by Matt J. Pike
After I left, the fighting continued out the back entrance. We were already outnumbered and losing when I left, but not long after that more Norwood hubbers poured out from the front. We surrendered. They lined up the remaining survivors from our crew out the back (14 people) and Mia said at that moment she thought they were going to be executed.
Then the fat guy, Alex, who they reckoned is the leader of the Norwood hub, walked out and ordered the survivors be let go. They had to leave all their weapons and also move the dead bodies from the back of the shopping centre to the other side of the car park. Mia was balling her eyes out when she told me this – it all made me shiver.
Once they were done they were taken to the front of the shops and made to help the other surviving members (18 survivors) do the same with the bodies out the front. Many of the survivors were injured and incapable of helping and Mia reckoned her and about 14 others did most of the work. It took hours. Only once it was completed were they allowed to head back to Trinity Gardens. All-in-all we lost 49 people, and have another eight or so with serious injuries. Mia’s husband, Craig, was one of those killed.
It was a total disaster.
Mia and I embraced again – human touch, shared helplessness and loss – I can’t explain that feeling. I cried again.
She asked me if I was alright and said she needed me back. I told her my experience from the day, how the old guy had told me to leave and my struggle with guilt and telling the community about what happened. She didn’t seem disappointed in me at all. In fact, she told me I’d done the right thing. It was so good to hear those words.
I fixed her a drink of water and we chatted some more about what her plans were to make it up to the community. She reckoned the mood has shifted massively (only natural, I guess). Everyone is feeling low about what happened, our food stocks and the fact we are weaker than those around us. They now feel we should fly under the radar and forage for food in more obscure locations, avoiding the larger groups. Mia reckon stocks aren’t gonna take us much further than a week. And more people are surfacing at the school to join the community, usually because they have run out of food and have nowhere to go. So the desperate situation is getting worse by the day.
I didn’t have any electricity on when she came around, which spared a bunch of questions about my set-up. I did notice her having a good look around the place. Not in a suspicious way, but out of general curiosity. Maybe more in a mothering way really as she went on to ask me how I was doing. I told her I had enough to keep going for now and I went on to tell her about Mr Nichols and that I’d bring his leftover food into the school the next day.
We chatted for a while after that, mostly about things we were doing before the comet hit; small talk, but genuine small talk. It’s interesting finding out about somebody’s life in the pre-rock world. I like it, even though it brings up thoughts of how easy my life used to be. I really like Mia too. Apart from being pretty hot she is very smart and sure of herself in a way that’s not cocky but very confident. I trust her. And I think she likes me too – I think I’ve impressed her with the independence I’ve shown. Plus I get that feeling with her. The one that tells me we are similar people from similar family backgrounds – just the things we talked about and what we put emphasis on as important. There’s no rule for it, but when you feel it you know you can trust someone.
I think she’s worried about her place in the whole community right now, at least that’s just the vibe I get. I think it’s from everything that happened in the lead-up to the Norwood raid. She lost control of the situation and people died. She’s probably got more numbers on her side now, given what happened, but she needs everyone to be strong and stay united. In a way she was recruiting me. She was probably there for over an hour before she headed back to the school, or home; I’m not sure.
I just sat there reflecting on the conversation and all the new information I’d taken in. I felt good. I felt better than I had in days actually. Before I knew it there was another knock at the door. I could not believe my luck when I asked who was out there – Fiona J! With no boyfriend! I looked skyward and mouthed, ‘thank-you’ before I let her in.
She looked in a terrible state, all skin and bone, dirty and shivering. When she saw me she just started crying and threw her arms around me. So many thoughts were going through my head. Why was she here? Was she planning to stay? As my partner? I knew in that instant I’d gladly turn two years of food for me into one year of food for me and a partner. For company. With everything that’s been happening and changing so fast, and with all the emotions I’ve been struggling to control, I realised that’s what I’ve been craving all along. Company.
Thank you, universe. You’ve been somewhat under-performing recently, but I wished for company last night and it arrived at my door today. You have slightly redeemed yourself. Don’t think I haven’t forgotten about the whole global catastrophe thing though.
Fiona told me between tears her boyfriend started going psycho when the food ran low and she thought he was scary and dangerous. She left and didn’t know where to go, just found herself drawn to my place.
God, that felt good. I’m still smiling as I write this several hours later.
She had a small backpack with a handful of clothes and a few other possessions, mostly beauty products and personal trinkets. I poured a water container into the bath, boiled the kettle a few times and managed to mix in enough to take the freezing edge off the water. It was a massive waste of resources from a strategic sense, but to help her feel clean and protected and safe; that was priceless.
She was gone for an age. I suggested she wash her clothes while there was water available and left her some warm clothes to put on while her’s went through the drier. She emerged in one of my old tracksuits and gave me an embarrassed smile. She looked stunning.
I poured her a cup of tea and set out to make the least unappealing meal I could think of. It was cream of mushroom soup – with one of the long life milks to give it some extra creaminess – and some of the bread I baked a couple of days ago. She was so thankful and it felt good to provide. Just the simple act of making a meal, using your resources to provide nutrients for someone and having such a heart-felt response, was heavenly. I felt wanted, needed, loved.
We talked well into the night about everything that’d happened since our last encounter, which felt like a lifetime ago. I told her most of my story, but kept my resource-rich position to myself. She told me that she and her douche bag boyfriend had pretty much holed-up in his flat with his best mate until the food ran out. They then went around looting vacant houses in the area to keep the supplies up but that only lasted for the better part of a week until their options ran low. Clearly, others were doing the same which killed off their supply.
I hadn’t realised the hunt for food had gotten so desperate so soon.
They burnt their furniture for warmth, which only lasted a few days, then started raiding derelict houses for more to burn. She said they were so confident when everything first went down that they’d survive, but the descent into failure was a quick one. They were fighting constantly about food. There was tension everywhere. And the flat was in a totally exposed position with people walking past all the time.
Then it turned bad. They were desperate and angry and hungry. The two guys went out one day and came back with blood-stained clothes and a bunch of food. Fiona didn’t ask but she knew what had happened. A few days later the same thing happened again. This time it got too much to tolerate and she called the boys out on it – asked them flat-out what happened. They lied and said everything was above board. She knew it was all lies and she’d had enough so she decided to leave. I gotta give her massive credit for that. She was rejecting the food because she didn’t agree with the violence but she needed the food to survive. Instead, she just put on her warmest clothes, told them she was going for a walk to clear her head and didn’t stop until she got to my place. That’s a long, long walk from Campbelltown.
> I shared a few stories too – the fight at Norwood, finding the bodies in the houses, finding Hardo’s family. It’s hard to know how much to share. Just telling your story to someone can make you feel better, but then you’re giving them some of your burden. You’re making things harder for them to deal with knowing the stories of pain don’t end where they think they do. I decided not to mention the loneliness – that was one burden too far, at least for today. Maybe I didn’t need to say anything about it anyway, I’ve got a feeling there was something in the way we talked to each other and what we talked about that we both knew it was there. Maybe now it’s just a bitter reality that never needs to be said – maybe sharing that burden could push someone else over the edge. Maybe I’m just thinking too much. Maybe I’m too stubborn, or selfish or scared to share the load. Whatever the case, I’m just happy she’s here and that for the first time since the night of the rock there will be someone else in the house I wake up in.
****
Tuesday, May 14, 2014
10.30am: Feel so good today after sharing my bed with Fiona. Nothing happened but we went to sleep in each others arms and for the first time in a long time, I woke up with a sense of future and purpose. You can’t beat that feeling – it’s like the fuel for survival.
I fixed us some breakfast and we ate and talked for a while.
Then I prepared for my trip to the school, via Mr Nichols’ place. Fiona wanted to come but I thought her time would be better spent recovering. She still seemed fairly weak and there was no point pushing it too quickly.
4.45pm: As per usual I gave the key parts of the backyard a de-ashing before I left. That’s getting harder and harder to do, partly because the ash piles are building up so high finding room to store it is a challenge and also because we’re facing new levels of cold. Serious cold. Freezing cold. Literally. It was after 9am before I started and the temperature was still minus 2. The ash mounds had turned into disgusting grey/brown clumps of ice. I had to hack the pile outside the shed door with the side of a shovel for an age before I could open it and get the pick-axe out.
It’s damn lucky I’ve been keeping the doorways by the house under control otherwise I could quite literally be iced-in right now. The back door is less of an issue because it’s under the veranda, but the side sliding door requires constant attention.
After I’d gotten the tools I needed from the shed I decided to leave the rest of the manual labour until I got back from the school. I was already stuffed and still had a long morning ahead of me.
I got a few steps out the door to Mr Nichols’ before I realised how the changing conditions affected everything. The ash had no give in it anymore. The hard surface was slippery as all hell. My sled shoes were of little use, except for giving more surface area to balance with. But underneath the hard surface there were mounds of softer non-frozen ash. Every now and then you’d hit a weak patch, break though the surface and sink into the goop underneath. The closest comparison I can make is say a soft serve ice-cream covered in that chocolate stuff that sets hard (IceMagic or something?) but then starts to melt underneath. This was similar but far less appetising. Once your foot broke the surface it took an age to get it back out.
Plus, what was a moderate problem when leaving home became a much bigger one when I had a backpack full of Mr Nichols’ food. Even the 20-30 steps from the front of his house to the front of mine saw me get bogged three times. I decided to pit-stop back at my place to find a better transport method. The best I could come up with at short notice was a boogie board from the shed. I strapped the arms of the backpack around the board, attached the cross-strap, then covered the backpack-board combo in a large bag to stop the arm straps getting damaged. I basically dragged the thing behind me using the boogie board’s wrist strap. It was slightly painful dragging across the undulating ground but better than it would’ve been carrying all that extra weight.
The conditions seem to change so often outside. Some days it stinks to high heaven, some days the ash is thick in the air and some days it’s windy. When you get a few days of calm weather in a row a walking track almost forms on the footpath as people trudge about. Makes you wonder how many people are out and about. All it takes is one windy, ashy day, and any paths are covered over like they were never there.
The IceMagic surface would’ve been easier to handle if it was somewhat flat, but the undulations made dragging the boogie board only a slightly better option than lugging the whole lot on my back. Still, a win’s a win, no matter how small.
The vibe at the school was very depressing. Obviously what happened at Norwood has taken its toll, but it was more than that. The ever present and ever diminishing food stocks in the corner were a silent reminder of what we faced. I added my stash and could feel eyes on me. When I looked around it was a pretty strange reaction – everyone was happy that it grew but, more than anything, disappointed I only had a backpack’s worth to donate. Everyone knew that wouldn’t get us far.
Mia came over to thank me as I was dumping the last of the cans on the pile. She told me about a strategy meeting happening just after lunch and asked if I could hang around. I thought it’d be a good chance to check out the group’s thinking.
It’s a pretty boring place to kill time though. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s really good to have people everywhere, but there’s little in the way of small talk and I definitely feel like an outsider. Mia’s too busy to spend much time with me so I spent most of my time looking at the giant map on the floor.
It is valuable time though – that map and I are closely acquainted now. I’m amazed how much I can remember when I sit and concentrate on it. I reckon I could almost draw half the suburb street-by-street and house-by-house. I’m like the real estate rain man! When I see all the different tokens on the properties marking their status (vacant, raided, empty etc), I see them like a giant pattern of colours that flows straight into the street map already planted in my mind. Then I become the rain man in the matrix – I can’t explain it but I am ‘one’ with the data. It all comes together and I know when I get home I’ll be able to update my map with all the new info.
Most of the properties had markers now meaning they were occupied or had been cleared of food, this was another reminder all of this would come to a head at some point soon. Food is scarce. I think it’s that uncertainty that freaks everyone out. I mean the maths for survival just doesn’t add up. Not any more. Not for everyone. Not for most people.
The simple fact is unless another food source magically introduces itself then the population is still too big to sustain itself. I’m guessing, based on discussions the morning after strike-night, plus what I’ve heard here and there, that 150,000 Adelaidians (of million and a bit) might have survived the rock. What has that reduced to now? What will it get to? What is the ultimate sustainable population for this area? My guess is with no real food source available, no sun to grow the trees and no clean water, then the ultimate sustainable population is zero, nada, ziltch, a big fat donut – nothin’!
That’s why everyone is so grim. All the devastation, personal loss and tragedy aside, Adelaide is on a first-class ride to uninhabitable and we all have front row seats. That’s the sad fact no one here is ready to admit.
I guess it was no surprise the meeting was a sombre affair. Mia was great, very positive given the circumstances, but it was in no way infectious. In fact it seemed a lot of people there expected her to have the answers. It was almost like they needed someone to blame and Mia, by the fact she’d put her hand up to take a leadership role, became the outlet for their frustrations. People are pathetic sometimes.
When you think about it though, people aren’t really trained to be responsible for their own lives. There are people to do this and that for them. There are systems in place to help people live their lives. They’ve got hoops to jump through every day, every week – hoops that keep them from actually having any control over their lives. I suppose the whole system, the system of life, is de
signed to offer just enough challenges and rewards to stop people going insane. But when you strip all that structure away people become lost, running around like headless chooks, as Grandad used to say.
But I digress. The meeting went for ages. Every angle of our plight was discussed. They were trying to come up with a plan to maximise the unclaimed food. The general consensus was that hitting the houses affected by the tsunami on the city-side of Portrush Rd was the best bet. It took them forever to come up with that semi-consensus and I was very much torn when they did. It was good to hear them finally coming together in agreement, but I couldn’t help but think they weren’t thinking big enough. Eventually I got the courage to speak.
I’d been thinking about this for a while. We needed a big play to get ourselves back in the game. I thought sending an expedition to the city centre was a no-brainer. For a start, we were one of the closest surviving areas, apart from Norwood maybe, and they were busy protecting their stronghold. If we could get to the city in large numbers before anyone else did we would have the pick of the food that remained.
It could be a big fail as no one knows how much the tsunami damaged the city. It could prove too difficult to move around and I said as much to everyone, but, IF there were ways to get around safely, there were potentially more food sources than anywhere else – supermarkets, convenience stores, restaurants, vending machines, more food than we could dream of carrying back. I can’t remember exactly the words I used but I do remember getting to the end of my spiel and looking out at a sea of blank faces. Well, they were blank at first, until some guy (I don’t know his name but he’s a constant negative pain in the arse) spoke. He said it was the best idea he’d heard since becoming part of the community. That seemed to give a few other people enough confidence to voice their approval and, before I knew what hit me, I was being peppered with questions about the logistics of it all. I couldn’t believe it – suddenly I was some kind of expert. I remember trying to answer as many questions as possible, I had a few pretty good pieces of information others didn’t, like my view over the city on rock night and my understanding of the topography, but I tried to stress multiple times I wasn’t sure any of it was going to work. I remember feeling conflicted when I held centre stage – part of me was stoked to be in a situation where others were looking up to me (even though I know I should be keeping a low profile) but the other part felt pity that they had so little control over their destiny they latched on to my idea like it was the great white hope for survival. I also had this feeling they’d turn on me if it didn’t reap the rewards they were hoping for.
