AncilChapter 23: Dead School
My humanity was so close to being stolen away that I almost forgot how it felt to be human. It had only been a couple months since I had found myself in a ship surrounded by corpses in the middle of the capital city of San Fernando but I wasn’t alone then; I had Ray Carter. A robot. He wasn’t much of a human but the voice had been enough to take me through that one day before he had mysteriously vanished. I had managed to survive for a couple months on my own but I had begun to look, feel and even smell like jumbies. The hair on my face and head was so unkempt that I was afraid to even look at myself in the mirror. The water was scarce so I had only taken baths when it was absolutely necessary or during rainy days when the tank overflowed. The water was not fit to drink but I had drunk it anyway. The acid in the rainwater made the water taste weird but food is food and water is water. That was the motto that I stood by. Food is food and water is water.
The only reason that I used to get up in the morning was to find food, eat, stay out of trouble and then go back to sleep. There had been no real reason to live anymore but amidst all the madness I didn’t want to be the one to die without a fight. I had promised my father that I would survive and I held on to that promise with every breath but I was on the brink of losing my humanity until that day when I saw Sara and her siblings. My hope was restored knowing that there were other people like me. Humans. A sight that was oh so common in the country just a couple months ago was now a rare sighting. I guess it was simply a matter of missing something only when it’s gone.
I had the option of leaving Sara and her siblings out on the streets with a bag of food to fend for themselves since, as Sara said, I didn’t owe them anything but I decided to do the right thing both for the sake of staying true to myself and for company. Even though Sara was arrogant and stubborn she was still company.
“You want to go check out my old school up the hill?” I asked Sara who was busy frying some eggs, the oil sizzling. During her time in the house she wore a lot of my mother’s old clothes which my father had kept and refused to get rid of. My mother had worn a lot of khakis and tank tops and so had my little sister, whose clothes fitted perfectly on Saraya. Clive and Justin however, just wore my clothes which were way too big for them but clothes was clothes.
Sara seemed to be handling her and her siblings’ needs really well. Even though it was almost two weeks that had passed since we raided the grocery stores in Sangre Grande and Valencia we still had enough food to last us a couple more weeks.
“Where is this school?” She asked while poking the frying egg yolk with a pot spoon.
“Right up the hill.”
“You know I can’t use too much energy.”
“Just a little walk up the hill. It’s right there. I just want to go in and see if we could find a map of the country. We could probably find some new groceries and hopefully a way to get to Mas Camp. With limited internet and energy, a physical map could be perfect.”
“You’re still planning on going to Mas Camp?” Sara asked pryingly.
“Well I can’t leave you and your siblings sick like this.”
“Yes you could. Are you really willing to risk your life for a….for a friend?”
“I’m sure you would do the same for me,” I stated, simply to see how she would respond.
“No I wouldn’t. I’d say that it’s either you or me. It no longer has place in this world to feel sorry for people. That shit only good for one thing, and that’s getting you killed. Survival of the fittest…Remember?”
“If that’s the case then what so different between us and them? Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten.”
“Humans always killed. What those things out there are doing is nothing new to human nature. Killing is nothing new to us.”
“Yeah but at least we have a choice…..They don’t,” I said.
“You really want to argue about this right now?”
“All this time we talking we could have been halfway up the hill by now.”
“I will come with you but I’m not going to allow you to let me slow you down.”
“If you drop your purse I will leave you let you pick it up,” I joked.
I hadn’t quite figured out Sara yet even though we were living in the same house for almost two weeks. Besides her dangerously heavy appetite she seemed to be a warrior type. A fighter. But then again, maybe I was just getting fooled by her bravado. She tried to sound as tough as nails but I assured myself that deep down inside she was as soft as a kitten.
We told the others that we were going to take a walk to the school up the hill then started off. Clive really wanted to come and I had to use some powers of persuasion to convince him to stay. The children had never seen a real Secondary School before so their curiosity took over but I let him and the rest of his siblings use the game console I had and that seemed to effectively keep them preoccupied as Sara and I slipped out.
