The Survivors (Book 2): Autumn (11 page)

“And I thought I had a weak stomach,” I teased
.  He shot me a dark look in return.

“It just… takes a second to get used to it, is all…”
He gulped down a lungful of the stinking air, then straightened himself up and put on his best manly airs.  I hid a smile and led him deeper into the building.

We passed row after row of dirty shelves covered in rotten produce and shattered glass, picking our way towards the back counter
.  There, the mysterious door stood waiting for us, as implacable as a gargoyle guarding its treasures.  At least, I hoped it was guarding treasures.  Otherwise, all the effort we were going to have to put in would be for nothing.

“Huh
.  That’s a tough door for the back room of a little corner store,” Michael pondered out loud, rapping his knuckles against the old metal.

“Yeah, that’s what got me curious
.  I mean, it seems like a lot of security for relatively nothing,” I agreed, edging around the door to get a good look at it.  “At least the hinges are on this side.  I think we should be able to get these off.”

“I assume that you already checked if there was a back door, or a window?”
He glanced at me, then looked back at the door.

“Of course.”
I nodded and gave him a smile.  “What kind of scavenger do you take me for?”

“Well, you never know
.  Let’s get to it then, eh?” He grinned back at me, handed me the crowbar, and set the tool kit down on the countertop nearby.  “Feel like making a bet on what’s in there?”

“I don’t have a clue
.  Probably money or something equally useless, knowing my luck.” I pulled a sour face, but Michael laughed.

“Hey, hey, hey
– positivity!” he scolded me lightly, while fishing around in search of a screwdriver big enough to survive the abuse we were about to unleash on it.

“I know, I know.”
I sighed and gestured towards the hinges.  “Have we got any lubricants in there? These are rusted solid; it’s going to be a bitch to get them loose.”

“Language!”
Michael teased me playfully.

“Sorry, Mum,” I answered dryly.

He gave me a peculiar look, but I was too amused to explain.  Did it make me weird to have spent so much time alone that I had inside jokes with myself? Yeah, probably.  Oh well.

Michael shook his head and shot me a lopsided smile, then tossed a can of industrial lubricant to me with a gentle, underhand throw
.  I caught it easily and popped the top, then covered my face with the neck of my tank top to protect me from the fumes as I lathered the hinges with grease.  When I was done, I stepped aside and Michael attacked the hinges with his screw driver, while I smeared lubricant over the locking mechanism as well.

It took all of Michael’s strength and a great deal of cursing from both of us before the bolt began to slide up out of the hinge with a blood-curdling, rusty screech
.  I ducked beneath his muscular arm and sprayed the bolt with more grease.  It came up easier after that.  After a few minutes of work, the first bolt came loose and we moved on to the next one.

The top bolt was even more difficult than the first one had been, since it required him to clamber up on an old crate to get the angle he needed, but eventually we got it out as well
.  By the time we got to the bottom hinge, we had our technique down; the last bolt came out easily compared to the first two.

Once we were done, we cast aside the loose bolts and stepped back to admire our handiwork
.  Now, the door was only held up by the tension of the lock itself, and a decade’s worth of rust.

“Honestly, who on earth thought metal doors were a good idea?
Really, that’s just selfish, if you ask me,” I commented.  My usual technique for solving any problem involved attacking it with a liberal dose of sarcasm, and this situation was no different.  I grabbed the crowbar, then jammed it into the gap between the hinges and the wall.  Michael added his strength to mine and we pulled as hard as we could, but all we got was a metallic whine that set my teeth on edge.

“No good,” Michael muttered
.  We released the tension and stood back again.

“The lock’s in too tight, I think.”
I bent down for a second to peer at it closely, then straightened up and went over to the toolkit.  “Give me a second, I have an idea.  Ah, here we go.” I pulled out the tools I had been looking for, and showed them to him: a hammer and chisel.

“How will those help?”
Michael peered at the tools dubiously.  “It’s metal.”

“The door is metal, and the hasp is metal,” I answered, then reached over and tapped the door frame
.  “But this is just wood.  I suspect if I dig deep enough, we should be able to rip the whole locking mechanism out of the wall.”

“Ahh…” he breathed in understanding and nodded his approval
.  I set about destroying the structural integrity of that frame with a vengeance.  Michael slipped up behind me to brace the door closed while I worked, just in case it happened to come loose.  With careful, practiced strokes, I reduced the old wood to splinters, taking care not to risk injuring either myself or my lover in the process.

In due time, I uncovered the base of the hasp buried deep within the wooden frame
.  My chisel struck it with a resounding clang, which let me know that I’d dug deep enough to reach my goal.  I widened the hole carefully until we could see the entire mechanism, then I set the hammer and chisel aside.

“That should be enough,” I announced, and looked back at him
.  “Now we just need to break the screws on the other side.  It’s brute force time.”

Michael nodded his agreement
.  With another terrible clang, he drove the head of the crowbar into the gap between the hasp and the wall, and I added my strength to his.

“Brace yourself,” he warned, though it was pretty much unnecessary
.  Both of us knew all about the terrible infections we could catch if we were to fall and cut ourselves in a filthy place like this.

“So much for taking it easy, huh?” I commented
.  Michael chuckled and nodded his agreement.  He planted his feet wide and leaned his weight against the crowbar; once again I pulled with him.  The door groaned in protest, but I could feel it moving.  We released after a moment, and he shifted the bar to a slightly different point.

“And again,” he instructed
.  I joined him, pulling with all my strength.  The door was definitely moving now; I could see it arching and I heard the whine of old metal protesting that it had been left untended for far too long.  Then, with a violent cracking sound, the left side of the door came free, with what was left of the hasp still clinging to a shattered segment of the door frame.

Suction kept the door from falling in on us, though
.  Michael braced himself against it to keep it in place while I took the bar and loosened it around the edges.  It creaked and whinged as I chipped away at a decade’s worth of rust until, with one last shriek, the entire door came away from the frame.

I lent my strength to help him shift the heavy door to one side, leaving both of us breathless but feeling victorious.

“How’s that for teamwork?” he gloated.  He grabbed me and gave me a quick kiss, then we turned our attention towards finally discovering what our prize actually was.

I was the first one through the doorway, so when I skidded to a halt without warning, Michael just about bowled me over
.  Then he saw what I saw and we both froze with shock.

When we finally regained our senses, Michael reached up to scratch his scruffy chin
.  “You know, all of a sudden I feel this overwhelming urge to arrest someone.”

“Hell, yes!” I laughed with glee, and broke out my best impression of the Snoopy Dance.

“This shouldn’t be here,” Michael mumbled to himself, his expression one of intense concern
.  “This really, really shouldn’t be here.”

“It shouldn’t, but it is,” I pointed out happily, bouncing around him like an over-excited toddler on a sugar rush
.  “And whoever used to own it must be dead, so now it’s ours!” There was still a locked grill between me and our findings, but I didn’t mind.  We had all the time in the world to figure out how to get into that cage, and I was pretty sure I knew exactly where I could find just the right tools for the job.

“You’re entirely too happy about this.”
Michael shot a stern glance at me, then he grabbed my hand and drew me into a protective embrace.  “You do realise how dangerous this is, right?”

“Take a second to consider who you’re talking to, then ask that question again,” I answered dryly, and gave him a long look in return
.  A faint flash of annoyance rose in my breast at his tone of voice, but I shoved it back down.  He was just trying to protect me, and everyone that we held dear.  “Of course, I know.  I know better than anyone – but I also know exactly how useful this will be for keeping our family safe.”

Michael looked at the cage and heaved a long sigh
.  “I suppose you’re right, but I worry.  There’s military-grade hardware in there, Sandy.  Just imagine what could have happened if those thugs that attacked us had been armed with one of those instead of a couple of air rifles.  We’d probably all be dead.”

He had a point, and that calmed me down
.  I stared at the cage, where a half-dozen semi-automatic assault rifles of various makes glinted ominously in the half-light, flanked by an assortment of handguns.  As much as I had longed for a real gun to defend myself with, he was right – any weapon could be used against its owner.

“We should still take them,” I said, then looked back at him
.  “We can’t leave them here now.  Let’s hide them instead, somewhere that only we can get at them.  If those mutants come south, they could save our lives one day.”

Michael nodded thoughtfully, his dark eyes distant as he mulled over the idea
.  Finally, he nodded again, more firmly this time.  “Okay.  That makes sense.  Like you said, we can’t just leave them here – anyone could grab them.”

“Go fetch the others to help us carry things back,” I instructed, reaching over to give his hand a gentle squeeze
.  “Bring boxes or crates, anything that we can hide stuff in so no one knows what we’ve found except our group.”

“What are you going to do?”
He raised a brow and looked at me.

I gave him an impish smile, and flexed my fingers dramatically
.  “I’m going to get that cage open.”

***

I’m nothing if not efficient.  By the time Michael returned with the doctor and Skylar in tow, I’d just about finished with my task.  The cage was held closed by a small padlock, so I had simply taken a pair of bolt cutters to it.  Problem solved.  The lock hit the ground with a heavy clang just moments before my family arrived to join me.

“My goodness!” the doctor exclaimed, adjusting his scratched spectacles to get a better look at our find
.  “I thought you were kidding, but I see you were very serious.”

“Wow.”
Skylar stared at the guns with enormous eyes.  “That’s a lot of guns.”

“No kidding,” I agreed, shooting her an amused look
.  “Do me a favour and check out the rest of this place while we’re getting this ready to shift?”

“Sure,” Skye agreed readily
.  She turned and vanished through a doorway nearby, while Michael and I began carefully lifting down each weapon and inspecting it.  I wasn’t exactly an expert on guns, but I’d learned through trial and error how to disassemble and clean a handgun, and I definitely knew how to shoot one.

Michael seemed to know what he was doing better than any of us
.  He took each gun I handed to him and lifted it to his eye, carefully sighting down along the barrel.  One by one, he inspected them, then either nodded or shook his head when he handed it back to me.  Those he judged salvageable, I carefully packed into a crate they’d brought for that purpose.  Those that were not, I set aside to be stripped down for parts.  Everything would be useful, one way or another.

When we were done with the rifles, we moved on to the handguns, then to the boxes of ammunition stacked in neat columns beneath the weapon display
.  That was the most dangerous part, but we were lucky.  Everything had been safely stored all those years ago, so nothing exploded in our hands.

“Sandy, come and look at this,” Skye called through the doorway
.  I exchanged a glance with the others, then handed the box of ammunition I was inspecting to Michael and went off to see what my sister had found.

The doorway opened up into a tiny, single-room flat, with a decrepit old bed against one wall, and a kitchenette against the other
.  The entire living quarters was probably no larger than the stockroom where the guns were kept.  My sister was bent over staring at something on a dusty old desk at the foot of the bed, but she looked up as I approached.

“This is a radio, right?
One of those old-school things they used before cell phones?” She reached out to brush some dust from it, a look of intense curiosity on her face.

“I think so.”
I shrugged helplessly.  “I couldn’t tell you for sure, though – you know how I was about communication before I met up with you guys.”

Skye heaved a long-suffering sigh, then called over her shoulder towards the door
.  “Doc? Michael? Do either of you know anything about radios?”

“Indeed, I do.” The doctor responded to her cry for help, and came trundling over to peer at the object of our interest, absently adjusting his spectacles
.  “Well, now.  If I am not mistaken, that’s a shortwave ham radio kit.”

“Ham radio,” I echoed, rubbing my bruised wrist absently
.  “I remember that term.  That was amateur radio, the two-way kind – right?”

“Indeed,” the doctor agreed, then suddenly lashed out and smacked the back of my hand lightly
.  “Stop scratching!”

I yelped and danced out of his reach, while my lovely little sister laughed at my misfortune
.  The sound of my cry attracted Michael’s attention, and he stuck his head into the room as well.

“What’s going on in here?” he demanded.

“The doctor’s beating me,” I whined, retreating to the relative protection of his embrace – or at least, I tried to, but he knew me better than that.

“Well, stop scratching then,” he teased me mercilessly, and left me pouting to go examine our find
.  “A radio? That’ll be useful.  Look, it’s even hand-cranked – no batteries required.  Good find.  Skye, can you gather up all the pieces and take it back with us? Look around and see if you can find any spare components, too.”

“Okay,” Skylar answered agreeably and set about doing just that, while the men filtered back out to the guns
.  As soon as their backs were turned, she promptly stuck her tongue out at me and whispered, “Who’s finding the cool stuff now?”

If I were a puppy, I’d have had my sad face on for a second there
– sometimes sisters were
not
the coolest thing in the world.  Then Michael called my name, and I forgot all about pretending to be the injured party as I hurried back out to join him.

***

It took us a while and a good amount of muscle power to get all of our new toys back to base.  When the guns were in their crate it proved to be too heavy for one person to lift, so we each took a side and man-handled it back the way we’d come.  A few more trips later, we finally had everything safely hidden in one of the downstairs storage rooms, beneath a mound of old clothing and behind a couple of huge sacks of rice.

There was some argument about what we should do with the guns now that we had them
.  Skylar argued that if we had them then we should use them, while the doctor joined the rest of us on the cautious side of the fence.

In the end, it was decided that we would train everyone to use them but only in the case of an actual emergency
.  Skye wasn’t happy, of course, but she grudgingly accepted our more experienced judgement.  She was too young to understand the concept that violence begets violence, but she did understand that we would make ourselves targets if we waved around something so valuable.

The radio was a whole other story
.  Radios had not been that common before the plague hit; by that stage, they were already outdated and had been replaced by the internet and mobile phones.  Now, ten years later, our wonderful modern technology had more or less failed us, which turned a radio into something precious.

Skylar had found an instruction manual squirrelled away in the closet of the person who had once owned the ham radio
.  She was intensely fascinated by the idea of communicating with people outside of our own group, and roped all of us into helping with her project.  We took turns assisting her with setting the radio up and learning to work it, which also gave us an opportunity to help her improve her reading as well.

We spent the next week or so keeping to ourselves
.  Michael and I divided our time between learning to use our new weapons, resting our injuries, and exploring the bounds of our new romance.  Needless to say, we spent a lot of time in bed.  And in the shower.  And in any other interesting place we could get away with.  Call it an experimental phase.

I’d missed out on that phase in my early twenties
.  Now that I was almost thirty, I felt like I deserved it – we both did.

Skye spent most of her time hunched over her radio, scanning the frequencies for any signs of life
.  Despite her reading difficulties, she picked up the basics of ham radio swiftly.  After the first few hurdles, she only came to us for help on a rare occasion.  However, she discovered that there just wasn’t much to be heard on the airwaves anymore.  I encouraged her to keep trying.  After all, anyone on the other end was just another human being.  They had to eat, sleep and forage for survival just like the rest of us, so they were unlikely to be sitting there all day waiting for her to contact them.

It was getting late in the season
.  Summer was almost over, and autumn well and truly on its way.  The wind blew cold on occasion, but the sunshine was still warm.  Over the course of the week, the weather cleared up.  On one sunny morning, Michael and I lay contentedly on the roof, basking in the sun while we could.  We’d finished assembling the railing around the edge, and had even added a small shelter at one end, in case we decided to position a guard up there one day.  All in all, it was a ratty piece of work but it was functional.

I heaved a long sigh and folded my hands beneath my head, letting the warm tiles soothe me
.  The sky was a beautiful shade of azure adorned with delicate, fluffy clouds, and the sun shone down with just the right degree of heat – enough to warm, but not to burn.  The breeze was crisp but not chilly, cooling us when the sun got a bit much, but not enough to make us shiver.  Our bellies were full, our home was secure, and our family was safe.  All in all, it was a perfect day as far as I was concerned.

Beside me, Michael made a contented sound and stretched out languidly, then turned his head and looked at me
.  “We should probably be doing something constructive.”

“Nah.”
I flapped a hand to brush away the idea.  “We’ve done plenty of constructive things.  We deserve a rest.”

“I like the way you think,” he agreed amiably
.  Apparently, he was in too good a mood to fight over something as inconsequential as being useful.  It was a beautiful day, too beautiful to waste on work.  Winter would be here all too soon, and then we’d be trapped inside, dreaming about days like today.

So we loitered for a while, sunbathing, as useless as a pair of statues
.  I wasn’t sure how much time passed, and I really didn’t care.  One of the few benefits of watching civilization fail was that we stopped having to count the time.

The days flowed in an endless stream, with no calendars to tell us what date it was
.  I didn’t know what day of the week it was, or even what month.  I guessed from the weather that it was around the middle of March, but more than that was a mystery.  We had a vague idea of the year from counting the summers that had passed since we last saw our loved ones, but it really didn’t matter anymore.

The days of counting the minutes between work or school and home were no more
.  Gone was the daily grind.  The watchful eye of society, that had once told me where to be and when, had gone to sleep forever.  None of it mattered now.  These were our days, and only we dictated how we spent our time.

Once the necessities of survival were taken care of, nobody could complain if we spent our days wisely or not
.  No one cared if we spent hours lost in books, exploring or even indulging in casual love-making, because there was no society left to judge us.