Forager - the Complete Trilogy (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Trilogy)

by Peter R Stone

  I caught her hands and tried to get her attention. "Nanako, are you okay?"

  "My photo-viewer, Ethan, I think they may have stolen it!" She pulled her hands from mine and went back to searching, muttering away to herself as tears slid silently down her cheeks and caused her thick black eyeliner to run. "Please be here, please be here..."

  "Can you just forget the photo-viewer for a moment and tell me what happened?" I asked, more firmly this time.

  "I got home from your mother's place an hour ago and found the place like this. Now please, quickly, help me look for my photo-viewer, if they've destroyed it or stolen it, I...I don't know what I'll do."

  Recognising the utter desperation in her tone, I recalled Councillor’s Okada’s warning, that Nanako wasn’t as tough as she seemed. I thought of the way she overreacted when King conscripted us to go to Hamamachi with him. She had panicked, withdrawn from me, and almost hyperventilated. I realised I was seeing that side of her again now – the side where she freaked out and succumbed to a host of fearful ‘what-if’ scenarios. I don’t know what caused her to react irrationally like this, though my being shot two years ago was no doubt part of it.

  Bearing this in mind, I stopped trying to force her to see reason, and joined her digging through the chaotic mess that covered the floor. The wooden sides of the bed were snapped right through and the top of our new mattress carved into strips. Ignoring the pain in my chest, I managed to lift up the broken bed so we could see if her photo-viewer was beneath it, but no luck.

  I shifted aside the dining room table, its metal legs twisted ninety degrees, and the chairs, which were missing their legs. But again, no luck. I helped her sort through the pile of cut up towels, torn clothing, and shredded bed sheets and doona, but still nothing.

  I went to the kitchen, and sighed in despair when I saw that the cupboard doors had all been torn off, and the shelves inside broken. The saucepans were ruined, the cutlery bent, and the stove smashed. After that, I hesitantly entered the bathroom, and had to sniff back tears when I saw they'd cut our new shower curtain into strips and shattered the mirror and almost all the shower wall’s tiles.

  As shock began to press its ugly way into my mind, I staggered out of the bathroom and saw Nanako on her knees, frantically searching through the ruined kitchen cupboards.

  "It's not there, I already checked," I assured her.

  "Then check again – check everything again! It has to be here somewhere," she practically wailed.

  Seeing that she was on the verge of hysterics, I knelt beside her and tried to pull her gently from the cupboard. "I think we just have to face up to the fact that they – whoever they are – have stolen it."

  "No! Keep looking!"

  I tightened my grip on her. "It's gone, Nanako, okay?"

  "But I can't lose it, Ethan, it means more than anything to me. Those photos are the only record I have of our times together. When we were dating, our engagement party, our wedding, everything."

  "You still have your memories," I pointed out, trying to console her.

  "You don't get it," she said angrily, trying to pull away from me. "In the two years we were apart, those photos were the only thing that kept me going. Whenever the fears or doubts got too big, every time it seemed I'd never get back with you, I would look at those photos, and then I'd find the strength to keep going. I can't lose them, Ethan."

  I loosened my grip but didn't quite let go. "Nanako, I understand what you're saying, but you've got me now, okay? And you've still got your memories – no one can take those from you."

  "Ethan, I know you're easy going and there's not much that you feel really strongly about. But these photos mean everything to me, okay? The memories are not enough," she stressed.

  "At least you have the memories," I said sadly, "I don't even have those."

  As my words sank into her panic-stricken mind, Nanako settled slowly back onto her heels and rocked slowly back and forth, sobbing quietly.

  "You have to let it go, okay? We've turned the flat inside out and the viewer's not here. I'm sorry, I really am. And you know, it's not the photos that gave you the strength to keep going these past two years." I placed my hand gently over her heart. "The strength came from here."

  "You think so?" Her tears flowing more freely.

  "I don't think so, I know so," I assured her. "Furthermore..." I stopped suddenly and my eyes opened wide. "Where's the fridge?"

  She gestured over her shoulder with her thumb.

  I looked towards the balcony and noticed the door was open. "You mean they..."

  "...threw it off the balcony, yeah," she said.

  So, we didn’t have a fridge any more either. I gazed around the flat and shook my head in disbelief. They didn't miss a thing; the people who did this. Every single thing we owned was destroyed, torn, shredded or otherwise wrecked.

  My eyes were suddenly drawn to pieces of broken black plastic on the floor next to the kitchen cupboard. I moved closer and my spirits fell. It was Nanako's precious black lunchbox, and it looked like someone wearing heavy boots had jumped on it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  "Oh no, I'm so sorry," I said sadly as I picked up a large plastic bowl that had a split down the side now. With meticulous care, I carefully collected every single piece of the lunchbox, right down to the smallest lacquer chip, and put them in the bowl. I fought back tears as memory after memory associated with the lunchbox fled through my mind. Nanako sharing her lunch with me the first time we met, of Nanako bringing me obento lunches when she came back to Newhome, and how I looked forward to eating obento lunches for the rest of my life.

  "What are you gonna do with that?" she asked, sniffing back tears.

  I looked at the bowl. "I just couldn’t leave it on the floor."

  "This is Sienna's doing, isn't it?" She asked as she stood and walked about the flat. Tears flowed again when she picked up her favourite blue-and-black zebra pattern stripped top – the one she had worn when we first met. The sleeves were practically torn off.

  "If it is, she can't have done it by herself – the furniture's been smashed to pieces!" I pointed out as I stood and followed her, cradling the bowl to my chest.

  "So what are we gonna do?"

  "We need to report it," I said.

  "To the Custodians?"

  "Yes."

  "They already know."

  "What, how?"

  "They came around not long after I got home. It was that Major Harris creep and his men we met in the market." She stooped and picked up more torn and shredded articles of clothing.

  "And?"

  She pulled three pieces of paper from the hip pocket of her dress. "They gave me a fine for making a public disturbance 'cause the neighbours complained about the noise made when the flat was trashed. Apparently, they accused us of having a wild party. They also gave me a fine for damaging public property since we’re renting the apartment from the town; and this one takes the cake, a fine for littering."

  "Littering?"

  "The fridge."

  I grabbed the three citations from her, anger at this injustice burning through me. "But didn't you explain to them what really happened?"

  "What do you reckon? They just accused me of lying."

  My anger turned to rage towards this Major Harris and his Custodian stooges. "But that's absurd, who'd do this to their own flat! And these citations, they come to two-thousand bucks!"

  Clutching her ruined clothes to her chest, Nanako sank to the floor, her face a picture of despondency. "Go over Major Harris's head and protest."

  "Okay, I'll do that, but I suspect they'll just throw the complaint back in my face." I looked at the detestable pieces of paper, my face getting hot as worry drove out the anger. It would take us weeks to pay the fines, not to mention we had to replace every single thing we owned.

  I flopped down onto the floor beside her and wrapped my arms around her. "The question is – what do we do now? We can't stay here."

 
; Nanako laid her head against my chest and sniffed back her tears. But then she sat up and searched out my eyes, the despair gone, replaced by a fiery determination. "Yes we can, and we will. We repaint the walls, we fix and mend what we can and replace what we can’t. We don’t let them win."

  Inspired by her indomitable strength of spirit, I hugged her and kissed her forehead. "Right! Let's get to it then."

  We spent the next six hours in a frenzy of activity. I bent all the metal cutlery back into shape, collected all the shards of broken glass and shattered wall tiles, and then swept the bathroom floor until it was spotless. I tried to fix the dining table, but the legs were bent back so far that the metal was cracked. After that, I collected the cupboard doors, hinges, and shelves. I couldn't fix anything without tools, but I sorted it all out so I could repair them when I get hold of some.

  Nanako collected the contents of her sewing kit from where it had been scattered across the floor and set about repairing what clothes she could. She reattached sleeves and closed ripped seams. When she repaired something, she folded it neatly and placed it in a pile beside her.

  By midnight, she could no longer keep her eyes open, so we collected the ruined doona, sheets and towels and made an impromptu bed on the floor. We lay down and Nanako threw her leg and arm over me as usual, and used my chest as a pillow. I wrapped my arms around her and ran my fingers through her silky hair.

  "I shouldn't have brought us back here," I said.

  "Don’t go beating yourself up," she drawled sleepily. "I'm the one who insisted we live here, remember?"

  "Yeah, I know, but..." I stopped mid sentence. Her breathing had become deep and rhythmical and her arms were twitching randomly. Wow, the girl's ability to fall asleep at the drop of a hat was awe-inspiring.

  I waited ten minutes and then carefully extracted myself from her embrace. After that I picked up the plastic container with the pieces of Nanako's treasured lunchbox and slipped out the door. I made my way inconspicuously over to my parent's place. I only had to go to ground once to dodge a roving Custodian patrol.

  I let myself into their apartment with the keys they'd never taken from me and covered the dining table with newspaper. Then I began laying out the pieces of the lunchbox as though it was a 3D jigsaw puzzle. When I’d done that, I ducked quietly into my father's bedroom – the room I used to share with him. I searched the bottom shelf of the old dresser in which I used to keep my clothes. To my relief, all the tools, paints and materials I used to make balsawood model ships were still there. Taking care not to wake my father, who was snoring noisily on the bed near the door, I carried all the items I might need to the dining room. I set a table lamp beside me and then began the laborious task of gluing the lunchbox back together, making sure I didn't leave out a single fragment or lacquer chip.

  Two hours later the door to my mother and sisters' bedroom opened and my mother came out squinting and blinking in an attempt to focus her eyes.

  "Yes, Mother?" I asked.

  "Whatever are you doing, Son? Do you realise it’s three in the morning?" she asked as she wrapped a dressing gown around her shoulders.

  "I'm trying to fix Nanako's lunchbox," I explained as though it were obvious.

  She pulled out a chair and sat at the table. "It could have waited until tomorrow, surely. You know I don't like it when you go sneaking about at night. One of these days the Custodians are going to catch you."

  Recalling a Custodian had caught us just last night, I wondered what my mother would say if I told her how prophetic that comment was. "Don’t worry, I'm very careful."

  "How did her lunchbox end up like that anyway?" she asked.

  Having reassembled the lunchbox now, I mixed up a small quantity of quick drying resin and began to fill all the cracks in the lacquer, as some pieces had been too badly damaged, and others I hadn't been able to retrieve. "Our flat got trashed."

  "What – by whom? When? How bad is it?"

  I held up my hands to stop the bombardment. "Someone – we don't know who – did it today when Nanako was here. And it's bad, they destroyed pretty much everything."

  All that answer did was send my mother into an even more frantic question mode as she tried to dig every piece of information out of me she could. I answered the best I could but finally had to stop her. "Mother, look, I really don't know anything more than what I've told you. And please, go back to bed. I was trying not to wake you."

  She made me a cup of hot soy milk and then surprised me by returning to bed, but I could tell from the sound of her tossing and turning that she didn't go back to sleep. Meanwhile, I used my finest sandpaper to render the lunchbox perfectly smooth, both inside and out, and then painted it with black enamel paint. When that dried – and I hurried the process along with a radiator – I painted it with transparent varnish.

  At 5:30am – after almost six hours work – it was finished, and looked almost as good as new. I quickly packed up everything and then crept back to my apartment in the dark. I set the lunchbox on the floor beside Nanako and lay on our makeshift bed, which looked more like a nest to be honest, and instantly fell asleep.

  * * *

  I was woken by gentle hands shaking me.

  "What's this, Ethan?"

  I felt like I'd only slept a few minutes, which wasn't far from the truth. Nanako was sitting up and examining the repaired lunchbox with an expression of utter disbelief and wonderment on her lovely face.

  "It's your lunchbox," I replied simply as I sat up.

  "But it was totalled."

  "Ta-da."

  "But..." she turned it over in her hands again. "It's as good as new! Must have taken you all night to fix it."

  "Pretty much."

  She threw her slim arms around my neck and sniffed back tears – happy ones this time – and buried her face in my neck. "Thank you."

  "Well, my motives weren’t exactly pure, you know. How was I gonna get those amazing lunches without the lunchbox?"

  "Doofus!" she exclaimed and gave me a playful shove on the chest. After that she stood, wrapped the lunchbox in its checked-pattern handkerchief, and placed it reverently on the pile of clothes she had repaired last night.

  "I don't know what we're gonna do about breakfast. The food got tossed out the window with the fridge," she said.

  I was about to suggest I pop out and buy something with what little money we had left – retrofitting the apartment and the bribe had pretty much cleared us out – when I heard three women approaching our apartment. My mother and sisters, in fact.

  "I think the breakfast problem’s about to be rectified," I said as hurried to the door.

  I pulled open the door – I didn’t need to unlock it, since it no longer had a lock – and quickly grabbed my father’s heavy toolbox that my mother and older sister were lugging between them. With their free hands, they each also carried a sewing kit. My younger sister, looking healthier by the day, struggled along behind them with a picnic basket.

  They had come to help!

  They took one step inside and froze, utterly dumbfounded.

  "Oh, Elder Brother, look at your flat and all your stuff – it's all ruined!" cried my little sister as she darted inside and stared at the scene of devastation with dismay.

  I put the heavy toolbox down by the kitchen bench, and ruffled her wavy brown hair. "Don't worry, we'll fix it."

  "Not all of it you can't, some stuff's totally wrecked," she said.

  "Then we'll have to replace it, I guess."

  "How can people be so mean?" She frowned and stuck out her bottom lip.

  "That's the million dollar question, isn't it?"

  "Who did this?" my older sister demanded.

  "No idea," I replied.

  "Did you ask the neighbours?" my mother asked.

  "Not yet, but according to the Custodian patrol that dropped in last night, the neighbours dobbed us in for having a wild party."

  "That’s ridiculous," my mother said angrily. "May I suggest
you visit your neighbours later and see if they saw anyone suspicious. Whoever did this must have made a lot of noise."

  "Okay, I'll give it a shot."

  "You have to find out something – this is outrageous!" my mother added. "But first, let's eat. We brought breakfast, lunch, and our sewing kits, so let’s have breakfast and then we ladies can get stuck into fixing all the clothes and linens."

  My older sister pointed to the toolbox. "That's father's contribution. He refused to come because you told him to stay out of your life, remember?" she scowled, as though I was the guilty party.

  "But where can we eat? The table's all busted," Younger Sister asked as she nudged the flattened table with her toes.

  Seeing no other option, I grabbed the table, plonked it on the floor near the bed, and gave it a thorough cleaning. After that my mother and older sister set a place for Nanako, Younger Sister, and me at the table and were about to wait on us, but I jumped up, grabbed the picnic basket, and laid out two more placemats, plates, and cups.

  "Whatever are you doing, Ethan?" Elder Sister snapped.

  "We're going to eat together," I said.

  My older sister glanced from me, to Nanako and to Mother, torn between her desires to adhere to Newhome's rigid customs, yet aware that Nanako came from a more relaxed background. "But..."

  "Come on, why don't you give it a go?" Nanako prompted as she laid a gentle hand on Elder Sister's arm.

  My little sister grabbed her other arm and pulled her down. "Come on, Father's not here to object, so let's do it!"

  Elder Sister frowned but knelt stiffly at the table nonetheless, and then my mother joined us.

  We ate a nourishing breakfast of homemade wholegrain bread, boiled eggs, mixed nuts, and dried fruits. My mother and younger sister chatted freely with Nanako and me while they ate. Elder Sister listened but refused to participate.

  When breakfast was out of the way, the women attacked the torn and slashed clothes, linen, and curtains with a vengeance. I was supposed to go to work soon, but I figured the boss would give me the day off if I told him what had happened.