Author's note; When I wrote this, Casey and Kyle hated each other, Gina was still alive, Tamara was barely in it. If there's anything else you're confused about, please ask.
Enjoy!
Busy Making Other Plans
Prologue
No one knew where the Virus came from. By the time they started worrying about it, it was too late. If you were an adult, you caught it. If you caught it, you died.
All over the world children were left to do the best they could, to draw together or push apart, to find their way or to flounder and become lost. Some tried to survive on their own; some formed groups, replacing the families they'd lost. Some battled through alone, some learned to rely on those around them.
And some took a while to learn anything at all.
Chapter One
Kyle turns out to be a good guy, in the end.
Even one day before the end, Casey would have said otherwise. Kyle, stronger than Brax and Heath as they sicken faster, drags him into the bush surrounding Summer Bay, in a strange reenactment of their first meeting; he spends two days forcing Casey to learn as much as he can, edible plants, non edible plants, which animals to hunt, which animals to leave alone, which to avoid on pain of death. Two days during which he gets weaker and weaker, coughs more and more often, and refuses to let Casey return to town.
He gives in on the third day, when he can't actually prevent Casey from putting him into the car.
"You'll want to avoid cities," he says breathlessly as they draw closer to Summer Bay.
"Dead bodies aren't actually a vector for disease, you know, that's a myth."
"Not that. I mean, that, but - this isn't affecting kids. It's killing all the adults, but not the kids. Summer Bay's probably safe, but - you're only one, and you can be overpowered. And you can't afford that now."
Casey glances at the back seat. Darcy is silent and watchful, just as she has been ever since Casey dragged her from her home. Mangrove River is not known for its children; it's not somewhere people live, it's somewhere they wait to leave. But there are children, and young teens, and they've passed several, some crying, some staring into space, some staring at them. One boy threw a rock at the car, but he'd run when Casey made a move in his direction.
To his shame, it was Kyle who thought of Darcy, Kyle who's laying plans for them. Casey wants to hate him; he stole Casey's chance to be with his brothers. He wants to thank him; he made sure Casey wouldn't have to be with his brothers.
It's complicated. But then, complicated and Kyle are old friends.
Kyle coughs, long and hard. Casey pushes a bottle of water in his direction and pretends not to notice the blood splattered on his hand.
He burns the house, that first day back.
He takes only a couple of things. Kyle's guitar; one of Rocco's baby suits, folded neatly into a back corner of Heath's drawers. He can't find anything that says *Brax*, so in the end he takes a picture of the three of them, laughing together on the beach, sun drenched and happy. He vaguely remembers it being taken in their early days in the Bay.
He leaves his brothers, all three, together inside.
Darcy sits on the path outside the Palmers - Jett isn't around, and Casey doesn't have the energy to worry about him - and watches while Casey carefully drenches the garden, the fences, the driveway, getting everything as wet as possible to prevent the fire spreading. He's backed all three cars down the road, out of harms' way.
Once he's satisfied, he douses the house, inside and out, and sets it alight.
April's sitting next to Darcy the next time he looks up. She looks tired, and even thinner than usual, although that shouldn't be possible; as little as two weeks ago, things were more or less normal. She can't have lost much weight since then.
Then he remembers, OCD.
He doesn't join them, not until the house is ashes. Darcy's asleep on the Palmer's lawn, head resting on Casey's jacket. April's sitting with her back against John's car, watching both of them.
Casey sits beside her, and for a long time they're quiet.
"I wouldn't let her in the house," he says finally. "Not when Heath -" He runs out of words, but April just nods. "Have you seen anyone else?"
"I was at the Walker's," she says vaguely, and Casey remembers that Dex is a year older than her.
Tamara, his desert angel, is two years older than him, closer to Kyle's age. Casey still can't believe he's alive, standing as he is on the older side of the danger zone; there's no chance she survived.
Sasha, though, Sasha's younger, younger than April.
"What about Sasha?" he asks.
"She wasn't there."
"Jett? Um, those two kids up at the Park; Maddy, and what's his name? April, haven't you seen anyone?"
"Can..." She swallows, glancing at the smoldering remains of his home. "Can you do that again? At the Beach House?"
They end up at Summer Bay House. There's no sign of Maddy or Spencer, and Casey refuses to let Darcy upstairs, not until he's done some work. Most of the vans are empty, and they move in there until they can think of something better.
Casey leaves April with Darcy and spends most of a day carrying as many supplies as he can from around the town to the park. He starts in shops, cafes, restaurants, and moves on to houses. In every home his first job is to place the bodies in one room, murmur a prayer or an apology or *something*, and shut them in.
He doesn't believe in God. Never has, really. But maybe someone's listening, and it feels wrong not to acknowledge that these were people not so long ago, people he knew and talked to.
Funerals are for the living, after all.
He visits the library, too, painstakingly sorting through books, taking anything he thinks might help. Cooking books, DIY guides. Kyle had suggested several things they'd need to pay attention to; hygiene, basic first aid. He takes novels, too, for April and the kids, anything to help pass the time.
April doesn't question him, just stacks supplies in the pantry, the shed, the attic. She takes Darcy down to the beach to fish, and Casey sets about clearing the house and the two occupied vans. He's dug two graves, out in the bush just behind the property - one for the Stewarts, one for the guests - and he whispers apologies as he carries the bodies.
Jett's sitting by the grave when he returns with the last one. "Your house burned," he observes. He's filthy, must have been living wild, but Casey can't quite figure out why.
"Yeah." He scrubs an arm across his forehead. "I burned it."
Jett nods, peering incuriously into the grave. "Want some help?"
"Please."
They fill the grave in together, Jett with the shovel, Casey with his hands. Jett trails Casey back to the house, helps him strip the beds of what remains of the sheets, half heartedly scrubs in the bucket out on the back porch. Casey grills the last of the meat while Jett wanders around, peering idly in windows.
Casey's exhausted, but he adds take care of the Palmers to tomorrow's to do list.
April, god bless her, doesn't react when she sees Jett, just smiles vaguely at him and sends Darcy to clean up. They've caught a couple of fish and a handful of crabs; tomorrow's dinner is sorted.
There's no power. Casey spends a while fiddling with switches and fuses before he accepts it. It seems sudden, to him; the power was still on when Kyle took him out of the Bay.
Luckily, the Stewarts were prepared. There are torches, and candles that he won't let the kids near, the barbecue can run on wood or charcoal and there's a gas hob and bottle. It's not like there's any TV to watch anyway.
He finds a little battery radio and turns it on, scanning idly up and down the bands. There's nothing there, static on every station. He makes a note to check it every day, drops it in a corner and more or less forgets about it.
Oddly, the big difficulty is washing clothes. Crockery can be done in a basin or bucket; he misses music, but they get used to it. They figure out how to cook on the hob, and for now at least, it's warm enough that they don't need extra heat.
But clothes are complicated and hard to wash by hand. They all get into the habit of wearing only a couple of outfits, the lighter, easier to wash stuff. It's going to be difficult in winter, but they can deal with this for now.
Casey's glad of Jett.
The boy seems to have blocked out everything that's happened. Casey offers to fetch anything from his house, if he wants, but he just stares blankly. Casey rescues a couple of pictures, in the end, before repeating his arson act. There's nothing in there they particularly need, and it's the easiest way.
Having Jett around means Casey can roam further, bringing him along and leaving April and Darcy at home. They risk Yabbie Creek one day, but it's mostly ransacked and their car is attacked twice; Casey thinks he might have broken the leg of one particularly tenacious boy.
He doesn't even consider Mangrove River.
He goes back to Angelo's, finds Brax's supplier list. Most of them are farmers, that's no good to him, but there's a couple of wholesalers. He chooses the nearest one, siphons the gas from Heath and Kyle's cars and loads it into Brax's. He makes April promise to stay close to the House, promises Darcy to bring her back something nice, and he and Jett set out early one morning, just before dawn.
The roads are empty, apart from the stalled or crashed cars. Casey knows there have to be other kids in the town; most of Summer Bay's school kids came from the surrounds, not the town, but there should still be others. But they haven't seen anyone, the two fires didn't flush anyone out, and he can't see any evidence of scavenging apart from his own.
The warehouse they're heading for is in a suburb a couple of hours away. Casey lets Jett choose the CDs - there's no radio, of course - and they sing along, mostly off key. The only low note comes when Jett abruptly turns off the music and asks "Did you put them together?"
"Sorry?"
"When you burned them. Did you put them together first?"
"Yeah." It's the first time Jett has acknowledged what's happened, but Casey doesn't push it, just nods. "Yeah, I put them together."
"Good. They'd like that."
He turns the CD back on.
Brax's supplier is a warehouse in a corner of an industrial park, all anonymous entrances and metal shutters and huge gates. Casey has to boost Jett over the gate to find the manual release; they open it just enough to get the car through and lock it again behind them. There's no sign that anyone's been here, but Casey's not taking any chances.
The warehouse, it turns out, stocks just about everything. Shelves three times Casey's height are stacked five layers deep; Jett jogs around the inside of the walls and takes just over ten minutes to make it back to him. Casey manages to find a layout plan, pinned up inside the office, and they start going.
There's three trucks in the loading bay, all empty. Casey checks the fuel; they'll all at least get to Summer Bay and back. With less worry about space he relaxes, lets Jett pick some luxury items as well as necessary stuff.
He wonders about moving their little group here. There's no water supply, but in all other ways it's great; there's plenty of bottled water, and he could probably fix up a tank or something on the roof.
April would hate it. She's trying her best, but the OCD she managed in more civilized surroundings is flaring under the pressures of this new life. She's trying to control it with meditation, since they can't get her medication anymore, but Casey often wakes at night to find her cleaning or tidying or counting and recounting the supplies. Sometimes he can talk her out of it; more often he can't, just sits with her until the kids wake up. This place, dusty and echoey and dirty, impossible to clean, impossible to count...
No. It would kill her. They'll just have to hope no one else finds it before they can come back.
He and Jett cram the first truck as full as they possibly can, celebrating with Coke and chocolate. Jett locks the gates again as they leave, scrambling up a pallet and kicking it away once he's on the wall. The truck's much harder to manage than Casey anticipated, but the warehouse roads give him some practise and it's not like there's other traffic to worry about. He doesn't try to get it up Summer Bay House's steeply inclined drive, though. There's no point anyway; they can't store all these goods in the House, not if they want to keep living there. He'll have to think of something else.
He's brought a handful of pretty ribbons for Darcy - and of course Jett stuffed as much chocolate as he could into the truck - and a bottle of perfume for April, one he vaguely recalls her mentioning before. She smiles and thanks him, dabbing it on neatly.
He's also brought some cleaning supplies, and she's far more grateful for those. He doesn't take it personally.
Darcy solves the storage problem, in the end. She and Casey have been spending time on the beach, fishing and crab hunting, and she usually wanders a little while he's cleaning and gutting their catch. Casey's stopped worrying about her. She's careful around the cliffs and he's fairly sure no one else is in town.
He straightens, catch neatly gutted in a bucket at his feet, and eyes the waves longingly for a moment before turning away. He hasn't gone surfing since this all happened. His board's still at Natalie's, but it seems unimportant now.
"Darcy?" He can't see her, but the sun's in his eyes. Holding up a hand to block it, he peers down the beach. "Darce!"
She appears from nowhere, scrambling over rocks at the base of the cliff, catching his hand and tugging urgently. Casey wedges the bucket of fish into the sand at the base of a rock, following her back the way she came. She scrambles for a crack in the cliff face, vanishing when he blinks.
Frowning, he moves closer, discovering that the crack bends sharply and widens into a tunnel. Darcy pulls a light stick from a crack in the wall - he feels vaguely proud that the emergency kits he's made everyone carry are proving themselves - and forges ahead down the tunnel, Casey on her heels.
It leads into caves, a whole series of them opening from each other, some bigger than others. They're surprisingly dry, and Casey nods in satisfaction. "This is perfect. Well done, Darce."
She nods. "I thought it would."
Casey stares for a minute before sweeping her into his arms, hanging on tightly.