by Sabina Green
I realised that I was just on my way to have lunch with a man who’d been stalking me and my family for five years. But I was so numb from the emotional pain of the loss I was about to suffer, I barely paid any attention to it. Anyway, Mark didn’t seem at all like a dangerous person, on the contrary, he looked mild, sensitive. A total gentleman.
We reached the restaurant two blocks away. Mark opened the door for me and pointed at a table in the far corner of the room.
“Who accepted you into The Collective?” I asked when we sat down and got some water.
“Andrew,” he confirmed my suspicions, and laughed. “It went nearly the same way as with you. At first I thought he’d run away from a madhouse.”
I almost laughed, but the momentary amusement didn’t manage to reach the surface.
“How long did it take before you believed…?”
He took a deep breath and opened the menu without looking at it. “I believed it much faster than you.”
I frowned. I’d thought that despite my initial protests, however strong, it didn’t take very long to convince me at all. “How come?”
“Try to understand, Connie, I don’t have a family… I don’t have anyone to worry about or to fight for. I have nothing to lose. And as far as my parents are concerned,” he paused and there was a very pained expression on his face, “and all the others… I…”
“You want them to die,” I finished his sentence quietly.
“I guess I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, but you’re right,” he admitted. “That same evening I wanted Andrew to tell me everything.”
I couldn’t imagine anybody accepting such a horrific piece of information all at once, I was still finding it difficult. How desperate do you have to be, mentally, for the end of the world to seem attractive? I moved on to another question, just in case.
“How do the individual Collective branches communicate?”
“With difficulties,” he said, and explained how careful they have to be when emailing each other. Using pre-planned ciphers or hints. Meeting at conferences once or twice a year to synchronize all the individual plans. A shiver ran down my spine when I imagined so many people ready to die and bring about the end of the human race. I might not be humanity’s biggest fan, but I still had a sense of self-preservation.
I was about to share that thought when two elderly ladies sat down at a table next to us. That put an end to our private, whispered conversation, Mark and I couldn’t risk any secret information reaching the wrong people.
I looked down at the menu and breathed with surprise. “This is a vegan restaurant?”
He raised his eyebrows and there was a smile playing at the corners of his lips. “You’ve only noticed it now?”
I nodded. “I guess I didn’t expect you to be vegan…”
“That might be because I’m not,” he smiled. “I believe that you don’t have to be a hundred percent vegan to not hurt animals. Just imagine how different the world would be if people treated meat and dairy products as a delicacy. Demand would drop massively, and so would the supply. Maybe then breeders would start treating their animals as they should.”
We kept talking about that for a while, but soon I was overcome by a heavy, terrifying gloom. I could deal with mentions of any kind of violence, working at the station had trained me enough, but when the conversation turned to small children or animals…
I tried switching the topic to more mundane ones, even though it seemed inappropriate. How could I comment on the weather and local strawberry harvest when we were about to be hit by an apocalypse?
The light conversation at lunch was just a momentary comfort and an escape from reality. As soon as I’d walked out onto the street, fear once again dug under my skin, wrapping its tentacles around my body in an inescapable iron grip.
I headed to the station to talk to the sergeant. Originally I’d planned to cut my shifts by half, that would give me enough time in the coming weeks to prepare for our New Zealand trip. Once I got there, I changed my mind. I decided that planning with Mark was definitely going to take up a lot of my time, and I didn’t really want to spend the rest of my life among the scum at work. I wanted to be with Dad and Ruby! I took time off until further notice, informed the sergeant of my trip to the east and promised to come see him after getting back to Australia.
I’d never lied to him before, but given that everything in me was already writhing in fear, anxiety and pain, the lie didn’t feel nearly as bad as I’d expected it to. What got me onto my knees was another thing altogether. The sergeant was a great person, and so was Emma. Seeing their sad smiles, their warmth and sadness, and the rest of the scale of human emotions, made me feel incredibly guilty.
How could I not tell them anything? Not give them an opportunity to spend as much time as possible with their loved ones, and maybe even tick a few things off their bucket lists? I wanted to save their lives, but what if it meant endangering the safety of my family?
After that day I started to act a little erratic. I would often stop on the street, in a shop, at work, to stare at people’s faces. Who are you? Do you have a family? Do you love and are you loved? Are you an honourable citizen? Do you deserve to survive? Some returned my stare just as intensely, probably wondering if I was losing my marbles.
I couldn’t understand how Mark, Andrew and the others from The Collective always managed to keep calm and be so collected and reserved in public, because I was a complete mess. However hard I tried to hide my mental state from Dad, I was definitely not successful. There was no doubt that he knew something huge was up. For the first time I found myself wishing it was just cancer…
But I couldn’t waste my time sinking into depression and hiding under the blankets. Despite not feeling like it at all, I forced myself to get up early every day, spend time with Ruby, have breakfast with Dad. After that, the usual trip to see Mark and learn a little more…
I’d discovered that I was probably the only member of The Collective who has family among the survivors. Before Mark pointed it out to me, I hadn’t even considered myself to be one of them. But my knowledge of their activities and the fact that I wasn’t doing anything to stop them meant that I really did belong there. That led me to question what exactly they wanted from me. According to Mark, things would start happening even without my help, but I still felt like there was something I was supposed to do. As it turned out, I didn’t have to wait long to find out.
“There is only a limited number of the vaccines,” Mark started gently, looking at me quizzically, “but the plague itself…”
“I see,” I swallowed and felt my body stiffen with coldness that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. “There are more than enough injections with the virus.”
We were looking into each other’s eyes for a moment.
“I’m supposed to get infected in the first line, is that what you want from me?” I hated my shaking, anxious voice.
Mark nodded and I had to hold on to a wall to stay upright. Why did I not realise this sooner?
Only when I opened my eyes I realised that Mark was holding me up.
My mind was racing. How long will I be able to resist the plague before it infects me? A week, two weeks? Was I just supposed to wait for death to find me, or welcome it with open arms while being the one to eliminate a few repulsive individuals right from the start? A few familiar faces popped up in my mind, people who’d show up at the station for a signature every other day. Men and women who were receiving inadequate punishment for their despicable actions and got away with so much because of insufficient evidence. One look at them was all it took to know with absolute certainty that the person standing in front of you is anything but good.
“Okay, I’ll do it.”
Mark
I had almost expected Connie to refuse, but I was glad she’d decided to go ahead with it. I
felt bad that I hadn’t approached her sooner, but I hadn’t known she would be so willing to help.
It was obvious that she was barely holding up. She might have been aware of what was to come, but it still hit her hard to suddenly get a concrete idea of each of the steps. I wondered what she was thinking about. I assumed it was her own death and how soon it was to come, because it was on my mind too. I couldn’t bear to watch her suffering, so I quickly offered a new piece of information to distract her a little.
“I’ll soon be able to give you a vaccine for Frank and Ruby,” I told her.
Her relief was almost palpable. I hope she didn’t think I’d been lying to her about the protection of her family?
“I’ll show you how to administer it later. The needle is so thin that they’ll barely feel it, you can even do it when they’re asleep.”
She was still rubbing her temples, but at least she wasn’t staggering anymore. “Have you ever given it to anyone?”
“No,” I admitted. “Actually, I’m only telling you what our chemist and the doctor told me.”
She looked surprised. “There is a chemist in The Collective?”
“Who do you think invented the vaccine? With the help of many others, of course, but Ross was a part of it.”
“Oh yeah, I should have realised. What’s a doctor doing here?”
“We have two. One is an epidemiologist, we took her on for obvious reasons. The other is a psychiatrist. I guess you can imagine what kind of patients she’s normally looking after. It’s kind of similar to you. You’re always dealing with criminals, she’s always dealing with the mentally unstable, or mentally ill…”
She nodded and took a few seconds to digest that. “What about the others, what kinds of jobs do they have? What do they do when they’re not here?”
She probably wanted to stop thinking about the fact that one of the doctors would soon inject her with the virus. I was more than happy to provide that distraction.
“Social worker,” I pointed at myself. Then I turned to Andrew and the others seated at their desks. “Animal shelter worker. Teacher. Prison guard. Historian. Nurse. Foreign affairs journalist specialised in war zones.”
Some nodded when it was their turn, others, like Andrew, were ignoring us and getting on with their own business.
We spent some time discussing what brought each of the people to The Collective, but I didn’t think it managed to distract Connie. It all sounded depressing. But preparations for the end of the world wouldn’t be a parade.
“I also need you to write a letter…” I approached a different subject.
“A letter… to Dad? To say goodbye?”
“No, not really. For somebody else.”
“Why?”
I led her to an armchair and waited until she sank into it. “Every selected survivor has a safe house or farm around Rotorua ready for them, to wait out the plague. In absolute safety,” I emphasized. “That’s all been taken care of, The Collective has worked out many safety precautions, so you really don’t need to worry.”
“How can you influence who will go where in Rotorua?”
I shrugged. “We’re only supposed to take care of Frank and Ruby. The others will be led by other Collective branches.”
“Alright. How are you guys going to take care of Dad and Ruby?”
“Through you, of course. We’ll give you a precise place and a date when they’re supposed to get there, and you will lead them to it. You can make up a reason yourself, or we can help you, whatever you prefer.”
“Will there be space for three?”
“What do you mean?”
“At the chosen location… will there be space for Dad, Ruby and me?”
I sighed. I had to deliver yet another blow, but I was going to try to be gentle. Connie’s obvious suffering made me feel uneasy. “I don’t think you’ll make it to New Zealand, Connie.”
She straightened up quickly and her face showed alarm. “Why the hell not?”
“Because,” I started softly, “you will have work to do here. With us.” I opened my arms and pointed at the entire lounge with quietly working Association members. “We have events planned here in Perth that will need our attendance, to spread the infection as quickly as possible. The more people help with that, the better.”
She started crying. It took ages before she could mutter: “I can’t leave them. There will be events in New Zealand, I can attend those…”
“Connie… whether you get to New Zealand or not… would you really like your family to watch you die?” The blow was delivered with surgical precision. I really didn’t want to hurt her, everything in me was fighting against it, but what else could I do? Her place was here. I was almost certain that she would come to the same conclusion. After she got sick, it will only take a week before she wouldn’t be capable of travelling.
Arguing with her wouldn’t do much good, so I waited patiently until she got through another fit of crying, although it took an unusually long time.
“Mark…” she said later, her voice weak, “I really, really don’t want to die.”
“I know,” I said, my throat tight. Her every response struck a chord with me, and I felt a strong urge to hug her. I managed to control myself at the last second.
“The letter…”
“Yeah,” I focused on that. “Well, as I said, every chosen person will have their own safe location to stay in until the plague is over. To bring them all together, we’ll give them instructions in a letter. Everyone will get one. But instead of being addressed to them, it will be for another survivor.”
“Why?”
“The Collective wanted to ensure that all the survivors would be brought together. That nobody will venture outside Rotorua on their own.”
She frowned. “By giving them a letter addressed to somebody else?”
I nodded.
She seemed totally confused, and I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t really understand these instructions myself, but it wasn’t up to me to question them… Connie didn’t need to understand them, she just needed to follow them.
“Okay, I’ll write the letter,” she agreed, almost lethargic. Was she wondering what else we have in stock for her? My assumptions were proven correct right away: “I’m gonna go home now. I don’t think I can deal with any more news.”
It was my responsibility to pick up the vaccine for Connie’s family, and I had a meeting with our chemist that same evening. After Connie left my thoughts were so scattered that I almost forgot about it if Andrew hadn’t reminded me.
The exchange was supposed to take place outside of the Association premises, probably in order to avoid the company getting into trouble if anything went wrong. I had no idea what could possibly go awry. No one could figure out that there is something disturbing hiding in an ordinary briefcase. Our video had provoked some reactions after being made public, but that only lasted a few weeks. After that everything went back to normal and nobody seemed to care that much about the chaos and suffering humanity is causing in the world. For The Collective, this had served as the final confirmation that we should go ahead with our plans, while also giving us the reassurance that nobody was going to do anything to stop us.
That evening at seven o’clock I got into a car parked in front of an old hardware store. Ross, our chemist, was already waiting for me inside.
“Here you are,” he got down to business immediately and handed me the briefcase. It was small and silver and there was a lock next to the handle.
“Thanks. What’s the code?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. I just put the two vaccines in there. As far as I know, Andrew and Molly came up with the code.”
“I didn’t know that,” I admitted. Why didn’t Andrew or the doctor mention anything today? We were in the office together all morning. “I’ll ask him.”
We were sitting in silence for a while, watching the drizzle outside and the fog spreading on the car window.
“Ross,” I finally dared to say. “Do you ever think about what it’s gonna be like when… the epidemic starts?”
He cleared his throat. “I’m trying not to. I want it to happen and I’m terrified of it at the same time.”
It wasn’t common for The Collective members to share their feelings about the plague and their own death. But when we did, we had our psychiatrist there. She could guide us through whatever emotion we had, calm us down, support us. Or write a prescription. It was a tad amusing that we were prescribed anxiety or depression relieving medication by someone who was planning to commit a suicide attack in the near future.
“Me, too.” I’d made my peace with it, and at the same time I was still having anxiety attacks, more and more frequently as The Day approached. Also, now there was another factor…
I disliked admitting it to myself but it felt like I’d succumbed to weakness or something. When did I first realise that I like Connie? That I like her a lot? She was so incredibly feminine, gentle and strong at the same time, with a heart that could carry the entire world. I enjoyed watching the evidence of her devotion to her family. I was thinking about her more and more. It made me happy whenever she came to see me. And when she was leaving, I was ready to do anything that would make her stay with me just a little bit longer. After she’d left, I couldn’t wait to see her again.
When we’d had lunch today in the vegan restaurant, even though Connie was pretty upset, it almost reminded me of a normal life. The kind I’ve never had but always craved. I wanted to have lunch with her every day. I had to basically force myself to keep talking about The Collective’s plans, while wanting so much to talk about anything else.
I sighed and turned to Ross. “Do you ever have any doubts?”
“How’d you mean?” he asked and kept looking ahead. “If we’re doing the right thing? I have no doubts about that. If I’m ready to die? I guess…”
