The Survivors Book IV: Spring

by V. L. Dreyer

  "Oh, that's it!" he said, snapping his fingers. "I knew your face was familiar. I don't think we ever spoke, but I remember seeing your face in my classes. I'm Michael, and this is my wife, Sandrine."

  "Valerie, but you can call me Val," she replied. "This is Xander. Don't mind him, he's not much of a people person. He just really loves his books."

  Xander shot her a dirty look, then muttered something and vanished back into the bowels of the building. Val rolled her eyes and gave us a long-suffering look. "Story of my life. He practically lived here before the plague, and nothing much changed when everyone died. He just lets me and the kids stay here because I'm bigger than him and because it means he doesn't have to find his own food."

  "The kids?" I echoed. "You have children?"

  "I have one," she replied, her expression suddenly turning dark. "My son, Dennis. He's four. Don't ask about his father. The others are foundlings. I couldn't very well leave them to starve after their parents died, so I adopted them."

  I grimaced at the implications of the situation regarding her son's paternity, because it was one all too familiar to me. I just nodded my understanding.

  "Yeah, we've got quite a few foundlings with us, too," I said, deliberately changing the subject to safer territory. "Like you said, it wouldn't be right to leave them to starve. We founded Tumanako – our little city – in hopes that no child would ever have to grow up alone. You're welcome to come and visit, if you want."

  A flicker passed through Valerie's eyes, then she glanced away. "Are there… are there many people there?"

  "More than four hundred now," I said softly, gently. "All people like you and me. People who have been alone for way too long, and just want to be surrounded by friendly faces again. Men, women, children – we even have some pets running around. It's not exactly like the old days, but we're doing our best to build something worthwhile."

  Valerie sighed and nodded. "I guess it can't hurt to look. Maybe we could think about transferring some of the books there. Are you sure it's secure? Doesn't Lower Hutt get flooding?"

  "Sometimes," I replied. "But we've got a multi-level building, and we've dedicated the top floor to the preservation of cultural artefacts. The plan was that if we fill up the top floor, we'll gradually move the people out of the apartments on the next floor down and make room for books there. We're not sure how many people are left alive around here, but if it's more than a thousand I'll be surprised. Still, we've got plenty of good buildings near our main base, and builders to help us make more as we need them. We just need to find a way to contact the people who didn't see our television broadcast or hear our radio transmission, like you."

  "I never was one for TV or radio," she admitted with a shrug. "Well, come on then. I suppose I better introduce you to the others, then you can show me what you've got."

  ***

  I sent the majority of my group off to check out the airport, while Michael, Erica, and I stayed behind to talk to Valerie and Xander. Once they'd relaxed and gotten used to us, they started opening up to us. Xander and Erica were drawn to one another almost immediately by their mutual intense love of books, and soon vanished out of sight. Val stuck with me and Michael. After the initial wariness wore off, she was perfectly happy to chatter away about whatever was on her mind, which mostly seemed to revolve around two things: the books, and her son.

  No matter how he'd come to be, she obviously loved Dennis with an intensity that almost hurt to see. Every so often, I'd catch her looking at me and Michael with longing, but just as regularly she'd shut up shop and shy away from us as if suddenly remembering something painful. I understood, and made no attempt to pressure her into opening up before she was ready.

  Unsurprisingly, Dennis and the younger kids gravitated towards Michael, and he to them. Val and I watched on from the relative safety of a couple of plush armchairs while Michael and the kids dashed frantically up and down the long aisles between bookshelves. Their laughter and shrieks of glee filled the library, driving back any shadows of doubt that either of us might have had about meeting one another.

  "You know, I've lost track of who's chasing whom," I admitted as they tore past us again.

  "Yeah, I have no idea," she replied. "I'm tired just watching them." She glanced back over her shoulder, then gave me a wink and a secretive smile. "You know, Xander's taken quite a shine to your army friend. I don't think I've ever seen him open up that fast to someone. When I first met him, it took me a week to convince him to even tell me his name."

  "Well, they have a common obsession," I said. "I’m not sure what’s going on with them, but I'm happy to see it. Erica's a brave woman, and she deserves a friend. She volunteered to stay behind while we came south to establish the city, and I was worried she was going to have difficulty getting used to being surrounded by people again. I know I did."

  "She's a soldier," Val replied simply. "Adapt and survive. That's what soldiers are trained to do. Police officers, too. I'm not surprised that she thrived all these years, and I'm not surprised Michael did either. We have the training to help us. I am, however, surprised that you did. You can't have been more than, what… sixteen when the plague hit?"

  "Eighteen," I corrected her. "But yeah, you're right. I'm not entirely sure how I survived, either. A lot of it was just trial and error, a lot of it was luck, some of it was reading, and the rest I put down to a few good teachers over the years. My mum and dad taught me a lot of valuable lessons before the plague, and then afterwards I met an ex-soldier named Gavin who's a lot like you, minus the love of books. Smart, quick to learn and slow to forget, and knows a lot about keeping himself alive."

  Val laughed and nodded. "No, I get it. There was a lot of luck involved. A lot of luck. I was twenty-two, but I had my training to fall back on. I was assigned to Wellington after Police College, and this was one of the first places that got badly hit by the riots. They wanted us to protect parliament, but we soon figured out that the prime minister and the rest of cabinet had already fled. Why risk our lives to protect something that didn't matter anymore? So we just went home."

  "I guess it's safe to say that your parents didn't make it?" I asked as gently as I could, watching her face for any sign that I was crossing a line.

  She just shrugged and glanced away. "My dad died of a stroke when I was a teenager, and my mum just sort of… wasted away after that. She died a week after I was accepted into Police College. I think she was just waiting to see me on the road to a good career before she went to join Dad, you know?"

  "Yeah, I know." I reached over to touch the back of her hand. She didn't pull away. "Some people are just meant to be together, in life and in death. My parents were like that. It's a long, not-nice story, but they died during the plague. So, is that why you came to protect the books?"

  "Pretty much," she said with a shrug. "I went back to the flat I was living in at the time, but it was on fire and there was no sign of the fire service coming to deal with it. I figured out pretty quickly that the whole city was going to go that way if we didn't do something to stop it, so I grabbed the riot gear out of my car and came back into town, looking for some way to stop what was happening.

  "I made it to the downtown area, then I was cornered by a group of rioters. They pulled me out of my car, and I thought for sure that my number was up – until someone laid into them from behind and managed to chase them off."

  In spite of the fact that she'd obviously survived the encounter, I found myself sitting forward in my seat, anxious to hear the rest. "Who was it?"

  "It was my partner," she replied softly. "Him, and a few of the other officers that he'd managed to round up. I found out afterwards that they'd barricaded themselves inside the library because it was the safest place they could find in a pinch, but when they saw me get pulled from my car they'd rallied out to save me. I was bruised up pretty badly, but they carried me back inside the library and took care of me."

  "They didn't go home, either?" I asked.

>   She shook her head and looked down at the floor. "They’d tried. I don't know about the others, but my partner's wife was dead. He couldn't say the words, but I could see it in his eyes. He never told me what happened. It's probably for the best." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to steady her shaking voice. "Most of the others died over the course of the next few weeks from the plague, until it was just me, Xander, and Dennis."

  I blinked in surprise. "Wait, but Dennis is only four…"

  Val cringed, then she sighed heavily. "Dennis senior was my partner. He was immune, like us. There was an accident, a few years ago… I don't want to talk about it."

  "Then don't talk about it," I said, grabbing her hand in both of mine to offer her some kind of support. "It's okay, you don't have to say anything at all. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring up bad memories."

  "It's not your fault," she replied, staring down at my hands as if they were some kind of alien life-form that had latched onto her. She swallowed hard, then put her free hand over top of mine and gave it a gentle squeeze. "Every day is hard. Every day, I wonder how I'm going to get through it all alone. I mean, I have Xander and the kids but they're always looking up to me, whether it's for food or protection or even just to play with. I'm not sure how much longer I can put up with this."

  "Then come home with me, Val," I said gently. "You can leave the kids here if you want. Xander can watch them for one night. Come and see Tumanako. It's not just a city, it's an idea. The name means 'hope'. People like you are exactly why we founded it. You need something to hope for as much as anyone – and you deserve it."

  "Sometimes I don't feel like I deserve it," she admitted, her voice husky. "Sometimes I wonder if those of us who survived did something horrible in a past life to deserve this fate. Like maybe we're suffering because we were mass murderers or committed genocide or something."

  "I used to feel that way, too," I admitted. "When I was all alone, with no one to help me, I used to cry myself to sleep every night, wondering what I'd done to deserve my fate. But, you know what? We haven't done anything to deserve this. We all deserve better. The problem is that the people who used to make things better for us are all gone now, so we have to make things better for ourselves. Come with us, Val. Just for one night. No contracts, no obligations. If you don't want to stay, then you don't have to. If you don't want to see us again, you don't have to. But if you do, then you'll be welcome to stay. You won't have to live in a library anymore. You won't have to do everything. Dennis can go to school with the other kids and make new friends. You can make new friends, too. I bet you don't remember what it's like to have friends anymore, do you?"

  "Well, I guess Xander counts as a friend, but only because there's no one else," she said hesitantly, then she bit her lip and fell silent. I just waited, watching her, letting her think through the decision without pushing her any more.

  Sure enough, less than a minute later, she looked up at me and nodded.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Once we took Val home, we couldn't have convinced her to leave even if we'd wanted to. She lasted about ten minutes before she burst into tears, and had to sit down for a while to recover. Maddy appeared out of nowhere, just as she had that first day I'd awoken in the Hamilton bunker, and her tiny, unthreatening presence helped Val through the shock.

  By midday, she'd seen everything we had to see and was thoroughly convinced that she wanted to be part of it. She insisted that we go fetch her son and bring him to Tumanako, and it took all of my wiles to convince her that she'd need to go with us or Xander was unlikely to let him go. She saw sense in the end, but heavy emotion left her a little irrational. She demanded that I come with her, and cried on my shoulder most of the way back to Wellington. Once she got there, the sight of her son's face seemed to steady her. She packed up their belongings, chased Xander and her foundlings into the trucks, and took them all back to Tumanako that very evening.

  Val and the kids settled in quickly, but Xander was another story. If not for Valerie and Erica, then he might well have slipped off in the night and never come back. But with their help, he eventually decided to give us an honest chance – and although he wasn't as vocal about it as Val, it swiftly became clear that he liked what he saw.

  Val metamorphosed into 'one of us' in no time flat. Within a couple of days, she became the perfect representation of my vision for the people of Tumanako: a lonely, frightened flower that bloomed within the greenhouse of safety and social acceptance into a happy, healthy, smiling rose. Every time I saw her, she was laughing and joking around with her new friends, and something about her unabashed joy was infectious. Even my little group of loners smiled when she was around. I saw her teasing stoic Warren on more than one occasion, and I could have sworn that he actually liked it.

  The new children went through a similar transformation over the course of the first week. At first, they were shy and standoffish, until they met Melody. With that special kind of magic only she was capable of, she took the new kids under her wing and taught them how to be children again. Soon, they were all part of her little pack of wild, fun-loving raggamuffins. There wasn't a morning that went by in silence with her there to lead them. They filled the corridors with happy noise, right up until it was time for class.

  On one such morning not quite two weeks after their arrival, I was sitting in the dining room staring out the window and fiddling with a pen when I heard someone pull out the chair across from me. I glanced over, and was surprised to discover Johan sitting down with a bundle of purring tabby fluff in his arms.

  "Wow, I can't believe Tigger's letting you carry her around," I commented, amused.

  Johan laughed and nodded. "I have secret vet voodoo, didn't you hear? It's the first thing they teach you when you start studying."

  I chuckled, setting put my pen down. "I can't believe how big she's getting. She must be almost a year old by now, but she's still all fluff."

  "You're not all fluff anymore, are you?" he asked the cat, stroking her fur. She didn't answer, of course. She just purred and wound herself around his hands, rubbing herself against him. He smiled and glanced up at me. "Did you know she's pregnant, too?"

  "What?" I gasped. "Who impregnated my kitten? I'll kill him!"

  Johan just laughed again, not fazed by my horror. "It's a natural thing, Sandrine. Life comes, life goes. She seems to be quite happy with her condition, so it's nothing to get upset about. I just wanted to check if you'd like me to spay her after she's had the kittens. She's due in the next few weeks."

  "Natural… right." I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for a second to calm myself down, then I shook my head. "Not just yet. There aren't a lot of domestic cats left around here, and we could use them to keep the pests out of the crops. Plus, they kind of help keep people sane. She certainly did that for me."

  "Why don't you write about that, then?" he suggested, gesturing towards the blank page in front of me. "You seem to be at a loss for where to start."

  "I am," I admitted, absently tracing my fingers over the smooth paper. "There's just so much to tell, you know? Ten years. More, if you count before the plague. Where do I even begin?"

  "Start with how you met Tigger," he replied. He placed the kitten – now a cat – on the table beside me and rose to his feet. "See her back home when you're done with her?"

  "Of course." I watched until he left the room, then I looked down at the fluffy tabby face staring up at me. I reached out to her and ran my hand across her back, marvelling at her softness.

  As I did so, a memory surfaced of a time not so long ago, a time when I'd needed that softness to keep me sane. Ohaupo. It felt like a lifetime ago, even though it wasn't quite a year yet. How much things had changed – and so much for the better. One year earlier, I'd been a shaken, traumatised loner without a friend in the world except for this little feline. Now, I had a home, a husband, a baby on the way, friends and family all around me. I had a life. I had hope. It was a beautiful thing.


  Tears welled up in my eyes as I picked up the pen, and began to transcribe the tale to paper for the very first time.

  ***

  Knowing the library was water-tight and secure took the pressure off us and relieved the urgency we felt. We could take our time moving the contents back to Tumanako, and lock the place up when we weren't there. It was a slow, laborious process, but now we could pick and choose the days we went down there. Whenever the weather was fine, we'd send a group down with the best trucks and horse-drawn wagons we had and they'd come back full to the brim with cultural treasures.

  As our library expanded, so did my waistline, until it got to the point I could barely waddle from bed to the toilet and back again without significant effort. One of our teams brought back an ultrasound machine, and I was its first victim. After a few minutes of cursing and scowling, and a fair amount of uncomfortable prodding, Professor Madurrit finally smiled and told us that our baby was very healthy.

  I was a different story. As the weeks progressed, I started to feel less and less healthy. I could sense the change in the seasons, but summer's impending arrival did nothing to improve my mood. Eventually, I gave up on toughing it out in silence and went to see the doctor and the professor. Again, I was poked and prodded, examined from all angles, had tests run on me, blood drawn, and then they left the room to consult with one another in private.

  A few minutes later, they came back in and both of them were smiling.

  "You're a little bit vitamin D deficient, but not enough to be worried about," Professor Madurrit told me. "The baby's fine. You just haven't been getting as much sun as you're used to recently, and that's why you're feeling off-colour. Try sitting in the sun for fifteen minutes every day, and you'll feel right as rain in no time."

  "No pun intended," Doctor Cross added, giving her a dark look. "And while we have you here, we should mention that we're almost ready to begin trials of the vaccine. Evie isn't showing any signs of wanting to wean yet, so we should be ready with plenty of time to spare."