After the Lights Go Out

by Lili Wilkinson

  He glances back and forth between me and Mateo again. Then he nods. ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘Good luck.’

  For a moment I wonder if I’ve misjudged him. Maybe he’s not so bad after all. Then I think of what he and my sister might get up to without me and Dad there to supervise, and I feel a little bit sick.

  It’s half past one. We’ve got six hours of daylight left.

  It’s about four hundred ks to the mine. The Holden has a full tank, but I can’t imagine it’s particularly fuel efficient. Still, it should get us close enough. We’ll figure out how to get back later.

  5

  The last building on the road out of Jubilee is Violet Hickory’s petrol station. I see the flywire door bang open and Violet comes out, wearing cargo shorts and a Fremantle Dockers T-shirt. I wave out the window as we pass her and she waves back, her face solemn.

  There’s no gradual transition from town to country here. No scattered houses or fields or orchards. As soon as we pass the petrol station, we’re in the desert, with nothing but four hundred kilometres of scrub between us and Hansbach.

  I gently ease my foot down on the accelerator. The Holden’s engine growls and the ute surges forward. It feels a little bit like driving off a cliff – I have no idea what we’ll find at the bottom, and if we get stuck there’ll be no one to come and rescue us.

  The road to Hansbach is long and straight, stretching out like a grey ribbon before us to the horizon. Rust-coloured dirt spreads out on either side of us, broken up by little pockets of grey-green scrub and bushland. Before I came here, I thought deserts were all sweeping sand-dunes and pristine oases. But there are no dunes here. Everything is spiky and weathered and drab, and filled with small wriggling things that want to kill you. Seen like this, from the road, it’s not majestic. It’s not beautiful. It’s just endless, boring, unchanging.

  It doesn’t take much to keep the Holden pointing forward, so I pay careful attention to the sky, looking out for a plane or helicopter. I also keep a close watch on the dashboard, fretting about how fast the fuel gauge is tipping towards empty.

  We sit there in silence for half an hour before Mateo finally speaks.

  ‘So you think it was an EMP.’

  Adrenaline jolts through me. How does he know that?

  I play dumb. ‘A what?’

  ‘An electromagnetic pulse. That’s why you went for this car. All the newer cars have microchips. That’s why they aren’t working. That’s why that guy’s pacemaker stopped. And our phones and…everything else. You knew this car would still work, because it’s so old.’

  How do I answer, without giving away any of Dad’s secrets?

  ‘Um. Maybe? I don’t really know much about it. I think I heard about it on TV once.’

  ‘An EMP is a burst of energy that disrupts or damages electronic equipment,’ Mateo explains. ‘It can be caused by lightning or meteors or solar storms, or deliberately caused by a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere.’

  I nod like I don’t already know this. Dad is much more paranoid about the nuclear-explosion scenarios, and he changes his mind all the time about who the most likely culprits will be. Terrorists. The Middle East. North Korea. China. Russia. The US. Our own government. The Illuminati.

  ‘I guess we won’t really know anything until we find out how widespread it is.’

  I nod again. This is the question I most want the answer to. If it was an EMP, there is a possibility it was only localised. Maybe it was some freak weather occurrence, or a military exercise gone wrong.

  I glance over at Mateo. ‘You seem to know a lot about this kind of stuff.’

  He shrugs. ‘I like computers,’ he says. ‘Plus you can’t live in the US without encountering some nutjob doomsday prepper EMP conspiracy theories.’

  My fingers tighten on the steering wheel when he says the word prepper. I consider telling him a watered-down version of the truth – that Dad is interested in survivalism, a hobbyist perhaps. But it opens the door to more questions. Too many questions.

  Luckily, I spot a mob of kangaroos and point them out to Mateo. He’s ridiculously excited, and laments not having his phone to photograph them.

  ‘Look at them jumping!’ he says. ‘It’s just like on TV!’

  I laugh, grateful he’s stopped talking about preppers and EMPs. But we quickly leave the roos behind, and I need something else to distract Mateo. So I tell him about my old life in the city.

  ‘If I was still in the city, this would be my last week of school,’ I say. ‘I’d be graduating next week. I’d be nervously waiting for my exam results, to see what university course I might have a hope of getting into.’

  ‘What did you want to study?’

  ‘I never really made up my mind,’ I say. ‘I wanted to be a vet, and a human rights lawyer, and a journalist, and a physical therapist, and a politician, and a tap dancer.’

  Mateo raises his eyebrows. ‘A tap dancer?’

  ‘That one was probably unrealistic,’ I say. ‘I thought I had the rest of high school to figure it out. But then we came here and…’

  I trail off. The truth is, I don’t know if I could get into uni now. I’d have to go back and do Year Twelve at least, and I don’t even know if I could get through that, I’ve missed out on so much.

  ‘I used to fantasise about this week,’ I tell Mateo. ‘My old best friend Zaina and I had it all planned out in Year Seven. We were going to get boyfriends at the beginning of Year Twelve, and this week, the last week of high school, we were going to lose our virginities.’

  Why am I talking about my virginity to Mateo? Why is talking about my virginity to Mateo making me blush?

  ‘Nonsense,’ he says, which was not the response I was expecting.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You know there’s no such thing as virginity, right? It’s a patriarchal construct invented by men – yet another thing they can take away from women, another tool to make them feel ashamed. Sex is just sex. You’re not broken or damaged or used after you’ve had it. It’s not a set of keys that you can lose.’

  ‘But the first time you have sex is special,’ I say.

  ‘Maybe for some people it is. But not for everyone. The first time I had sex it was mundane and awkward. We were both a bit drunk and she did this super weird thing with her tongue that I didn’t like, but I didn’t know how to tell her I didn’t like it without looking like a dick. It lasted about ten minutes, and afterwards we went to McDonald’s.’

  My blush is back, as I think about the first time Mateo had sex, and the implication that there has been more than a first time.

  Mateo gestures emphatically out the window at the desert. ‘At my high school we were taught all that bullshit about virginity – it’s a precious flower, it’s a gift that you can only give once – but none of that means anything.’

  ‘So you don’t think teenagers should be cautious about their first time? That they should wait for the right person?’

  Mateo snorts. ‘What does that even mean? You think after the first time, it’s okay to have sex with the wrong person? Nobody, at any point in their lives, should have sex with the wrong person. Sex can be scary. It can be dangerous. It can make you vulnerable. First time, second time, all the way up until you’re too old and wrinkly to do it anymore.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that—’ I break off. What did I mean? I’m not sure now, partially because I’ve become extremely distracted by the thought of having sex with Mateo, which was not something I expected to be thinking about one day into Dad’s long-awaited apocalypse.

  He’s still talking, but my attention wanders. I find myself thinking about Zaina, and whether or not she got to follow through on the plan. I haven’t heard from her for years. When we first moved to Jubilee, I sneakily used Jan Marshall’s ancient computer to send her emails, but after about six months we both slipped out of the routine. I became friends with Ana and the other Jubilee kids, and Zaina must have made new friends too. I hope she gets thro
ugh exams okay. I hope she gets into the marine biology course she always dreamed about. I hope whatever is happening here in Jubilee hasn’t happened where she is, and if it has, I hope she’s okay.

  I find myself looking at Mateo’s arms a lot, out of the corner of my eye. It’s been a while since I’ve spent so long in physical proximity to someone I’m not related to, and it’s making me feel all sorts of feelings. I want to trace my fingers along the black lines of his tattoos.

  He turns his head and catches me staring. I jerk my eyes back to the road.

  ‘What does that say?’ I ask, nodding at the words tattooed along his left arm.

  ‘Nada contra la corriente,’ he says. ‘Swim against the current.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s to remind me that fitting in and being like everyone else isn’t a virtue.’

  It can make life easier, though. I’ve spent the last three years wishing I was like everyone else. But…I realise with a start that if I’d been granted that wish, I’d still be in Melbourne right now. And if my hunch is right, and what’s happening here is also happening in Melbourne, I might be dead. I certainly wouldn’t have any skills to survive what’s coming.

  I glance back over at Mateo’s tattoo, the curling script of the words.

  ‘Nada contra la corriente,’ I say, and for the first time in years I consider the possibility that maybe I’m one of the lucky ones.

  ‘And also,’ Mateo holds up his other arm, the one with the Tesla tattoo. ‘Swim against the current. Electrical current.’

  ‘Very clever.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  I can feel his eyes lingering on me, and I shift a little in my seat, easing my thighs off the leather.

  What am I doing? I don’t like Mateo.

  By three-thirty, I’m pretty sure the Holden isn’t going to make it. I don’t tell Mateo, though. He might make me turn back, and I’ve come too far to give up now.

  Just after four-thirty the fuel gauge hits the E.

  At five-thirty, the light turns golden and the edges of the sky start to deepen into mauves and pinks. The ute stalls and rolls to a halt.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Mateo asks.

  ‘We’ve run out of petrol,’ I tell him.

  Mateo pauses, like he thinks I haven’t finished my sentence. ‘But you’ve got some more…’ he prompts. ‘In the car somewhere?’

  I shake my head. ‘Where was I supposed to get more from?’

  ‘The gas station?’

  ‘And how were you proposing to get the petrol out of the underground tank with no electric pump?’

  Mateo stares at me. ‘You don’t seem particularly surprised about this,’ he says, his tone accusatory.

  I shrug. ‘Old cars use up a lot of fuel.’

  ‘So you knew this was a possibility. And you didn’t say anything.’

  ‘Would you have changed your mind about coming?’

  Mateo shakes his head. ‘Unacceptable.’

  There’s a map in my bug-out bag. I spread it out over the Holden’s dashboard. I reckon we’re about seventy kilometres from Hansbach.

  ‘So…what’s the plan?’

  ‘We walk.’ I jab my finger at a spot on the map. ‘We can shelter here overnight. If we make good time we’ll be at Hansbach before dark tomorrow.’

  ‘Why can’t we follow the road?’ Mateo asks, looking out over the sparse orange hills. ‘I don’t want to get lost out there.’

  I point at the map. ‘See how the road curves here, where it goes around this gully? We’ll make much better time if we cut across. And we can rest in the gully and top up our water supplies.’

  I clamber out of the driver’s seat and head around to the back of the ute. I fill my backpack and Ana’s pink one with as many supplies as I can fit. I roll up the tarps and the crocheted blanket and tie them to the backpacks, like bedrolls. I tilt the plastic drums of water, and fill up my water bottle, and Ana’s pink plastic one, as well as the two empty waterskins in my backpack. Then I pass the pink bottle to Mateo.

  ‘Drink this, fill it up, drink it again,’ I order. ‘It’s not so hot now, but you still need to get hydrated.’

  I pull a compass out of my backpack and examine it. The needle is swinging wildly, no matter which way I point it. Mateo peers over my shoulder.

  ‘That’s not going to be very helpful,’ he says. ‘I really think we should follow the road.’

  I point towards the sun, which is starting to dip down to the horizon. ‘We know that’s west, right? So all we have to do is follow the road until it starts to curve towards the sunset. We should be able to see the gully by then. We head down, get some water, shelter for the night, and then tomorrow morning we cross to the other side, and the road will be right there.’

  Mateo looks uncertain. ‘This is exactly what people warn you against when you go camping,’ he says. ‘Not that I’ve ever been camping.’

  I stand up and pick up the two backpacks. ‘Put this on,’ I order, handing him Ana’s pink bag. ‘Unless you’d prefer this blue one?’

  ‘My masculinity isn’t threatened by a pink backpack,’ he declares.

  ‘Great.’ I head off before he can argue.

  I don’t want to tell Mateo why I’m so confident to head out into the bush. I know I can survive out there better than I can on a bitumen road. And I know we won’t get lost. We’re really not straying that far from the road, and even if we were, I know eight different ways to navigate without a compass – using the position of the sun, the movement of shadows, the stars, or an analogue watch. Getting lost is the least of our potential problems. I’m much more worried about what we’ll find at Hansbach.

  It takes about an hour and a half to reach the gully. Orange light spills over the sides and reflects off a silvery billabong. Massive red boulders rise up on either side of us as we scramble down to the water’s edge, still warm from the heat of the day. I can hear crickets and frogs.

  Mateo pauses on the way down, looking out at the billabong, the boulders glowing like embers in the late afternoon light, the pale limbs of a coolabah tree leaning out to caress the water with grey-green fingered leaves.

  ‘Not bad, is it?’ I say with a grin.

  He tries to look grumpy, and fails. ‘It’s okay, I guess.’

  His heel slips on the rough stones and he skids a little way. I put out my hand to steady him, grasping his forearm. His Tesla tattoo is under my fingers.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says, and we look at each other for a moment before I remember to take my hand away.

  The edge of the billabong is fringed with green reeds and red rock. There’s a flat sandy area on one side close enough to the water but not too close, with no dead branches overhead. There are two small but sturdy red ash trees, and I lead Mateo over to them, and we dump our backpacks.

  The sun sinks lower and the rocks fade from red to brown to grey as the gully is engulfed in shadow. The temperature drops several degrees immediately, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

  ‘Okay,’ says Mateo, grudgingly. ‘I’m getting into it. It’s like Survivor. Do we build a shelter now?’

  I poke around at the edge of the billabong and pick up a large, flat stone. ‘Can you find me some more like this?’

  He wanders off, and I string up a piece of rope between the two red ash trees, securing each end around a trunk with a taut-line hitch. Then I drape one of our tarpaulins over the rope to form a basic A-frame shelter. I spread the second tarp on the ground beneath, and spread out the Vassilis’ crocheted blanket on top of that.

  Mateo returns with a selection of rocks, and we place them along the bottom edge of the first tarp to secure it.

  ‘We’re going to sleep on the ground?’ Mateo asks.

  I nod.

  ‘No mattress? No tent?’

  ‘Did you carry a mattress down here? Did you carry a tent?’

  ‘What about bugs?’ he asks. ‘Snakes?’

  ‘The snakes will be asleep, and we’ll have to t
ake our chances with the bugs.’

  ‘Take our chances?’

  I shrug. ‘I guess you could try sleeping in a tree, but I don’t recommend it.’

  Mateo looks around, as if he is expecting to be accosted by a gang of insects at any moment. ‘I’m not stupid, you know,’ he says. ‘I know about the spiders here. I know how big they are.’

  I laugh. ‘It’s not the big ones you have to worry about. It’s the little ones that’ll kill you.’

  ‘Why would you say that?’ He scours the ground around him.

  ‘You didn’t go camping when you were a kid?’

  ‘Why would I volunteer to sleep on the ground? Camping is when rich white people pay thousands of dollars for Gore-Tex this and polar fleece that, then they go to a park and pay a fee to sleep outside. And all the while, there are hundreds of thousands of people who are forced to sleep outside because they’re homeless. Somebody needs to call Alanis Morissette, because that shit right there? That is ironic.’

  I get what he’s talking about, but we didn’t do that kind of camping when I was a kid. We had a second-hand tent that smelled like cat wee, and we ate baked beans and instant ramen for dinner every night.

  ‘Camping isn’t only for rich people,’ I tell him. ‘In Australia it’s often the only way a working-class family can afford a beach holiday.’

  Mateo tilts his head to the side, thinking about what I said. ‘In Puerto Rico,’ he says at last, ‘you’re never more than an hour away from the beach.’

  ‘It takes days to drive to a beach from here. And even then you couldn’t swim in it, because of crocodiles.’

  Mateo eyes the billabong warily. I let out a chuckle. ‘Don’t worry, you’re safe here. In any case, freshwater crocs aren’t interested in humans.’

  He stares at me for a moment. ‘Crocodiles,’ he says. ‘Crocodiles is exactly why camping is bullshit.’

  I start gathering firewood and making three piles – big long-burning logs, medium-sized sticks, and little twiggy bits for kindling.

  ‘A fire?’ Mateo says. ‘Will we really need one? It’s still pretty warm.’ ‘The temperature can drop to below zero overnight,’ I tell him. ‘We need a fire.’