The Sky So Heavy

by Claire Zorn

  As I squash Lucy’s bag into the back of the station wagon, I feel the gun press into my hip. Lucy walks down the drive to the car, hugging herself against the cold. She looks up and her eyes are red and teary, but there is stubborn determination in her expression.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  She nods.

  I glance to the front seat, to Noll. He is very still, eyes downcast.

  ‘Are you okay with us bringing the gun?’ I ask Lucy quietly.

  She frowns. ‘Are you okay with it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I . . . I’m thinking about Noll, I guess. He’s worried about Starvos and what we’ve done. I don’t think he’ll want to keep it, but I think we’ll be safer with it.’

  ‘Let’s just go. I need to go.’

  I open the back door for her. She gets in and slides across to the other side. I get in next to her. There is one seat left.

  ‘Can we make a detour?’ I ask.

  Twenty-seven

  As we drive through the streets of our town, toward the highway, we are silent.

  I haven’t been beyond Noll’s house for three months. The road is a wide strip of dirty snow. Houses stare out at it from beneath their cloaks of grimy ice. People’s gardens have died. The front of each house is populated with wiry skeletons reaching up for a sun that isn’t there. We wind through streets that all look the same. There are some tyre tracks on the road but not many. As we get closer to the highway we see a group of people standing out on the street, they are the first people we’ve seen and they are looking at something. As we approach, Noll slows down. On the right-hand side of the road are the charred remains of a house, black and stark against the snow, steam rising from it. I know Noll wants to stop, I want to stop, but as we approach the people turn their faces toward us, they stare out from under the hoods of their coats. I can’t make out how old they might be. Their eyes are cold and desperate, cheeks sunken, skin grey. They look like the walking dead. Noll keeps driving and it occurs to me we probably look no different. I turn and watch them out the rear window. They have turned their attention back to the house and stand motionless, like mourners at a gravesite.

  We turn onto the highway and head east, down the mountains toward the city. I give Noll directions and he takes a left turn off the highway. We follow the street for a few hundred metres and I tell him to pull over outside a small weatherboard cottage. There are no cars in the driveway and I know there’s not really any point seeing if anyone is home, but I get out and walk up the front path anyway. The front yard is as familiar to me as my own. Beside the path, the broken trampoline I have spent hours on sags beneath the weight of melting snow. I go up the three steps to the front door and knock loudly.

  ‘Hello? Lokey?’

  I wait. Nothing.

  I try again, but if he is still alive he is not here.

  We drive back to the highway. We pass the ghosts of the library and McDonald’s and as we come into the next town I disturb the pool of silence by suggesting we go past the supermarket. Noll catches my eye in the rear-view mirror and I shrug.

  ‘You never know.’

  We pull into the empty car park. Noll slows as we drive past the supermarket entrance. There is a space where the sliding glass doors should be. Snow has drifted in over the shiny lino floors. Noll stops the car and I get out, Lucy follows. Max opens his door.

  ‘Stay.’

  ‘C’mon––’

  ‘Stay,’ I bark. He gives me the finger and I return it.

  The shelves are bare. There are a few items abandoned in the middle of the deserted aisles: a mop, some rolls of paper towel, shampoo bottles, a packet of nappies. Nothing we can use. Most of the registers at the checkouts have been smashed, their computer monitors lying on the floor. We head back out to the car at the same time three guys come around the corner of the building. They see us and approach, not looking like they are after casual conversation. They have the same desperate look as the people we saw earlier and, as they get closer, I see that they aren’t that much older than us. I think one of them used to go to our school. Lucy and I quicken our pace.

  ‘Oi,’ yells the biggest one. They make it to the car before we do. I silently curse myself for not hiding the food better in the back – it’s blatantly obvious through the windows. One of them stands in front of the back door, we move to go to the other side but the biggest one blocks us.

  ‘Give us your food,’ he says.

  ‘Back off,’ says Lucy.

  The big guy smiles. ‘Stay out of this, sweetheart,’ he says and I can actually see the moment when Lucy notes that the guy is way bigger than her and decides she doesn’t give a crap.

  ‘Who the hell are you calling sweetheart? You think you can just take our stuff?’ she says.

  ‘Yeah, I do.’ He thumps the driver’s window. ‘Open up!’

  I pull open my coat and lift the edge of my hoodie. I point to the gun tucked into the band of my jeans, trying to make out like I’m used to making hardcore gangsta-style threats. ‘Piss off, yeah?’

  He puts his palms up, backs away from the car. The others do the same. Lucy and I get in.

  Noll accelerates. I can see Max gripping the upholstery of the front seat, his face is white.

  ‘What did you say to them?’ Noll asks.

  ‘I said Lucy had tuberculosis and was highly contagious.’

  ‘They fell for that easy.’ Noll looks at me in the mirror. I shrug. He drops it, but I don’t think we have convinced him. We leave the car park and turn back onto the highway at an intersection where traffic lights stand like monuments to some past era. Noll keeps to the left of the highway even though there’s no one on it and no cops to tell him otherwise. The light is fading and I know we won’t get far before nightfall.

  Twenty-eight

  Driving in the dark, you can almost pretend that nothing has happened, that the world is the way it was before and you’re not running. There is nothing on either side of the car, just black, and we follow the cold light thrown before us by the headlights of a dead woman’s car. The lines on the road are lost beneath the ice and slurry and there is nothing to guide us. Noll loses the road and noses the car up an embankment. We are going so slowly that no one screams, not even Max. Instead we are just irritated – cold, hungry and irritated.

  Noll tries to back the car up, but all it does is whine. We sit in silence for a moment, then Noll heaves his door open and gets out. Beside me, Lucy sighs and tilts her head back, looking to the roof for guidance, or strength, or maybe she’s just sick of looking at the dark. I get out of the car.

  Noll kicks at the snow around the front tyre. I get a shovel from the back of the car and start to dig.

  ‘You think we’ve got enough petrol to make it to the city?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know. We’ve got a quarter of a tank but I’ve got no idea how much it takes to get there. Do you?’

  ‘No idea . . . Want me to drive for a bit?’

  ‘Yes.’

  We get back in and I put the car in reverse and roll back onto the road. We begin again. I don’t know why, but in my head I can see Mr Effrez. He is sitting at his desk in my old English classroom. The windows are gone and there’s snow over all the desks. He sits in the dark, stroking his beard, thinking. But my imagination is wrong, inaccurate, because in the picture there is a moon up in the sky.

  I don’t know how long we’ve been driving on the freeway. It runs from the mountains, across the plains to the city – a drive we’ve all done countless times before and even though it’s dark now, the scenery is tattooed in my memory. Suburbs sprawl out from it on either side, huge urban mazes that merge into mini-cities themselves: housing estates with cul-de-sacs, sporting fields and shopping centres. I imagine everything covered with grey snow, like sheet-covered furniture in a big, vacant house. Maybe we’ve been driving an hour, maybe t
wo. It’s a trip that used to take an hour, but at the pace we’re going I feel it’s going to take at least four.

  We pass the cheerful sign that welcomes us to the city of Sydney and marks the beginning of the western suburbs. Maybe we will meet a sort of station where there’ll be cans of food and people with clipboards checking off names. I will give them my name and they’ll smile and lead me to where my dad is sitting with a cup of tea and a Milk Arrowroot. That’s not going to happen. I know that’s not going to happen.

  When the headlights catch a sign that says ‘State Emergency Service Information Centre’ and points to the middle of the road we all lean forward slightly in our seats, craning to see further ahead. Then a line of orange witches’ hats appears in front of us, I brake, swerving to the left. The car slides on the ice and this time Max screams. I spin the wheel and manage to pull up just before we hit a parked car. Most of the witches’ hats come off second best.

  ‘Thank you, Need for Speed,’ I say, feeling the thud of my pulse in my temples.

  Ahead, a demountable building is illuminated by our headlights. It stands in the centre of the freeway, where the grassy median strip once was. There are two cars parked next to the demountable, but no light coming from the building. We get out of the car. Our feet crunch on the snow and the hinges of the car doors squeal through the silence when we close them. Max, Noll and I look at the building but don’t approach it. Lucy flicks her torch on and doesn’t hesitate.

  ‘Luce, wait.’

  I follow her. She shines the torch at the cars. They are both covered with snow and have broken windows. We head for the steps and see that the door is hanging open. Lucy shines the torch into the black. The whole thing feels like a scene from a Cohen brothers movie. There’s a couple of plastic chairs and a two-legged wooden desk. A map of Sydney and the Greater West clings to the wall, pierced crookedly into place with thumbtacks. It is marked and divided by red, hand-drawn lines. Below it, on the ground, is a puddle of snow partially covering what looks like a big burn mark on the lino floor. We look up at the ceiling, and there’s a hole, a makeshift chimney. There is nothing else in the place – the official-looking people must have eaten all the Milk Arrowroots, burnt their clipboards and fled.

  Outside, Noll is peering through the broken windows of the parked cars. ‘Someone’s already got to the fuel,’ he says before I can ask.

  We head toward our car, but I’m soon aware that Max isn’t beside me. I turn around and can make out his shape in the black, still lingering by the mouth of the demountable.

  ‘Max, there’s nothing here man, c’mon.’

  He doesn’t move, the others both have the torches and keep walking. I turn and head back toward Max, feeling through my pockets for a lighter. When I find one I flick it and the flame makes a fragile, wobbly light between us.

  ‘You okay?’ I can see the wet on his cheeks glint in the light.

  ‘I thought it would all be alright, I thought there would be people here and they’d know what we’re supposed to be doing and we’d find Dad––’

  ‘Maximum, look at me. I’m here. I’m here with you. I’m going to get you through this, okay? We’ve got Noll and Lucy. We’re not alone, you’re not alone.’

  He shakes his head and the tears keep coming. He looks so small in his beanie and mittens, snot leaking onto his top lip.

  ‘Hey, hey. You remember those bad bushfires in Victoria? Black Saturday? I read a story about about a guy and his wife who were stranded in the fire. No way out. They had three little kids with them and they all hid with wet blankets over them in this gap between a brick wall and a water tank. The guy said the fear, the panic, was like a heavy medicine ball that he and his wife passed between them – when one panicked the other one would be calm and rational. They survived by taking it in turns. I can hold the ball for you, Max. I’ve got it. I’ve got you.’

  He wipes the snot with his sleeve.

  ‘Stay cool, Max.’

  The corner of his mouth twitches and I can see he’s tempted to make the obvious joke.

  ‘Let’s go back to the car. We gotta keep going.’

  He nods and we trudge through the snow. I can’t help wondering when I’m going to drop the ball, though, and who’s going to catch it for me.

  We are all back in the car, about to leave, when Lucy opens her door again.

  ‘Wait a sec,’ she says over her shoulder and jogs back to the demountable. Moments later she gets back in the car, holding the map. I put the car into drive and we start again, carving our way into the dark.

  Pools of white light from the headlights on the snow in front and beside us. Black everywhere else. The lights catch the shadowy shapes of cars abandoned by the side of the road. I get careless with the accelerator and the car slides on the ice.

  ‘Easy, Fin,’ says Noll. ‘We haven’t come this far to die in a car accident.’ Just as he speaks the headlights fall on the body of a car just ahead of us, it lies upside down like a beetle on its back, charred and twisted. I brake and we slide to a halt.

  ‘Well, that’s encouraging,’ mutters Lucy.

  It becomes harder and harder to tell what is road and what is not. I end up waywardly heading for the edge too many times. Lucy takes over driving for a bit, but she has the same problem. A collective decision is made to stop and sleep in the car and continue driving in the morning.

  I don’t know what it is that wakes me but when I open my eyes there is a guy striding toward the car with a brick in his hand. Like he’s going to use it in a way it wasn’t intended for. Like smashing a window.

  ‘Shit! Shit!’

  Lucy wakes just as the house brick collides with my window. It’s obvious the brick-wielding bloke hasn’t eaten properly for a while, the glass cracks, doesn’t break. Lucy’s fast, I’ll give her that, she has started the ignition before I’ve had a chance to find the gun under the seat. She hits the accelerator in the same instant that the brick connects with the window again, more successfully this time. I’m showered with thousands of tiny glass prisms. The ice and snow hardly make for a quick getaway and the guy is quicker than the car. His gloved hand gets a grip on the window edge. Lucy screams and swerves the car, maybe intentionally to try to throw him off. But the tyres hit a mound of snow and we stop. The guy grabs me by the neck and shoulder and hauls himself halfway in the window. Max is screaming now, too. The grip on my throat doesn’t allow for much from me. I am madly gouging at the guy’s face when I see a hand clamp the back of his neck and a fist smash his nose. Noll is leaning through the gap between the front seats, he punches the guy again. My throat is released and I gulp air. Lucy’s scream has become a screech. The guy goes limp and his bloody face falls on my chest.

  ‘Arrrgh! Arrrgh!’ I’m like a girl with a dead rat. I push his head, his arm and get him out of the window. His body slumps in the snow next to the car.

  I’m covered in blood. Lucy has her hands over her mouth and her eyes closed. In the back, Noll sits eyes wide, labouring to catch his breath. His hands are held up, chest height, shaking, right glove dark with blood. Max is crying. My throat aches from the guy’s grip.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Lucy asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ I manage.

  Noll opens his door, pulls off his gloves and throws them out. Then he leans out and vomits into the snow. Lucy gets out and crouches next to him, giving him a bottle of water. In the back Max is snivelling, furiously wiping at his tears.

  ‘Maximum. I’m okay.’

  He nods.

  ‘You okay?’

  He shakes his head. I smile at him.

  ‘Yeah, you are. You gonna be sick?’

  Another shake of the head.

  ‘Yeah, you are.’

  He opens his door just in time.

  Noll hands Max the water and Lucy gets back in the car.

  ‘Should have used those move
s at school, Noll,’ I say.

  He gives a tight smile.

  Twenty-nine

  We drive and drive. It’s stupidly slow, but there are track marks through the slush and I find that comforting. Then another demountable building by the side of the road. Lucy pulls the car over. I see movement through the window of the demountable. A sign of life. I get out, open the boot of the station wagon and cover the food with blankets. Max opens his door.

  ‘I want you to stay here,’ I say.

  ‘I can handle it!’

  ‘You’re staying here.’

  He rolls his eyes. Noll and Lucy get out of the car and we make our way to the building. Footprints have muddied the snow at the doorway, but there is no sound from behind the closed door. I raise a fist and knock. The three of us wait; Lucy and Noll look as nervous as I feel. At first there is nothing but the sound of our own breathing, then a loud cough and movement, voices. The door opens. A face, skull-like. He peers out at us. Behind him on the floor are bundled shapes which I take to be people.

  ‘No room in here,’ he says. Then he notices Lucy, he looks her up and down in a way which makes me want to hit him. ‘You can come in. We got some food, could have a little trade.’

  I open my mouth to abuse the guy, but Lucy gets there first.

  ‘What did you say?’ She narrows her eyes.

  ‘I’m kidding, I’m kidding.’

  Several others, all men, crowd behind him and peer out the door at us. The three of us back up a bit and I’m already calculating the length of time it will take to run to the car.

  ‘Go back,’ I say to her. She hesitates for a moment and I sense that she’d rather stay and kick the guy in the nuts instead. ‘Please, Luce.’

  ‘I’m not doing that.’

  ‘She can come in ’ere with us, can’t ya gorgeous,’ growls the skull.