Survivors of the Sun

by Kingslie, Mia

  She thought about the little boy who had come to her at breakfast, right back in the early days of Three-eighteen, asking if his dad had come home yet. He had done a lot of growing up since then, so much so that she almost forgot that he was not yet an adult.

  She contemplated going back to sleep for a little while longer, but then the fly came back and she knew it was pointless. She sat up and reached out for her water bottle, taking a long swig. It was warm, but it was wet. Then looking around for Deedee and the dogs, she spotted her sitting beneath a tree a little way from them.

  She wore her bandana again, and now had two long black and white feathers tucked in at the back. Dried mud streaked across her face. She was bent forward, her brow creased in concentration, the map spread out across her legs. Millie, Badger and Ant lay sunning themselves next to her. Georgia studied Badger for a moment, watching the rise and fall of her ribcage as she slept, and was very relieved to see her breathing appeared normal. She had been really scared that there would be dire consequences from her river plunge, but from what she could tell, Badger was fine. In fact all three of them seemed none the worse for the previous night’s adventure. Even so, she made a mental note to keep a close eye on all of them.

  ‘Wow you’ve been busy,’ she said, as she approached Deedee, every muscle in her body complaining. And she certainly had been busy. The fire had been built up ready to be lit, the large aluminum pot filled with water sitting on the ground next to it, mugs were lined up and several sachets of instant coffee set out in readiness. And she so needed a coffee!

  Deedee beamed up at her. ‘Jamie said, I had to be extra good because that’s how Apaches are. He even gave me these two feathers,’ she said, bobbing her head down to give Georgia a better look.

  Did he now? Well, if this is the result then good on Jamie.

  Georgia knelt down next to her, ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Shall I light the fire?’

  ‘I’ll do it, I have the lighter, I got it out of your pocket earlier, I did ask, but you were really fast asleep.’

  ‘I see,’ Georgia said again. She watched, somewhat bemused as Deedee first brought the fire to life, and then once the flames had taken, moved the pot into place.

  ‘Shouldn’t take too long,’ Deedee said, as she wiped her hands on the back of her jeans and then settled back down against the tree, pulling the map over her knees once more.

  ‘Great,’ Georgia said.

  ‘I got up because Ruby woke me, she needed to do a wee and I had to hold a towel up so no one could see, cause she said she wouldn’t go in amongst the trees because of the snakes, and then I fetched her some water so she could make a cup of tea.’

  ‘Oh?’ Georgia said as Deedee kept chatting away misunderstanding the question in her voice. So something about the snake incident had gotten through to Ruby.

  ‘Well Jamie helped, and we all had a cup of tea, well not you or Becky or Lola of course, ‘cause you were all still asleep. Then Ruby went back to sleep and Jamie and I explored. But then Jamie went back to bed as well, so it was just me awake.’ She giggled, then added, ‘well me and the dogs.’

  Georgia felt exhausted just listening to her exuberant dialogue. ‘So what are you doing now?’ She asked, indicating the map.

  ‘I’m trying to guess where we are, but I think I know.’

  Georgia sat down next to her and pulled the map across so it covered both their legs. Millie, Badger and Ant took this as an open invitation to play and suddenly leapt over at them, Millie with that silly happy smile on her face. Georgia whipped the map out of the way just in time, another second and their paws would no doubt have mangled it beyond repair.

  ‘Get down,’ she said. Her tone was such that the ‘girls’ knew she meant it. Millie and Badger walked a little way off and then flopped down on their sides, sighing deeply. Ant, on the other hand, sat down in disbelief, then pointedly stood up again, turned around and sat with her back to Georgia, peering once over her shoulder to make sure that she had noticed the slight.

  Deedee laughed. ‘Ant is really mad at you.’

  ‘Yes, she is,’ Georgia agreed, unable to stop herself smiling as she straightened out the map. Her little princess was not used to be treated like the other dogs. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘this is where we were last night.’

  ‘Is that where Auntie Lola fell out of the canoe, cause of the snake?’

  Georgia glanced over at Deedee, she had never called her that before, but it was not out of place, in a way Lola had become her auntie.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and this is the bridge, where I waited for you and Jamie and Auntie Lola. Feeling the auntie roll round in her mouth, sounding right. ‘Then much later, we passed these houses on the right and…,’ She paused, how far had they come? It had been way too dark to really make out any sort of landmarks.

  ‘I think we are here,’ Deedee said, pointing to a small triangle of land much further up the river, ‘cause we are on an island.’

  ‘We are?’ Georgia said. How did I miss that? I must have been even more tired than I thought.

  ‘Yeah, Jamie and I walked all around earlier today. There are houses over here and here,’ she said tapping the map. ‘Just like it shows on the map.’ She sounded amazed by this. Then she added, ‘and we saw people there, over on the other side, through the binoculars, that’s why I put camouflage on my face.’

  Georgia was dumbstruck. The things the Apaches got up to when she was asleep, and here she had been thinking them sleeping next to her, safe and sound, and all the time, they had been off exploring.

  ‘How many people?’ She asked, keeping her voice steady.

  ‘Not sure, they were building something, Jamie said it looked like a chicken coup, but I didn’t see any chickens. But I did see two men and a woman with a baby on her hip. Jamie thought that he saw more men further up at the big house. They didn’t carry any weapons though.’ Her tone was serious, as she related the intelligence they had gathered. What else could you call it? The two of them had gone out and surveyed their surroundings, gathering intelligence! ‘So how far did we come?’ Deedee asked.

  Georgia showed Deedee how to work out the distance, then did a quick measurement. ‘Well, if in fact we are at Coal Camp Creek Arm, then we have come nearly twelve miles, which is pretty good considering everything.’

  ‘That’s longer than we have travelled in any one day,’ Deedee said, sounding really impressed.

  ‘It certainly is.’

  The water finally came to the boil and Georgia tipped a little into one of the mugs and stirred in the contents of one of the sachets. She blew on the hot liquid then deciding she couldn’t wait, topped it up with a little of the water from her drinking bottle.

  ‘The others are still asleep?’ Deedee asked. It was a statement but she had made it sound like a question.’

  Georgia looked back over at them, then nodded. ‘Yes, still out to it.’

  ‘Can I tell you a secret?’

  Georgia was a little taken aback. She could not even imagine that Deedee had any secrets to tell, let alone one to share with her. Had she given it any thought, she would have naturally assumed Deedee would share any secrets with Jamie. Or perhaps it was about Jamie? Did she have a crush on him?

  She suppressed a little smile, keeping her face serious.

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘And you promise not to tell Jamie?’

  ‘Scout’s honor,’ Georgia said, holding three fingers up in the scout salute.

  ‘But you’re a girl, you weren’t a Scout,’ Deedee said.

  ‘Okay, well Guide’s honor then.’

  ‘Okay then.’ Deedee looked serious, pursing her lips in deep concentration. ‘It’s just that Maggie said not to tell, not to tell you or Jamie or even Becky.’

  Now Georgia was curious. This was not about a crush, this was something that Deedee had been keeping to herself for some considerable time, but the part that was concerning, was that Maggie knew about it too and she couldn’t
even begin to imagine what it could be about.

  ‘Okay,’ she said.

  When Deedee remained silent, Georgia said, ‘you don’t have to share it if you don’t want to.’

  ‘No, but I think I better, but you have to promise not to be angry.’

  A secret kept by Maggie and Deedee that had the potential to make her angry? This was becoming more and more intriguing. ‘Well, seeing as I don’t know what it is, I can’t promise not to be angry, but I can promise that I won’t be angry with you.’

  ‘Guides honor?’

  ‘Yes, Guides honor.’

  Just then they heard a crunching on the gravel and the dogs leapt up to greet Lola who was headed their way. Behind her, Rebecca, Ruby and Jamie were all showing signs of getting up.

  ‘Is there any coffee?’ she asked, bending down to hug the Boston tribe, ‘I could kill for one.’

  ‘Sure is,’ Georgia said, ‘no sugar though.’ Well, whatever Deedee’s secret was, it was going to have to wait until another time.

  ‘We travelled twelve miles last night,’ Deedee exclaimed, as Lola sat down. ‘That’s the longest we ever did.’

  ‘Not surprised,’ Lola said, taking the mug of coffee from Georgia, ‘I reckon there were times last night that we were moving faster than green grass travelling through a goose.’

  Deedee burst into giggles at this, then stood up and then ran over to talk to Jamie.

  As Georgia sipped her coffee, she told Lola what Deedee and Jamie had been up to while they slept. That they weren’t alone, and that they were on an island of sorts. She didn’t say a word about the, as yet mysterious secret. That was between her and Deedee, and Maggie.

  The rest of the afternoon was spent drying damp clothing, which had pretty well just been dumped where they stood the night before (well really at dawn), no one having the energy to do anything at that time, except set up the bedding and crawl into it. The packs had then been reorganized and the water bottles topped up with boiled water. Then once they had bathed, teeth had been brushed, hair combed out. They changed into fresh clothing and set about putting a meal together from refried beans and noodles.

  Lola had managed to catch two small fish for the dogs, which wasn’t really enough for them, but it was better than nothing, Georgia told herself, as she carefully picked out all the tiny bones and then hand fed the dogs, ensuring they each had a fair share.

  It was not long after that, that Georgia discovered her watch had stopped. At first she panicked, thinking the mechanism must have broken, then realized, that with all that had happened she had simply forgotten to wind it. While there was no way now to set the exact time, she did know that it had grown dark at around eight the night before, so it was simply a matter of waiting until night fell once more to set the time. While it would be sufficient for their needs, she felt a little sad, as knowing the exact time had been one of the last real connections to the past and all it stood for.

  They waited until around nine, an hour after dark before they finally left. ‘Nine o’clock Georgia time,’ Lola called it, teasing her unmercifully for forgetting to wind up the watch and Georgia knew it was going to be a long time before she let her forget it. They had held off leaving until then, as they knew that once they were on the river again, they would be in full view of any houses on the island itself, as well as those up on the surrounding hills.

  As it happened, they had not encountered any problems travelling past the houses just out of Warsaw, but perhaps that had been more luck than anything else, and yes, it had been dark, but the reality was that they had been just as open to attack, then as any other time. She couldn’t even come up with a good reason in her own mind as to why she just assumed that once they were past Warsaw they would be safe.

  Perhaps meeting up with Harold, and the kindness he had shown their group had made her drop her guard? Or was it simply exhaustion, her sleep deprived mind taking the easy road.

  And the whole business of losing sight of each other after the bridge disaster. With Lola, Jamie and Deedee thinking they had gone ahead, and she deciding not to catch up with them, instead going ashore and looking for Badger. It could have ended in all manner of catastrophes, that didn’t bear thinking about.

  If the previous night had taught her anything it was that a pre-arranged plan should be stuck to, and that it was far too easy to get separated as a group while they were travelling in two canoes. As a group of six they were a force to be reckoned with, but divided into two groups of three, they were ever so much more vulnerable. The expression, safety in numbers, was just pure common sense. And so they had waited until it was really dark before leaving, and as none of them wanted to risk becoming separated as they had the night before, they came up with the simple solution of tying a long rope between the canoes.

  They paddled all through the night, without any mishaps or issues of any sort. As there was no reason for speed, they followed the stream at a more leisurely pace, stopping once at around two in the morning, for calls of nature and a hot drink.

  The dogs behaved as though going by canoe was something they did every night. Millie did not howl, and Badger refrained from leaping overboard. Ant, of course, snoozed away in her pink condo.

  This led Georgia to the suspicion that Millie had not been scared of the water at all. More likely she had reacted to that bloody snake which had been the catalyst to the whole chaotic evening. Perhaps Millie had caught its scent? Which led her to the next question. Just how long had that snake been aboard? Had it already been in the canoe when they carried it down to the water’s edge? She suddenly had an image of the Water Moccasin curled up under one of the seats, being knocked about as they had stumbled blindly through the darkness.

  But then again, perhaps it was just her wild imagination. After all Millie was famous for fainting when she spotted a snake, and she had not fainted the night before, she had only howled.

  As the first sliver of light finally caressed the horizon, they wearily pulled the canoes ashore and hid them in the scrub. They camped on a hill near a place called Proctors Cove and their bivouac site was far from ideal, as they were unable to find a level area to sleep on. However, dawn had taken away any further possibilities, as there were far too many houses around for them to continue.

  And as Georgia said to Ruby, as she helped her sit down on her makeshift bed, ‘there are worse things in this world than sleeping on a slope.’

  ‘Yes indeed there are,’ Ruby agreed, ‘there are snakes that camouflage themselves as slippers.’

  Chapter Forty Seven

  August 15th, Day 36

  ‘We are lost,’ Georgia said. She spoke quietly, almost too softly to be heard, but it didn’t really matter. It was blatantly obvious to all of them, with the possible exception of Ruby. Either that, or the cartographer had a really sick sense of humor. But somehow she doubted this.

  ‘Sure looks that way,’ Lola said, back paddling to bring her canoe alongside Georgia’s.

  They had left their campsite after dark as usual, the sky was unusually cloudless, their way lit up by a breathtaking display of stars and a crescent moon. The river ahead of them glistened like black plastic sheeting and the distant shoreline was defined only by dense darkness.

  After several miles, there was a sense of the shoreline gradually closing in on them, the river becoming narrower and the water no longer seemed to rush and gurgle in quite the same way. Inexplicably Georgia began to feel that something wasn’t quite right. The sort of feeling you get, half an hour after leaving home, when you try to remember if you really did turn the electric heater off. But of course it wasn’t that, for so many reasons!

  She was still trying to work out what it could possibly be, when they rounded a short bend in the river and found they had reached a dead end. The river just ceased to be. Somewhat taken aback at this unexpected turn of events, they peered through the darkness, trying to make sense out of the uneven half circle of solid blackness that blocked their way.

 
‘Where did the river go?’ Rebecca asked after a moment’s silence.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Georgia said, then feeling she needed to say more added, ‘I don’t think it was the river after all, it must be some sort of back water.’

  Though she managed to keep her voice steady, she was feeling close to tears, tears of frustration. She was sick of the dark, and the unknown and the overwhelming handicap of being without modern technology. It was like trying to run an obstacle course with both hands bound, and an iron ball chained to one leg. Crossing Missouri with an outdated map book (and the more recently obtained touristic wall map), was not nearly as simple as she had imagined it would be.

  Every time she had unfolded that map, and traced her fingers along their intended route, she had thought how much simpler this would all be if she just had, the now extinct luxury of being able to turn on a computer. Certainly a map was helpful (vital), but it was silent and static and well, it obviously wasn’t enough if she couldn’t even follow a simple blue line.

  How an earth did the ancient mariners do it? Their maps had been somewhat lacking in comparison to the modern day equivalent. Displaying annotations such as, ‘here there be monsters’, and ‘here be dragons’, as a way of letting the early explorer know that no one had a clue what lay in that direction, and that it was probably a really bad idea to go there. Yet in spite of this, they had navigated across the globe, and returned home again. (Well some of them had.) While she, couldn’t even manage to do something as simple as following a river downstream.

  Georgia dipped her paddle in the water, they couldn’t stay here. ‘I guess there is nothing for it but to go back the way we came and try to find out where we went wrong.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lola said, ‘we could do that, but I reckon it would be better to just call it a night and try to sort this out in day light.’

  Deedee and Jamie who had been whispering together ever since they had drawn the two canoes together, started giggling.

  Only those two could find something to laugh about when they were lost in the dark in the middle of who knew where. However, despite herself, Georgia found herself smiling, as she asked, ‘what’s so funny?’