by V. L. Dreyer
I had no answer. Nothing seemed adequate. Anahera took the empty bowl from my hand, then she turned away from me. "I must go help Elly and Skylar with the children. Try not to spend too much time brooding on it. We'll find a way to get through this together."
I just nodded silently. Once she was gone, I turned my attention back to watching the wild weather and pondering this cruel new twist of fate.
***
I stayed on watch as the sun slowly climbed higher in the sky. Every so often, someone came over to check in with me and let me know the progress of our preparations to leave, but they had things well under control. Hearing Skylar shouting like a drill sergeant never failed to make me smile, despite my dark mood. It was nearly an hour after sunrise before the walkie-talkie in my hand finally crackled to life, and Rebecca's familiar voice cut through my reverie.
"Testing… testing… hello? Is this working?"
"It is," I answered. "Good morning, sleepy head. I was starting to think I was going to have to come over and wake you myself."
"We weren't sleeping," she snapped indignantly. "It takes time to pack up your entire life, you know!"
"I know, Rebecca," I replied, adjusting my tone appropriately. "I was just teasing you."
"Teasing? Oh. Oh!" The radio crackled for a moment, which I could only presume was the result of her taking a deep breath and letting it out across the microphone without realising what she was doing. "Sorry. It's been a long time since I've been teased. I guess I forgot."
"Don't worry, I've totally been there," I answered, smiling to myself. I understood better than most. "You'll get used to it. Just give it time. Anyway, how's everything going?"
"We're just about ready, but we had a question." There was a long pause, then she asked, "Sandy, what do we do about the power station?"
"What do you mean?" I asked, confused.
"I mean… do we shut it down? Do we leave it running?" She went silent for a few seconds, then Jim's voice came over the radio. "Theoretically, the power station could run itself… well, indefinitely. Most of it is automated. It's only when the unexpected happens that it needs human intervention – like the tree."
"Oh, I'm with you." I paused to think about it, processing the pluses and minuses of each scenario out loud. "If we leave the station running, there is a chance that something could damage it. But we have no intention of coming back, and if we leave it running then that would potentially give us the ability to access its power as we travel south, which could save our precious resources. I think we should leave it running. What do you guys think?"
"I think you're right," Rebecca said. "We haven't really had to do much to keep it running all this time. We just clean out the pipes occasionally, and keep an eye on the warning lights."
"Okay, leave it running," I decided, nodding thoughtfully to myself. "How much longer do you guys need before you're ready to go?"
"Give us half an hour to finish up down here," she answered. "We'll meet you at the warehouse when we're ready to go."
"Good." I straightened up, absently adjusting the unfamiliar folds of my coat around me. "We're pretty much ready to move out now, so we're just waiting on you. Let us know if you need extra help."
"Thanks, but I think we're good," she replied. "We'll see you soon."
The radio went dead in my hand. I tucked it back into its pocket in the lining of my coat, then buttoned it back up over my midsection. My stomach felt a little upset and it bothered me, but I was used to nausea. I had experienced it on a regular basis as a result of my odd, irregular diet.
"Sandy?"
As if reading my mind, I suddenly heard Anahera calling my name. She paused and looked me up and down, tilting her head to one side.
"Are you all right, dear?" she asked. "You look pale. Well, paler than usual."
"Oh, it's the fish," I answered with a strained chuckle. "I'm not used to having fish for breakfast. I'll be fine."
"Oh!" A smile lit up her face, one that was so friendly and understanding that it immediately made me feel better. "I'm sorry, I didn't think about that. I suppose your folks aren't used to having fish for every meal."
"I'm not used to having fish at all, to be honest. I'm terrible at fishing," I admitted sheepishly. "We'll get used to it. Anyway, was there something you wanted?"
"Yes, actually." Anahera sighed heavily and came over towards me. She sat down on the edge of a nearby table, and shot a thoughtful look at me. "I want to go through Tokoroa."
I froze for a second, staring back at her. "Tokoroa was gang territory, last time I checked. I was planning to go around it. Why do you want to go there?"
"There's a radio station there," she said quietly, watching my face as though trying to divine my thoughts. "Like we discussed, the other people in this region deserve some kind of warning. I did a bit of research last night, and found out that Tokoroa's station is the nearest one that we're likely to pass before we leave the Waikato."
I swore softly beneath my breath and turned away from her, staring out the door at the driving rain. She said nothing, just sat watching me and giving me the time I needed to think over the decision. I knew there was really only one choice that I could make, but I didn't like it.
Unfortunately, she was right. Even the gangs included women and children, and not all of the men were terrible people. They certainly didn't deserve to die a bloody, brutal, painful death.
"Fine," I agreed grudgingly. "We'll go through Tokoroa."
***
Even with all the delays, we were back on the road before the sun had climbed high enough to peek over the trees. Michael and I led in the Hilux, with him behind the wheel and me hunched over our maps, plotting our route south.
"We'll need to swing east at the next junction," I told him, tracing the line of the road on the map. "Turn left."
"Okay," he replied simply.
While he was busy watching the road through the deluge, I pulled out my radio and called back to the convoy. "Rebecca and Jim, I need you for a second."
"We're here," Rebecca's voice answered within a few seconds. "What's up, boss?"
"Oh lord, don't start with that again," I protested with a dramatic groan. "I just need to know what we can expect on the roads today. How far east of Arapuni have you travelled?"
"Not far," she admitted. "A few kilometres at most. We really had no reason to go that way."
"Damn," I grumbled. "I don't suppose there's any chance you guys went down Old Taupo Road, is there?"
"No," she replied. "Not since before the plague. Sorry, mate."
"It's all good," I said. "We're just going to have to chance it, and hope for the best."
"Well, if it helps, the roads we saw were in pretty decent condition," she supplied, along with the verbal equivalent of a shrug. "Beyond that… I dunno, sorry."
"Thanks anyway. We'll let you know if we see any problems." I clicked off the radio and set it down on the dashboard in front of me, within easy reach should I need it. "Well, at least it doesn't seem to be a quake zone."
Michael grunted wordless agreement. The rain was coming down thick and fast, making it hard for him to see, so I fell silent and let him concentrate. Rebecca was certainly right about the condition of the roads for the first few kilometres; they were in practically perfect condition. We passed by a few old farmsteads, set amidst overgrown pastures and small patches of native bush.
A few minutes later, we reached a large intersection, with branches pointing out like the spokes of a wheel. Michael slowed down and glanced at me for directions.
"Right," I told him. "Turn right, and keep following that road until I say otherwise."
He nodded, and guided us around the corner, while I picked up my radio to convey the instructions to the rest of the convoy in case they were unable to see us through the gloom. I could barely see a dozen feet in front of the windshield, so I rolled down my window a crack… then I burst out laughing.
"What are you laughing at?" Michael asked
.
"Corn," I answered, amused. "More corn. Always corn."
"Food is food," Michael answered. "Think we should stop and top up our supplies?"
"Nah, we're good for the moment." I shook my head, and planted my elbow on the window sill to watch the passing corn fields for any sign of danger. Or anything else, really, but there was nothing to be seen. The corn went on forever, or so it felt. Suddenly, a flash of white plastic interrupted the monotony, but it was only old bales of sodden hay, wrapped in tattered plastic sheets. Nothing of any interest to us. Then, more corn.
I heaved a monumental sigh, and gave Michael a look. "I spy with my little eye, something beginning with…"
"Is it corn?" Michael asked dryly, clearly sensing my mood was drifting into the silly.
"No way!" I feigned surprise. "How did you guess so fast?"
"I'm just lucky like that," he said with a grin. "Man, it's starting to feel like one day the entire Waikato is going to be conquered by an army of cornfields."
"Better cornfields than mutants and zombie pigs," I replied. "At least we can eat corn."
"Well, there's no logical reason to assume that we can't eat zombie pigs," he commented. "I mean, have you ever tried?"
"No!" I exclaimed, horrified by the mere suggestion. "You would have to be a special kind of crazy to actually consider doing that. They're all… rotten and stuff. Gross."
"Yes," he said slowly, as though talking to a child. "I didn't say they were appetizing. I was just suggesting that it's entirely possible that they're edible. Appetizing and edible are two different things."
I opened my mouth to argue, but at the same moment it suddenly clicked that he was trying to bait me. "Hang on just one corn-picking minute… are you just trying to get out of ever being put on kitchen duty again?"
"Of course not!" He made a dismissive gesture with one hand, but it was just a little bit too dramatic to be real. "I'm just saying, don't knock it 'til you've tried it, right? Like Brussels sprouts."
"That's it, now you're doing the dishes every night for the rest of forever," I teased right back, folding my arms across my chest.
"You have no sense of humour at all." He started to say something else, but something out in the rain caught his attention. His eyes flew wide and he slammed on the brakes so suddenly that I was jerked half out of my seat. If we hadn't been travelling at a snail's pace because of the rain, it could have done serious damage. Luckily for me, it just ruffled my feathers.
"What?" I exclaimed, shoving myself back into my seat. "What is it?"
"There's someone out there," he answered, his voice barely above a whisper. "Or something. I can't tell."
"Stop the convoy," I told him, my irritation at the sudden halt vanishing in the blink of an eye. "I'll check it out."
"Sandy, no," Michael protested, grabbing my hand. "Not by yourself."
"I have my gun right beside me, and I'm already dressed for the rain." I gently extracted my hand from his, and pulled the hood of my coat up over my head. "I won't leave your line of sight. Join me as soon as the convoy is safe."
He might have had a few more words to say, but I didn't hear them. In a single, well-practiced motion, I was out the door and in a fighter's crouch, with my shotgun aimed into the mists. I wondered briefly whether the weapon was safe to use in the rain, but there wasn't time to ask. If it was an enemy up ahead, I had to be sure.
The rain was so heavy that it had me drenched in a few seconds flat, but the leather kept my skin mostly dry. As silently as I could, I crept around to the driver's side of the Hilux, and stared at the road in front of us. There was something there, something moving with slow, jerky motions, but the details were obscured by the haze.
Suddenly, the door beside me opened and Michael leapt out, wrapped in a newly-salvaged leather jacket of his own. His lacked a hood, though, which forced him to squint to keep the water out of his eyes.
"What is it?" he asked, so quietly that his voice was almost a whisper.
"I don't know," I admitted softly. I lifted a hand and gestured for him to accompany me, but I didn't wait to see if he followed me. I didn't have to. If there was one person I knew, it was Michael. He'd always be at my side when I needed him, and that was why I trusted him.
I sensed him half a step behind me as we crept forward, weapons at the ready. Slowly but surely, a humanoid figure started to resolve out of the haze. It was moving southwards in a slow, halting gait. I knew without having to see its face that it was probably one of the infected, but I always erred on the side of caution. There was no undo button if you chose to shoot first and ask questions later.
I held up my hand and made a gesture instructing Michael to hold his position, and then I crept forward and began to circle around the creature. For a few seconds I walked beside it, following a parallel course while keeping myself well out of its reach. Eventually, I drew out in front of it, turning as I moved until I was very nearly walking backwards.
Suddenly, it turned and looked at me. Its mouth gaped, and it let out a terrible, blood-curdling, familiar screech. I jumped back, my finger on the trigger, fully expecting it to leap at me the way the mutants usually did.
Nothing happened. It just stared at me, completely expressionless, and kept on shuffling southwards. I glanced at Michael, but he didn't have an answer any more than I did. Once the creature passed me, it seemed to lose interest in me completely.
Curious, I took a few steps backwards, to bring myself back into its field of vision. Again, it looked at me, issued one of those horrid, skin-crawling screeches, then kept on walking as though nothing had happened.
"What the hell is that?" A breathless voice asked behind me. I glanced back, and saw that Skylar had joined us, along with most of the fighters of the group. "It sounds like a mutant."
"It sounds like one, but it isn't attacking," I answered, just as confused as she sounded. "I don't understand."
"How can it shriek like a mutant but not be one?" Michael asked what we were all thinking. "Why isn't it attacking us? Where's it going?"
"Maybe it's going south for the winter?" I suggested, trying to squeeze a little bit of humour out of a situation that wasn't funny at all.
"It's a proto-mutant," Skylar said suddenly. I glanced at her, and saw her staring back at me with wide eyes. "Like, something halfway between the mutants we know and the normal infected. It's turning into a mutant." She paused and stared at it for a second, then looked back at me. "What's it wearing? Is that a uniform?"
"I think so, yeah," I answered. I hurried back over, and slowly stepped back into the creature's line of sight. Again, it shrieked at me, but made no attempt to attack me, which gave me the time I needed to get a good look at it. "Looks like a nurse, or maybe a cleaner, I'm not sure. I think I see an ID tag. I'm going to try and grab it. Cover me."
A series of grunts, and the sound of bodies moving and guns being cocked was the reply to my request. I nodded once, then I leapt forward and tried to grab the tag hanging around the thing's neck. My first attempt failed, but it didn't even seem to care. I made a second grab, and this time my fingers closed around the cold, wet plastic. The safety clasp holding the lanyard in place popped open when I gave it a good, hard tug, and with that the prize was mine.
"It's so faded, I can barely read it," I said as I returned to my group. "That logo is familiar, though. Do you guys recognise it?"
"Yes," Michael answered, shading his eyes to keep the rain out of them as he studied the tag in my hand. "It's the logo of the hospital where we met. That thing is from Hamilton. How the hell did it get this far south?"
"It seems pretty determined to go wherever it's going," I commented, watching the thing shuffling away from us. Suddenly, realisation dawned on me. "Oh, God. It's not just a proto-mutant. It's a plague-bearer."
"What?" Skye exclaimed, turning to stare at me. "You think it's going south to spread the mutated virus? Can that happen? That the infected be re-infected?"
"I don't kn
ow, and I sure as hell don't want to find out." I spun around and pointed at her. "Go back to the convoy and get as much accelerant as we need to get this thing burning. We have to destroy it right now!"
Skylar nodded and ran off, leaving Michael and the others staring at me.
"Sandy, what are you thinking?" Michael asked, running his hand back through his wet hair to smooth it away from his face.
"I'm thinking…" I paused, turning the idea over in my head. The more I thought about it, the worse it got. "Michael, how many people worked at that hospital before the plague? And how many patients were there?"
"I don't know," he said. "Hundreds, at least. Probably thousands. I mean, where do people go when they get sick? They go to a hospital. It felt like half the city was there towards the end."
"So, where did all those people go?" I asked rhetorically, turning to look him square in the eye. He stared back at me, not quite seeming to understand. "Okay, think about it. Let's assume that there were at least a thousand people there. We know that sometimes the virus burns fast and devours everything, but we also know that sometimes it burns slower and takes longer to totally destroy the infected, right?"
"Right..." he echoed.
"So," I continued, "if we presume that half those poor folks have burned out by now, that leaves five hundred people that should have been in that hospital when we met. How many did we see?"
"Only four or five," he said, his eyes slowly widening. "My God… where did all those people go?"
"Out into the countryside," I answered morbidly. "Spreading the mutated infection between them and the regular undead that are still on their feet. If I remember my high school biology right, a virus breeds by consuming a host's cells, which in turn kills the cells and makes them unsuitable for the virus to keep breeding in. The visible decay that we see happens because of that cell death. So, if Ebola X is still living and breeding in these infected after so long, it must have figured out a way to keep reproducing inside dead cells, without destroying them completely."