“Good luck,” he murmured. I nodded and touched his hand, then turned and walked away from my little family. Priyanka tried to follow me, but Michael distracted her with something I didn’t quite catch before I was out of earshot. The sound of voices faded behind me as I made my way away from the group, and picked my way carefully up the stairs that led back into the depths of the power station.
The door closed heavily behind me, blocking out the sound of the churning turbines, but not the vibrations. I could still feel the tremor beneath my feet as I made my way through the tunnels, and found the set of stairs that led up into the engine room itself.
There, a single figure stood hunched over a control panel, monitoring a mind-boggling array of dials and doohickies. I had no idea how he knew what he was doing, but he seemed to. Jim was so focused that he didn’t even seem to notice my approach until I cleared my throat loudly. Only then did he glance up, with a look of annoyance at being interrupted.
“What? Can’t you see I’m busy here?” He glared at me. The dirty look gave me a moment’s pause, but I braced myself against it.
“Jim, I need to talk to you about something and I wanted to get you alone to do it,” I answered calmly, keeping my tone of voice as even as possible despite my annoyance at his attitude. “This is the first time I’ve managed to all week.”
“Christ, what’s so important that you have to tell me now, of all times?” He grumbled a few choice words and turned his attention back to the panel in front of him.
“Jim, I just want to know… about you and Rebecca.” As Michael and I had agreed, I chose my words carefully. I didn’t want to get Rebecca in trouble – or worse, put her in danger. “I don’t know what kind of relationship the two of you have. If she got involved with another man, would you be angry?”
“What?” He froze for a second and stared at me. “That’s all? You came all this way and interrupted my work to ask me that? I wouldn’t care. I already gave her permission to shag whoever she likes.”
“You… I… what?” I stared at him, shocked. “So you already know?”
“Of course I bloody well did!” he snapped. “She asked my permission when your boys arrived, and I agreed. Christ, you think she’d do something like that without my permission?” As though suddenly realising just how much distress I’d been in for the last week, he turned and looked at me. “You were really that worried?”
“Yes,” I answered, feeling more and more confused by the second. “I mean, I thought…”
“Aw, Christ.” Jim absently scratched at his balding pate and eyed me uncertainly. “Erm… how do I put this? Rebecca is my friend. We’ve been friends for a very long time, but we’re not friends ‘like that’. About a year or so after the plague, she was living in Arapuni township while I ran the station. She used to bring me food and stuff, but then some boys from the south started coming by and bothering her. She was getting really scared for her safety, so I convinced her to move in here and be my ‘wife’, so that I could protect her. It’s never been any more than that, though. She ain’t my type.”
“She’s not your type?” I stared at him, bewildered by what I was hearing. “I don’t understand. She’s a nice lady, and I’m sure she’s pretty attractive, if you’re that way inclined. What’s not to like about… wait…” My eyes widened in surprise when realisation struck me. “Do you mean…?”
“Aye, lass. I’m gay.” Jim looked amused by my freshly-caught-fish expression. I could only guess that he got that a lot when he told people.
“But, you don’t—”
“I know, I know. I don’t look gay, and I don’t act gay. I’m homosexual, not a bloody ponce. I’m just a regular Kiwi bloke who happens to prefer other blokes. There’s a difference.” He glared at me for a moment, right up until I started feeling like a total idiot. It must have shown on my face, because an amused smile suddenly flickered across his lips. “Stereotyping is rarely right on the money, kid. You should know that.”
“Damn… I’m sorry, mate.” I looked down at my feet, rubbing the back of my neck. “I had some trouble with the blokes down south as well, so I’ve spent most of the last decade alone. I don’t really know how to read people anymore.”
“Don’t worry about it, lass. You meant well.” He brushed my shame aside with a vague gesture. “Just be glad your boyfriend isn’t my way inclined, or I’d give you a race for your money.”
I smiled shyly, sensing the joke behind his words despite his deadpan expression.
“Fiancé, actually,” I corrected him, reaching up to draw my necklace out from beneath my clothing to show him the ring. “He proposed a few days ago.”
To my surprise, Jim looked genuinely pleased. “That’s good to hear. You two make a nice couple. You’ll work well together, I think.”
“I think so, too. He’s the only other person that I told about Rebecca, Tane and Iorangi. We didn’t want to embarrass you, but I guess it doesn’t matter now.” I sighed, feeling relieved all of a sudden. “I’m so glad it turns out there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for it. To be honest, it’s been tearing me up inside all week thinking that she might have been betraying you with my friends.”
“Two of them, huh?” Jim chuckled, a dark sort of chuckle that set my teeth on edge, but he didn’t seem to notice. “That little slut. Well, I suppose a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
“I guess she was a little pent up?” I suggested with as much humour as I could, even though the comment made my inner feminist a little uncomfortable. I’d learned that Jim was a special kind of fish, and that it was best not to take his comments seriously.
“Must be. Now, you get out of here, I have work to do,” Jim grumbled and made shooing gestures at me.
“Okay, okay, I’m going,” I answered as I retreated towards the door. “Thanks for not killing me.”
“It's fine, lass. Thanks for giving a shit,” he replied. A moment later I was out the door, and left him in peace. That also left me alone with my thoughts, which were a very confusing place. How on earth was I going to explain this to Michael?
***
It turned out to be easier than I was expecting.
By the time I tracked Michael down, he was back in our room packing our bags in preparation for our departure. It was still fairly early in the day and we were all anxious to get home to our families, so it seemed wise to set off as soon as possible. I plunked myself down on our bed and repeated word-for-word exactly what Jim had told me. Michael stayed quiet the entire time I relayed the conversation, and it wasn’t until after I was done that he said anything.
“Well, I suppose that’s a relief then,” he murmured uncertainly, absently scratching the stubble on his chin that he hadn’t gotten around to shaving away.
“Yeah, I guess so. It kind of feels like we got all worked up over nothing now, doesn’t it?” I smiled and leaned over to give his scruff a little scritch of my own. Michael gave me an amused glance in return, but didn’t complain.
“That’s a good thing though, isn’t it?” he asked, looking up at me curiously. “I’d rather get worked up and have it turn out to be nothing than break up someone’s marriage. Wouldn’t you?”
“That’s true,” I agreed simply, and then slid down off the bed to sit beside him on the floor. “I’m relieved, too. Now we can just go home, and worry about whatever the hell is wrong with Madeline instead.”
“She’s a kid. Kids have nightmares. Don’t worry about it.” Michael put his arm around my shoulders and drew me close, planting a reassuring kiss on my cheek. “Once we introduce her to Priyanka, they’ll be the best of friends and she’ll forget all about fires and scary things. She’s just lonely and bored.”
“That reminds me, actually.” I sighed heavily and reached over to grab my bag so that I could stack my things back into it. “We need to look for some replacement parts for the Hilux on the way back.”
“Gotcha covered, sweetheart.” Michael smiled and gave me
a quick snuggle, catching me by surprise. “I told Hemi and his boys about it the other day. They’re going to take us into town to look for parts, and then they’ll give us a lift back to the truck. I think he still kind of feels like he owes us for something.”
“Well, that’ll be handy,” I agreed, then glanced up at him curiously. “Will your dog be able to keep up for that long, though?”
“Hemi reckons he can get Alfred up on the front of one of the bikes,” he answered cheerfully.
“Alfred?” I laughed in surprise. “You named the poor pooch Alfred?”
“Damn straight, I did.” His smile widened into a full grin. “It’ll take a little practice, but he should be fine. You know how dogs are about the wind.”
I chuckled at the image his words conjured up. “That’s true. We should get ourselves some quad bikes.” Suddenly, my smile faded. The moment to reveal the first stage of my plan to Michael had arrived without any warning at all. I wasn’t prepared, but I decided to plunge ahead anyway. “Actually, I’ve been pondering something and I want to run it by you. I think that we should talk to Anahera about combining our groups.”
Michael blinked like a possum caught in the headlights. “Why?”
“Well, I…” How did I explain this to him? It was a thought that I could barely wrap my head around myself. “Michael, we need to do something for our futures. Not just us personally, but all of us. The entire human species. We’re not going to be able to survive picking over the bones of this old corpse of a world indefinitely. We need to find somewhere, settle down, and start gathering people. As many people as we can. It needs to be somewhere defensible, so we can grow crops and raise animals. We’ll need every hand we can get.
“It’s the only way we’ll ever be safe, and the only way our children will have the opportunity to live in the kind of world that our parents took for granted. We need to build a sanctuary, and fill it with as many good people as we can find. There’s safety in numbers, and if we can build a permanent settlement then we’ll have a chance to eventually grow our numbers.”
“You want to build a city?” Michael stared at me, stunned. It took me a second to process what he’d said, before the words actually sank in.
“I hadn’t thought of it quite like that, but… yes, I think so.” I nodded thoughtfully. “Not build from scratch, though. At least, not to start with. We need to get the first wave of people together before we can think about that, so we’ll need to find somewhere safe and secure to house them, somewhere we can grow food and become self-sufficient.
“Once we have a large enough number of people, we won’t have to worry about gangs or anything like that anymore, and we can focus on repairing what Ebola-X did to us and planning for the future. Combining our group with Anahera’s would give us a solid base to start with. That would give us sixteen people, which is a large enough group that most of the gangs would steer clear of us.”
“And once we’ve got a safe place,” Michael said thoughtfully, picking up where I left off, “and enough numbers to protect everyone, then we get word out. We’d attract people from all over, particularly the women and children who are vulnerable out there on their own – like you were.”
“Yes, exactly,” I nodded, relieved that he understood my idea.
“This is ambitious, Sandy.” he looked at me uncertainly. “It’ll take a long time, a lot of hard work, and it’s dangerous. Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“I’ve got you to help me, right? With you and all the others, I think we can make this dream a reality.” I paused for a second, and then shook my head. “No, I know that we can make it a reality. We have to. The only other option is to watch our friends and family gradually slide towards barbarism. Think about it, honey. Humanity is the only species that has ever actively attempted to save another species from extinction. It’s time that we did it for ourselves.”
“That’s… really profound.” Michael drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, closing his eyes. “I think you’re right, though. I think we can do it. Like you said, we have to do it. For Priyanka and Madeline.”
“For all the children,” I agreed softly, reaching over to take his hand, “including ours, when the time is right.”
He looked at me, and it was like a light had come on behind his eyes. Watching that understanding dawn in his expression made all the effort worthwhile. I knew then that I had him, and that he would stand by my side to the end. A slow smile crept across his face, then he drew me into an embrace and held me close. “New New Zealand?”
“What?” I blinked owlishly, before I realised he was offering a name for the city we planned to build. “Oh, no. That’s terrible, honey.”
“I know,” he answered, lifting his head up so that I could see his grin.
“Mocking me already? Sheesh.” I made an indignant noise and tilted my chin up defiantly. “You just wait, we’ll both be hailed as heroes one day. There will be statues of us in the town square, and school children will have to memorise every detail about our lives.”
“Not every detail, I hope. Some of those details are pretty X-rated,” Michael laughed merrily and dragged me into a kiss. My cheeky answer to that was muffled by his lips, just to prove his point.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Oi, Sandy!”
At that moment, I was bottoms-up under the dusty bonnet of an ancient ute, so my answer came out muffled. “What?”
“Sandy? Where the hell are you?” The voice drew closer, close enough that I could identify that it belonged to Hemi.
“In here,” I called back. Unfortunately, drawing the breath to yell meant I inhaled a good deal of dust, and ended up sneezing. By the time the fit passed, he’d found me.
“Hey, careful there.” The youth grinned impishly at me. “You’ll sprain something.”
“You’ll sprain something when I get you.” I shook my fist at him teasingly. “Anyway, what are you shouting about? I’m a little busy here.”
“I was just coming to tell you we found a truck you might be able to scavenge.” Hemi leaned around me to get a look at the old ute. I was half way through disconnecting the starter motor to replace the one that I suspected had died in the Hilux. “You already find what you need?”
“It’s all good. I have no way to test this one, so we’re better off taking a couple of spares.” I beckoned him closer, and ducked back under the bonnet. “Come help me with this one, I could use an extra set of hands.”
Hemi came over to help me out. Together, we managed to get the component free and wrapped it up in an old towel to keep the grease from getting everywhere. I put it in my backpack and shouldered it, then we headed out to go see the car he’d found.
When we arrived, I discovered a gaggle of bewildered-looking blokes standing around another old utility, with its hood raised. They were alternately scratching their heads and shooting sneaky glances at one another as they tried to figure out what they were looking at, without giving away that they were completely clueless on all things car-related.
Amused, I shouldered my way through the crowd and leaned over to inspect the engine myself. The starter motor looked fine, so I enlisted the help of a couple of strong hands to extract it. Once the component was out, I wrapped it up and added it to my pack as well, then shooed the guys back towards their bikes.
Ten minutes later, we were on the road at last. The wind streamed through my hair as I clung on to Ropata’s waist, enjoying that feeling of freedom. With the bikes at our disposal, I estimated we could be back to the Hilux by midday. Assuming things went well with the repairs, we could be home by just after sunset.
I was looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again, so much so that I could almost feel the soft pillows beneath my cheek already. Although home was wherever Michael was, there was a pleasant familiarity about our old loft that I adored.
The outskirts of Arapuni passed by in a blaze with our quad bike bouncing merrily over the dips and cracks in the road. I heard a yelp fr
om the dog and glanced back to check on him, but he seemed perfectly happy to perch in front of Hemi, panting in the wind.
We slowed as we approached the narrow roadway that passed atop the dam, but I had no time to worry. Before I quite realised where we were, we were across the far side and making our way up the slope on the far side of the river. The corpses of the men Michael had killed in self-defence still lay where they’d fallen the week before. Now, their blood had crusted over and dried, washed and baked by alternating periods of rain and hot sun.
We passed them without stopping, and angled our way up onto the long, flat expanse of road between Arapuni and the ruins of Pukeatua. The sun crept slowly higher in the sky as the kilometres fell behind us.
The sky was clear, a beautiful, breathtakingly-infinite arc of blue dusted with fluffy clouds, but the wind was cool and carried with it the bluster of early autumn. As we passed by, I suddenly realised that the forests on either side of the road had begun to take on their golden-orange coats. Another summer had passed us by, leaving me to wonder what we would do come winter.
Should we wait for spring before we began our venture? Or should we set out immediately to seek a site for our new city? As much as it saddened me, I knew that Ohaupo would not serve for my grand scheme. What we needed was somewhere larger, a bigger town or a small city. More importantly, we needed to get further away from Hamilton.
I had a gut feeling that we would see those abominations again, the living, hunting dead. I felt like we were living on a time limit. If they were determined enough, they would find us in Ohaupo, and then we would have to fight again. The future of our children – born or unborn – rested in our hands, and we couldn’t risk that anywhere less than perfect.
South seemed like a logical direction to go. I already knew the areas to avoid, so we could focus on the regions that were unknown. Though, if we could convince Anahera to join us, our combined force would be enough to give any of the gangs pause. The largest I had seen was five or six people; a potentially deadly threat to a lone female armed only with a taser and a small pistol, but not much of a problem to a dozen trained, determined, and well-equipped fighters.
The Survivors (Book 2): Autumn Page 26
