‘I think he did it on purpose,’ I said, after a moment.
They fixed their deep brown eyes on me.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Taylor.
‘The glass was in really deep. Like it had been pushed there,’ I said.
‘Holy shit,’ said Lizzy.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Taylor.
‘No,’ I said.
We were silent. Somehow all knowing that it was true.
‘Well, you can’t screw around with him like that anymore,’ said Taylor, bitingly.
I nodded. Lizzy glared at her. We all watched the soup for a while.
‘This is ridiculous,’ said Lizzy.
‘What?’ asked Taylor. ‘Being trapped in a mall?’
‘Yeah,’ said Lizzy.
‘Quite an observation,’ said Taylor.
They glared at each other.
‘Rocky won’t last in here, like this, forever,’ said Lizzy, staring at the soup.
‘None of us will,’ Taylor said.
Taylor was a tight ball of stress. I’d seen it building in her shoulders for a while, but now it seemed constant and dangerous. She needed music more than ever, but was moving further away from it with every day.
‘He’s a teenager,’ I said, eventually.
The two of them looked at me.
‘Remember how that was?’ I said. ‘We just need to give him space. Let him brood stuff over,’ I said.
‘Have you guys ever spoken about his family?’ Taylor asked me.
‘Not really. I know he has a stepdad and a baby sister,’ I replied. ‘I kind of figured he was talking to you while you guys worked on the doors.’
‘You don’t think he should be taking antidepressants or something?’ asked Taylor carefully. She and Lizzy both looked at me. It seemed like something they had discussed already.
‘Shit, I don’t know, maybe. Probably. It’s hard to tell in this place,’ I said.
We were pensive for a few moments.
‘There’s also his arrival here,’ said Lizzy.
Taylor looked at her. Maybe they had discussed this too.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Well, he came to work. What makes somebody turn up to shift during the apocalypse?’ asked Lizzy.
‘God. What does that even mean, Lizzy?’ asked Taylor.
‘Nobody else did,’ she replied.
‘I asked him already. He said he got to work early that morning,’ said Taylor. ‘Probably missed the whole thing.’
‘Rocky got to work early?’ replied Lizzy.
Taylor shrugged. I had a stupid thought and let out a small laugh. The Finns stared at me.
‘What?’ asked Taylor.
‘Nothing. Sorry,’ I replied.
They glared at me until I spilled.
‘I was just thinking. Do you think working the apocalypse pays double time?’
Lizzy flashed one of her huge oh my god that’s funny but I’m not going to laugh smiles. Taylor smiled ruefully and sighed.
‘You’re a maniac, Nox,’ she said.
Lizzy picked out some bowls for the soup and wiped the dust off them. We sat together and spooned in the comforting mixture of country chicken and vegetable and frozen corn. I don’t think any of us thought Rocky’s problems were just about being a teenager. But it gave us a little security. Barely a decade older and full of our own insecurities, we knew we weren’t cut out for the support and guidance he seemed to require. Carousel also had a way of highlighting things that could normally be ignored. We didn’t know exactly what these things were for Rocky, but they seemed serious.
8
During the following week Carousel was battered by the first in a series of severe storms. Brewed in deep masses of low pressure in the Southern Ocean, they were buffeted north and east to smash against the state’s coastline. I had been wondering when the winter cold fronts would come. The third level of David Jones offered a sweeping view of the sky to the south via a series of windows throwing light on the linen section below. I liked to wander up there when the wind seemed to pick up outside and watch the walls of rainclouds roll towards us. Taylor and Lizzy would look at me curiously when I arrived back saying it would rain in half an hour.
The first storm made for a pleasant break from routine. We huddled on couches at the back entrance, watching the lightning with cups of powdered milk and Oreos that were magically in code for another six years.
Lizzy and Rocky both loved lightning. They would already be seated, gazing out at the distant and infrequent flashes, when Taylor and I wandered down to join them. Often they would stand right at the windows as a storm passed over. Rocky stationary, his exfoliating glove glowing softly in the dark. Lizzy hopping about with excitement, pointing out each flash retrospectively. Taylor and I weren’t quite as pumped. But we both liked seeing Lizzy and Rocky together. They were often the odd couple in our weird little group. Rocky and Taylor still spent a lot of time together on the doors. Even more since Rocky cut his hand. I was still helping Lizzy with her studio in Rugs a Million. Although, from what I could gather, it was almost ready and she often played in there without recording. Usually loud and late at night, as if to remind the world that we were still alive. My relationship with Taylor was a bit fractured. We often skirted around each other as if to avoid something that neither of us quite grasped. But then we would hang out and drink wine, or work out things to cook, and get along fine. Seeing Lizzy and Rocky stand together at the window, watching the lightning, was kind of like having our girlfriends get along, or watching distant cousins find some common ground to dispel the awkwardness of their forced relationship.
I think we were all quietly thankful for the storms.
It wasn’t until the third front, and the largest, that we were presented with an opportunity to escape.
It had come during the night. Gusts of moist southern wind whistling across the ageing patchwork of steel that made up the cinema roof. Wind was our best reminder that a world still existed outside. Carousel had cracked and groaned with the hot easterly in the summer, and now it buckled tightly under winter’s gusty bursts from the south.
The sky had been clear when I ventured up to David Jones at sunset so I was surprised to be woken by such force during the night. Of course the view only offered a short-range forecast. If I had the internet I might have seen a huge brooding low spitting out cold fronts that stretched all the way from Geraldton to Esperance.
As usual, the first one was the angriest.
I sat up in my bunk for a while, listening to the wind and wondering when the rain might start. There seemed to be an unusually long build-up. Tucked back into the north-east corner of the centre, Myer was relatively sheltered. I could hear the dull hum of wind, with the occasional echo of some loose roofing or gutter smacking against steel somewhere on the sprawling roof. But, for a long time, no rain. I had drifted back to sleep by the time the first spatterings began.
By morning the noise was immense.
I walked downstairs to join the others at breakfast. Lizzy and Rocky were already eating, keen to get out to the back entrance and watch the storm roll through. There was half a bottle of Shake ’n’ Pour ready for me on the bench so I dripped out a couple of pancakes and watched them cook. Taylor arrived looking tired with a big fluffy robe pulled over her jeans and t-shirt. I held up the mix. She nodded so I poured out two more. The noise of the rain drowned out all sounds so there was no point talking. Before long, Lizzy and Rocky were cycling off to the back entrance.
Taylor and I sat through a pretty lazy breakfast. After the pancakes we swallowed a selection of daily vitamins put together by Lizzy. A multi. Some fish oil. C with echinacea. These were altered due to what was still in code and what new condition she considered posed us the most risk. On top of these we piled coffee. In contrast to the first day, time and practice had developed our coffee skills to a barista level. Even now that we were well out of fresh and frozen milk we could still churn out p
retty perfect lattes using powder. Taylor sipped hers and read a Gourmet Traveller magazine. I worked my way through some Sylvia Plath.
When we were done Taylor packed together her tools to head out and check some doors. I decided to tag along given her usual assistant was busy watching the storm.
As we walked westward through the centre we noticed several patches of wetness on the floor where rain had blown in under gutters or gathered too heavily at fissures and seeped inside. The noise changed as we approached the front entrance and the dome. The echo disappeared, replaced by the sound of direct rain. We hadn’t erected the winter awning over the dome when the season started to turn. There was a control panel by the sushi place, and a good chance Rocky could figure out how it worked, but the idea of adding to our confinement and losing our only real patch of sky didn’t appeal to any of us, regardless of the weather. With today’s rain the floor was wet and slippery all the way back to the Apple Store.
Taylor led us upstairs past the cinema. Halfway across I reached out and tapped her on the shoulder. She looked back and I nodded down at the entrance.
The scene beneath the dome was pretty surreal.
A miniature tornado swirled down through the opening to the tiles below. The falling water was condensed and circular at the top, but fanned as it lowered and the wind swirled in every direction. Leaves and dirt littered the floor, carried outward by tiny rivulets of water. The whole thing was backlit by the daylight seeping through the large windows at the entrance. Our centre had its own waterfall.
Taylor and I shared a smile. It was beautiful and awful at the same time. Like a lot of stuff in Carousel.
We continued on to an amenities area adjacent to the cinemas. There were a couple of corridors with various doors similar to the one we had broken through near Just Jeans. Taylor stopped out the front of these and unpacked her tools. I stood by her side and looked up at the ceiling to listen to the rain. It really was intense.
Taylor handed me a mallet and we started on one of the corridors. She had established a pretty comprehensive system by this stage. First she would check the locks and handles to see if they could be jimmied with a series of small screwdrivers. Failing this, she located the position of the hinges to see whether the door could be knocked free. Then there was the crowbar approach which had magically worked for Rocky. When none of these freed the door, there were other, more forceful options.
It had been ages since I’d seen Taylor really flip out on a door. Occasionally you would come across one that she had taken to during our first week, with axe marks near the hinges and large mallet indentations surrounding the handle. But most of them seemed to be tested thoroughly then left alone. I don’t think any of us, including Taylor, really thought we could bust a hole in a door or smash a window to break out of the centre anymore. Somehow it was more complicated than that.
We tried the first door, and the second, with no luck. At the third a giant crashing noise stopped us dead.
Taylor and I stood looking at the cinema. Something had fallen somewhere inside. The sound had reached us above the rain.
It must have been big.
We glanced at each other. There were a lot of weird noises in an abandoned shopping centre, but this one had been different. Something had changed. Neither of us needed to say anything. We put down our tools and headed to the cinema.
Just because we weren’t talking about our discovery of the Fiesta didn’t mean we weren’t thinking about it. That day had caused a slight but permanent shift in our lives. We looked at things differently. Kept together at night. Talked more on the radio. Walking into the foyer, the dull blue hatchback was forefront in my mind.
We had pretty much left the cinema alone aside from a half-baked attempt to run a movie on one of the complicated projectors. It was a maze of darkened, soundproof rooms. Not the type of place you want to frequent in our situation.
But the noise we heard had definitely come from somewhere inside. We paused at the candy bar and considered our options. We were reluctant to search each cinema, one by one. There were nearly twenty of them and tons of corridors, toilets and projection booths in between.
Taylor sighed and headed off in the direction of the first cinema. I grabbed her arm. She turned and looked at me, confused. I tapped my ear, signalling for her to listen. Amid the chorus of falling water there was something else. A kind of swirling noise. Dense, like an indoor pool. It was coming from behind the candy bar.
We slid over the counter and walked around the corner to a door labelled Office. Taylor tried the handle. It turned. She held the door open and I reached inside for a light switch. There was a bunch of them by the door.
A long room was illuminated under a series of fluoros. There were some desks. A large stack of movie standees and posters. A kitchenette with a sink, fridge and water dispenser. And a series of doors leading up to projection booths.
The noise was definitely louder in there.
We moved through the room, listening cautiously. It was above us, in one of the projection booths. We scanned the doors, trying to decide which one to investigate first. A small pool of water had gathered at the base of the door to Projection Booth Four. We looked at it carefully as if to confirm it was real. The noise was a constant hum from behind the door. Taylor glanced at me and took the handle of the door.
‘Stand on this side,’ I said loudly, above the rain.
Taylor stared at me blankly. She couldn’t hear. Rather than try again I took her arm and pulled her over to the other side of the door. She looked at me like I was weird, then turned the handle.
The door flung open and a wall of water exploded into the office.
Straight away I realised we should have left the entrance open. The room was large, but if it filled with water we would be screwed.
I left Taylor gaping at the river we had created and dashed across the office to the candy bar entrance. I think she must have thought I was getting the hell out of there because I half heard her yell, ‘What the hell, Nox!’
The water had reached the door before me, which made it hard to pull it back against the flow. When I did I had to find something big and heavy to keep it propped. There wasn’t really anything close by so I pushed it back fully against the wall so that the water pressure would hold it open rather than closed. Then I dragged across a desk and propped it there just to be sure.
Trudging back I noticed the pressure decreasing already.
Taylor looked at me and nodded with a half smile.
We waited by the door until the flow of water had subsided a little more, then moved carefully up the stairs inside.
The walls and ceiling were wet all around us. Water had completely filled the staircase. It was pretty narrow and although another rush of water seemed unlikely, neither of us felt totally comfortable in the space. There was also a light source somewhere ahead. I’d noticed it as soon as the door had opened, and I’m sure Taylor had too. This didn’t necessarily mean anything. But it created an automatic anticipation.
Taylor double-stepped the final section of stairs and disappeared around the corner. I shrugged off visions of her being thrown back by a wall of water or falling down some huge Carousel chasm, and followed.
Inside was carnage.
Reams of film were plastered all around the long, hall-like projection booth. Two of the big, clumsy looking projectors had been tipped over by rushes of water. All of the small square windows to the cinemas were burst through and dripping with water.
A section of the roof had collapsed under the pressure of the torrential rainfall. Maybe something had blocked up the guttering during the summer. On a flat roof like Carousel’s this would create some serious pooling. The section had fallen away from us so that the opening faced the opposite end of the booth. From where we stood there was just a downward sloping ceiling that met the floor in a messy and jagged pile of soaking rubble. However, through pockets of this, and to one side, there filtered the unmistakable grey of dayli
ght.
Taylor looked at me with big, excited eyes.
We stepped carefully forward to the edge of the collapsed roof. I was a little nervous. Water was still running freely beneath our feet and there was a shitload of electrical items in the room. Many of these were switched off, but probably not everything, and I could never remember how conductivity worked. We both had rubber-soled shoes. Did this mean we were safe?
‘The gaps aren’t big enough,’ said Taylor, crouching.
I followed her gaze and saw what she meant. There were only small pockets of space where the water and light were reaching us. It looked like there might have been something bigger when the roof first came down. But since then a growing pile of debris had banked up against it from the outside. None of the holes that remained were anywhere near large enough to climb through.
It seemed like the hole in the roof was out of reach.
‘Maybe from the other side,’ I said.
Taylor nodded and moved back past me toward the exit. We ventured swiftly into the two adjacent projection booths to see if they had also been breached or somehow offered access to the hole.
Both were intact.
More deflating was the discovery that all booths seemed to share the exact same layout. Basically a long hallway-type room with a solitary entry via a staircase. This meant that the roof had collapsed right at the end of Projection Booth Four, and there was unlikely to be any other access to the small area beneath the hole.
Taylor wanted to check all of the booths, just to be sure. I followed for a while, suspecting it was futile. With two remaining, I gave up and trudged back through the office, leaving her to finish alone.
We had made a real mess of the candy bar and foyer by opening the doors. Dirty brown water had spilt out onto the plush red carpet in a widening semicircle. Several of the temporary queuing barriers had fallen over in a tangled mess. A giant standee for the latest Adam Sandler film lay flat and dejected.
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