I felt sick.
I lit a candle. My stomach twisted with dread as I tore open the envelope that held Jack’s letter. By the flickering yellow flame, I unfolded a page from the notebook he’d scribbled in as we drove along the railway.
Dear Danby,
You saved me from fear & from myself.
I’m going to do everything in my power to keep you safe & happy. I’ve known since I first saw you that we’ll be together. Together we’ll make a better world for you & me & Evan.
While I’m not with you now, please know I’m with you in spirit.
You’re not even out of sight & I can’t wait to see you again!
You just joked that you were the last girl and that’s why I wanted you with me.
But I don’t think of you as the last girl.
You’re the only one for me.
All my love,
Jack
PS: I hope your mum is fine. Please say ‘Hi!’ and tell her I hope to meet her soon.
I read it again, anger mounting at his grandiose assumptions,at the saccharine sentiments, at the gutlessly indirect way he’d professed ‘love’. But it was the horrifically jolly post-script that made me scrunch up his note and hurl it off the verandah like the filthy trash it was.
The bastard.
The bastard had sent Mr November here to make sure that I couldn’t revive Mum. Not with all the Lorazepam in the world. If the guy arrived and found she was already dead then all he had to do was leave. If she was alive but catatonic then killing her would be as simple as covering her nose and mouth until she stopped breathing.
‘No.’
I must’ve said it one hundred times. I didn’t want to believe it.
But it was like I’d opened a door that I couldn’t close and a blinding new light was shining on everything.
Jack didn’t shoot Nathan by accident or because of the Cop’s muscle memory or whatever. He wanted him dead for the oldest male reason there was—because he saw him as a competitor for love and leadership. I recalled how Jack had reacted when I said I was ‘with’ Nathan. Me getting shot? Unfortunate collateral damage. But it had given him the chance to save me and fix me up. Discovering Evan—the littlest hostage—was another bonus. Jack knew I’d never leave Evan.
A line from his letter echoed mockingly in my head: Together we’ll make a better world for you & me & Evan. The way I heard it now was him saying that if we weren’t together there’d be no world for me and Evan.
Once I agreed to go to Clearview, Jack had revived Joel and rescued Tina, Jamal and Baz. I’d been impressed by him, with myself for changing him. But whatever Jack heard in their car ahead meant they had to go. Even their deaths had the happy spin-off that I’d felt Jack had saved my life and Evan’s.
My stomach lurched when I thought about the Major. Jack had been in no hurry to get to his dad, and he hadn’t been surprised to find him dead. What I suspected was that while we’d been with Marv, a minion had taken Jack’s key and slipped inside and finished off the old soldier. ‘He had a bad heart’ didn’t have to mean the Major had died of a coronary. It sounded to me like his son had hated him and had killed him in revenge for being kicked out.
Jack was happy to get me out of Clearview. Nathan was reviving people. That had to be stopped. Jack couldn’t very well head back east and carry out a pogrom with me around. Down here, I was out of the way, unable to hear the Revivees. I had no doubt that the Cop, the Biker, the Surfer—or others just like them—were out hunting down innocent people again. I guessed Jack’s plan was to finish the job he started with Nathan and kill enough Revivees to terrify the rest back into compliance. I’d given him days to do it. When I got back, how would I know the difference? When I got back to Clearview he would sadly explain that the mortality rate had been much higher than expected.
‘Why?’ I said to the night.
Mum: he’d perceived her as a potential threat. I wondered if she’d still be alive if I hadn’t told Jack she was a firebrand free thinker.
I was sure the story Jack was writing had already been recorded time and again in the pages of Mum’s history books.
Jack wanted to rule the new world. He had unleashed a bloodbath to establish his new order and since then he had tried to convince me that I’d blessed him with newfound benevolence. Jack wanted me to choose to be at his side. I felt sure he meant it when he used Evan to tell me he loved me. It was in his letter in that roundabout way. Love—in his sociopathic definition of the word. It seemed absurd that a monster could want a mate. But there were plenty of examples way beyond old horror movies. Didn’t Adolf love Eva? Napoleon dote on Josephine? I bet if I checked Mum’s library I’d find that Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot and the rest of history’s genocidal maniacs all had ‘better halves’ too.
Queen, First Lady, Co-conspirator, Confessor: that was the role he wanted me to play. Jack was all about theatrics. The Legion stuff. The way he’d built up to raising Bruce. His fearless supermarket entrance. Waking up Vera to lure Marv. The goddamned dead dad moment that made me so sad and sorry for him. I knew what I was supposed to do now: drag my ass back to Clearview, my sadness about Mum magnifying my gladness for him. My freakin’ saviour.
But I wasn’t in Jack’s story—he was in mine. And in my story shit had happened the wrong way for him. Mr November had been supposed to go over the cliff. If he had then I would never have known he’d been here. But the fact that he hadn’t gone over the edge with his bike gave me hope.
Jack had told me that the very first person he raised—Mike, the Mikester, the Mike-anator—had returned to catatonia when he experimented with ‘letting him go’. If that was true, why didn’t Jack just send Mr November into the bush and switch him off? It seemed to me that he’d tried to make him kill himself. Was that because if Jack let him go he would revert to his normal self? But Mr November hadn’t gone gently over the cliff. I thought I had seen minion self-preservation instincts kick in before when faced with self-destruction. The Range Rover driver’s eyes and expression had reflected horrific awareness as his vehicle went over the cliff. Maybe he wasn’t wrestling against the slippery railway line but against Jack in those final seconds. But I hadn’t glimpsed fear in Evan or Michelle when we had slipped towards the same abyss. They knew—Jack knew—it was just for show.
I laughed in the verandah’s darkness. Me and my theories. But I knew I was right. Jack’s power over people wasn’t final and forever.
Comforted by my new conviction, I curled up in Mum’s bed and slept a dreamless sleep until late the next afternoon.
EPILOGUE
I know it’s New Year’s Eve but I don’t know how many minutes or hours are left until midnight. It doesn’t really matter. Either way, I know there won’t be any celebrations anywhere. That’s fine by me. There’s nothing I want less than skies emblazoned with explosives and cacophonous crowds going crazy.
Silent stars materialising high over Shadow Valley are spectacle enough. It’s probably only a break in the cloud rather than the blanket of smoke lifting. There’s still too much to burn for me to hope for clear skies. But the glimpse of those distant yellow suns offers reassurance that the universe still exists beyond whatever’s left down here. At least something’s the same as it was a week ago.
I know the maths. The human race isn’t quite done. There will be other people like me in Newcastle, Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane, Hobart, Adelaide, Darwin, Perth. Maybe thousands of survivors in megacities like Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Delhi, New York, Sao Paolo, Karachi. Jack can’t reach those places. Beyond me and him, beyond Evan and Nathan, beyond the Revivees and the Raised, the human race will make it, even if in a newly evolved form and greatly reduced numbers.
But the world at large isn’t my concern. What I need to do is take control of my part of the planet. I have to set free Evan and the rest of Jack’s minions. If I can get those dozens and dozens of strong young men and women reviving people then we can work our way east and link up with Nathan
—if he’s still alive. I’ve got a shot at saving some of the city’s citizens. I know the odds aren’t great. But they’re all I have.
I’m not the Last Girl on Earth. But in this corner of the world I am the Last Girl. I’m the one who survives to the end in the horror movie. I’m the one who has to fight the monster.
I turn my Christmas present on my wrist. I found it in a little ribbon-wrapped Santa box on Mum’s bedside table. The silver’s tarnished but shiny enough to just catch the starlight. It’s a kitschy bracelet with the words ‘Wonder Woman’ stamped into it. The small card simply read, ‘To Danby, You’re my hero, All my love, Mum.’ I’m going to make sure I’m worthy of my mum’s belief. And I’ll do my best to grant Jack his post-script wish to meet her.
The cosmos above me is calming and that’s good because I need to be calm. Tomorrow, I’ll head back to Clearview. Jack will be waiting for me. I’ll cry real tears about Mum. I’ll let him hug me. I’ll hug him back.
I want him to think that he’s won. That I could love him. That’s the way to get him alone and with his guard down.
I’m Jack’s weakness and tomorrow his weakness is going to kill him.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to Clare and Ava, who make everything worthwhile. Clare also for many reads, hugely helpful suggestions and endless patience when the conversation again turned to The Book. Noel and Wanda, who instilled love—and the love of the written word. Melanie Ostell, who first saw Danby’s potential and whose agency ensured she made it to publication.
Allen & Unwin’s uber-publisher Anna McFarlane, whose calm good nature made the apocalypse such a smooth undertaking. Cat McCredie, whose structural suggestions made every step of Danby’s journey better. Rachael Donovan, for unfailingly answering every editorial question and sending Tim Tams. Melanie Fedderson, for her terrific cover and interior page designs, Marika Järv, for her perfect Wall of Sound artwork and Katie Evans, for her fine proofreading work. Liz Bray, for believing in The Last Girl, and Angela Namoi, for repping it to the world. Lara Wallace, Jyy-Wei Ip and Allen & Unwin’s sales team for helping to put this book into your hands. Booksellers, for fighting the good fight.
Mic Looby, for a quarter-century’s friendship and for reading, re-reading and making great suggestions. Great friends Luke Goodsell, Lachlan Huddy, Dan Creighton, Oscar Hillerström and Paul O’Farrell for early reads, enthusiasm and course-correcting critiques. Great friends Chris Murray, Michael Pickering, Amanda Ryding, Liz Doran, Michelle Newton, Shane Bugden, Guy Mosel, Rod Yates, Sam Barclay and Neil White for listening to me tell the story late into various nights and being goodly enough to say, ‘Sounds awesome’, rather than, ‘Sleep it off, man.’ Rachel Carbonell, Leonie O’Farrell and Charlotte Pache, for being ace. Zoe Stewart, for answering questions about medical students and Situs inversus, though any mistakes of far-fetchedness rest on my shoulders alone.
Dave and Tina, for love and support. Ray and Denzil, Susan and David, Sam and Max, Michael and Sarah, Charlie, Oscar and Leo, for being the best in-laws ever. Linda, Huw, Ella; Hali, Chris, Luka and Mila; Bek, Klete, Blake, Mia, Kayden and Rosa Lee; Matt, Eva, Finn and Matilda: for good times and making us feel welcome in the Mountains. Kylie, Damien, Eli and Zoe Taylor; Jude, Phil, Georgia and Evan Bailey, for making our last place feel like home.
Michael Adams has been a restaurant dishwasher, television host, ice-cream scooper, toilet scrubber, magazine journalist, ecohouse lab rat, film reviewer, social media curator, telemarketing jerk, reality TV scribe and B-movie zombie. This one time he watched bad movies at the rate of one per day for an entire year and wrote a book about the traumatic experience, which is called Showgirls, Teen Wolves and Astro Zombies. Michael lives in the Blue Mountains with his partner, daughter, one dog, two cats and an average of three supersized spiders. The Last Girl is his first novel. Find Michael on Twitter @wordymofo.
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ONE
My gun’s aimed at Jack.
‘Don’t move,’ I whisper.
Not that he can. Nor do I think I can miss him. Not at this range.
‘Bang,’ I say, lowering the weapon with a trembling hand. ‘You’re dead.’
My Jack is six feet tall, similar to the actual version. Other than that, any resemblance to persons living or soon to be dead is purely coincidental. Sketched on the door of Mum’s old outhouse, this Jack has oval eyes, a smudge nose and a half-moon smile set in an oval head. I was going to draw a heart inside his pink-chalk torso but I didn’t know where it should go. Left side? Right side? Nowhere at all? My theory is that Nathan survived being shot because he has the same genetic anomaly—Situs inversus—that I do. I don’t know if that holds true for Jack but I can’t risk it. His heart doesn’t matter. I have to go for a headshot. In movies they always say that it’s tricky. That’s why I need to be in close.
I raise the gun again. Try to hold it steady.
It’s an hour after the kinda dawn and Shadow Valley looks like it’s immersed in weak tea. Sepia smoke and cloud hangs low from the mountains to blur the crowns of the gum trees behind Mum’s studio. Haze and hillside merge on the back paddock to reduce nibbling kangaroos to shuffling shadows. But even with all the grit in the air, my target’s perfectly visible, just a few metres away.
I need Jack dead to free my little brother. I’m gutted every time I think of Evan back there in Clearview. Not because I fear for his physical wellbeing—I’m certain Jack will keep him safe for my sake. But I wonder where the real Evan is right now. Is he stuck inside that awful nothing place, frightened and feeling trapped forever? What I want to believe is that Evan’s somewhere happy—maybe in the mental equivalent of his cupboard cave, eating Chocopops and playing Snots ’N’ Bots and feeling safe surrounded by his soft-toy friends. That I can’t be sure of any of that—and the fresh realisation that I’ll never see Mum or Dad or Jacinta again—makes my eyes well up. There’s no holding back the tears that surge from me.
It’s a while before I’m wrung out, before I wipe my eyes clear and see the target again. But I feel calmer, composed. It’s like my anger and sorrow’s become cold and concentrated. I raise the revolver—if cinematic memory serves, the little gun’s a .38 of some sort—and point it at Chalk Jack again.
I picture the real Jack’s smiling face. So confident. All that self-belief. It’s going to be his downfall. The smug bastard was so sure of himself—of his power over me—that he couldn’t conceive that I might turn the gun he gave me on him. What pisses me off is that Jack was almost right. If poor Mr November had died according to plan then I wouldn’t have had a clue that Mum was murdered. Instead of still being here, training myself to be an assassin, I might already be back in Clearview in Jack’s arms, feeling all tragic—maybe all romantic. He played me like his goddamned guitar.
My finger touches the trigger and then curls away from it.
The revolver sits heavier in my hand than the .45 did back at Beautopia Point. Then I was all jumped up on adrenaline. But those fight-or-flight chemicals are gone. Even though this gun is smaller—wooden grip, blue-steel barrel, six brass cartridges glinting in the cylinder—it feels like a dead weight.
Jesus—if I can’t shoot at a crude drawing of Jack, what chance am I going to have against the flesh-and-blood version?
I’m no cool movie gunslinger. I’m not worthy of my Wonder Woman bracelet. I’ve been standing here wavering for what feels like ages.
But that’s the point of this New Year’s Day morning practice session. Get used to the gun, get comfortable with how it feels and how it fires. Because I’ll only have one shot at Jack. If I don’t get it right, Evan will be lost forever, Nathan’s chances of evading the minions will dwindle and I . . .
I’ll be dead.
Simple as that. Jack told me he loves me in a roundabout way. But I have no doubt he’ll kill me if I threaten him.
I steady my aim. Best I can tell, I’m gonna put a bullet right between
his eyes.
‘Bang.’ I lower the six shooter. Exhale slowly. Raise it again. Take aim. ‘Bang.’ My draw-aim-bang routine gets smoother with repetition.
Now I need to bite the bullet. Fire one, at least.
Thing is, I’m afraid of the real blast the revolver will make. Rationally, there is the slightest chance someone’s still alive and sentient in Shadow Valley and that hearing a gunshot might make him or her reach for a rifle usually reserved for rabbits. Irrationally, I feel like the bang will disturb Mum’s whole rest in peace thing down in the strawberry patch.
I’m being stupid. Wherever Mum is, it’s not with her body in the dirt. Anyway, she’d definitely want me to have the skills to blow Jack out of this world—if only so she could have a turn kicking his ass in the next.
Chalk Jack smiles blankly from the dunny door. I raise the revolver, sight down the barrel at his head and curl my finger around the trigger. I don’t back off. I don’t tremble. I take a deep breath. Exhale slowly. Squeeze.
Crack!
The muzzle flares orange and the weapon tugs against my hand as the gunshot echoes through Shadow Valley. Smudged kangaroos bound into the safety of the denser murk. The noise fades. Silence returns. Mum doesn’t rise from the grave. I don’t take incoming fire.
I take the few steps to the outhouse to check exactly how dead I’ve made Jack. But his head’s unscathed. I haven’t even scored a body shot. Then I see it: a wound in the wood just below his left arm. No: that’s an old knothole I hadn’t noticed before.
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