Diary of a Survivor 4

by Matt Pike

  While the stands were empty, they watched on. I know they did. I wondered what they thought of me in that moment. I felt a lot of judgement, but I think that was just the stuff coming from me.

  *

  March 25, 2015

  In reflection, I may have tried to get up and face the world too early. If only there was someone there to tell me that, aside from, well, everyone.

  I couldn’t go back to the ward. But, I didn’t want to see anyone either. I just wanted to hibernate. Alyce soon had things sorted so I could reclaim my old room. She’s been organising food and keeping the wolves from the door.

  The only people who’ve made it past are Anika, who visits several times a day to do my obs, check my pain levels and issue whatever I need to get me through. She keeps it pretty straight, in terms of conversation, and it’s very much appreciated.

  The pain is constant, but manageable. It’s more trying to find a position to be in that doesn’t irritate one wound or another. In general, lying down is easier, but that also aggravates more problem areas. So, it’s painkillers, taking it easy and time. That’ll take care of the physical side.

  Shane has also come by, both yesterday and today. Like Annika, he is keeping the conversation in the safe lanes. He keeps me up to date with all the progress being made around the oval. There are so many things going on. We are building a new world. And it really is an entirely new world. It’s not the old oval anymore. This is newer, bigger and better. It is the real start of the future we have all dared to want since rock night.

  He knows how to play me, Shane. That’s exactly the kind of talk he knows will get me on my feet and excited about life directions again. Bastard!

  Anyway, tomorrow night there’s going to be a big ceremony for the 43 people who lost their lives in the battle. The day after, there’s going to be some official meeting of what will be our governing council - or whatever they’re going to call themselves. I say they, but I think I’m involved.

  I had been sure the death toll was going to be more than 43. Apparently, while we didn’t get there in time to stop Norwood starting their redundancy plan, we did stop them completing it. We turned the tables and changed New Adelaide for the better. It cost 43 lives, though. As well as almost the entire Norwood hierarchy. There are only three of them left now. All recovering from their wounds, well away from the luxury of our wards.

  Their fate is yet to be determined.

  Anyway, back to annoying Shane and his annoying ability to annoyingly play me.

  It’s time. I know it is. I’ve got to get back into this game.

  *

  Funny, isn’t it? How much this world has thrown at me. How much I’ve endured. I stayed strong for the longest time. Then, the moment was all over, and I lost my shit.

  The Ye-jun thing has hit me hard. Nate as well, obviously, but Ye was like a brother. I miss him. Yet I know it’s more than that. We barely had a chance to grieve when we lost the battle for the city. Now all of the events of the past month have kind of rolled together, without any time to come up for oxygen, I guess.

  Or maybe it’s even bigger than that still. Maybe it’s all the events of the last, well, nearly year. It’s all been so much change and loss. It feels like it is. It feels like, in one way, I’m coming up for oxygen for the first time on all of it.

  It’s the first time I’ve felt clear air ahead. It’s the first time I haven’t had to be thinking about, and planning for, the next danger.

  There’s a good feeling in it all, once I’m through all this.

  The best.

  It’s time.

  *

  March 26, 2015

  I felt a calling today. I’m ready to come back, but there was something I needed to do before I could.

  It’s funny how the mind works. I just woke up with a course forward already set. I hadn’t thought about it when I went to sleep last night, yet I am consumed by the calling.

  Life has moved so far in the last year and I've been doing a lot of looking back in between all the looking inwards and forwards.

  Bottom line - I had to go home. My pre-rock home.

  Something was pulling me there and it was strong.

  I can’t really explain it, other than I had no choice. Once the idea got into my head, nothing else could push it out. It also became my gateway back to facing life at the oval, for whatever reason.

  *

  With Alyce’s help, I got dressed and ready to face outside again. I took a double dose of painkillers for good measure. That was definitely not doctor’s orders, but neither was what I was about to do.

  Alyce helped me from the room down to ground level again. I thanked her, then told here I needed to face the rest of this on my own.

  I shuffled my way to the garage, where Phoenix waited. Jonesy and his crew have all three hovercraft back up and running now. They’re also completing the work he had started on the other three he was putting together before the battle for the city.

  It was kind of weird, our interaction, at least for a moment. He was quite shocked to see me. I guess word gets around. He was definitely unsure as to what was happening and what to do for a moment. I just gave him a look - a who do you think you’re dealing with, give me the goddamn keys to my ride look (metaphorical keys - there are no keys to the hovercraft).

  He laughed at himself then said “Be my guest.”

  I could feel the eyes of everyone else in the workshop as I gave Phoenix a quick inspection and nodded to Jonesy for the good repair work they’d done. I went to jump in my ride, but my body screamed at me that it was a bad idea. Jonesy was over in a second, offering his forearm as leverage for me to lean on. I resisted for a moment, before taking the help.

  Once in, I cranked Phoenix into life and headed out of the oval.

  Even though it was early, there were already so many people up and about - planning, working, building. I just snaked through them as best I could until I reached the oval’s edge. There were eyes on me the whole way. Maybe they were staring at me, probably the hovercraft. Once I was past the last of it, I cranked the speed.

  Then it was just me and the road. As soon as I felt that, I was able to breath. I knew I’d made the right call.

  I needed this.

  *

  It felt weird heading home, for lots of reasons.

  Firstly, there was no Ye-jun. I completely felt his absence on this latest adventure. Maybe I felt his presence, too.

  “Miss you, Ye,” I said to the air.

  The second one was driving through the eastern suburbs without feeling like there could be enemy eyes on me – or that there were enemy eyes on me. It was just me, Phoenix and the road.

  I was halfway up Magill Rd when I just let out a whoo-hoo. Think I got nearly 20 seconds out of it. I hadn’t done that for the longest time. I mean, I’m partial to a quality whoo-hooo these days, but most of the recent ones I can remember were the result of surviving a gun encounter, successfully fleeing for my life or anything around the general theme of surviving some situation that could’ve potentially ended it all.

  But this, this was pure whoo-hooing. There was no threat, no survival, no tension, no enemy, just me and the road and a lifetime of possibilities ahead.

  Just so good.

  I was soon nearing home and my mood changed again - this was the third weird. I didn’t know what to expect as I approached, but I knew the carefree elation from the ride there had evaporated.

  Even as I turned off the main road and started snaking through the side streets of Trinity Gardens, I could feel it rising. By the time I reached my street, it had gone to another level again. I could barely breathe by the time I pulled up outside my house.

  I rolled out of Phoenix in the least painful way possible and looked at it for a while.

  It was smaller than I remembered.

  I did the usual security protocols, but it was pretty obvious no one had been there in a long, long time. Ash had piled up against the door and there wasn�
�t a footprint to be seen.

  Eventually, I had the doorway clear and braced myself for what I might see and feel on the other side. Oh, by the way, the key was in my pocket (an actual key this time). As in, the key had been in my pocket since the last time I’d left this place so many months ago. It had never left my side. Just like this place, perhaps.

  I was shaking as I tried to put it in the lock, but was soon opening the door and walking in.

  The first thing that hit me was the defence set-up I had by the door. I’d created this little entry channel through the door and I’d masked off all the windows. I remember how huge that all seemed at the time. It made me smile to look at it again.

  Everything was so dusty. The whole place was thick with it – caked a centimetre thick over everything. I was walking through the lounge room and into the kitchen when I saw the duplicate of my first diary on the dining table.

  I’d made a copy, determined my words would survive, so the memories of those I talked about in the pages would. I’d left it there hoping someone would find it, read the words and understand life during the biggest moment in human history.

  There it was, untouched. Time capsules take a while to pay dividends, I guess.

  I did a lap of the bedrooms, feeling a wave of grief for each of my family members as I went – first Mum and Dad, then Jase. When I reached my room, my thoughts turned to Fi.

  I would never forget. I had survived what this life had thrown at me. So had my words and so would their memories.

  I continued my lap of the place, finding my way to the backyard, seeing the three crosses I’d laid there for Mum, Dad and Fi. I went over and touched each of them, giving a thought to each loved one again as I did.

  Then my attention turned to the shed. I had to go back there and look at the workshop that created Phoenix. It hadn’t changed a bit, of course. Apart from the dust.

  I smiled again. Between all the old equipment in there, and the things I’d learned from my dad, well, something was made in that space and it changed the future of our city.

  It really did. Without Phoenix, everything turns out differently for me and for Adelaide. Doubt if I’m still alive in that world. Maybe the city would be reclaimed – maybe. The coast certainly wouldn’t have been reached. Let alone all the alliances, battles – everything that had been altered by the presence of a hovercraft. And it all started in that shed.

  I went back inside, smiling.

  There was one place in the house I wasn’t sure whether I’d revisit or not. The cellar. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted it, or even needed it.

  Any time I was walking past the kitchen, I could feel the square shape in the floorboards staring at me. Eventually, I stopped and stared back. It lasted a good minute, that contest. The door was always going to win. But, during the stand-off, I had made my mind up that I didn’t want to go back to that place again. I had set out to get whatever it was I needed from my trip home and revisiting the moment I lost Fi was not going to add to it.

  That memory was for the past. “You can have it,” I told the door as I turned away.

  It felt good.

  No sooner had I looked away, than I saw the ham radio. I smiled again. It was one of the things I grabbed in the last days before impact night. I’d never even used it, it was still in the box, but this was a way to talk to the world.

  In my state at that moment, it was as if the cellar door had shown it to me. As if it understood what I went home for, appreciated my efforts and wanted to give me a little reward. I grabbed the radio and said thanks to the door.

  Before leaving, I went back to my room one final time and grabbed my footy and Crows guernesy. Something about the way the oval was coming together told me I’d miss them if I didn’t take them with me. Besides, if Jessie has a Power guernsey, I definitely have to have a Crows one when we do kick to kick. I also know there are plenty of footballs in and around the oval, but this one was mine. It still had my name in texta on the side, just as I’d written it there when my parents gave it to me for my 14th birthday.

  With that, I was done. I gave the house one more look as I pictured my family around the dinner table eating roast and laughing at some difference of opinion, then saw myself setting defences as a lone survivor - a very green lone survivor, before seeing myself cuddling on the couch with Fi. This place had given me three different lives and I was thankful for them all.

  I left, locked the door behind me and put the key back into my pocket for whenever I came back again. If I came back again.

  *

  I looked at the oval through different eyes as I headed back there. Back home. I mean, it had felt like home for a while before the battle, but after saying another goodbye to my old house, well, this really was home now.

  I was back… and I was back.

  The place was a sea of activity. There are tents going up everywhere. On the hill at the Cathedral end, on the grassed area between the eastern and southern stands, out behind the members area in the west, with other little pockets of them in between all the crops fields that were formerly Adelaide Oval No.2.

  We’re like a tent city. For now.

  It’s a great temporary solution, but once we’re set up, our attention will turn to North Adelaide. There are houses not far from where we are – enough for everyone who wants their own place to live, all close by our oval hub. If things keep going the way they are, we think there will be enough sunlight to start making solar panels effective, especially after winter. Shane was saying he’s part of a team of engineers, electricians and builders, drawing up plans to put the immediate streets nearby back on a collective energy grid.

  That’s really building.

  Many of those places are old enough to have open fireplaces, which should get people through winter in the meantime. It gives us a few stages to work towards as we deal with the influx of people and work to a sustained future going forward.

  The planning around the shape of our city doesn’t stop there. Sights are also set on creating a permanent facility down at the frigate site. A gateway to the coast, where we can continue to have access to a steady and sustainable supply of fish.

  Already, some people seem keen to make it their permanent home, others happy to be part of the fishing and desalination crews. HIHOs we’re already dubbing them - hover in, hover out.

  People want to contribute, they want to do their bit and feel like they belong. That’s not just a select few, or the majority, it’s everyone. Every single person.

  This place and this gathering of groups has created a new hope for the future. It’s a collection of ingredients that seems to have magic powers. Everyone believes. I can’t even explain that feeling in any way to give it justice. Just, everyone here is completely committed and invested to working together with everything they have for a mutually beneficial future. For a home.

  On that thought, I hovered back to the garage, gave Jonesy a smile, then headed to my room. I really was back.

  I walked past people I didn’t even know and they smiled.

  Granted, some of them probably smiled because everyone seems to know who I am and what I’ve done. But, if that wasn’t me and I was just some Jack from somewhere else, I’d still get the same warmth. It is a feeling. It is tangible and it is everywhere.

  *

  Afterwards, I went and got some breakfast with Alyce. We sat in one of the stands and just watched our world grow around us. I was smiling again. I was back.

  We then retreated to our room and shared a very long overdue reconnection that didn’t involve outdoors, sand or sneaking around. It may have tested my injury recovery more far more than Anika would’ve approved of, but what are you going to do?

  *

  I was now ready to properly face the world again. I headed out to the medical ward first. My timing was perfect as Zoe was preparing to go for her first walk. Anika was with her and I joined the pair as they went on a lap of the members’ stand. There was no real chat, other than the weather
and pointing out all the new developments around the oval as they came into view. Just simple.

  I also had a chance to thank each of them separately for what they’d done, given both had saved my life in different ways. Both were nice moments.

  Zoe was also quick to apologise profusely about losing contact with me before the battle. I haven’t gotten the full details yet, other than the Fat Man grew suspicious of her motives. At the same time, he had taken a shine to her in other ways. A very one-sided shine. The bottom line is, she was tethered to him for the last few days before battle. All she could do was hope and pray we came through.

  There are a lot of grateful people around here that we did.

  Before I left the wards, I stopped by each bed. I introduced myself to everyone, asked what had happened to them and wished them all the best in their recovery.

  After that, I tracked down Shane. He was with Steph, Maria, Jimmy and a bunch of other people I’d never met - the leaders of the other groups. As I approached, they gave me a round of applause. It was super embarrassing. After a number of enthusiastic introductions and another round of praise heaped on me, I had a chance to say my own thanks. Maria and Jimmy - they had come through. Whatever doubt they felt, they rose above it and committed everything to telling the other groups and being there when it mattered most.

  It was the one time where Jimmy spoke before Maria. He said, “We believed in you. You’re good people.” That meant more than I could comprehend at the time. To hear those words, especially from the man of few words Jimmy, well, that was as good a compliment as you can get. It wasn’t just for me either. That was for us. Playing the game our way. Being real. Thinking of the future. It was a lot of good things.

  Then I thanked Steph and Shane, for everything.

  Before I knew it, I was sitting in on the planning meeting. They were halfway through, but gave me a quick catch-up on what I’d missed. Once that was done, attention turned to the goodbye ceremony planned for tonight. Jimmy is going to run it and he’s asked if I can have a small involvement. I said yes.

  Hopefully, we can give everyone the moment they deserve. I mean, it’s a stupid thing to say, because they actually deserve to be alive, but you know what I mean.