Skyquakers

by Conway, A. J.

  ‘Wait!’ Ned cried, holding up his hands. ‘My name is—’

  ‘Leave!’ the ranger cried. ‘Get out of here!’

  Ned noticed behind the ranger a small girl in overalls, only six or seven, watching from the staircase inside.

  ‘Please,’ Ned whimpered, ‘I’ve been alone for weeks. I just—’

  The ranger cocked his gun and narrowed his aim. Ned began to sweat.

  ‘Please, I’m only trying to—’

  ‘You think I’m an idiot, huh?’ the ranger spat. ‘You think I don’t know a fucking Suit when I see one?’

  ‘Suit? No, my name is—’

  ‘You’ve got until the count of three, you little shit.’

  ‘Please!’

  The ranger placed his nose to his gun and looked down the barrel. ‘One…’

  ‘I’m going!’ Ned cried. He shut the gate and walked backwards, slowly and gently. The ranger kept his eye on him the whole time, his barrel following him as he went back down the dirt path, back onto the bushes where he came from.

  Ned, once out of reach of the crazed park ranger, watched from between the trees as that little light went out and all the curtains were hastily closed again. They were scared, scared like him, but why point a gun at what may have been the first fellow survivor they’d seen in a month? What did they think he was? An escaped criminal? A Quaker?

  He carried on eastwards with the setting sun behind him, crossing the last of the wetlands. A storm appeared. It hovered west, directly over the ranger’s cabin, and swirled in the sky menacingly above it. The cabin was then beamed, and little glittery specks, once the ranger and the little girl, went up into the sky to join the others.

  JACKRABBIT

  He built a fire by a small creek, a few kilometres from the ranger’s cabin. He huddled close to the flames, keeping warm, and jimmied open a can of beans, corn, and tuna. The resulting mixture had the consistency of dog food but it contained all the goodness he needed, and when washed down with another half of a Mars bar, it was not that bad a meal. He sat on the rough dirt and ate with the sound of Lonely Lily in his ears and with a vigilant eye on the sky. The storm was moving on, still yet to spot him. It made thunder noises, as usual.

  Suits, he thought again. The only thing he could even remotely relate to the ranger’s rants was that human he saw walking about with the Skyquakers in Wyndham, dressed in a fancy suit and tie. Was that who he was afraid of? Was that little person, assisting the Quakers in their work, some sort of slave to them? Or a helper? A spy? Ned, therefore, was not the first human the ranger and his daughter had come across since the storm, and whatever encounter he had had with this ‘Suit’ thereon left him untrusting of anyone who crossed his path, humanoid or otherwise. Or maybe Ned simply attracted bad luck, and anyone who met him was ultimately doomed.

  It was during that meal, and Lonely Lily’s playing of ‘Yesterday’ by the Beatles, that Ned heard footsteps up ahead, crunching sticks along the ground. He leapt up. He seized his knife and his torch. He saw a shadow coming towards him through the bushes and his heart began to race. He switched off the radio and heard it clearly now: one pair of feet, stomping along steadily, following the goat track across the wetlands which led directly towards him. When at last the shadow stepped into Ned’s light, it halted. It was an Aboriginal man, late forties, dressed in a shabby blue flannelette shirt, stained white singlet, half untucked, and old jeans. His dark hair was messy and his bristled chin was unkempt. He had no pack with him, just a walking stick and a belt of items. His boots were covered in red dust.

  Ned did not know what to say. For a while, neither did the man.

  ‘Hey,’ he said.

  ‘Hey,’ Ned said.

  The man, curious, waddled towards him. Ned stood his ground, held his knife in a fighting stance, eyes locked. The man walked casually, lazily, leaping down to the bank of the creek to admire his campsite. He observed Ned for a while, looked him up and down, checked out his little setup by the fire. Ned began to shake.

  The man said, ‘Mai, you look silly like that. Stop it.’

  Ned was hesitant. The man chuckled. It made Ned lower his arm a little.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Ned.’ He swallowed. ‘My name is Ned.’

  The man nodded. He looked down at the campsite again, particularly at the food cans scattered around.

  ‘You got a feed, mai?’

  Ned, reluctantly, gave the man a can of tuna and let him sit with him by the fire. They sat opposite each other, enjoying the warmth of the flames, slapping at mosquitos on their arms. The mysterious stranger ate like a pig, scoffed down the food as fast as he could and sucked the can dry of every last salty drop. Ned could not help but to stare at him, not because anything about his appearance was unusual, but because he had not sat and had dinner with another person in almost a month.

  Once he was done, the stranger introduced himself as Jackrabbit. He asked where Ned was going.

  ‘The Kununurra. I’m heading across to Ivanhoe.’

  Jackrabbit looked at him and laughed through his yellow teeth. ‘You, mai? You as scrawny as nothin’. You wanna dun get ’cross the ’Nunurra? The sand? The salt?’

  ‘I need to get to Ivanhoe.’

  ‘Ain’t nothing in Ivanhoe,’ said Jackrabbit.

  Ned sat forward. ‘Is that where you came from?’

  ‘I came from the Never Never…’ he said, still chewing, ‘passed by Willeroo, Timber Creek, over the border and through the ’Nunurra.’

  In other words, he had trekked half the country and the reason why was obvious: to find people, any people. During the storm, Jackrabbit had been sleeping under a tree, somewhat unconscious, when everyone was beamed up. He woke to find himself alone, so he packed up and left, without a second thought. He wasn’t looking for anyone or anything in particular; he was quite a secluded soul, even before the storm, so being alone in the rough was not new to him. He passed towns here and there, stole rum from the abandoned bars, slept in a good bed once in a while, but then he moved on to the next, lacking any sentimental feelings towards any place, or any object, which passed him by.

  Ned asked cautiously, ‘And Ivanhoe?’

  ‘A dusty load of shit.’

  He collapsed into his hands. ‘No, no, no… there has to be someone. There has to be a place, a town, or some emergency bunker, where people—’

  ‘Ain’t no people no more,’ said Jackrabbit. ‘Just them Walkers.’

  Ned lifted his head. ‘You’ve seen them too?’

  ‘Making their houses, yeah.’

  Ned asked him more questions, as many as he could think of, but the Skyquakers were quite elusive. They operated only in pairs or threes, usually overlooking the construction of their big warehouses or occasionally examining a nearby town which they had formally cleared. With their faces and bodies obscured by those astronaut suits, Jackrabbit had as much to tell of them as Ned did, but Jackrabbit had far more assumptions about their arrival and their purpose here.

  ‘Land, of course.’

  ‘They want land?’

  ‘They didn’t blow up the place, did they? They dun’t drop bombs or torch us all. Nah, they needed everything nice and neat. They dun’t beam down them warehouses near cities, neither: they do it in paddocks, near rivers, in the middle of nowheres. They’re already setting up farms.’

  ‘Farms?’

  ‘Yeah, crops and stuff. I’ve seen some of what they growin’. Looks a lot like corn and wheat. Them animals though, they’re something new, ey?’

  Each had an experience to share: for Ned, it was the Loch Ness crocodile in Parry’s Lagoon; for Jackrabbit, it was a sheep-cross-cow mammal he had seen grazing in a fenced off paddock, which the Quakers had set up in the Never Never. A thousand of the bastards, he swore there were, grazing on the grass as usual, with fluffy white or grey coats, some with horns, some spotted, each with added ‘alien’ body parts which he could not quite explain. He had hunted a few at night
, stolen one for a slab of meat. Tasted just like lamb; nothing different.

  ‘They took the sheep,’ he said, ‘and now they’re bringin’ them back.’

  Ned somewhat understood what Jackrabbit was getting at. ‘You think they have all the animals up there, up in the sky? And they’re altering them, then sending them back down? What for?’

  ‘I ’unno, mai! To integrate with us, or something like that, maybe? Like half-halfs.’

  ‘Hybrid alien animals?’

  ‘Yeah, ’unno.’

  An immediate thought followed: ‘What do you think they’re doing to all the people, then?’

  Jackrabbit didn’t comment. He then said, ‘You ain’t going across the Kununurra.’

  ‘Yes, I am. And if there’s no one there, I’m going to Darwin.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  Ned revealed his pocket radio, which he protected like a gem. ‘There’s a girl there. She’s on the radio. I listen to her every night.’

  ‘How she got power to do that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Ain’t seen no one for nearly a month, no power neither, and so you think there’s really a girlie up there, sending out SOS signals, waiting for you to come and rescue her?’

  Ned withdrew his radio and hugged it insecurely. He did not like reality smearing all over his dreams.

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘You gotta be careful, mai. Sheep ain’t sheep no more, crocs ain’t crocs. Girls ain’t girls neither.’

  ‘But she’s a survivor like you and me! She’s waiting to be found!’

  But Jackrabbit was not convinced. ‘Nah, mai. Ain’t nothing. There are tricksters ’round here now. You gotta be careful who you meet.’

  ‘Tricksters?’ He thought back to the ranger’s cabin. ‘Suits.’

  Jackrabbit nodded. ‘I ’unno if they’ve been around your part yet, but they sure as hell been around mine.’

  ‘What are Suits?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nah, ’nuff of that. I’m gonna take a piss.’ And he got up and stumbled through the dark to some far-off bushes.

  He didn’t listen to Lonely Lily that night, not in front of Jackrabbit; he felt silly now, thinking a voice on a radio could be his friend, but he couldn’t understand Jackrabbit’s scepticism. Why would he think Lily was tricking him? What else could she possibly be, other than a stranded girl in a cubicle, attempting to reach out to the vacant world with musical smoke signals? Perhaps she was the sweet scent of a poisonous flower, and at the other end of these radio waves was a trap, drawing any last humans which the beams may have missed towards some sort of simulation of a damsel in distress. It would be an incredibly smart ploy, but Ned refused to believe someone who sounded so beautiful and had given him so many weeks of comfort could be anything less than the girl of his dreams, whose face he simply imagined out of thin air, like some sort of fractured image of all his former crushes and lovers moulded together.

  He slept by the fire, hugging Lonely Lily. Beside him, Jackrabbit snored with his head against the trunk of a tree, a wide-brimmed hat pulled over his face. He was fast asleep, without a care in the world. Meanwhile, Ned was awake nearly all night.

  A boot kicked him and said, ‘Oi, mai!’

  Ned rolled over and squinted from the orange glow of the newly rising sun seeping through the trees. Jackrabbit stood over him, grinning. ‘Got something to show ya.’

  Ned left his campsite and followed the man through the dense shrub. The creek went by them softly, lapping over rocks and weaving through the shrubbery. They came across a flock of birds which, to Ned, sort of looked like ibises. They had very long, curved beaks, black coloured feathers with a little bit of white on their underbellies. They were standing in the shallows of the gentle creek, drinking and cleaning themselves. When they spread their wings, flapped them or rustled them, Ned and Jackrabbit saw the added features: bat-like wings were mounted onto their bodies, made of rubbery, membrane-like skin which joined each bone, and sharp hooks curled at the ends. They looked like feathered pterodactyls, miniature versions.

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  On the way back to the campsite, Jackrabbit collected berries for Ned and gave him advice on what to eat and what to avoid when it came to Top End bush tucker. The berries were very bitter to taste, but they were the freshest fruit he had eaten in months. Jackrabbit had eaten nearly everything which grew, flew, slithered, swam and hopped around these parts. He struggled now to find as much, since most of the birds, reptiles and marsupials were gone and were gradually being ‘replaced’, for lack of a better word. Not everything had been beamed, Ned was told: all the fish were still about, all the insects, all the plants and fungi and moss, and a few of the smaller lizards and frogs. As for the ‘returning’ species, they were arriving in drips and drabs, so Jackrabbit was not sure about all the new critters out there.

  Ned washed himself in the creek, soaking his armpits and hair, and then proceeded to pack up his things.

  Jackrabbit watched him pack. He sighed and repeated to him, ‘You ain’t going to Ivanhoe.’

  ‘I told you, I am.’

  ‘You die, mai.’

  ‘I’m going to find people.’

  ‘I know where people are.’

  Ned looked up. ‘What? Where?’

  ‘Not in Ivanhoe.’

  ‘You told me last night there was no one—’

  ‘I know a place where some folks are setting up, south of the ’Nunurra. Called Zebra Rock.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘A dozen,’ he guessed lazily.

  Ned stared. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  But he only shrugged. He said it was about three and a half day’s walk from here.

  Ned stood up and calculated things. ‘I won’t have enough to get me there, especially not for two.’

  ‘For two?’

  ‘You’re coming with me, aren’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please! You can get me across the desert. You’ve done it before! You know where people are! Take me there, and then you can go on your way. I won’t make it there on my own!’

  ‘Come on, mai…’

  ‘Please! Please! What else am I meant to do? I’ve been living in a goddamned fridge for nearly a month!’

  Jackrabbit gave a loud, extended moan, as though it was a horrible inconvenience to him and his aimless travels. Finally he grumbled and cursed something under his breath, which Ned took as a yes. The wanderer took his hat and his stick and started walking back the way he came. Ned hoisted his pack onto his shoulders and eagerly followed.

  KUNUNURRA

  Hell began here.

  The flat, salty crust of the Earth, scarred by the sun, stretched before him, from north to south, and endlessly east. The hard earth of the Kununurra was impenetrable and strained his swollen ankles, and the dried-up creeks burned scars across the dead terrain. All colour save for blood-orange had been sucked from this place, all life abandoning it, leaving nothing worth governing over, even before the abduction. The sharp peaks of red cliffs jutted from the sand like the molars of some subterranean beast, and what little vegetation there was looked villainous, prickly and twig-like, sustaining nothing but themselves in this constant drought. To stand at the desert’s brim was like staring into a sinking pit of quicksand from which very few were expected to emerge alive. There stood Ned. No signs, no tracks, no shade, and definitely no water: the 30-kilometre hike was going to be painful, but at least there was now something tangible to reach on the other side.

  They walked for hours, due east. Jackrabbit wasn’t very chatty. Ned was reluctant to ask too many questions; he could tell by the man’s body language as he laboured through the dirt that he was not in the mood. He was interesting though, mysterious, complex. There were a lot of scars on his arms and neck; long scratches, some that looked as though they may have been knife wounds, stitched up long ago. They did not have much to talk about
anyway. They were strangers, one on a mission, the other a nomad. Jackrabbit used his long stick to walk across the dry, cracked earth, drawing a dotted line for Ned to follow. They journeyed in silence.

  At the stroke of midday, Ned collapsed to his knees under the heat and the strain of his weight. Jackrabbit turned around to see how exhausted his sweat-lathered body was. He let him take a break, although without shade, and with nothing but warm water and small morsels of food, it did not provide much relief from the agony of the Kununurra. He looked to his wrist-bound pedometer and was shattered to see how little they had come. Jackrabbit said he was walking too slowly. He blamed his oversized pack. Ned refused to dump it, knowing it contained too many vital things, but the one thing they were both lacking was food and water. There was not enough for both of them, not at the pace Ned was going. Water, in particular, was becoming a major worry.

  Jackrabbit suggested a detour. He knew where to find something interesting, he said, and he changed his angle slightly north. It was worrying to go off-track, but up north it was slightly greener; more creeks to pass by, a little more shade, and more edible bush food too. This whole area was actually a floodplain, Jackrabbit claimed, and when the big rains came down, the nearby river, the Ord, flooded into luscious, shallow pools. The faint outlines of these teardrop-shaped pools were visible from a high perch. All around them, Jackrabbit pointed out to Ned the hidden remnants of seasonal lakes and oases which were invisible in summer. Despite his exhaustion, Ned admired the Kununurra for its volatility: desert-savannah one season, lakes and wetlands in another.

  Three-and-a-half hours’ walk north-east took them to the banks of the mighty Ord River, the only permanent stream of fresh water in the whole of the Kununurra, running south-east towards Lake Argyle. They stopped there to cool off under the shade of trees, refilled their bottles with fresh water, and gave in to the temptation of Ned’s remaining resources, being merely a can of soup and high-protein energy bars. They crossed the Ord where it was only waist high, although to Ned it was more so chest high, and on the other side they continued north to Jackrabbit’s destination. They did not arrive until sunset, when Jackrabbit suddenly halted and crouched down into the grasses. Ned followed suit.