by Alex Burns
“Mmm. It’s going to take a long time to get used to.”
“If we ever do… I don’t know that I can get used to this,” I said, taking a long draught of the wine.
“Yeah…” Tom looked broodily into his own glass. “So whose still kicking around here?”
I thought for a moment, thinking about the people he’d know. “Well, Jack is - you remember Jack, right?”
“Sarah’s Jack?”
I let out a laugh. “Yeah. Him.”
“Who else?”
“Ollie Fitzgerald.”
“Didn’t you two go out for awhile?”
I snorted. “Just for a few months in Year 11. Nothing major.”
“What happened? I don’t remember. Your love life wasn’t exactly one of my priorities when I was fourteen.”
“He went off to Melbourne for uni. We broke up after that.”
“Oh. What happened to him? He got mega rich didn’t he?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I guess. Well, you know he was smart - he got, like, in the top 0.1 percent of the state for his Year 12 results.”
“Yeah, I remember he was dux.”
“Yeah, well anyway, he ended up dropping out of his law degree and starting his own software company and moved to the States. Made a bucket load of money from his company.”
“Woah.”
“Well, all that money isn’t much use to him now, is it?” I asked, echoing Ollie himself.
“‘Spose not,” Tom said gloomily. “So, who else?”
I tapped my lip. “Ina across the road.”
“Ina! Awesome!”
“I dunno if you remember her not - she was in between us at school - Bec Harlock.”
“Yeah, I remember her. She was nice.”
“Still is,” I said. “Judy from the pub and her mum and one of her nieces… um, old Mr Douglas, a few of the teachers from the high school, the fish and chip lady… Kristy Bell…”
“The one who was a total bitch to Sarah?”
“Yeah. That one. All five of her kids died.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah…”
I reeled off a few more names. Some he knew, others he didn’t.
“So, Sarah…” he eventually said. I’d been waiting for it.
We spent the rest of the night reminiscing and trading stories about our sister. It felt good, almost like she was in the room with us.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Time seemed to speed up. Every morning I woke up was a day further from my old, normal life.
We fell into a routine of sorts. At first I just wanted to sleep and sleep away the loneliness, sorrow, and uncertainty, but slowly that faded. Things needed to be done. Besides, the tireder I was in the evenings, the better I slept. I still had the occasional nightmares, but the dreams where Tristan turned up and we just did normal things, or went on whacky dream-adventures made up for it. If the world hadn’t gone to hell in a hand basket, I’d seriously wonder if I needed to be committed to a mental institution or something, but as it was, being more excited about my dreams than reality seemed rather mild to what other people were going through.
On more than one occasion, I woke up and, if I didn’t move, I could still feel the pressure of his body on mine. It was bittersweet, and almost felt like he’d been there with me.
I started waking up with the birds at dawn. That was getting earlier and earlier according to the clock Mum still had batteries for in the kitchen. I’d stopped paying much attention to the time though. There wasn’t much point. It wasn’t like we had appointments or jobs or classes or TV shows to keep track of.
I didn’t know how she did it, but Mum was always up before me, pot of tea brewing away on the table, and the smell of the day’s bread starting to waft out of the oven.
We would sit there, just the two of us, sipping our tea and discuss what needed to be done that day. If there was any bread left from the day before, I’d toast it and slather it with butter and Vegemite. Occasionally jam. I figured our stocks of Vegemite might run out before my life did, but we could always make jam and honey. I’d enjoy the Vegemite while I still could.
Ina taught me how to make butter. It had been one of her jobs when she’d been a child, back in the good old days when they didn’t have electricity connected to their farm. I’d always assumed Ina had grown up in Turalla, but she’d actually grown up on an old homestead about twenty kilometres away, on the shore of one of the lakes. They’d grown onions, and had a few dairy cows for the family’s milk, cheese, cream and butter supplies. She said it had been a simple life, but hard. She’d leapt at the opportunity to move into ‘town’ when she’d married her husband.
At first, I’d gone down and collected milk from Andy, but after a few weeks he said, “why don’t you take a couple of cows? You could use that back paddock behind the orchard.”
I’d gone back to Mum, and she’d agreed, as long as they were jerseys. She’d always had a thing against the more common black and white friesians for some reason. The paddock wasn’t ours - it belonged to the Burke family, but they were all gone.
Tom and Jack fixed up the fence and installed a gate. Well, Jack did most of the work and Tom tried to help. My brother wasn’t the handiest of men, but he gave it a go.
“You’ll probably need a little milking shed before next winter,” Jack said after they were done and we’d put the cows in their new home. “But you’ll be fine for now.”
Charlotte wanted to name them Mrs Moo and Mr Moo. The fact that they were both female didn’t seem to concern the girl. I overrode her. I named them Florence and Daisy. They were docile, curious creatures. Florence was a very light brown, while Daisy was darker. They both had beautiful, deep brown eyes.
Sammy the pony seemed to like the company and extra space, although he kept herding the cows up and then didn’t seem to quite know what to do with them. Poor Maggie the dog was scared of the cows and refused to go anywhere near them. Horatio, on the other hand, had the same idea as Sammy and wanted to herd the poor creatures, which actually turned out to be a very useful trait once I trained him to actually bring them back to me instead of just herd them wherever he wanted. Usually the cows own natural curiosity and knowledge that they’d get a treat brought them to the gate, but every now and then they would be on the far side of a muddy paddock, and it was a lot easier to send Horatio bounding eagerly down to them rather than trudge through the muck myself.
I was terrible at milking to start with. It took me ages to fill a bucket, but I was getting better. The cows were surprisingly patient with me. The first time I took some fresh milk over to Ina, she’d drunk it straight away, smacked her lips and said she hadn’t tasted milk so good in years.
It took me a little while to get used to the stronger taste, but the two little girls loved it. Mum started experimenting with cheese making.
“We’re going to have to become completely self-sufficient with food, Alice. The supplies we have won’t last forever, especially not with this amount of mouths to feed. And we can’t rely on others.”
So, we milked the cows, experimented with making our own cheese and butter.
“It’ll be good to barter with when other people figure out they’ll need to actually do something for themselves,” Mum had muttered. Most of the survivors so far seemed to be living mostly on food we’d scavenged from the shops in Braxton and the empty houses. A few of the survivors hunted rabbits for meat, and quite a few people had a few chooks in their backyard for eggs. Rhys, one of the teenagers, had started trading honey from the hives his mother had kept for supplies. Andy had talked about slaughtering a few sheep or cows and sharing around the meat. There were a lot of unclaimed farm animals roaming around the district. People shouldn’t go hungry yet, as long as they had a few skills.
It was Charlotte and Ava’s job to collect the eggs and feed the chooks. Between the four hens in our henhouse, and the five next door in Lynette’s backyard, we had more than enough eggs for our n
eeds.
After I’d done milking Daisy and Florence each morning, I usually helped Mum in the vegetable gardens for an hour or two. Between us, and with occasional help from the girls and Tom and Yi-Ling, we kept on top of the weeds, and cleared out space for another few beds, ready for seedlings to be planted in. Mum’s greenhouse was thriving, but she was rather protective of the space.
Squatting in amongst the last of the winter vegetables, I realised with a jolt just how lucky I was. What if my family all lived in high-rise apartments in the city? What would we have done then?
By mid-morning, Tom and Yi-Ling usually emerged, yawning and in need of coffee. We all trooped back into the kitchen and Mum made us morning tea, and breakfast for Tom and Yi-Ling. Tom helped out in the yard if Mum needed any heavy lifting, or any maintenance done on the house. Yi-Ling was a bit lost at first, wandering around the property wondering what to do with herself. She was a highly educated doctor, and not having any structure or purpose to her day seemed to throw her. More than once, I found her standing at the back fence, just staring off over the paddocks, tears streaming down her face.
We were in opposite positions. She knew her lover was alive and healthy and could see him whenever she wanted to, and went to bed wrapped in his arms, but she had no idea as to the fate of her family. I knew what had happened to most of my family, but I had no idea about Tristan. I couldn’t decide which was worse. Sometimes I found myself wishing I’d gone back to Canada with him so that we’d be together now, but then I’d think of Mum and Charlotte and Tom and feel guilty for even thinking that. If I had to make a conscious choice, I had no idea how I’d choose.
In the afternoons I usually went for a walk with the dogs. Sometimes I took the girls, other times I went alone. I visited Jack every few days, and at least once a week I trekked up to Ollie’s house on the hill. The place was becoming more and more fortress-like every time I went.
One morning in October, Mum said over our morning pot of tea, “I think we should have a little school for the girls. Nothing too serious, but they need to learn to read and write properly, and count and everything else you learned in school. Well - not everything else, but they do need to learn to read properly.”
And so our little lessons started. The girls were both excited at first. Charlotte said she’d missed school. The excitement didn’t last all that long though, and some days included a lot of whinging when we finished our morning chores and said it was time for lessons. I tried to teach them reading and writing, while Yi-Ling gave them maths lessons. Tom decided he’d be the science teacher. Mum taught them music and botany.
Ava could write a bit, and I assumed she could read some, although she still wasn’t talking out loud. I wondered how long her muteness would last. Mum assured me that she’d talk when she was ready, and not to push her.
Charlotte knew the alphabet, and could read a little bit, but she needed a lot of guidance and help. I felt completely out of my depth. In theory teaching someone to read and write didn’t sound all that hard, but after a few frustrating weeks I’d developed a huge appreciation for prep teachers. The inability to simply google the information I needed was frustrating.
I went to Melissa and Ben for help, but they were both high school teachers, and almost as clueless as I was when it came to teaching young children. I came bearing gifts of a fresh loaf of bread, some of my latest batch of butter, and a small bag of veggies out of the garden. Ben all but snatched them out of my hands in his eagerness for the fresh food.
“They can already read and write by the time I get them,” Melissa said after I’d told them my problem. “Well, most of them…”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t have a clue where to start! The little ones always kinda scared be to be honest…” Ben said with a faint shudder.
“There’s probably a whole bunch of resources at the primary school that you could use,” Melissa said after a moment, tapping her finger against her lips and then nodding to herself. “I’m sure of it.”
“Right… no one who worked at the primary school is still here, are they?” I asked, my mind running through all the survivors. Mr Kenna had retired years ago, I doubted he still had keys to the school. I realised I could probably ask for his advice though, and tried to remember to next time I saw him.
“It’s changed a lot since I went here,” I said. Melissa and I stood at the front gate, looking over the buildings and yard. The ancient original bluestone building was still there. That had been the classroom I’d spent my own first year of school in. It had long ago been turned into the administration wing of the school, housing the small staff room and offices. Where I remembered playing cricket and other games on the basketball court was now a bright blue shed. We walked around the school, giving it a brief inspection. The old high monkey bars were gone, replaced by a much safer and boring looking contraption that you’d have to be pretty unlucky to hurt yourself on. I didn’t really blame the school for getting rid of the monkey bars - I’d lost count over the years I’d been there of how many kids had fallen off and winded themselves, or worse. Sarah had sprained her ankle on an awkward land, and one boy a few years younger than me had broken his arm. I still felt nostalgic for the way it had been.
One of the old shelter sheds was still standing, but the other one was long gone. A stand of trees that I remembered as being waist height now towered over us, branches waving in the slight wind.
All of the doors were locked. Melissa pulled a crowbar out of her backpack. I stood back and let her do the honours. With a crack and splinter, we were in.
“That felt surprisingly good,” Melissa said with a laugh, putting the crowbar down. “Maybe I missed my calling. I should have been a thief.”
“It probably would have been more lucrative than teaching,” I said.
“Indeed.”
We peered in through the door. It was empty, of course, and untouched since the last teacher had left, locking the door behind them.
Our footsteps echoed down the empty corridor. The ghosts of countless generations of school children haunted me. Artwork lined the walls, proudly displaying the talents (or at least the enthusiasm) of the youth of Turalla. I tried not to think about the fact that most of the budding artists were now rotting in the Turalla cemetery. I couldn’t shake the maudlin thought once it was there though. I sighed.
“What is it?” Melissa asked. I’d almost forgotten she was there.
I waved helplessly at the paintings. “Just thinking about the kids who drew these…”
“Yeah… it’s rough,” she said in a small voice. “So much potential, just wiped out.” She sighed herself and looked sadly around. “I would have had these kids in a few years… Now…”
She reached out and touched one of the paintings. It was a self-portrait of a child and her family. Melissa shook her head after a minute and kept walking. I followed.
The school wasn’t very big. Only a hundred students or so. Maybe less. There’d been more kids back in my day, but not enough of my generation were sticking around the country to raise our own children.
We looked in each classroom to see what books they had. The school was like a time capsule. Everything was still exactly where the teachers and students had left it before the Red Death hit. School had been one of the first things cancelled. I imagined the teachers thinking that they’d be back to work in a week or two or three. Sometime, at any rate. There was a pile of marking on one desk, ready to be handed back to the students. Another desk had a half-finished to-do list. Another room held a partially built model of a ship.
“I didn’t realise it would be this depressing,” I said as we surveyed what looked like a happy classroom. Colourful posters lined the walls, smiling photographs of the kids beamed down at us from a birthday wall, and the words from the last spelling test were still on the board, along with the homework and a reminder about parent/teacher interviews.
I gravitated towards the birthday wall. Ava’s face grinned down at me. She looked so hap
py and carefree, with her big, toothy grin.
I’d never seen her smile like that.
April 23rd. I’d have to remember to tell Mum when her birthday was.
I wrinkled my nose when we opened the door to the next classroom. It smelt funky. I soon saw the culprits. Possums had broken in and made a nest. Couldn’t really do much about that, and really there wasn’t exactly much point, so we just closed the door and left them.
The juniors rooms were the last ones we came to. Melissa flicked through a few books.
“Bingo,” she muttered and started handing me books. I pulled off my backpack and piled them in. I’d take a closer look later.
Back home again, I was pouring over the books we’d liberated from the primary school. A door slammed shut, and the sound of running feet made me look up. Ava came skidding breathlessly into the room. She stared at me with wild eyes.
“What is it?” I asked, sitting up straighter.
Her mouth opened and closed a few times, but nothing came out.
“Ava, what is it?” I asked more urgently.
“It’s Charlotte,” Ava croaked. “She can’t breathe.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
I dropped the book and leaped out of my chair.
“Where is she? Is she alive? What happened?”
Ava blinked at me. “She’s at the chook shed. She can’t breathe.”
“MUM!” I yelled, before remembering she’d gone over to Ina’s. “Tom! Where are you? Yi-Ling!”
Yi-Ling opened the bathroom door as I ran past, and I grabbed her by the wrist, dragging her along with me. She was mostly dressed, her hair dripping wet.
“What -”
“Something’s wrong with Charlotte,” I said hurriedly.
“Where is she?”
“Down the back,” I said, tugging on her arm. “Where’s Tom?” We were at the back door and I pushed it open and jumped quickly to avoid trampling Maggie who had been snoozing on the door mat.