Carousel

by Brendan Ritchie

  Lizzy crossed through an intersection on her mountain bike ahead of me. I didn’t think she saw me but a few seconds later she re-emerged around the corner and coasted my way. She was wearing her favourite pea coat from David Jones and some cherry-red boots. I continued to haul the chairs behind me.

  ‘Whoa. Nice one, Nox,’ said Lizzy, circling behind me.

  ‘The best they had,’ I replied. ‘What you up to?’

  Lizzy shrugged and slowed down to roll alongside me.

  ‘It’s your birthday soon,’ she said.

  I nodded. Birthdays were touchy in Carousel. They confirmed the passage of time. Plus we’d pretty much taken anything of interest from the shelves, making gifting problematic.

  ‘Still no writing?’ she asked.

  ‘Not really,’ I said.

  In truth I had been writing at night quite a lot but hadn’t included anything in with Lizzy’s cards since our discussion of the kid on the bus story.

  ‘You gotta get onto that, man. We’ll be out of here one of these days and you could have a bunch of stuff ready to publish,’ she said.

  Both ideas seemed pretty ridiculous.

  ‘Is it true that we’re out of vitamins?’ I asked.

  Lizzy nodded solemnly.

  ‘There’s some zinc left. And some D’s,’ she said. ‘Just random stuff.’

  ‘We have to grow more vegies,’ I said.

  Lizzy nodded. The gardening wasn’t working out as well as we’d hoped.

  ‘Remember last summer at the dome? All those bugs dropping down on us?’ I changed the topic.

  Lizzy shuddered. ‘Yeah, but the stars were awesome. And your tiki stuff is going to rule,’ said Lizzy.

  I nodded and we rounded the corner toward the dome.

  The following afternoon the four of us sat on deckchairs amid shredded sunlight and sipped on limey cocktails mixed by Taylor. The temperatures still seemed pretty low outside and the massive concrete slab that was our home would need a few good months to thaw out from the winter. So our deckchairs were adorned with rugs rather than beach towels and none of us were keen to reveal our pasty-white shopping centre skin. Rocky lay tucked deep within a hood, sipping his mocktail through a long straw and looking up at the sky. Lizzy read a book, while Taylor and I hid comfortably behind our sunglasses.

  I hadn’t thought about what we actually had to cook on the barbecue when I wheeled it across from Bonanza. Other than the occasional can of beef and vegetable soup or frozen chicken nuggets we were effectively rendered vegetarian these days. In the end all we could think of were some puny mushrooms from our garden and a packet of frozen wieners Lizzy found in Wendys. It was rough losing food as a topic of conversation. In the beginning Taylor and I had chewed through a heap of time reading copies of Gourmet Traveller from the waiting area of the surgery and thinking up meals we could make with our abundant food stocks. Now food was just something we needed to find enough of to survive.

  When the sky turned from blue to pink I sizzled our tiny meal on the giant hotplate and Taylor made up one of our weirdo salads. We were still picking away at the food when the sky deepened to navy and a triple-seven jet flew over.

  It was easy to forget that Carousel was just a couple of suburbs away from the Perth airport. With the runways flowing north–south, it was also beneath the flight path for what was once a shitload of air traffic heading in and out of the state. Either by accident or some hair-brained plan the hole in the dome offered a regular and unobstructed view of the belly of these planes, accompanied by the shattering roar of their engines. Or at least it had until we arrived.

  During our first few days each of us had thought we’d heard the sound of distant planes. I had imagined a fleet of domestic arrivals converging on a city in chaos, runways without controllers, terminals without staff, too far into their fuel to divert to anywhere else in the giant, sprawling state.

  But those had been nothing like this. The deep growling stopped us dead.

  ‘What the fuck is that?’ asked Taylor.

  She didn’t wait for an answer, instead dropping her plate and walking out of the tiki enclosure towards the garden. Lizzy and I followed. We gazed up at the dusky sky even though it was impossible to tell which direction the noise was coming from. Only that it was getting louder.

  ‘It sounds like a plane,’ said Lizzy.

  Taylor tried to reply but her words were drowned out. Plants started to tremble slightly at our feet. I looked around, wondering if a tidal wave was about to smash into Carousel and sweep us away to join the rest of the world.

  The growling grew louder and louder. The noise was intense. Suddenly Rocky was beside me.

  There was a tiny pause before a plane thundered across our dome. All grey steel and flashing lights. For a moment the giant undercarriage completely blocked the sky.

  A second later it was gone and the sound hit us with its full force. We covered our ears and turned away from the direction of the hidden craft. We were facing south.

  Taylor was talking but the roar was still too loud. She pressed her face close to me and I saw that the flicker was back in her eyes. I held my hand up to my ear. The rumble was gradually fading. Abruptly I got the dizzy feeling and started seeing the weird SimCity-style map of Carousel spreading out in front of me again. I could feel Taylor looking at me but couldn’t react.

  ‘Did you see what airline it was?’ she yelled.

  It was dull in my ears.

  ‘Nox?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied, coming to.

  ‘Did you see what airline it was?’ Taylor asked again.

  She looked at me expectantly. I shook my head and looked at Lizzy standing behind her. She was smiling. It was big and uninhibited. There were also tears spilling from her eyes. Taylor turned to look at her sister. The plane was a distant grumble now.

  ‘What?’ asked Taylor of Lizzy.

  ‘It was Air Canada,’ she replied.

  ‘Seriously?’ said Taylor. ‘Do they even fly here?’

  ‘Just to Sydney,’ said Rocky and coughed.

  For some reason we knew he would be right.

  ‘What are they doing here?’ said Taylor.

  Lizzy shrugged and wiped away a tear. She was looking a little sheepish.

  ‘I saw the wheels out. That means they’re landing, yeah?’ asked Taylor.

  ‘They could have just taken off,’ I said.

  ‘Landing. The strip is north,’ said Rocky.

  The three of us looked at him and tried to process this information. Rocky coughed again. He didn’t look totally stable on his feet. I walked him back to the tiki area and we sat on deckchairs.

  Taylor moved over to Lizzy and looked at her as if to assess whether she required comforting. Affection was pretty rare between the Finns. Almost as if their closeness as twins made it superficial or unnecessary. Maybe not quite like hugging yourself, but something similar. Taylor placed a hand on Lizzy’s shoulder and I watched them talk.

  I could understand Lizzy’s emotion. The plane gave her a flicker of home that she hadn’t seen for a long time now. Even if it had no further bearing on our imprisonment, it was a clear signal that things still existed. Not just the world, but maybe her and Taylor’s home. I had wandered past tiny Qantas desks in foreign airports for the same feeling. A lot of the time I forgot just how far from Canada they were.

  For a moment my empathy was clouded by stupid jealousy. Once again I feared the doors opening and Taylor and Lizzy leaving for Canada, having wiped Carousel and me from their memories forever. But Lizzy’s reaction reminded me of how much they needed to go home, and I wanted this badly for them. And for Rocky. I had to make that feeing stronger than any other.

  Taylor and Lizzy rejoined us at the deckchairs and the four of us sipped pensively on our cocktails.

  ‘God. What does this shit mean?’ asked Taylor. ‘They built this place on a flight path, right. So it’s kinda normal.’

  She looked at me and I nodded.

>   ‘But why Air Canada. And why now?’

  Lizzy and her looked at each other. Rocky was quiet.

  ‘It’s totally a sign,’ said Lizzy.

  Normally Taylor and I wouldn’t have gone for this, but we kept quiet and considered the possibility. Taylor looked up at the hole in the dome.

  ‘Man, I wish there was something we could shoot out of there to let them know we are here,’ she said.

  Lizzy and I followed her gaze.

  Taylor mulled over the possibilities. Lizzy seemed happy just hanging to her momentary connection with home. Rocky had eased back on his deckchair and was looking out at the stars. I glanced at him. It was the last time he would look out of the dome.

  17

  Rocky’s sickness was a slow-burn. It didn’t reach up and snatch at him like it might have an old man or infant. Instead it took a hold in his lungs and refused to leave. His breathing took on a wheeze while he sat idle, and seemed to stop altogether when he coughed for long, horrible stretches into the night. He kept an appetite but dropped weight regardless. Except for his neck, which was puffy and swollen with overstressed glands.

  We hoped it was bacterial and we could buffet him with antibiotics until one of them stuck, then nurse his stomach back to health with probiotics. But, having cycled through a series of penicillins, and having already used amoxicillin for his hand, we came to the conclusion that whatever he had must be viral. This left Rocky weak and nauseous and limited our treatment options severely.

  We would make a daily soup, mixing cans with whatever vegetables we could grow. Lizzy took off on long explorations through the centre, finding multivitamins and prescriptions under counters and in staff lockers. Taylor and I made up a bedroom in a corner of JB’s where he could stay warm and draught-free while we were nearby on the couches.

  For all of this, Rocky wasn’t able to shake it. He was quieter than normal but his moods seemed relatively stable. He still brightened with his favourite television shows, and seemed to like the sound of Taylor and Lizzy babbling away on the couch. And, as always, there was never a complaint. None of us knew a whole lot about Rocky’s life before Carousel. His answers were monosyllabic and hinted of the boredom of normal teenage suburbia. Whatever his circumstances, we imagined a likeable kid who accepted his hand with the kind of quiet grace he was displaying now.

  But his sickness was breaking our hearts. Without a treatment, our attention shifted to escape.

  Taylor and I started working on the partially collapsed section of ceiling in the cinema. We figured that there must be a way to collapse the side that was blocking our entry, and if we did we should be able to climb up onto the roof and find daylight. So we carted a pile of useful looking tools up there from Backyard Bonanza and started chipping away at the blockage.

  It was easy enough to get through the plastered ceiling and into the roof cavity. But from there we encountered a patch of thick steel framework supporting the roof.

  ‘It’s like the bend in the roof makes it harder to get through,’ I said, taking a break from hacksawing.

  Taylor looked up at the unimpressive hole we had made. The twisted steel inside would need to be severed before this side of the roof might cave. We stepped away and looked at the assortment of tools we had on offer. Bonanza was a quasi backyard store that specialised in things like garden gnomes and pond decorations, not serious power tools. The best item we found was an electric hacksaw with a series of interchangeable blades. Unfortunately it seemed to bounce away from the steel rather than cut into it, and our arms were beginning to feel numb from the vibration.

  Taylor took an axe and walked back over to the ceiling. Tiny beams of sweet, alluring daylight shot across her legs from the cavity above. She swung upward and brought down a shower of plasterboard. Another swing loosened the sheet above her. One more brought it down. I reached up and helped shield her face from the severed piece of plaster. We lay it on the floor behind us and looked up at the now open roof cavity. The mass of steel was intimidating.

  ‘It’s not going to happen, right?’ said Taylor.

  I shook my head and looked around. Taylor had brought down an impressively large sheet of plaster with just a few blows. I turned and looked behind us.

  ‘This is Projection Booth Four, right?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Taylor.

  ‘So Projection Five should be next door,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Taylor.

  ‘So that wall should be the same one as Five,’ I said, nodding at the hidden wall ahead of us.

  ‘You wanna smash through from the other side?’ asked Taylor, a light in her eyes.

  ‘You got through the plaster here pretty easy. Maybe the walls are made of the same stuff,’ I said.

  We trudged up the long, narrow staircase into Projection Five and found an identical room, sans the flood damage. Taylor moved straight along to the far end and started smashing at the wall with the axe. After a few blows, she tired and I took over. There was already a sizeable chunk out of the wall. I swung into this and pulled away some more plaster.

  The beams inside were wooden. Timber we could get through. I smiled at Taylor and swung again. The axe head broke through. I pulled it back and waited for the flood of daylight.

  It didn’t come.

  I sighed. Carousel was fucking with us again.

  I glanced back at Taylor. She seemed confused. I looked past her to where we had entered.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  I felt like an idiot.

  ‘We’re cutting into Projection Six,’ I said, and walked back past her to the entrance.

  ‘Oh,’ she said sheepishly.

  We stopped at the top of the staircase and assessed the wall that really led back into Projection Four. The paint was bubbling a little. This meant there was moisture behind the wall. It was a good sign. I stepped back and cleared some room so I could swing the axe and not tumble down the stairs in the process. Taylor watched with interest.

  I swung hard and plunged straight through the wet, softened plaster and into Projection Four.

  Daylight swept across our shadowy figures.

  ‘Shit. Shit!’ Taylor hopped about excitedly.

  I smiled at her and stepped back from the small pile of rubble I had created.

  ‘Here,’ she said, taking the axe from me.

  I moved aside. Taylor had been waiting for this moment for a long time.

  She swung through the plaster with a series of blows. It came away easily, either falling into the mysterious chasm inside, or pulling back with the axe to land at her feet. I started to see what was in there. Long sheets of roofing lay on a wicked slope down to a small patch of floor at the very edge of Projection Four. The walls inside were worn and damp from a winter’s worth of channelling rainfall. Then there was the daylight. Not piercing or particularly bright, but still amazing and terrifying in equal doses.

  Taylor was enjoying busting the wall apart. We could climb through by now but she kept at it. Chunks of plaster and timber spitting off everywhere. She was like a child tearing at the final shreds of Christmas wrapping.

  The timber groaned as she jolted into a support beam. Suddenly I had a horrible thought.

  ‘Wait!’ I said.

  Taylor turned reluctantly, demanding an explanation.

  ‘It could cave in if we smash any more,’ I said.

  She turned back and looked at the gaping hole lined with broken and splintered beams. Her grip loosened on the axe and she put it aside.

  The two of us stepped carefully through into Projection Four. I had a fleeting thought about the purity of the air we were breathing, but it was probably too late now. Plus it smelt amazing. There were clouds above us, and even a small patch of blue. The slope of the fallen roof and the wet surface made traversing upward difficult. We could have done with some rope and better shoes, but there was no way we were going back yet. Taylor went first, keeping low and holding some guttering for balance. I followed and toge
ther we edged our way out of Carousel.

  The last metre or so was pretty treacherous, but then the roof sheeting flattened back to the horizontal and we were outside. The pair of us stood motionless and inhaled the heady cocktail of concrete, parkland and distant ocean that was Perth. I smiled at Taylor and she smiled back. We felt triumphant, but also a little foolish for getting outside so easily after all these months.

  From our position above the cinema all we could see was roof and sky. This section seemed to be quite low relative to the surrounding buildings. No wonder it had filled so violently with rain. The sheeting also looked a lot older where we stood, compared to some of the other slopes we could see. Carousel had expanded in spurts since its opening in the seventies. The expansions seemed logical and flowing on the inside, but the roof told a different story.

  We edged our way along the channel of steel that was the cinema roof. Behind us was another roof marking the end of the projection booths and the start of something higher. On our right was a long, sheer wall running maybe ten metres up to another roof. On our left were a series of massive air conditioning units fenced off with steel and jutting upward, blocking any view of what was beyond them. Several of these were weathered badly and I wondered if they were even operational, or just relics of a previous cooling system. It wasn’t the sweeping vista of freedom we had expected on our escape, and we were keen to get to the end of the channel and see some horizon.

  Walking along behind Taylor I had the random thought that the bowl of grey around us would make for an awesome backdrop for a Taylor & Lizzy music video. I could imagine Lizzy walking beside Taylor. Both of them singing and carrying guitars, but facing away from us as they moved toward nothing but sky. We would pace it out and roll camera so that they were a step away from the end when the song finished. The final step hidden by a cut to black and it was over. I had ideas like this all of the time. Sometimes for a novel or a screenplay. Sometimes for a video. They sprung out of nowhere and seemed like the answer to a lot of stuff, but faded and grew clichéd in my mind before I was able to tell anybody and find out if they were.

  When Taylor and I did stop at the edge of the channel the view was anticlimactic. Like a couple of thirsty pilgrims in some old biblical film, we looked out on roof upon roof, a steel desert with no end. The adjoining roof was lower and did offer a flicker of horizon for us to gaze upon. It was a nondescript patch of suburbia. Tiny squares of tiled roofs. The green of some trees and parks. The snaking grey of a road. It wasn’t much, but both of us stared at it wordlessly.