The Survivors (Book 2): Autumn (16 page)

“I imagine all those people you arrested knew, right up until the time you slapped them in cuffs,” I retorted, stepping over his prone body to retrieve my tank top from where it adorned a nearby bush
.  As I passed, I felt playful fingers creep up my leg but I was out of reach before they could achieve anything.

“Well, they should have invited me,” he laughed merrily, watching me while I hunted around for my missing undergarments.

“They probably just like being in handcuffs.  I hear that’s a fetish.” I was only kidding of course, but the noise Michael made was somewhere between a low growl and a purr; a sound of intense, animal interest.  I turned to him in surprise, and raised my brows.  “You? Really? You don’t strike me as the kind of man that would like to cuff a girl up and give her a feel.”

“What?”
He looked equally startled for a moment, and then laughed and shook his head.  “No, no, not like that.  The other way around.”

“Oh?”
I peered at him with interest, equal parts curious and fascinated by the revelation.  “Horny young police officer goes to arrest the sexy she-villain, only to get captured in the line of duty? That sounds like the theme of a dirty movie.”

“Something like that,” he said looking embarrassed, as if he were admitting to a dark secret.

“I’ll have to remember that.” I gave him a wicked, flirtatious smile.  Just at that moment, the wind caught something stuck in the tree above us and set it flapping.  The movement attracted my eye.  I glanced up, and then gasped in astonishment.  “How did my bra get up there?”

“I plead not guilty,” Michael answered cheerfully
.  As if to contradict his statement, a particularly strong gust caught the garment and tugged it free, dropping it right on his face.  He was laughing so hard by the time I reached him that he made no attempt to keep it from me.

With a victorious whoop, I pulled on my bra and tank top, and then went back to searching for my underpants
.  It took me a second to realise that Michael was still laughing.  Curious, I glanced back at him and spotted him holding up my poor knickers teasingly.

“You thief!” I accused playfully, leaping on him in an attempt to capture the metaphorical flag, but he laughed even harder as he held them out of my reach
.  We tumbled together in the grass, both laughing and shouting like silly children, oblivious to how foolish we would have looked to anyone else.  Sometimes, the fact that we were almost entirely alone in the world was a good thing.

After a few moments of play-wrestling, I finally got my underwear back and managed to get dressed
.  It took some coaxing to get Michael to do the same, though; after being cooped up in that basement surrounded by small children for so long, he was enjoying the freedom of his own nudity a little too much.

I wouldn’t have minded, if not for the fact that we would need to get moving or we’d never reach the dam
.  Eventually, the promise of lunch coaxed him back into decency.  It was a little bribery on my part, but it worked.

“What have you got now?” he asked curiously, leaning over my shoulder to watch while I sliced and assembled our meal.

“Sandwiches,” I told him proudly.  It really shouldn’t have been so exciting, but it was.  After ten years without bread, I relished the thought and the texture of something so simple.  The idea had come to me just before we left, so I had found an old Tupperware container in one of our cupboards and packed it full of the fixings of a good sandwich: tomatoes, lettuce, smoked fish and the delicious rewena bread our Maori neighbours baked.

Anahera understood my longing for bread like nobody else, and had sent along a freshly-baked batch when Hemi came to trade with us
.  Who would have thought that something as simple as bread would become more exciting than cake?

I sliced the bread thickly and carefully arranged the other fixings upon it, with Michael watching over my shoulder the entire time
.  As soon as he had figured out what I was doing, he was riveted by the idea.  Although Michael had been born in China, he’d grown up in New Zealand and that made him just as much a Kiwi as I was when it came to our tastes in food.  Ten years of living on rice was a bit much for anyone, so he longed for bread just as much as I did.

The fresh produce wouldn’t last forever outside in the heat though, so we had to eat it before it went to waste
.  I filled the sandwiches full to bursting, then I carefully picked one up and handed it to him, and took the other one for myself.

We enjoyed our old-fashioned lunch immensely, far more than either of us would have liked another boring meal from a
can.  Although Michael never complained, I knew he must be as frustrated as I was with having to live that way.  The introduction of a steady supply of fresh food into our diet had brightened both of our moods almost as much as the new romance blooming between us.  It brought back memories of decades past, and made us feel… human again.

After lunch, we waited until the heat died down before we slathered on a fresh coat of sunscreen, picked up our backpacks, and moved off
.  The wind picked up just after midday, bringing pleasant gusts to cool us, which made the walk much more pleasant.  My foot felt a little better for the rest, but I longed to soak it in the cool waters of the Waikato to take the swelling down.  It already felt like we’d been walking forever, and we were unlikely to reach Arapuni before sundown.  I wondered if we would find somewhere safe to rest before nightfall.

In contrast to what Rebecca had said about the bush being dense in this part of the country, the land directly east of Te Awamutu was flat and pleasant with only a few trees sprinkled along the route
.  The roadway was narrow and cracked, flanked on either side by gorse bushes that kept all other plant life from encroaching too closely on the road itself.  Aside from the long grass that stuck up through the cracks in the asphalt, the walk was relatively easy.  Still, the road was so well-preserved that I regretted losing the Hilux – we would have made good time in those conditions.

Beyond the gorse, long grass waved placidly in the wind
.  We watched it for any sign of trouble, but held our weapons relaxed with the safeties on.  If something as large and dangerous as a pig approached us, then we would be sure to see it coming long before it got close enough to concern us.

The road took a bend, and we followed as it wound its way into a small patch of woodlands
.  A flash of neon yellow amongst the trees caught my eye.  I nudged Michael and pointed it out.  His expression turned grim when he spotted it, but he nodded and walked on regardless.  What I’d seen was an old sign post warning non-existent drivers of the school up ahead.

I had no doubt that we shared the same thought: we both dreaded the thought of finding an infected child.

The trees began to clear as we reached another bend.  We looked, and saw the overgrown remains of a primary school nestled within the curve of the road.  The playground was rusted and bent by a decade’s worth of weather, but what made me freeze and grab Michael’s hand was the sight of a small human figure sitting on the swings.

He saw her at the same time I did
.  I looked at him.  He looked back, and I saw my own indecision reflected on his face.  I knew that we shared similar feelings about the infected.  Despite our experiences with the mutated ones, the regular infected were objects of pity, to be put out of their misery whenever possible.

“We can’t just leave her there,” I whispered, shifting my shotgun into the crook of my left arm
.  With my right hand, I drew my taser out of my pocket, and then I looked at him again.  He nodded his agreement and adjusted the weight of the rifle in his hands.  I understood the precaution.  Our encounters with the violent, mutated infected in Hamilton had left us both tense and on edge.

With
stealthy footsteps, we crept closer to the young girl on the swings.  We were wary, but we’d both done it before.  This time, though, something was different.  Just as we were closing on the lone figure, I grabbed Michael’s arm to halt him and paused, listening intently.  He glanced at me in surprise, then seemed to realise what I was hearing: the girl on the swings was singing quietly to herself.

We exchanged looks of shock as we both reached the same conclusion
.  Either that little girl was some kind of infected that neither of us had seen before, or she was actually alive.  Michael grabbed my arm and pulled me back out of earshot.

“Are there any groups of survivors in this area?” he whispered urgently.

“I don’t know.  I haven’t heard of any, but things change.” I shook my head slowly, unable to tear my gaze away from the young girl.  She had her back to us and hadn’t noticed us yet.  I couldn’t guess her age without seeing her face.  I couldn’t even identify the language she was singing in.

“Maybe she’s on her own,” Michael said, and then he looked at me as though seeking my advice
.  I stared back at him, turning the thought over in my head, trying to decide the best way to proceed.  Eventually, I came to a decision.

“I’m going to talk to her
.  Stay here,” I said.  I offered him my shotgun, which he took from my hand with a frown of obvious concern.

“Are you sure?” he asked
.  “I’m happy to do it, if you want me to.”

“No, I’m less threatening.”
I shook my head firmly, my mind made up.  “Goodness knows what she’s been through.  I don’t want to scare her.  You just cover me, okay?”

Michael nodded slowly, but I could see the worry in his eyes
.  He knew better than anyone else in the world that my past experiences made me skittish around strangers, but this was different.  This wasn’t a big, strapping man, it was a young girl.  I could handle a young girl.  At least, I hoped I could.

Armed only with the taser hidden in my pocket, I circled around the edge of the playing field until I moved into her field of vision
.  She didn’t seem to see me at first; her attention was focused on something nestled in her lap.  Once I was fully in front of her, I slowly walked towards her, making no attempt at stealth and no sudden movements.  As I drew closer, I could hear her singing again.  The words were nonsensical to me, but it didn’t take long for me to figure out that she was singing in a foreign language that I didn’t recognise.

The girl was young and small, fragile from malnutrition, with long, tangled dark brown hair that hung almost to her knees
.  She was so thin it took me a while to pinpoint her age at around thirteen or fourteen; her rag-clad body showed a few of the earliest stages of puberty, but not much.  In her lap, she nursed what appeared to be a very threadbare teddy bear.  At least, that’s what I hoped it was.  All I could really see was light brown fur.

I did a quick calculation in my head and worked out that she must have been three or four when the virus hit
.  A surge of sympathy hit me along with the realisation that she would have been hardly more than a toddler when she was left on her own.  I wondered if her parents had been immune, or if she’d been completely alone since she was a little child, and somehow miraculously survived all these years without any adults to help her.  I wondered if she spoke English, or if she just remembered a song her mother had sung to her as a baby.  There was only one way to find out.

“Hello,” I said softly, halting about five metres from the swings
.  The girl looked up sharply, her otter-brown eyes huge against skin the colour of milk chocolate.  I recognised her ethnicity as someone who originated from India, but I couldn’t even begin to guess which province.

The girl didn’t say anything, just sat there looking totally shocked by my unexpected presence
.  She didn’t seem to be frightened so much as bewildered, which made sense since she probably hadn’t seen another human face in a very, very long time.

It occurred to me that she might only speak Hindi
.  Maybe her parents had never had a chance to teach her English – or maybe she’d just forgotten over the years.  I raised a hand and waved a harmless greeting, then repeated myself.  “Hello.”

The girl looked at my hand, then looked at my face, then looked down at her own hands
.  Slowly, as if uncertain what to do, she raised her hand and waved back at me.  The confusion on her face tugged at my heartstrings; her eyes were so big that she looked like a little girl, despite being in her early teens. 

In an effort to make myself smaller and less intimidating, I eased my backpack off my shoulders and set it down, then sat down on the ground a few metres away from her.

“Can you understand me?” I asked, speaking gently so as not to frighten her, but slowly and clearly.

The girl stared at me while the question sank in
.  It was a look I understood better than most; after a decade of isolation, it was hard to think in terms of questions and answers.  Conversations were no longer second nature.  At last, she nodded hesitantly and found a question of her own.  “Are you… real?”

The question confused me a little, but I took it in my stride
.  “Yes, I’m real.  My name is Sandy.  What is your name?”

Her brow wrinkled
.  For a moment it seemed like I’d lost her, but I just waited and gave her time, not rushing her for an answer.