Tommy was focusing hard on the small screen.
‘I’m going to waste him with this pistol,’ he replied.
He tried and failed. We laughed and he passed me the console.
‘I can’t believe you guys had PS4 and Xbox in Carousel,’ he said.
‘We had everything, man,’ I replied. ‘Arcade stuff too.’
Tommy sighed. I resumed the game where he left off.
‘The library was so boring,’ said Tommy.
‘Do you think there were other people in there when it happened?’ I asked.
‘Oh yeah, I think so. People who work at the help desk. Maybe some students that were sleeping in the common room. We heard some noises while we were filming, but I didn’t see anyone. The library is pretty huge,’ said Tommy.
I nodded and blew up the remainder of a compound.
‘Cool,’ said Tommy, watching.
‘Did you guys find any good food?’ I asked.
‘Not really. The cafe in the library is pretty bad,’ he replied. ‘I smashed up a vending machine though.’
‘Serious? Weren’t there heaps of coins in the cafe?’ I asked.
‘Oh yeah, but I thought fuck it. I’m going to smash that thing,’ said Tommy.
I looked at him and laughed. My guy started getting shot-up on screen.
‘Man. You’re really getting pounded,’ said Tommy, concerned.
I lost it and shoved the console at Tommy who took over.
‘Watch this,’ said Tommy.
He swapped weapons and started firing all over the place.
‘Dude, you shoot like a maniac,’ I said.
‘Oh yeah,’ said Tommy, proudly. ‘How many batteries do we have left?’
I fished through one of the many bags of random supplies Taylor and I had collected.
‘Loads,’ I replied.
I opened another packet of chips and watched Tommy’s avatar going mental on screen. Taylor was right. As much as anything Tommy and I were messy, apathetic, overstimulated Gen Y boys. It wasn’t our fault that the world needed us to be something different. Tommy had been abiding from day one. Me too, for the most part. A brief return to sloth and apathy was as close to a holiday as was on offer these days.
Two weeks after Tommy’s arrival Lizzy and I rose to find him checking over his gear in the living room.
‘Hello,’ he said, with his usual grin.
‘Hey,’ I replied. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Just making sure everything is ready before I head off,’ he replied.
For a moment Lizzy and I didn’t have a reply.
‘About time you stopped mooching,’ said Lizzy eventually, and took up a seat on the couch.
Tommy laughed. ‘It has been great here. Really great.’
‘Where are you going?’ I asked, trying hard not to sound affected.
‘I’m just going to keep trekking along the ranges. It’s cooler up here and there are still a lot of houses to check,’ he replied.
Taylor entered from her wing of the house, glancing at Tommy for just a moment before heading through to the kitchen.
‘You’re not leaving without proper supplies, Tommy,’ she said.
‘Oh thanks. Yeah, supplies would be great,’ he replied.
We watched as he carefully cleaned a camera lens.
‘You really think this Curator is living in the hills?’ I asked.
‘Oh yeah, maybe. Some people I have interviewed have said that,’ he replied.
‘What did they say exactly?’ asked Taylor.
Tommy packed the lens away and started on another.
‘I met a band living in a small shopping centre in a suburb called Gosnells. It’s kind of at the bottom of the hills I think. They told me about this guy who used to visit them in a ute sometimes. He would turn up every month or so with fresh fruit and vegetables from the hills and ask them to play him some music in return. They said he could come and go from the centre whenever he wanted, but that they were trapped inside. Like you guys were,’ said Tommy, eyes wide like a kid with a ghost story.
I looked across at Taylor. She was pensive.
‘After a few visits the singer went kind of crazy and asked this guy why the fuck they couldn’t leave the shopping centre. The guy said he didn’t know and that he couldn’t help them. All he suggested was that they write some new songs. They were pretty pissed I think. The guy never showed up again and they were stuck there for a while,’ said Tommy.
‘Until they wrote the songs?’ said Taylor.
Tommy beamed and nodded. Lizzy groaned. My stomach contracted.
‘Who else?’ asked Taylor.
‘There was a dude I met near the uni. He was pretty young and into graffiti art and that kind of thing. He had been sleeping in the top floor apartment of this sweet building near the river for a few weeks. He said that every few nights he would see headlights up in the hills somewhere. This guy moved around a lot, like me I guess, but he had never seen a car anywhere that was still working. Except up in the hills,’ said Tommy.
Tommy finished with the lenses. We watched him, waiting to see if there were more stories to come.
‘Plus I met a crazy lady who just kept screaming “bitch” up at the hills,’ he added.
Lizzy laughed.
‘Probably Rachel,’ said Taylor.
‘Have you met a trashy single mum with bottle-blonde hair and a gutter mouth?’ asked Lizzy.
Tommy laughed. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘She could leave when we couldn’t,’ Taylor said to herself.
Suddenly I felt flushed and guilty. My thoughts raced to the roller door in Carousel. It had shuddered its way open for me, but hadn’t moved for the Finns. What did this mean? Was it connected to my writing? Or was I somehow the same as Rachel?
‘Hmm. She sounds like a Patron maybe,’ said Tommy.
‘What the hell is a Patron?’ asked Taylor.
‘It’s what people call some of the others that didn’t disappear. The ones that aren’t Artists,’ he replied.
‘Like the people in the library?’ asked Taylor.
Tommy nodded. My head started spinning.
‘So what is this Curator dude planning on doing with all this new art?’ asked Lizzy.
‘That’s what I want to ask him in my interview,’ said Tommy.
Taylor nodded and looked across at me curiously.
‘When are our interviews?’ asked Lizzy.
‘I was hoping tonight,’ he replied, smiling.
I stood up and got the hell out of there. I was acting like a weirdo and felt all of their eyes on my back. Outside it was bright and sunny, but the air was still cool from the night. I ignored the cold, pulled off my shirt and plunged deep into the choppy pool. I kicked down to the bottom and sat there in the watery abyss, not wanting to surface until the world had its shit together.
But when I came back up it was all still there waiting for me. The sky, cleaner and bluer than it had ever been. Lizzy and Chess playing fetch on a burnt-out lawn. Taylor pressing Tommy for more details inside our mansion. All of us surrounded by the deep, oppressing silence of a city in suspended hibernation.
5
With Tommy about to resume his search for the Curator, the issue of what the hell the Finns and I were doing finally came to a head. Since our escape from the Bulls we had sheltered away with no serious talk of resuming our journey to the airport or otherwise. Meeting Tommy, with his steadfast agenda and dedication to his documentary, had made us suddenly restless. We hadn’t spent all that time stuck in a shopping complex to hibernate our lives away in a mansion in the hills.
I rose from a futile nap to find Taylor and Lizzy in deep discussion by the pool. They looked up at me as I wandered over. Lizzy offered a slight smile.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘Hey,’ I replied. ‘Where’s Tommy?’
‘Sleeping,’ said Taylor. ‘Says he won’t get much once he’s moving again.’
I rubbed
Chess on the side with my foot.
‘What do you think we should do, Nox?’ asked Lizzy.
She caught me out.
‘Ah, right. I thought you guys looked serious,’ I replied.
Taylor stared hard at the floor, her mind ticking over.
‘Are you guys still keen on the airport?’ I asked.
‘Tommy didn’t see the plane,’ said Taylor, avoiding Lizzy’s gaze.
Tommy had dropped a bombshell when he revealed he hadn’t seen or heard a plane since the Disappearance. Lizzy pressed him for anything about planes or airports, but Tommy had nothing to tell her. Somehow he had missed the thundering Air Canada plane completely. I guess it was possible. Tommy hadn’t been living right on top of the airport like us.
‘It was at night though,’ I offered.
‘Exactly,’ said Lizzy.
I looked at them both, trying to establish the dynamic. Taylor took a breath.
‘I think he might be right about the Curator,’ said Taylor.
Lizzy rubbed an ache out of her forehead and looked at her sister.
‘Even if he is, what does it mean?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. That we’re here for something. Because of something,’ Taylor replied.
Her tone caught both of us out.
‘So what do you want to do?’ asked Lizzy.
‘Go to the city. See who’s there. Figure out what the hell is happening for ourselves,’ she replied.
Taylor’s eyes were glistening and Lizzy’s quickly followed. She was asking her sister to forget about the plane, Canada, their mother, everything that was behind them.
Lizzy sniffed and turned away to the horizon.
‘God,’ she said, exhaling shakily.
It was easy to think that Lizzy didn’t care about much these days. She had a way of looking at peace that probably wasn’t reflective of how she really felt.
‘Are you okay with this, Nox?’ asked Lizzy.
‘The city? Sure, why not,’ I replied.
Taylor looked at me carefully.
‘No bullshit, Nox,’ she said.
‘What does that mean?’ I replied.
‘If you think this is crazy, you need to say so,’ she replied.
‘It’s all crazy, Taylor. Tommy is making a film about a bunch of artists that survived the apocalypse thanks to some Jim Jarmusch type curator. And it’s a fucking documentary,’ I replied.
I stood up and stretched my neck. Chess peered up at me restlessly.
‘We just want you to be in on whatever we do, together,’ said Lizzy.
She looked at me. There was a softness in her gaze. I had kept a lot of stuff to myself in Carousel and it had gotten us into trouble more than once. Taylor and Lizzy talked the hell out of everything. Now that we were out in the world I could see how it was important to be up-front.
‘I think the city idea is dangerous,’ I replied. ‘If there’s Bulls in the suburbs and the airport, there’s a good chance they’ll be in the city too.’
Taylor nodded. Lizzy ruffled Chess reassuringly.
‘Plus, remember what Tommy said about the Loots,’ I added.
Tommy had only ever seen the Loots from a distance, but they sounded full on. Patrons and Artists turned cracky and desperate. Smashing into shops and houses to stockpile food and supplies, but also just to break shit. And their fight wasn’t only against the city, but other survivors too. Tommy had heard stories from Artists who had been beaten and ransacked when they had next to nothing to begin with.
Taylor and Lizzy were quiet for a moment. I sat back down.
‘Do you think it would be safer to go to the airport?’ asked Taylor.
I thought about it. Not the question, but Tommy’s theory. About the idea of meeting more Artists in the city. People with talent and status like Taylor and Lizzy. People that felt a million miles removed from me.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘I think it will be just the same. And if we are going to go anywhere it might as well be the city.’
Taylor smiled at me and a few more tears dripped from her eyes. Lizzy nestled into her sister’s lap and stayed there, staring across the silky blue surface of the pool. I took a breath and tried to make my brief flicker of courage sink down to somewhere deeper.
The three of us made a wordless decision to leave the next morning.
We spent the rest of the afternoon away from each other, packing our things and saying our goodbyes to the house. Tommy was excited to hear of our plan, but may have felt similar to hear we were staying in the house to work on some art.
I piled my things together quickly and spent the remainder of the daylight hours desperately trying to write something. It was pretty futile. The prose felt forced and overly descriptive. Plus I didn’t really have any ideas that I was into. Tommy’s mythical Curator hovered over me like some disappointed English teacher. I cursed myself for lazing around the whole time we had been up there instead of building on my work from Carousel. Tomorrow we would be on the road with a thousand other things to deal with.
Taylor and I had laid out all of the supplies we had collected in the garage. Late in the afternoon I met her and Tommy down there to put together some travel packs. We would be riding out of the hills on the bikes we had arrived on. We figured this gave us the best chance of escaping any future Bulls, but made carrying supplies difficult. Lizzy’s bike was a red fixie with a delicate looking basket attached to the front. It slumped hopelessly as soon as we loaded anything decent inside so Tommy and I took it off and replaced it with an old milk crate, drilled to the handlebars. Taylor refused to be a part of this, knowing Lizzy would be mad.
We did the same to our bikes and eventually were able to store a small amount of supplies onboard. It was mostly cans and noodles, but we also took a bunch of under-ripe fruit from the trees bordering the house. Taylor figured it would ripen in the heat and keep us in vitamin C for at least a week or two.
For the Bulls, Loots and whatever else happened to be out in the world we strapped a golf club to each bike, along with a can of insect spray. Tommy had discovered that this messed with the Bulls’ breathing – if you could spray it in their face before they started chewing on your neck, that is.
Tommy travelled light. He took a couple of cans and some fruit, but didn’t seem overly worried about going hungry. It was easy to feel reassured by Tommy. Nothing in the new world seemed to faze him much. You could be mistaken to think he’d had a cushy time of it, but then he would casually drop a story about not having water for a day and a half, or fending off a pair of Bulls with a school ruler and some bug spray, and you quickly realised it wasn’t the case at all.
At dusk the four of us wandered up to the balcony to watch the lightshow and drink some wine from the cellar. It was delicious and probably crazy-expensive, but I would have killed for something cold like a gin and tonic or a beer. Summer had cloaked the city in a heavy blanket of heat. The only respite came with the early-morning easterly that blew in from the night-cooled deserts. By ten this wind was stick-dry and ominous. By one it was deadly.
Taylor and I observed the lightshow carefully, trying to get a final gauge on the source before we headed down from the hills toward it. Lizzy slipped away with Chess before the show had ended. We stayed on for a while without her until we heard music from beside the pool below. The three of us drifted across to find Lizzy at a keyboard she had found in the guest linen cupboard a few weeks back.
‘Oh cool,’ said Tommy.
Lizzy keyed away, aware of us watching, but also kind of oblivious. She was experimenting with some new progressions and melodies. They were raw, but still sounded poppy and interesting.
I glanced at Taylor to catch her reaction. She seemed preoccupied.
Tommy ventured inside and returned with a camera. He waited for Lizzy to give him a small nod before filming her for his documentary.
Taylor and I moved over to the pool to finish our wines. Our legs dangled and disappeared into the cool black vo
id of water.
‘We didn’t ask you if you wanted to go to your parents’ place,’ said Taylor, a little ashamed.
‘It’s fine,’ I replied.
‘We totally can if you want to,’ she said.
‘I don’t know really. I’ve thought about it. But I figure it won’t change anything,’ I replied. ‘Plus my mum is obsessed with cheese, so the place is probably rancid by now.’
Taylor smiled and looked down at the dancing surface of the pool.
‘I think this is harder for you than it is for us,’ she said. ‘How come?’ I asked.
‘Because this is where you live. For Lizzy and me, home still looks the same in our heads. It’s still out there waiting for us,’ she replied.
I looked out at the dark spread of Perth. There was half a moon somewhere above us. Enough to outline the snake of the river and wide edge of the Indian Ocean.
It was weird to think of how many lives had existed between where we sat in the hills and the start of that ocean. It just seemed like geography now. Water. Soil. Undulations of earth. But for the people that used to be down there it was a whole universe and more. I felt numb and sick at the same time.
‘I don’t live in this place,’ I said, softly.
Taylor looked at me.
‘I hover above it. Looking around and freaking out like one of those ghost dudes in Super Mario Bros,’ I said.
‘Boos,’ said Taylor.
‘What?’ I replied.
‘The ghost dudes. They’re called Boos,’ said Taylor. ‘Right,’ I said.
‘You know they cover their eyes when you look at them,’ said Taylor.
‘Sounds about right,’ I replied.
She laughed and shoved my shoulder. Lizzy’s music wafted down past us and was swallowed by the bush.
‘What’s it like being an artist?’ I asked.
Taylor looked confused.
‘I mean, like a famous artist,’ I said.
‘What do you mean? Having money and playing festivals?’ she asked.
I shook my head. ‘Just being part of somebody’s life that you have never met. Maybe will never meet,’ I asked.
Taylor thought about it for a moment. ‘It’s the best thing in the world,’ she replied, deadly serious.
Beyond Carousel Page 3
