‘Or hash browns,’ said Lizzy.
I looked up at the ceiling as Lizzy continued to radio through whatever food slipped into her mind. It reminded me of primary school. Cheap looking square panels boarded by a thin steel frame. We used to jump up from chairs to push them upward into the roof cavity.
‘Are you back on the iPod?’ asked Lizzy.
‘Yeah. Sorry. Should I have been listening?’ I joked.
‘Asshole,’ said Lizzy.
‘Where are you, Nox? Rocky and I want to race your ass.’ Taylor had joined in on our conversation.
I hesitated.
‘I’m heading back to JB’s. Lizzy made me hungry,’ I said and rose from the couch.
‘Chicken,’ said Taylor.
Or maybe it was Lizzy.
‘Sounds good,’ I replied.
I set off swiftly westward, not wanting to run into them in the east end and get a bunch of other questions I hadn’t prepared for.
Lizzy and I snacked and watched some TV in JB’s for a while before she drifted off to play some CDs at the other end of the store. Rocky and Taylor returned from their racing and caught their breath on the couch beside me. Lizzy’s deejaying was a little higher than conversation level and drifted in over the television. I waited for Taylor to snap, but she surprised me and wandered over to join Lizzy at the stereos.
The pair of them flicked through albums and talked in a way I hadn’t seen them do in a long time. They were separate from the world. In a bubble, not just born out of their sisterhood, but out of talent and status, and whatever else separated famous musicians from the rest of us. I watched and was almost relieved to feel a pang of envy. Carousel hadn’t changed them yet. It was trying, and maybe it would eventually succeed, but for the moment Taylor and Lizzy Finn were still awesome.
The world retained an iota of sense.
11
At breakfast Taylor announced her plan to venture back into the staff car park and try to open the garage door. None of us were overly surprised. She was pretty determined to test every door in the centre, and the garage door was one of them. But the car park and the Fiesta were topics we’d steered away from, so there was automatic anxiety.
‘You don’t have to worry about the backpacks or anything,’ Taylor told me. ‘I’m just going to jiggle it around a little and see if it moves. If anything happens we can figure out a plan afterward.’
Lizzy and I chewed down our porridge quietly. Rocky hadn’t surfaced yet.
‘I’m coming,’ I said, my cubicle secret weighing heavier by the minute.
Taylor and I looked at Lizzy.
‘I’m not staying up here alone while you two take off into the city,’ she said.
Taylor sighed.
‘You should stay in the corridor so that fucking door doesn’t close on us,’ I said.
‘A doorstop, Nox?’ said Lizzy.
I nodded, mocking seriousness.
‘And Rocky?’ asked Taylor.
Taylor and I were silent. It seemed like Lizzy should decide on this.
‘He has to come,’ she said after a moment.
We nodded and continued with our breakfast. On cue, Rocky cycled around the corner.
I left breakfast and hastily put together a backpack in Army Depot. Taylor had told me not to bother but there were basic things we would need and there was no way I was heading into that car park unprepared. I stashed a couple of stronger Maglites in a bag, as well as a freestanding light that could be placed beside the door while we worked on it. I also stuffed in one of the gas masks. It seemed stupid to take just one, rather than four, but I didn’t have a lot of room.
Before I left I packed one final item. A large, vicious looking hunting knife from behind the counter. I felt ridiculous tucking it inside. Any danger that we were about to face would surely not be quelled by a hunting knife. But I had to take something. None of the others knew what I knew. Even if that wasn’t much.
Taylor exited her bathroom and glanced at me with the backpack. She didn’t say anything, but to ease the tension I put a couple of her tools inside. Rocky seemed to have been briefed on the plan and stood waiting in the corridor, flicking a skateboard around. Lizzy poured out the contents of a smoothie into a couple of takeaway cups, handed one to Taylor, and we set off.
This time Rocky and I had the door open without any problems. The three of us stepped outside while Lizzy took up position on the step.
I handed her a torch.
‘Your radio on?’ I asked.
‘Roger,’ she replied.
We turned on our torches and set off toward the ramp.
‘I’m eating the last Tim Tams if you guys take too long,’ said Lizzy.
The extra power of the torches lit up a lot more of the space. Not that there was anything to see. Just a big empty car park slowly filling with dust.
At the base of the ramp the three of us immediately turned around to locate the Fiesta. It was there, just as before. With this confirmed, we headed for the dull columns of light escaping down the sides of the roller door. Taylor stopped beside the door and put down her tools. I took off the backpack, pulled out the portable light I had packed and switched it on. It threw a steady pocket of illumination across the door.
Taylor nodded, impressed.
‘Stick around, Rocky. Okay?’ she said.
Rocky nodded, looking slightly bored.
Taylor proceeded to wedge various crowbars under the steel while I searched around for a switch or lever that would open the door and make us all feel stupid. Sometimes I wondered if our escape from Carousel was as simple as pushing a door instead of pulling it and this whole experience had been completely avoidable.
There were a couple of control panels on the wall but nothing that seemed to relate to the door. Taylor had been able to wedge a crowbar underneath the door, but not move it upward even a fraction. She gave up and moved over to one side to see if it might shift that way. I turned to join her but Rocky stopped me.
I looked at him curiously. He nodded in front of me and held up his torch. I followed the light to find a spider web strung between pillars with a tiny spider suspended in the middle. I patted Rocky gratefully and bypassed the web. His arm lingered on mine, as if there might have been something else. I glanced at him, but he kept quiet.
Taylor could increase the gap at the side of the door a fraction using all her strength on the crowbar. I watched as the column of light widened slightly on one side, and almost disappeared on the other. It was kind of exciting, but I couldn’t really see how it would get the door open. Taylor stopped, seemingly thinking the same.
‘Alright. At least I can sleep now,’ she said as we both stood staring at the door.
‘Yep,’ I said and gathered a few of her tools.
Our radios crackled.
‘So I’m thinking Gossip Girl season three, Coke Zeros and those pizza shape biscuit things,’ said Lizzy from upstairs as if sensing our failure with the door.
Taylor and I smiled.
‘We’ll be back up in a sec,’ Taylor replied.
I turned off the light and passed it to Taylor who had the backpack. She placed it inside but it wouldn’t zip up. She took it out and shuffled the other contents. Her hand stopped on something.
I swore silently. It had to be the hunting knife. Taylor edged it aside, packed in the light and handed me the bag without saying anything.
‘All set, Rocky?’ she asked.
He nodded tiredly and followed us back up the ramp. I took a final glance at the Fiesta. It glinted dully and then was lost from view.
Lizzy seemed uninterested in our attempts on the door. She simply stood up and led us back into the centre.
I think we were all a little relieved. Taylor and Lizzy sat through a bunch of Gossip Girl, with Rocky looking on, feigning boredom even though he was clearly into it. I made us some packet mash potato with gravy, and heated some frozen garlic bread. A huge carbo load but one of our favourite meals.
/> Late in the afternoon Taylor returned from her bathroom, sat down and rubbed her temples.
‘What?’ asked Lizzy.
Taylor was still for a moment, then took her hands away. She was pale and looked like she was trying to remember something. All three of us watched her.
‘Taylor?’ asked Lizzy.
‘A cubicle in my bathroom was de-gnomed. While we were in the car park.’
I went cold.
‘Are you sure it was gnomed when we left?’ I asked. Taylor looked at me. She was.
‘Shit. Shit. Shit,’ whispered Lizzy in a kind of anxious daze.
‘What do we do about this? I mean, somebody is in here with us, right?’ said Taylor.
I kept quiet.
‘Why wouldn’t they come and talk to us?’ asked Lizzy.
‘They’re obviously not the making-friends-in-empty-malls type,’ said Taylor.
‘It’s just one door. The other one was an accident. Do we really want to turn this into something dramatic?’ replied Lizzy.
The lump of guilt in my stomach rose into my throat.
‘I think they did my bathroom, too,’ I said, looking down.
Taylor and Lizzy stared at me.
‘You think?’ asked Taylor.
‘It could have been me. I’m pretty out of it in the morning.’ I copped out.
‘When was this?’ asked Lizzy.
‘A few weeks ago. Sorry.’ I said.
I looked up at them and was scared as hell that they would hate me forever.
‘I thought it would just freak everyone out so I didn’t say anything. But now it makes sense.’
‘The knife,’ said Taylor softly.
I looked at her but she turned away from me. Lizzy seemed confused but gave me a tiny, sympathetic smile.
I looked across the couch and realised that Rocky was with us. These weren’t the type of conversations we normally had when he was around.
‘They de-gnomed my bathroom, and Nox’s,’ said Taylor, thinking it over.
‘And Lizzy’s,’ said Rocky, abruptly.
We looked at him.
‘That was you, Rocky. Remember?’ said Taylor soothingly.
Rocky shook his head. We all watched him.
‘I used the toilet next door. Forgot to gnome the door in there,’ he said.
‘Oh my god,’ said Lizzy.
I suddenly remembered him lingering weirdly outside the adjacent bathroom as we went back into Lizzy’s bathroom.
‘You didn’t say anything,’ said Taylor.
Rocky dropped his head.
‘Did you get confused, Rock?’ I asked.
He nodded.
‘How come we didn’t see this when we were cleaning?’ asked Lizzy to nobody in particular.
‘I gnomed it again in the night,’ said Rocky.
‘Holy shit, Rocky. You gotta stop creeping around the place in those giant boots,’ said Lizzy.
It was funny as hell but none of us dared to laugh. Rocky kept his head down. We were silent while Leighton Meester chirped away on the TV.
‘We need to find the security office,’ said Rocky.
None of us followed.
‘Watch the screens to see who is moving around,’ he continued.
‘Rocky. That’s awesome,’ said Taylor genuinely.
And it was. Shoplifting was rife in Carousel. There were cameras everywhere.
‘Didn’t we look for that already?’ asked Lizzy.
‘Yeah, but it’s got to be here somewhere,’ I said. ‘Have you guys seen anything while you’re working on the doors?’ I asked Taylor.
It felt good to ask her something. Like I was out of the woods.
‘There are some rooms we could check out. But it’s pretty vague,’ she replied.
‘Somewhere on the perimeter,’ said Rocky. ‘So they can come late at night and check on the car parks,’ he finished.
We nodded. This made total sense and narrowed the search significantly.
‘It’s got to be in the south, right?’ said Lizzy. ‘All the perimeter stores in the north are boutiques. The east is boarded by that car park. And the west is the dome.’
Taylor and I nodded. None of us seemed to have anything else to say. In the morning we would search the south end for the security office. If we could find it then Carousel’s mystery fifth inhabitant might be revealed. I looked over at Rocky to give him a nod or something that said good job and sorry we all accused you of being a demented freak. He was back watching Gossip Girl.
We made an unspoken decision to remain in JB’s until morning. Shit was going down in Carousel and nobody seemed keen for any more right away. Taylor curled up on the couch with a blanket. Rocky didn’t move. I shuffled over to the gaming couch with a sleeping bag and some chocolate bullets. Lizzy picked up a guitar.
She thumbed softly through some songs from Holy Noise and The Quell on a beanbag amid the DVDs. It was gentle and only for herself. I turned over and listened the best I could from my couch. After twenty minutes or so I noticed the TV noises had stopped. Taylor had turned it off. JB’s was silent but for Lizzy.
She finished her song, paused for a moment, then put down the guitar.
12
I was beginning to hate that our breakfasts were becoming a prelude to some big venture. I just wanted to sit around with Lizzy, chewing on pancakes and making perfect lattes. Not spoon down serious porridge covered in dirt-coloured supplements and stress about what we were about to find. But that was pretty much the deal the following morning as we prepared to search for the security office and whatever horror it decided to reveal.
The four of us moved steadily southward through the centre. We stopped briefly at the dome to water our strange, sprawling garden. Lizzy and I quietly noted the lack of any growth from the seeds in the rubbish bins. The place was going to need a decent clean-up once the winter rains had stopped. At the moment any heavy rainfall was flushing through the pots and spreading dirt in an increasing fan across the tiles. We left, carrying this on our shoes past the cinema and further south.
It was hard to get a handle on what type of stores were in the south end. The east was similarly mishmash but held together by the theme of thrift. You could buy a pair of sneakers, and a giant bottle of shampoo. And both would be at a bargain price. This wasn’t really the case in the south. There was a Freedom furniture outlet selling sleek rectangular lounges and glass coffee tables, as well as a bubble-tea house covered in kitschy yellow pandas. If anything, the smaller stores seemed like filler for the corridors leading to big outlets like Woolworths, Coles and Big W. For us this meant the south was our major source of food in the centre. Twice a week we would trolley back to JB’s with a pile of whatever was still in code and prepare what we could to eat.
Beyond the big stores were a series of smaller corridors leading out to car parks. There were stores lining these routes but it was pretty average real estate. Shoppers were either on their way in for groceries and nothing else, or on their way out after marathon ventures throughout the centre, too exhausted to look at another mobile phone plan or wall calendar.
As we suspected, several of these stores had exterior facings that provided independent access to the centre after hours. Rocky deemed this vital to a potential security office. His stepdad worked night shift for Guardhouse Security in the city so none of us were in a position to doubt him.
We paced along looking for anything that wasn’t retail. There were a couple of offices that had us momentarily excited until we noticed the To Lease listing on the counter. Otherwise all we found was a series of random shopfronts where you could picture the shop assistant shamelessly tapping their smartphones as you browsed inside.
Right at the end of one of the corridors, beside an exit leading onto a ramp and most likely a car park, Rocky noticed a hallway. We wandered over and found a couple of cleaning closets and a large cupboard housing firefighting equipment. The end of the hall was pretty dim and we nearly dismissed it, but for so
me open space on the right. Moving closer we found a small staircase leading up to a singular door.
It had to be the security office.
For some reason it made perfect sense that the office would be upstairs, above the surrounding stores. I doubted whether you could see any more from up there but it somehow fitted with the security office’s omniscient feel. Rocky stopped at the base and looked back at us like a well-trained puppy. We nodded and followed him up the stairs.
The door was locked and looked like it swung outward, which would make knocking it in problematic. Taylor produced one of her crowbars and wedged it in between door and frame. We stepped back and she braced herself for a great heave.
The lock gave meekly and the door swung open towards us.
‘Some security office,’ said Taylor and headed inside.
We followed and were relieved to find a simple room with a wall full of closed-circuit TVs. Each one offered split screens with multiple live angles of the centre. The checkouts at Target. The box office at the cinema. The dome. Our little hideaway in JB Hi-Fi. Every exit in the centre. It was all there.
The four of us stood and stared at the screens. It felt strange looking at our centre from up there. Kind of like we had somehow gained objectivity. We were able to see our situation, our entrapment, for the absurdity that it was. We had been wandering across these screens for months and months. Tiny black figures lingering in places we shouldn’t.
‘This is weird,’ said Lizzy.
‘So weird,’ said Taylor.
The coverage was impressive. Every corner of the centre that we recognised seemed to be on-screen, and then there was a bunch of places that didn’t look familiar at all.
‘We have a Domino’s?’ I asked.
‘You didn’t know that?’ asked Lizzy.
I shook my head.
‘No bases though. It’s tragic,’ she continued.
‘Holy crap, you can see outside!’ said Taylor.
She pushed a chair aside and leant in close to a couple of screens trained on the surrounding car parks. The four of us huddled around, eager for a glimpse of the outside.
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