After the cyclone, we had to decide what to do next. The pharmacy truck was the only vehicle left. Someone had parked it on a small hillock which saved it from the flash flood. The other vehicles had had their engines flooded and weren't of much use. Even Stephan's motorcycle was dead. Satish and Dave had walked around the property and in a lot of places the fence had collapsed, which meant we were vulnerable to a large mass of living dead that had moved into the villages below the mountain. There was always the possibility they could invade the area and there was not enough material at the lodge to fix the fence. The adults felt it was best we salvage whatever we could and make our way northeast and then west until we got to Ebene.
Camille and Lucy were managing as well as they could. It was tough on them, but we tried to make them feel better. To their credit, they coped because that was the situation we were in. We had no choice but to cope. We had to bottle our feelings deep inside and concentrate on surviving, until we took back control.
The road we took was the one along the east coast and it is one of the most scenic routes in Mauritius. We used to go for drives on Sundays. Mom and Dad took us to Belle Mare beach, which was a 45- to 60-minute drive from Rose Belle. We could have gone to closer beaches, but Dad's theory was that Belle Mare was far away and not as crowded because Mauritians were too lazy to drive. I'd remind him that the people of Flacq could also be at Belle Mare, but he had a theory for that too. He said people in Flacq didn't really go to Belle Mare because it was the closest beach to them and they took it for granted as it was always there, so they preferred to stay at home on Sundays. And he was right in that Belle Mare was not as crowded.
As we drove along in the pharmacy truck we opened the side door. The cabin quickly became hot when the door was closed. Camille, Maya, Satish, Milou, and I were in the back. Dad, Dave, and Stephan were at the front, which had seating for three. They had squeezed Murali and Lucy in with them. We made ourselves comfortable by putting some cushions from the lodge in the back. Dad stopped on the main road at the bottom of the entrance leading to the Domaine. Through the open door we saw a huge mass of living dead heading up the hill towards the lodge. We drove for a while in silence. Dave, Dad, or Stephan would call out through the small window that separated the cabin with our compartment if they saw something of interest, but other than the living dead, some of which tried to get the truck, and dead bodies lying by their cars there wasn't much. Every once in a while, we had to slow down because the road was backed up with cars. There were always signs of a struggle. Like a man or what was left of him on top of a car, his legs eaten, a huge wound in his head. We figured he had shot himself. The gun was still in his hand. He was badly decomposed, but we could tell he took several of the living dead with him, they were lying in piles around the car. Someone mentioned getting his gun, someone else mentioned it wasn't worth the risk. We drove on.
We crossed the broad river in the east, the Grande Riviere Sud Est, and headed inland away from the coast. We were approaching one of the small villages in the area when Dad called from the truck's cab.
"Car. There's a family. I'm going to stop. If they're bad, you guys know what to do."
Before we left the lodge, Dave gave us each a set of weapons: knives, hammers, and the guava clubs like the ones Dad had made when we were back in the farm. With the self-defence techniques Satish had been teaching us we were prepared to fight both the living dead and the living. I was also given the Winchester. I had killed about five deer and had become a good shot. Although I only had a few bullets left, everyone felt it would be a good deterrent if we ran into any bad guys. Dave and Dad had the shotguns with them in the front. The plan was if we should meet people on the road we would first determine if they were hostile or not. If they were, we would drive off. If they attacked us, we were to fight with everything we had. Satish called it overwhelming force, something he had learned when training in the US. Attack them with a lot of violence before they have time to respond and then split. I don't know if we had it in us, but I knew, especially among the adults, they felt this strong drive to protect us children at all costs. I wasn't related to Dave, Satish, Maya or Stephan, yet they took care of me as if I were family and I fully trusted them. I knew Murali, Camille, and Lucy felt the same way about Dad and the rest of the adults.
We stopped.
"There's a family," Murali said from the front. "They have kids with them."
"Dave says we can come out," Lucy said.
"Take the gun," Satish said to me. "Just in case and keep an eye on the surrounding area. If you see anything fishy, dead or living, tell me."
We stepped out the side door and I saw a family of four; a man, a woman and two kids who seemed to be under ten. They smiled at us. I smiled back.
Satish and Dad did most of the talking. It turned out they were part of a camp outside of Clemencia, a village close by. They had barricaded themselves inside a camp that once housed foreign guest workers. They said we were welcome to stay with them for as long as we wanted. We weren't sure how safe the camp was or if it was a trap, but the adults decided to take a chance. We would be able to rest and prepare for the next leg. The man Dad was speaking to knew about a camp in Ebene, but was not interested in going there, not for the time being. He had his sick mother to take care of, or someone who was sick. He said others had left and tried to get to the camp in Ebene, but so far no one had come back.
We followed them, albeit with a bit of trepidation, someone said we should be on our guard. I sat up front with Dad and Satish. The camp was in a sugar cane field, surrounded by metal walls. Satish said the government had been planning on building a highway in the area and were given help by the Chinese government. The whole project was put on hold when things started to go bad and the workers for whom the camp was built never came. We followed the family inside the compound. I saw two men closing the gate. They both had some kind of weapon, machetes and crude spears, on them. I pointed this out to Dad and Satish, who both said they had noticed. Inside the camp we saw a lot of people going about their business. A few of them stopped to look at us but most continued with whatever it was they were doing. It all felt so normal.
The place had dormitories, and tents and makeshift shelters, I guessed for those families that did not have a place in the dormitories.
The man from the family stopped his car and came to Dad's side.
"You guys follow me to the back. There aren't any spaces left in the dormitories but there is an area in the back that is free. I might be able to find you a tent or something."
"Who's in charge?" Dad asked him.
"No one really. We kind of take decisions together and take it from there," the man said.
"No living dead around here?"
"We haven't seen any in a while."
The man took us to the back of the compound. A couple of families had their camps set up. They all welcomed us and helped us settle in. We didn't have any tents, but before we knew it, we had a semi-decent shelter set up using tarps attached to a couple of metal and wooden poles.
However, life never works out the way you want it, does it? Fergie says even in peace time, life never worked out perfectly. Something bad always happens, even when things should be fine. Okay, fair enough, but when you are in a situation where the world has gone to shit, it makes life all that much more difficult. We hadn't settled in for more than a few days when things went bad fast. The adults tried to get the people in the camp to take better precautions. For one, they made a lot of noise. The camp was equipped with these huge generators and they were used to turn massive fog lights on at night, the kind you find in football stadiums. We tried to explain to them this was a bad idea as the living dead loved lights. Their counter argument was, how were they going to get around at night? The way we saw it, when the sun went down you went down, to bed that is. It also meant you were better rested and ready to take on anything. They even played music at night. They felt they had survived for this long and nothing had happened so far. We felt it was only a matter of time before something bad happened, especially since they were so reckless.
Within a few days of us being there, Dad and Dave went out to find a safe route to Ebene and get some supplies. They made their way to the outskirts of Flacq. When they came back they said there was a huge mass of infected close by and although they were not a direct danger to the camp they could very well be. They tried again to get the people in the camp to change their habits. Nobody listened. Someone even said the living dead were deaf and you could make as much noise as you wanted.
The next morning, Dad went out again to check on the mass and found them heading straight for the camp. We packed our things and got ready to leave. Everyone asked where we were going and told us to stay, nothing was going to happen. Dad and the other adults argued that they should abandon the camp, but they said we should stay, that we were safer with them. They had been living there for so long they had become complacent and thought everything was going to be just fine. Dad had a few of them climb up one of the platforms where the lamps were and showed them the mass heading towards the camp. The people from the camp didn't seem worried. They felt they could wait it out. They really believed the mass would not be able to get in. We told them the Malaysians had said the living dead stop at nothing and it would be difficult to fight them from within the compound. They insisted otherwise. When we left, I could hear the moans and groans of the living dead. They were calling for more to come join them.
I saw an aerial photo of the camp a while back. It had been destroyed. Three of the four walls had collapsed. On the photo, there were bodies on the ground. I estimated there had been at least 2000 people in the camp, packed into a small area, but surviving. The living dead must have surrounded the place and with the weight of their bodies just collapsed the walls. It's happened in so many places around the world, they just press and press until the wall gives in. I feel guilty about those people, we hadn't stayed for too long, but I still feel bad.
The camp ended up attracting a lot of the living dead to the area and cleared the way for us. We took the main highway to Ebene, away from all the urban areas. The highway was mostly clear of vehicles. Whenever we hit a patch with abandoned vehicles we used the dirt roads on the sides of the highway. The living dead were few and far between on the highway and if we spotted a group of them we took a detour.
The highway eventually took us to a small hill overseeing Ebene. We stopped at the top of the hill and Dad took out his binoculars.
"I don't see any movement," he said. "There aren't any living dead around, well none walking around anyways."
I looked through the binoculars. I had never been to Ebene before, but we had driven past it a few times. I knew it was full of tall, glass office buildings. Now the area was surrounded with fences, like the type they use at concerts, and bright yellow tape. It was as if they had gift wrapped Ebene.
I'm not sure if the fences and tapes were working as there were no living dead around. However, the lack of any living dead didn't seem right. We were in a major urban centre; there should have been loads of them everywhere.
We continued and approached Ebene slowly. We took the main road into the city and still nothing. Until we came around a corner and there they were, thousands and thousands of them. They had overrun the camp and had surrounded a building several stories tall. They had their backs to us and we kept a healthy distance. None of us were keen to get their attention.
"I know that building," Dad said. "We installed all their elevators. You could keep thousands of people in there if you were desperate enough."
I had the binoculars with me. I checked the floors one by one, something or someone had attracted the dead. On one of the floors I saw a group of people. They hadn't seen us. They were more worried about the mass.
I couldn't believe it.
"Uncle Nevin!" I cried.
"What?" Dad said. I gave Dad the binoculars.
"I see Uncle Nevin. Look on the tenth floor."
"That's him! That's my brother. I can't believe it! He's alive! Val! Your uncle is alive!"
Dad gave me a hug.
"How are we going to get him and the rest of those folks out of there?" Dave asked.