All We Have Left

Chapter One

Blackberries Should Be out of season by now, but I find a bramble still dotted with plump fruit, soaking up the autumn sun.

Some are mouldering on the vine, but enough look edible that I take off my jacket and use it to cradle the berries, sling style.

I should have brought a bucket, but I wasn’t expecting luck this late in the year.

It’s a testament to the blackberry itself—a resilient plant, growing where it shouldn’t, when it shouldn’t.

In the pre-Quake days, people spent a lot of time and money cutting back the canes, but I’m glad they never managed to get rid of them.

Not all of humanity’s failures are for the worst.

My stomach rumbles as a berry bruises against my fingers. Juice runs down my thumb, but I don’t give into temptation. A hungry forager is a slow, selfish one. I’ll wait until I’m with April. She needs them more than I do, anyway.

Once my jacket is full, I retrace my path. The sun is noonday high. I’m expecting to find April re-reading our copy of And Then There Were None, which is her favourite, for reasons I can’t fathom. Something about horrible people dying horrible deaths comforts her.

But when I push back the branches of the oak tree we hid our tarp behind, I spot my little sister crumpled over like a leaf, the book fallen from her hands.

“April?” I drop the jacket and rush to her side. She was awake when I left her. She doesn’t respond to my voice, so I roll her onto her back. “Hey! April! You okay?”

She takes a shuddering breath, and my pulse slows. Still alive, though her cheeks are stark white. She manages to shoot me a withering look as she blinks awake. “What?”

“Are you okay? Did you pass out again?” I press two fingers against her forehead, which is always too warm these days, but she swats me away, growing more pissed by the second.

“No.” She rubs one of her eyes. “Kayla, I took a nap. On purpose.”

“Oh.” The problem is sleeping and fainting and dead all look an awful lot alike.

I swear, one of these days, I’m going to come back and she won’t wake up.

We’re so close to Crofton, but that only winds me tighter.

Nothing would be worse than losing my sister now, when we’re within spitting distance of help. “Sorry.”

“Now that that’s cleared up, I’m going back to sleep,” she says.

“No can do, actually.”

She turns her morning bitch face to me, clearly expecting orders to start hiking. It’s most of what we do these days. I nag her until she walks. She walks until she collapses. Repeat cycle. I hope it’s a welcome surprise when I grin and say, “I brought breakfast.”

“You… what?” She rubs her eyes. “I thought you were scouting for TNS.”

“Well, I found something much bet—” I stop, realizing the berries are scattered over the forest floor, thanks to my earlier panic. Whatever. It’s fine. Birds shit all over those bushes anyway. Dirt isn’t going to hurt anyone.

I hold a hand up to April. “One second.”

She groans and lies back down. “Kayla…”

I hastily stack them in the centre of my jacket. “You’re going to be excited for this. I want you preparing your excited voice.”

“Yaaaaay…” April feigns enthusiasm with all the conviction of a cat learning to swim.

“Ta-da!” I lay the jacket out between us.

She props herself on her elbows. “Oh!”

“See? What did I tell you?”

“I thought you just found mushrooms or something,” she says, taking a handful.

“No, the kitchen staff realized you always send the mushrooms back, your highness. Only the best for you.”

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t bother sassing me, too focused on the berries. April would have squealed at a treat like this a few years ago. I miss the little girl she used to be sometimes. But that tiny oh when she saw what I brought her? From a fifteen-year-old, that’s a standing ovation.

After she’s taken a couple of handfuls, I treat myself to a few.

I eat slowly, savouring every ripple of juice over my tongue.

It’s been weeks since we had fresh fruit.

I could wolf the whole pile down in an instant, but I pace myself so she can have the majority.

Even eating twice the rations I do, she’s losing weight.

A whisper of dread curls around my lungs, but I shove it away.

There’s no point in wondering exactly how close we are to Crofton.

We should be within a few kilometres, but pre-Quake maps provide estimations at best. So many roads and landforms are a jumbled mess of their former selves.

All we can do is hug the coast and head north.

“So you didn’t see any sign of TNS?” she asks, between mouthfuls. Anyone with half a brain fears True North Strong—TNS for short—the paramilitary group that runs our region. After the Quake, they gathered up most of the firearms from Victoria to Calgary.

“No, and I don’t expect to. Those berries were right on the main road.”

“So?”

“So, no one’s around. They would have picked them.” It’s a good and a bad sign. No people means no one to hurt us, but what if it also means no one to help? “I guess… I guess it isn’t worth it to the islanders to come over, just for blackberries.”

April nods, doubtless doing the same mental arithmetic. “They must have their own bushes.”

“That must be it.”

As a rule, we don’t talk about the possibility that Salt Spring Island won’t be able to help us.

For the past eight years, I’ve led us to countless places only to find the things that should have been there were missing.

Houses we used to shelter in? Stripped down for firewood by someone else.

Spinach patches I planted in the fall would be picked over by the time we returned in spring.

But this is more important than having to spend another night under the tarp or miss a meal.

For April, it’s life or death, which means it is for me, too.

I pull out the pre-Quake map I use to navigate Vancouver Island and measure our route again.

Usually, we spend this time of year living off the salmon run at the Goldstream estuary.

It’s the perfect place to gather the fat and protein we need to sustain us through the winter, before hunkering down in an abandoned neighbourhood and praying TNS doesn’t finds us.

But April fell ill at the end of the summer. At first, it didn’t seem like much: headaches, dry mouth, dizziness. I’ve pushed through worse. But April has never had my stamina, so we stopped to rest for a week. I waited for her to get better. And waited. And waited.

Eventually, we had to talk about options. We both knew there was only one.

Back when our mum was alive, we met another group of survivors when we went to fill our water bottles out of the Cowichan River.

They didn’t try to shank us right away, so that was a good sign they weren’t TNS.

Still, that didn’t guarantee they were safe either.

Mum eventually approached and offered to trade for some of their food.

We’d grabbed some jewellery and a wind-up watch from an abandoned house earlier that year.

We had no use for them, but the people by the river were interested.

“You could come with us,” one of them said, his eyes roving to me and April. I would have been fifteen; she was just five. “It would be a better place to raise your girls. We’ve got a school, a hospital—”

“Thanks, but we’ve taken enough chances with colonies already,” said Mum, and I certainly agreed with that assessment. I started to drag April away, knowing it would be my job to carry her if things turned violent. Most people don’t like it when you refuse to join their cult.

“Suit yourself.” He shrugged and turned back to his companions. “We’re on Salt Spring, if you change your mind.”

“Salt Spring?” Mum’s eyes narrowed.

She didn’t say it, but we had heard of them before.

The leader of our last colony used to tell us harrowing stories of the way the Gulf Islands hunted down anyone who opposed them.

They were as bad as TNS. Probably worse, considering they’d been able to fight TNS off.

He warned us, if we ever met anyone from Salt Spring Island, to get the hell away while we were still alive.

As we stood there on the riverside, I remember wondering if we’d already lost our chance to run. Though if we had, why weren’t they shooting yet?

The man from Salt Spring nodded. “You can get to the island from Crofton. Provided you come unarmed, the guards will let you in.”

Mum thanked him, but once her back was to the group, she rolled her eyes.

“Unarmed, my ass,” she muttered to me. We both heard the same subtext. Maybe they didn’t want to kill us. But they’d only take us into their colony if we were helpless and easy to control. We’d been down that road before and knew better than to trust strangers to protect us.

Even though it’s been years, his words still haunt me.

A hospital. I’ve got a vague idea of what that is, thanks to the books we find lying around in abandoned houses.

In all likelihood, it’s a myth, like Santa Claus and a dozen other things from the pre-Quake days that only exist in picture books now.

But April needs a fairy tale. Nothing else is going to save her.

We finish the last of the blackberries, and I fold up the map. I shutter the memories; bring myself back to the present, so that I can focus on keeping both of us alive.

“We should get going. I think we’ll make it today. I smell the ocean.” I offer her a hand up and she wobbles. I wish I could carry her pack for her, but I’ve already got most of our gear. Pots and pans clatter against the outside of my bag.

I use all the pep I can muster as we strike camp. We can’t hike long distances like we used to when she was healthy, but the few surviving street signs I’ve spotted place us tantalizingly close to the Crofton Ferry Terminal.

The thought makes me more uneasy than I dare admit out loud.

The last thing April needs is doubt, but Salt Spring could have been invaded by TNS in the past ten years.

TNS gets to everyone eventually, especially decent people.

Or the island could be a creepy ass cult like the last colony we sheltered in.

I don’t think I’m a paranoid person by nature, but I know better than to take chances.

Yes, there are people out there who claim they want to protect us.

But in these population-depressed, fractured remains of the world, any colony’s motive for saving us is pretty obvious.

I’m a female of peak breeding age. April isn’t far behind.

So yeah, Salt Spring might want us. But what if the cure is worse than the sickness?

I try not to think about that option. This is our only solution, so we’re going for it, and I’m telling myself every lie I need to so I can make peace with the decision.

Once we get there, we’ll be safe, April will get better, and life will be all rainbows.

The world is a messed-up pile of broken buildings and thorny vines, but that doesn’t mean all the good is gone, right?

There are still blackberries growing between the prickles. One small miracle is all we need.