Watershed

by Jane Abbott

  Tears of joy or tears of sorrow, her mother had always said of the rain, but she’d only been half right. Because as one arid year stretched to two, then three, then ten; before Sarah met Daniel, before the cities drowned and the world began to wear its skin back to front; before Anna was raped and Jeremiah was born, and the armies of the righteous took up their unholy wars again, it had become clear, to Sarah at least, that God had only ever been about sorrow.

  She could barely remember the Last Rains. She knew she should, she’d been fifteen at the time; the date was recorded, and clocks everywhere counted each waterless second.

  Her father excused her. It hadn’t been anything special, he said. Maybe if they’d known, they might all have paid a bit more attention.

  Except they had known, hadn’t they?

  Will it rain here again? she asked him. Ever?

  His face clouded. I don’t know. I hope so.

  They were walking along what was left of the beach, next to the breach wall; ever-widening gaps in the concrete were stuffed with sandbags. Since her mother’s death, it was something they did of an evening, when it was a little cooler, when they could; when the water was lower and calmer and the washed strip of filthy sand was wide enough. Their special time, though they weren’t the only ones. The shallows were always filled with people, drawn down to the shore, an ebbing human tide. Some swam, the younger ones even laughed, but most just stood waist-deep, silent and staring out past the rows of towering turbines that no longer turned no matter how strong the wind, to the banks of clouds beyond. Watching the rain fall out at sea where it wasn’t needed.

  Do you believe what people are saying? she asked her father. That this is it, and the world is ending?

  Stopping, he turned her slowly so they faced the ocean like the others and she could see the veil of water, backlit by lightning, flashing grey to white over a black sea. A few weeks ago they wouldn’t have seen anything for the tsunami of dust, stirred by a burning wind, that had blanketed the city and turned seven days to seven nights. Before that another firestorm had choked the air with its ash and smoke. They took turns, these storms, but the rain stayed away.

  She felt her father’s arm at her back, his hand curled at her shoulder, squeezing gently. Honestly? he asked. Yes, she replied. His grip tightened, and she heard his long sigh, softer than the sea’s. Then no, he told her. It’s not the world that is ending. It’s everything else.

  Some years later, after she met Daniel at the call centre (he had two degrees, she had one, but the only jobs to be found were with Aquafied P/L, fielding angry complaints from furious customers) and decided that she liked his slow smile and his gentle voice and his quiet wit, enough that she wanted to feel his lips and his body pressed to hers, she asked him the same question and he answered the same way: Not the whole world, Sarah. Just us.

  She’d never considered herself a survivalist. Not the sort her parents had told her about, the crazy ones who’d stored and hoarded and, as things turned out, hadn’t been so crazy after all. But staring into the cupboard filled with stacked towers of tins and dried goods and assorted containers of water they didn’t dare use, Sarah realised that was exactly what she’d become.

  She’d almost laughed when Daniel had suggested they start collecting whatever they could. That had been before the last container ship had docked at the sinking port; before the roads had fissured on their beds of shrinking earth and become impassable; before the first of the low-lying desalination plants had drowned beneath a rising tide; before the wash of refugees from the dying countryside, and other places, had flooded the ailing city; before all the lootings by desperate mobs had forced the military to establish the depots, which were armed and patrolled by bulky soldiers wearing headsets who clicked in the customers queuing with their vouchers: click, click; click, click. The food bouncers, Sarah had called them; Daniel had almost smiled at the description.

  But she wasn’t laughing now, was she? Now, as she faced a wall of cans and tried to decide whether they should eat tinned corn or tinned peas with their tinned meat, she felt only gratitude for his foresight. Shrugging, she grabbed one of each; she didn’t care any more. Daniel could choose.

  A high scream – don’t stop, Sarah! – then another, and laughter, coarse and cruel. She slowed to risk a quick sideways glance into the dark wedge between two buildings – don’t look! – and stopped. Behind her, the stream of pedestrians cursed and jostled and kept moving. She’d later wish she’d done the same.

  A man – no, not a man, just a boy, thin and sallow, with a wisp of beard – sauntered out to lean against one of the walls; his ragged jeans were unzipped and rode low, and he was smoking something, some kind of black tube on which he sucked and blew. Through his brown fug, Sarah could see a woman struggling, fighting; saw the gang pressing around her and into her, saw the knives and sticks and, oh God, what were they –? Another scream, strangled this time.

  What the fuck’re you lookin’ at? the boy called to Sarah, before blowing another cloud. You wanna go next? Terrified, she backed away, into people who wouldn’t stop and didn’t care. She grabbed at one, then another: Help! Please, someone help her! But they shook her off and hurried on, while the boy watched, grinning and blowing his smoke. No one gives a shit, bitch; it’s a whole different world now, see? he taunted, before falling back into darkness to rejoin the sport. Bending over, Sarah disgorged her fear and her shame.

  That night she took Daniel inside her and held him there fiercely; afterwards, as they lay together and she listened to his breathing quieten, she didn’t wonder why she hadn’t mentioned what she’d seen, or what the boy had decreed. It was a whole different world now, see, and sometimes the truth didn’t bear repeating.

  Anna was born ahead of a rising sun.

  Sarah woke to darkness, the heavy weight of Daniel’s arm just under her breasts; he slept, snoring gently, and when she shifted to get more comfortable, she felt the wet beneath her, not cold but warm. The first spasm startled her, and she tapped Daniel’s shoulder, prodding him when he didn’t move. It’s coming, she told him. The baby.

  She wasn’t afraid. They’d prepared for months, Daniel stealing out into the night, bartering back-door trades: food vouchers for antiseptic, cloths, a few old packets of nappies, bottles and teats. The hospitals had long been sealed off and quarantined, resources consumed by contagion, but she and Daniel knew what to do. It was instinctive, wasn’t it, she thought, this birthing and rearing of young? They’d hoarded boiled water, shredded old curtains and washed the strips, rolling them up, ready; they’d read what they could find, procedures and complications, thinking only of the best outcome, steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the worst.

  The only working bulb was in the kitchen. One light and one power point; that was all they had now. All they could afford. But a dirty kitchen was no place to give birth. When Daniel went to light the candle on the bedside table, Sarah told him not to waste it. She trusted him, she said. Even in the dark.

  He propped a cheap battery lantern by her feet; she knocked it over a dozen times. The heat was oppressive, stifling, and he insisted on wasting water to bathe and cool her body. She was grateful and told him so, between contractions. But the labour proved mercifully quick, and when she strained and gave that final push and her daughter slid into the world, the room brightened suddenly, magic ally, the first long fingers of sunlight reaching through dusty glass to stroke the small glistening body, painting it red. It was a good sign, she thought, watching Daniel through half-closed eyes as he severed the last link. Everything would be just fine now.

  Daniel took photos on his phone, and on hers – mother and baby, timeless. Three months later, the power sputtered and sparked and cut out for good, and the pictures were lost.

  They dined on tinned anything, no longer choosy, sharing a single can each morning and another at night, Daniel always ensuring Sarah ate the biggest portion. For your milk, he insisted; later, it was to share with Anna. But one tin bet
ween three wasn’t enough.

  The work at Aquafied had dried up along with the water and they were made to rely on whatever their vouchers might buy; when provisions ran low Daniel would go looking for more, contravening the curfew, a thief in the night. But he wasn’t the only one, and while he was gone Sarah would clutch Anna and wait anxiously for his return. More and more often he’d bring something else: rats, lizards and, once, a cat. But she drew the line when he came back with a half-starved, mangy dog, and he let it loose for others to find and feast upon. He smashed the locked meter from the pipe to let the water flow – just a trickle, brown and brackish, and they boiled every drop. They pulled palings off the fence, hacked at the two dead trees in the yard, broke up the furniture – used whatever they could to fuel a fire; the air inside the house became as hot and as smoky as the air outside. But the shelves of books they left untouched.

  The authorities kept up the rhetoric long after everyone had stopped listening, calling for calm and appealing to common sense, but the insane answered other calls instead. They scared Sarah, those men, with their chanting and their marching and their prayers and exhortations, but worse were the women and children who ranged beside them, faceless and voiceless, swelling armies that each hoisted indifferent, unlikeable gods. Believe! Repent! Obey! It angered her, this blind exaltation of deities, as though the faithful might summon the supernatural as easily as one might once have called a dog to heel. And a mistake, she thought. Didn’t everyone know that sleeping dogs were best left to lie?

  Daniel tore up the floors, boarding the windows and barring the doors; only once did Anna ask why. The little house became an oven, and while they baked they listened to the noise outside, the shouts, the calls to stop, to fall back, the rat-a-tat of gunfire. Sarah had always thought it a silly description, but that’s exactly what it was: rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat-a-tat. A mechanical stutter, punctuated with screams. All day and every night.

  She and Daniel hunched over the little radio: military bulletins, directives, more health warnings; the sea wall had finally fallen and streets were now waterways, half a metre, then another, then two; the command to evacuate, then a second, more urgent. Anna played at their feet and demanded stories; the distraction was always too brief.

  Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-rat-a-tat-a-tat.

  They didn’t dare leave. Not yet. They were on higher ground, surely the water wouldn’t – couldn’t – reach them; surely it must cease its incessant creep and fall back, taking with it the panic and the madness? No, they dared not leave. Not until they were absolutely sure. But when the last broadcast cut out mid-sentence, the radio crackling to static – black noise, Sarah thought, not white – they could no longer pretend. They stared at each other, horrified, and Daniel switched off the radio. That’s it then, he said.

  They packed what they could carry. When Sarah stuffed three books into her bag – she’d agonised over which of her favourites to save – Daniel shook his head. Too heavy, he said. There’d be plenty to find later, wherever they ended up.

  They spent their last night curled together on the bed, hot and scared, Anna between them, crying. Sarah sang her favourite song to calm her, over and over. None of them slept.

  Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses … something, something. Sarah couldn’t remember the rest. Why couldn’t she remember? Only the first part, and the name of the woman who’d written the poem: Emma Lazarus. Which was strange, she thought, because hadn’t there been another Lazarus too, some long-ago man of myth brought back from the dead? Yes. She was sure of that much at least. And this was what they had become – a mass of unhuddled undead, denied their rightful rest, fated to shuffle forever along blistered roads that mocked with their drifts of dirt and their thin pools of melted pitch. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.

  They’d been turned away from the first camp. Too crowded, they were told. Daniel had pushed his way through the angry mob to the razor wire fence with its inner ring of armed soldiers who were tossing small food packages over the barrier in an attempt to appease, the crowd tearing at each other to claim a share. Where were they supposed to go? he demanded. What the fuck did it matter? one of the guards replied, with a tired shrug. It was all over anyway.

  They passed long-stranded vehicles (cars, vans and trucks and, once, a ruin of train carriages spilled from their buckled rail), warped metal ovens settled into skirts of sand, their baked goods perched inside, stiff and crisped, almost serene but for the playful tease of the wind that would lift bleached tufts of hair from leathered skulls and whistle mournfully through open mouths and emptied eye sockets.

  Sarah knew she’d never grow indifferent to the gracelessness of death; old bodies mummified to shiny black hide, and new ones, bloated and split, their dark meaty entrails squirming with maggots and flies and ants. She’d never get used to the madness; men who fought over a speck of food, a useless tool, a shard of glass, even a pair of worn boots – ripping at dead legs, twisting and tearing the feet, cracking sun-dried sinew and bone – the victor always the one with the weapon. She could never shake the constant hum of flies during the day and mosquitoes at night, or the smell of decay that filled her nose, tickling and prickling with its slow, odorous burn. She’d come to hate the red glare of the sun, the fierce dust that chafed face and eyes and hands, the thick pall of smoke that seemed to follow them wherever they went.

  But other things followed too, worse things, sounds and calls carried on a high wind or echoing in the abrupt stillness of the night; fierce and wild, clamouring for death and flesh, for water and blood, for sacrifices to appease maddened minds and furious gods, or to sate an insatiable hunger. She’d turned away and retched the first time they stumbled upon such remains. It was inevitable, Daniel said later, in a clumsy attempt to soothe. For some, meat was just that.

  It was Daniel’s idea to walk with others who had children. Safer, he said, and Sarah hadn’t questioned it. But safer also meant slower, and no matter where they went others had always got there before them, seizing any handouts of rations or claiming their places in the camps. Anna tramped between them, her shorter strides setting the pace. Carrying her wouldn’t have hastened their progress – neither Sarah nor Daniel had strength to spare – and as she slowly transformed from a small girl into a bigger one, the very idea became impossible. She’d never be tall; her meagre diet couldn’t fulfil the demands of her growing body, every bit of energy consumed by the need to walk and walk and walk. She didn’t complain, perhaps she knew there was little point, but she wasn’t silent either like so many children were, hollow-eyed and afraid, and Sarah was grateful for her daughter’s staccato chatter, all the small questions that helped her to think and to reason, reminding her that she was a mother.

  Oh, the sea, the sea! The cruel, the selfish, the sensuous sea, which crept and swelled and pushed them on. It haunted their days with its salty roar, and sighed through every nightly dream. All that water they dared not touch, the waves too strong, the surge too great, teasing and beckoning and daring the foolhardy. What had they imagined? Sarah wondered. That the oceans would fill slowly, like a bath, calmly creeping and climbing, a placid lake to gently lap the salted shore? Why were they so shocked by its dark vehemence and the grey-foamed crests littered with wreckage? Bits of boats and shards of ships hurled against the teeth of the land before being chewed and swallowed – these were the remnant hopes of those who’d trusted to know-how and means to conquer the tide; now each was being returned and laid at their feet, as a cat might once have presented its owners with a dead mouse. Do you not like my gift, human? Am I not skilful? Am I not powerful?

  And just as many lives were claimed from the shore; those who, armed with their containers and buckets and bags, would scramble over slippery mud and rock to the angry edge of the world, hoping to take a little of what the sea might provide, had it been willing to share. But then would come the sudden swell, to breach and seize and suck down, and another would be lost to its fierce embrace.

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nbsp; So the rest would sigh and turn away and continue to scrounge for hints of grey and yellow amid the brown, beads of cacti and spikes of anything that might hold some moisture. And when there was nothing to find, they’d scrape the sweat from their bodies and cook their own urine, the dark fetid liquid steaming in hot holes beneath warped covers of putrid plastic in the hope of yielding something more potable.

  And while they drank, the sea would laugh.

  They gave the camp a wide berth. Word had filtered back: closed, diseased, more dead than living, stay away, stay away. Those who didn’t believe, most of them families, kept to their course. Sarah and Daniel didn’t. The next was the same, not disease this time, but violence. Even from a distance Sarah could see the black columns clouding the wind, could hear gunshots and yells, the cries of triumph and the screams for mercy; discordant bells tolling humanity’s sad end. Keep moving, they were told. Head for higher ground.

  There was no order to their long march, no one who was willing to take charge even if others had agreed. Day or night, dawn or dusk, they walked when they had the strength, rested when they didn’t, each of them a part of a miserable whole, and when one fell the others closed in tighter, bunching together to rid themselves of the memory, of the space that had been occupied. Time was measured not by the passing of sun or moon, but by the count of steps, meals, draughts of water, with every brief triumph and each dismal failure, by weariness, and by death, until any need for its accounting had become utterly redundant.

  Decent shelter that would last them longer than a few days was hard to find; any suitable caves, grottos or broken buildings were already occupied and guarded fiercely against intrusion. So, more often than not, they would simply spoon together in shallow, sweaty scrapes beneath spinneys of dead thorns and sticks, with their bellies empty and their backs to the wind, before picking themselves up and moving on again.