Munroe owned the gallery with his elderly wife and artist, Deborah. He was driving home in his truck when he saw his gallery be beamed by the sky, and he raced home to find sweet Deborah gone. Being so remote, surrounded mostly by farmland and bush, beams were infrequent during those first days and before long, Munroe found himself alone. He had a storm shelter with food, water and fuel stored up, wary of hurricanes and floods, and had hardly budged an inch in the four weeks since the disaster. He drove his truck into Ivanhoe once or twice, searching for people, but with no luck. The only one he found was Jackrabbit, passing through from the Never Never. The two camped out and spoke of the situation involving the sky, and Munroe, too old and fat to go trekking the Top End from one coast to another, told him to spread the word that he was here with open arms if any survivors were ever found.
In the early afternoon, under the shade of the gallery’s veranda, all the settlers, including Munroe and Jackrabbit, pulled up chairs and surrounded Ned with absolute fascination. They had plenty of food to go around: homemade breads and canned fruits, Doritos and soft drink and enough beer to last weeks. Ned savoured fresh bread lathered with Vegemite, as well as sliced oranges and long life milk. By the banks of the Ord River, there was a cool breeze, a blue sky, and shady greenery all around them. It was a beautiful place, and for the first time in many weeks, Ned, surrounded by people once more, felt complete again.
As well as saving Ned’s life, Jackrabbit had rescued the other settlers as well. He spent a week tracking what appeared to be a large group of wanderers lost in the Kununurra. He found twelve of them, dehydrated and on the brink of collapsing, and steered them south along the Ord. The twelve were all marine biologists and research students of Darwin University, ranging in age from early twenties to late forties. They were all scuba diving on Veteran’s Day when the storm came, examining the coral reefs, and emerged only to find all their crewmen gone and their boats abandoned. They returned to shore to find the startling vacancy of the city, instantly void of 130,000 people and amuck with the littered remains of chaos. Like Ned, they spent their first week in a state of confusion. They tried radios and phones to contact help, but all lines were dead, and once the electricity went out, they were stranded. Like Ned’s situation in Wyndham, the biologists, alone in a vast city, had every resource at their disposal, so food, water and shelter were plentiful. They too had gathered non-perishables and formed a small fort for themselves inside a local yacht club, close to the safety of the water. But unlike Ned, they were forced to leave the city following a second round of attacks by a different invading force.
‘Suits,’ Ned said gingerly.
‘They burned down the city, the whole city,’ said Elizabeth, known as Dr Lizzie. She was one of the leading biologists of the team, a doctorate-level scholar who lectured at Darwin University. She had been in charge of the field trip which had kept her students from being beamed. ‘My god, I have never seen anything quite like it.’
Dr Lizzie described these ‘flying ships’, like fighter jets, but rounder, which broke off from the massive storm cloud and hovered over the city. She spoke of enormous bulldozers the size of skyscrapers – an entirely unexaggerated statement – crushing everything to rubble. From the hurricane-like storm in sky, they launched missiles of pink light at the bay, burning down every marina, warehouse, jetty, and beach box as though it was a direct target. Darwin began to crumble and burn, forcing the biologists to flee for their lives, but on the ground, they were ambushed by a strange new threat: humans. Little human people – boys, girls, old and young – dressed in suits, appeared from the sky armed with weapons. They began firing on their own kind.
‘They looked… hypnotised,’ she said, ‘and yet… and yet I think they knew what they were doing.’
‘They knew exactly what they were doing,’ said another settler, James. James was a mid-thirties tanned, rugged man, who had been the scuba diving instructor on Elizabeth’s trip. Ned was interested in the bandage around his face, covering one eye. He could see the skin of his cheek and neck was red and peeling, as if from burns. James explained that Suits were to blame for the permanent damage to his vision. ‘This was a planned ambush. We weren’t the only ones who got cornered. We saw other survivors here and there, raiding shopping centres for food, sleeping in their own bunkers. I saw what those bastards did to them: they chased them, they burned them, they shot them in the back while they were trying to escape… There was no remorse on their faces, but behind those shades, they knew what they were doing. Those fuckers drove us into the desert and roasted the rest alive. Got me good too.’
Ned stared in horror. ‘How many people… did they kill?’
‘We have no idea,’ said Dr Lizzie.
‘They’ve probably burned down the other capitals too by now,’ James hissed. ‘May as well target the biggest cities if you want to kill off as many as possible.’
‘No, you half-wit, it wasn’t for that,’ said Munroe. ‘It’s because of all the barracks.’
‘Barracks?’
‘The navy and air force bases. Darwin has plenty of them. They were probably burning them, not you lot. You all just got in the way.’
‘In the way?’ James snarled at the old man. ‘These little pricks come storming my country and killing my countrymen and you say I’m just in the way? Did my face just get in the way, huh?’
‘Calm down,’ Elizabeth said. ‘We’re safe now.’
James, a frustrated patriot, aggressively snapped open a beer. It kept him quiet for now.
Elizabeth turned back to Ned. ‘You poor thing. You’ve been out there all alone this whole time?’
‘I hid in a fridge.’
Munroe arched his white, bushy eyebrows. ‘Well, that’s new.’
A student of Dr Lizzie’s, a young university boy, said, ‘Oh please, Indiana tried that in the fourth movie and Mythbusters already declared that a fridge could not possibly save you from a blast of gamma radiation.’
‘Then it isn’t gamma rays,’ argued the student next to him. ‘It’s something else.’
‘And Indie was in a nuclear bomb. These are just beams of light,’ said another.
‘I still say it’s the Chinese,’ said a fourth.
‘No,’ said Ned, ‘it’s al—’
‘Let’s not get into the five-hundredth argument of what ‘it’ is and isn’t,’ Elizabeth sighed. ‘Let’s just be grateful that Jackrabbit found us another survivor.’
‘You’ve come a long way, son,’ said Munroe. He patted the boy on the back.
With a mouth full of bread, Ned mumbled, ‘Thanks to him, of course.’
‘Bah.’ Jackrabbit waved it off, cracked another beer, and gulped down.
Elizabeth smiled at the Aboriginal wanderer and said, ‘I thought we’d never see you again, Jack. Will you stay with us this time?’
‘Nah, mai. I’ll be gone by morning.’
‘But where to?’
‘He may find others like this one out there,’ said Munroe. ‘There could be hundreds of people still lost in the middle of nowhere. You’re bloody lucky, kiddo.’
‘Ah-huh.’ Ned looked around. ‘Hey, where’s Moonboy?’
‘Who’s Moonboy?’
‘Ergh,’ Jackrabbit snorted. ‘If he’s gone, leave him. No one wants that mutt here.’
But Ned was worried. He left his chair and went looking for him, calling out for his dog, searching in bushes and paddocks around the gallery for the hybrid critter.
When he was gone, James turned to the other settlers. ‘What do we think?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean, what do we think?’ Elizabeth snapped.
‘Well, I just think we should start being a little more cautious about who we meet. We shouldn’t just open our arms to every wanderer who comes by, begging for food. No offense, Jack. But I mean, we’ve been ambushed by Suits before. How do we know this kid isn’t a spy or something?’
‘Christ, James!’
‘Lizzie, we just have
to be careful. We should start fortifying this place, keeping watch, making sure we don’t get jumped again like we did in Darwin. There could be thieves and murderers and God-knows what else lurking around here.’ He turned to Munroe. ‘I think we should start considering protecting ourselves, mate.’
‘Well my wife didn’t like guns, so I don’t know how I can help you, mate,’ the old man grumbled. ‘You can go off and be a one-man army if you want, but I ain’t turning down a lost boy.’
‘No one is turning him down,’ Elizabeth said boldly, particularly to James. ‘Now more than ever, we need to learn to get along.’
James gave up and rested back in his chair.
Munroe looked to Jackrabbit and tried to steer the conversation elsewhere. ‘So, tell us, what’ve you seen out there, other than the kid?’
Jackrabbit sat up to address the settlers. He began with a word: ‘Suits.’
11
GOODBYE
Ned slept for twelve hours on his first night. He woke at dawn, but Jackrabbit was already gone. He didn’t even say goodbye.
12
FAMILY
The settlers lived at Zebra Rock for more than three months. During that time, all of summer passed, as did Christmas, the New Year, the national holiday, Valentine’s, and a couple of birthdays in between. By autumn, fourteen strangers had moulded themselves into a close-knit community of brothers and sisters.
From the abandoned suburbs of Wyndham, to the vacant farmland of central Australia, Ned’s idea of sustainability and survival had to be dramatically rearranged. His days of scavenging pantries and grocery stores were over. Besides Ivanhoe, there was not another township within hundreds of kilometres of Zebra Rock and homes were too few and far apart to rely on for food, shelter, and basic needs over the long term. The biologists had not brought much with them when they escaped Darwin and Munroe’s emergency supplies ran out within the first few weeks of their arrival, but they were sitting in the dead centre of unoccupied farmland, so it was common sense to take advantage of it. Munroe knew what grew around here and helped devise a basic map of the lower Ord and southern Ivanhoe region: mangos, bananas, melons, sugar cane, chickpeas and pumpkin were the main crops in this area, and much of it was completely unaffected by the abrupt disappearance of humans. Perhaps a few sprinklers had not been turned on, but the sunlight still beat down and the December rain made the Ord run thicker than ever. It was funny how nature was perfectly capable of taking care of itself in the absence of the human race.
The settlers took on the challenge of caring for thousands of hectares of produce and became self-taught farmers. Very few had any agricultural experience, but the marine biology students were at least somewhat aware of wetland and freshwater flora. Their daily duties mostly involved planting, weeding, watering and harvesting. Of course, these farms were large enough to feed a third of the state, and under the summer rain they were overwhelmed with produce. A lot went to waste, unpicked and left to rot on the ground; fourteen pairs of hands simply could not care for so many fields and fourteen mouths could not eat that much. They simply made sure to prune the branches and keep them well-watered, so that next season there would be more to pick.
Life on the Ord was serene, both because of the beautiful land surrounding them and the company of each other. Work days were short and most of the afternoons were usually spent napping, exploring the red caves, telling stories, reading, playing cricket, and swimming in the river. There was really no need to ever leave. There was a warehouse a kilometre west which used to sell farming equipment, tools, wheelbarrows, fertiliser, pesticides; enough to last them years. Nearby homes were further away, but were useful to find little items such as washing detergent, basic medication and feminine hygiene products, bedding, clothes, gas for the stove, spices and canned foods, and fishing rods. Two of the students raided a nearby home and found baseball equipment in the garage – bats and gloves and baseball caps – and the settlers formed competitive teams which played at least once a week out in the fields. It was the little things which made life more enjoyable and full of purpose.
For the first few weeks, Ned was unsure of himself and his surroundings. The transition from being alone to being in this large family of fellow humans was a big shock, and he found it difficult to reconnect to others, as though he had been severed from the world for many years. He worked, ate, and slept without protest, listened and obeyed any decision, and rarely participated in stories, jokes or games. He was still locked in ‘survival mode’, and he felt any shortcomings would have dramatic effects on their continuity. In actuality, it was quite the opposite. The remoteness of the gallery, its pastoral wilderness, and the impenetrability of the surrounding Kununurra almost made their stronghold impregnable from the ground, and the brutally hot sun made passing storm-like phenomena rare. The storms which did pass did so briefly, with little or no interest in what it saw below. The settlers were too few in number, too scattered among bushland, and too uncaring of their presence to warrant any action against them.
Ned was still unsure. It was only occasionally that the doubtful thought arose, often just in passing, but it still bothered him: how long could they keep this up? How safe were they at Zebra Rock? When was it all going to go back to normal? The others worked and lived under the presumption that all the answers were never, but he did not feel the same way.
Elizabeth noticed that he was struggling. One night, she sat with him on a log around the flickering flames and whispered low to him, ‘It’s okay to be terrified.’
Ned looked up. He smiled and was about to say something, but couldn’t.
‘I know what’s going through your head,’ she said. ‘You’re terrified of change. You don’t want to get close to people in case they all disappear on you again. Am I right?’
Ned nodded. ‘Something like that, I suppose.’
‘We all feel like that, every moment of every day. But you have to embrace the time you have. You have to enjoy what’s here while it’s here.’ She nudged him with her elbow. ‘You were one of the lucky ones, like us. You’re one of the special ones. Don’t forget that.’
‘I hid in a fridge like a coward.’ He looked down. ‘I didn’t even try to save my mum.’
Elizabeth looked up at the stars. ‘I don’t think they’re gone. I think they’re still alive. Somewhere. Up there.’
Ned also looked up. He used to believe that too, but it was becoming harder to imagine that his family and friends were all okay. He softly asked, ‘Then why haven’t they come back yet?’
Elizabeth didn’t have those answers. No one did.
Time was lost with the rolling of the sun over the horizon, the movement of constellations, and before long, it was hard to determine the days and weeks apart. As near to Christmas as they could estimate, the settlers found a plastic tree and decorated it with tinsel. On New Year’s Eve, they ran around at night with streamers, party poppers and sparklers, drawing shapes in the night sky.
It took such time for Ned to become close to his new family, but he benefitted from it greatly. The students took him on as their baby brother and warmed to him effortlessly. He was not the only one who missed his former life, his school friends, and normality in general, but he, like the settlers, had to accept the change for what it was, and had to consider what minute liberties they still had: at least they were free, they thought. At least they managed to outsmart a creature – or a machine – which spanned the width of a metropolis and carried more firepower than a military’s whole arsenal. At least they were stationary now, able to live in peace unnoticed, without borders, able to farm for themselves and sleep without needing to worry if they were still being hunted. At least they had each other; this, above all, gave Ned the greatest pleasure. If all other liberties were to vanish, if all their freedoms were withdrawn to the point where they became shackled slaves of the invaders from the sky, it was the companionship of others which he held highest above all other necessities.
So Ned gave
in to them, wholly and unconditionally, and found new friendships among these lost souls. In the mornings, he picked bananas with Tim and found they shared similar tastes in comics and movies. Tim was not an outdoorsy guy and was having severe withdrawals from his games and TV shows, especially the ones which left him on indefinite cliff-hangers. He was not very sporty either and would often prefer to watch baseball from under a tree, keeping the score in the shade and avoiding as many activities as possible which could make him perspire. But beneath his quiet antisocial nature, Tim was intelligent. Ned saw brief moments when he shined. It was Tim who designed their freshwater catchment system from the Ord using ropes, overhanging tree branches, and buckets. He took careful note of the seedlings of crops, drawing and analysing their rate of growth in different soils. He even created a new formula of cooking oils to use as emergency fuel for Munroe’s ute, should a speedy escape be required.
In the afternoons, Ned swam with Michael, while Violet sat on the banks and tanned with her oversized sunglasses. Michael and Violet had had a crush on each other since second year Organic Chemistry, but it seemed as though the romance which blossomed on their scuba trip had died suddenly; Darwin had rattled them all, and the Kununurra had drained them of so much energy. It was difficult to adjust to this dramatic change and simultaneously keep up the passion. As the weeks settled into months, the two began to feel more comfortable around each other again. They started laughing again, flirting, with small, hinting touches on each other’s arms and hands. Whenever it was Violet’s turn to wash up, Michael was there to help her. Whenever the settlers decided to play a game of touch rugby, he always wanted to be on opposite sides to her, so that he may have a fleeting chance of getting her in his arms.
Skyquakers Page 7
