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

Entry 35

Marion's attitude changed over time. At some point she stopped asking us when we planned on leaving, asking us instead what we could do to consolidate the place and make it work for us. I suppose she realized she needed us more than we needed her. She still had some of her issues, like trying to get us to use different utensils, but Satish or Dad or Dave usually teased her until she stopped. We didn't take it too seriously. I think she was glad we were there with them.

Dad had fixed the solar panels, so we could get some electricity to the fridge which meant we could store meat. Mrs. Kalichurn, with Marion's help, got the garden going, Dave and Satish got shrimp and eel from the river, and Maya and Stephan made some tasty dishes with them. Camille and Lucy were making the best of the situation. Along with Murali, we kids spent most of our time together. We even had a few hours of school every day. Maya and Stephan set up a curriculum of sorts for us and took turns teaching us. Mrs. Kalichurn taught us about planting. When Dad and Dave went about fixing the solar panels we followed them, and they explained to us what they were doing. Satish taught us how to fish and every afternoon he taught all of us self-defence. It kept us kids busy and by the evening we were ready for bed. It also helped us forget, for a bit at least, the fiends.

When we were given our first lesson, Marion protested, saying something about how her kids were enrolled at a prestigious private French school and didn't want their minds to be corrupted or whatever. But Dad told her to give it a rest and said he'd pay for the girls to catch up to the French standard when everything went back to normal. Satish said he would pay too, and so did Dave, until it was obvious they were making fun of her. She relented, but grumbled. When she saw that her girls were learning something she stopped interfering and started to teach us about maintaining a household. I spent a lot of time with Marion hunting and cleaning the deer we shot and we quickly became close. She reminded me of Mom. Sometimes she would even scold me. I didn't mind. I welcomed it. Marion soon started to treat me like one of her daughters.

Around the world people who would not normally have bonded started to do so. Many forgot race, religion, ethnicity, class, and the other social dividers we had in the normal world. This was all about surviving as human beings.

There are plenty of stories of how people came together—the very people who before the outbreak were at one another's throats. I met a Brazilian who had been fighting for land rights and had been at odds against the rich farmers in his area for a long time. When the outbreak came to Brazil his community teamed up with the landowners to survive. Even today they're trying to build their community anew. They don't want to make things the way they were. Neither does the Global Council. We have a chance for a fresh new start.

At the lodge an important thing that Dave and Dad managed to do was hook up a radio to a satellite dish on the roof and we listened to the messages being broadcast from around the world. Some good, but most of them bad. Really bad. The bad ones were mostly pleas for help. We listened to a few until the adults saw it was bothering us kids and stopped us from listening. We plugged in the TV a few times, but we couldn't get anything, except for once or twice when we managed to catch a broken channel. Dave said it was the Malaysians again. We couldn't understand as the image kept breaking up. Now I know they were continuing to broadcast by every means possible. They were trying to encourage those of us who had survived, to let us know the tide was turning.

One day as Dave was fiddling with the radio he locked onto a message that was on a loop. He called all of us to the kitchen where we kept the radio. The message was from a Mauritian police officer by the name of Ketan something or other. I can't remember his last name. The message was that survivors should make their way to Ebene, which is in the centre of the island. It said several thousand survivors were there and were fighting back. This was great news for all of us, even though the message was at least five months old. We knew this because there was a recorded time stamp at the beginning of the message. The adults said five months was a long time and they weren't sure if the survivors were still there. Some of the adults wanted to set out to Ebene immediately. Dad didn't feel it was good idea because we weren't sure if the roads were clear or if they were still at Ebene. He made the argument that the highway could be blocked all the way from Curepipe to Ebene, which was one of the most populated stretches of Mauritius.