Blue

by Brandy Wehinger

  But then Katie was there, rescuing me. At first I was terrified and thought she was pushing the Deads aside so she could eat me herself. But Blues aren’t like that. Nobody seems to know this, not even our teachers. Blues are more like us than we realise — thinking, dreaming, talking. She guarded me and led me back to Desert Camp.

  I’m not really sure why I did it, probably because I was curious, or maybe because I’m sick of Desert Camp and wanted some time out of there, but I asked Katie if I could see her again. And since then we’ve been meeting up each day. Life outside the confines of the colonies is amazing! There is so much to see, so much to do.

  Katie has grey eyes like the dark pearls Mother wears. Her skin is very smooth and soft, and kind of a dusky violet colour, and she has long black hair the colour of ink. It might sound ugly, and it took a little while to get used to, but then she just started to look normal to me. Blues don’t smell bad or ooze like the others that are infected.

  I’ve told her all about you and she wants to meet you someday. Maybe the two of you can talk about the books you like to read. She has hundreds of books and I’m pretty sure she has read them all. Still, I don’t know when I’ll see you again. If Mother doesn’t try to kill me, the Leaders will surely put me in jail. I want you to know that I’m safe and I’m really happy. But I’m scared of losing you as my sister. Our parents were never the most nurturing people. Beth and us kids were the real family. Please, Rose, try to understand. I love you.

  Love, Elliot

  P. S. Please don’t mention this letter to ANYONE. Not even Oscar.

  ROSE, winter, 61 A. Z.

  Dear Diary,

  I received a letter from my brother today and have no idea what to think. I don’t really understand what he means, but I feel that he might be in danger. I’m trying to hide my crying from everyone because I think what he told me should be kept a secret. Beth can tell I’m acting weird, but I just said I was tired.

  What do I do? I want to tell Oscar and find out what he thinks, but Elliot specifically asked that I not talk to anyone. And the truth is I’m not sure what a Blue really is — but then I’ve never seen a regular Dead either. At school we’re told not even to talk about them. They don’t concern us and they are strictly an adult topic. As if that stops us! We just wait until no adults are around. Half of what we say is only guesswork, though — we barely know anything!

  I’m scared for Elliot. What if Katie, the Blue he’s with, bites him? What’s going to happen when Mother and Father find out, which surely they will? I wish you were a real person, Diary. I really need someone to talk to right now.

  ROSE, winter, 61 A. Z.

  Dear Diary,

  Mother and Father have been in the lounge for the last two hours. I heard Mother yelling, ‘We’re ruined! That fool of a son has ruined it all!’ I heard something break, and then I heard father mutter. I think he was trying to calm her down. What does she mean by saying Elliot ‘ruined it all’? I’m so confused, especially since two other Leaders came to the house to speak to Father. That’s really serious. I know Elliot has run off with an Infected and that’s dangerous, but shouldn’t it be just our family’s concern?

  When Father first told Mother, she actually hugged herself and fell to the floor. Then she frantically ran her hands through her hair, pulling out pins, and grabbing little bits of hair until her immaculate beehive was a tangled ball of orange fluff. Father tried to pick her up, but her legs were weak and she swung like a rag doll pinned to his side. It scared me. She’s supposed to be an elegant, restrained and proper lady.

  My sister is red-faced and pacing in her room. When I asked her why everyone seemed to be overreacting, Jenny said, ‘Rose, Elliot has messed up and has tainted our family.’ Then I asked her how, and why others would care. It’s our brother who’s in danger, not theirs!

  Jenny sighed and said, ‘We are Leaders. Ours is the family to look up to, the example of how to behave. We make the rules, so if even we can’t follow them, why should others?’

  Jenny is moody and pessimistic by nature, but something in the way she spoke sounded true. She looked at me for a while, then she pulled me to the window and made me look out to where a group of Growers were carefully tending to the rooftop vegetable gardens. ‘Do you see all the people out there, Rose? They all go about their work and lives each day because they believe they are part of a community that makes them and their families safe.’ She pointed to the ground below. ‘Down there is desolation, a wasteland, Corpses and danger. It is no place to live. We survive by staying up here and working together. But people need Leaders to do that. Our father is that Leader. Now that Elliot has broken one of the most fundamental rules of our society, all those people who look to us, believe in us, will start to question Father’s leadership.’ Then Jenny grabbed both my hands, pulled me to her and cried. Jenny, who has gone out of her way to push me away, actually wanted me for comfort. It felt really good. The last time we were friends was before Jenny became a teenager.

  If what she said is true, then what will become of us? Father can’t just change the rules for our family. But what about Elliot? I’m worried about him.

  CHRIS, winter, 61 A. Z.

  THE GREY-HAIRED COUNCILLOR looked over at the City’s Leader and spoke slowly. ‘This is a most unfortunate thing that has happened, Christopher. Your family has been blighted by your son’s actions and there is no way of disguising the fact. People are talking, questioning your house, your leadership.’

  Chris pulled the sleeves of his robes back from his forearms and placed his palms on the table in front of him. He looked at the men sitting across from him and leaned forward. It was obvious that he had spent his life as a Leader — he was demanding, charismatic and persuasive. The men fell quiet, even though they had the upper hand.

  Chris knew that the Grand Council Leaders would happily remove him from power, that they would accept the comforts and prestige that ultimate leadership brought. He knew that he would have to choose his words carefully while he presented his case or he would be thrown out. It pained him to set forth this plan, but it was the only way to show the settlements that his laws were righteous and unbending.

  ‘Good men of this council, my son is a fool and obviously mentally incompetent. We shall treat him as such. His folly and blatant defiance of the law will be met with an unequivocal punishment. This will send an example to the communities as to our commitment to order, duty and law.’

  Knowing the meaning and significance of his words, the councilmen stared at Chris. The room was silent, as if already gathering up the darkness of the coming storm. Chris knew that the old councilmen, having spent a lifetime carefully sculpting society and crafting laws, were eager to finally stretch the fingers of their authority and see their law in action. If they couldn’t remove Chris from power, then they would happily settle for his son’s blood. But ultimately, Chris would make them do as he asked.

  Notice to the people of Tree Sanctuary

  The Council Leaders request that if Elliot Grosvenor is seen in your settlement, he be immediately seized and retained.

  This demand has been set forth because Elliot Grosvenor is guilty of the following crimes

  1) associating with the Infected

  2) abandoning his duties

  3) failing his commitments to his betrothed

  He is 180 cm tall, auburn-haired and blue-eyed. Any sightings of the fugitive should be immediately reported to the guards of your settlement.

  Your help with this situation is appreciated.

  The Council of Leaders

  MEMOIRS OF J. DING, 61 A. Z.

  DESPITE THE PLAGUE of Zombies that has crippled the human race, killed most of my family and been a constant threat in my life, I have survived to become this reminiscing grey-haired old man. Though much of my energy has been used up in the daily hardships of survival, in my twilight years, I’ve found enough luxury and respite to turn some of my focus back to the pursuits of my youth. The academi
c endeavours that consumed me as a young man, which I have always cherished and tried to employ throughout the rebuilding of society, have, unfortunately, never progressed as I once believed they would.

  I earned my MD and PhD from top universities, in the hope of becoming an innovative, even brilliant, pathologist. My sweet and lovely wife was equally as passionate about her place in the medical profession and her research on post-operative biomarkers. Both of us were at that precious point in our careers where we were gaining credibility, publishing, and presenting to large groups of our peers. The future looked so promising. After so many years as a poor student, reliant on what my wife earned as a doctor in a busy intensive-care unit, I’d begun to add to our bank account. We were even able to purchase a stylish two-storey home, drive fairly new European vehicles, and take wonderful holidays abroad.

  But all that ended. I remember the first time I heard about the Plague. Impossible, I thought. Preposterous. The dead simply did not rise up and begin to walk about.

  Even when I saw the news clips from Australia of Zombies with their awkward gait and grey skin, I did not believe. News came of that country being completely overrun with them, all of its major cities — Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide — being destroyed. And still I did not believe.

  I will never forget the news footage of Xoe Dirge, possibly the first infected by the disease. She was treated, or rather confined to a hospital, in the northern city of Darwin. A pale, baby-doll-faced girl with long brown hair, dressed in a pink nightdress splattered with blood. She paced within her padded room, growling and rushing at the windows, where news photographers and spectators had gathered. She was a ‘Variant’, which is what the media later labelled the faster-moving, more animal-like manifestation of the Zombie disease. Images of her circulated around the world, and we watched with horror her misfortune. We didn’t know what her escape would bring — the destruction of everything we knew and loved.

  Throughout the beginnings of the Plague’s spread, I remained strangely unbelieving. I was sceptical even as my own country was invaded, as the city imposed curfews, the airports shut down, the entire world panicked. Only when Josey, my lovely raven-haired wife, was bitten did I truly believe these monsters existed.

  I miss you, Josey. Even after this long time. I wish I had spent more of this life with you. My beautiful wife, so concerned for humanity. You went back to help at the hospital when you heard that most of the staff had abandoned the patients. You said, ‘They’ve just left them, even the people needing ventilators! The charge nurse called me, crying. She said she hadn’t been home in four days and hadn’t slept for forty-eight hours. There are only two nurses left to staff the entire intensive-care unit. They need help.’

  I kissed you before you left. At least I did that. When I saw you again, you were no longer Josey. That brilliant spark of life was gone — I knew it as soon as I saw those milky, unrecognising eyes. So many years I’ve lamented not going with you that day to the hospital, protecting you, being there for you.

  I am an old man now, eighty-eight years old, and much has happened since then. Looking back at my life when I was a young man feels a bit like trying to remember an old movie, slightly disconnected and blurry.

  After the Zombies came, humans were forced to alter the structure of society, change their norms. I ended up here in Tree Sanctuary amongst the beautiful pines, ferns and simple way of life.

  In my forties, I met Charlotte, the second love of my life. Ten years younger than me, but so compatible was my Charlotte! We had a short but wonderful life together in our tree house. Charlotte died in labour with our third son, Andrew. The boys are adults now, all of them healthy and well, with children of their own.

  I wept the first time I held my granddaughter, Delilah. Delicate skin, tiny fists punching into the air, a defiant expression, my own almond eyes and black hair. I thought, I have been a survivor and so will this child be. Truly I have become sentimental in my old age!

  But what now? Things are changing again. There are whispers spreading throughout the colonies: problems amongst the Leaders and civil unrest. Humanity has only tentatively held onto this world. The luxury of being able to waste energy on fighting and bickering has never been ours. Unfortunately, perhaps now it is.

  LUKAS, autumn, 61 A. Z.

  AFTER A FEW days of doing nothing but mostly sleeping in a pile of dusty, moth-eaten quilts, Lukas decided to continue moving. The storm had broken, and the sun was shining through the cracked windows, as if urging him to get up. He rose, and rifled through the wardrobes once more, until he found another set of ill-fitting clothes — a baggy grey tee-shirt and shorts he imagined had once belonged to the old man in the family photos on the cottage walls.

  He rummaged through the kitchen, taking bits and pieces that might be useful: a knife and a small metal bowl, a hammer and nails. He threw them into a backpack he had found in one of the children’s rooms. The bag was black with the image on it of a blue-haired man in a skin-tight red and blue suit, a tiny cape flared out behind his massively muscled shoulders. Lukas wondered who he was and what significance he held for the backpack’s first owner, probably a child, now dead for at least sixty years. Perhaps he was a good man, a leader, somebody righteous or amazing enough that a child would admire him.

  Lukas had never been so close to artefacts from the old world. The world before the Deads that Mr Ding, his old school teacher, described to him seemed fictional: millions of busy people moving about however they liked, unafraid of being attacked by a Corpse, concerned with entirely different problems from the ones Lukas knew. They spent a lot of time communicating with each other — at least that’s what Mr Ding said. They used little metal rectangles to talk through and send pictures to one another almost constantly, and they watched stories on larger flat rectangles. Lukas wondered what people back then thought was so important that they had to talk to each other about it all the time.

  Mr Ding said they could store thousands of books’ worth of information in a box the size of a piece of bread, and that almost every home contained at least one of these boxes. Maybe Mr Ding had dreamed that up and had mistakenly remembered it as being true? It just didn’t make sense to Lukas because first, it would be impossible to put so much into such a little space, and second, how did anyone have the time to look at all those things? After a day of digging holes, planting, clearing brush and hauling water to his orchard’s less-established trees, Lukas was always exhausted. Any leftover energy went into his other day-to-day chores — and, of course, to courting the beautiful Zhee.

  He felt a stab of pain at the memory of her — radiant, delicate Zhee. A life with her would have been better than anything he could dream of now. He would have tended the trees, she would have continued to make the ceramics for the colony, and then one day, if they were lucky, they would have had children. But all of that was gone.

  Lukas sagged against the wall and closed his eyes. Tears ran down his face, and he hugged himself with his arm.

  He needed to pull himself together. Lukas opened his eyes and tried to calm himself by studying the room around him. It was a child’s room, decorated for a long-dead little boy. This child’s life had been taken from him just as Lukas’s life had been stolen from him.

  Actually, I am still here, Lukas thought. Infected, yes, but not dead like this child.

  Lukas stood up and wiped his face.

  HELEN, winter, 61 A. Z.

  HELEN SANTOS KNEW herself to be a practical woman. Raising three boys, working as Tree Sanctuary’s only healer (with occasional help from Mr Ding), and fulfilling her duties as a wife occupied all of her time. The day-to-day activities of life satisfied her, sometimes even gave her great joy. But since her dealings with the patient Lukas — and her secrecy in releasing him — a small burden had settled on her soul.

  She worried about him: alone, friendless and in constant peril. The harvest festival had come and gone, and winter had set in. The cold rain they had been having would soon
turn to snow and the ground would become frozen. His chances of survival were surely slim.

  Helen had also begun worrying about the new rules around marriage, which were dictated by the Leaders in the far-off City. She was dismayed that her sons would never know the beauty of unexpected romance. The Leaders had justified the laws by saying they would prevent inbreeding and unite the colonies, and had successfully worked in many cultures throughout history. This was all logical, yes, but it just felt bizarre to her.

  In a year from now, her son Joaquin would be married to a girl from another settlement. It seemed impossible. The two of them had never met and yet, according to the law, they must commit to a life with one another. Helen remembered sitting with Joaquin and telling him about the arrangement. His father had pulled him in, hugged him and told him it wouldn’t be all bad. Joaquin had nodded his head, accepting.

  Helen had asked him not to speak to his brothers about the arrangement of the marriage. Better to let them grow up a little without knowing the limits of their life. But perhaps this was a mistake. Maybe it was better to give them time to accept and grow into their destiny?

  She knew she was procrastinating. Her boys were intelligent and listened to the adults speaking amongst themselves. She knew, too, that children talk. Perhaps she should have the inevitable discussion sooner rather than later.

  JESSY, spring, 62 A. Z.

  Dear Xavier,

  I wish I was back at Tree Sanctuary. I want to take my horse from here and ride back as quick as I can. When I get there, you and your brothers could help me build a strong fence around a paddock to keep Bob safe. We’d have to make him some kind of shelter, too, but the fencing is more important at first. This is all I think about. I know I can’t really leave here. I’m trapped in this crummy desert and I hate almost everyone here. This place is stupid and these people are mean.