The ceiling fans squeaked and rattled in the silence. Light fell in stripes from the windows in the warehouse roof. A seagull had gotten inside and was perched up in the steel rafters. I thought of how amusing it would be if it suddenly shat on Lovelock’s head, and suddenly – with a hundred serious, expectant faces looking on – I had to bite my tongue to stifle a laugh.
It wasn’t it easy. It had all struck me at once. This was what we were trying to preserve: a rump of democracy, a hundred men and women still playing at being Member for Donger Beach or whatever. MPs whose constituents, whatever slim fraction of them had survived, had no idea that their government was still alive and functioning, because it was all they could do to keep themselves alive and functioning. Politicians whom Tobias and the Governor-General earnestly wanted to convince that we weren’t a threat, little realising that they, themselves, weren’t a threat. That they only held onto what they called “power” because the Governor-General and the Defence chiefs let them. They were like children playing a game – and, like children, we had to placate them when they got upset.
Remember Ira Cole, I thought to myself, as I struggled to contain laughter. Remember what happened to the kids. Remember Andy’s eye. Remember Matt. There are people in this room who were complicit in that.
I met the eye of Lovelock. He was still waiting for me to begin, an inscrutable look on his face.
I didn’t feel like laughing anymore.
“My name is Aaron King,” I said. That seemed a promising start.
“I’m eighteen years old,” I went on. “I was born in Perth. When all of this began I was living there with my dad and my brother Matt. I won’t go into what happened when everything started to get bad – we’ve all got our own stories.” Except actually, I thought, you guys probably don’t. “My dad didn’t make it. Matt and I ended up in a survivor group out on the Nullarbor. It was around then – and as weird as this sounds, I’m not going to avoid it, because I’m sure you already know about it – that I started to have dreams.
“I had dreams about something in the Snowy Mountains. Something lying there waiting for me. I didn’t know what it was or what I would find if I went there, but it was pulling me, and I knew that I had to go. Matt and a few friends of ours were with me, but I doubt we would have made it if we hadn’t been lucky enough to run into Captain Tobias and his SAS team.”
I took a breath. The hundred faces sat there impassively, staring back at me, some at the back whispering to each other.
I thought of Matt sitting on that beach.
“What we found there was more of a shock to me than it would have been to you, or to Captain Tobias,” I said. “You’d seen the satellite photos. You knew – at least some of you knew – that there was an alien spaceship in that valley. And all of you knew that there was something alien and hostile at the crash site in Ballarat.
“You wouldn’t have been able to access that valley if it wasn’t for me and Matt. The Endeavour’s field... I can’t explain it, but it would have pushed any investigators out. That’s why the first chopper you sent crashed.”
“A terrible loss of life,” a bullish-looking man on the front bench said. A few other MPs yelled “Hear, hear!” but others were glaring at him, and the Speaker said, “Order! The Member for North Sydney will conduct himself appropriately while Mr King is speaking.” He looked at me, motioning for me to go on.
“That was an accident,” I said, looking straight at the Member for North Sydney, whose entire electorate was almost certainly dead. “It was an accident and the Endeavour regrets it.”
The MP glared back at me. I wondered if I was doing well or not, and realised I didn’t care. I didn’t care anymore if the Governor-General disbanded this farce.
No. That wasn’t true. He’d been right – the current occupants might be irritating, but we needed to maintain the institution.
What was going on with me? Why was I having so many mood swings lately, so many volatile changes of opinion?
“It was an accident,” I went on, “and since our arrival – and you can talk to Captain Tobias or any of the soldiers we brought up here, or anyone at all in Jagungal – the Endeavour has worked together with us to create a safe place for survivors and to fight against the machines. It’s thanks to the Endeavour that we know this nuke strategy will even work. It’s thanks to the Endeavour that, after we do it, we might get some help and back-up from somewhere else in the universe instead of just waiting for the machines to come back and properly finish what they started.”
I looked out at them again. I couldn’t properly read their feelings; not one. Normally I can, when my emotions are heightened – and they sure as fuck were after that dickhead MP made a smartass comment – but there were too many of them in the room. It was all mixed up.
“Look,” I said. “I’m like the captain. I didn’t ask for any of this. I spent the first half of this year just trying to stay alive. It’s hell out there. If you’re not getting attacked by zombies you’re getting attacked by other people. Other Australians. We had... if we want...” I paused, gathered my thoughts, and went on. “If we want to have anything to salvage on the other side of this we need to work together. I don’t know about you, but ever since we found the Endeavour and pulled this plan together – ever since I realised we had a chance – I’ve been happier than I was when we were sitting out on the Nullarbor. Because all we were doing back there was waiting to die. That’s all any other survivor is doing right now, anywhere in the world – waiting to die.
“This is the human race’s last best hope. This is it. I can understand why the Prime Minister – the former Prime Minister, I mean – I can understand why he felt like he was losing control of the situation, why he was maybe a little bit scared of what was happening down in Jagungal. But all I can ask is that you trust us, and trust the plan we have in place.” And if you don’t like it, too bad, because we’re doing it anyway.
“I’m not a threat. My brother wasn’t a threat either.” Except to himself. Or anyone who got in his way. “I’m an Australian citizen, I’m a human being, and I’m just trying to do the best I can – like thousands of other people around the country and around the world – to end this nightmare that we’ve been living through this year.” Unlike you assholes. “I can’t say it any more plainly than that. I was asked to come here to Christmas Island to show you that I’m just a person, that I’m not alien or dangerous or anything to be frightened of.” I held the edge of the podium with both hands. “But I can’t help but feel that maybe instead of us coming here, some of you should have come to Jagungal. The Prime Minister, for example.”
There was an awkward silence. I wasn’t even sure who the Prime Minister was, but nobody moved to take me up on the offer. The Speaker must have been warned that my speech would be off the cuff, because when I didn’t move to speak again he said, “Mr King, allow me to thank you once again on behalf of the Parliament for travelling to Christmas Island to address the House and the Senate, and again, on behalf of the Parliament and indeed the nation, to express my condolences on the loss of your brother Matthew. Your brother showed tremendous courage and fortitude in New England and in the months following, and while none of us had the pleasure to meet him personally, his service to his country...”
He droned on his empty, ceremonial sentiment for a while longer, and an attendant ushered me towards the wing Tobias had left through, the senators and MPs standing to applaud as I left. I wasn’t really paying attention, but it sounded a bit more lukewarm than Tobias’. I guess it’s easier to applaud the military hero than the frightening alien child.
I was led outside to, surprisingly, a limousine. Captain Tobias was waiting inside on the plush leather seats. The Governor-General was sitting next to him, his walking stick across his knees. “I thought I might as well give you a lift back to your hotel, since I was in the area,” he said.
“A limo?” I said. “Really?”
The Governor-General shrugged. �
�We have enormous fuel stocks, and nowhere near enough preservative to put in them. They’ll go off long before we use them up, so we may as well use as much as we want.”
“I don’t think that’s the most interesting thing to discuss right now,” Tobias said, and turned to me. “You did well, Aaron. Thank you for doing it. I know you didn’t want to.”
“I didn’t think I did well at all,” I said. “One of them seemed pretty pissed off at me. The guy for North Sydney or whatever it was.”
“The new Deputy Prime Minister,” the Governor-General said. “A little big for his britches. Don’t worry, he’s at least easy to read. It’s the others I worry about.”
I let out an irritated snort. “Why? Why do you bother? Do you know what occurred to me up there? That it’s all on them. If they had a shred of self-preservation they’d shut the fuck up and let us do our jobs. They’re only still there because you want them to be. Right? They must realise that, surely?”
“They worry about General McLeod more than me,” the Governor-General said. “A military coup. You’d be surprised how little you actually need to know to get elected; I’m sure many of them don’t realise that the general and myself could seize power entirely legally.”
“Legally,” I said. “That word doesn’t even mean anything anymore.”
“Unless we want it to,” the Governor-General said cryptically.
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t be bothered arguing the point. I didn’t care anymore. I saw what he meant, and I agreed with him, but... this was his provenance. This was his job, and the only thing he had to worry about. I had other shit going on with the nuke attack on the machine base, and with Matt on that goddamn beach. I didn’t want this on my plate as well. I’d done my bit.
“You did fine,” Tobias reassured me. “It wasn’t what you said so much; it was just you being there. They just needed to see you in the flesh.”
We’d arrived back at the hotel. As Tobias and I were getting out of the limo, the Governor-General said, “Remember, captain – the two of you will be meeting the former prime minister tomorrow at ten.”
Shit. I’d forgotten about that. So I haven’t quite done my bit. Not yet.
8.00pm
It wasn’t even noon when we arrived back at the hotel. Tobias was off for another meeting with the Defence chiefs, and half his retinue went with him. Professor Llewellyn was with CSIRO or whoever it is he goes off to see. The rest of us were left at the hotel again, staring out over the ocean.
I was about to go to my room for a nap – maybe to see if I could make my way to Matt again – when a car showed up, courtesy of Tobias or the Governor-General or McLeod or someone, with the intention of taking us on a tour somewhere. That sound sketchy as I write it down, but both Tobias and the Governor-General had mentioned it before; I think more for the soldiers than for me or Jess or Hannah. Letting them blow off steam. That said, only a couple of them took up the offer – Corporal Martin, and a sergeant named Mendelson. Jess and Hannah came as well. They split us up into two cars, and I rode shotgun, with Jess and Hannah in the back.
Our driver was Sergeant Tucker, a laidback man in his fifties with a walnut-brown tan. He was a Christmas Island native – or good enough, since he’d been living here for fifteen years – and I was surprised to find out that he was a police officer rather than a soldier. “But you’re wearing camo,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, shifting gears as the Range Rover left the straight roads of the new city and plunged into the jungle. “But it’s all pretty much the same. They just don’t have the uniforms, I guess. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a cop before all this. I worked at the docks. They drafted us after the government started showing up. No-one fucking invited ‘em, I can tell you that!” He laughed. “But it’s all good. Wharfie, cop, whatever. As long as you get paid.”
“You get paid?”
“Well, not exactly. I mean, not money. We don’t use it anymore. Rations coupons and stuff like that. I ‘spect you haven’t been using that kind of thing yourself.”
“Nah. They’ve been feeding us.”
“Yeah. Fish, fish, and more fucking fish. Still. I shouldn’t complain. I know you’ve been on the mainland, I hear it’s pretty bad there.”
He was a nice guy, but he had a lackadaisical drawl; a way of saying “I hear it’s pretty bad there” which was just lip service, which dismissed everything the three of us had gone through. I glanced in the rear-view mirror to see Jess and Hannah’s expressions, but they were looking out the windows at the jungle rushing past.
A few minutes later Tucker slammed the brakes on and the Range Rover skidded to a halt on the sandy track. My adrenaline flared and I reached for my Glock. “Check this out!” Tucker said, pushing his door open. “You’ll love this.”
Feeling irritated, I got out of the car and followed him; Jess and Hannah came out as well. The Range Rover behind us with Martin and Mendelson in it pulled up short and honked, but Tucker waved at the car and said “Hang on a sec, Andy!” He led us to the edge of the track where a huge red crab was scuttling under a fallen palm branch, trying to conceal itself. Tucker lifted the branch up and pinned the crab down with a stick.
“See that?” he said. “Christmas Island red crab. Used to be millions of them. Literally millions. They’d migrate down into the ocean for breeding season every year and you wouldn’t be able to drive down this track without killing thousands of ‘em. Just thick on the ground.”
“What happened to them?” Jess asked.
“What do you think?” Tucker said. “They’re good eating.” He lifted the stick up and brought it down hard, killing the crab with one blow, taking it back into the car with him.
And with that we kept on south. Tucker and the other cops were taking us to Dolly Beach, on the south-east prong of the island. Christmas Island is almost entirely ringed by steep cliffs, and while there’s a bit of sandy beach at the Settlement – I guess why they founded it there – it’s pretty gross and polluted. Tucker promised us, as a local, a beach worth the half hour drive.
And it was. It involved a steep set of stairs carved into the cliffside, and a steep metal stairway with a rope handhold, but soon we were all standing down on a slice of beach between two cliffs, the waves washing peacefully on the shore – me, Jess, Hannah, Corporal Martin and Sergeant Mendelson, and Tucker and three other cops.
“I got some masks if you want to go snorkelling,” Tucker said, rummaging around in his bag. “There’s some corals off the point that haven’t been bleached yet, worth having a look at.”
I took him up on it, but the swell was up and the water was full of billowing sand. Soon I was content to just float on my back near the shore.
I’d been floating like that for a few minutes when Jess came up underneath me and freaked me out. I spluttered and splashed while she laughed at me, standing in chest-deep water. “That’s not cool,” I said.
“What’d you think I was?” she grinned. “A shark or a zombie?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I don’t like surprises.”
I’d gone back to floating on my back, but lifting my head above the water, above the waves that kept rolling in to shore. I glanced back up at the beach. Hannah was talking to Sergeant Mendelson, while Corporal Martin and Sergeant Tucker were walking through the rockpools at the base of the western cliff – looking for more crabs maybe. The other three cops were sitting along the beach, cradling sub-machineguns and smoking cigarettes. One of them saw me looking at him, and stared back impassively, exhaling smoke and tapping ash into the sand.
My Glock was sitting in the pile of clothes I’d left alongside my towel on the beach. Just like I’d leave my keys or my wallet in the heel of my shoes on the beach back in Perth.
Jess had started floating on her back alongside me. “Do you think zombies could walk underwater?”
“I know they can,” I said. “One of them came ashore when we were at Eucla.”
“My sister E
rica always wanted to take the boat down the river and out into the ocean to find an island,” she said. “Dad said it was stupid because the boat wasn’t built for the sea and we’d get sunk in the first storm, but she said we just had to find the closest island we could and we’d be set. But I never really believed that. Because... well, yeah. They can just walk underwater, right?”
“They’d have a hard time getting all the way here from Australia,” I said. I remembered that Indonesia was closer, but even then, it was a long fucking way. Probably all kinds of trenches and fissures and stuff on the seabed, too.
“Yeah,” she said. “You’d have to be pretty close to the shore.”
I suddenly wondered how close Reeve Island was to the shores of South Australia. Not even 30 kilometres, if memory served. I glanced back up at the beach again. Hannah was still talking to Mendelson, laughing at his jokes; the cops were still sitting there, bored.
“I thought you did good in Parliament,” Jess said.
“You did?”
“For what it was,” she said. “God, I couldn’t do that. It was bad enough going to see the Defence chiefs yesterday, and there’s only four of them. There were like a hundred people in Parliament.”
I thought of that warehouse – the seagulls on the roof, the guards at the barbed wire fences of the port, the shitty wooden bleachers serving as a crude facsimile of the real House of Representatives. “I don’t know,” I said. “It doesn’t really man anything. It’s not the real world. So who cares?”
Jess didn’t say anything. I was floating on my back with my head lifted, looking out across the sea at the Navy frigate rolling at anchor five kilometres out, and the faint ring of refugee boats beyond that.
“I mean, we both went up there and gave our little speeches about the attack on Jagungal because there was nothing else to talk about,” I said. “And it was pathetic. They know the Governor-General can take them apart whenever he wants but they pretend they don’t know because they want to pretend they still have power. But they had one trump card and they played it. And now we’re up here trying to convince them to play nice because we want to try to keep a civilian government through all this, and... arrrghh!”
End Times Box Set [Books 1-6] Page 176
