Arcadium (3 page)

“Definitely
less than yesterday,” I say.

“Clearly.”

Up ahead
there’s a park in the distance, flat with a few trees dotted in the
overgrown grass.

Liss finishes
her last drop of water and screws the lid back on. “I’m out,” she
says.

To me it sounds
like she’s talking about ammo. Maybe water is as precious as
bullets. It’s our weapon against dehydration. I begin to wonder
with jokes like that if I’m not already dehydrated and going
slightly crazy.

“I need to
pee,” Liss says.

At least she’s
not dehydrated. “You know the drill.” We operate on a drop your
pants and go right next to one another method. It’s too risky to go
out of each other’s sight just for some stupid privacy, though I’ll
admit it’s pretty weird peeing on the nature strip in the middle of
the street right next to your kid sister. But, like almost
anything, you get used to it.

Liss points to
a silver water fountain just inside the park boundaries. “Do you
think there’s any water in there?”

“Good spotting.
You want to go check?”

She presses her
lips together and stares at me. “You sure?”

I’ve already
surveyed the scene. The park is flat and free of infected people.
“Sure.”

Liss runs over,
and she’s constantly looking around. She’s becoming more aware and
I can’t help but smile. It’s a good thing. Liss presses the button
and water shoots out in an arc but she backs away suddenly
suspicious and takes off at a run.

“What is it?” I
say, watching her closely when she returns.

Liss is holding
her hands out in front. “There’s water but it’s no good. There’s
blood on it.”

“Did you touch
it?”

“The button
yeah, but not the blood.” She’s breathless from her run but won’t
drop her hands to her side. “I don’t think so anyway.”

“Ok.” I get out
the antibacterial wipes, pull one out of the packet and seal it
again. “Flip your hands over?” There’s no blood. I pass her the
wipe and she scrubs her fingers with it.

“Good call,” I
say. “You can never be too careful.”

Liss balls up
the wipe and leaves it by a street lamp.

We keep
walking, trying to stick to the shade but as the sun moves across
the sky it’s hard to hide from it. Liss pushes the sunglasses back
up the tiny bridge of her nose. “It’s hot.”

Thank you,
captain obvious. “Are you thirsty?”

Liss nods.

“Give me your
bottle.”

Liss hands it
over and I pour some of my water into her bottle. “I’m only doing
this because you’re my sister. You’re my family and we look out for
each other.” I pass her the bottle and watch her drink. “Don’t ever
give anyone else your water or food. Ever. Not anyone. Got it?”

She gives me a
little soldier salute and screws the cap back on her bottle. Up
ahead I catch a flash of movement and my senses prickle. I don’t
need to tell Liss, it’s like she can read me instantly. I duck and
she copies. We stay crouched, watching as a lonely infected person
wanders across our path. It’s an older man, with a potbelly, a
stained shirt and trousers, and a tie flapping in the breeze.

He’s never
really a threat; he doesn’t notice us even though he passes within
fifty metres of us. I figure their sense of smell isn’t any better
than ours, since they were like us once. But since they can hear
and see movement, I put our own brand of sign language into
use.

First it’s the
quiet sign: it’s pretty universal, straight index finger to lips.
Liss copies to show me she understands. Next it’s the single file
and follow me sign: two fingers together pointing in the direction
I want to go.

We move along,
still crouching. It’s slow going but our lives are worth it. The
single file and follow me sign completely obliterates the stay back
while I check the intersection rule so Liss follows me like a
shadow.

It’s clear to
the right and ahead. To the left is the infected businessman but
he’s wandering away with his back to us. There’s no point in
waiting, where there’s one there tend to be many more just around
the corner. I reach back and grab Liss’ hand and together we creep
across the open space.

That’s the only
infected person we see for the rest of our walk. We pass by the
service station but it’s been looted like crazy so I don’t bother
going in. In the evening it starts to cool again, but just a
bit.

We haven’t
dared speak since seeing the infected man, but that was hours ago.
“I think turning in early today’s a good idea,” I say.

Liss nods.

“You ok?”

Liss fidgets
with her backpack straps. “Yeah.”

I pick a house
on the corner. It has security screens over the windows and doors
and not much glass. Those are the safe houses. Liss waits just
inside the front fence and I try the door. It’s actually locked,
damn it, but I really want this house. I check under the mat and
round the pot plants. Bingo.

The key is
under a dead plant. It’s a win but I also know that a locked door
sometimes means dead bodies inside and they are spectacularly
gross.

I unlock it and
step in. It’s dark and shadowy and stinking hot. And the smell…
that’s definite dead body smell. Ew. I pinch my nose with my
fingers, and breath from the corner of my mouth so I can’t taste
it.

The hallway,
lounge and kitchen are clear. Off the hallway are three closed
doors. Since the infected can’t open doors I decide not to check
them.

It’s strange
that this is totally acceptable, just walking into someone’s home,
when in normal times I’d probably be thrown into jail for it. The
house kind of still looks lived in. There are two shirts and a
towel hung to dry off the back of chairs. The candles are all half
burnt. The toaster and kettle are still plugged into the wall
sockets with switches on. There are even old crumbs on the bench
and shoes by the back door.

The good thing
about this house is the enclosed back yard and there’s a small
bungalow out there too.

I go back and
get Liss before checking any further. I have another rule that if I
have to leave Liss outside it’s never for more than thirty
seconds.

“Block your
nose,” I say.

She does it
straight away. I swear she was never ever this obedient before.

“Cupboard
check. You got it? I need to do a quick check outside.”

Liss quietly
pulls open the cupboard one by one and I peer out the back window.
The backyard is small and square and the fence is high. It’s still
connected to the road, so we can always see what’s going on out
there.

“Got some
water,” Liss says.

“Nice. Any
drinkable liquids, tins of food, jars, that sort of thing. Put them
on the bench. I’ll be two seconds.”

I step out into
the backyard and check the bungalow. It’s just a small detached
room and it’s unlocked. Inside the air is musty but it’s not warm
dead person smell like in the main house.

Liss has done a
good job picking out food. We’ve got baked beans, tinned fruits, a
sealed packet of Tim Tams, a two-litre bottle of water and a can of
Pepsi.

“You want to
eat outside?” I say. “It’s safe.”

“Yeah,” Liss
says. It sounds like she’s got a cold but she’s just blocking her
nose from the gross smell.

In the back
yard we set up on the outdoor table and benches. For some reason
Liss likes opening cans, it’s just her thing. So she sits there
peacefully engrossed in her metal slicing, opening every tin we
have. It’s nice to be outside too, almost like normal times. Fresh
air and hot sun… nearly feels like freedom. Well, just a tiny
bit.

Liss sips the
sugary juice from a tin of peaches as I eat half of the cold baked
beans. There’s a lot to be said for baked beans. Maybe I didn’t
appreciate them before but it’s the one tinned food you can eat
cold and it still tastes ok.

Liss spears a
peach half on her fork. “Hey, Flo…” It’s her question voice.

“Mmm?”

“If I became
infected, would you kill me?”

Why do kids
always ask the hard questions? Next thing I know she’ll be asking
me where babies come from. “Would you want me to?”

She tries to
shove the entire peach half in her mouth but can’t quite manage it
so she spits it all back into her hand. Again I wonder how she’d
survive out there alone.

“I… maybe. But
wouldn’t I already be dead?”

“I guess. Does
that mean I shouldn’t kill you?” It’s weird because I can think of
so many times I’ve said
I will kill
you in the sisterly way
you do sometimes without really meaning it.

“Um... I think
I’ll leave it up to you.”

“Ok. And I’ll
work it out when it happens.” But I already know the answer. I’d
run away and leave her to roam… then I’d die early of diabetes from
only eating chocolate because that’s all that seems to survive the
apocalypse and that would be the end of a very tragic story.

For the
evenings entertainment we lie on our stomachs on the bungalow roof
and play eye-spy from our vantage point. The green tin roof is
still warm but we have a nice mild breeze sweeping over our
backs.

I’m half way
through guessing a word beginning with B when I hear the
unmistakable noise of human chatter.

“You hear
that?” I whisper.

Liss nods.

“Where?”

Liss checks the
to the left and I check right. She nudges me with her shoulder and
points.

“Stay flat,” I
whisper. “And don’t move.”

We watch like
birds of prey as a group of normal uninfected people walk down the
street, totally oblivious to us. The man at the front has a
shotgun, and the man at the back has a small handgun. Between them
there are another ten people. Two of them are kids, six are women
and there are two more men. The kids look just a bit younger than
Liss and it looks like they’ve got mum with them.

It’s easy to
wonder where they’re going, if they might know of a secret
sanctuary or cure. But that’s a huge group to be looking after,
hugely dangerous. I’d never help them… I’d never be
able
to
help them. I can hear them talking from here, so they’re just
sitting ducks for the infected. I give them a week, maximum. Sad
but true.

We watch them
until they’ve disappeared and the chatter is no longer audible.

Liss rolls her
two front teeth over her bottom lip and looks at me. “They won’t
last long.”

I’m beginning
to think I’ve trained her too well.

Chapter 3

Liss is totally
unmotivated today. I try to wake her but she just groans and rolls
over so I leave her, half conscious on the mattress, and I sit
outside dividing the water between our bottles. Eventually the heat
will drive her out, when it turns the bungalow into an oven.

Since the
apocalypse began I haven’t been more than thirty seconds away from
Liss and that’s got to grind on even the most lovey-dovey kind of
people. As much as I love her it’s nice to have a little alone
time.

My arms are
looking pretty tanned because it’s been too hot to wear my favoured
leather jacket. Not in my wildest dreams would I have ever been
able to afford it in normal times but the shop I took our matching
Doc Martin boots from had one just hanging there, looking all soft
and special and maybe slightly badass. Liss was too small for
anything and she’s mega fussy about her clothes anyway, I mean,
she’s wearing a dress in the apocalypse… nine-year-olds are so
impractical.

Finally Liss
wakes and stumbles from the bungalow looking like a cross between
lobster and one of the infected.

“Is the
princess awake?” I say with a grin.

She blinks at
the glaring sun. “She is.”

“Would her
highness care for some water?” I wiggle the half-empty two-litre
bottle in front of her face.

“Her highness
would.”

Liss sits next
to me and takes a few big swigs of water. She wipes her mouth. “How
far is it now?”

“You’re not
going to believe this but… it’s even less then yesterday.”

She gives me
this look, like she’s trying to glare through her eyebrows.

“I speak the
truth.”

She rolls her
eyes and takes another sip. “Can’t we just stay here?”

“Forever?”

Liss nods.

“Sorry, babe.
We can’t. We’ve got somewhere to be.”

“But where are
we going?”

I lean over and
poke her in the side. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

She bats my
hand away but at least she smiles and then she draws in a long
breath, stares at the fence and sighs it all back out.

“Hey,” I say,
reaching into the front pocket of my bag. “I’ve got you
something.”

Liss looks
sceptical but only for a few seconds. Her eyes nearly bulge out of
her head when I show her. It’s just a single piece of white chalk.
I have a whole box but if I tell her she’ll bug me for it all and
if I can I want to make it last.

She takes it
from my hand, sits cross-legged and starts doodling on the pale
concrete. I lie back on the porch and figure we can stand to waste
the morning if it keeps her morale up.

After being
wrangled into playing hopscotch and noughts-and-crosses a hundred
times each, the chalk stick is almost gone. Liss keeps drawing
though, nearly scraping her fingers on the ground and that makes me
nervous. Cuts and scrapes are so dangerous around the infected.

“Hey.” I chuck
the whole box at her, in a nice slow underarm throw, and she
catches it like a baseball player taking a dive. “I feel like
taking the morning off,” I say. “We’ll start moving at two.”

Liss nods but
she’s not really paying attention, totally engrossed in covering
every bare inch of concrete in some kind of girly drawing.

Today I feel
like a good sister.