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

Entry 14

The effect of so many people leaving meant fewer emergency, medical, police, and government personnel available in Mauritius. Including the people who left on the ships, an additional 100,000 Mauritians left when the outbreak started picking up speed. Before the outbreak, Mauritius had a population of around 1.3 to 1.4 million people. When things started to get bad, people left in droves. The government tried to make do the best it could, but it was difficult to cope. They started by imposing a curfew, as other countries were doing, but most people ignored it. The government lacked the personnel to enforce it and Mauritius didn't have an army. The police had a branch called the Special Mobile Force which mostly did rescue work and dealt with riots between rival fans at football games. They tried their best to keep things in order, but it was pointless.

One day Dad came home early.

"The company has closed," he said, and sat at his favourite couch.

"They shut it down?" I asked. I was in front of the laptop and Mom was making dinner.

"Yes, nothing's happening," he said. "Nothing at all. My staff aren't coming to work. I went to visit one of our clients in Ebene. No one was there. Ebene is dead. Port Louis is dead. People are staying at home."

"I'm going to the kovil," Mom said. "The swami says we must pray. That's the only solution."

"Tanu, don't waste your time. We need to figure out what we're going to do," Dad said.

"I'm going, and I'm taking the girls with me."

Dad didn't argue with her. It was relatively safe to go out, or so we thought. We also felt that the kovil or church might be good for her.

Vani and I went with her to Kovil Tookay which was a ten- to fifteen-minute drive from our place. I went because part of me believed divine intervention was the answer, a naïve part I guess. Mom had been going to the local church, as well as the temple, before the priest disappeared. The people who helped take care of the church couldn't find him. Somebody told us he had been seen at the airport boarding a flight to Cape Town.

At the kovil, the swami was asking people to donate a piece of gold for a special prayer. I may have been fourteen, but I wasn't buying it. I told Mom she shouldn't give them anything. She agreed, and we went home. She even told off one of the kovil officials for asking people to bring their gold and taking advantage of them in such difficult times. I thought she seemed back to her old self again, not taking crap from people.

I spent my days at home going online. I didn't watch TV or do much else. I felt there was nothing else to do but find out what was going on. I was obsessed. Mom and Dad had stopped checking on me. The internet was flooded with thousands of videos and pictures documenting everything. One of the posts was about how the French police had tracked down Maxim Le Pen. They found him in one of Pharma France's smaller laboratories with the two scientists who helped develop Rémoire. He had shot them both, but they had turned. When the police entered the building, they found the scientists feeding on Maxim Le Pen. Poetic justice? Maybe? The problem was the French government was hoping to get information for a cure from the scientists. My heart sank. There was no longer a chance for a cure. Maxim had destroyed everything. I was only fourteen years old and I felt so hopeless.

Dad came in and I told him the news. He wasn't shocked.

"I knew something like this was going to happen," he said. "The radio's saying they've quarantined the whole northern part of the island. Turn on the news."

I turned on the radio. The newsreader said the quarantine centre in Calebasse in the north of the island had been overrun. At first, she didn't say by what or whom. She covered the mike with one hand, but we could still hear her. "You have to tell the people," a man said.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"We have to," he said.

"Very well." She cleared her throat. "The Calebasse Hospital has been overrun by the living dead. All roads leading to the north of the island are cut off. Do not go north. This will be our last broadcast."

"That's it then," Dad said.

What the radio didn't tell us was that flights around the world were cancelled. Chaos was taking over. Everything as we knew it was coming to an end. My world was coming to an end.