Also by Michael Adams
The Last Girl
First published in 2014
Copyright © Michael Adams, 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the
National Library of Australia
www.trove.nla.gov.au
ISBN 978 1 74331 673 3
eISBN 978 1 74343 417 8
Cover and internal design by i2i Design
Cover and internal cross-hairs artwork © Marika Järv, 2014
Front cover photography: (girl) by Christopher Phillips Photography,
model Alissa Dinallo; (trees) by Jill Schneider/Getty Images
Back cover and internal images: (silhouettes) by Robert Adrian Hillman/
Shutterstock; (flames) by iStockphoto
Set in 11.5/18.5 pt Minion by Midland Typesetters, Australia
For Ava and Clare
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
1. GET SET
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
2. READY OR NOT
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
3. HERE I COME
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
‘Wake up, Danby.’
Mum’s at my desk, fussing with my computer. On the screen are flyers for her Trash ’N’ Treasure business. She smiles at me. ‘How do I print these?’
I prop myself on my pillows, sleepily amused by how she can be so hopeless with technology. ‘Just say the word,’ I say. ‘Print.’
On my command the machine whirs to life and flyers begin sliding out into the paper tray.
My bed’s warm and my room sunlit. Sydney Harbour shimmers through my window. But the bridge’s arc across the horizon sends a shiver from the nape of my neck to the tips of my toes. That’s because it shouldn’t be there. A plane crash destroyed the bridge. I was there. I saw it.
‘Oh,’ I murmur. ‘Oh, wow.’
‘What?’ Mum runs a hand through her hair. Dirt trickles from between silver strands and onto her shoulders. The T-shirt and jeans she’s wearing are soiled as well. She must’ve been gardening before she came over.
‘This dream I had,’ I say. ‘It was full-on and—’
And the world was ending because everyone could hear what everyone else was thinking and no one could handle it. Somehow I was immune and no one knew what was in my head. A guy was helping me to save people who’d gone catatonic. But another man had the power to resurrect people and take control of them. And—
‘And—’ I say again, not sure where to start.
‘And what?’ Mum asks.
I feel awkward. Because I thought it was just the two of us. But my dad and my stepmother are sitting cross-legged by my bed. Somehow my best friend Jacinta has gotten into the room and has spread out across the bookshelf like it’s a bunk. They’re all looking at me the same way as Mum. Waiting to hear about my dream.
I gasp as more details flood back. Mum, Dad, Jacinta, Stephanie—they were all dead.
My God. I can’t tell them that’s what I dreamt. They’ll think I’m a mental case. Send me back to the headshrinker.
My eyes fall to my hands, fingers clutching the bed covers. My nails are dirty, too. Flecked with what looks like rust.
‘I—I—can’t remember,’ I mutter. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
No one argues.
No one answers.
I glance up. They’re all gone. I’m not in my bedroom at Beautopia Point. This is the spare room at my mum’s place in Shadow Valley. My little brother sits nestled among big stuffed toys in one corner. Except he’s not really Evan. He has button eyes. Somehow I know it’s up to me to turn him back into a real live boy.
A shadow darkens the doorway.
The guy who was helping me save people walks into the room.
Nathan—that’s his name.
‘Hot off the press,’ he says, holding up a flyer. ‘What do you think?’
‘YOU MUST READ AND REMEMBER’ is printed across the top of the piece of paper.
In the centre of the flyer is a photo of the other man. The one controlling people.
Golden eyes locked on me. Finger pointed at my heart. Smile that says he has all the answers.
‘I WANT YOU!’—is handwritten beneath his face.
I jolt awake. Fury burning in my heart. His name on my lips.
‘Jack.’
ONE
My gun’s aimed at Jack.
‘Don’t move,’ I whisper.
Not that he can.
Nor can I miss him. Not at this range.
‘Bang,’ I say, holding the weapon in a trembling hand. ‘You’re dead.’
My Jack is six feet tall, about the same height as the actual version. I didn’t inherit my mum’s artistic talent so 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 little eyes, a smudge nose and a crescent smile set in a moon head. His arms are outstretched as if in welcome and his long rectangle legs are planted in blocky boots.
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 Nathan survived being shot because he has the same genetic anomaly—Situs inversus—that I do. I don’t know if Jack has it too. But I can’t risk it. So his heart’s not the target. His head is. In movies they always say headshots are tricky. That’s why I need to be in close.
I lower the gun, raise it again, try to keep it steady, line up the front fin and rear sight on Jack’s face.
It’s an hour after the kinda dawn. Shadow Valley looks immersed in weak tea. Sepia smoke and cloud hang so low from the mountains they blur the gum trees behind Mum’s studio. Haze and hillside merge on the back paddock to reduce nibbling kangaroos to shuffling shadows. But my target’s perfectly visible, just a few metres away.
Jack’s gotta die. No two ways about it. To pay for murdering Mum. For shooting Nathan and me. For killing so many people in cold blood. But most of all he’s gotta die to free my little brother. My guts twist tight 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 hate to think where the real Evan is right now. Is he stuck inside that awful nothing place, frightened and feeling trapped forever? Or is he like a computer program that’s open but inactive in the background? I don’t want to believe either. I try to think of Evan 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. What I hope is that when I blow Jack away my little brother will return to himself without any traumatic memory of being anywhere horrible. But I can’t be sure of that—and as that doubt takes hold so does the fresh realisation that I’ll never see Mum or Dad or Jacinta again. Tears surge from me. I lower the gun.
It’s a while before I’m wrung out, before I wipe my eyes clear and can see Chalk Jack again.
‘You—you—filthy bastard.’
I raise the revolver—if a lifetime of movie memories are right, it’s a .38 of some sort—and aim it at that smiling face again.
Jack’s need for control is so total that he couldn’t risk my mum turning me against him. He thought by killing her I’d have no one but him. But that’s where he went wrong. I’m not one of his Minions. He can’t control me. Not now. And all of that arrogant self-belief will be his downfall. He was so sure of himself—of his power over me—that he couldn’t conceive I might turn the gun he gave me on him. What pisses me off is that he was almost right. If Mr November, Jack’s poor helpless assassin, had died according to plan, 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. He got me out of the way so he could go after Nathan without me knowing. Nathan, my only real ally, still out there, reviving people, telling them to resist Jack. My heart feels like it’s being corroded whenever I think of him being hunted down by Jack and his Minions. I hope he’s been able to keep his head down.
My finger curls around the trigger and then straightens away. The revolver sits heavier than the .45 did back at Beautopia Point. Then I was all jumped up on adrenaline. But those fight-or-flight chemicals are long flushed from my system. Now I’m forcing myself to use a firearm and even though this gun is smaller—wooden grip, blue steel barrel, six brass cartridges glinting in the cylinder—it feels like a dead weight in my hand.
Jesus—if I can’t shoot at a crude drawing of Jack, what chance will I have against the flesh-and-blood version?
I’m no cool movie gunslinger. I’m not worthy of the Wonder Woman bracelet on my wrist—Mum’s final Christmas gift to me. I’ve been standing here wavering for ages.
But that’s the point of this New Year’s Day’s morning practice session. Get past nerves, get used to the gun, get comfortable with how it feels and how it fires. I’ll only have one shot at Jack. If I don’t get it right, Evan will be lost forever, Nathan’s chances will dwindle and I . . .
I’ll be dead.
Simple as that. Jack may have written me a love letter. 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 blast. Rationally, I guess someone could still be sentient in Shadow Valley and hearing a gunshot could make them come out of hiding with a rifle usually reserved for rabbits. Irrationally, I’m afraid the bang will disturb Mum’s whole rest in peace thing down in the strawberry patch.
But that’s stupid. Wherever Mum is, she’s not in her body in the dirt. Anyway, she’d want me to have the skills I need to blow Jack out of this world—if only so she could have her turn kicking his ass in the next.
My target smiles blankly. Laughter ripples out of me when I realise that by creating Chalk Jack on a toilet door I’ve accidentally combined my mum and dad’s vocations. She painted caricatured portraits; he created bathroom marketing campaigns—wow, what a tribute. I reckon Mum might’ve seen the funny side. Dad maybe not so much.
Sadness swamps me again. It’s not just that I can’t believe they’re gone. It’s the foreverness of their goneness. Her in the studio. Him in our lounge room. That’s where they ended. There’ll be no new times, no new memories. Not just Mum and Dad. But my best friend Jacinta, Madison and Emma, and everyone else from school. Probably everyone I’ve ever known. Except Evan. And Nathan. They’re not gone, but Jack wants to take them from me. Keep me for himself. I feel an anger that’s clear and cold and concentrated. But I can still stop him and save them. That starts here.
My finger finds the trigger. 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. Gun smoke drifts around me with a burned pepper and steel smell, like New Year’s Eve fireworks on Sydney Harbour. Silence returns. Mum doesn’t rise from the grave. No one takes pot shots at me.
Stepping up to the outhouse, I 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.
Missed.
Returning to my spot, I steady myself and fire again. There’s a flash and the shot rips the air and echoes off the hills. What I don’t see is a bullet punching a hole in the door amid a flurry of paint flakes and woodchips.
Missed again.
I examine the little gun. There’s not much to it. The barrel is no longer than my middle finger and the front and rear sights are no more than metal fins. I can’t see how it could be askew or need calibrating. I also can’t see how I can be such a terrible shot.
I take a step closer. The revolver’s muzzle is only a body length from Chalk Jack. I knew I’d have to be close—but this close makes me recall Dad shooting himself in the face.
The memory is ice cracking beneath my feet. I plunge into black doubt. What if I’m wrong about Jack’s guilt? What if he didn’t send Mr November to kill Mum? What if I’m murdering humanity’s only hope? What if I’m like the Roman soldier who jabbed his spear into Jesus? What if I am right but Jack’s really a life support system and with one bullet I kill not only him but Evan and everyone else he has raised? These questions could freeze me forever.
I shake my head, resurface, reclaim focus.
‘No,’ I say. ‘You’re right about this.’
I know I am. I’ve turned the evidence in my head over and over. This is my fear trying to talk me out of what I have to do.
‘ “Bravery is being scared but doing it anyway”, ’ I say.
It’s one of the dozens of quotes scribbled beside sketches in an old journal of Mum’s that I found on the bookshelf this morning.
I picture another scrawled note: ‘There’s nothing to fear but fear itself—and clowns.’
That one made me laugh—and I smile now because I hear Mum’s voice saying it.
It makes sense to be scared. A week ago I was a sixteen-year-old unwrapping Christmas presents. Now I’m a sixteen-year-old doing a dress rehearsal for first-degree murder. No wonder my brain’s trying to find some way to duck out of this.
‘The best way out is through’—that was on a page next to a drawing of what looked like a black hole.
To get out, to save Evan and Nathan and everyone, I have to go through Jack.
Relax. Inhale. Exhale. Aim. Squeeze.
Blam!
I hit nothing again.
‘Shit!’ I blurt.
At this rate, I’ll have to hold the gun to Jack’s temple. As much as he might want me by his side, I’m not sure he�
�ll stand still for that. I step closer again to the outhouse, intimate enough now to see a column of ants spilling from a crevice near my target’s inner thigh.
I aim and squeeze the trigger and the muzzle flares and my ears ring louder.
Chalk Jack abides. Unfazed ants march on across undamaged wooden planks.
A lot of uns also apply to me. Untrained with firearms. Unmoored by what’s happened to the world. Unable to believe every single shot I’ve fired has missed. Physics isn’t—wasn’t—my best subject at school but I’m goddamned sure bullets don’t go around corners.
Chalk Jack’s smile no longer seems blank. It seems sinister. Mocking. My skin prickles into goosepimples. Maybe Jack is a new god. I’ve invoked him with my crude totem and now insulted his divinity with my puny attempts to inflict injury. Maybe he can watch me through those vacant eyes and bend the laws of the universe so my bullets miss.
‘No,’ I say, as if my denial only has power spoken aloud. ‘No.’
Jack isn’t here. He can’t see me. Chalk Jack’s not real. He’s just a representation.
I look at the gun in my hand.
It’s fitting that everything I know about it—that it’s a .38, that headshots are tricky, that I’m supposed to squeeze not pull the trigger—comes from movies and television.
I don’t think the gun’s actually a weapon at all.
I think it’s a prop.
Sitting on Mum’s couch in her cluttered lounge room, I carefully slide the catch on the revolver to open its cylinder and up-end its six rounds into my hand. I thought I fired four times but I must have lost count because there are five empty brass cases that reek of gunpowder. But one is intact and its firepower is still sealed in a red plastic bulb. Setting the .38 and shells down on the coffee table, I tip the rest of the ammunition from the paper bag of extras Jack packed for me. They’re identical to the unfired shell from the cylinder. But they’re not bullets. They’re blanks.
A vortex opens in my chest. It’s worse than self-doubt. It’s the dread that everything I know is about to be sucked away.
‘Stay calm.’ The crack in my voice is anything but. ‘Keep cool.’
Not for the first time I wonder whether this is all a hallucination induced by a head injury—maybe when I fell over at Mollie’s party—and that I’m merely Danby-Dorothy struggling through a nightmare and about to awake in my own bed surrounded by everyone I know and love. I wish.
The Last Shot Page 1
