Free The Survivors (Book 1): Summer by V. L. Dreyer Page A

survive.
    I chose to live.
    I took Mum's car and drove away, with Mushkin curled up on the seat beside me.  For the first year or so, he was my loyal companion and followed me everywhere.  But he was already old by the time the plague hit.  One night, we curled up to sleep together, and he just never woke up.
    After he died, I really was all alone.
    ***
    The kitten was aggressive with its affection and demanding but it helped me to centre myself, to bring me back to the present and to focus on what needed to be done.  I patted it gently, letting its soft fur bring back pleasant memories from childhood, happy memories of nights spent curled up with my beloved Mushkin, safe and warm in bed.
    I tried not to think about the fleas.
    Eventually, I calmed down enough to function.  It took a while, but the kitten's sweet-faced inquisitiveness helped.  Whenever I started to slip away, she nudged me with her little head and brought me back to the present.  Finally, after I cried my way through utter despair and out the other side, I felt strong enough to get up.  I would have to do something about that damn 'Function' building, or else I would not be able to sleep tonight.
    There was an unspoken code amongst survivors.  A way to both respect the dead, and warn others away from something they really didn’t want to see.  I had come across a few marked sites during my years on my own, and I knew without anyone ever having to tell me what the black mark meant.  With that in mind, I set off in search of tools.
    I found what I needed stashed away in the workshop I discovered earlier.  While I was gathering things, an idea began to grow in the back of my mind.  I initially planned to bury Benny and his beloved wife together, but it seemed more appropriate for them to spend their eternity with the community that they loved.
    A coil of rope slung over my shoulder and a can of spray paint in my pocket, I returned home to fetch Benny and Margaret.  It was not a pleasant trip, dragging a decaying corpse a few hundred metres along the street in the bright summer sun.  He was already starting to fall apart, but I managed to keep him intact long enough to get him into the function centre.
    I left Benny in the lobby.  I couldn't bring myself to open the inner doors and take him all the way inside.  I reassured myself that Benny would be happy just being close to his friends.  It felt right.  I straightened up his rotting limbs with as much respect as I could and set the jar of his wife's ashes into his wrinkled old hands and his wedding photo on his chest, then I stood back and looked down at him.
    " Rest in peace, Benny," I whispered.
    Leaving them to their eternal sleep, I backed out of the function centre one last time, pulling the outer doors closed behind me.  I slipped the coil of rope from my shoulder, and then I wound it around the door bars and pulled it tight, knotting it a few times until I was satisfied.
    A few knots wouldn't be enough to stop a determined survivor, but it would keep anything inside from getting out, which was really the point.  I rattled the doors to check that my knots were tight, and then fished my can of spray paint out of my pocket.
    It took a bit of shaking to get the thing going, but when I did, I painted a large, black X across the doors, the universal sign that meant 'you really don't want to see what's in here, buddy'.  I went over it a few more times, making it as bold as possible, then below it I added three simple letters:  R I P.
    I didn’t think I could be any clearer than that.

Chapter Eight
    The kitten padded after me as I spent the rest of the day keeping myself busy.  Occasionally, would she vanish, only to appear again a few minutes later in the most unexpected of places.  After a quick cold scrub to get the stink of death off my hands, I hunted down the hot water cylinder of my new home to see if I could figure out what was wrong with it.
    I was no electrician, but I had