Valli : Personal Journal of Valli Pillay, a Living Dead Pandemic Survivor

Entry 11

After my chat with Daniel, I went home straight to my laptop. I needed to know more. I told Mom I had some research to do for an assignment, which seemed to satisfy her. There was a lot of information online and the hacktivists, the Unknowns Who Know, had been hard at work as usual. I tracked down a blog run by a Mauritian member; he or she had posted pictures of the crash. I thought it could be Ritesh. He lived in Rose Belle. This blog had a cockpit recording from the flight deck of the doomed plane. Before I could start playing it Dad came home.

"You guys have to listen to this," he said.

He had tuned the radio to Radio Soleil the most popular station in Mauritius. The newscaster said a group of business people were in the process of raising funds to hire enough cruise ships to take people who wanted to leave Mauritius to Australia or Indonesia. They felt these countries were better able to deal with the problems that were going on around the world. The spokesperson for the group did not think the government of Mauritius was able to handle the epidemic, sickness or whatever and they were going to get the cruise ships and leave. Those who wanted to leave could pay for a place on board. The more funds they raised, the better their chances of finding a safe haven. They didn't mention if the governments of those countries would accept them or not. Government officials, on the other hand, were insisting people were safer in Mauritius.

"This is insane," Dad said as he took a beer from the fridge and went to sit on his couch.

The newscaster on the radio started to take calls. People were upset and scared. They wanted to know what was going on. One caller said he had seen dead people walking around. The radio cut off the call, the newscaster warned people not to say anything inflammatory or exaggerated and unproven. People kept calling and more folks said they had seen dead people walking. The radio station cancelled the program and played music instead.

"Idiots." Dad switched off the radio and turned on the TV.

I went back to the blog which gave a timeline of what happened to the Paris Express flight. After it crossed Madagascar, the crew sent a message to the control tower at the airport in Mauritius, saying they had three passengers who had passed away. They weren't too sure what was going on and asked authorities in Mauritius to make sure emergency services were ready. As they approached Mauritius all hell broke loose. The UWKs had posted the actual recording on SoundCloud, which was an audio website at the time. I put on my headphones. The pilot, man was he calm, telling the control tower in Mauritius there was something wrong with some of the passengers. He had two doctors and a nurse among his passengers, but they couldn't identify the problem.

This was followed by, "My dead passengers have woken up. I repeat the dead have arisen. God save us."

The people in the control tower asked him to repeat himself.

"My dead passengers have awakened, and they are eating the other passengers. Mayday, mayday, mayday."

The recording stopped there. I think the plane crashed at that point. Dad had been quiet the whole time. He got up from his couch which was not far from the table where I was sitting.

"Tanu, kids, we need to talk," he said.

"About what?" Mom asked him.

"Something's not right and we should prepare for it."

"There's just some kind of epidemic," Mom said in her matter-of-fact tone.

"Epidemic? Sweetheart, people are dying and coming back to life! Now a crapload of people are planning on leaving Mauritius for Australia or Indonesia or God knows where!" Dad walked around waving his hand like an animated priest.

"Don't say stuff like that in front of the kids and don't curse. You're going to scare them!" Mom crossed her arms. That usually indicated that the conversation was over.

"What Dad's saying is true," I said. "I saw it. Dad also saw it. Online."

"You saw dead people walking?" Vani asked.

"Yes."

Mom got mad.

"You let her watch those videos you were talking about?" she said.

"She's fourteen, Tanu. She's smart enough to figure out what's going on," Dad answered.

"The only preparation we need to do is to pray this epidemic goes away and everything will be fine," Mom said.

"It won't be fine and whether you like it or not I'm going to get ready." Dad grabbed another beer from the fridge.

"For what?" Mom asked. "That's your second beer. You're drinking during the week now?"

Ignoring her, Dad opened his beer.

"We need to be ready for whatever's coming," he said. "If it's not already here." He grabbed Mom's iPad and went back to his favourite seat.

That night I had trouble sleeping. Mom and Dad had argued some more. Vani and I stayed out of it. Vani got scared and asked me whether I really had seen dead people walking around. She was ten, and I didn't want to lie to her, so I told her I saw some stuff online, all in foreign countries. That night she came to my room and slept in my bed, like she did when she had nightmares. I told her there was an epidemic or sickness of some sort, but she didn't have to worry, I would protect her.

At some point, I woke up feeling thirsty. Vani was sound asleep and Dad's low snores echoed around the house. It was past midnight. I went to the kitchen to get some water. Our kitchen opened into our dining and living room. Both street light and moonlight were coming into the room. Mom and Dad had forgotten to pull the curtains before going to bed. Too busy arguing, I suppose. From the kitchen, I could see up the driveway onto the street. We had low cut bamboo hedges which meant you could see people walking by. As I headed back to bed, I peeked outside and saw someone on the street. I went to the living room to get a better look. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was Reshma. I almost dropped my glass of water. My heart started beating fast and I felt the hair rise at the back of my neck. I backed into the darkness of the living room, away from the light, and stayed as quiet as possible. I did it all on instinct. The same way a mouse will hide from a cat. Reshma shuffled along. She stopped in front of our gate and turned around. She looked like the girl from Texas, raised nose, almost between her eyes and a wide-open mouth. I couldn't make out her eyes, but I knew they would be jet black. I gasped inwardly. She sniffed the air, then kept going. I went back to bed, I was shaking so bad I was afraid I'd wake up Vani. I was thinking; I'm seeing things. I need to get off the net.

On my way to school the next day, Stephanie, told me people in her neighbourhood were saying they had seen Reshma walking around. I was about to tell her I had seen her too, when she said those people were crazy. No wanting to go be labelled crazy by my cousin I kept quiet.

But everything was about to come full circle.

That day we had a school assembly. Mrs. La Joie wanted to talk about the events that were taking place. We all lined up in the gym—the gym where Reshma had fallen. As always, we lined up in rows according to the form we were in. I was in Form 4. The rows started from Form 1 to Upper 6 which was the final A-Level classes. Mrs. La Joie started addressing us. The girl standing next to me was swaying a bit and kept bumping into me. I turned around to tell her to knock it off when she just collapsed. I grabbed her, but she was a big girl and I kind of went down with her. There were more shouts. When I stood up other girls had collapsed all over the gym floor, some of the teachers had collapsed too. Mrs. La Joie asked everyone to keep calm. Coach and a couple of other teachers sprang into action telling us what to do to help our fellow students. Mrs. La Joie went to call the ambulance service. Those of us who were okay were sent back to class, my class had about thirty students—only ten went back to class.

We sat around and waited for a long time, we were all in a bit of a daze. A couple of the girls were crying. After a while a girl came by and said the teachers had taken the students who fainted to the hospital in their personal cars. The ambulance service was stretched. Someone in class put the radio on through their phone. Reports came in that people all over the island had gotten sick and the hospitals were overwhelmed. Then they said the government was closing all schools until further notice. The teachers who had stayed behind came around and sent us all home. That was my last day of school.