Skyquakers

by Conway, A. J.

  Once it was all said, Ned felt a heavy weight lift off his shoulders. He gave a sigh and sank a little further into his chair. He rested his head back and closed his eyes, absorbing the sun and the warm breeze.

  The point of the story, perhaps, was that they didn’t deserve to die, and if it wasn’t for Lara, they may have still been alive and happy in the Kununurra. The Quakers could have taken over the whole country and occupied every city on Earth; none of them would have noticed, but now the tragedy had set in again. The reality of the whole world was flooding back and once more Ned was alone and utterly terrified. He felt as though there was nowhere to go from here: his last chance of happiness was gone. There could not possibly be any conclusion to his life other than in death. The world was barren, eroding, and so was he.

  Lara shook her head. ‘There must be others.’

  ‘There are no others.’

  ‘There must be. Think. How many people were forgotten and missed like you? How many are still hiding in bunkers, waiting for us to find them?’

  Well, Ned could think of two humans who still roamed the Earth, assuming they were still alive: Sarah, for one, who left the settlers, and Jackrabbit, who was God-knows where.

  And Lily, the last DJ on Earth, if, of course, she was not merely another illusion.

  He glanced at Lara and saw she was very withdrawn, just sitting and scraping the bottom of another peach can with a spoon. He could see she had been trying, at least, to make conversation, and she truly felt responsible for what she had brought upon Ned. She said softly, ‘I agree. They didn’t deserve to die at all.’

  Ned shifted his weight and changed the subject: ‘What did you do before?’

  ‘Before what?’ she asked, but then it became obvious. ‘Oh, I was a student at a youth centre in Melbourne. I was doing my Master’s in Social Sciences.’

  Ned gave her a sour look. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t quite know. I don’t even know why I was doing it. I suppose I had ideas about becoming a counsellor or a lawyer for immigrants, something like that.’ She placed the empty can down onto the table. ‘And you? What did you hope to grow up and be?’

  ‘I have no idea. I still have no idea.’ He shrugged. ‘I became good at farming. Maybe I’ll be a farmer. A peach farmer.’

  Lara smiled briefly and reclined in her chair. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t help to take your mind off it.’

  He pointed out the faint metropolis on the horizon and unanimously they decided it was their best bet. Having spent the last four or five months solely on foot though, crossing deserts, labouring in fields, running from fires and running from storms, Ned looked at the road ahead and already felt the lethargy in his body. He could not think of anything worse than having to cross endless uninhabited land again, with no sense of direction and no way of knowing if he would ever find another living soul. Lara saw his desire to make use of the quad bike and said that they may as well, so they borrowed the four-wheeler from the beach house and found the keys for it in a kitchen drawer. Ned leapt onto the red and black-painted beast and revved the engine. Lara sat behind him and hugged his waist. The two shot off down the gravel path, roaring over bushland and small rocks, heading west towards that faint city on the horizon. The wind flew about their mattered hair. The feeling of a moving, humming vehicle was so foreign, but gradually it all came back to him, and Ned became more and more daring with speed as they grew more comfortable. He was certain the storm cloud would immediately be upon them like an angry god to the sound of their mischief, but the skies were clear blue and the world raced by them, completed unfazed by two wild spirits alone on the planet.

  Life is short, Ned told himself.

  DINGOES

  Dirt led to gravel roads, and the steep decline from the cliff-top beach house eventually flattened out into dusty plains and vacant outback. The further inland they went, the more this place began to look like the Kununurra: flat and dry, with prickly bushes dotted here and there, dead tree skeletons waiting for the wet season and farms left abandoned on large properties.

  They hit asphalt suddenly and continued south, waiting to see when the road diverged west. Ned thought Lara would have been keen to get back home to Melbourne, but she did not seem particularly attached to that place, and in the time spent in hibernation she seemed to have long forgotten it. She described how Melbourne had been largely destroyed during the storm simply due to sudden human absences: trains with no drivers crashed into platforms, fires could not be put out, helicopters tumbled into skyscrapers with no hands to hold them up. And of her friends, family: she said she had little hope for them anyway, as though from the day she was born, she felt that they were all doomed, and what had become of them now did not faze her much. They were either asleep or dead; either way there was nothing she could do about it.

  The only road signs they drove passed were indications of nearby rural towns neither of them had heard of. They were too far out from a major capital for its name to show up yet; they needed to find freeways, bigger roads. In a one-street town called Lee Point, less than fifteen minutes from the beach, they found a rusty petrol station next to a B&B. Lara took advantage of the toilet facilities while Ned swiftly and without second thought became his old kleptomaniac self again, which fit him like a pair of well-worn shoes. He stole necessities from the little shop that he had lost at Zebra Rock: torches and batteries, more matches, a rain jacket, Mars Bars, bottles of water, fishing wire, bug repellent, and a new backpack to carry it all in. There were souvenirs strung up on rotating racks, from dorky caps, Southern Cross flags, bumper stickers, and a kangaroo plush toy wearing a cork hat and holding a can of beer in its paw.

  ‘Welcome to Earth!’ Ned said, pretending to hold out the novelty toy to a Skyquaker army upon their arrival. ‘Here, have fucking kangaroo and a beer, mate.’

  He found postcards and began sorting through them, in hopes that they mentioned a state or a city with a familiar name. Most depicted beach scenery, and unfortunately the serene coasts in these pictures were still unfamiliar to him. One card was titled, The Top End, giving him adequate proof that they were still in the high north, at least. He decided to take out a pen and write a note on the back of a card. He left it on the counter of the petrol station, wedged into the cash register where it wouldn’t fly away.

  When Lara returned, he threw her a Mars Bar and headed back out through the glass doors to return to the bike; he was keen to feel the wind in his hair again. Lara opened the chocolate bar and bit into it. She too noticed the postcards and saw Ned’s little message. Before he spotted her prying, she snuck a peek at what he had written on the back of a card depicting a beautiful Australian beach at sunset, not unlike the one they had just come from.

  Mum,

  I am fine.

  Didn’t make it to Ivanhoe.

  Miss you lots.

  xx Ned

  She almost laughed and cried at the same time. Taking a leaf from Ned’s book, she pocketed a few postcards and a pen, and then wedged the note back into its place for some imaginary person to come and collect.

  She returned outside to see Ned was standing perfectly still among the petrol pumps. He had not mounted his quad bike because something up ahead blocked the road. In case Lara squealed again, he grabbed her arm and squeezed it, hushing her.

  They had appeared from the wild outback. They had found interesting scents and were following them with black noses to the ground. At first there were four, but then two more appeared from the outlands.

  ‘What the hell are they?’

  At first, they appeared to be large dogs. The four-footed canines sniffed about, digging here and there, and making small growls to one another. The dogs were a sandy colour, with a white underbelly, and fox-like ears.

  ‘Are those… dingoes?’

  ‘They used to be.’

  The pack spotted them in the doorway of the station. Like sharp-minded predators, they turned their attentions towards t
hem and began to slink from the interesting scents on the road to the interesting prey they belonged to. Lara gasped a little at the alterations. These wild dogs, usually a timid, rarely-spotted native animal, looked as though they had been fed a high-steroid diet. They were huge; three times larger than the average dingo, muscular arms so thick that their gate was widened when they walked, and veins bulging from their necks. Their shoulder blades protruded high up from their backs, and their hind legs looked as though they could outrun a horse. Their enormous fangs drooled as they began snarling and stepping closer, paw after gigantic paw.

  Ned pulled her by the arm. ‘Back inside.’

  The pack of mutant dogs chased them, barking. Ned pushed Lara back through the shop door and attempted to pull it shut behind him, but an enormous furry beast barged through and kept it ajar with its head caught in the door. It snapped and drooled at his legs, with five others of the pack trying to scramble over it, snapping and drooling like rabid beasts from hell. Ned was holding the door in place with every inch of strength he had, trying to fully pull it shut. Lara was elsewhere, hastily trying to find something useful in the petrol station to fend off the mutant carnivores. There weren’t many weapon-like objects around, until the sight of a wall-mounted fire extinguisher caught her eye. She pulled the red canister from the wall, ripped out the pin, and ran back to Ned. Hose in hand, she doused the dingo hybrid in the face with a cloud of white gas. It instantly lurched back, allowing Ned to seal the gap and shut the door. A second dog attempted to barge in and take the place of its fallen comrade, but it only got a face full of solid glass.

  Ned locked the door. The two then stood there, panting, watching six wild mutts attempting to claw and ram down the barricade. The glass made a dull doof, doof noise with each ramming muscular body. There was a desperate hunger in their black, alien eyes; whatever dingoes ate before was certainly different to what they preferred now.

  Ned looked down at the fire extinguisher in Lara’s hands. With silent nods, too breathless to speak, they congratulated each other on their work.

  FEVER

  They waited it out, but so did the dingoes. The mutated hounds gave up trying to ram the bolted door down after an hour and instead decided to lay around the station in strategic posts, in case their prey made a dart for their getaway vehicle. There was nothing they could do but wait, but at least the station had enough food and water to serve as a bunker for a few days, if they needed it. The day was therefore lost while they lounged in their fortress, drinking and eating anything that was still well-preserved. The chips were starting to taste less crunchy and the milk in the fridge was now cheese, but energy bars, soft drinks, bags of lollies, and canned things were all still edible. While Lara gorged, Ned lay down on the tiled floor and said he wasn’t hungry.

  ‘You haven’t eaten all day.’

  He waved her off and closed his eyes. He didn’t move for hours. Lara amused herself with the stacks of newspapers and magazines left abandoned on the shelves. The last date on every paper was Veteran’s Day, with no mention of anything askew and perfect weather predicted. Mankind didn’t stand a chance, she realised; this had been planned for years, decades, and despite all the fancy space technology they possessed, nothing suggested they had any knowledge of something as big as a cloud-ship coming towards them. Of course, there were so many possible conspiracy theories, many which VVEE fans constantly dabbled with: the government knew about the cloud all along and hid it from the public, or they were in cahoots with the Quakers for some sort of profit. Sadly for VVEE and all the theorists, the truth was far simpler: we had a planet and they didn’t. Wherever they had come from, it had been a long and risky journey and she could see how her escape could threaten everything.

  She napped for a while, and she dreamt she was still in her pod. She could almost feel the puddle of brown water around her, and like a phantom limb, she constantly kept scratching the back of her neck where her tube was itching. He woke at around sunset, only to see the dingoes had vanished back to the bush, giving up to go hunt for feral hybrid rodents and alien snakes instead.

  Ned was asleep under the counter. When she shook him awake, he was slow to move. He rolled over to reveal his eyes were red and puffy. He said he didn’t feel well. She felt his forehead. ‘My god, you’re burning up.’ She searched the store until she found some ibuprofen on a shelf. She heard vomiting and went back to Ned to see he was hunched over a pool of colourless bile and saliva. She abandoned the medication and merely brought him water. She forced him to drink it, even though he didn’t want to.

  ‘We need to find a pharmacy. Or a hospital.’

  On his back, Ned gave a condescending chuckle. ‘You won’t find shit.’

  ‘What’s wrong? Did the dog bite you?’

  But there were no bites, no major wounds, just scratches and bruises. It must be a bug, then, something he ate, or some bad water he drank back at the Ord. His forehead and the back of his neck were covered in sweat. He looked pale. The yellowness in his eyes was concerning. Lara didn’t know much about medicine but she knew enough to know when to be concerned.

  Ned’s breathing was laboured. He complained that his stomach both hurt and felt horribly ill. Lying on the cold tiles of the station, he looked up at Lara and cautiously asked, ‘Are you really contaminated?’

  ‘No!’ she cried. ‘I mean, I don’t think so. I’m not sick.’ But nonetheless, she felt entirely responsible. ‘We’re going to find you help, okay? Come on.’

  ‘No…’

  ‘We have to keep moving.’

  She hoisted him up and carried him back towards the quad, taking careful steps in case the dingoes had an ambush planned. Luckily they escaped the petrol station without a glitch. Lara drove, with Ned sitting behind her, leaning against her back with his arms loosely wrapped around her waist. She sped off down the rural highway, leaving the town of Lee Point behind in search of the big city. The sky was turning orange. A faint half-moon could be seen lingering among the first stars. She didn’t want to be out here at night with the wild animals.

  Within five minutes of leaving the town, a big highway sign appeared before them, and the one destination listed was: Darwin.

  Lara stopped the quad. That sign left her with chills. She remembered Psycho’s story, and if he was telling the truth, then Darwin would be a smouldering wasteland now, riddled with Suits and Quakers. It was set ablaze to drag all the humans out of hiding, and its ports and air bases were bombed to keep any rogue army from forming against them. She may as well be driving towards a landmine. But it was Ned’s moans that made her go on. She kept telling herself that the damage couldn’t be that bad; Psycho was a braggart and a manipulative bastard boy. Surely something of Darwin was still standing, and hopefully it contained people who could help.

  ‘Where are we?’ he moaned.

  ‘Just hang on,’ she kept saying.

  By following highway signs, Lara discovered the abandoned capital city of the Northern Territory. Nestled in a harbour of yachts and manmade wave breaks, the coastal metropolis emerged on her horizon as the sun began to set behind it. What damage it had sustained from Psycho’s attack was only partially visible in the dying light, but she could see smoke, she could see buildings were damaged; along the highway, cars were piled onto each other, trucks were tipped, and there was a crater in the asphalt as though a bomb had gone off. Every inch closer, she felt more and more trespassing into Psycho’s territory, as though he had left his black mark on every piece of damaged road and building. She was surprised that there was not yet a monument erected in his honour.

  The collapsed and decrepit city stood eerily silent. The quad sounded excessively loud and disturbing as it rumbled down the unused roads, weaving through cracked streets, littered with the debris of a war. She kept vigilant, but the place was empty. Around her waist, she felt Ned stir, and with his head resting on her back, he opened his eyes for a brief moment only to see the broken glass windows of shops, upturned cars scarr
ed by fire, and buildings which looked as though they had collapsed under the force of a monstrous earthquake. ‘My god,’ he muttered. He had not seen civilisation since he left Wyndham, and he had certainly not seen damage like this before. Lara assumed Melbourne and the other capitals looked very much the same by now.