by Claire Zorn
Max was beginning to rally. There was colour in his face again. I gathered up our bedding and stuffed it into garbage bags. I could hear my mum telling me that I’d fit more in the bags if I folded the blankets.
‘Where are we going?’ Max asked.
‘Up the road. Arnold’s place.’
‘Who’s Arnold?’
‘Guy from school. He has food. It makes more sense for us to band together.’
I picked up the last doona. Beneath it was Pooh and Tigger Fly Kites. Max and I stared at the book.
‘Do you think she’s okay?’ Max whispered.
‘I don’t know.’ I took the bag out to the car, then came back for Max. I wanted him to lean on me as we went to the car but he wouldn’t.
Just like the handbook said, I made sure my passenger and I were both wearing our seatbelts. Then I checked and adjusted my seat position and mirrors. The view out the back window was pretty much obscured by the coffee table. There was nothing I could do about this so I carried on. I started the ignition, put my foot on the brake and put the car into drive. As I let the handbrake off and eased my foot off the brake, I turned the wheel toward the nature strip on the left-hand side of the road and the car crept forward. We hit the lip of the guttering and I pressed the accelerator a fraction, the car let out a high-pitched whine of protest and the back tyres spun on the ice. I tried again and the car nosed up the kerb and onto the nature strip. I drove it gently forward and straightened the wheel so we were parallel with the road. I began driving up the hill slowly. We made it about fifteen metres until the back tyres began to skid again and we started to slide backward ever so slightly.
‘Shit, shit, shit.’ I smacked the wheel. ‘C’mon, c’mon.’ The car whined its refusal. Why did Mum and Dad have to pick a house at the bottom of a bloody hill? Why? I pressed the accelerator again. And backward we went. I put on the handbrake and turned to Max. ‘Okay, you’re going to have to drive. I’ll push.’ His eyes bulged. I got out of the car.
‘I’ll talk you through it, yeah?’
Max got in the driver’s seat. ‘Which one’s the accelerator?’
‘The one on the right. Put your seatbelt on.’
I went to the back of the car and braced myself against it with my full body weight.
‘Okay, put your foot on the brake, on the left, put it into drive, take the handbrake off and gently press the accelerator as you take your foot off the brake.’
The car whined and the tyres flung snow into the air. I pushed and pushed with everything I had, which admittedly wasn’t all that much. It wasn’t working. All I was doing was preventing the car from sliding backward and even that was questionable.
‘Okay, okay, stop. Put the handbrake on.’ I turned and leaned on the back of the car taking a minute to get my breath.
‘Okay new plan.’ I opened the driver’s door. Max got out and went back to the passenger seat. I got in and reversed the car onto the road again, so it was pointing down the hill.
‘Ready?’
‘Hell yes.’
I took the handbrake off and floored it. We sped down the hill and the end of the cul-de-sac came rushing toward us, Max was gripping either side of his seat. The end. Don’t brake don’t brake don’t brake. I spun the wheel to the right and pulled the handbrake on, just like I had seen Matt Damon do. The rear of the car slid out and we were in a cloud of grey, I let the handbrake off and the car launched toward the nature strip, up over the kerb, I turned right just a fraction and the back slid out again and we were facing back up the hill. I pressed down on the accelerator and the engine sang like it quite liked that and using the momentum we roared up the nature strip, through azalea bushes and over at least three tiny Buddha statues. The car kept singing and somehow we gained traction and bounced over people’s lawns and driveways. Max let out a whoop as we bounded up the hill. As we got to the top I let the car slow. Max was laughing. We got to the corner and I eased the car gently around, sticking to the nature strip. The car bunted over the grass until we got to Arnold’s place.
‘Man, next time you have to let me have a go,’ said Max.
‘Yeah right.’
I opened the boot of the car and Arnold came out of the house. He stood looking at the car, frowning.
‘How did you get it up the hill?’
I shrugged but I couldn’t stop grinning.
‘Why didn’t you just put chains on?’
‘Don’t have any, only been to the snow once.’
‘But, Fin, you can use anything, rope, whatever, you just wrap it round the tyres.’ Max laughed. I opened my mouth to reply but nothing came out. Arnold took two bags from the boot and went inside. Despite the laughing, Max still looked pale.
‘Go inside,’ I told him.
‘You are such a tool.’
‘Go sit down.’ I led Max up the front steps. Arnold stood and held the door open for us. ‘Max, this is Arnold. Arnold, this is my brother, Max.’
Arnold nodded to Max. ‘Call me Noll,’ he said. I dumped a garbage bag of clothes in the living room and wondered if I was allowed to call him Noll too.
We drank tea and sat on the mattress Arnold had dragged out in front of the fire for Max. I would take the couch. After eating another can of food, Max fell asleep.
‘So,’ said Noll. ‘Mr Starvos’ shop.’
‘Yeah. He said he was keeping everything in the storeroom.’
‘There’s no guarantee there will be anything left.’
‘No. But I don’t see a whole lot of other options.’
‘It means stealing food that we have no right to.’
‘I know. We wouldn’t take it all.’
‘Have you thought about how we would do it?’
Twenty-two
I would have to do it very quickly. One shot only. I would have to use enough force to get it right the first time. The hammer was in the front pocket of my hoodie and both my hands were shoved in there, too. I wore my hood low over my eyes. I remember seeing a news story on television about how some Neighbourhood Watch groups in London were calling for hoodies to be banned because they provided instant disguise for vandals and hooligans. Did this mean I had become a thug? Lokey would be proud. I put my head down and strode quickly down the street. I neared the corner and rehearsed the action over and over again in my mind, feeling a bit soft for being so nervous. I walked past the supermarket windows, I rounded the corner and as I did I took the hammer from my pocket and rammed it through the pane of glass next to the deadlock on the door. The sound was beautiful, like a peal of bells cracking through the silent streetscape. I put the hammer back in my pocket, put my head down and ran, the soles of my shoes smacking the snow-covered bitumen. I ran all the way around the block until I came back to Noll’s house.
Much later, Max went for a walk past the shop. The narrow strip of shattered glass next to the front door had been boarded up with cardboard and duct tape. Too easy.
Twenty-three
Midnight. We were in the living room, nervous as hell. We gazed, quiet, at the last smouldering remains of a dining chair. The rest of the wood from Arnold’s house was loaded in the back of the station wagon now, along with a bag of clothes, a heap of bottled water, some bedding and a hose for syphoning fuel. Arnold had also packed other things we thought might come in handy: gaffer tape, rope, a Swiss army knife. Things that almost made us believe that we knew how to survive without the comforts of home. We would leave as soon as the job was done. The Job – as if we were about to rob a friggin’ casino.
Noll’s forehead was furrowed in concentration. ‘I’m still not convinced this is a good idea,’ he said.
‘It’s too easy: we go in, we get the food, we leave.’ I was trying to convince myself as much as him.
‘It’s wrong.’
‘I don’t see what choice we have. We will starve if w
e don’t do something. Who knows how long it’s going to take to find Mum.’
‘I still don’t like it.’
‘Neither do I. But we don’t have to like it. If we don’t get there first someone else will.’
‘Survival of the fittest?’
‘Exactly.’
Max liked the plan. He was pumped, sitting, bobbing his head with his hood up like he was friggin’ Snoop Dogg or someone. I thought of that cop in our kitchen trying to get our food. We were different to him, weren’t we? I had Max to worry about. Starvos would have heaps of stuff in there. Heaps. More than enough.
We were ready to go, dressed in the darkest clothes we had – which seemed kind of dumb, it wasn’t like anyone was going to see us. There were no streetlights. I held the Dolphin torch.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Let’s go,’ Arnold agreed.
I realised that I hadn’t been outside at night since the bombs. I hadn’t experienced the swallowing blackness. The little light in the car illuminated the yard for a few moments when we opened the doors. Then we shut them and were in the blackness again. I heard the key scraping around next to the steering wheel while Noll fumbled around for the ignition. I opened my door a fraction so the light came back on, he put the key in and started the car. The sound seemed loud enough to wake up the whole street.
‘Go, go, go,’ I said.
We drove up the street and Noll stopped the car about a hundred metres from the shop and turned off the ignition and the headlights.
‘Noll, I know this is dramatic,’ I said. ‘But if someone busts us, don’t worry about me, get Max out of there.’
I thought maybe he would protest and say something about solidarity and all for one and stuff, but he just nodded.
I propped the Dolphin torch on the dashboard and it shone a thin stream of light onto the road ahead of us, so we could partially see where we were going. Max and I got out of the car.
‘Max, this is serious, yeah? Don’t do anything dumb. Stick to the plan.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
We began to push. The idea was that without the engine running there was less chance of anyone hearing us. The only sound was our breathing and the soft mulch of ice beneath the tyres. In my imagination it had been a stealthy move but in reality it was bloody hard work and took freaking ages. The soles of our shoes kept slipping on the ice.
We pushed the car along the kerb until we were about fifteen metres away from the shop. Max would stand outside the shop and keep watch. I would go in, get the boxes of cans and pass them to Max, who would run them down to the car. We wouldn’t take everything, but we would take as much as we could fit in the boot.
Max and I walked up the street to the shop.
‘If someone comes you yell out and then run. Don’t wait for me, just run like hell to the car and go.’
‘What will you do?’
‘I’ll deal with it. No one will see us anyway. It’ll be cool. You got your torch?’
‘In my pocket.’
‘Cool.’
We reached the corner and I turned to glance back to where the car was. We stopped at the shop door. I took the Stanley knife from my back pocket and pushed the blade up. Max shielded the torchlight with his hand and concentrated the beam on the cardboard panel by the doorframe. I gripped the knife and plunged the blade into the cardboard. It made a muffled popping sort of noise. Working the blade back and forth I cut a flap in the cardboard, then slid my hand in and felt around for the back of the deadlock. My fingers located the cold ball of the metal switch, I turned it and repeated the process for the bolts at the top and bottom of the door. It was easy. I nodded at Max and went inside.
I swung the beam of the torch around the room and down the mouths of the aisles, illuminating items on the shelves: laundry detergent, soap, razors, garbage bags. I shone it behind the counter to the doorway that led to what I guessed to be the storeroom. I went in. It was a small room with brick walls and no windows, just like a tomb. There were cartons piled up all over the place. I ran the torchlight over them: copy paper, laundry detergent. Useless. Two-minute noodles. Bingo. I set the torch down on one of the boxes so it threw enough light around the room for me to see my way. I picked up a box and carried it out to the front door. I gave it to Max and he turned and ran with it toward the car and I went back for another box. There didn’t seem to be any soup left. More noodles, I took them, they were good because they were light, then I got breakfast cereal, cartons of soy milk, nuts. More noodles. Max said the boot was nearly full. We only had room for a couple more boxes. I got more cereal and ran it out to Max but he wasn’t there. He must have been down at the car. I couldn’t see his torch and I figured he had probably got the hang of going without it. I put the box down at the doorway and went back into the storeroom. I pushed a box of dog food aside with my foot and found a carton of Weet-Bix. As the box scraped along the concrete I thought I heard a brief shadow of a noise. I froze. I listened to the silence. Waited. Nothing. I turned, crouched down to lift the carton of Weet-Bix and that’s when I felt a hand take a fistful of my hair, almost tearing it from my scalp. I didn’t have time to yell out. My cheek was smashed against the brick wall and all the breath left me.
I pressed my palms flat against the brickwork and tried to push backward, tried to stop my cheek making such a rough connection with the wall. It didn’t really work. The guy was bigger than me. It was the grip of someone well fed. My head was pulled back and slammed once again into the wall and I saw stars, twinkling, dancing stars, which was ironic; I’d wondered when I’d see those again. Then I was still. He didn’t pull me back, but left me pressed with my cheek against the wall. I moved my hand back toward my pocket, to the knife. And then I felt a hard object press into the back of my skull.
He yelled at me in a language I didn’t understand, but I knew the voice. My nose was filled with the sourness of his sweat and what I guessed to be my blood. Sweat? How could anyone sweat in this cold? Then he brought the gun around and showed it to me. He pressed it into my temple and laughed great wheezing rasps like he’d just told me a joke. He yelled again, moved his fingers down to my neck and jammed the pistol into the base of my skull. I heard him say Max’s name.
‘Where’s Max?’ I managed to croak.
He pulled my head back again. He said something.
‘I can’t understand you,’ I moaned. He laughed again and then shoved my face back into the bricks.
‘You want your brother? You have your brother when I get my food back, yes? Or maybe I just kill you. Maybe I eat you!’ He laughed again. My cheek slammed once more into the wall. I couldn’t feel it any more, only the warmth of my blood on my skin and a creeping tingle up the back of my neck.
‘You think you are the first to try this? You think I am not waiting for you?’ He drove the muzzle of the gun against my scalp. ‘I need to make example of you. I am not––’ he pulled my head back, ‘—charity,’ he said and slammed it forward into the bricks.
I was very, very tired. Sleepy. I didn’t care if he killed me. I just wanted to go to sleep. I felt my body relax.
I closed my eyes.
I see my mum’s face lit by candlelight. She leans over the pirate birthday cake.
‘Big breath, Finni! Blow out the candles!’
I am running my thumb over the smooth glob of plastic at the end of the rope on my toboggan. My fingers are pink with the cold.
I am watching the baby sleep. I am not supposed to be in his room but I like to stand next to his cot and watch him breathe. I like him better when he is asleep.
I am lying on my back on the grass looking up at the sky listening to my iPod.
Lucy crosses her ankles in history class.
I am running.
It’s his foot that brings me back. A boot to the soft part just below my ribs. I open my ey
es and try to take a breath but it’s a bit like someone pulling your face out of the water only to shove it under again. He seems furious that I passed out. From where my head is on the ground I can see his boots and hear them snuff over the concrete floor. They are Blundstones, I think, steel-capped things. Fun.
‘Wake up, pussy! You think you can take my food? You think I am stupid?’ He punctuates his sentences with his foot. Maybe he’s not going to shoot me after all. Perhaps he’ll just kick me to death. But no, he stops kicking me. I hear a click and I turn my head just a little to look up at him. Starvos is perfectly still, pointing the gun down at my head. I close my eyes and think of God, only I’m not sure what I want Him to do.
And then there is a sharp cracking noise and my last thought before the enormous black weight comes down on me is of a backyard cricket match the last summer Mum and Dad were still together.
It doesn’t sound like a gunshot. But then if I’ve been shot in the head, my perception of these things is probably off.
Twenty-four
I can still smell tobacco and sweat. And the bitter scent of blood, stronger now. Mine?
I don’t think I am dead. But I am underneath something very heavy and my lungs hurt too much to breathe and don’t seem to have room to expand anyway. I need to find the strength to move my arms and push the weight off me. I try to think about my arms, about where they are. I move my fingers. I am not dead. I cannot move much else though. A breath manages to work its way into my chest and the feeling is like having your diaphragm stabbed with a blunt object. The weight moves, it rocks and I am sure I can hear the sound of someone groaning in effort. The pressure is off my arms a little, I can move my right arm, I can push with it and I do and then cold air finds my face. I gasp and it hurts like hell but the weight is gone and I can see the arches of light on the walls cast by the torch from where I have left it on a box. Two faces come into my line of vision: a man and a girl. They are pooled in shadow; my eyes try to adjust. The expression on the girl’s face is of panic, wide eyes. Even in my near-dead stupor I notice they are very nice eyes. My vision blurs. I close my eyes and open them again. Dark indigo beanie pulled low over the ears, big coat and an expression that changes from fear to absolute relief and warmth. She touches my face.
