The route was pretty quiet apart from the odd stranded car (and odd stranded thing) to dodge in the road, but as this area is mainly a holiday destination and it was the middle of the school term, there wasn’t much happening. By the time Rita awoke we were halfway to Nelspruit and had filled up the bus with petrol at an eerily deserted petrol station along the way. We stocked up on the limited food and drinks that they had there as the convenience store which I had hoped we could stop at was swarming with things, and Sammie, my angel, I hope you believe me when I say that I tried to call you from the back office of the petrol station. Obviously, as I am sure you will have guessed, I had no luck. The phones were down and they have been all the way from Hoedspruit.
Rita directed us from there as she had been this way “a million times” she said, and as we neared Nelspruit and saw a rise in the number of hungry looking people in the streets (and cars, lots of them – overturned, crashed, empty), she took us the back roads through the least populated parts of the city. Her sister, who decided to stay in the area where she was born, as opposed to Rita who was now based in Cape Town, luckily still lived on the family plot outside of town.
When we turned into the driveway, after making sure that there was no-one in sight, Rita broke down. I think it was purely due to the fear of her sister being dead. I had the same feelings about you my love… The tears started coming harder as we pulled up to the front of the house, but that was because she could see her brother-in-law peeking out the front window. Her sister, Anne, opened the door and cautiously let us in after making sure through the security gate that we were ‘fine’.
Anne and her husband, Gordon, graciously let us clean up and spend the night with them – being on the outskirts of town we were relatively safe and only had one interested visitor who Corne took care of with one shot. They had heard a radio broadcast that morning, before losing all their TV, radio and phone signals, saying that Bloemfontein would be used as a “halfway house” for the survivors of what the news was calling an “advanced and sophisticated terrorist attack”. After a decent sleep, again guarding the house in shifts, but with more people this time, we decided to leave at first light for Bloem. Rita, Anne and Gordon, however, not through a lack of us trying, were going to try hold out where they were as long as they could so that they could give their father a fighting chance of making it to them from his retirement home in Knysna.
So at 5:45am we climbed back into the bus, with some tinned food from Anne as well as seven or eight two litre Coke bottles filled with water, and headed in the general direction of Bloemfontein. And that’s where things are at right now with me… There have been some hair-raising episodes so far, with one of them almost getting into the bus one night while we slept just outside of Standerton (Corne had fallen asleep during his shift) and Lourens blew the thing’s head apart, meaning that we spent the next day cleaning bits of brain and fragments from its skull from the bus – seriously gross but better than being dead, I suppose.
We have bumped into a lot of other things along the way – they are horrible Sammie – like things you see in your nightmares. They are like us. They look like us too. But they are so far away from being like us that it is scary. I wonder what’s happening my babe?
We have seen a few groups of other ‘normal’ people too, and some of them have also told us about this whole Bloemfontein thing, while we have told others about it too. (How weird is this? I actually bumped into a girl I used to go to school with who was on her way from Witbank to Bloemfontein with her fiancé and his family – what a small world! Wasn’t the easiest situation to try and catch up in – there was one of the things that had just been shot by them at our feet, but it was nice to see her anyways. A bit surreal though). We have tried to follow a couple of groups in convey along the way, but it just doesn’t work out – people have to stop for supplies while others just want to move one – some have to take detours to try find loved one and friends and other times you just need to stop and freshen up while other groups want to push on towards Bloem. I guess there is safety in numbers, but to tell you the honest truth Sam, I haven’t felt safe for… well, since I heard Harold on the radio that day.
Okay my love, I better go. The internet café that I am at is in the centre of town and it is starting to get dark. We haven’t seen any of them since we arrived in this shithole (excuse the French) but I don’t want to put any of the others at risk. I love you with every fibre of my being and can’t wait to be with you again. Please take great care of yourself my Sammie – I couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to you.
All my love – forever more. We’ll get through this together.
Your Lily
I still cannot tell you how grateful I am that Lily’s is okay – it is still surreal, and that is a word which I have heard so many times since the start of all of this. Nothing seems real, does it?
Have a good evening all of you out there. Enjoy the rest of your Monday! (PS. I had to check the calendar to see what the day was yesterday – haven’t done that for ages. When I saw that it was a Sunday I had a flashback to my days of school. Sunday was always a great, relaxing day around our house. And we all used to watch the Sunday night movie on M-net as a family. But one thing that always put me in a bad mood on Sunday evenings was when I heard the Carte Blanche theme tune (an investigative journalism programme on South African TV – a 7pm, Sunday night staple for many years). That used to indicate to me that the weekend was coming to a close and I would have to go to school again the next day. I remember that vividly. Come to think of it, this whole thing would be the exact sort of state of affairs that Carte Blanche would have investigated…)
Take care
Sam W
11:52am, August 4
I just had to pop on to tell you this. I just had myself the juiciest, tastiest tomato that I have ever eaten! And it was still green! I just couldn’t help myself – I needed to taste something fresh, something grown, something of the earth. I have been dreaming about it for the last week! I also had two leaves of lettuce (if you call them that?) Oh. My. Word. I am the best gardener in the world. I just had to tell you that.
It is getting warmer and warmer by the day. I am in shorts and a T-shirt as I sit here and type this. And with the warmth, eventually will come rain. And with the rain, I’ll eventually head to Bloemfontein. And when I get to Bloemfontein I will see Lil again. The way I feel now, this whole thing will be worth it if I get to hold her again, even if it’s just for a minute.
Take care
Sam W
6:36pm, August 5
Have to tell you that I just had the most amazing onion and mayo supper. That’s all.
Sam W
3:15pm, August 8
Hey! It’s raining! Not much, but I suppose you could call this the first summer rainfall… I doubt that it is going to rain long enough for me to drive to Bloemfontein, but at least it’s a good sign for things to come.
In the meantime, in preparation for my road trip – now that Lil has got in touch and is heading to Bloemfontein herself, I am getting seriously excited – I have been collecting petrol for the R8. First I went down to the rubbish collection spot in the complex. Then I went straight back to my place to get something to block my nose – it seriously stinks – I knew it would smell bad but I couldn’t believe how horrible it actually was. So I went back with a soccer sock, one of those long ones, tied around my face, which didn’t make too much difference, and searched amongst the rubbish for two litre Coke bottles – I managed to find 12 of them.
After a quick but thorough wash I was back out in the complex, trusty nail gun at my side. This time though I was out to siphon some petrol. I cut a metre long piece of hose from one of the ground floor units and headed to the first car. I’d never done it before but kind of recalled from hearing about people doing it that you just give a good suck once the hose is in the petrol tank and gravity and centrifugal forces and other stuff that I have no idea what they are, does the
rest.
So I was pretty confident when I got the petrol cap of a white Hyundai Tuscon open with a screwdriver, pushed the hose in as far as it could go, and gave a big suck, empty two litre Coke bottle ready and waiting. Let me tell you this straight off the bat – petrol tastes fucking horrible. The first time I tried, I sucked and sucked until my cheeks were sore – you know how your cheeks get when you blow up too many balloons? Yes? It’s a weird pain, isn’t it? Well, that’s how I felt, so I pinched the hose as hard as I could and gave one big, final suck… and then I had petrol in my mouth. And on my neck and clothes. By the time I eventually cottoned on to what was going on, I managed to fill up three quarters of a Coke bottle – I am sure if I had got it all from the start I would have filled up at least two, if not more of them.
After my second wash of the day, I moved on to the next car – some dodgy Ford with blue flames down the side. Nice... But that one was running on fumes – well hardly – even when I pried open the petrol cap, with absolutely no effort at all, I could hardly smell anything. Typical. But the next one was a jackpot – a Merc – a notorious petrol guzzler, and it filled up all of my bottles in one shot! And I had no trouble with the siphoning – I think it was the pinching the hose that did the trick. So then I had all twelve bottles filled up and half a tank of petrol still to be used. What now?
I went back inside my place and wondered what I could use to store petrol that could also, ultimately, be carried in a car. I thought of buckets, but the petrol fumes would have been too much. And then it hit me. Balloons. Maybe it was because my cheeks were still sore and I was still having flashbacks of blowing up balloons for my cousin Sean’s fifteenth birthday, but what a great idea if I do say so myself. They can hold quite a bit, are flexible, meaning that I could load them easily into the car (in between cases and stuff, under chairs) and they would be easy to empty into the car. Just one snag though. I didn’t have any balloons…
Usually I would have just popped out to the shops – Karaglen shopping centre in Edenvale is probably just two and half kilometres away and there is like a party-cum-flower shop there which would definitely have had balloons. But if I went there now I would probably die. And that wasn’t what I felt like doing. As I was thinking of this I remembered of the birthday party that some kid had had a few days before this whole infected episode. I only remember it because I almost ran over some little brat… if it hadn’t been for the balloons he was holding as he ran across the street in the complex I would have probably killed him. The mother glowered at me as I drove past and I had half a mind to shout out the window, “Hey, if I had killed that brat it would have been your fault – teach him how to cross a bloody road!” But I didn’t.
I grabbed my nail gun, again, and headed in the general direction of where the balloon kid had been running. There are still no more of the infected in the complex that I know of, by the way. I went towards where I had almost committed involuntary manslaughter and started looking through the windows. Bingo! The third unit that I looked into was the one – there were toys everywhere. A kid definitely stayed there.
Luckily this was a garden unit so I hopped over the tiny wall and went around the back, hoping that the patio doors would be open. No luck though, so I smashed the small pane next to the handle – because I could see the keys hanging in the handle on the inside – with the ‘butt’ of the nail gun and let myself in. This was definitely the place. Toys were strewn around the house, and if I didn’t know better I would have probably assumed that one of the infected was inside. I don’t know the reason why I did it, but I looked in the fridge and there was the conclusive proof – a stinky, awfully stinky really, piece of birthday cake with two candles still protruding from its greeney, browney, black mould. Horrible.
So where were the damn balloons? I looked in the kitchen drawers but no joy. Kids room – nada. Folks room – nothing. Then I checked behind the couch – there they were, seven deflated balloons still tied to their strings. That’s where mine had always ended up when I was a kid. Good start. I eventually, after about 15 minutes of searching, found another six unused ones in the bottom drawer of their TV cabinet. Bonus. But there was nothing else in the house worth taking – all the food was off, there was no booze and cigarettes and even if the power had been working I would not have taken the mammoth collection of Barney and Noddy DVDs to watch back at my place.
So I went back to the Mercedes Benz, and although it was a bit messier this way, I managed to fill up most of the balloons with petrol. I have stored them in the bathroom for now but will, when I am not so bloody tired after all my running around today, start loading them into the R8.
Okay, well that’s it for now. I am going to go have another wash and an early night. Oh, and the rain has stopped already in case you are interested. Guess I won’t be going to Bloem any time too soon then.
See ya
Sam W
11:56am, August 9
Just noticed on my calendar that today is a public holiday. Don’t know which one it is, but happy public holiday anyways. Hope that you don’t have to go in to work and can stay home like me.
Take care
Sam W
4:08pm, August 14
I heard from Lil again today – they haven’t been able to get too far since we last spoke, but here, read for yourself. It is seriously long (and I mean seriously long – like a half hour read), but Lil was always a damn fast typer:
From: Lourens Stadler
Sent: 14 August 2011 14:12PM
To: Sam Ward
Subject: Re: Hi Sam
Greetings my gorgeous Sammie! We are all well, hope that you are too and that you are enjoying your veggies (I read your blog)! I would never have imagined the day when you would be craving homegrown, healthy food! I guess that is what the imminent end of the world does to you.
Last time I emailed you we were just outside Standerton on our way towards Bethlehem. We are now just a little further outside Standerton and just a little closer to Bethlehem. Well… that makes it sound like we have hardly moved, so let me explain…
After I last mailed you we spent another day around the town looking for clothes, food, batteries and stuff like that to take with us. It was a pretty quiet town when it came to seeing those things – I think if we killed five in those two days it was a lot – so we thought we would use the opportunity to scavenge while we could (the word scavenge doesn’t sound right – it make us sound… savage… but scavenge was what we were doing anyway).
When we eventually took stock and decided to leave, we were in for the shock of our lives. As we left town, probably only two or three kilometres out, we went over a rise, and as we did, Corne slammed on brakes. I went flying into the seat in front (I was trying on clothes that we had sourced, silly me) and ended up splitting the skin above my right eye. Blood was streaming down my face as I got up to see what was going on, and as I made my way to the front, half blinded by a stream of red, the silence from everyone else on board the bus filled me with fear.
I wiped the blood from my brow onto my already dirty pants and took a few tentative steps forward. Sammie, the pain in my head disappeared as soon as I looked out the window. The potholed tar road stretched out before us, empty for a kilometre or so – even devoid of painted lines – then this serenity was punctured by the first car, a maroon Opel Corsa. On its side. A few metres further on, maybe thirty or forty, was a police car, doors open and back windscreen smashed, jack-knifed with a white Toyota Hilux bakkie. After the smashed glass littered on the floor around these two wrecks, my eyes lost their focus and I saw car after car, crumpled, crashed, some on their sides, some on their roofs. Some on fire. And in amongst the cars, on them, in them, jumping from one to another, were them. They weren’t alone – there were some normal people too, but they were being overrun and attacked. Savagely.
We looked at this massacre in dumbfounded silence. Even the usually boisterous Sandra was just staring at this scene in front of us aghast, not saying a
word. By the time anyone even said anything, the first few things had spotted us and were ambling their way towards our bus. We weren’t worried though – it would have taken them ages to get to us – we were just transfixed by what was in front of us. Was this what the world had come to? Was this how we would eventually come to an end? Was this a close-up view, well, a couple of hundred metres away, of our future? I cried Sammie. I cried a lot. It wasn’t because of the savagery going on, or that lonely, buckled baby chair which must have been flung from one of the cars in the pile-up. At least I think not. I just cried and cried until eventually Sandra put her arm around me and cried too. I noticed that Corne had a tear in his eye too when he backed up the bus and we turned around, looking for another way through or around the town.
What we had just seen couldn’t have happened, or started to happen, too long before we got there. If we had left just a few minutes earlier that day we could have ended up smack bang in the middle of all of that. It gives me the shivers Sam whenever I think of that. And I still can’t get that bloody car seat out of my mind… I dream about it.
The GPS which we had been using had given up the ghost by then (what a truly awful saying that is) so we had to rely on a map book of South Africa which we had ‘bought’ from a deserted and ransacked petrol station a few days before. After a couple of false starts, dead ends, and, in one case, the road just ending as an overgrown forest of some seriously scary looking trees, seemingly intent on devouring the road, we managed to find our way onto the highway again, having bypassed the monster pile-up which still left us in silence on the bus.
The Infected Page 15