The Survivors Book III: Winter

by V. L. Dreyer

  Michael stared down at me, his expression a hostile mask – right up until I lifted my hand, and rested it on his chest, right above the spot where his ring was hidden on its chain around his throat. Then, a flicker of something softer passed through his eyes. He nodded, and looked away.

  I breathed a second sigh of relief and returned my attention to Ryan. "We need to get back inside. We're leaving Ohaupo today. Come on."

  "If Skye's half as angry at me as I deserve, then I'm probably safer out here," the young man answered nervously, shifting from one foot to the other as though anxious to flee.

  "I have no idea how angry she is." I shrugged and turned away, heading for the door. "She won't talk about it. You're just going to have to find out the hard way."

  Behind me, I heard Ryan sigh.

  ***

  By the time we made it back upstairs, breakfast was a charred disaster. I found Skye half way through rescuing as much of it as she could. When I told her who was waiting for her, she dropped her spatula with a clatter, and stared at me in white-faced shock for nearly a minute.

  I couldn't blame her. When Ryan had vanished nearly a month before, none of us had really expected him to return.

  "He came back?" she whispered. "Why? Why would he come back now?"

  "I don't know, but he's waiting out in the lobby if you want to ask him," I answered gently. "You don't have to, though, if you don't want to. I can tell him to go away."

  "No, there's no need for that." She shook her head slowly, bit her lip, and looked down at the ground. "I'll go talk to him. Maybe it'll be okay. I mean, maybe."

  "Don't let him push you into anything you don't want, okay?" I said, reaching out to my baby sister with a gentleness that I reserved only for her. She nodded and hugged me quickly, then went out to meet her estranged fiancé with a brave face.

  Elly and Michael stood nearby, watching the exchange with very different expressions on their faces. Once my sister had left, I gave Elly a long-suffering smile, and Michael a hug. He hugged me back in silence, then detached himself and went off to gather up his belongings.

  "There is a lot of tension in this group," Elly observed as she dished up the last of the food for those that hadn't eaten yet. "I hope this will not cause problems later on."

  "I have no idea if it will or not," I admitted, accepting the plate that she offered to me. "I guess we'll just have to find out along the road. We can't stay here, so this isn't going to delay our departure."

  "Well, eat up, then." Elly smiled at me and gestured towards my plate. "My husband has gone off to fetch the cars that he's repaired for us, and wanted me to tell you that he'll be back soon. Once he returns, we'll need to go."

  "Yeah, we will." I stuck a fork into my breakfast and shovelled some into my mouth, and tried not to think about how it was going to feel to leave my little home behind. It hadn't been mine for very long, but I had more happy memories in Ohaupo than anywhere else in the last ten years.

  As loathe as I was to admit it, I was going to miss that little town. At least this time, I was leaving with a sense of hope in my chest, instead of despair.

  ***

  "All right, here we go. And… up!"

  I watched from the side-lines as the men struggled to lift the heavy barrels of fuel up onto the back of one of the new utility vehicles that Zain had managed to scavenge from the outlying farmsteads. The addition of a qualified, experienced mechanic to our team had done a world of good. I would be the first person to admit that I was pretty much just guessing, and had no idea what I was actually doing.

  Under Zain's touch, my Hilux was purring like a kitten, and he'd managed to find three more tough, reliable utes to add to our small fleet. Yeah, I was a little jealous of his skills, but I was mostly just relieved. Having cars gave us freedom, and having a real mechanic meant that we could pick and choose rather than going with the ones that I thought I might be able to fix up through trial and error.

  Two of the trucks had been relegated for cargo, and the other two for a mixture of cargo and passengers. Now, the women stood guard while the men put their strength to good use, loading everything that we could carry onto the back of the trucks.

  "We should be ready to go by mid-morning," I commented, glancing up at the sky. "I don't trust those clouds; I think we'll have rain soon."

  "Not much we can do about it," Skye answered, following my gaze up to the darkening heavens. "Let's just hope we find shelter by nightfall."

  "We won't – we're sleeping under the stars tonight." I gave her a sideways grin and nudged her in the side. "Good thing we have tarps, right?"

  Skye smiled, but didn't say anything. My grin faded away when I realised that she wasn't going to rise to the bait, but I didn't want to call her out on it. She'd been quiet and sullen since Ryan's return, but I didn't really want to push her too hard until she'd had time to recover from the shock. At least she hadn't retreated into herself like when he'd first left, and keeping her active seemed to help her take her mind off it.

  "I think that's the last of it," Michael said as he came up to us, dusting off his hands. "Let's go grab your things from upstairs, honey."

  "All right," I agreed, leading the way back into our little store. It looked so sad and empty without its layer of trash and junk, familiar objects that I'd gotten used to. For a while, it had been home.

  As if sensing my bleak thoughts, I felt Michael's hand fall on my shoulder and I was drawn into a gentle hug. "It's okay, Sandy. We'll find somewhere else. And this time, it really will be ours, won't it?"

  "Yeah," I agreed softly. I gave him a weak smile, then went back upstairs to the loft. We had chosen to leave the furniture behind, but we were taking all the blankets and pillows with us, along with the food, cutlery, cookware, and everything else that we had a use for. That had already gone into the trucks, and it left my beloved loft looking strangely barren.

  Michael hugged me tight, right at the moment when tears threatened to break through my emotional reserves. With great difficulty, I fought them back and kept myself strong, for myself as much as for him. I knew he wouldn't judge me for crying. The children were already downstairs, waiting safely in one of the new trucks, along with Alfred. Of course, thinking about the dog made me think of my kitten.

  "Has anyone seen Tigger this morning?" I asked, suddenly concerned.

  "Maddy's got her, don't worry," Michael answered gently, leaning down to press a kiss against my cheek. "When she sat down and put her seatbelt on, Tigger jumped right into her lap, curled up, and went to sleep. I think she's coming whether we like it or not."

  "Oh." I took a deep breath, trying to force myself to relax. "That's good, I guess. I mean, I'm sure she'd be fine without us, but… I don't like the idea of abandoning her forever. I'm fond of her."

  "I know you are." Michael chuckled softly. He slid his arm around my waist and guided me through the living room, into the bedroom where we'd spent so much of our early relationship getting to know one another. The bed had been stripped, all the medical supplies moved to the trucks, and Anahera had been carried out to the back of the Hilux. The only things left were my personal belongings – my backpack, my salvaged clothing, and the few tiny personal items that I'd collected along the way.

  I disentangled myself from Michael's embrace, and went over to finish packing. My backpack was already full, but I had collected a few small suitcases for my spare clothing. No point letting it go to waste. One by one, I emptied the drawers out, and packed the neatly folded garments into the cases waiting for them, then did them up and gave them to Michael to carry downstairs.

  Eventually, all that was left was me, my backpack, and my travel items. One by one, I packed my taser, GPS, and medical kit into the pockets of my cargo pants, and put on my backpack. On top of the dresser, a single incongruity stared back at me: the little group of Sylvanian Families bunnies that I'd collected months ago, before I even knew that my sister was still alive.

  They were dead weight. T
aking them with me would be a waste of space. There had been times when that alone would have been enough for me to leave them behind, but my whole attitude towards life had changed since then. Now, sentiment mattered. It mattered more than anything else in the world. That little family represented my own lost family, and now that I'd found my sister it seemed more important than ever to keep the memory of our parents alive. It took me no time at all to make the decision to bring them along.

  Michael had never asked about the bunnies, even though he'd seen them on numerous occasions. He was an intuitive man, so he had probably already guessed what they meant to me. Skylar, on the other hand, shot me a curious glance when I came out the door with the little toys in my hand.

  "What are those?" she asked. "I saw them when I was going to the bathroom, but never got around to asking."

  "You were probably too young to remember." I smiled at her, then took her hand and put the little family of bunnies in it. "When the plague first arrived in New Zealand, our family travelled through Ohaupo on our way south and we stopped here for a while. You saw these in the old antique store, and begged me to buy them for you. I couldn't, and that made you cry.

  "So, consider this my gift to you, baby sis. I couldn't give them to you when you were eight, but I can give them to you now. Hang onto them and keep them safe. One day, one of us will have kids to play with them."

  Skylar stared at me with the stunned-mullet expression that she sometimes got when I pulled a real curve ball on her, but I didn't have anything else to say. I just patted her shoulder, and guided her towards her place in the convoy, then went to say my last goodbyes to my store. The door stood open and empty, revealing a room beyond that was dark and shadowy but cleaner than it had ever been before.

  "Ah, Benny, if only you could see this place now," I commented to myself. I went through and locked the inner doors one last time, then set the key ring down on the counter. There was no point taking them with me. Unlike when we'd left Hamilton, this time we were leaving nothing behind that we might want to come back for, except our memories. Lots and lots of memories. Thankfully, memories were portable, and they only weighed as much as we let them.

  With that thought in mind, I turned my back on my little store, and headed out to the waiting convoy.

  Chapter Seven

  The rain came around lunchtime. We stopped for a few minutes to shovel down a cold meal, then piled back into the cars, onto the bikes, and resumed travelling. By the time we were on the move again, the rain was pelting down with such force that the fat droplets had our windscreen wipers working overtime.

  "Are you sure Hemi and his lads will be all right out there on those little bikes of theirs?" Michael asked suddenly, hunched over the wheel as he struggled to make out the road in front of us. He and I led the convoy in our Hilux, with everyone else strung out behind us along the road south towards Te Awamutu.

  "Well, I suggested that they come in until the rain passes, but he said they'd be fine." I shot a glance at him and shrugged. "They know where we are if they change their minds."

  "It's going to be a miserable night tonight." He glanced back at me and smiled wryly. "I'm guessing that you plan for us to stop at the same place we spent the night last time?"

  "Yeah. It's not dry, but at least it's secure." I returned his smile, and shifted my attention back to trying to fix the radio in my lap. "Like I told Skye, at least we have tarps. We'll rig something up. Gotta be a bit inventive in this day and age, right?"

  "True that," Michael agreed dryly. "I think we're about to enter the earthqu—"

  Just as he was saying the words, we hit the first break in the tarmac. Years earlier, a terrible earthquake had flattened the city of Te Awamutu, and left the road rippled like a concrete ocean. The jolt took him by surprise, but I'd been watching our position on the GPS so I was braced for it.

  I grabbed my walkie-talkie off my belt, and held it up to my lips. "Guys, we're entering Te Awamutu. The ground here is really rough, but your trucks should be able to take it. Go into four wheel drive mode, just in case. Hemi, if you and your boys have any trouble, sing out and we'll put you in one of the trucks."

  "We're fine!" Hemi snapped back from somewhere down the line. "It's just a little rollercoaster, like Rainbow's End. We'll – WHOA – we'll be fine!"

  "Stubborn, that's what you are," I teased him, then clicked the radio off and looked at Michael. "You wanna take bets on how long it'll be before someone throws up?"

  "No bet." He laughed and shook his head. "Honestly, I'm amazed we've made it this far without one of the kids complaining that they need to pee."

  "Don't jinx it," I answered dryly.

  "What… is that noise?" a voice asked weakly from the back seat. I looked back over my shoulder, and I found Anahera's bewildered face peering back at me. "Sandy? Sandy, is that you?"

  "You're awake!" I gasped, surprised and thrilled at the same time. "Thank God. You worried us half to death, Ana. How are you feeling?"

  "Terrible," she answered bluntly, slowly lifting a hand to touch her bandaged head. "Where… where am I?"

  "You're in a car, heading south with us," I told her. Sympathetic to her discomfort, I grabbed my own water bottle, took the lid off, and held it out to her. "Here, drink this. You've been unconscious for four days."

  "Four days?" Her eyes flew wide in surprise. She tried to lean forward, but we'd strapped her in nice and tight to keep her from bouncing around too much while she was unconscious. "Where's Hemi? Where's my son? And Wiremu, Nikora, and Petera? Last I saw them, we were in the pantry, and death was pounding on the door."

  "They're all fine," I reassured her. "They're here, in different parts of the convoy. We rescued the four of you from the pantry and brought you home with us, but it was too dangerous to take you back to your camp. Those things are everywhere, so we've all joined together and we're heading south. All of your tribe are with us, except for the ones that… we couldn't get to in time. I'm sorry, Anahera. We saved everyone we could."

  "I know," she said softly, sadly. "I know that you would have done everything in your power to save my family. I am grateful that you saved as many as you did." She suddenly seemed to remember the bottle of water I was still holding, and reached out to take it from me. Although her grip was weak, she drank deeply and it seemed to refresh her. When she finished drinking, she handed the bottle back to me, looking a bit more relaxed.

  "We did," I agreed. "And we're going to keep doing everything we can to protect your clan, if you agree. I want to combine our groups. If you want to take your men and leave, we'll understand, but—"

  "There's no need to explain, Sandy," she interrupted me, a gentle smile touching her lips. "I understand. I was going to suggest the same at our next meeting, anyway. It is a shame that we were not able to gather our things before we left, but our lives are more important than our possessions."

  "Yeah." I nodded, screwing the cap back onto my bottle. "There are plenty of things out here for the taking, but we can't replace you, or Hemi, or any of the others. The mutants are spreading, and leaving death in their wake."

  "They are." She closed her eyes, her expression turning grim. "I underestimated the threat they posed. Now, I wish we'd taken your warning more seriously."

  "Don't blame yourself." I reached back, and rested my hand over top of hers. "We're only just realising what they're capable of. "That's why we're going south. We're going to go as far as we can, and hopefully outrun them."

  "What about the others, though?" She opened her eyes, and stared at me intently.

  I blinked and stared back at her. "What others?"

  "The other survivors," she answered. Suddenly, she grabbed my hand. "There are others out here, though we rarely see them. We must find some way to warn them, or they are lambs to the slaughter. Even the bad ones do not deserve to be eaten."

  "I'm all for warning them, but how can we contact them?" I shrugged helplessly. "We had a shortwave radio, but we searched for day
s and only ever found the folks at the power station, which is where we're heading now."

  Anahera went silent for a long moment, then looked me in the eye again. "Avalon. We must go to Avalon."

  "…Excuse me?" I stared at her, wondering if she'd been hit on the head a little too hard. Of course, Anahera wasn't one to mince words. She flapped a hand, and quickly clarified what she meant.

  "We must go to the suburb of Avalon, in Lower Hutt," she explained. "There, we'll find the Anchorman. He is the only means we have to disseminate information across the entire country."

  "The Anchorman? You know where he is?" I asked, genuinely surprised by that news.

  "The who?" Michael asked, shooting a confused look at us.

  "The Anchorman," I repeated. "He's the guy that runs the six o'clock news. He's been running it ever since the plague."

  "Oh, that guy. Yeah, I think you mentioned him once." His expression turned sheepish. "Sorry, I never watched much television."

  "Nothing to apologise for," Anahera said, waving the apology away. She smiled faintly to herself, her eyes drifting out of focus. "He's an old friend. His name is Simon. Simon Wentworth. We knew one another a lifetime ago, back in university, and we used to keep in touch. We haven't spoken recently, but I know that he was working at Avalon Studios around the time when the end came. My bet is that he's still there."

  "Okay, so we want to go to Avalon – now there's something I never thought I'd say seriously." I eased myself back into my seat, picked up my GPS, and thumbed in the location. "That's a long, long way south. Almost as far as Wellington."

  "It'll get us far away from the mutants, which seems like a very good idea if you ask me," Michael commented dryly.

  "No argument here." I chuckled softly, and leaned over to pat his thigh. "We can follow the State Highways south to Lake Taupo, and then try to cut across the Desert Road from there, but I'm not sure what kind of condition it's in. Last time I was down that way, Mount Tongariro was still erupting."