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

Entry 37

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.