After the Lights Go Out

by Lili Wilkinson

  But now they’re gone, spread out in the wilderness and unable to find their way home. Will some of them band together and form new colonies? I hope so. A bee won’t survive for long without a hive.

  The air is full of birdsong as I trudge over the scrubby red ridge. The sun has sunk to the horizon, taking the sting of heat out of the day but leaving behind the humidity. I wonder if it will ever rain. I feel the ground vibrate beneath my feet as a mob of kangaroos thunder by, probably heading for Lake Lincoln.

  As I near the Paddock, I start collecting flat orange stones. When I reach the gully where the entrance to the Paddock is, I turn and head up instead, scrambling to the very top of the ridge.

  There are two solar panels up here, which provide us with very limited power in the Paddock. Dad fretted about it for months – they are a clear visible clue to the existence of the bunker. But we needed a renewable source of power that would withstand an EMP. All the wiring for the panels is wrapped in multiple layers of foil to protect it from harmful radiation. Dad positioned the panels as high up as he could, angled so they were almost impossible to spot from elsewhere on the ground. Technically you might see the glint of them from an aircraft, but as there are no flight paths over this area, Dad deemed it an acceptable risk.

  I balance my flat orange stones in a pile next to the panel. There isn’t much point in building the cairn here. Dad would check the Paddock for us if he was nearby. But I do it anyway.

  At the bottom of the stairs I ease the door to the Paddock open, and there’s a moment’s silence before I’m hit by three bodies – two human and one canine.

  ‘Keller came to the house,’ says Blythe breathlessly. ‘He told us about the cars not working, but that you’d stolen Mr Vassili’s ute and gone to Hansbach with some Mexican guy.’

  I wince. ‘He’s Puerto Rican.’

  ‘It’s an EMP, isn’t it?’ says Grace. ‘Old cars still work, but new ones don’t?’

  I nod.

  With a groan, Blythe flops onto the couch. ‘Ugh, Dad’s going to be so smug about this.’

  There’s a pause. I can feel the question coming, and I don’t know how to answer it.

  ‘Where is Dad?’ Grace asks, craning to look over my shoulder like she’s expecting him to walk in the door.

  The right answer hasn’t come.

  ‘There was an explosion,’ I say at last. ‘An oxygen build-up when the backup generator failed. Most of the crew were down there, celebrating opening the new stope.’

  Grace raises a hand to her mouth, the blood draining from her face. It’s the hand she hurt during the drill the other day. There’s a bandaid over the cut, but the skin around it looks shiny and swollen.

  ‘Was Dad down there?’ Blythe asks.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I tell them about what David Bratton told me, about his missing bug-out bag, Clarita’s vanishing supplies and the cairn I built.

  ‘He’s alive,’ Grace says, her mouth set in a firm, pale line. ‘He’s coming back to us.’

  Blythe is uncharacteristically quiet. I tell them the rest of the story, about Mateo and our trip to Hansbach. I tell them about what Keith heard on the radio about the solar storm.

  ‘We’ve seen the aurora at night,’ says Grace. ‘How widespread do you think it is?’

  ‘If it is from the solar storm, then it’s unlikely to be localised.’ I don’t want to sugar-coat it.

  Blythe is ripping at the cuticles on her fingers, a bad habit that I thought she’d shaken long ago.

  Grace’s eyes are wide. ‘The Big One,’ she breathes.

  I can’t believe Dad was right.

  I pull the Colt out of my bag and lock it away in the iron trunk with Dad’s other weapons. Hopefully I’ll never have to pick it up again. The twins watch me, but they don’t comment.

  There are four radios in the communications room – one regular, one digital, one CB and a ham. I grab the ham radio and switch it on. It’s unbelievably comforting to see the orange display light up with digital numbers. The handset spits out a hiss of static, and I turn it off. It won’t work down here – the earth and lead are blocking the signal.

  ‘Pru?’ says Grace, as I charge past her and head up the steps to the surface. ‘Wait—’

  I don’t have time for her questions. I need answers. Her steps are coming up behind me, her voice is raised.

  ‘Stop!’ she yells, as I push open the hatch and climb up into the twilight.

  Then I freeze as I realise why she’s yelling.

  My stomach sinks as I look down at the radio. I close my eyes for a moment, then open them and flick the switch.

  Nothing. No orange display. No digital numbers. No hiss of static.

  Grace bursts up behind me. ‘The storm isn’t over! It’ll fry the radio!’

  I’m such an idiot.

  I let out a yell of frustration and throw the now-useless radio against a nearby tree. Dad bought the sturdiest model, so it bounces off harmlessly and disappears into a frothing mass of harlequin mistletoe.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say to Grace.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she says, but I can see in her eyes that it isn’t okay.

  Nothing is okay.

  We regroup inside, and start talking strategy. All the plans Dad made, all his disaster scenarios, involved him being with us. It’s so strange being here in the Paddock without him. It feels forbidden, as if we’re playing with toys we’re not supposed to have.

  But Dad is gone. The twins are acting like he’ll appear at any moment, but he didn’t respond to the message I left at Hansbach, so I have to assume that he met the same fate as all the other people there – buried under tonnes of earth and rubble. Maybe Clarita was wrong about the missing supplies.

  I think about the earth above us, pushing down on the steel and lead shell of the Paddock, and my heart starts to hammer erratically, just as it does right after I’ve used an epipen. Maybe we should leave the Paddock and go into Jubilee. We could stay in the hotel with Mateo. Share our supplies and resources.

  I look over at Grace and Blythe. Convincing them will be hard. They buy into Dad’s paranoia more than I do – especially Grace. Perhaps it’s better to ease into the idea.

  ‘I think we should take some of our medical supplies,’ I say. ‘Peter Wu is organising stuff at the Heart.’

  Blythe and Grace exchange a glance. ‘We have to be careful,’ Blythe says slowly. ‘I mean…we don’t want people to know, do we? About the Paddock?’

  There’s a pause while her words sink in.

  Family comes first.

  Good girl.

  That’s what Dad would want us to do. Hole up. Avoid arousing suspicion. Wait it out.

  It’s what I’ve been doing since the power went out. Hiding the truth. Lying.

  But it feels wrong. What about the people in Jubilee? What about Clarita, half a world away from her home, shouldering the burden of a whole town’s medical needs? What about Mateo?

  ‘What will Dad say?’ Grace scratches nervously around the edge of the bandaid on her hand.

  I bite my lip. ‘Gracie…I think we have to consider the possibility that Dad isn’t coming back.’

  Blythe ignores this. ‘If they find out what we have here, we’ll have the whole town on our doorstep. How long will our supplies last then? A couple of months? Then what?’

  This is what Dad has been training us for, but now we’re here, I can’t believe they’re accepting it so blindly. Are we really going to hide away and let the town starve to death?

  ‘We have to be practical.’ Blythe’s voice is firm. ‘Maybe there are ways we can contribute without sharing our supplies? We could still go into town every day and help out. We tell them we’re still living at the house – no one will bother to check, it’s too far.’

  ‘We pretend to be these perfect good Samaritans, and then every night we come home to hot showers and full meals?’

  ‘We’ll be better equipped to help if we’re well fed and well rested. It
makes sense, Pru. You know it does.’

  ‘It’s selfish.’

  ‘It’s about prioritising. Family comes first. The better we take care of the family, the better we can take care of the town.’

  Blythe is right. And it’s more than Dad would have let us do. I nod, and the decision is made.

  ‘Do you think Mum’s okay?’ Grace asks softly.

  ‘Who cares,’ Blythe replies, her voice tight. ‘I hope she’s starving to death somewhere.’

  ‘Blythe!’

  Blythe shrugs. ‘It’s not like she ever cared enough to try and find us. Why should I care about her now?’

  We don’t talk about it any further. I have a shower while Grace makes dinner. It’s not the best shower in the world – a low-pressure, water-saving drizzle. But it’s hot and wet, and I feel like my skin is encrusted with sweat and dirt. I watch the water swirl down the drain, where it will be filtered and pumped back around. Water is everything, in the desert, and not a drop can be wasted. Water is life.

  Dinner is a sombre affair. Blythe and Grace’s conviction that Dad will return is already starting to waver, and I’m too exhausted to try to cheer them up. We don’t linger at the table – Blythe disappears off to the room she shares with Grace, and I leave my dirty dishes on the table for Grace to clear away, and drag myself to bed. Panda follows me and curls up on my feet. Her weight is comforting, and it’s only seconds before I’m asleep.

  We stay in the Paddock for two days. I’m itching to get out and see what’s happening in town, but Grace and Blythe outvote me. Better to wait, they say. Give it a few days for the initial panic to die down.

  I pace the carpet tiles. I go through the storeroom and check everything off against the inventory. Dad has thought of everything. We could survive down here for a year.

  The twins try to carry on like everything is normal. To a certain extent, for them, this is normal. They were only twelve when we moved here. They don’t understand that this was never meant to happen; Dad wasn’t supposed to be right. They play board games and read books. Blythe braids Grace’s hair. They play fetch with Panda. But there is a mechanical nature to their movements, a blankness to their expressions. I know that on the inside, they are experiencing the same maelstrom of grief and confusion that I am. If only we knew for sure that Dad is gone. Then we could grieve properly, instead of always listening for his tread on the metal steps outside the door.

  Finally, on day three, we agree to leave. We walk back to the house, over the ridge. It still hasn’t rained. I check to see if the bees have returned – they haven’t – and collect eggs from the chook house, then we pick up our bikes to cycle into town. We open up the house and leave Panda there. The road to Jubilee is too long and hot for her, and she’d just be a nuisance.

  There’s an old Kingswood station wagon parked in the main street, a crappy old rust bucket of a thing. It looks like it’s been dissolving in someone’s back paddock for decades.

  Kate Liddel is leaning out the driver’s-side window, talking to Barri Taylor and Peter Wu. I can see Kate’s mum, Jane, in the front seat, and Mrs Kausler and the two children in the back. The rear is packed tight with boxes and blankets and suitcases.

  Paddy Nowak and Emma Zubek watch forlornly from the footpath as they watch their friends drive off down Main Street and out of Jubilee.

  ‘Where are they going?’ Blythe asks Peter.

  ‘Matadale,’ he says. ‘Ciera is diabetic, and needs to be somewhere with a decent supply of insulin.’

  I swallow. Ciera Liddel is only six years old. There’s insulin in the Paddock.

  ‘Violet pumped up the fuel by hand,’ Barri tells us. ‘Georgie says the Kingswood might look like a piece of shit, but it should drive fine. It was Andy Liddel’s first car when he was eighteen, and it was ancient even then. No one’s driven it for twenty years. I hope they make it.’

  Grace bites her lip. Even if they do make it, there’s no knowing what they’ll find in Matadale.

  ‘Kerri, Nerida and Sandra went yesterday,’ Peter Wu says. ‘Found an old car that still worked. Wanted to get their kids to safety.’

  Blythe’s eyes meet mine. We know that there’s no such thing as a safe place right now. Fleeing to bigger towns and cities is the worst possible thing you can do. The bigger the population, the worse it’ll be.

  The cloud of red dust that the car kicked up starts to dissipate. I wonder how many others will leave. What if everyone does? Would the twins leave the Paddock then? Or would we be stuck out there forever, with only each other and Panda for company, for the rest of our lives?

  I shudder, and Barri smiles at me. ‘I’m sure they’ll find the help they need.’

  I nod. ‘Me too.’

  ‘This humidity is the worst,’ says Blythe. ‘I’m sweating like a priest in a kindergarten.’ She glances at Peter Wu. ‘Sorry.’

  Peter chuckles. ‘How are you girls doing?’ he asks. ‘We’ve been worried about you.’

  ‘We’re fine,’ Grace replies with a smile, and I’m genuinely impressed by her acting skills. She doesn’t offer any more information about our situation.

  Never elaborate more than you need to, Dad told us. It’s a clear sign of lying.

  Peter frowns. ‘I’m not sure I’m comfortable with you girls being out there on your own. Wouldn’t you be safer in town with everyone else? You could stay in the hotel, or one of the empty houses.’

  Blythe screws up her nose. ‘I’m not staying in a dead person’s house. Too weird.’

  ‘We’re perfectly safe where we are,’ Grace says. ‘What could possibly happen to us out there? It’s not like there’s any risk from predators or anything. And we have Panda, and our chooks, and a little veggie garden. If the power doesn’t come back on soon, then maybe something like a veggie garden will be very valuable. We don’t want to abandon it.’

  She sounds so sensible, so earnest. I can tell Peter is convinced.

  ‘But we’re going to come into town every day,’ Blythe says. ‘To help out where we can. After all, we’re all in this together, right?’

  Peter smiles, and I feel sick.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about organising a memorial service,’ he says. ‘To honour those who aren’t with us. Give people a chance to grieve. Allow us some time to look back, before we face what’s ahead.’

  ‘That sounds really lovely,’ says Grace. ‘Let us know what we can do to help.’

  Peter beams at her. ‘I will.’

  Blythe wants to go to Keller’s place, and Grace trails after her. I head to the clinic, where I find Clarita in the waiting room, sitting on the floor, surrounded by boxes and what look like medical textbooks. She’s holding up a small bottle of pills in one hand, reading the label.

  Her eyes are bloodshot, and she looks exhausted. She looks up and smiles wearily as I enter.

  ‘You made it,’ I say.

  She nods. ‘We lost another Red the day you left,’ she says. ‘But everyone else is here now.’

  ‘Any more disappearing dental floss?’ I ask, hoping for news of Dad.

  ‘Nope,’ she says. ‘I think I must have been imagining it. I’m pretty tired, so who knows what’s real and what’s not.’

  My teeth clench.

  Clarita holds up the bottle of pills. ‘Can you use fish antibiotics on humans? I miss Google.’

  You totally can. It’s how we have such a hefty supply of medicines in the Paddock. You need prescriptions for human antibiotics, but not for pet ones, so they’re super easy to buy online.

  ‘Surely an antibiotic is an antibiotic?’ I say encouragingly.

  Clarita shrugs. ‘I guess so.’ She looks around the storeroom. ‘Doctor Willis was well stocked for emergencies,’ she says. ‘Pulse oximeters, spirograph, ECG, defibrillators. Unfortunately none of them work without electricity. Mateo has brought me these boxes from the vet clinic – I’m trying to figure out what they all are and whether they’re fit for human consumption.’ She sighs. ‘I haven’t be
en a practising nurse for ten years, and everything has a different name over here, even when it’s for humans.’

  She holds up a bottle of yellow liquid and squints at the label. ‘ACP-2,’ she says. ‘How am I supposed to know what that is?’

  It’s acepromazine, although in the US she might know it as Atravet. Dad has some in the Paddock for Panda. It was used on humans in the nineteen-fifties as an antipsychotic.

  I try to play dumb. ‘I think it’s a sedative?’ I say. ‘We got something that looked like that for Panda when she got desexed and wouldn’t stop chewing on her stitches.’

  Clarita pushes her hair back from her forehead. ‘You must think I’m crazy,’ she says. ‘It’s only been a week, and I’m preparing for the apocalypse.’

  She’s doing exactly what I would do in her place. Except I wouldn’t, because I am in her place, and I’m hoarding supplies and lying to the whole town.

  ‘It’s just…’ She puts the bottle of acepromazine down. ‘I worked with a doctor who was in New Orleans when Katrina happened. I know how quickly things can go bad.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re crazy,’ I tell her. ‘Jubilee is so far away from anywhere – even if the main problem gets fixed in a week or two…it could be months before anyone makes it out here. And we can’t all fit in the Holden and leave.’

  Clarita looks around at the boxes. ‘I hope we have enough supplies.’

  The image of the medicine locker in the Paddock flashes into my mind again.

  ‘We should start going through the empty houses,’ I say. ‘For food as well as medical stuff. No point in letting it spoil.’

  Clarita winces. ‘It doesn’t feel right to break into people’s homes.’

  Dad would call this attitude ridiculous sentiment.

  ‘What about the beauty salon?’ I ask. ‘Barri should have a supply of peroxide and alcohol wipes at the very least. And she’s good with her hands – she might be able to help you with some basic stuff like bandaging, or stitches.’

  Clarita nods. ‘That’s a good idea,’ she says. ‘Would you mind talking to her? I feel a bit weird ordering people around when I’m a total stranger.’