Survivors of the Sun

by Kingslie, Mia

  Rebecca and Deedee stayed back at the house, Rebecca because she was still patiently waiting on Lexie to come home, and Deedee because, as she said, ‘Rebecca can be really hare-brained sometimes’. ’ None of them were quite sure about the context of this statement, but they let it go and left Deedee to watch over Rebecca. Anything to keep the peace.

  Disappointingly, the neighboring houses all appeared vacant. Either everyone had left, or they were really good at hiding. Disheartened, they sat down at a picnic table in a neighboring yard and Jamie voiced what Georgia had been traumatizing over all afternoon. ‘It looks like we are going to have to take her with us.’

  Lola kicked thoughtfully at a leg of the table. ‘How can we? We are barely managing as it is.’

  Georgia rubbed her temples, ‘I know, and she is really going to slow us down, but in all honesty, how can we leave her behind? She won’t survive on her own.’

  ‘Maybe we can find someone along the way to take her,’ Lola said hopefully.’

  Jamie gave her a quizzical look, ‘you think?’

  ‘No, you’re right, bad idea.’

  ‘What are you thinking Georgia,’ Jamie asked, reaching out to touch her hand.

  ‘Well, we are stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea, really, the idea of leaving her behind, just makes me sick, but if we take her with us, she might slow us down so badly that we end up being caught out in the open in a winter freeze.’

  ‘She’s a little gaga, yes,’ Jamie said quietly, ‘but she’s not lame, I doubt she will slow us down that much, and who knows, being as old as she is she probably knows lots of stuff about living without all the mod cons and…,’

  Lola suddenly interrupted, ‘for what it’s worth, I don’t think we should leave her here either, remember, I was practically in the same situation as her, okay it was different, but you know what I mean. You took me in, and it worked out.’

  Georgia nodded. ‘Yes, that’s true, so I guess it’s decided, but I am not sure it will be that easy to convince her to come with us. For all her muddle-headedness, she seems to be one determined old lady.’

  ‘Ain’t that the truth,’ Jamie said.

  Together they rose from the table and started walking back to the house.

  Just as they reached the front steps, Lola paused and turned to the others, grimacing, ‘and one of us, is going to have to break the bad news about Lexie and her mum to Rebecca, there is no way round it.’

  This was met with a somber silence, and Georgia knew the ‘someone’ was going to have to be her. It was not going to be easy. She would have preferred to have left Rebecca in the dark over Lexie’s demise, but she would become suspicious, if they insisted on taking Ruby with them, without waiting for Lexie and her mum.

  She sighed deeply as she followed the others up the steps and into the house. The last thing she wanted to do was break Rebecca’s heart, but she was going to have to, she simply couldn’t see any way to avoid it.

  Chapter Thirty Three

  August 9th, Day 30

  Georgia put away the last of the dishes from their meagre breakfast. It had been a long night. Her relentless thoughts had returned over and over to that locked room, just a few doors down, her mind replaying what she had seen, imagining different scenarios of what had taken place. It was not possible that either of them had survived. She pictured Ruby, lying in her room, listening to the dreadful sounds, somehow trying to equate it to a rowdy party. Later going in and spraying the room, shutting out the rest from her mind, explaining to herself that the girls had simply gone out and would be back soon.

  Through the window she could see Rebecca, shoulders hunched, kneeling on the lawn, still crying. It had not gone well. The telling. She would have been out there with her, comforting her. She had gone out and tried, they all had, but Rebecca had roundly and soundly told them all to stay away from her. So they had withdrawn one by one and come inside.

  Earlier it had been decided that they would simply tell her that Lexie and Josie (Georgia had finally remembered Lexie’s mother’s name), had left the house shortly after ‘it’ and never returned. That way, they felt, their absence would be easier to accept, and it would leave hope in Rebecca, that they were still alive.

  But she wasn’t having any of it. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, ‘they would never have left their Nan alone. This is just a big fat lie because you don’t want to wait any longer.’

  ‘They have gone, and they won’t be coming back.’ Lola said softly.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ she yelled, ‘if you are in such a hurry, then go, I am going to wait for them.’

  ‘They won’t be coming back,’ Georgia reiterated.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ Rebecca spat.

  And here the plan fell apart, because in spite of all her promises to herself, Georgia told her the truth. ‘Because they are more than likely dead.’ The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

  ‘You can’t know that.’

  ‘We do know that Rebecca, and that is why there is no point waiting.’ Jamie answered.

  ‘You’re siding with her?’

  ‘It’s not a matter of sides, it’s the truth,’ Jamie said, a gentleness to his words.

  ‘Prove it then,’ and then when no one said anything, she scoffed, ‘you can’t can you?’

  ‘Show her the room,’ Jamie said.

  Georgia shook her head, trying to stop the words coming out of his mouth, but it was too late.

  ‘What room?’ Rebecca demanded.

  In the end, despite her misgivings, Georgia withdrew the key from her back pocket and took Rebecca to see for herself.

  She had stood stock still inside the room, shocked to her very core, and then walked over to the bloody handprint on the wall. She had stared at it for a moment, and then slowly, ever so slowly she had raised her own hand to it, and closed her eyes. ‘Oh Lexie,’ she breathed so quietly, that Georgia barely heard her, then she added, ‘may God be with you.’

  Then they were back in the corridor. The door shut, but not locked. It was no longer necessary.

  Rebecca stared first at Jamie, and then at Lola. ‘Someone murdered her? And her mum? And you all knew?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Deedee said.

  She turned angrily to Georgia, ‘why didn’t you tell me straight away?’

  Georgia hesitated, not sure what to say.

  ‘Because she was trying to protect you,’ Lola explained.

  Rebecca continued to glare at Georgia, ‘protect me from what? The truth? Oh my God, I am not a child anymore, you told Jamie, but not me, he is younger than me.’

  Then before anyone could say another word she had pulled away from them, rushed outside, and collapsed in a sobbing heap on the lawn.

  Georgia sighed as she closed the cupboard. I really could have handled that better.

  ‘So, are we going camping then?’ Ruby asked, sometime later, peering into the hallway, where they were finishing up the repacking of their packs, preparing for the trek ahead. Rebecca was still outside, now reading her bible, and still not talking to them.

  ‘Bertie always did love tramping in the country. We spent many a weekend exploring the Midlands. Of course that was before he went and got himself killed in the war.’

  ‘The war?’ Georgia asked, puzzled, Surely Ruby was too young to have a husband that died in the war.

  ‘Yes, dear, he was in the Falklands, you know.’ Then she chuckled. ‘You were thinking of World War Two, weren’t you? I wasn’t even born then, still, I can remember my father talking about all the rationing when I was a little girl. At least they had ration cards then, now we don’t even have that.’

  Georgia sat up on her haunches. ‘So she did understand that there was some sort of crisis.’ She shook her head as she finished pulling the straps closed on her pack.

  ‘Yes, we are going camping, you as well, a little holiday is just what we all need,’ Georgia said cautiously. Not quite certain how Ruby wou
ld take the news. She took it well.

  ‘Right then, well I will just go and get my handbag, and change my slippers for something more sensible. Bertie always was one for wearing comfortable shoes.’ And with that, she bustled away.

  Lola burst into laughter. ‘That was so much easier than we expected.’

  Of course it wasn’t that simple. While Ruby was searching the kitchen for the tea caddy (how could any of them have thought they were leaving without it), Georgia and Lola went through to her bedroom, quickly gathering suitable clothing, including her dressing gown, slippers, reading glasses and other items they thought she might need. They carefully searched the house, checking if there was any medicines the old lady was taking, but apart from a box of Tylenol in the dresser drawer, they couldn’t find any. It seemed she was not on any medication. One good thing anyway.

  Then there was the issue of where she would sleep, the five of them (eight if you included the dogs), were used to sleeping on the joined sleeping bags. It did not seem likely that she could do the same, aside from the fact there was absolutely no more room. In the end they took the thickest comforter they could find, another blanket and a pillow. There was nothing for it, she would have to adapt. Somehow they managed to find room between them to carry it all. It went without saying, that she could not carry a pack.

  ‘Finally,’ Georgia thought, ‘we are ready.’ But they weren’t.

  Sensibly, Jamie had taken the shopping caddy, which already held the paltry remains from the pantry, down to the vegetable garden, and was carefully filling it with carrots, potatoes, and cabbages.

  Rebecca was up a tree, refusing to budge, telling them that she hated them all and she was never coming down.

  Ruby had decided she simply could not go on holiday without her curlers (understandable), and her pantyhose (not so understandable), ‘and drat where did I put the teapot’.

  Sometime, during this flurry of last minute activity, Deedee had taken it into her head that the dogs were hungry, which they probably were, and had gone out and shot a duck for them. And by the looks of it, they would not be done eating soon.

  And Lola was…, Lola was sitting at the kitchen table. ‘Would you like half this tomato,’ she asked, totally oblivious to the pandemonium around them. ‘It’s very good.’

  Eventually, Ruby had gathered her treasures together. The shopping caddy was full, and the dogs had come back inside, fuzzy bits of down, stuck to their muzzles. Rebecca had climbed down from her tree. Apparently, Deedee had threatened to shoot her in her patootie, if she didn’t come down.

  ‘Though I wouldn’t have,’ she hastened to assure Georgia, ‘because then I would have had all the bother of climbing the tree to get my arrow back.’

  Finally, this time they really were on their way. They were leaving this house of horrors. Jamie and Deedee helped Rebecca put on her pack and they set off, finding their way back across several fields, through the long grass and back onto Route 7.

  They had been walking for several hours when Georgia stopped and let Ant out of her bag, watching as she ran over to Millie and Badger. They were making good time, and as long as they kept up this pace they would have no problems. So far Ruby had not slowed them down at all. She was walking with Jamie and Deedee chatting away happily, and every so often she would call back and say, ‘lovely day for it,’ and then go back to her conversation. Rebecca walked ahead of them, by herself. They had still not been forgiven.

  ‘So how do you think she is doing?’ Lola asked.

  Georgia knew instinctively she was not asking about Ruby. She shrugged, regretting the movement immediately as the straps from her pack dug in a little deeper. ‘Not the best, loss is a hard thing to cope with, she’s only hitting out at us, because she has to direct that anger somewhere.’

  They passed a tangled clump of wild roses, the pink blossoms clamoring for space amongst the dusty weeds. Lola paused, plucking a bloom and tucked it behind her ear, then she smiled over at Georgia. ‘Here. One for you as well.’ She held out the flower, and Georgia took it from her. A moment later she was off, exclaiming over a butterfly.

  ‘Her kindred spirit, a butterfly,’ Georgia thought, stopping to wait for her, ‘she is so like one herself, flitting from flower to flower, totally unaffected and unaware of any danger around her.’

  She twirled the flower in her fingers as Lola ran back to her, and they began walking again, ‘I’ve been thinking, we really need to set up a watch at night, especially now that we are heading into a more populated area again.’

  Lola looked over at her. ‘But that’s not the only reason is it?’

  ‘No it isn’t, I am really worried that Ruby, being the way she is, might just get it into her head to wander off into the night. I’d never forgive myself.’

  ‘I have to admit the thought has crossed my mind,’ Lola said, then she asked, ‘do you think she is going senile? Or do you think it is only temporary, more of a trauma thing?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘Hopefully it is temporary, but only time will tell.’

  Deedee suddenly turned and waved at them, then pointed down the road. There was a road sign about thirty yards ahead. Lola and Georgia caught up with the others and they all stopped while Georgia put Ant back in her bag.

  The signpost announced that they had reached Tightwad, and much sooner than expected, and as Georgia hitched the straps of Ant’s bag back over her shoulders, she read ‘Speed limit 45, pop 63’.

  She turned to the others. ‘What do you think, shall we double back and make our way around or continue on?’

  Lola was standing shading her eyes as she stared further down the road, ‘I vote we go on through, seems deserted and who knows, maybe we can get supplies or find something useful. Toothpaste and a toothbrush would be really nice.’

  ‘Oh,’ Ruby said, ‘perhaps we can buy some postcards.’

  Georgia looked at the children. ‘Continue on,’ Jamie said. Deedee nodded. ‘Yeah, continue on.’ Rebecca remained silent, refusing even to look at them.

  ‘So five yays and one abstention,’ Georgia said, ‘majority rules, let’s go.’ What else could she do? She couldn’t force Rebecca to vote, any more than she could force her to talk.

  They spread out, weapons at the ready, moving slowly, silently down the road, carefully checking their surroundings. Millie and Badger, sensing the tension paced next to Georgia, their hackles slightly raised. Ruby walked a little behind Lola, clutching her handbag, and if she thought it strange that they were armed, she gave no indication.

  Fear prickled at Georgia, It was so still, unnervingly so, and she had the unshakable feeling that someone was watching them. She should not have given them the option, she should have just insisted they double back. She waved a fly away and almost immediately caught a whiff of that dreadful cloying, clinging, invasive stench, that seemed to suggest that all was not well, and that death had walked this road before them. She tightened her grip on the shotgun, concentrating on the scattered buildings, the hedges, the shadows.

  A burned out barn, fire scarred buildings, the looted stores, with their empty shelves and the bullet riddled street fronts told them what had happened, as clearly as if it had been scrawled across a billboard.

  They cautiously pressed on, occasionally exchanging looks; all the while searching for signs of life, expecting to come upon dead bodies.

  A ginger kitten, mewing plaintively, appeared amongst the scraggly Indian grass that grew along the side of the road. Before Georgia could stop her, Lola had darted over towards it and scooped it up. For a brief moment, it purred loudly, kneading its paws against Lola’s arm as she cradled it, but then Millie rushed over to see. In a blur of movement, the kitten streaked up onto Lola’s shoulder and leapt off, her tail fluffing up as she disappeared in amongst the weeds.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ Georgia hissed. ‘Did it scratch you?’ Lola shook her head, and Georgia went on, ‘what if it has rabies or…,’

  ‘I’m sorry, and I kn
ow all that,’ Lola said, her voice so low that Georgia barely heard her, ‘but the poor thing has no one.’ She looked away, but not before Georgia caught the telltale glimpse of dampness in her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ Georgia said, ‘so damn sorry. This whole damn situation is unbearable.’ They walked on. After a moment, Georgia caught Lola’s arm, ‘look if you really want to rescue that kitten …,’ she whispered.

  Lola shook her head. ‘It would never work, even if we could catch it, one of us would have to carry it, because for sure it wouldn’t follow us on its own accord.’

  Jamie smiled over at Lola. ‘Well, you know the rule, if you really want it; you will be the one carrying it.’

  Lola gave a half laugh, wiping the tears from her face with the palms of her hands. ‘No, it’s sure to be feral and Georgia…,’

  Deedee did not let her finish. ‘Glad to hear it,’ she said, ‘because Jamie and I are having a hard enough time hunting for all of us, as it is. Especially now,’ and just to make sure there was no doubt in anyone’s mind what she was referring to, she pointedly looked over at Ruby.

  They passed a convenience store, this too had smoke damage to the outside of the building, and while they kept guard, Jamie hurried up to the glass front, and cupping his hands against the window, he peered in. After a moment, he came back to them. ‘Nope nothing in there, shelves are all stripped bare.’

  They began walking again when suddenly Jamie came to an abrupt halt. ‘Doesn’t something strike you as odd about this place?’

  They stared at him, puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’ Georgia asked.

  ‘Well for one thing, there are no bodies, no blood, no broken glass, sure the shelves, back there,’ he cocked his thumb as he spoke, ‘are all empty, but nothing is really damaged and there is no mess. Even where that other store had been shot up, none of the windows were hit, and I didn’t see any bullet casings anywhere.’