End Times Box Set [Books 1-6]

by Carrow, Shane

  I stood up and looked around. The beach stretched off in both directions forever. I turned around, climbed up the sand dunes behind us, clawing my way through scrubby saltbush, and when I reached the top I could see for miles inland. There was nothing out there but a great wasteland, dotted with scrappy dead trees and desert scrub. Like looking north from Eucla. Nothing stirred; no birds, no animals, not even any wind. The air felt still and dead.

  I turned back down to look at the beach, and for a moment I thought Matt might have disappeared, but he was still there. I came and knelt beside him again, talking to him, trying to grab his attention. He didn’t pay me any mind – just kept staring down at the sand and muttering to himself. I started shouting, grabbing him by the shoulders, trying to shake him into lucidity. But he didn’t respond. It was like he wasn’t even there.

  The dream ended when I was shaken awake myself. It was Jess, leaning over my seat, one wisp of red hair dangling over her face. “Aaron!” she whispered. “Wake up!”

  I blinked, breathing heavily. I’d gone from looking at Matt’s withdrawn, ghostly face to looking at her concerned and lively one, peering down at me. ‘What happened?” I asked stupidly.

  “You looked like you were having a nightmare,” she said.

  I sat up a little in my reclined seat and glanced at my watch. It was 1:20am, eastern time. We’d be landing in Carnarvon in another hour or so. The cabin lights had been dimmed and the others were all asleep. Thank God I hadn’t been screaming out Matt’s name like I had in the dream.

  “Dream,” I said. “Yeah. Just a dream.”

  “What was it about?” she asked.

  “I don’t really want to talk about it,” I said.

  She shrugged, and went back to her seat, saying, “You’re welcome.”

  I wasn’t sure whether to thank her or not. Wasn’t sure whether I wanted to be there or not, on that unreal beach with my dead brother.

  Every other weird dream I’ve had has been… recognisable, at least. It’s been a memory or a premonition, even if it was one of Matt’s memories instead of one of mine. But that? What the fuck was that?

  I can’t get back to sleep. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m sitting here five thousand metres above the earth in a plane on the way to Christmas Island, listening to the drone of the engines and the wind rushing over the fuselage, and all I can think about is that weird and non-existent place I was in my head just now.

  We’ll be landing soon.

  10.30pm

  I didn’t sleep for the rest of the flight. I tried to – not because I was tired, but because I hoped I could get back to that forlorn little beach where Matt was sitting. It was no good. I was too wired.

  Tobias said Carnarvon Airport had been a tiny civilian airfield, back in the day, but since the fall it had been secured by the RAAF as a strategic asset. It actually lay directly east of the town, which was sort of on a peninsula with the Gascyone River to the north, and they’d been able to build up a few barricades and extend the airport fence and effectively seal Carnarvon off from the mainland – which was surrounded by hundreds of kilometres of desert in any case. Once they’d cleared the town itself, which had only had a population of a few thousand, they had a handy little survivor stronghold, and over the past six months they’d attracted nearly a thousand refugees from up and down the coast.

  Or so Tobias said, anyway. The refuel only took half an hour and we didn’t get off the plane. I could see the workers in the floodlights outside, backing the trucks up and sticking the hoses into the tanks under the wings, but that was it.

  I’d thought I might feel something, something strange or maybe comforting, being back in Western Australia after what feels like so long. The last time I’d set foot in my home state had been as we scrambled into the boats the night Eucla was attacked, fleeing to the Regina Maersk, Sergeant Varley staying behind on the beach and screaming at us to go. But staring out the window at those RAAF men fuelling up the plane, and the dark night beyond the glare of the floodlights, we may as well have been anywhere in Australia. And Carnarvon was a world away from the WA I knew. Until now I’d never been further north than Lancelin.

  Thirty minutes later we were back in the air, on the way to Christmas Island.

  It was another two and a half hours of flying time. Everybody else went back to sleep, but I couldn’t. I kept thinking about Matt. It sounds stupid – I don’t even want to write it down – but that beach he’d been sitting on was something more than a dream. I was staring out the window at the darkness below for two and a half hours and not one minute went by that I wasn’t imagining myself back on that beach.

  The sky started turning brighter as we drew closer to Christmas Island, and as we descended for the final approach the sun was peeking above the eastern horizon. All of us had our faces pressed against the windows as the plane banked and circled to approach the island’s airport.

  From above, at first, it looked like paradise. I’d been in the mountains for so long I’d forgotten there was any other kind of landscape but snow gums and alpine grass and endless contours in the earth – beautiful in its own way, but cold and harsh, even in summer. Christmas Island was a jewel set in a tropical sea. From the air we could see beneath the ocean, the fringe of vibrant coral reefs surrounding the shoreline, the aquamarine waves...

  As we descended lower, things changed a little. You could see the ring of hundreds of refugee ships clustered around the island, kept at a mandated distance by the dozens of equally-spaced Navy vessels keeping a watchful eye on them. I remembered Corporal Rahvi describing it as a wall, and he wasn’t far off.

  I’d read up a bit on Christmas Island back in Jagungal, but they were old sources, describing an old situation. Last year it was a sleepy, isolated island with a population of a few thousand people, notable only for a detention centre where the government used to put refugees – old-school refugees, boat people, fleeing Afghanistan or Iran or whatever via the people smuggling routes of Indonesia. Back in the days before everyone in the world became a refugee. Back then the island had been almost entirely rainforest, most of which was national park.

  It was shaped like a three-pronged boomerang. The entire north-east prong was now covered in what could fairly be called a city, the rainforest bulldozed and replaced with refugee camps and hastily-constructed buildings. The streets were unpaved and the buildings were mostly timber. The airport had tripled in size from what it had looked to be on my old map, most of the runways looking clean and fresh, tarmac poured down mere months ago. And from the activity at the south end of the nameless “city,” it looked like they were still busy levelling the rainforest and expanding. As though it would one day grow to fill the entire island.

  “What are they building for?” I asked. “I thought they weren’t letting refugees in? That’s why all the boats are out there?”

  “Depends where they’re from,” Tobias said, “and whether they’re useful or not.”

  I wondered how many of the people sitting on those boats out there were Indonesian. Christmas Island is something like 1500 kilometres from the Australian mainland, but a mere 300 kilometres from Java’s teeming millions. Things had been bad in Australia, an entire continent with open deserts and plains to escape into; imagine having to live through the fall on one of the most heavily populated islands in the world. Imagine what Java must look like now.

  “They could overwhelm the island,” I said. “Surely? Back at the beginning? There would have been thousands and thousands of them. Weren’t you here, back in January?”

  “Yes,” he said. “The Navy had to open fire on them more than once. It wasn’t... pleasant, but there was nothing else we could do. It wasn’t just the Indonesians, it was Australian civilians with boats, from pretty much anywhere in WA or the Northern Territory. Everyone knew the government had gone here and they figured that meant it was safe. Most of them have learned to go elsewhere now, back to the mainland. All those boats you see there, that’s no
thing compared to what it was like back at the beginning of the year.” He stared out the window. “No. It wasn’t pleasant.”

  I wondered how many sunken boats there must be in a ring on the seabed around the island. How many people had come so far over the ocean only to die right there.

  We buckled our seatbelts as the plane came in to land on the runway. I had a sick feeling in my stomach. Already I disliked this place.

  The plane pulled up not far from the small terminal, while the crew went about the typical safety checks before opening the door in a burst of tropical morning sunlight. I grabbed my bag, checked that my Glock holster was strapped on properly, and filed out of the cabin with the others. As soon as we left the air-conditioned plane and stepped out onto the stairs, the heat and humidity hit me. “Whoa,” I said. “Jesus.”

  “You get used to it,” Tobias said, nudging me in the back to keep me walking down the stairs.

  I couldn’t imagine that. I’d never been to the tropics before, but it stirred a childhood memory of the butterfly house at Perth Zoo – stifling, cloying humidity. Not even that hot, really. It just felt like the air itself was wet. My back and my armpits had already started sweating.

  There was a platoon of soldiers standing nearby, who saluted as we came down the stairs, and three middle-aged men waiting to greet us. (Actually there were a number of men, but something about those three indicated they were important, and the rest were staffers or assistants.) The sun was only just now beginning to peek over the roof of the airport terminal. Over the sound of the plane’s engines powering down I could hear the shrill noise of birds and insects in the dawn chorus, in the jungle on the other side of the airport fence.

  One of the men was wearing full military dress uniform, and Tobias saluted him. The other soldiers we’d brought with us from Jagungal snapped into formation and stood at attention, a mirror to the platoon behind our greeters. Jess, Hannah, Professor Llewellyn and myself hung about awkwardly at the foot of the stairs.

  “Captain Tobias,” the military man said, “Welcome back to Christmas Island. I don’t believe you’ve met the Secretary of Defence, Damian Lincoln?” Tobias and Lincoln shook hands. “And the Acting Minister for Defence, Stephen Lovelock.”

  Lovelock was a short man in his forties, wearing a crumpled black suit and blue tie, despite the heat. He stepped forward to shake the captain’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Captain. You’ve done an immense amount of good for this country. For the human race, in fact. I must present the Acting Prime Minister’s apologies for not being able to greet you in person today, but please let me pass on his assurances that no member of the present government in any way supported the Prime Minister’s vicious and unfounded attack on the base at Jagungal. There will be consequences, I can assure you of that, and...”

  “But there have been no trials yet?” Tobias said.

  “Well, it was a recent turn of events, and...”

  “It was a month ago.”

  Lovelock looked flustered. “There will be a full and independent inquiry, I can assure you of that, and let me present my assurances on behalf of the government – of the entire parliament, in fact – that nothing like that will ever happen again. The Prime Minister and select members of his cabinet – all of whom have been arrested – acted secretly and in conjunction with surviving intelligence assets in Canberra. It was not in any way an attack on you by the government itself, or by the either party of the coalition...”

  “We can discuss this later,” Tobias said. “In any case, this is Aaron King.”

  The minister regarded me for a moment, then extended his hand. I hesitated before shaking it – something about his eyes, the way he looked me up and down, sizing me up. “An great pleasure to meet you, Aaron,” he said. “My deepest apologies and sympathies to you as well, of course. And I was very saddened to hear of your brother’s passing. A terrible loss to the country.”

  I didn’t say anything. His words were meaningless. He spoke like a politician – because he was one, I suppose. He gabbled on a bit longer before we were led to the vehicles waiting to take us to our accommodation. I rode in the front seat of a Range Rover – back in the blessed relief of air-conditioning – with a quiet young private driving. Tobias and the military man – whom, I had learned, was General McLeod, the Chief of the Defence Force – sat in the back.

  “Permission to speak freely, sir?” Tobias asked, as soon as the doors were shut and we began driving.

  “I think you’ve earned that, Jon,” General McLeod said drily.

  “Who made that fucking galah the Defence Minister?” Tobias said. “Jesus, out of everybody they could have picked!”

  McLeod sighed. He was well into his sixties, and embodied a sort of weariness that I wasn’t surprised to find in a man with an even more difficult job than Tobias. “The caucus room selected him. We had no input. You know how it works.”

  “I know how it used to work,” Tobias said. “I would’ve thought things might have been shaken up a little bit by, you know, the end of the world as we knew it. Christ, James, don’t tell me you believe him? That he had no part in things?”

  “I don’t know,” McLeod said. “I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to know. The important question is whether he’s telling the truth when he says it won’t happen again.”

  “It can’t happen again,” Tobias said. “We killed the only players they had in the game.”

  “That we know of,” McLeod said.

  This island was already giving me a headache. Lovelock had annoyed me, but it was a passing irritant. As we drove through the fresh streets of Christmas Island, past chain-link fencing and labour camps and fresh army recruits doing drills in the yards of brand-new barracks, my mind was already drifting back to that overcast beach where Matt was sitting and waiting. Waiting for what?

  It was only a ten minute drive to where we were staying, a place called the Sunset Hotel. Christmas Island no longer had much use for hotels, but a pre-existing three-star hotel was a valuable commodity on an island where most beds were now hammocks or sleeping mats in hastily built refugee centres. They’d been using it to house civil service staff; I wondered who’d been turfed out of their rooms to make way for our entourage. It was in Flying Fish Cove, in the heart of the island’s original small village settlement, right on the beach with magnificent ocean views. No doubt it would have been a nice place for a holiday, once, before the ocean views were marred with a flotilla of refugee vessels and the beach was strewn with rubbish washed ashore from them.

  I was sharing a room with Professor Llewellyn. I tossed my bag on the bed and – out of habit – turned the TV on, like anyone would arriving in a hotel or motel in a new place. I was honestly surprised to see that it was actually receiving broadcasts. There were only three channels. The first was some kind of government public service announcement loop, which at that moment was running through basic first aid. It was interrupted periodically with ads – or announcements, really – reminding people of the rules. All weapons must be registered, anyone over the age of 60 or with a history of heart problems or high blood pressure must sleep in a locked room, anyone seen coming ashore from the refugee ring must be reported etc. There was an ad entirely in a foreign language – Indonesian, I guess – which I gathered from the footage was a warning against trying to come ashore on the island. Maybe some of those boats have TVs onboard.

  The second channel was a news station, with the ABC logo in the bottom corner. It gave me a shifting sense of deja vu to watch myself stepping out of the plane at the airport. I hadn’t noticed any cameras there, but I’d been focused on the men meeting us. “...to speak with the new cabinet and the Governor-General about the former prime minister’s attempted attack on Jagungal,” the newsreader was saying. The set was very basic; weirdly, it just made it look old, like a tape of a news broadcast from the ‘80s or ‘90s, before they had any fancy graphics. “The party includes both Captain Jonathan Tobias, the ranking military of
ficer at the site, and Aaron King, the surviving member of the King twins...”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said. “Seriously? People know who we are?”

  Professor Llewellyn was threading a shirt onto a coat hanger. “From what I’ve heard. It’s weird for me as well. When I left, the Endeavour was a state secret.”

  I turned back to the TV. The story about our arrival was over, and the newsreader had moved onto something about health authorities advising people to cover up against mosquitoes given a spike in dengue fever. I changed the channel. The third and final one was playing a TV show – an old episode of The Bill, by the look of it.

  “Huh,” the professor said. “They only had two channels when I was here.”

  “Good to see they’ve got their priorities in order,” I said, and turned the TV off.

  I wandered out to see what was supposed to happen now. General McLeod was the only member of the welcoming party who’d come to the hotel with us; the secretary and the minister had gone back to whatever it was they did all day. Just a ceremonial thing, I guess. In any case, McLeod was speaking to Tobias privately. I wandered out onto the balcony and noted that the platoon that had welcomed us at the airport was arrayed in various positions around the hotel’s gardens and car park. Were we actually in any danger? Or were we just high profile figures here, with armed guards being a standard precaution?

  Tobias and McLeod soon emerged from his room, and McLeod got back in his chauffeured Range Rover. “So what now?” I asked Tobias.

  “We wait,” he said. “The Governor-General is coming to visit us this afternoon. He’s very keen on meeting you. Parliament is sitting tomorrow and we’ll both be addressing it, so you might want to think about what you’re going to say.”