It took all my self-control not to run over to our house. I forced myself to crouch down again. I would have to wait until Steve and his people had gone. Then, and only then would it be feasible to go and take a look.
Alice! Yuki! Nin! Please, please let them be okay down there! Please!!
I almost choked with fury and anxiety for them.
Soon, the cloud of dust settled and relief washed over me. The damage to our house wasn’t that bad. There were some gaping holes in the walls, yes, but our house was still standing.
What a relief! Burying my head in my arms, I took some deep breaths. They were safe! After all, the bomb shelter as well as the sub-basement had been constructed to survive a direct hit by a bomb. Everything had obviously withstood this explosion. What a relief!
And the fire that the men had tried to lit hadn’t taken off, too! Too little fuel probably. Or maybe everything was just too wet after the raining of before. Or, more likely, the blast of the explosion had extinguished whatever flames there had been in the first place? Whatever, I was just tremendously relieved that only so little damage had been done to our house.
What would Steve do next now?
Through my binoculars I saw him standing there, an evil, almost mad laugh on his face. He aimed his pistol at our house, pulled the trigger and emptied the entire magazine like a madman.
His men stood by watching; some laughing, but most just looking bored.
As he was done, he walked to his car and retrieved a little container. Then he walked back to the house, bent to pick up what looked like a piece of wood and sprayed something onto it.
I couldn’t make out what he was writing; but his men obviously found it hugely entertaining coz they were almost doubling up with laughter. Finally, Steve stood back from the house, threw the spray away and barked something at his men. Everybody got back into the cars and they all drove away.
So that was it? That was the full wrath of Steve’s hate? A bit of raving and ranting, some explosions, a bit of shooting around and depositing some messages?
A bit ridiculous, really.
I had seen some of his men snigger at his ineffectiveness.
Ah well, it was none of my concern – as long as Steve didn’t come back. I was sure, that Steve had completed his work of destruction here. He wouldn’t return. He obviously had been allowed to try to get us once and had fails. Maybe he wouldn’t be allowed to further search for us. After all, hadn’t the man called Chris indicated yesterday, that Steve couldn’t just do as he pleased?
I remained sitting there under that fir tree the entire afternoon. Watching our house, checking and rechecking everything with my binoculars every now and then. Not that I expected to see anything. It was just strangely reassuring to sit there and watch over our house. That way, I felt close to Alice, Nin and Yuki.
I was sure that they were safe inside. Surely, they must have heard the noise of the explosion. But Yuki must by now have told Nin about her pregnancy. This would make them be cautious, wouldn’t it? Plus, they knew about Steve now. That he was trying to kill us. Surely, they must have figured out that now wasn’t the time to venture out the sub-basement and have a look.
For a while I agonized whether to go and check that they hadn’t come out or to stay put. The thought that I might have caught the pathogen yesterday or the day before, and would therefore be highly contagious and dangerous to them, made me refrain from this plan. It was safer to watch from far. I had to trust that they were safe. I just had to trust that all was well. Anything else was unfathomable, anyway.
I kept up my watch over the house until it was too dark to see anything anymore. During the entire afternoon there hadn’t been a sound of human presence, neither close or far away. I had been utterly alone, safe for some birds and cats that I had seen. Toward dusk, some rabbits, which must have escaped from somewhere, hopped onto the meadow between our house and the tree I sat under. I was beautiful to watch them hop around, graze a bit, chase each other and, generally, just enjoying life.
Finally, when it was too dark to see anything, I stood up and slowly walked back over to the barn. I forced myself to eat something even though I felt depressed and emotionally absolutely exhausted.
Unable and unwilling to agonize over Alice, Yuki and Nin; praying for their well-being, I huddled into my straw nest, and fell asleep quickly. And strangely, no nightmares this time.
Chapter 11 – the vigil
7th to 17th April 2072
The next ten days I spent in a strange kind of vigil.
Every morning I ate a little something, washed myself as well as I could in the little fountain by the barn, combed my ever more tangled up hair in a braid and set out to the fir tree, my by now familiar outlook over our house. I would huddle against the trunk of that big tree and sit there the whole day, watching our house, the surroundings, listening for sounds of human presence, but there was never anything.
On day five, I heard an airplane taking off from down by the airport.
I had almost been falling asleep at the time, and the sound of an engine starting up jolted me awake, instantly alert and tense. The by now usual panic at the sound of humans surged up in me, but quickly abated once I realized that the sound came from far away. I would have loved to know who flew this plane and where – Steve or somebody else from the Nemesis? Or could it have been other survivors? I wondered about it for quite some time, but couldn’t decide who it might have been.
Steve never came back. I had expected this, but somehow it also surprised me. And it made me wonder. Was this a trap? Could Steve be more cunning than I had given him credit for? Or had he concluded, as I had hoped he would, that we’d gone for good and that it wasn’t worthwhile to wait for us here?
If the latter were true, all I’d have to do was wait it out and then go home.
Could it be that simple?
The way I knew Steve, his thinking was pretty much straight forward, of the rather pedestrian variety. He was vain and conceited, yes, and had what one could call low cunning. But I doubted very much that he’d be able to come up with any kind of intricate plan; let alone discover one being played out in front of him.
But then, my plan hadn’t been that complicated either, had it?
Of course, he knew nothing about the sub-basement and our safe-haven.
But shouldn’t he guess that we might still prefer to be here in our familiar surroundings than elsewhere? Especially since we were on our own?
Unless he thought that we had gone somewhere else entirely. Then, of course, he wouldn’t expect us to stick it out here.
But where could he think we were going? For sure he wouldn’t suspect us to try for the States. After all, how could we with all the planes down? I knew I had mentioned Kenya, Phil and Kamene, their home there once or twice. I remembered how Alice had once told him at length how much she liked Kenya, camping out in the wilderness, life in the bush and all. But none of us had ever mentioned Blue-Hill-farm.
Still, was it possible that Steve thought we were on our way to Kenya? That would be both good and bad. On the plus side, he would search us somewhere where we weren’t yet. On the negative side, should he find out that we weren’t already on our way to Kenya, he might either come back straight here, or he might try to waylay us. Both could be potentially very dangerous for us.
But there was also the chance, and from what the man called Chris had said, it was more than just a chance, rather a distinct possibility, that Steve had had his chance at getting us, had failed and couldn’t pursue us just as he liked. That would definitely be the best thing to have happen.
The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that this was just how things had played out with Steve.
Of course, I might be deceiving myself here. Was this just wishful thinking on my part, or a fairly good guess at what really had happened?
I spent hours thinking about this; sometimes panic surging up within me at the thought of what might happen should Steve co
me back while we were inside the sub-basement; sometimes just coolly dissecting the problem.
If I wasn’t thinking about this, my mind was focused on Alice, Yuki and Nin. I agonized for hours about the possibility that they might have been harmed in some way by Steve’s attempt to blow up our house.
My mind instinctively shied away from this train of thought. It was unfathomable that they could have been seriously harmed in any way. This just mustn’t be! Alice must be alive and well! Yuki and Nin had to have their chance at a happy life together! They must! It just had to be like that! Anything else was utterly unbearable.
I don’t see myself as the melodramatic type; I usually tackled problems head on, analysing the pros and cons of things, factoring in alternative plans b, c and d.
But now, the mere thought of my sister, my brother or Yuki hurt, maybe dead, made me weep like a baby. I whispered promises of what I would do or never do again, if only they were safe and unharmed.
Please, please!
At times, I spent hours thinking about our past; mostly about Alice. How it had been when she had been born, how she’d been as a baby, as a toddler. How I missed the things I had never witnessed but only heard from Mum’s vivid accounts, because at the time I had been away. How wonderful these last couple of months with Alice had been. How much more I had come to love her, now that I had spent so much time with her. I didn’t just feel the love and responsibility of an elder sister; instead my entire being was somehow tuned to her needs; her well-being, safety and happiness being of utmost priority to me.
I also thought a lot about Nin and Yuki; their love for each other, their treasured friendship with me. There wasn’t a person who knew more about me than Yuki or Nin. Yuki, because I trusted her implicitly and had shared many very private thoughts with her; Nin, because we had always been very close and were utterly acquainted with each other’s every virtue and flaw.
Often, I felt lonely, so lonely! I longed for their company and time seemed to pass agonizingly slow.
Then again, I made plans how to set about getting back into the house once my vigil was over. I would go over to the house, make my way through it down to the sub-basement. I would knock the agreed-upon signal on the door, they’d open the door and then … But it always stopped there. Too afraid that something might have gone wrong, I couldn’t envisage their reaction.
And another thought to agonize over: what if the way to the sub-basement had somehow been blocked by that explosion Steve had triggered? And I wouldn’t be able to reach them; nor they to get out! Another unthinkable eventuality I dissected and mulled over for hours on end.
It wasn’t just these thoughts and worries that kept me busy during those hours of silent vigil.
To distract myself from the panic over Nin, Yuki and Alice, I wondered where Uncle Phil, Auntie Kamene, Mum, Nate, the twins and all the other people on the boat could possibly be by now. I never worried about their safety and well-being. I was absolutely convinced that they were as safe as was possible. What with Uncle Phil as their guardian and pilot.
He was, after all, famous for his meticulous and careful planning of everything and anything he ever did. He had taught me to always have a back-up plan ready. His ability to foresee almost any possible and impossible eventuality was legendary. He’d never told or shown us, but I was sure that we weren’t bound for Blue-Hill-Farm just because of its remote location in the wilderness of the Kenyan bush, but because he must have equipped it over the years with everything needed for it to be a long term safe haven for our entire family.
We only had to get there.
Then life, a completely different life from the one we had known until just some days ago, but a life which would be safe, challenging but safe, could ensue.
How I longed to be there soon!
And, how I dreaded the journey there!
When I wasn’t thinking about my family, I spent hours upon hours listening for anything that might reveal the presence of other human beings. I didn’t dare scout around the area yet, though I was itching to have a look; but it was too early, the pathogen might still be around and potent enough to kill.
Instead I sat and listened for hours on end; scanned my surroundings with my binoculars. And, of course, I was scared! Lonely and terrified!
Several times I heard dogs barking in the distance as if chasing something. I wondered what they were after, but what worried me most was the idea of them heading my direction. If they did, they could easily find me. The trail from the barn to the fir tree, which I was using daily, would quickly reveal my scent and my presence. I only hoped that for the time being they found it easier to scavenge for food within the city and wouldn’t venture my direction.
Other than that I didn’t see much wildlife about.
Down in the flood plain of the river valley, I saw some cattle wandering about. Somebody must have released them from their stables. They had plenty of grass to feed on the meadows down there. I saw many calves with them. Good! Still, seeing them in this relative idyllic scenery, made me wonder how many more must have perished, locked up their stables, without food or water, when their human owners had died!
The horses which had been house on the farm, in whose barn I was staying, had disappeared. Had they been killed? Or had the owners taken them with them when they’d left? Whatever, I was more than glad that I needn’t worry about what to do with them.
And cats! I saw lots of them. For them, to survive now that their human servants had gone, must be easy. There were enough small mammals and birds around that they could hunt. And most of them were born hunters anyway. Not like dogs, that might find it difficult to adjust, once the easy scavenging was over.
Birds, lots of them, were around day in and day out. In the evenings I often saw the rabbits and sometimes they were joined by deer. Several times, I saw foxes passing by. Had it not been for all the dead humans, it would have been beautiful and idyllic to see so much wildlife so close to or even in that big city.
On day eight, I was jolted out of my daydreaming under the fir tree by the sound of cars approaching!
Because sounds carried much, much further in this new world now, I could hear the cars from far away. And it took a little while, until I could see them. They passed on the nearby highway, a convoy of army vehicles, mostly open trucks. I counted five trucks, two four-by-fours and several motor bikes. But the people in the vehicles didn’t look like regular army. They wore no uniforms, just dark clothes. And they had weapons, plenty of weapons from what I could glimpse. It didn’t take me long to conclude that this had been Nemesis-people. After all, who else would dare move about in such an open way?
Still, that there had been so many of them, kind of shocked me. Somehow I had assumed that they were just a small organization, a couple of people, a handful of idiots. But this now, plus the incident down by the river seemed to indicate otherwise. They seemed to be more and better organized than I had imagined. But, if their numbers were bigger than I’d thought, how were we to escape and find a safe way to Kenya? And, even more importantly, how was Josh going to get here without running into them somewhere?
Josh!
As much as I had avoided thinking about him before, while I had to plan about how to deal with Steve, my thoughts now centred on him almost as much as on Alice.
How I wished to know whether he was safe!
Were he and Nin still able to communicate? On a daily basis? Had he been told about my stint? How had he taken it?
Here, I turned the thought around: how would I have reacted upon learning that he’d done what I had? That was easy: I’d have gone crazy! Not to know where the person you love had gone, not to hear from him for days, knowing he’d gone to face our worst and most direct enemy, it would have driven me crazy!
But, did Josh feel for me the same way I did for him? And, what did I feel for him exactly? Was it love? Just a crush? Something else?
I had been fascinated by him, no doubt about that, when I’d met him at K
amene’s place.
The way he had of relating to people, so much more open than I could ever be, and yet very private, had moved me to the core. His smile and laughter, his gentleness with everyone, the deep intelligence shining through in everything he did and said!
Of course, I couldn’t have helped falling in love with him!
Straightaway and head over heels I had fallen for him. But I had kept quiet, because the idea that he might find me attractive, too, had seemed so ludicrous. After all, there were hundreds of girls, women, with better looks and more credentials to recommend themselves than I had, weren’t there? Back then, it had seemed impossible that he might feel something for me.
But now, somehow, things had changed.
Despite the horror around us, the fact that we were alone now in a world entirely alien, populated by an unknown number of survivors and an equally unknown number of enemies, who were intend on hunting us down and killing us, I suddenly I didn’t care any longer about other, more attractive choices Josh might have. Now, I knew I belonged to him. Why? I didn’t know? But the undeniable truth of this thought felt exhilarating.
Did Josh have butterflies fluttering inside, too, when he thought of me?
The few words he’d said on 17th March had hinted at that he might feel a lot for me; more than just friendship anyway. And Yuki had thought so too, even though she didn’t know Josh in person. And Yuki was usually spot on when it came to judging people.
Wishful thinking on my part, or the truth?
It felt like turning and twisting a ball in my head, trying to have a look at it from every angle. Contemplating every possibility. Where, actually, only one counted. I loved Josh. And hopefully, possibly, he loved me too.
After the motor cascade on day eight, my inner antenna turned. I was now utterly focused on going back inside. Back to Alice, Yuki and Nin.
Lia's files 1_Presumed extinct Page 19