The Survivors (Book 1): Pandemic

by Alex Burns

  “So, how’d the date go, once you finally went on it?” Jack asked after I’d been contemplating the stars for awhile.

  “Good. Really good, in the end. But it didn’t get off to the best start - the hockey was on.”

  “Oh?”

  “Vancouver were in the play offs. He took me to a sports bar and positioned himself so that he could see a screen over my shoulder so he wouldn’t miss anything!”

  Jack laughed. “Well, it can’t have been all bad.”

  “No. It got much better after the game finished. What can I say? The chemistry was amazing.”

  Jack nodded into the firelight, his brow creased in a light frown.

  “It wasn’t meant to be serious,” I continued after a moment. “He was just meant to be a fun fling.”

  “Funny how people sneak up on you, isn’t it.” It was a statement not a question.

  “Yeah… we both said we weren’t going to get serious, at the start. No getting attached. I was meant to be moving back to Australia at the end of the year, and I knew getting involved with any Canadians was bound to end in heartache or drama or both.”

  “But you got attached anyway.”

  “Yeah… I didn’t mean to. It just kinda happened. I soon came to the realisation that I was in trouble - he was one of the best people I’d ever met. Being with Tristan was easy. People always keep saying relationships are hard, and you have to work for them… but… I dunno, it just always felt so easy and good with him. We were on the same page. Of course, we had our ups and downs, but, most of the time, it was just…” I sighed. “For a long time I was scared that it was too good to last. I didn’t realise that relationships could actually be that good and supportive and drama-free. How could anyone possibly be so lucky and happy as us? I kept half-waiting for something drastic to go wrong. Naturally, I was thinking something normal like a car crash, not the apocalypse.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think anyone expected this to happen…” Jack said sadly. I glanced over at him. He was staring morosely into the flames, nursing an empty bottle of beer.

  “You want another one?” I asked, gesturing to my own bottle. Jack nodded. I stood up and stretched, holding my hands out to the flames, and then turned to go inside and grab two more beers from the fridge.

  I handed Jack his beer.

  “Cheers,” he said, and we clinked bottles.

  “So, enough about me,” I said. “How did you and Sophie get together?”

  Jack was silent for a minute or two, and I started wondering if I shouldn’t have brought her up. He never really talked about her much. I opened my mouth to apologise, but he started speaking.

  “Same as you,” he said with a low laugh. “At the pub.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t as exotic as Vancouver. Just the old local.”

  “When did you guys hook up?” I asked.

  “Few years ago,” Jack said with a faint shrug. “Three years, I think. I should probably know that…”

  “Ah okay. Was there anyone else, before her? Like, I mean, anyone serious?”

  Jack shrugged again and waved his hand in front of his face as the wind changed and blew the smoke in his direction. I scuttled around to a different seat to avoid the smoke.

  “There were a few… but nothing to write home about. Options were a bit limited here, if you recall.” He took a long draught from his bottle.

  “Well, they just got a hell of a lot worse,” I muttered.

  “True that,” Jack said. Neither of us said anything for a while after that. I poked the fire with a stick. Sparks flew off into the night sky.

  “So. Sophie,” I said. “I didn’t know her all that well, to be honest. She was in the year above me. I only remember having one class with her. Sorry,” I belatedly added. “Is it hard talking about her?”

  I liked talking about Tristan, it made him feel more real, but not everyone would feel the same way.

  Jack shook his head. “Nah. It’s all right. It’s just… I… we… well, we broke up actually. A couple of days before everything went to shit.”

  “What? I didn’t know that. Why?”

  “No one knew… we were waiting to see if it would stick before telling people…” Jack sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “We wanted different things.”

  I eyed Jack, sitting there. His gaze was firmly planted on the fire, lost in thought.

  “What did she want?” I asked quietly, curiosity getting the better of me.

  “What did Sophie want?” Jack echoed, still staring into the fire. “Ah, you know. The usual. A wedding. Kids. A house with a white picket fence,” he said in a strangely empty voice.

  “You didn’t want that?”

  “I dunno, Alice. I know it’s a bit late now, but I’d decided I wanted to see more of the world. Go backpacking or whatever - not just a week in Bali or Phuket or whatever. I’m talking taking a year or two off and just hitting the road. I’ve never lived anywhere other than Braxton or Turalla!”

  “Sophie wasn’t so keen?”

  “Nah,” Jack said, shaking his head. “She would have been happy with the yearly week-long trip up to the Gold Coast and maybe Bali or Thailand if we were lucky. She just, she wanted to stay here with her friends and family, she wanted us to stay in our little lives, in the little cocoons we’d made for ourselves. She’d like me to work on the farm like a good country lad, and she’d pop out a few kids, join the mothers group, I’d play footy while she played netball…”

  “But…”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s what I wanted too, once upon a time. I dunno, what can I tell you? I’m a late bloomer, Alice. You and Sarah went off in your early twenties, I was gonna do it in my early thirties. Oh well, too bloody late now. I waited too long. Don’t like my chances of getting to see Europe or South America these days…” He stopped talking and stared broodily into the fire.

  “Mmm.” I didn’t really know what to say. “So that’s why you broke up? Because you wanted to go travelling, and she didn’t?”

  “Yeah. No. Kinda.”

  I just looked at him over the fire, waiting for him to continue.

  “It wasn’t just that. I mean, if it was, I coulda gone off for six months and done my thing and got it out of my system. Don’t get me wrong… Soph was a top woman, and I did love her. But… There was just something…” He let out another sigh and drained his bottle. “She was really putting the pressure on for a ring that last year. I knew it would make her happy, but I just couldn’t do it. I figured I should really want to do that, shouldn’t I? Not just because it would make her happy?”

  “Yeah, I suppose so,” I said slowly.

  “How did Tristan ask you?”

  “Well, I didn’t pressure him to start with!” I said with half a laugh. I looked down at my ring. The firelight glinted off a few of the small diamonds.

  “I know you wouldn’t do that, Al.”

  “Nah, I really wasn’t even expecting it, to be honest. I mean, we were both pretty happy with the way things were going along, and well, I mean, the man had already moved halfway around the world to be with me, so I wasn’t exactly worried about the commitment side of things… besides, both the Aussie and Canadian governments already considered us spouses, so it wouldn’t make much of a difference, getting married or not… or so I thought, anyway.”

  “So you thought?” Jack echoed.

  “Well… before he asked… I really didn’t think it would make a difference at all. A few of our close friends had gotten married and they all said nothing changed after the wedding, but… getting asked, I dunno. I was on cloud nine for months afterwards! I surprised myself with how happy it made me.”

  “How’d he ask? Was it all romantic and shit?”

  I laughed. “Nah. Well, yeah, it was, but not in the usual way. There wasn’t any big gestures or hot air balloons or standing up on a stage… we were just in the backyard, at home, and well… he got down on one knee and asked me. Sa
id some lovely ego-boosting things about how wonderful I was too…” I looked at my ring again, smiling to myself. “Once he saw how happy he’d made me, he said he would have asked me earlier if he’d known I’d have that reaction.”

  The firelight flickered over Jack’s face and I couldn’t tell if he was smiling or grimacing.

  “No wedding though… shit, did you have one booked?” Jack half choked on his beer.

  I shook my head sadly. “Nope.” I spun my engagement ring around and round my finger.

  “Sorry for bringing this all up, Alice.”

  “It’s fine. I like talking about him actually. Makes him feel real again, and like he’s not just a figment of my imagination…” I paused and took another sip of beer. I was drinking it too slowly. It was warming up again. I hated warm beer. “To be honest we were just lazy about organising a wedding! The logistics of an international wedding gave me a headache anytime I thought about it,” I said with a faint laugh. “Who knows, we might have got around to it one day.”

  “Where would have you had it? Here or there?”

  “That was the problem, we couldn’t decide. Either way it was a lot of travelling for half the guests… we’d kinda decided on Hawaii. You know, meet in the middle.”

  “That woulda been fun…”

  “Yeah… well, I guess we’ll never know now.” I stared morosely at my ring.

  “You never know… maybe one day…”

  I stared at Jack, wondering if he actually believed that things could go back to how they used to be, or if he was just humouring me.

  I grunted something non-committal.

  “I never got the obsession with weddings. Not at all. Soph was always flicking through bridal magazines and looking at things online. ‘Spose I should have taken the hint a bit earlier… But they always seemed like a waste of money to me. All that planning and effort and excitement and money and it’s all over and done with in an afternoon and evening. Then what? Felt like some women were so focussed on the perfect wedding, they forgot about their partners.”

  “Mmm,” I said. I’d known a few women like that. There was one girl I’d worked with in Vancouver who didn’t seem to care who she married, as long as someone asked her so she could have her fairy tale wedding.

  “Sarah and Chris’ wedding was nice,” I said after a moment.

  “Yeah, it was.” We both looked into the flames for a few minutes, remembering. Sarah had been absolutely radiant. I’d never seen her that happy before, not until it was surpassed by Charlotte’s birth. That had been a different kind of happy though. Chris hadn’t been able to take his eyes off his new wife all evening. He’d been so proud, and still seemed vaguely surprised that such a beautiful, wonderful, accomplished woman had agreed to marry him. After a few wines, I’d been morosely jealous, convinced that I’d never meet a man who would look at me like that. I’d just gotten out of a mediocre relationship at the time, and still had a few crummy ones ahead of me, but I eventually met Tristan. Mum had been right after all. I’d just needed to be patient.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Christmas was fast approaching. Mum was dithering over what to do. I got sick of listening to her argue with herself and decided to go for a walk. I whistled for the dogs.

  “Where are you going, Auntie Alice?”

  I looked down into Charlotte’s bright face. The kid had a habit of popping up when I wasn’t expecting her. As usual, Ava wasn’t far behind.

  “Just for a walk, pumpkin.”

  “Can we come too?”

  I bit my lip. I had wanted some time alone to think, but who could say no to that eager face?

  “Oh, I ‘spose so. Go put your shoes on.”

  Both girls feet were as tough as nails these days. They usually ran around all day in bare feet, but with the warm weather we’d been having, encountering snakes was a possibility. We rarely actually saw snakes around, but they were definitely there. Thankfully they were more scared of humans than we were of them and usually slithered off if they had the opportunity. The trouble was if you accidentally stood on one, hence the shoes.

  I waited while the girls scrambled around looking for their shoes. They’d outgrow them soon, and then what would we do? There were probably plenty of children’s shoes in the abandoned houses. It still felt a bit weird, rummaging around through the dead’s possessions.

  Charlotte put her foot out for me to tie her laces.

  “Can’t you tie your own laces yet? I thought Uncle Tom taught you,” I said, frowning down at my niece.

  “I can, but you do it better,” she said, grinning up at me.

  “Oh, all right then, you little rascal.” I bent down, getting a cheeky lick in the face curtesy of Maggie and quickly tied them, mussing her hair on the way up. I glanced at Ava. She looked at me almost defiantly, laces already tied. I nodded.

  “Alrighty, let’s go.”

  We followed the dogs out. They started sniffing around the fence, utterly engrossed in some fascinating smell.

  “Where are we going?” Charlotte piped up, slipping her little hand into mine.

  “I’m not sure. Just for a walk...” I looked right and left up the street. One of the Tucker’s was out in their front lawn a few houses down with a couple of their dogs.

  “Let’s go this way,” I said, and turned in the opposite direction, not really feeling like risking an altercation between the dogs. Their little terrier didn’t seem to like Maggie all that much, judging by previous encounters.

  We walked up towards the mountain, past the crude barrier that had been built blocking the road. Personally I didn’t think it would keep anyone out who really wanted to get in, but I held my tongue.

  I hadn’t intended to go there, but we ended up close to Ollie’s house. Charlotte kept up a running commentary of our walk, that apparently included fairies following us through the trees.

  We came around the corner, and came face to face with Ollie’s tall fence and gate. They should have asked Ollie to design the barrier. He’d turned his parent’s house into a veritable fortress. I pressed the buzzer next to the gate, not really expecting any answer. Worry for him gnawed at me. It had been almost a month since our argument, and no one had seen him since. I was worried he’d done something stupid. Or he could just be lurking in his house, refusing to talk to anyone. Neither would surprise me.

  We waited for a few minutes. Ava and Charlotte were slightly behind me, looking intently for olivine in the rocks by the road. I didn’t like their chances of finding any - Sarah, Tom and I had picked that track clean when we were kids. I pressed the buzzer a few more times, but the answer was the same as every other time I’d been up here lately. Silence.

  We kept walking around the track, and back down off the hill to the ‘main’ street. I looked up and down the street, tossing up which way to go. Keep going away from the town, or back towards home? Horatio made the decision for me and started trotting along the road, away from town. I glanced back at the barrier. I felt safe enough out in the paddocks, during daylight. We followed the dog.

  We walked for about a kilometre, along the road that eventually met up with the highway. The chatter of the two girls, the odd moo from a nearby cow, and the screeching of some cockatoos in some nearby trees was all I could hear. It was peaceful, in it’s own way, apart from the buzzing of the flies around my face. I swatted at them, irritated. Who invented flies? They were the most annoying creatures. The paddocks were still mostly green, but starting to dry out in the early summer sun. In another month or so, everything would be golden brown. Would it be a hot dry summer? Or a cool, wet one? I missed being able to check the weather forecast.

  I could have kept going, but the girls were starting to get tired and the whinging had gone up a notch. I was just about to whistle for Maggie and Horatio to come back, when I heard a very human-like groan.

  Horatio’s ears perked up, seemingly hearing the same thing as me. We both stared in the direction of the noise. It came again, sli
ghtly louder, and Horatio barked and dove into the undergrowth.

  “Wait here,” I said firmly to the two girls.

  Cursing under my breath, I followed Horatio. I pushed my way through the long overgrown grass and scrub. I prayed that any snakes around could feel me stumbling towards them and had already gotten out of the way. Horatio barked ahead and the groaning sound came again. I froze for a moment. That definitely sounded human. A branch scratched my face. My fingers danced across my stinging cheek and came away sticky with blood.

  “Damn it,” I muttered. I wiped the blood on my jeans and touched my cheek gingerly with the back of my hand.

  I followed the sound of Horatio’s bark, more concerned with my cheek than what I would find.

  My brain didn’t process what my eyes were seeing for a moment. A slight young man stood against a tree, holding a stick in between himself and the barking Horatio. A prone, unmoving body slumped under a stringy bark tree at the young man’s feet.

  Horatio whined when he saw me, but didn’t move away from the young man. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the body on the ground.

  “Shit,” I swore and then stumbled towards the unmoving man. “Ollie? What did you do to him?” I demanded, glancing up at the skinny young man.

  “Nothing, I didn’t do it…”

  I dropped down onto the dirt next to Ollie, ignoring the boy for the moment. My hands hovered helplessly over Ollie’s body. Dark, dry blood soaked his t-shirt and jeans. So much blood. He was pale underneath his scruffy blonde beard, and much thinner than the last time I’d seen him. Where the hell had he been.

  “Ollie? What happened? Please don’t die.”

  My breath hitched. I reached out and put my fingers on his throat. His pulse flickered under my shaking fingers. Gingerly I lifted up his shirt. There was an ugly looking wound in his abdomen that was still weeping fluid. It didn’t look all that fresh. He’d wrapped something around his left leg, but blood had soaked through, leaving it a crusty brown colour.