Emma Zeth - The Lucky Prepper - A Gardener's Story of Surviving a Pandemic

I found it odd that everyone seemed to buy into it, into the local currencies and allocated jobs, the use of refugee children to build a compliant workforce, but maybe they were just grateful for the appearance of normal life and didn’t care who was in charge. Grieving for loved ones and shell-shocked from all the changes, they were probably happy to have someone tell them what to do. I know I had appreciated it; had been willing to be sucked in. If it hadn’t been for what happened to Frank, I might never have looked much closer at the system.

The way they had caught us though… had they been searching for us? Or had they just been watching the roads, looking for people escaping the city? They certainly couldn’t afford competition from alternative groups, People were in shock from the outbreak, but they must soon realise that democracy had disappeared.

I waited patiently until Mark clicked on a link labelled ‘Transfers’. My eyes skimmed down the list of jobs and names and my gaze snagged on ‘science teacher’. I recognised the name… Mr Webster.

‘Stop’ I said, ‘go back’

Mark scrolled back and I read across to the destination. Glynneath, Wales. ‘Click there’ I said, breathlessly.

Mark clicked on the destination and a new page opened; it was a coal mine. He had found the transfer lists.

He looked at my aghast face, ‘what is it?’ he asked urgently.

‘That was the old science teacher,’ I said, ‘he criticised the way things were run.’

Mark looked back at the screen. ‘It looked like he paid a heavy price.’ he said grimly.

He scrolled down the page, there were a lot of names; people placed in factories, spread out amongst farms and working in warehouses. I thought back to Stephen and his odd behaviour; caring for the kids, but compliant with a system that maltreated them. Maybe this explained it… if you spoke out against the system or caused any disruption, it would be easy to lose your assigned job and house, and if you couldn’t pay for food… I suppose you would have to accept being transferred to work down a coalmine, especially if you had a family to feed.

Mark stopped scrolling and looked at me, we still hadn’t found the others, and it seemed more urgent than ever.

‘Maybe we should be more logical about this,’ I said, ‘let’s map it out and see if we can see if there is an underlying structure.’

I picked up a pen and an A4 pad of lined paper. Mark went back to the initial page and I wrote down all the hyperlinks, each one on a separate page. Then we slowly went through. It took ages, but after a while, a pattern emerged. Each hyperlink was for an aspect of the camp, housing, jobs, food, sanitation etc. Each then linked to each of the separate camps but also to central services, then there would be links between sections so clicking on jobs there would be a link to sanitation and the dates of rubbish collections in each of the camps and the personnel involved. By writing it all down, we identified that some personnel worked at several different camps. The link for security seemed promising, but it wasn’t until we accessed the information from a security job on the correct date, which linked to a set of new registrations at one of the hostels, did we find them. Clicking on the registrations the names came up; Ruth Sanders, Kai Perth, Eddie Leathers, Drew Taylor Alisha Gill, Jasmine Gill. We had found them; but they weren’t in the Chiltern Camp, they were up at Potters Bar. And they weren’t registered in the school.

‘Great!’ I said, ‘But where are Jack and Liam?’

‘Liam is younger than the others, maybe he was sent somewhere else,’ said Mark.

I remembered Frank, and Ruth’s friend; Michael. They had both been unable to work, Frank had been too old, Michael had been injured. And they had both died. The thought passed through my mind; Liam was young, and small, and after our escape he would be labelled as trouble. Would they bother to keep him for another three years until he was old enough to be allocated a job?

I shrugged off the awful thought and left Mark to find out as much as possible whilst I went to tell the others the good news. We had found them, now we just had to put together a rescue plan.

Leila and Taz were in their bungalow, rearranging the furniture to suit them. They were ecstatic when they heard we had found Ruth and the others, but I needed to bring them down to earth.

‘Guys, what did you do for food before you joined the camp?’ I asked.

‘We scavenged,’ said Leila.

‘We were good at it,’ said Taz, ‘we could find food stashes people had left behind and no one else had found.’

‘We lived in Hackney,’ added Leila, ‘we tried to stay away from the different gangs but eventually one expanded out to where we were living so we had to move.’

‘We had heard about the settlement camp from a friend and we went online and applied,’ said Taz.

‘Why do you think they accepted you?’ I asked; according to Ruth, they only took people with useful skills, as kids I would have expected the camp to turn them down.

‘They accepted everyone, but I think the people they didn’t want were told the wrong pickup point, several of our friends made the journey but returned having missed the pick-up.’

‘But why did they take you two in?’ I asked again.

The two girls were silent, then Taz spoke tentatively ‘Maybe it’s because we can sew; we designed all our outfits for our dance shows before the outbreak.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Laila, ‘we put a lot about our ambitions to be dancers in the entry essay, but we also mentioned how we design and sew all our outfits, we even uploaded a couple of pictures of us in our outfits.’

I pondered what they had said, and then looked at them, there were enough clothes left in shops and warehouse across the country to last for at least ten years, so that wasn’t it. But both girls were pretty to look at, their dancing background had made them fit and strong and in a few years’ time the boys would be all over them. I shook my head, but the thought wouldn’t go away; they had been accepted for their looks, as girlfriend material for the Wendover boys.

The scale of the social engineering stunned me. If it was true, then the new government had gone way beyond its remit. I shook off my thoughts, ‘so you’re good at finding food,’ I said, ‘would you like to take charge of that here? I have some stocks but we are going to need more.’

‘Sure,’ said Taz.

‘I’ve checked most of the houses here in Carpenders Park, and there seems to be a lot of people still in South Oxhey, but you could walk over the hill to Bushey. I’ve not been over there at all. Or perhaps go south across the fields to hatch end.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Leila, ‘we’ll rustle up some supplies.’

‘I have a map…’ I said. I was nervous about sending them off into unknown areas; they seemed so young.

‘Thanks but I’m dyslexic,’ said Taz.

‘We don’t really need a map,’ said Leila.

They must have read the doubt in my face. ‘Don’t worry, we did this for six months after our mums left, we’ll be fine,’ said Taz.

I remember her muttered comment to Nina, it sounded like Taz and Leila had been on their own for a while. I felt a pang of sadness for all the kids who were now alone.

‘Can I see your garden?’ I asked, changing tack. I wanted to remind myself of what it looked like and what we could easily grow.

We walked around together mapping out which beds could go where. We peered over the top of the fence on the right side, it was flimsy and would be quite easy to take down so we could combine the two gardens. I was glad I had bought so many seeds; it looked like we would be able to cultivate enough food for all of us and more.