‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Girl, I’m so sorry.’
Jack grimaced as he returned to me. ‘We had to put it down.’
‘Put it down?’ The dog’s fur was matted with blood where she’d been shot. She had died snarling. ‘Why?’
‘It attacked one of the guys.’
‘I saw her a few days ago,’ I said. ‘I meant to go back and feed—’
I wiped my eyes.
Jack put his hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s not your fault. C’mon, Danby.’
As he led me away, I knew he was wrong. Starvation must’ve driven the dog to leave her master. And that must have driven her mad. All I’d needed to do was remember to get her a can of food.
Gloom seized me. I didn’t come back to my surroundings properly until I came upon another familiar corpse. Having to step around the putrefying Party Duder meant we were walking along Church Street. My throat tightened. My feet felt mired in mud again. The taxi where Nathan and I had made our only stand was just ahead on the other side of the street. Even from here I could see his red cap slumped over the steering wheel. No pretending this time.
I couldn’t fathom why Jack wanted to show me my friend’s dead body.
Was he offering some sort of closure? Was he showing off his handiwork?
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
Jack turned to me. ‘What do you mean?’
He didn’t know. Hadn’t realised where we were. Maybe it was no surprise he wasn’t thinking about Nathan. He literally had a lot of other people on his mind.
My eyes drifted past Jack and my guts turned to cold slush. Nathan wasn’t in the taxi. The corpse wore my friend’s cap but that’s where the similarities ended. Under the veil of flies the guy’s skin was darker and he had a big belly.
‘Danby?’
I forced myself to look back at Jack casually.
‘I mean I need to know . . .’ I said, stepping closer, keeping his focus on me. ‘Evan. You said before you were holding him up for a while. Can you let him go? Any of them?’
Jack sighed. ‘I tried with that stockbroker douchebag,’ he said. ‘He dropped back into catatonia and then I couldn’t wake him up again.’
‘Great!’ I said, pushing past Jack, striding up the street, leading him away. ‘Jesus!’
‘Wait,’ he said, following me for a change. ‘Danby!’
When we were well clear of the taxi I stopped and let him catch up. I needed a moment to catch up to this new reality. Nathan, alive!
‘There has to be a way to return them to normal,’ Jack said. ‘But I’m going to have to work out how to do it slowly. I’ll do everything I can to help Evan. I promise.’
I’d turned on the theatrics to get him away from the taxi but I didn’t have to force tears now. Evan: he relied on Jack like a life-support machine. Nathan: of course he was darker and swollen because I’d been cruelly tricked by decomposition.
My head and shoulders slumped and I didn’t pull away when Jack put his arm around me.
‘It’s going to be all right,’ he said soothingly. ‘Trust me.’
Then I wasn’t sobbing sad. I was sobbing happy. We stood in the intersection and I stared over his shoulder up at the windows of the Law Of Small Numbers office. For just an instant—even through the blur of my tears and against the sky’s sallow glare—light and shadow played at the edges of those venetian blinds. Nathan was up there watching. I was sure of it. He had managed to drag himself to our hideout. I hoped he was able to fix himself up with the medical supplies we left behind in our mad scramble to escape.
‘Nathan’s all right! We have to help him!’—that’s what I almost said.
Something stopped me. I wasn’t sure if Jack was telling me the truth about how Nathan had been shot. But I wasn’t going to risk my friend’s life to find out. He had to stay hidden and stay away from us. God knows what Nathan thought of me hugging this guy. I needed to give him some sign. I let one hand creep up Jack’s back and made the thumbs-down signal. It’s all I could think of. I wasn’t sure Nathan would understand what it meant. I wasn’t sure I knew myself.
‘Can we go back?’ I said, pushing free. ‘I need to see Evan.’
‘He’s fine,’ Jack said. ‘I promise.’
‘I believe you,’ I said, ‘but I just want to see him.’
Jack nodded.
‘You think we brought this on ourselves, don’t you?’ I asked as we made our way back to Old Government House.
Jack looked up at me from where he was laying hands on a lanky guy spread among ferns in a big concrete planter. ‘Did splitting the atom create nuclear weapons?’
He let the question hang.
‘No.’
‘The Sync—that’s what I call it—didn’t create all this destruction,’ Jack said. ‘What was in our minds did that. Cosmic consciousness? It should have been the great evolutionary leap. It should’ve ended all violence and war, ensured social justice, given us the means to save our environment, everything we supposedly wanted.’
I watched in silence as Jack whispered and the lanky guy blinked awake. He stretched and drank and walked away. Jack resurrecting these people was beautiful—spiritual even. I wondered whether I was in the presence of someone who’d be remembered—worshipped—thousands of years from now.
‘We were given the ability to walk in other people’s shoes,’ Jack said. ‘The opportunity for true empathy. But what did we do with this incredible power? We worried about hiding our secrets. Searching out the sins of others. Who thought I was fat? Who trash talked me? Who thought I was pretty or ugly or smart or stupid or sexy or successful? Who was sleeping with who? Who was ripping-off who? Not that that stuff doesn’t play a part in who we are. But it’s all most people saw, all most people cared about, even at the end. We were blind to the miracle.’
Jack walked on. ‘It was like the internet raised to infinity.’
I caught up to him. ‘What?’
He glanced at me, rubbed the stubble at his jaw.
‘The internet placed the world’s knowledge at our fingertips, right? What did most people use it for? Porn and online dating, playing shoot-’em-up games, spending real money to buy virtual farms, pop-culture trivia, pirating movies and music, showing strangers what they ate for lunch and pouring hatred on people they didn’t even know.’
Jack nodded in anticipation of my objection.
‘I know, I know—that’s not all we used it for but my point is the internet didn’t create the desire to actually understand ourselves and the world more deeply. All we wanted was to skim the surface ever faster. We wanted to always be connected. We got our wish with the Sync—it was like some kind of “Mindbook”—and look what it did to us.’
‘But Jack—’
The air flashed and the ground rippled as a boom shook the buildings around us. Glass facades shattered from office towers above our heads. It was like the world was ending all over again. Jack pulled me into a doorway just as a glass stalactite exploded into the footpath where we’d been standing.
When everything stopped jangling and rumbling, Jack stepped from our alcove. He looked back at me ashen faced.
‘Are . . . are . . . you all right?’
I nodded, stepped onto the footpath and saw what had him rattled. There was a huge spray of splintered glass right where we’d been walking. Beyond it every Goner on the street glittered with shards and blood. Across Parramatta hundreds of people would be terribly injured. There was nothing I could do to help any of them. All I could hope was that Nathan had been out of harm’s way.
‘Thanks,’ I said to Jack, meaning it.
He nodded, colour returning to his face.
‘What the hell was that?’ Jack gazed in awe at the oily mushroom cloud reaching into the atmosphere east of Parramatta.
‘The refinery at Silverwater.’ I was glad to tell him something he didn’t already know from his megamind. ‘I passed it on my way here. It nearly blew then.’
‘Jesus,’ he s
aid. ‘I thought someone had launched a nuke.’
My heart trembled at the thought. Some crazy person somewhere probably had launched nukes. The people bleeding out around us might be blessed. They were dying fast and they didn’t know it. We might survive all of this only to end up riddled with cancers from radioactive fallout blanketing the world.
‘A refinery could burn for months,’ Jack said. ‘All the more reason to get away.’
‘How?’ I blurted. ‘How can we go anywhere when the roads are all blocked?’
Despite everything, Jack’s eyes twinkled.
‘One road isn’t.’
TWENTY-TWO
Railroad.
I had to admit, Jack’s plan was smart. During my short driving career, I’d been in hundreds of minds all trying to find the solution to the same problem: how to get out of the city. Jack’s answer hadn’t occurred to anybody. I certainly hadn’t reimagined the railway as a highway.
We stood in the doorway to Old Government House’s family room, watching Evan and Michelle playing with plastic dinosaurs on the rug. I couldn’t reconcile how he could be both of them—and everyone else—but I didn’t want to make things more complicated by thinking about it too much right then.
‘But I saw a train crash,’ I said. ‘At least, I saw the wreckage.’
Searching for Mum, several minds had shown me carnage on the western line we’d be following.
‘Where?’ Jack asked.
‘Near Penrith.’
He nodded. ‘We’ll deal with it.’
Deal with it: just that simple.
‘And then?’ I asked. ‘What happens when you get to Clearview?’
I was still saying ‘you’—telling myself I hadn’t decided anything yet.
‘First ensure everyone has the basics—food, shelter, security,’ he said. ‘Next try to find more survivors. Then work out how to transition everyone back to their own minds.’
That all sounded so goddamned reasonable.
I wanted to run from Jack. I wanted to stay with him. He made me feel safe. He scared the shit out of me. As split as my feelings were, I didn’t really have a choice. Without him, Evan was as good as dead, and there was no doubt Jack was our best chance for getting to Shadow Valley. Getting Jack out of Parramatta was also the best way to keep Nathan safe if Jack still secretly considered him a threat. As ruthless as Jack’s means had been, he had a survival plan for society. He didn’t need me for it to work but I thought I knew why he wanted me with him. Anything that anyone else said or did was only his echo and his shadow. But me? I was beyond his control. Not that it made me feel exotic or mysterious. Jack really might be settling for the last girl on earth. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that it gave me some power.
‘I’ll come with you,’ I said. ‘But on three conditions and you have to promise.’
Jack dipped his head for me to go on.
‘You don’t kill anyone else.’
He looked at me. ‘What about self-defence?’
Jack had a point. If Nathan hadn’t killed the Party Duder I would be dead. Evan too. I nodded. ‘Promise under no other circumstances?’
‘I promise. What else?’
‘When we get to Clearview, you revive everyone, no matter who they are or what they do.’
Jack sighed. ‘Even people who’ve got no chance of recovering? I bring them back just so they can be conscious they’re going to die?’
Bloody hell. ‘You bring back everyone who’s got a chance of living,’ I snapped. ‘There has to be a role for everyone. Even if it’s just washing dishes or planting seeds.’
Jack nodded. ‘Done.’
I took a deep breath. I didn’t know if he’d go for three.
‘I go alone to find my mum.’
Jack’s eyes narrowed as he went to object.
I put my finger to my lips.
‘Whether she’s like you and me or I have to revive her with Lorazepam—’
‘But I can—’
‘This is not negotiable. Mum’s a firebrand. A free spirit. Very private. She’d rather be dead than have someone pull her strings or tell her what to do. I go alone. She decides whether she wants to come back to Clearview. If she doesn’t, we leave her be. We—you and I—stay out of her head.’
Jack laughed.
‘What?’
‘Even at the end of the world, I can’t get a girl who’ll take me home to meet her mother.’
‘This is serious,’ I said. ‘You have to promise.’
‘What about you, Danby?’ Jack frowned. ‘Do you promise to come back no matter what?’
‘I’d never abandon Evan,’ I said. ‘I promise.’
‘Then I promise, too.’
Was this how diplomats felt when they struck peace deals with dictators? If Jack was true to his word, I’d stopped more needless violence and I’d cleared the way for more people to be saved. But our negotiations had been much more personal than that. An unidentifiable tremor ran through me at what he might expect down the track.
The four-wheel drives were rumbling and ready to go. Packed with passengers and supplies, the convoy pointed at the north-western edge of the park. Jack led Evan, Michelle and me to a silver Pathfinder in the middle of the line.
Nick had traded his shotgun for the steering wheel. I saw he had a horrible snake tattoo on the back of his neck. Another man mountain with a rifle sat in the cargo area among cartons and Jack’s guitar and amp.
Through the tinted windows, I saw men down by the park gate, chainsawing trees, unrolling barbed wire and driving mini-bulldozers to form earthern ramparts. Even this far away, there was no mistaking the Biker, the Cop and the Surfer among them.
I gasped.
‘Don’t worry,’ Jack said. ‘They’re staying here. They’ll secure the park and the house in case we have to come back.’
He had no reason to suspect Nathan was still alive. But I worried his skeleton crew of thugs might stumble upon him if they plundered Parramatta for supplies.
‘No killing,’ I said.
He turned to me. ‘I gave you my word.’
Half of me was glad the killers were being left behind to suffer flies and firestorms. The other half knew it wasn’t fair because the real culprit was in the front seat. If the Biker and his cohort died here then they were as much victims as Ray and the rest. My head and heart ached with the contradiction—and at leaving Nathan behind in this hell.
The convoy started to roll. The lead vehicles bumped across the grassy field and we followed the path they wove between vehicles and bodies. A minute later we were through a gate and had bounced up a service road that took us onto the railway connecting Sydney with the Blue Mountains. Our chunky tyres crunched over the blue-metal gravel, big wheels straddling the tracks as though the axle width had been calculated for the task. We weren’t setting any speed records but it felt like a miracle to see Parramatta’s skyline, now dwarfed by the refinery’s black mountain of smoke, recede in the rear window.
Tension began to drain from me as I sank into the leather seat in the cool gust of the air conditioner. But I shifted and felt stifled when it dawned on me that we had more than a dozen vehicles in our convoy and they couldn’t have all been conveniently vacant. I tried to banish my guilt. It was as useless as wishing I could revive the Goners I saw in the weeds along the railway embankments.
I had to look at the positives. Nathan was back from the dead. He’d surely find other survivors. Evan and I were alive. We were heading in the right direction. The few cars that had encroached on the tracks were easily nudged aside by the powerful lead vehicles. The railway was a fire break, inside which we passed safely through swatches of burning suburbia.
We might make it to Clearview. From there I had a good shot at Shadow Valley.
My mind went to Tregan and Gary at their camp on the shore of a reservoir. They had a tent, sleeping bags and a small stash of groceries from an abandoned campervan and were hoping such minor looting wasn�
�t punishable by death. Every sound in the trees behind them ignited panic. Other Revivees were also convinced they were being stalked by unseen killers. I wished I could tell them the danger had passed. I wished I could fully believe it had.
My imagination went to Nathan. I pictured him so alone in that dreary office. Unaware I had left the city. Unable to communicate his presence to the Revivees. I felt like the worst person for leaving him. I told myself again it was the right thing to do. Then I had a thought that almost made me cry out in agony. We had left the back door of the accountant’s office open when we fled. The movement of the venetian blinds could’ve been caused by a breeze. The flyblown body in that taxi might really be my dead friend.
Jack popped open the glove compartment. ‘You want some music?’
Anything to distract me from my mind’s bleak places. ‘I guess.’
‘Carly Simon, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, Adele,’ Jack said, rummaging through CDs. ‘Bit of a classic hits selection.’
I could imagine the woman who’d driven this car. Someone’s daughter, lover, sister, mother, she’d likely been alive in this very vehicle a few hours ago when she’d been dragged out and discarded, only for her driver’s seat to be filled by someone’s son, lover, brother, father, his mind now enslaved. Violent dispossession, systematic extermination, brutal oppression and forced labour: Jack had tried to prepare me for the foundations of his new world.
‘Adele,’ I said.
A few moments later ‘Rolling in the Deep’ filled the car.
My eyes filled with tears as dead suburbs rolled by.
I didn’t know how Blacktown had gotten its name but it described what I saw of its commercial district. The streets were a mess of melted cars, twisted steel and broken masonry. But they were mere foothills around a volcanic mega-mall cascading fire and smoke.
We stopped inside the scarred bones of Blacktown’s railway station. This concrete skeleton had withstood the firestorm but charcoal corpses were falling to pieces on its platforms and stairs. The heat was overpowering our air conditioning.
‘Why are we stopping?’ I said.
The Last Girl Page 22
