But they never did.
***
Present Day
I sat in the sun on my little bench with my head between my knees, gasping for breath as I struggled to get my racing heart back under control. Tears rolled freely down my cheeks, but I didn’t have the willpower to wipe them away. You would think that after this long, my heart would be hardened to this kind of thing, but it wasn't. I was still a person, still a human being.
Just like they had been. There were at least a hundred of them, all crammed into that hall together. A decade later, their skeletons lay in the positions in which they'd died. Clinging to one another, curled up in as though in sleep.
So many bodies… so very many bodies – and the smell... oh God, the smell. I couldn’t get it out of my head.
I muffled a sob and wiped my nose on my sleeve. Not the most elegant thing to do, but as I was having a bit of a breakdown and there was no one else around to see me so it didn’t really matter. There was only so much one can person could handle before it became too much.
There were so many of them: Men, women and children alike all crammed into that dusty hall. They weren’t even infected. Maybe a couple were, but not many. The skeletons were still there, bleached by the humid air over the years, their clothing preserved from the elements by the shelter of the hall. If they had carried the infection, then there would be no bones left, or at least not nearly as many.
They might have lived!
My mind rebelled at the idea. Some of them could have been immune, but they didn’t dare to take the risk. So they chose to die together, huddled in a dark building for all of eternity. Husbands and wives, friends and neighbours, and even parents and children alike.
The parents – how could they do that? How could they murder their own babies?
But it was to spare them the horror of becoming like poor, poor Benny. I could understand that. I couldn't bear knowing my children might end up like that.
But they might have lived!
If I don’t find some way to calm myself down, I am going to lose my peaches. That thought made me laugh, but it was a hysterical kind of laugh that did nothing to stop the sobs from wracking my body. It had been awhile since I'd had a full blown break down, so I suppose I was entitled to one.
I’d seen suicides before, but never so many all at once. A lot of people had chosen to take their own lives rather than let the disease run its course. My own mother did, as did my grandmother. But I’d never seen so many in one place before. I was completely overwhelmed.
"Mew?" A soft head bonked against my hand; I looked up and found myself staring down into a pair of huge golden eyes, set into a fluffy little tabby face. The kitten had returned.
How did the animals always know?
***
January 2014
Mushkin purred contentedly in my lap, oblivious to the shaking of my hands as tears rolled silently down my cheeks. No, oblivious wasn't the right word. He wasn't oblivious. As soon as I started crying, he climbed up into my lap and started purring, rubbing his soft head against my hands until I patted him. He knew something was wrong. He always did.
Mum was the first of us to get sick. It had started a week ago, with a fever. When Dad and Skylar failed to arrive, it was like all the strength had drained right out of her and with it had gone her will to live. She hadn’t let me out of her sight, she was so terrified that she might lose me as well.
It had ended up being just the three of us huddled around the television while the latest updates were read out by an exhausted and frightened news anchorman.
"That man needs a shave," Grandma had commented dryly as we sat together, with her usual irreverent sense of humour. My parents had always joked that I inherited my sense of humour from her, and they were probably right. At that moment though, even I hadn’t felt like jokes. I was watching my mother more than the television. Once I became aware of how pale she’d become, I became more and more anxious.
"Mum, are you alright?" I’d asked, reaching over to take her hand. She had turned and looked at me with dark, sunken eyes, and then shrugged.
"I don't feel very well." Her voice was husky, and her skin felt hot and clammy to the touch.
"Well, off to bed with you, then." Grandma had hidden her emotions behind a mask of strength like she always did, and bundled Mum off to rest.
That was a week ago. The fever didn’t break, and Mum was starting to have trouble speaking. Grandma had banished me from the room while she tended to my poor mother, so I was curled up on the couch watching yet another news report. This one was about the immune. They’d discovered that some people were resistant to the disease, and they hoped that immunity would give the scientists enough information to protect the rest of us.
The anchorman still hadn’t shaved.
It was then that I realised that I hadn’t seen any other people on the news in days. I wondered if they were all sick. Was this anchorman the only one left? That thought scared me, so I hugged Mushkin tight and buried my face in his rumbling warmth. Maybe if I wished hard enough, Mum would be okay, and Dad would arrive with Skylar in tow. We'd be safe and happy forever.
Grandma's cool hand landed on my shoulder and interrupted my wistful delusion. When I looked up and saw her expression, dread clamped its ice-cold talons around my heart.
"You need to go say goodbye to her," Grandma told me softly. All the humour was gone from her voice, but somehow she stayed strong. Her daughter lay dying and yet she managed to keep her wits together. It didn't occur to me until much later that Grandma felt like she had to stay strong for my sake.
I picked Mushkin up, and headed for the bedroom where my mother spent the final week of her life. I made no attempt to wipe the tears from my cheeks. There was no point; I knew I'd be crying again soon enough.
I also knew that I was about to lose my mother forever, and that there was nothing in the world I could do to stop it.
Mum lay limp in her bed, propped up on as many pillows as we were able to scavenge from around the house. Her skin was so pale she looked like a porcelain doll. There was a clammy sheen of sweat on her brow that never seemed to go away.
I wondered briefly why Grandma would let me near her when she was so sick, then I realised that it was already too late for us both. If my mother had the disease, then we’d both been fatally exposed already.
It was only a matter of time.
I sat down beside her and reached out, taking her clammy hand in mine. I gave it a gentle squeeze; she opened her eyes and looked up at me helplessly. Although she tried to speak, when she opened her mouth nothing came out.
"She can't talk anymore," Grandma explained softly, her expression unreadable. I was about to lose my mother, but she was about to lose her only daughter. I could not imagine how she felt.
I made no attempt to stop the tears rolling down my cheeks as I leaned over to stroke my dying mother’s forehead. I couldn't think of what to say. Everything seemed inadequate. How do you say goodbye to the one person you love more than anyone else in the world?
Lacking any other option, I just told her the simple truth.
"I love you, Mum."
The only response she gave me was a tiny smile and a gentle squeeze of my hand. She was too far gone to reply, but she still understood. Then suddenly, Grandma was bundling me out of the room, though I fought to stay longer.
"Please," I implored her, feeling completely helpless, "at least let me stay with her until the end."
Grandma caught my shoulders as I tried to get by her and held me firmly. "You can't, sweetheart. I made her a promise when she could still speak; now I have to keep it. Take Mushkin outside, I'll join you soon." She turned me around and ushered me out the door. With no other option, I took my fat old cat out and sat down on the doorstep to wait.
A few minutes later, a single gunshot shattered the silence. My head jerked up in surprise. Not long afterwards, Grandma stepped up beside me, her face a mask of grief. There was a small
handgun clutched between her frail fingers. I looked up at her in horror, and she looked at me with more emotion than I’d ever seen on her face before.
"She made me promise." Grandma's voice was choked up, grief and guilt warring on her face. She sat down beside me on the stoop, staring down at the gun in her hand.
Then she looked at me. I realised with a jolt that her skin was clammy, and now that same sheen of sweat shone upon her brow as well.
"Sandy, I need you to make me a promise."
***
The promise had been the same one that my mother swore her to. When the disease took them to the point where they became helpless, they chose a quick and painless death over waiting for the inevitable.
My grandmother and I buried the body of my mother in the back yard. A week later, I buried my grandmother alone. Then it was waiting, waiting for weeks, waiting for the fever to claim me as well. All alone, just me and my cat, living on the supplies we brought with us from Auckland and what was already in the house.
Eventually, they ran out and I started to get hungry.
After a month passed, I realised that if I wasn't sick now then I wasn't going to get sick. I was one of the immune – alive but all alone. I needed to leave, to find food somewhere, but without my parents to guide me I couldn't even think of where to begin. I was absolutely terrified, but I was so hungry I could think of no other option. My choice was either to lay down and die with my family, or find to some way to survive.
I chose to live.
I took Mum's car and drove away, with Mushkin curled up on the seat beside me. For the first year or so, he was my loyal companion and followed me everywhere. But he was already old by the time the plague hit. One night, we curled up to sleep together, and he just never woke up.
After he died, I really was all alone.
***
The kitten was aggressive with its affection and demanding but it helped me to centre myself, to bring me back to the present and to focus on what needed to be done. I patted it gently, letting its soft fur bring back pleasant memories from childhood, happy memories of nights spent curled up with my beloved Mushkin, safe and warm in bed.
I tried not to think about the fleas.
Eventually, I calmed down enough to function. It took a while, but the kitten's sweet-faced inquisitiveness helped. Whenever I started to slip away, she nudged me with her little head and brought me back to the present. Finally, after I cried my way through utter despair and out the other side, I felt strong enough to get up. I would have to do something about that damn 'Function' building, or else I would not be able to sleep tonight.
There was an unspoken code amongst survivors. A way to both respect the dead, and warn others away from something they really didn’t want to see. I had come across a few marked sites during my years on my own, and I knew without anyone ever having to tell me what the black mark meant. With that in mind, I set off in search of tools.
I found what I needed stashed away in the workshop I discovered earlier. While I was gathering things, an idea began to grow in the back of my mind. I initially planned to bury Benny and his beloved wife together, but it seemed more appropriate for them to spend their eternity with the community that they loved.
A coil of rope slung over my shoulder and a can of spray paint in my pocket, I returned home to fetch Benny and Margaret. It was not a pleasant trip, dragging a decaying corpse a few hundred metres along the street in the bright summer sun. He was already starting to fall apart, but I managed to keep him intact long enough to get him into the function centre.
I left Benny in the lobby. I couldn't bring myself to open the inner doors and take him all the way inside. I reassured myself that Benny would be happy just being close to his friends. It felt right. I straightened up his rotting limbs with as much respect as I could and set the jar of his wife's ashes into his wrinkled old hands and his wedding photo on his chest, then I stood back and looked down at him.
"Rest in peace, Benny," I whispered.
Leaving them to their eternal sleep, I backed out of the function centre one last time, pulling the outer doors closed behind me. I slipped the coil of rope from my shoulder, and then I wound it around the door bars and pulled it tight, knotting it a few times until I was satisfied.
A few knots wouldn't be enough to stop a determined survivor, but it would keep anything inside from getting out, which was really the point. I rattled the doors to check that my knots were tight, and then fished my can of spray paint out of my pocket.
It took a bit of shaking to get the thing going, but when I did, I painted a large, black X across the doors, the universal sign that meant 'you really don't want to see what's in here, buddy'. I went over it a few more times, making it as bold as possible, then below it I added three simple letters: R I P.
I didn’t think I could be any clearer than that.
Chapter Eight
The kitten padded after me as I spent the rest of the day keeping myself busy. Occasionally, would she vanish, only to appear again a few minutes later in the most unexpected of places. After a quick cold scrub to get the stink of death off my hands, I hunted down the hot water cylinder of my new home to see if I could figure out what was wrong with it.
I was no electrician, but I had learned enough over the years to be self-sufficient. My father had taught me the basics of automotive engineering when I was a teenager, and I’d picked up a bit at school as well. The rest was really just logic, combined with large amounts of trial and error.
It didn't take me long to figure out that the heating coil was blown. I could replace it, but I would have to find another one in order to do so. There were quite a few homes scattered around the outlying reaches of town. With any luck, one of them might have a spare.
Another problem for another day.
On the plus side, at least now that I knew where all the bodies were, I was less worried about stumbling over a corpse in an unexpected place. You never quite got over the horror of tripping over a dead person when you didn’t expect it, particularly if the corpse belonged to a child.
I eased myself out of the cupboard where the hot water cylinder lived and stood up, and then I moved to the window to check on the weather. There were clouds rolling in from the west again, thicker and darker than the ones the night before, warning me of foul weather yet to come. I opened the window and stuck my head outside, drawing in a deep breath through my mouth and nose. Sure enough, the tell-tale taste of a storm was on the air.
Probably best to stay indoors then, rather than out in the open.
There were still a few hours left before dark, and at least a couple before the storm arrived, so I decided to use them wisely. I returned to the automotive workshop, to see if I could salvage one of the cars.
They were a pack of rust-buckets after so many years without maintenance, but not entirely without hope. There were even a couple of different choices. There was a sedan up on the hoist, and another out in the yard, a hatchback parked by the gate, and a four wheel drive under shelter. I chose the four wheel drive, for practicality and comfort.
After the end of the world, you couldn’t really trust the roads to be well-maintained.
I found the keys in the office, discarded amongst piles of records that probably once meant something to someone, but not to me. I didn't care who the owner of the vehicle was. If they were still alive, they would probably have taken it already. No one had claimed it, so that made it mine.
It was a good machine, a double-cab Hilux with a canopy over the back; solid and well-built. One thing I’d learned is that Japanese cars really were made to last, and the parts were common and easy to find.
After a quick peek through the windows to check for corpses and rats, I unlocked the driver's door and climbed behind the wheel. The interior was still in good condition, less dusty than most due to being safely sealed for almost a decade. The smell was a little off, but that could be fixed with a bit of airing out. Resting one hand upon the wheel, I pu
t my foot on the brake, slipped the keys into the ignition and turned.
Nothing.
Ah well, you didn’t get something for nothing in the scavenger's life. I tried the key again, listening closely for telltale sounds that would let me know what was wrong. Again, there was nothing.
I concluded that the battery was flat, and hauled myself back out of the driver’s seat. Not all that surprising; most of them died after a while. I popped the bonnet and propped it up with its little metal arm, then leaned in to get a closer look. A few cobwebs, but not much in the way of rust. That was a good sign. The battery terminals could use a good clean, but I knew how to take care of that with no trouble at all.
I didn't bother trying to find another vehicle to jump start the battery. After ten years, there was just no point. It was safe to say that the other cars were just as dead. However, I did strike it lucky and find a mobile charger not two metres away, in good enough condition that it looked like it would still work. It took me a couple of minutes to disconnect the battery and move it to the charger, but when I did the lights glowed steadily, reassuringly.
It would take all night to charge up, so I filled in the time with general maintenance. I checked the fluids, and found that there was still a full tank of gas that looked fine, but the oil was congealed and dirty. That was probably one of the reasons that its old owner had brought it in for maintenance all those years ago.
Ah, well. No time like the present, right?
***
By the time I was finished draining the old oil and cleaning the components that needed it, the storm was getting close. As I hauled myself out from beneath the Hilux and wiped the grease from my hands, I spotted the kitten watching me from a workbench nearby. Her little head was canted curiously as she regarded me, as if she were trying in vain to figure out what I was about. I offered her a hand, but she turned her nose up and danced away from me, playing hard to get.
"Have it your way, then," I told her, and walked over to a sink nearby instead. With some difficulty, I cranked open the rusted tap to wash my hands. There was some old, harsh soap nearby, crusted up over the years, but still useful enough for scrubbing the grease from my skin.
The Survivors (Book 1): Summer Page 6
