The Last Girl

by Michael Adams

  At least the people of Pompeii had been able to huddle together when the end came pouring down. Most of these guys hadn’t even had that comfort. They were spread out as though obeying some unseen grid because when privacy had evaporated personal space had been the only thing left.

  The river closed on the other side of the bridge. A few desperate souls had crashed out knee deep in mud and clutching mangrove trunks. I saw where the high tide had reached up their bodies. They’d been lucky not to drown. Then I saw the unlucky one. He was just head, torso and arms wrapped around a branch hanging low to the water. Nothing left beneath the waist. I wondered whether he’d been run over by some frantic speedboat. It didn’t matter. I just wanted to put the sight behind me. I paddled faster and was glad there was nothing in my stomach to throw up.

  The refinery monstered up from behind the swampy shore. Shiny towers and silos. White storage vats. Spiral staircases. It looked like something out of a sci-fi film but there was nothing more down-to-earth. Civilisation’s blood had been processed here, pumped in as crude oil, sent back out as petrol and diesel and whatever else. Signs on channel markers—‘Danger!— Submarine High-Pressure Pipelines!’—warned that right below us lay a network of veins and ventricles. Surely when the Christmas Day shift lost their shit someone flipped the safety switches? Surely even if no one had, there were automatic mechanisms to stop the place going supernova?

  I paused mid-paddle in a moment of preternatural silence. It was like the universe was considering my questions. Then came the answer. Sirens whooped. Warning lights flashed. Workers didn’t scramble to emergency stations to avoid catastrophe. No one was going to save us but me.

  My paddle bounced off something rubbery in the water. Fat guy. Big and bloated. As I went to push him away with the blade, he rolled so that a pudgy arm flailed up at me. I yelled as a grey snout ripped a chunk from the corpse and the river churned with thrashing fins and tails. Sharks thudded against the kayak’s hull. Black eyes rolled in grey bullet heads and razor teeth flashed from gummy mouths. The sharks weren’t large but what they lacked in size they made up for in numbers. I held the paddle over my head so it wouldn’t be bitten in half and the boat rocked hard in the pink frothy water. If we capsized we’d be wedged upside down in the feeding frenzy. We’d be sardines.

  I heaved the paddle at a space between the sharks. Managed to propel us forwards. Scooped the water again. Got us closer to the edge of the carnage. The refinery wailed so loud it shook the mangrove leaves. I imagined some tiny static spark igniting a cylinder or tank. An explosion in the pipes underneath us. A scalding fireball shooting us high into the air. Me and Evan blinking like cartoon characters at the apex of that burning fountain before we plummeted amid the snapping sharks.

  Bright flames whooshed from the tip of a refinery tower. I closed my eyes. Buried my head in Evan’s neck. Braced for death.

  There was no pain. No blinding light and searing heat. Just silence as the sirens cut out. I dared to look up. Plumes of flame fluttered above silver-latticed stacks. I looked at the water around me. The snouts and jaws and fins and tails were gone. Best I could guess: the flames were the refinery’s fail-safe and the sharks were following the bodies down the river. I wasn’t going to stick around and be proved wrong. So I paddled as hard as I could to get us away.

  But I knew this wasn’t really crisis averted—life was crisis now.

  Once we were clear, I slowed my pace and the rest of the journey to Parramatta was almost peaceful. Ahead and behind, visibility dwindled and even the mangroves disappeared in the haze. Future and past seemed to vanish. My existence was reduced to soft splashing through brown water and brown air. I was grateful for this blurry space. I knew there were hundreds of suburbs on either side of the river where millions of people were in danger of dying. But being inside that cloud let me block it out. Just for a little while.

  TWELVE

  The world came back gradually. Mangroves gave way to industrial estates and then backyard fences. I passed under an old iron bridge and Parramatta’s skyline massed into solid rectangles above the river. We entered the city and cruised into the centre of a watery cul-de-sac.

  A sleek ferry wharf jutted from one shore and on the opposite side an apartment building stood on a sandstone cliff. Straight ahead lay a weir and pedestrian bridge. Above them, the river continued through the city, enclosed by concrete and parkland.

  There were a dozen Goners on the wharf. Most were laid out loose and peaceful. A few sat stiffly with limbs at mannequin angles. One guy, whose tattered clothes sketched his story for survival, stood by a pylon, mouth set in a grimace, arm outstretched like he was reaching after a departing ferry. When I tried to find minds, here or in the city beyond, all I heard was my heartbeat, the cry of seagulls, and water lapping the kayak.

  Surely there had to be other people. Maybe I just wasn’t in range of whoever was out there. For now, I faced going it alone in this flatlined place. Wandering among the Goners was the second freakiest thing I could think of doing. The freakiest was being so paralysed with fear that we floated here until we died of dehydration.

  I paddled to the wharf. A plaque read: ‘Gi walawa and nalawala at Baramada’. The Aboriginal-to-English translation underneath seemed just for me: ‘Please stop here and rest at Parramatta’. The tourist map was more direct: ‘You are here!’ it declared, pinpointing my place on the planet. It confirmed that when the river came out the other side of Parramatta Park it dribbled into a suburban creek. My kayaking days were over. I had no idea how I’d get us from here to Shadow Valley.

  I tied the kayak to the wharf, pulled myself onto the concrete platform and lifted Evan out after me. I stood still and quiet, eyes darting between people on the gangway and benches and on the pathways beyond. A few were dead, skin changing colour, clothes matted with dried blood, flies buzzing around them. But the rest were still alive. I could hear the people closest to me as their stomachs gurgled and their chests rose and fell with raspy breaths.

  Standing there among the living dead slammed reality home. There really might not be anyone else left like me.

  ‘Why?’ I croaked. ‘Why me?’

  Had a higher power singled me out for some greater purpose yet to be revealed? Had I won the genetic lottery with a one-in-eight-billion genomic quirk?

  I heard an ugly noise. Realised it was me laughing. Maybe I hadn’t been mystically chosen so much as simply forgotten by the creator. Maybe humanity had run its natural course and my freaky DNA had made me the last member of a soon-to-be-extinct species.

  All I knew beyond doubt was that I was starving. If I had to fulfil humanity’s destiny by dying, I would damned well do it after dinner.

  A cafe called Starboard overlooked the wharf. It seemed as good a place as any to hole up. I tucked Evan under my arm and dragged him through the miserable congregation of catatonics. As best I could, I tried to keep my distance. I knew they were as harmless as Evan but I also thought if someone snapped back to consciousness I’d probably die of fright.

  Up on street level, there were Goners everywhere. On the nearest corner, a woman sat on the kerb, red dress hiked up around her thighs, mouth resting on her knuckles like Rodin’s thinker. Beyond her, a canyon of glass, steel and concrete was carpeted with stalled cars and frozen people.

  Someone had beaten me to Starboard, judging from the smashed glass doors. I eased Evan down against a blackboard that wished customers a Merry Christmas. Edging closer, I peered into the cafe’s dark interior.

  A figure knelt on a table, arms raised to the heavens.

  ‘Hello?’

  As my vision adjusted, I saw it was a he and he wasn’t praying or pleading for mercy. This guy had hooked his fingers over the top of a wall widescreen and connected himself to it with headphones. He was now as blank as the TV.

  Stepping into Starboard, I saw the Plasma Guy was about my age, heavy set body wrapped in oversized streetwear. His eyes were clenched tight and his nose was pressed
against the screen. I knew I should try to prise him down, but I told myself I’d overbalance the table and hurt him. Truth was, the idea of touching him freaked me out.

  He was alive—I could hear him breathing softly. When I worked out how to wake up Evan I’d wake him up too.

  I carried Evan inside and lay him down in a booth seat. Regular customers smiled from photos collaged on the ‘Star’s Board!’ I tried not to think about the black holes that had replaced each of those people. Instead, I turned my attention to the menu board that had kept them coming back. Asian salmon salad. Lamb and goat’s cheese pizza. Organic beef burger with the lot. It all sounded good. But the glass cabinets had been cleared out. Even the cookie jars were empty.

  A tall fridge was unlocked and still stocked. I grabbed a bottle of warm lemonade and gulped it down. The walk-in pantry offered some basics: tins of fish and baked beans and crushed tomatoes, boxes of crackers and cereals, packets of pasta and cooking chocolate. I didn’t have to worry about starving. There should be food wherever I went—houses, convenience stores, entire shopping centres—at least until all the used-by dates had been reached. It wasn’t like I had competition.

  I ate tuna with corn chips and salsa and drank nearly a litre of apple juice. It made me feel better immediately but also guilty and worried that I couldn’t give Evan anything. I checked my phone. Seven o’clock. Over thirty hours now since he’d had the Chocopops and milk. Maybe Evan’s inactivity would buy him bonus time. Didn’t every earthquake disaster story come with the good news of a small child plucked alive from the rubble after weeks without sustenance?

  I moved into the booth next to Evan. When I had blacked out back at Beautopia Point, his voice had rescued me. That was where I should start. Maybe he’d respond to a few of his favourite things.

  ‘Chocopops, Evan.’ I held his hand and held in my mind an image of a plastic cup overflowing with the sugary breakfast treats. I pictured a booger splattering a robot. ‘Snots ’N’ Bots.’

  I repeated the words, aloud and in my mind, and wove them together, visualising a strong rope lowering into the darkness. Chocopops Snotsnbots!

  Visualising climbing down the rope and swinging at its end, I tried to grab him from the imagined abyss. He was inches away but miles beyond my reach.

  ‘Chocopops, Snots’N’Bots,’ I said beside him in the booth, lightly shaking his shoulder. ‘Come on, Evan. Please.’

  He couldn’t hear my thoughts or words. I slammed my fists against the table.

  Peeling Evan from his damp and smelly clothes, I washed him with a bottle of mineral water and wrapped him in tablecloths. At least he was clean and dry. In the little staff bathroom, I cleaned myself and hung my jeans to dry. Not that it was the highest priority but I would find us new clothes tomorrow.

  Through the cafe’s windows rectangles of sky darkened between buildings as night descended. There was nothing more to do now. But at first light I had to set about hydrating Evan. Buy more time to figure out how to wake him up.

  I reached for my phone. Stopped myself with a snort. I couldn’t search the internet for the answer. Google was gone. The Cloud was up in smoke. Even if I could locate a bookstore, I doubted I’d just be able to pluck IV Drips for Dummies off its bestseller shelves.

  But a doctor’s office! That’s where I might find a textbook and the necessary solutions and bags and needles and tubes. I laughed at myself. Sourcing the right information and the right equipment was one thing. Poking a hole into little brother and pumping him full of saline or whatever was an entirely different matter. I might puncture an artery and he’d bleed out—or I’d put air in his veins and give him the bends. Thing was, if I didn’t try Evan would dry up and die.

  Exhaustion seeped into me. Sleep promised an escape. I made a rough bed of cushions under the table and curled us up in there. Evan breathed wispily and I willed morning to come so I could start saving him.

  I awoke to a white flash so brilliant it seared through my eyelids. Then came a sky-ripping crack and a rumble that shook the cafe. I grabbed Evan, ready to run. Then there was another flash, another crash, and a storm broke over Parramatta.

  Relief washed through me. I lay back down, stroked Evan’s hair, letting myself drift into the sound of the rain. I hoped the deluge was drowning the fires. As I slipped into sleep, I thought maybe people caught in the downpour would wake up now, like born-again Christians baptised into a new life with Jesus.

  Buddha’s wisdom greeted me when I opened my eyes again. Starboard was lit by another eerie dawn.

  ‘Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment,’ read a banner on the ceiling.

  My eyes moved to a second message.

  ‘I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end,’ someone named Kahlil Gibran had once said.

  And a third, from George Bernard Shaw: ‘You see things; and you say, “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say, “Why not?”

  ’ Maxims were all across the ceiling. Account managers and personal trainers had stared up at these quotes as they waited for their lunch orders. My eyes drifted to the gossip magazines set by the counter to cater for more trivial tastes.

  ‘THE END FOR JEN & GEORGE?!’

  ‘HELLBANGA’S VATICAN SCANDAL!’

  ‘B-LO’S NEW LOVE!’

  I couldn’t imagine these celebrities as Goners. It made more sense that they were all somehow immune and partying behind velvet ropes in a VIP survivors’ lounge.

  I listened to Evan’s chest. Felt the pulse in his neck. Touched his forehead. He seemed fine. Then it struck me: there was a way to tell if his brain was okay. I turned his face to the windows and pushed his eyelids open and watched his big pupils shrink from the light. Yes! They weren’t ‘fixed and dilated’—which was what television doctors said gravely when someone was going to be a vegetable—and I gave him a hug.

  But to save him I had to leave him for a while. I hoped he’d be safe under the table. I slid out and peered up at the Plasma Guy. He was still kneeling on his table, a steadily breathing statue on a pedestal. I was glad he’d made it. Outside it would be a different story. There were dead people and they would’ve started to smell. I spied a little stand of chewing gum, tore open a packet and munched pieces, sucking in menthol-flavoured air. I didn’t know if that’d be enough so I found a tea towel, dabbed it with floral hand lotion and wrapped it around my nose and mouth like a Resist protestor trying to beat facial recognition. I pulled on my jeans and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. I was as ready as I could be.

  The sky had dulled to tarnished silver and grey drizzle had stripped the world of colour. At least the storm and wind had cleared some of the smoke. Now the planet, or my little part of it, looked like a wet ashtray. At least when I inhaled I only smelled a strange mixture of menthol and moisturiser.

  The deluge hadn’t woken anyone. From the riverbanks to the city corners, everyone was where they’d been last night— just drenched. All except the woman in red. During the storm her weight had shifted and she had toppled into the gutter. Now she was submerged in a little pool that had formed where her body and other debris had blocked the drain. I didn’t run to her. The time for heroics had been the middle of the night. That’s when she’d been drowning in a puddle of rainwater while I’d entertained fantasies about baptismal resurrections.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  I allowed myself a moment of revulsion and shame. But I’d be lucky if she was the worst thing I saw today and if this was the worst I felt. I had to put her out of my mind and get on with my mission. All that mattered was finding IV stuff and getting back to Evan. Once he was stabilised I could put my mind to waking him up and getting us to Shadow Valley.

  I’d read about people who disassociated when faced with trauma. They floated outside themselves to avoid going insane, even though that usually happe
ned later when all the bad memories came flooding back. I didn’t know whether it was possible to will such a personality split, but as I stepped onto the street I tried to step out of myself. It worked—for about four seconds.

  The financial district—blocks of Goners between cars and beneath office towers—was more than I could handle. Just thinking about venturing among them made me tremble so much I thought I’d crumple into a pile next to the grandpa at the bus stop, his best suit soaked, drizzle pooling in the brim of his fedora.

  I couldn’t force myself to brave this claustrophobic nightmare but I couldn’t give up and retreat to Starboard. There had to be another way. I clenched my fists, took a deep masked breath and visualised the tourist map down on the ferry wharf and the ribbon of river running through the city. There’d be more space and air and light there. It’d still get me to the main shopping district. That’s where I’d find a doctor’s surgery or a medical centre.

  A lot of people must have thought the waterway and its banks were a possible escape route or safer place. They’d poured down here and passed out on the paths and lawns. Some had ended up in the river. Their bodies bobbed against the concrete weir wall in a frothy slurry of leaves and rubbish.

  I wandered in slow motion, feeling like an intruder, imagining the Goners were watching me. A heavy woman in a tracksuit had collapsed with her legs folded tight under her. Junkies and drunks who passed out like that risked amputation as blood flow was cut off. I tilted the lady onto her side and straightened her out. Maybe that made amends for not helping the drowned woman. But I couldn’t save the guy who’d ended his suffering by putting a plastic bag over his head.