His father was much more relaxed and was perfectly content to let Michael do whatever he wanted, but it was his mother who was the dominant parent in their union and it was her will that ruled the nest. Michael’s childhood was one of school and endless tutoring, with very little time for friends or fun.
For years, his mother tried to convince him to become an architect or an accountant or a doctor, but Michael stayed resolute. He watched his brother grow up and go off to university, following his mother’s dream of a good career, but Michael didn’t care about money or prestige. All he wanted to do with his life was to protect and serve.
By the time he finished high school, Michael was fluent in four more languages in addition to the English and Mandarin that they spoke at home. He was an excellent student with top grades, head prefect and a prominent member of the athletics team. He could play the flute and the cello with reasonable competence, and showed a genuine talent for the violin. Although he had few friends, all of his teachers agreed that he was a diligent, intelligent and affable young man with a bright future ahead of him.
In spite of all of that, Michael never doubted for a second which career he would choose.
He could have been anything, but the only thing he wanted was to be a police officer. Every ounce of effort he put into his studies was just another means to push himself a little bit closer to that goal. The same day that he graduated from high school, he applied to the Royal New Zealand Police College and was accepted. Six months later, he graduated with honours, and was offered a position in Hamilton.
Eager to be about the career he’d longed for all his life, he took the position and moved south. In spite of the move and the clashes with his wilful mother, he was a good son and loved his family. He returned to Auckland often to visit them, and made sure to always be there for important family events. He was there for his brother's graduation from university and his wedding, and there for every Christmas. He was there when his only niece, Sophie, was born, and he was there for her first birthday.
When the plague first started to spread, the constables were kept well informed. He told me about the dread he felt in the pit of his stomach when he heard the news that the infection had reached New Zealand’s shores. He’d spent what felt like forever trying to phone his mother, his father, and his brother and sister-in-law, trying desperately to reach anyone in his family.
There was no answer; the phone lines were always engaged. No one answered his emails or his text messages. It was like they were simply gone.
Then the riots started and he was too busy to think about his family anymore. Day and night, he was out trying to calm the panicked populace of his adopted home, only to see them fall ill one by one. The only person he could rely on was his partner, an older police officer that he’d been paired with to help him learn the ropes.
But then his partner got sick.
By the time Michael fought through the crowds to get him to the hospital, he’d lost the ability to speak and his eyes were glazed over. The nurses swept him away without a word, leaving Michael to do his job alone.
By that stage, the riots were starting to fade. People were just too sick to put up a fight anymore. Michael did his best to make them as comfortable as possible, but there was nothing he could do to help them. Exhausted and helpless, the young police officer spent every day and every night out in the city helping anyone that he could, while waiting for instructions from his superiors on what to do.
The orders never came.
At last, he returned to the police station only to find it completely abandoned. Everyone was gone, from the administration staff to the senior sergeant. For the longest time, he sat alone in the break room, the very room we were in now, as he tried to figure out what to do.
Like all of us, he’d heard through the media that there were some people with a natural immunity to the disease, but he never considered that he would be one of them. He never imagined that he would be left all alone with no one to guide him. He was just 22 years old, from a sheltered background and a career where he was still used to having someone to boss him around and tell him what to do.
Now there was no one.
He looked me in the eye when he admitted that he'd been terrified. I knew he was ashamed to admit it, but I just nodded. I understood. I had been, too.
"I abandoned my post," he told me flatly without breaking eye contact. "I took my squad car and went north, along the motorway towards Auckland. The only thing I could think about was finding out what happened to my family."
He explained that halfway there he came across overturned trucks blocking the entire span of the motorway, forcing him to abandon his car and travel the rest of the way home on foot. It was more than twenty kilometres, but he walked and walked until finally, he reached the house where he grew up.
The house was empty, the door thrown wide and partially broken off its hinges. He saw signs of looting, but no blood and no clue that told him where his parents were. There were no messages, no notes and the computer was gone so he couldn’t see if there were any half-written emails that they just never had the chance to finish. He told me how he used the last of the battery power in his cell phone to try and ring theirs, but again there was no answer.
Frozen with indecision, he waited for hours to see if perhaps his parents would return. He sat in his favourite armchair, the one he’d spent many hours in doing homework while he was growing up, and stared at the door. Hoping, praying.
His parents never came. No one did. Finally, he forced himself to make a decision on his own. He needed to find out what happened to his brother.
It was close to sunset when he reached his brother's house. Again, the door was unlocked so he let himself in, and called out his brother and sister-in-law's names at the top of his voice. There was no answer. On the wall near the door, the telephone hung off the hook; the endless dial tone was a low, sad sound. He picked it up and set it back in the cradle, not sure what else he could do.
Then, he heard the baby crying from upstairs.
He raced up as fast as he could go, taking the stairs two or three at a time, to find his tiny niece sitting in her crib. She was exhausted, filthy and starving from being trapped there for so long without food or water; her bed had become a cage.
When she saw him, the two-year-old cried his name and reached for him frantically with tiny, grasping hands.
He scooped her up without a moment of hesitation and carried her back down the stairs to her high chair. Although he had no children of his own, paternal instincts kicked in and soon the toddler was fed and changed.
She was terrified though, he told me. Terrified of being abandoned again. Any time he put her down, she started crying. Any time he left her line of sight, she screamed. He was desperate to leave before he went crazy, but he couldn't leave the baby behind. It just wasn’t an option.
While he was gathering the little girl’s things in preparation for their departure, something out in the back yard caught his eye. He told me how he went outside with the baby huddled in his arms, and found his brother and sister-in-law standing there in the semi-darkness on the lawn.
They were completely unresponsive, and stared off into space with cold, glazed eyes. They didn't even blink when he and Sophie called out to them, nor did their eyes focus when he moved into their line of sight and waved to them.
They were already gone.
Sophie was too young to understand. She cried and cried when he took her away; she didn’t understand why they were leaving Mummy and Daddy behind. She didn't know what he knew, that once the infection took their speech away, there was no turning back. That wasn't his brother anymore, it wasn't little Sophie's mummy and daddy.
But how could he possibly explain that to a two-year-old?
Fuelled by terror and a desperate need to protect the one family member he had left, he took the tiny child and carried her south. He walked non-stop through the night, pausing only to eat, drink and feed Sophie, and then he picked her up agai
n and walked some more. Eventually, Sophie fell into an exhausted sleep in his arms, but still he walked on. He’d never walked so far in his life, and by the time he reached safety it felt like his legs were about to drop off.
With no other option and no one to give him a better idea, Michael took his precious cargo back to the only safe place he could think of – his home away from home in the crew quarters beneath the Hamilton police station.
There, he raised her like his own daughter, and taught her all the hard lessons he had to learn to survive in the world after humanity was gone. He watched her grow, taught her to read and write, played with her she was little, and told her stories about her daddy from his own childhood.
He was always honest with her and never babied her. He took her with him when he was scavenging because experience was the only way that she would learn. Sophie had been a sweet and intelligent child who learned quickly, and soon became as useful as any of the adults who later joined the group.
***
"If only I hadn't been so lenient." He finally turned to look at me, his eyes filled with so much sadness that my heart dropped into my stomach. "If only I'd insisted that she stay home where it’s safe. I only turned my back for a second.
"I didn’t notice that she’d run off. We were out poking around, and I guess she saw something that caught her eye. I have no idea what it was, and I guess now I’ll never know. I only heard her scream, but by the time I got to her it was too late. The infected had already torn her throat out and it was— hitting her. She was still alive, but only just. I managed to get it off her, but she was bleeding out and I knew she was dying. I tried to get her home, but she didn’t make it."
Michael drew a deep, rough breath and put a hand over his face, like he didn’t want me to see his emotion. But I knew and I understood. It was a fresh wound, still raw. It had only been a few days since he watched the little girl he loved like a daughter die a horrible, painful death. Even after so long alone, I still felt all the human emotions, like sympathy, remorse and grief.
In that moment when he needed me most, I put aside my fear of other survivors completely. I wrapped my arms around him and just held him, not saying a word while he grieved for the poor child snatched away long before her time.
With each of us distracted in a different way, it wasn’t until much later that any of us realised that we’d forgotten one important thing: night had fallen, and the kid named Dog still hadn’t come home.
That was an oversight that we would come to regret.
Chapter Sixteen
I slept poorly that night, tossing and turning in my bed as my mind went over and over Michael’s story. For the longest time, there had only been one story in my head, and that was my own. I had never even considered the terrible things that other survivors had gone through, and now my psyche was in distress.
In my nightmares, it was me making that long, long trek between the cities, frightened and alone except for a little girl begging and begging and begging to see her mummy again.
Please, please, she pleaded in my dream, twisting her little hands in the fabric of my uniform. Her little face was a blur, since my subconscious didn’t have a face to give her.
I want my mummy…
Just before dawn, I awoke in a cold sweat, unsure whether it was the nightmare that had interrupted my sleep, or some sound I heard. Years of living on my own had left me a very light sleeper. I felt like I might have heard something, but I couldn’t be certain. I lay awake in the dark, straining my ears for anything out of the ordinary, but I heard only silence. I brushed it off as a figment of my imagination, then rolled over and closed my eyes once more.
Then I heard it, clear as a bell: A whispery voice begging for help, but struggling to form the words. I came awake instantly and was out of bed a second later, dressed in nothing but a grey nightshirt. There was a wet cough beyond the door and a faint scraping sound.
I froze, listening intently.
The noises were so soft that I could barely hear them. I was the closest, so it seemed unlikely that anyone else would hear them at all. It was up to me to investigate.
I fumbled for my taser in the dark before I switched on the light. My room was as I'd left it. The noise was definitely coming from outside. I thought I could hear someone crying, and then there was another sodden cough. Whatever was out there, it couldn’t possibly be a threat. It sounded pathetic, injured. Harmless.
I didn’t feel reassured. My back was up, so to speak, and I was ready for a fight.
Then my sleep-addled thoughts darted to something that someone said the day before. I think it was Michael. He mentioned another survivor, a deaf boy that was staying with them. I thought back to the previous night, and realised I hadn’t seen anyone matching that description come back to the bunker. I was paranoid, but I wasn’t stupid; I swiftly put two and two together.
Taser in hand, in case whoever or whatever had injured the boy was still nearby, I threw open the door and stepped out into the murky hall.
A moment later, the weapon slipped from my fingers and clattered to the ground. My hands flew up to my mouth in horror.
There was so much blood. So much blood.
"Dr Cross!" I turned and raced down the corridor with no thought of my foot at all, panic and adrenaline dulling the pain. When I reached the doctor’s door, I beat on it with my fists and screamed his name as loud as I could until finally it opened.
"What? What is it?" The doctor looked sleepy and confused. I couldn’t get the words to come out the way I wanted, so I just grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him back to where the wounded survivor lay in a puddle of blood.
I’d seen enough death in my lifetime to know how much blood is in the human body. I could hardly believe that poor boy was still breathing.
The kid lifted his head and looked at us pitifully with his one remaining eye; the other had been torn from his head along with half his scalp. Flesh hung in tattered strips off the bone around the empty socket.
"Help…" Blood dribbled from his lips as he struggled to speak, but then he coughed again. It was a terrible spasm that racked his entire body with pain, and blood sprayed from his mouth across the cold concrete floor.
"Oh, sweet mother Mary." Dr Cross dropped to his knees beside the young man, ignoring the blood that soaked his trousers. I heard a cry behind me, and turned to see that Skylar and Ryan had joined us. The doctor looked at us and started issuing orders.
"Skylar, fetch my medical kit, now." He words were a command and Skye jumped to obey them. "Ryan, go check all the outside doors are closed. And you—" He pointed at me. "—go fetch Michael!"
I nodded and raced off, limping as fast as my body would let me. The leader of the group slept in a different area of the building, so he was unlikely to have heard the racket we were making – or so I assumed.
As it turned out, I underestimated exactly how loud I'd been screaming. As I rounded the corner into the corridor that led to Michael's room, I found myself face to face with a broad, bare chest. I crashed into it before I could slow down, and almost bowled him off his feet.
He managed to brace himself just in time and caught me before I could fall.
"I heard something..."
I was out of breath from the run and the panic, and struggled to form coherent words. I only managed to get out one: "Dog."
It was enough. Michael looked in the direction that I pointed, immediately understanding what I meant. He set me back on my feet and raced off, with me in hot pursuit. Every second was precious, while a human life was bleeding out on the floor.
I was the last to return to the group besides Ryan, who was still off checking on our security. During the short time I'd been gone, Dr Cross had acquired a bundle of towels and was trying frantically to stem the blood flowing from the young man's terrible, terrible wounds.
The face wasn't the worst of it, I realised with horror. Poor Dog's torso was a mess of deep cuts, with chunks of flesh missing completely
in a number of places. His left hand was gone, severed at the wrist and pumping blood from the ragged stump. The doctor had managed to staunch it with a tourniquet, but I feared it was already too late.
"Help me get him into his bed." The doctor looked at Michael, who hurried over to obey. He knelt to carefully lift the youth in his arms, trying hard not to jostle him but the injuries were so extensive that it seemed like an impossible task. The boy looked so small and fragile compared to Michael’s lean bulk that in my imagination he weighed next to nothing. With half of his face missing, I couldn’t even guess at his age.
Silently, I hoped I would have the chance to ask him one day.
Dog cried piteously, his one remaining hand grasping at Michael's shoulder as he was lifted. He was in excruciating pain and fighting for his life, I realised. Terrified. Alone. Trapped in a dark, silent world. His one remaining eye darted about but blood hindered his vision, and I could see the muscles inside the empty socket twitching convulsively to match. The sight was almost enough to make me throw up.
The poor boy. I’d never really wished death on another human being in my life, but right now I found myself praying he would die soon just so that he wouldn’t have to suffer any more. It seemed impossible for us to save him. I couldn’t bear to watch his torment, but I couldn’t just run away and hide. Nobody should ever have to die alone.
Suddenly, the boy’s good eye cleared and found Michael’s face; recognition flashed across what was left of his.
"Muh… Muh…"
He stumbled over his words, obviously trying to say his friend’s name, but he couldn’t get it out. Tears gathered in his eye and he began signing frantically with his one remaining hand, trying to express with his own language what he couldn’t do with the spoken word.
"Calm down, buddy. You're home, we've got you." Michael tried to reassure him as he carried him to his bed and gently lay him down on the sheets. I wondered if the boy could even see him clearly enough to read his lips. The moment he was safely down, the doctor shoved Michael away and went to work trying to save the poor kid's life before he bled to death.
The Survivors (Book 1): Summer Page 16
