The hordes are heading towards the city and they'll be here soon. If you can't get there before they have to close it, stay together and find somewhere defendable. They say the phones should start working again soon.
I love you. Please hurry.
Chapter Four
I felt cold. I let the letter drop onto the dressing table and hurried back out of the room. There was no way to know if Kaitlyn had ever gotten the message. Only a fraction of the population survived the change.
"Anything up there?" Taylor called from downstairs.
I shuddered and moved towards the sound of his voice. I called back to let him know what I'd discovered. I didn't mention the letter.
"The other room down here just has one massive table and a bunch of chairs. Why would they use a room that's bigger than your whole apartment for a table?"
I followed Taylor's voice until I found him and tried to stop thinking about Kaitlyn and her family.
"They obviously used to have a lot more space available than we have in the city. And my apartment isn't that small." I scowled. I wanted to protest more on behalf of my accommodation but it really was very small.
"So this is basically an apartment? For one family?" he asked, ignoring my comment.
I looked around again, taking in the pure scope of the place. The wide open areas, the views through the windows that actually had space beyond them. I had one room with a kitchen, bed and sofa sharing the space and another tiny box for a wash room. That was my entire apartment within Harbour city and even that was bigger than the apartments people lived in on the lower levels. Some of them had to share public bathrooms.
It must have been such a different life back then. In the city, only the privileged few got to go up onto the rooftops. Very occasionally, Taylor and I would sneak up to see the sky and breathe the fresh air. Technically when we did so we were breaking and entering but the old guy who owned the penthouse had never noticed us and we only risked it at night when he was sleeping. We knew it was stupid but it was worth it to spend a few hours under the stars.
These people had spent every day with the wind blowing around them, flowing through their hair, filling their lungs. I hoped they knew how lucky they were while it lasted.
My eyes started to fill with tears and I raised a hand to brush them away. It bumped uselessly against my visor and I cursed.
I crouched down and started taking the sample bottles out of the bag that Taylor had left in the hallway. Some contained a swab which needed to be wiped on surfaces, others were just empty bottles for collecting soil. I pulled a swab from the first one and ran it through the layer of dust along one of the counter tops in the kitchen before resealing it inside the tube.
Taylor took another swab bottle up the stairs and I headed back outside. I looked down at the little black bear that I was still holding. I wanted to take him with me but there was no way he'd make it through decontamination.
I walked to the window and placed him on the sill so that he could watch the world go by. He looked very lonely.
We spent the next hour exploring the rest of our area, filling our sample pots as we went.
The heat of the sun piercing through the fabric of the biohazard suit was exquisite. I longed for the feel of it on my own skin. It was hard to imagine how this world used to be and although I had never experienced it, I missed it somehow.
"I think we should go up to the penthouse in the day," I said as we walked.
"Are you mad?" Taylor asked.
"We could make sure he's out," I said. "I want to know what the sun feels like on my skin."
"Hot. It feels hot. I'm not going to SubWar so you can find out what hot feels like. We'll go to the sauna next time we hit the gym."
"Great." I let the subject drop, he'd come round eventually.
There was another tree in front of the last house in our search zone. This one had two pieces of rope dangling from a large branch that held a seat a few feet from the ground. It swayed in the wind as we passed it.
Inside the house were photographs of a small child being pushed on the seat by his mother. Taylor looked at the picture for a few moments before grabbing my hand and pulling me back out to look at it again.
"It moves!" He pushed the seat and it flew into the air and back towards him again. "Get on."
"No way." I backed away from it. "Those ropes must be a hundred years old."
"Okay, I'll go and you push me." He moved around and tentatively put his weight onto it. The ropes groaned and creaked for a few moments but they seemed to hold. Taylor carefully lifted his feet off of the ground. More creaking ensued but the ropes held.
"I'm ready. Push," he said.