less scary, but I was not oblivious to it. There was only so long that I could deny reality before I would have to accept it and deal with it, even if I didn’t want to.
"Okay. Okay, okay, I promise. I won’t contact anyone." I summoned a weak smile to reassure her, then switched on my phone and thumbed through a text to my father to pass on the message.
Once it was sent, I resumed staring out the window. A green government-issue road sign rolled past, announcing that the township we were about to enter was some little town called Ohaupo, a tiny place that was nothing more than a blip on the map.
***
Present Day
I stared at the painting, thinking back over the way I felt when I first came here at the age of eighteen. I had been passing through on my way to somewhere else, but my first impression of the place was that it looked dull, like one of those little country towns where old people go to die. Back then, it had been alive and full of people.
Well, not full in the Auckland sense of the word, but there were people nevertheless.
It looked like they were all gone now. They were either dead, lingering in the purgatory of undeath, or had left for other places. There was a thick layer of dust on the little decorative table directly beneath the painting, and the tiny china figures were faded and dirty.
Faded and dirty, kind of like Mum and Dad and little Skylar, I thought. The idea brought tears to my eyes. I hadn't seen any of them in so long. It hurt just to think abou
t them.
I shoved that thought back into the little corner of my mind that kept me awake at night, and tried to focus on the task at hand. There were only a couple of hours of daylight left, and it was best for me to use them wisely.
At the end of the hallway stood yet another door, this one hanging slightly ajar. An angular beam of afternoon sunlight shone through the crack, making the dust stirred up by my footsteps sparkle like fairy dust. I pressed the door open with one hand, the other resting on the pocket where I kept my taser, just in case.
I needn't have bothered. Nothing stirred within.
The place had stood undisturbed for years, a time capsule dating back to a whole other era. The landing opened into a small living room, with an antique couch and a plump armchair sitting in front of a box television that was probably older than me.
Dust coated everything, shimmering in the rays of afternoon sunshine that filtered through net curtains. Behind the television, large windows overlooked the street below, framed by thick curtains in an old damask print that gave the room a special kind of rustic charm. Shelves covered in knick-knacks decorated the walls, and an old, framed black and white photograph of a happy couple on their wedding day took centre stage directly above the television.
Beside the photograph was a small urn, just big enough to hold a person’s ashes. I stepped closer and stared at it, then reached out to brush away the dust that blurred the inscription. It bore a woman's name and a short verse.
Margaret.
Beloved wife, beloved mother.
Rest forever in Heaven.
I stood back to consider it, feeling an unexpected rush of relief course through me. It hurt to think of an innocent little old lady going through what Benny had to suffer – or worse, having to watch him go through it. But she had been dead long before he became infected. She was already at peace, and never knew what would happen to her home and her world. That thought gave me some sense of peace, as well.
Perhaps later on, I would bury them together. It seemed like the right thing to do.
Chapter Five
I sneezed violently.
Mum would be so proud, I thought dryly as I rubbed my nose. God knows that I never did this much dusting at home. Still, if I wanted to make this little loft into my new home then it would have to be clean. It was hard enough to find food and water without a crusty layer of dust getting all over everything.
An hour earlier, I had finished my inspection of the little apartment, and found that there really wasn’t much to it. A tiny kitchen opened up off the living room, with a stove, a fridge and a decent-sized pantry. At the far end of the living room, a door led into a small bedroom with an attached en suite. It was just right for one person, maybe two if they didn’t mind getting a bit cosy.
For me all on my lonesome, it was perfect.
The bad news was that the dust was just as thick everywhere else as it was in the living room, and the kitchen was a disaster area of a whole other stripe. The good news was that when I tried a light switch, I discovered the place was still attached to the power grid, and the grid was miraculously still going.
Thank you mysterious heroes, whoever you may be.
I was going to have to invest a substantial amount of time in getting the place clean, but it was water-tight, wired, and very secure. There was no sign of rats or roach infestations, which was a blessing. I hated rats. While I was immune to Ebola-X, that immunity did not extend to all the other diseases that could be brought by pests – and if something were to happen to me, where would I go for treatment?
Being a survivor meant being self-sufficient, but it also meant being a bit of a neat freak. It was just better to stay healthy to begin with than to have to try and pull myself back together after a nasty bout of the flu – or worse.
As soon as I had finished my inspection and judged the place fit to be my new domicile, I went back down to retrieve my backpack so that I could leave it somewhere safe while I cleaned. No time like the present; the sooner I got started, the sooner I’d be finished.
I discovered a small vacuum cleaner hidden in the back of the linen cupboard, but my inner survivalist was loathe to give away my position over something as minor as a little dust. Our world was a silent place now, without the drone of traffic and human voices; the noise of a vacuum cleaner would carry over half the township. As far as I was concerned, there was no reason to assume that I was safe and alone just because I hadn’t seen anyone yet. After the pain that I’d been through, I chose to err on the side of caution.
Luckily for me, it seemed that Benny had been a rather fastidious fellow in his former life, and kept the place well stocked with cleaning supplies before his untimely infection. In no time at all, I had the windows open to let the apartment air out and I’d tossed the worst of the dust right back outside where it belonged. In some places, the dust was so thick I didn’t even need to use a dustpan; I just picked it up with my fingers and it all came up in one big wad of filth.
The spiders were another story. They were a little territorial. Thankfully, any arachnophobia that I might have once suffered from was a distant memory.
"Sorry, mate, but this is my house now," I told one particularly large daddy longlegs as I swept him off the ceiling with my broom, and shook him out the window.
Good thing that spiders were also immune. Could you imagine a zombie tarantula?
That thought made me chuckle, even in the face of so much horror. I figured that you had to keep up your sense of humour, or you'd go crazy.
I suppose when you had spent the better part of the last ten years alone, it didn’t really matter if other people thought you were crazy, did it? All kinds of things stopped mattering when you no longer had society watching and judging you, and from what I’d seen it seemed to be different for every person.
For some survivors, personal hygiene seemed to be one of the first things that they abandoned, but I still considered it vitally important. Perhaps it was because I’m female, and we were just more sensitive to that kind of thing. I hated that unspecified itchy feeling when your skin was all filthy and sweaty, and I loathed being able to smell myself. Most of the male survivors that I’d met didn’t seem to care. I could only guess that they couldn’t smell their own stench the way I could.
Yet another reason to avoid them, as if I needed any more after what had happened the last time I saw another living human being.
I let the broom head drop to the floor, and stood back to admire my handiwork. Not perfect, but it was a start. There was still the matter of the bed, though. The last person who had slept in that bed was Benny, and that was years ago. I hated to think what kind of foulness lingered in those stale, old sheets. They’d have to go.
With a determined stride, I crossed to the bedroom and set about stripping off all of the bedding. Sheets, duvet, and pillows alike, I flung them into a pile on the floor. When I reached the mattress, I was relieved to discover that it was still in excellent condition, with no signs of fungus or pests aside from a tiny bit of mildew on the underside. A wee bit of mould wasn’t enough to deter me from sleeping in it though, not after I’d spent the last couple of years living in the back of an old shipping container.
It gave me the shivers just thinking about sleeping in a real bed again.
I gathered up the old linens and dumped them in a pile in the living room so that I could deal with them another day. As filthy as they were, a survivor threw nothing away if there was any chance it could be saved. Waste not, want not. After the end of the world, you became the ultimate recycler.
From the linen cupboard, I fetched the spare set of bedding. Despite the years, the sheets were relatively clean and mould-free. I unfolded them and flapped them out the window, giving them a damn good shake to get rid of any excess dust.
There would be time to wash all the bedding out another day, but not tonight. I was working against the clock, with not much time before the sun set. Knowing that the power was still on did relieve
the tension of impending darkness, but I preferred not to rely too heavily on something that could abandon me at any moment. It was not terribly surprising that we suffered a lot of blackouts in this day and age.
When the new bedding finally passed my critical inspection, I returned to the bedroom. There, I flicked the bottom sheet over the mattress and quickly mitred and knotted the corners the way my mother had taught me when I was a little girl. A pang of longing and loneliness twisted my heart when I thought of her, but I fought it off. If I gave in to despair, I might as well have killed myself right then and gotten it over with. Mum wouldn't have wanted that.
Besides, I still had to deal with the kitchen, and I wasn’t looking forward to that at all.
***
By the time I finished sanitising the kitchen, I decided it was appropriate to coin a whole new word to describe the state it was originally in. 'Epigross' seemed appropriate, or perhaps ‘grodetacular’ was better.
I wonder if Oxford is still taking submissions?
The kitchen held all kinds of smells in unexpected places, and none of them were good. Most of them came from the fridge, which I was sad to discover had burned out years ago. Given enough time I could probably have fixed it but there was no real need to do so. What would I refrigerate? Everything I ate came in cans or packets, or was fresh out of the ground. I settled for scraping out the contents and giving the fridge a quick wash, then I left it alone.
The pantry was in no better state, and everything that was in there soon went into a rubbish sack as well. Sadly, my good friend Benny was not the kind of fellow that kept a stash of canned food in case of emergency. Rather selfish of him, if you ask me. I did come away with a couple of tins of baked beans and minted peas. Not an amazing haul, but decent enough. Combined with what I'd brought with me, it would be enough to keep me going another couple of days – long enough to explore this pretty little town and map out the available resources.
The Survivors (Book 1): Summer Page 3
