According to the farmers and the butcher who had already surveyed the cattle and poultry on nearby farms, we would soon be able to fortify our soups and other meals with meat. I’m not sure how Connie would have reacted to that, though I assumed she wouldn’t have minded too much. As far as I understood, she had become a vegan mainly in response to animal cruelty and the ethical issues connected to conventional meat production. But even she had understood that as long as animals are treated humanely, it is natural for people to eat meat.
I decided that when things calmed down a bit more and the community settled into a routine, I’d do my bit in that regard and hike out to a nearby river to fish.
As soon as we took care of accommodation and a regular food supply for everyone in the community, we turned our attention to the brass keys. Finally, I thought to myself. I felt a new stab of disappointment that my letter and key were missing. What would I have found in my storage? Lumberjacking and carpentry tools, no doubt. But could there be something else, too?
Even so, it was very satisfying to send out small teams of people to various locations, let them open the locked storage spaces and return with a prize exactly matching the specific person’s profession.
Medication and various medical tools for doctors, midwives, physiotherapists. Seeds and gardening tools for orchardists and gardeners. Children’s books, textbooks, toys, and writing tools for teachers and wardens. Tools for vets, shearers, butchers and farmers, most of which I couldn’t even name. Cookware and huge supplies of durable food for the cooks, which cheered up everyone in the community. Bikes, more maps, herbariums, various manuals. Everyone–or almost everyone–was satisfied.
In a big community like ours, a sense of fair play was essential. Everyone had to work just as hard as the others. Everyone’s children getting what they deserve. We would need to introduce some kind of currency, rewards for work, a barter system, payment possibilities. I had no idea how yet. But it would come.
Seeing a list of all those professions and tools connected to them was yet another reminder and reassurance that our chances of survival and comfortable living were so much higher when we stuck together then if we tried to make it on our own.
The few letters and keys which didn’t have recipients were placed into an empty cash box and stored away on the highest shelf in the cafeteria office. It was a shame that we didn’t know the location of the remaining shelters, we could have gone there even without the key owners and at least find out which professions were missing.
We were slowly developing new habits–through trial and error, but mostly we figured things out quickly–and started getting used to our new life. It didn’t mean that we stopped mourning those we’d lost along the way, but we had a lot to be grateful for. Ruby wasn’t clinging to me all the time anymore. On the contrary, it was astonishing how quickly she found her place among the others. She relaxed, quickly got used to our new home and made friends she wanted to spend her free time with. Every day she was happy to be taken to the teachers and wardens who had set up the children’s centre and its outside area in the middle of the settlement according to the needs of their pupils. Her eyes were bright with excitement and I was mentally thanking Constance for securing us the opportunity to be here, however small her contribution was.
The children’s centre had become a makeshift kindergarten, the wooden cottages our homes, the factory and warehouse were storing most of the supplies from our shelters. The cafeteria became a place of social events and meetings, the surrounding farms and orchards were our new livelihood and food source.
Billy never stopped playing his ukulele. He now had–after emptying his storage space–a wide range of other instruments which, to a great surprise of the community, he could all play. Others who were able to play a few songs on the guitar, violin, flute or harmonica, soon volunteered their skills too. We were able to put together a group of one professional and several amateur musicians, and our evenings were filled with music. It had an incredibly soothing effect, for a moment we could stop thinking about The Collective, the plague, the end of the world and the beginning of hard work in the new community, and focus on other more pleasant things. On the fact that we were all healthy –albeit in a slightly frail mental state– and had each other.
I understood why the survivors included a musician, a painter, a yoga and meditation instructors, a preacher and a writer, a singer and an actor. To remind us apart from work, the company of others, relaxation, a smile also matter…
For now, we had everything that we needed.
Not many of us would admit it out loud, but every day we anxiously awaited the return of the team which went to the blue tree to stand guard. We hoped–maybe I did more than others–, that the missing people had just got the dates wrong and would show up eventually. The sign attached to the blue trunk assured them that this original meeting place was being checked every day at noon. But as days went by and the team kept returning empty-handed, it was becoming less and less likely that anyone was going to come. And so we found ourselves a new topic.
A few people were preoccupied by the idea that there might be other survivors, people who weren’t especially selected by The Collective. Our evenings, spent based on the weather either outside by a bonfire sitting on the ground, on trunks or benches, or
