Anyone human, that is. We lose chickens to king browns all the time, and Andy Liddel’s dog got taken by a death adder.
Mateo doesn’t say much for the next few hours. He’s too busy scanning the ground ahead of us and carefully avoiding every fallen stick and branch, just in case.
Eventually, when I’m starting to doubt my own navigational abilities, we reach the road. With a sigh of relief, I collapse underneath the shady branches of a gnarled bloodwood tree. Flies buzz around me and I snap off a switch of leaves. I squint up at the sun. It’s around midday.
‘So we’re nearly there, right?’ Mateo slumps down beside me.
I make a face.
‘Right?’ Mateo’s tone is desperate.
‘It’s at least another fifty k,’ I tell him. ‘I have no idea what that translates to in whatever stupid system Americans use.’
‘We use metric on the Island. I know what a kilometre is.’
We trudge along the road, making better progress because it’s flat and straight and we don’t have to scramble around as much. But it’s boring. I don’t have to navigate anymore. There aren’t many trees to identify.
Thoughts creep in.
I keep telling myself that it’ll be alright when we get there. That Dad will have all the answers we need.
But what if he doesn’t?
We walk.
In the distance, I can see something on the road ahead of us.
‘Is that…’ Mateo peers at the object, then starts to run. ‘It’s a truck!’
He’s right. It isn’t moving – no surprise there. It’s not pulled over by the side of the road – it’s stopped, right on the bitumen. I can see the logo on the side – it’s one of Hansbach’s freight vehicles, an enormous semitrailer with two carriages loaded with zinc slurry.
We both forget how footsore and hot we are as we dash towards the truck.
There could be someone inside.
They could have water.
They could have answers.
As we approach, I search for signs of movement, but see none. I slow my pace, but Mateo goes sprinting up to the truck.
‘Hello?’ he yells. ‘Anyone?’
There’s no response. Mateo bends over double, wheezing from the exertion. The heat radiates off the baking bitumen in visible waves, making the ground wobble before us.
There’s no one in the cab. Mateo climbs up, flicking switches – the radio, the ignition, the CB radio. He shakes his head.
‘Nothing,’ he says.
I climb up after him and search the cab for food or water. There’s nothing. I slide down and pop the hood to check the windscreen wiper reservoir in case there’s potable water, but it’s full of some kind of squashed bug–busting green liquid.
Mateo peers over my shoulder. ‘I read about a guy who survived for five days on nothing but windshield fluid.’
I give him a flat look. ‘It contains antifreeze. You could go blind.’
But there’s not much water left. We’re going to have to be careful.
I pull out the map. From what I can tell, we’re probably going to be walking for another five hours. If we make good time, we’ll be there before dark. If we don’t, I’ll have to start getting creative.
I can find water, no problem. I can collect morning dew. I can follow fresh animal tracks. I can watch for seed-eating birds who fly in formation when they’re heading to water. But I don’t want to do any of that because then Mateo will guess that I’m a prepper, and the Paddock won’t be secure.
So we walk.
6
The dying light of the day turns everything grey and silver as we finally crest a steep hill and look down at Hansbach.
Instantly I know something has gone very, very wrong.
Hansbach is a zinc mine, so although there is an open-cut section, most of the mine is underground. It has a labyrinth of sloping tunnels called declines, each one punctuated with horizontal shafts called stopes, where the actual drilling happens. Dad took us a little way down into the mine when we first moved here. I hated it – it was even worse than being in the Paddock. The tunnels are enormous – each one easily four metres tall, and wide enough for two massive rock-hauling Euclid trucks to pass each other comfortably. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the thousands of kilos of rock and earth on top of me, and the crushing weight of gravity pressing it all down, down, down, trying to fill up every pocket of air.
Dad laughed at me and told me there was nothing to be frightened of. He said that in the event of a disaster, underground was always the safest place to be. He told us about how the only creatures that survived the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs were the ones who were underground – that only a metre or so of earth insulated them from the overheated atmosphere above, and that we are descended from these creatures. Being underground, Dad told us, is in our DNA.
I didn’t care. I hate being underground.
The open-cut section of the mine is enormous, a giant gravelly mouth that has swallowed up all the trees and plants and rocks. It’s shocking to see – a gaping wound in the wilderness.
But that’s not what’s shocking me today.
My eyes search the landscape for the two black tunnels that lead underground, but I can’t see them. I can’t see the head frame either – the tall steel tower that rises above the main vertical shaft. It’s this shaft that transports the miners and their equipment down to the working section of the mine, as well as pulling up massive skips full of crushed ore.
The head frame isn’t there.
I wonder if dehydration is making me hallucinate.
My eyes follow the top line of the open pit to where there should be a small cluster of buildings – the administrative offices, the rec room, the canteen and the living quarters for the miners.
It’s as if there’s been an earthquake.
Half of the living quarters have collapsed. Several buildings have just gone, swallowed into a dark sinkhole of gravel, leading deep into the earth.
I see no lights. No trucks. No people. Everything is silent, except for evening birdsong, and the whistle of the wind as it chases around the walls of the open pit.
‘Could they have downed tools for the day?’ Mateo asks hopefully.
I shake my head. Hansbach is a twenty-four-seven mine. It only stops for one week each year, over Christmas.
I break into a run.
I’m out of breath by the time I reach the little group of buildings. Twilight has fallen, and everything is blue shadows and dark emptiness. Now that I’m closer, I can see the head frame, buckled and toppled over, crushing a massive Euclid truck under its weight. There is dust and rubble everywhere.
The giant corrugated-iron sheds that store the mining equipment have collapsed, the huge metal sheets crumpled like used serviettes.
I have to find Dad.
Lungs burning, I stagger past the remains of the strip of cabins where the miners live on-site. Only three are still standing – the rest are a tangle of corrugated iron and crumbled sheetrock. With a flash of horror, I see other things in the rubble. A smashed flatscreen television. A battered suitcase. A roll of toilet paper, half-unwound and floating in the breeze like a ghost.
I skirt the edge of the sinkhole, not wanting to get too close to the gaping black maw. It’s devoured the rec room with its pool table and gym, as well as the infirmary. I think of Mateo’s mum. Would she have been in there?
My heart leaps into my throat.
There’s a light on in the admin building, and I’m almost certain it’s coming from Dad’s office.
Maybe, just maybe, whatever terrible thing has happened here could be a little bit less terrible if Dad is still alive. I know Dad isn’t really into physical affection, but I am going to give him the biggest hug of his life. I’m going to apologise for whinging my way through so many emergency drills. I’m going to tell him that from now on, I’m going to work hard to be a good girl.
I throw open the main door and stum
ble through. It’s dark inside – the twilight doesn’t illuminate much.
‘Dad?’ I call into the dim building.
Dad’s office is at the very back, with the other engineers. The frosted glass door is closed, but I can see a light moving on the other side, as though he’s picking up a torch.
‘Dad?’ I call again, and my voice sounds small, like a little kid’s. I can hear Mateo’s steps behind me, hear his panting breath. I fumble in my bag for my own torch, but before I find it, the door to Dad’s office opens and a blinding light hits me in the eyes.
The torch beam plays from me to Mateo, and then the darkness speaks with a woman’s voice.
‘Mateo?’
‘Mom?’
Mateo pushes past me. I find my torch and switch it on to see Mateo hugging a woman who looks like a female version of him. The woman is crying and muttering something in Spanish that sounds like a prayer of thanks.
‘Negrito, how did you get here?’
‘We drove. Pru found a car that still works, and we drove halfway but then we ran out of gas and camped overnight in the desert and walked the rest of the way and I am so tired and my feet are killing me.’
Mateo’s mum laughs and rumples his hair, then turns to me.
‘Hi,’ I say, a split second before I’m enveloped in a crushing embrace.
‘Thank you for looking after him,’ she says into my shoulder. Her accent is stronger than Mateo’s. She pulls away and looks more carefully at me. ‘I’m Clarita. Come on, you’ll want to sit down.’ She nods towards a door.
I can’t suppress a little gulp of misery as she ushers us into Dad’s office.
She’s pushed the desk up against the wall, and has a mattress on the floor. She switches on a mining lamp that she’s taped to a white plastic jug, which diffuses the light. She sinks down on the mattress and Mateo sits next to her. I perch on Dad’s office chair. I can see a photo of me and the twins on his desk, alongside the dark panel of his computer monitor.
Clarita offers us water and we drink it greedily.
‘What happened?’ I say between gulps. ‘Where is everyone?’
Clarita shakes her head. ‘The power went out, and the backup generator didn’t kick in. About ten minutes after the power cut, there was an explosion. It could have been a gas leak, or maybe a build-up of oxygen once the ventilation system stopped. I don’t know. But it brought down the head frame and opened up that hole you would have seen on your way in.’
I feel my heart start to hammer, as I remember being in the decline. Feeling that rubble over my head.
‘Nearly everyone was below ground – work was supposed to start on the new deposit next week. They were having a little ceremony to officially open the stope – breaking a bottle of champagne over the Euclid. There were a few people who were closer to the surface who managed to dig their way out. They’re pretty banged up, though. I’ve set up a hospital in the canteen.’
‘How many survived?’ I ask.
Clarita bites her lip. ‘Fifteen, including me.’
I stare at her in horror. Hansbach employed over a hundred workers.
‘What about the other staff? The cleaners? The food services crew? Transportation?’
Dad. What about Dad.
‘They were all in the mine for the party.’ She winces. ‘It’s a terrible health and safety violation. I think that was why they did it. Because I was here. They – they thought it was funny.’
Of course they did. Hansbach’s website makes it look like an amazing, inclusive, diverse workforce, but in reality it’s a bunch of straight white men out in the middle of nowhere. I can only imagine how they would have reacted, having a brown woman try to tell them that they should change the way they work. Of course they flagrantly disobeyed her and had a party a kilometre and a half below the surface of the earth.
‘Why are you in this office?’ I blurt out.
Clarita nods to the north-facing window. ‘It gets the best light in the day,’ she says. ‘And I need a space away from the patients, to just be quiet, you know? Or else I’ll go crazy. I come in here and rest for a half-hour, and then go back and check on them.’
I gaze around. I’ve been in here before, with Dad. I can see on the desk the pen we bought him for his fiftieth birthday. His orange safety vest hangs from the hook on the back of the door. I can smell him, the soap he uses, his shaving cream.
But his bag isn’t here. His bug-out bag. That means there’s a chance he could be okay.
‘I need to see,’ I say, and stumble outside.
The canteen is a few paces away from the main building. Outside, it looks the same as it always did – a large demountable building clad in grey fibro cement.
Inside, everything is different.
As soon as I open the door, I’m hit with the smell of disinfectant, blood and other, grosser things. I cast my torch around and see mattresses on the floor, lined up in rows, each one with a human-sized lump under a blanket. I see IV bags and bandaged limbs and weird sheets of paper with coloured marks on them.
Is one of these shapes my father?
‘Dad?’ I say. ‘Dad? It’s Pru. Are you in here?’
Nothing. And then, ‘Prudence Palmer? Is that you?’
I shine my torch at the voice. It’s David Bratton. He has a bandage on his head, and a black eye. He winces at the light, and I turn the torch onto the wall, where it bounces back and dimly illuminates us both.
‘It is you,’ says David. ‘How did you get here? Is everyone okay in Jubilee? Have you seen Simmone? Has she heard from Maddie?’
I nod. ‘Everyone’s fine,’ I say, before I remember poor Mr Kausler. ‘Simmone’s fine, but we don’t have any news from outside Jubilee.’
I tell him about what happened, about the power.
‘How did you know that Jubilee was affected too?’ I ask him.
‘The truck driver,’ says David Bratton. ‘He heard something on the radio.’
I remember the abandoned truck we saw on the road. Maybe he knows something.
David is staring at me with a funny expression on his face. It takes me a while to realise it’s pity, and I finally ask the question I came in here to ask.
‘Is Dad here?’
David hesitates before answering. ‘I saw him, about half an hour before it happened. I didn’t go down to the party. I’m going for a new job and didn’t want to get into any trouble. I was heading back to the site office when I passed him. Asked him why he wasn’t down there too. He said he needed to work. You know your dad – not really one for socialising. I thought he would have stayed in his office. But nobody’s seen him.’
I nod dumbly. David is still talking, but I can’t make the words out anymore. There’s a rushing noise in my ears.
I get to my feet and make my way outside again. David calls out to me, tells me to wait, but it’s as if I have no control over my body.
I’m suddenly very aware of the gritty earth below my feet. I know there is a spiralling maze of stopes beneath me, tunnels providing access to the mine’s zinc deposits. They push nearly a kilometre deep into the earth.
I imagine being down there when the power went out. Those cavernous spaces would feel very small when you were trapped in the dark, with nearly a hundred men and a dwindling supply of oxygen.
Could there be any survivors? If Clarita was right and the explosion had caused several levels of tunnels to collapse, then it was unlikely. The new deposit was a long way down – with no electricity, how long could they survive? If the ventilation tunnels had collapsed, they’d probably died of carbon monoxide poisoning within hours.
Did they panic? Did they try to escape?
Did they cry, or pray, or fight?
Did they realise they would never get out?
The aurora flickers into life above me, but it doesn’t seem beautiful and momentous the way it did last night. Tonight the pinks and blues are muted, and most of the sky is lit up with ghostly green fingers, like some spirit is t
rying to tear through the fabric of our universe.
The light turns the remaining buildings sinister, throwing shadows around. I keep thinking I see movement in the darkness, that it’s Dad, popping up out of nowhere to surprise us all. But there’s nobody out there. I feel weak and hollow, as if I’ve just thrown up.
There’s a tomb beneath my feet.
I hear light footsteps, then Clarita sits down beside me.
‘Mateo says you came here to find your father,’ she says. ‘I saw your photo on his desk.’
I nod.
‘I haven’t seen him,’ she says. ‘I don’t know if he was in the mine or not. But I haven’t seen him.’
Dad’s not a miner. He’s an engineer. He does go into the mine occasionally, but most of the time he’s in his office.
What are the chances he was in the mine when the power went out?
I think of the sinkhole. What if he’s in there? What if he’d gone to work out in the gym, or stopped to talk to the nurse?
Clarita touches my arm. ‘There is some hope,’ she says quietly. ‘The mine has multiple refuge chambers – steel boxes with oxygen and food. If your dad is down there, and he can get to a chamber, then there’s a chance we can get him out once the power comes back on.’
I know what Dad would say if he was here.
He’d say the power isn’t coming back on.
Mateo comes outside and sits next to Clarita, and we tell her everything we know – the blackout, the cars, the Kauslers. When Mateo gets to the part where Mr Kausler went into cardiac arrest, his voice gets tight.
‘Mami, I felt him die,’ he says. ‘Right there under my hands. He just wasn’t there anymore. Maybe I did it wrong. Maybe I should have started earlier, or pushed harder.’
Clarita puts her arm around Mateo and kisses the top of his head. ‘Negrito, there was nothing more you could have done. I’m so proud of you for staying level-headed, and doing what you could.’ She sighs. ‘The fact is right now there isn’t much we can do about things like heart attacks. Either the patient will recover, or they’ll die. Without electricity and cars and hospitals, a heart attack is pretty much untreatable.’
‘So we give up?’ Mateo asks.
After the Lights Go Out Page 8
