by Claire Zorn
‘Yes, sir,’ we reply, almost in unison. ‘Thank you.’
He takes a saucepan from a hook on the wall and goes into the next room.
‘My bathroom has become a fireplace,’ he explains. I stick my head in the doorway to see the vanity sink filled with charcoal and ash. Plumes of black soot coat the tiles and mirror above the vanity. A hole is punched through the plaster ceiling above: an improvised chimney. Effrez takes some small pieces of wood from the bathtub and places them in the sink to light a fire.
‘I suppose you’ve noticed that matches are in short supply these days,’ he says.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I remember reading that we had lost the technology to visit the moon, that if we wanted to go back we’d have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. I suspect the same is true of matches. We are going to have to rediscover how to conjure fire ourselves.’
‘Thank God for Survivor, sir,’ I say.
‘Useful tutorials with people in bikinis building fires,’ says Noll.
‘Ha, yes.’
He makes us coffee and leads us into the cramped sitting room. The three of us sit and sip our drinks.
‘You made it into the city,’ Effrez says gravely.
Noll and I explain the situation out west, how we left with Max and Lucy.
‘We came to try and find my mum,’ I tell Mr Effrez. ‘We thought she would be able to help.’
‘And did you find her?’ he asks.
I don’t reply. Noll explains to Effrez that we had just come from seeing my mother when we met him.
‘She says she can’t do anything for Noll and Lucy.’
‘What are you going to do, Fin?’ Effrez asks.
‘He’s going to get Max and go back to her.’
‘No I’m not, Noll.’
‘You have to, Fin. It’s stupid not to.’
‘I’m not leaving you and Lucy.’
‘And so we come to the moment when I saw you taking out your frustrations on an innocent bicycle,’ Effrez says.
We sit in silence for a few minutes. Noll clears his throat.
‘I didn’t know you lived in the city, sir.’
‘Yes. I used to travel all the way up to your fine school purely for the privilege of working in such beautiful surrounds.’ He smiles. ‘You all took it so much for granted, leaving your Coke cans and chip packets lying all over the place.’
‘Yes, sir. We did . . . Are you here on your own?’
‘It appears so, Arnold. My lovely wife relocated to sunny California with her tennis instructor not long before the missiles. Although I suspect it isn’t quite as sunny now.’ He looks at me. ‘No one has the capacity to disappoint us like our loved ones. Yes. I am on my own, which has made it easier in many ways. This life isn’t sustainable, however. Like your mother told you, Findlay, there will be widespread famine if individuals continue to rely on outside sources for food. Have you considered leaving the city?’
‘Where would we go, sir?’
‘Do you remember in class when I told you about the community that were heading down south, near the Royal National Park? They have set up there. There are lots of feral deer that can be hunted. Place is full of them and they can survive the cold. There’s also mines, deep enough to tap into underground water sources.’
‘Why haven’t you gone with them?’ I ask.
Effrez doesn’t answer straightaway. He turns his mug around in his hands, eyes downcast.
‘My daughter was in Melbourne at university when all this started. She told me she was leaving to come up here. To come home. I was going to take her there with me. She hasn’t arrived. Obviously. I can’t leave here without her.’
The silence that comes is something I am becoming used to, the grief of not knowing. Effrez stands and takes our mugs into the kitchen.
He shakes our hands when we leave, giving us each a pat on the shoulder. And it seems that while our world has tilted and capsized, not everyone is pushing – some are scrambling to make room for others to cling on.
‘Think about what I said,’ he says. ‘Come back and see me either way.’
As Noll and I walk with our one remaining bike back to the car park. I try to think of what to say to Max when he asks if I found our mother.
The gloaming fades to black.
The moment Noll and I come down the tunnel into the car park Max bolts to us.
‘You found her, didn’t you? Didn’t you? You were gone ages – I figured you must have found her. Was she there?’
I stand there looking at him, my mouth trying to make the words.
‘Did you find her?’
‘Yes.’
He leaps up and grabs me around the neck. I gently untangle myself from him.
‘Why aren’t you smiling? Why aren’t you happy?’
Lucy’s eyes meet mine. ‘What happened?’
‘Are we going now?’ asks Max.
‘No.’
‘In the morning?’
‘No. Max, please. Settle down.’
‘Why not? You found her, didn’t you?’
‘Max! Just give me some space.’
He frowns and his lip starts to wobble, but he puffs himself up, fighting it.
‘She . . . she can’t help all of us. She says she can’t help Lucy and Noll.’
‘What? How come?’
‘There’s . . . it’s complicated. She just . . .’
Noll steps in, finding the words I can’t get hold of. ‘There’s limited resources. She can help immediate family and that’s it.’
Lucy drops her gaze to her feet. She takes a few steps away and sits down on the ground, drawing her knees up to her chin.
‘We are not splitting up,’ I say. ‘We are not going to do that . . . We met Mr Effrez, our English teacher—’
‘What?’ Lucy turns around.
‘There’s a community down south, self-sustaining. He thinks we should go down there.’
‘But what about Mum?’ asks Max.
‘I don’t know, Maximum.’
‘I want to see her.’
‘Then I’ll take you in the morning. But Max, she can’t offer you any more than rations and a place to sleep. There’s no future. Even when this passes, there’s going to be famine.’
‘These people in this community,’ says Noll. ‘They’re going to try and sustain themselves away from the system that left us to starve on the other side of the border.’
Max looks at me with his big innocent eyes.
‘But, Mum . . .’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
Thirty-nine
It is late and Max, Matt and Alan are asleep. Noll, Lucy and I sit by the remains of the campfire, cutting plastic bags into strips and winding them into balls.
‘The best thing about going south is it’ll give us something to do,’ says Noll. ‘The worst thing about this is the fact there are no distractions. It’s like being locked in your own head on a permanent basis.’
‘I would have thought . . .’ I hesitate.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What? Come on.’
‘Well, don’t you pray? Doesn’t that help, like, occupy your mind?’
‘Not exactly leading the most prayerful life at the moment.’
‘Why not?’
He smiles sadly. ‘It says in the bible that when Jesus is getting crucified, he looks up to the sky, and . . .’ Noll sighs and I see that there are tears in his eyes. The first I have ever seen, even through all the shit he went through at school, even when he told me his parents were dead and he was all alone, I’ve never seen him cry. ‘He says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”’ Noll tries to laugh. ‘We don’t use words like forsaken any more. Why is that? All I can think now, when I t
ry to pray is, God, why the fuck have you forsaken us? We’re just fucking kids, Christ was Christ, he could take it, but us? Why the fuck would you forsake a bunch of kids? And Fin, you really, really shouldn’t swear at God.’
I swallow hard, feeling the ache of tears behind my own eyes.
‘I think He can take it, Noll.’
His tears start to spill. ‘I don’t want to die. I’m afraid to die. My parents willingly stayed in a place they knew would be destroyed. They waited for their deaths, they didn’t run away to save themselves. Look at me. I stole food from another man and here I am scrambling around in a car park,’ he motions to the twine in his hands, ‘trying to hold onto this world, this screwed-up world.’
‘I don’t think you should feel guilty about being scared,’ says Lucy. ‘You said that God doesn’t want this. Doesn’t that make it okay to be scared?’
Noll keeps talking, I’m not sure if he has even heard her.
‘I really don’t want to die. And, you know, it’s ironic because for ages I did want to. I used to come home from school and scope out places where I could hang myself.’
‘Shit, Noll.’
He laughs a little. ‘Now look at me.’
‘Noll, don’t stop praying,’ I say. ‘Please don’t stop praying for us, Noll. Please.’ Maybe it’s because I’ve just witnessed my mother give up every principle I thought she believed in. I don’t think I can handle Noll caving. I can’t. But the idea that we are the wisest beings in existence is terrifying, like Lucy said. Maybe I’ve developed a faith in God that is second-hand, I need Noll to hang onto it.
‘I’m sorry, Noll. About all the horrible things you went through at school,’ says Lucy.
He smiles. ‘Oh, it’s okay. It made me what I am, gold that’s tested in fire and all that,’ he says glibly. ‘I used to ask God to save me from that as well.’
‘Well, He kind of did,’ I say. ‘Might have been overkill, though.’
‘Yeah, nuclear holocaust wasn’t really what I had in mind.’
‘Noll, I’m serious,’ says Lucy.
‘I know you are. Funny, but sometimes I almost prefer this. At least I’m not alone in this particular version of hell.’
Later I lie beside Lucy and grip her hand.
‘I’m sorry about your mum,’ she says.
‘So am I. I just can’t get my head around the fact that she is part of all this.’
‘Maybe she was just doing what she had to. There really isn’t enough for everyone.’
‘Why not? We kind of created this for ourselves, society, I mean. We created a way of life totally dependent on outside sources: electricity, transport. She’s been researching this for years, this kind of disaster. She would have known that our total way of life was precarious. And what does she do? She buys me an iPhone and moves in with her boyfriend.’
‘Are you saying she should have been teaching you to grow vegetables or something?’
‘I don’t freakin’ know. She should have done something.’
‘Like what, though? Taught you Morse code instead of buying you a phone? She didn’t know this was coming. If anyone said it was going to be a bloody nuclear apocalypse we would have thought they were paranoid or crazy.’
‘Do you remember that last day at school when you asked what Mr Effrez was yelling about in homeroom and Lokey said he was talking about hippies starting a commune?’
‘They’re the same people? In the national park?’
‘Yeah. They knew this was coming. You’re right. We thought they were nuts, we mocked them. Why, do you think?’
She is quiet for a minute, thinking. ‘Because the alternative was terrifying. The thought that this seriously could happen was too frightening to contemplate. It’s like those people out in the ration line complaining about people from over the border taking their share. They have to believe that we’re greedy, ’cause the idea that we were actually left to starve is just too awful.’
We lie in silence for a while. I listen to the sounds of the camp settling around us, as familiar to me now as home.
‘You know, I wouldn’t blame you, if you wanted to go with your mum,’ says Lucy.
‘I’m not leaving you. It would be a truly shit life anyway.’
‘How do you know it will be any better down south in the settlement?’
‘You’ll be with me.’
She nudges me. ‘You’re a total sucker, you know that?’
‘Yeah, I’m aware of that.’
Lucy props her head up on her hand. I gaze at her face in the dying light of the campfire.
‘I love you, you know,’ I whisper.
‘I know.’ She leans over and kisses me.
‘And I know you don’t need me to, but I will try and protect you.’
‘I know.’
In the morning we rise and prepare breakfast like every other morning. Only the mood is more subdued than usual. Max, who usually buoys everyone with inane facts from National Geographic or lame jokes, is silent. He sits beside Noll to eat his breakfast.
Alan doesn’t get up from his bed. I take him some tea. His eyes are closed. I talk to him softly to wake him up, but he doesn’t move.
‘Alan? Al, wake up.’ I touch my fingers to his forehead. It is cold. I sit down on the concrete next to him and feel myself starting to break apart inside. I’m not sure how long I stay there. When Lucy comes over, my face is saturated. She puts her arms around me and my whole body shakes. People come and stand by Alan’s bed and cry. I can’t move. I stay there with him. It’s Noll that comes and pulls the sheet up over his face.
‘We’ll take him away,’ he says. ‘Lucy and I will take him.’
‘No. I’ll come.’
In the night we leave Max with Matt and Rosa at the camp and Noll, Lucy and I carry Alan’s body up the ramp out of the car park. We walk through the streets for what seems like miles. Then we come to the harbour.
To be there in a place that used to be so alive with light and colour and sound, to be there in utter darkness, is the most surreal experience of my entire life. Thick, impenetrable darkness all around, our torch light insignificant against the swallowing black – it feels like being in a wilderness. Even though you can’t see the buildings, you can feel their presence towering over us. And it’s so, so quiet. For almost two centuries this place has been smothered by the noise of people and their stuff: cars, buses, ferries, trains, conversations, music, inane PA announcements about train tickets, sirens, footsteps, buskers, beggars, street sweepers, garbage trucks. All of that has now been silenced. And all that is left is the lapping of water in the harbour. Now we stand at its edge, on the walkway lined with abandoned takeaway food vendors, ice-cream shops, and souvenir shops with smashed windows. If we could see them, the Harbour Bridge would be almost directly in front of us, and the Opera House on our right.
The three of us grip the white sheet that wraps Alan’s body. We know what we have to do, but the act of actually throwing somebody, somebody that you care about, into deep, dark water feels almost impossible. Even when we all know he is long gone already.
‘On three,’ I say. ‘One, two, three.’
We drop Alan’s body into lapping, undulating darkness and I watch the white sheet dance and swirl as he disappears. No-one moves for a long time. We stand and gaze at the water – the rhythmic roll and swell of its surface – and I realise that there is something soothing in the way it still moves the same way as it did before, back when the world was so different.
Forty
Max sits on his bed, plucking lint from the blanket. I sit down beside him.
‘I’ll take you to see Mum.’
He nods, not looking at me.
‘She’s going to want you to stay with her. She won’t want you to come south. You have to do what you want to do, okay? Don’t be pushed into anyt
hing.’
He shrugs.
‘I know it’s hard. I’m sorry it’s turned out this way.’
He looks at me. ‘Do you think Dad is dead?’
‘Dad?’
‘Yeah. Do you think he’s dead?’
‘Honestly?’
‘Yeah.’ He now holds my gaze, unwavering.
‘I think . . . I think if he was still alive he would have found a way to get back to us, at home. I think he might have died trying. Maybe he crashed the car. That’s honestly what I think.’
Max bites his lip.
‘I know that we can’t stay here. And I know that Mum can only help you and me. And even if we did stay with her, what she could do for us is minimal. In the long term . . . I think we’re better off to leave. But it’s up to you, Maximum.’ I try to mask the fault-line in my voice. ‘I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do.’
Max and I have to double on Noll’s bike. I don’t know if it’s because it’s so slow or maybe it’s just because Max is with me, but it feels way more exposed and vulnerable than when I crossed the city with Noll. The only people who are out on the streets are men and their cold stares follow us as we pass. I do have the gun, still. And the possibility of using it doesn’t feel like as much of an abstract concept any more.
When we finally make it there, I leave the bike leaning against the fence in front of Town Hall. The soldier at the gates glares at me like he wants to give us a parking fine.
‘We’re Libby Streeton’s kids,’ I tell him. ‘She’s expecting us.’
The soldier has obviously been told that we would show up because instead of pointing his gun at me he looks us up and down then says something into his two-way radio. He listens to the response and opens the gates, motioning us in with a jerk of his head.
We walk into the busy foyer. My mother rushes over to us, one hand over her mouth. She pulls Max into her arms. He loses it then, sobbing into her shirt.
‘It’s okay, sweetie,’ she says, stroking his hair. ‘You’re safe now. Come with me, both of you.’
