The Last Shot

by Michael Adams

Damon shakes his head and looks at me. I imagine Jack in those dark eyes. ‘We couldn’t do that because of the risk of bushfire. Petrol tanks exploding. Windshields focusing the sun.’

  ‘What sun?’ Alex scoffs.

  Damon ignores him. ‘We’re in this for the long haul not the quick fix.’

  We reach a lookout. Cars are neatly arranged in its parking bays, like this is just another tourist morning. Below us, Sydney is just shadows and haze.

  After more winding road, we ease into suburban Emu Plains, passing homes whose lawns are filled with yet more vehicles.

  I close my eyes, try to tune any minds. This is where the Revivees faded for me last time. Getting nothing makes me cold. Maybe Jack has been lying. He has hunted them to extinction while I—Then I hear. A whisper. And another. Others. Fading up. Materialising mentally.

  So-far-so-good-I-know-but-after-we-revive-another-batch-we-head-north-babe: Tregan offers Gary a compromise as they prepare Lorazepam in an apartment block near Parramatta.

  I’m glad that Nathan’s fellow medical students have lived up to the hopes he had for them when he risked reviving Tregan and baring himself to me through her mind.

  We-have-to-save-ourselves-No-we-need-to-help-Find-more-stuff . . . Ravi, who I revived in Parramatta, and her husband, Wayne, who she woke up, arguing about whether they should risk helping if it means being hunted.

  My mind scans, tuning Revivees old and new. I flash to individuals, small clusters of family and friends, minds interlocking, in flux as they clash and cooperate. Most hunker in houses and shops but others scatter north or skirt the edges of fires as they head south. They walk, ride bikes and motorcycles, take what they can carry, armed with rifles, machetes, axes, crossbows. They’re rag-tag, wary of each other, scared they’re being stalked. The Lorazepam revival information’s available to all—memories have become open source instruction manuals—but few want to take the risk for strangers. Best I can glean there are a few dozen Revivees now in range of me. Their minds relay glimpses of more who’ve made it to the northern beaches and southern highlands. I get the sense they feel safer using Lorazepam there but it’s hard to see how many people they’ve woken up.

  My heart sinks. There aren’t as many Revivees as I’d hoped. A few hundred maybe. Changing their minds about the risks won’t be easy. Jack’s brutal lesson still resonates, passed around minds so that even those who were catatonic at the time know what happened to Ray, Cassie and Jackie. Nathan’s rallying cry to keep reviving people despite the danger reverberates, too, but has nowhere near the power. What saddens me is that the people out there aren’t organised because ego and fear and selfishness and all the other species of silliness are still getting in the way. I feel bad for judging them: I don’t have to answer for my thoughts to people all around me every second of the day.

  The good news is that Jack didn’t lie. Revivees haven’t been killed since he made his promise to me.

  What upsets me is that no one has had eyes on Nathan for days. The most recent evidence of him are memories I get from three Revivees—each since gone their own way—who woke up on New Year’s Eve amid used IV bags and Revival Survival Kits. I assume it was my friend’s work and he’s since stayed under the radar. I hope that’s the case and not that he has died from his injuries.

  ‘I’m glad I’m not out there,’ Alex says. ‘You know, all disorganised and shit, jumping at shadows.’

  I bite my tongue. I’m guessing they only know what they saw in the aftermath of the Snap and whatever version of events Jack has told them since.

  ‘Where were you when it happened?’

  Max’s attention stays on the scenery. Alex twists around in his seat.

  ‘My dad’s place, you know, until he crashed out or whatever,’ he says. ‘I stayed holed up until I ran out of food. I checked on my friends. Couldn’t do anything for them. So I went into Penrith, thought if there was going to be anyone left like me, that’s where they’d be. But everyone was out for the count. I thought I was the only person left, y’know?’

  I nod. Our stories aren’t so different.

  ‘A liquor store was busted open and I helped myself there and then hit a comic book store,’ he says. ‘Anyway, that’s where I was when Jack and Max and Marv and everyone came in a few days ago.’

  Alex grins but my view of him darkens. We didn’t have the same experience. While Nathan and I were trying to save people, he was drunk and reading X-Men or whatever. My poker face fails me.

  ‘I wanted to help,’ he says, looking caught out. ‘I saw what you and that guy Nathan were doing to wake people up. I was going to try it, I swear, but then people were getting killed and I thought, you know, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. Not right then.’

  Not ever—that’s when Alex would’ve risked himself to revive anyone.

  I tamp down anger by reminding myself he had been shocked and frightened and trying to stay alive. I shouldn’t judge him too harshly.

  ‘I get that,’ I say to him. ‘How about you, Max?’

  Alex shakes his head, makes a zipper motion across his mouth. It’s too late—my question’s out there.

  The seconds stretch.

  ‘My wife and I were camping,’ Max says in a dull voice, staring through the window at the shattered suburban streets. ‘When she went down I couldn’t carry her. I got lost on the way back to Clearview. Jack did everything he could. Sent out a search party. By the time they found her it was too late.’

  I feel terrible for stirring up his memories. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Me, too,’ he says, glancing back at me. ‘And I’m sorry for your losses.’

  Max hasn’t asked about my people. He doesn’t have to. It’s just the new reality. Trauma and tragedy are our shared back story.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  The Old Western Road joins the wider Great Western Highway. Yet more cars are being cleared by men and women in surgical masks. Each has a gun of some sort: pistols are tucked into waistbands, rifles are slung over shoulders. I look around the cabin of our car. The grip of a pistol is visible in the door compartment next to Damon. Nick has a .45 in a shoulder holster. As far as I can see, Max, Alex and Marv aren’t armed. Maybe that’s the easiest way to tell who’s who. Minions get guns. Specials don’t. I guess that’s fair enough. Jack’s probably not sure of Max, Alex, Marv and the others. Not in the same way he can be of himself—or his selves.

  We pass a shopping centre nestled by Emu Plains railway station. Both buildings are still and dead. But their car parks are brimming. I glimpse Goners, pushed into passenger seats, and try not to think about how many are still alive but being left to die because they’re beyond help.

  We follow a bend and approach Victoria Bridge over the Nepean River. The road and rail crossings run side by side. I remember this place from when we drove the other way along the train tracks. Under the dull grey trusses, the railway is empty now. Not so the road. Trucks rumble towards us up the centre of two tight lanes that look even narrower for being enclosed by high steel walls that are riveted like battleship armour.

  Nick pulls onto the shoulder so the lorries can pass.

  I lean forward to be heard over the convoy. ‘Do you guys know why your thoughts couldn’t be read?’ I ask. ‘Why you didn’t crash out and have to be, y’know, woken up?’

  I can’t read Nick’s eyes in the rear-vision mirror.

  ‘Don’t have a clue,’ says Max. ‘We’ve been trying to figure it out, haven’t we, Marv?’

  ‘Yes,’ Marv says obediently behind me. ‘Beats me.’

  ‘So far as I can tell,’ Max says, ‘there’s no real common denominator. Angela—did you meet her?—She’s in her forties. Marv, you’re what?’

  ‘Fifty last year.’

  ‘Marv’s mum was Aboriginal and his dad was Anglo. Me, I turned thirty-nine just before Christmas and my parents were from Scotland and Germany. Alex here is seventeen—which is also his IQ—and half-Thai. Nick?’

  Nick glanc
es at Max. ‘Mum’s of Polish descent, Dad’s from the Ukraine. I’m forty-one.’

  ‘Damon?’ Max asks.

  ‘Twenty, pure mongrel,’ he says with a grin.

  Max seems smart. Maybe it’s just the beard and glasses but he looks like a university professor. Even so I don’t think he suspects that Nick and Damon aren’t like him and me and Alex and Marv. I can’t blame him for that really. I don’t think I’d know if Jack hadn’t let me see behind the curtain.

  ‘Danby?’ Max prompts. ‘Age and ethnicity?’

  ‘Sixteen and Anglo.’

  ‘Ages, genders, ethnic backgrounds.’ Max breathes mist on his glasses, polishes them with his shirttails. ‘They’re all over the place. I reckon we’d all be different blood types too. Far as I can see, it’s random.’

  I think it’s time to mention my Situs inversus theory. There’s no need to keep it from these guys—or Jack. We’re all in this together and it’s information that might help in some way. I open my mouth to speak but Alex cuts me off.

  ‘How do you think he does it?’ he asks. ‘Jack, I mean, waking people up like that.’

  Not that I can really answer that question but telling them what Jack has told me about the process feels like betraying his trust. I shake my head. ‘I really don’t know.’

  Max strokes his beard. ‘I’ve actually seen something like it before.’

  We all look at him. Even Nick. I guess Jack’s as eager to hear this as anyone.

  ‘Backpacking in America,’ Max continues, ‘I saw one of those revival church meetings in Kentucky. This preacher works everyone into a frenzy with his snake-handling sermon. The crowd’s speaking in tongues—all of that. Then this holy roller starts praying over crippled people and they’re dropping their crutches and getting out of their wheelchairs.’

  Alex cackles. ‘Isn’t all that faith healing stuff a lot of crap?’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Max says, looking from him to me and Damon. ‘That it was a con. Now I’m not so sure.’

  I see amusement in Nick’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. He puts one hand on the back of his neck, covering the snake tattoo, and points the other one out the window at a body on the riverbank.

  ‘Duggaduggaschmookopalamooko,’ he says. ‘Shazbot.’

  Max frowns. ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘Snake handling, mumbo jumbo,’ Nick says. ‘Doesn’t work for me.’

  Max clears his throat. ‘I’m just telling you what I saw.’

  ‘So you think Jack’s channelling God?’ Marv asks from the cargo area.

  ‘Who knows anything any more?’ Max says with a shrug. ‘I know what I’ve seen Jack do. That’s good enough for me at the moment at least.’

  ‘What spins me out,’ Damon says, ‘is how quiet some of them are. It’s kinda creepy sometimes.’

  ‘Shock?’ I say—although it’s less of a suggestion and more a description of how I feel. Nick mocking any suggestion that Jack has supernatural powers, Damon speaking up about Minions not speaking up more: I wonder if Jack overestimates the control he has over these guys. Or if he’s just getting so good at impersonating them that who’s who is almost beside the point.

  ‘Shock is goddamned right,’ Nick says, turning the key in the ignition as the last truck grunts past us. ‘Saw it in the Middle East. You ride through a place that’s just been levelled by an air-strike and you don’t see too many chatty Charlies. The survivors stare into space like a lot of the knuckleheads up in Clearview. But they come around eventually.’

  We cross the claustrophobic iron bridge between the tall metal walls and I’m glad when we emerge at the eastern end and follow a gentle bend past a riverside motel. This stretch of road, the footpaths and a memorial park are all free of bodies and cars. We round a corner and pass the Civic Centre. It’s a modern complex, glass and steel. The grounds are spotless. When I peer up at the roof there are silhouettes of men with guns watching over this edge of the city.

  ‘Back where I started,’ Alex says.

  Penrith Plaza looms in the windshield. The place is a concrete monolith that stretches for blocks. We pass a multistorey car park that’s filled with vehicles removed from surrounding streets. Inside huge cargo bays, Minions load more trucks. Coming our way in the opposite lane a driver in a respirator steers a little tractor that pulls a long trailer. Once used for collecting shopping trolleys, it’s neatly stacked with the dead.

  ‘We’re putting them in a big theatre around the corner,’ Damon says softly. ‘When it’s full we’ll seal it up.’

  Nick hangs a right turn at an empty intersection. The train station, bus interchange, these streets and the mall around the plaza: there’s not a car or corpse to be seen.

  Only Jack.

  TWELVE

  Jack leans on his motorbike, wearing black jeans and a T-shirt. He has a pistol holstered on one hip, walkie-talkie on the other, daypack slung over a shoulder. God, he looks cool.

  I feel shallow for thinking that before I remember I don’t need to feel guilty about liking him anymore. Jack’s doing his best under difficult circumstances rather than orchestrating some elaborate conspiracy against me and whatever’s left of the world. I can be excited and happy to see him.

  Jack opens the passenger door for me. I hop out. Help Evan down. I’m thankful an unreadable mind means never having to say sorry for having had horrible suspicions about someone.

  Jack kisses my cheek, stubble grazing my skin nicely. He steps back, glances down at me.

  ‘Hole,’ he says. ‘Nice.’

  I flush, glance down at my T-shirt and then look at his Guns N’ Roses shirt that’s emblazoned with skulls on a crucifix. I burst out laughing.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Band shirts, black jeans: we should be at a music festival. Matching outfits. Is this his way of making me his? I don’t know whether I should be flattered or embarrassed. Both probably.

  ‘Everyone good?’ Jack asks over my shoulder as the others pile out of the four-wheel drive.

  ‘No problems,’ Nick says.

  Jack’s eyes lock back on mine. ‘And you, Danby?’ he purrs. ‘Are you okay?’

  The hairs on my arms spring up. Like there’s static electricity everywhere. Like lightning’s about to strike. Forcing myself to break the circuit, I look away and around the mall. ‘You’ve cleaned this place up.’

  ‘We’re getting there.’ Jack wrinkles his nose, nods at the plaza behind him. ‘Let’s go inside. Whenever the wind shifts, we still get the smell. It’s still pretty awful just a few streets in any direction.’

  The plaza’s smoked-glass doors hiss open as we approach. Evan scoots through ahead of us—just like he used to do when he went shopping with Dad and Stephanie and me.

  I look at Jack and shake my head in disbelief.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Automatic doors, already?’

  ‘Back-up generation plant. Marv helped get us sorted.’

  ‘I best go check up on that,’ Marv says.

  Jack stops and eyes him for a moment. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Great, thanks.’

  Marv looks relieved as he nods and hurries off through the door. If Jack notices Marv’s discomfort, he doesn’t show it. Maybe I need to tell him why I think Marv’s a bit spooked. That he—we—can trust him with the truth.

  Just inside the plaza entrance, two men stand guard with assault rifles.

  ‘Hey, guys,’ Jack says to them. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ says the younger man.

  His older companion doesn’t answer.

  ‘You coping with everything?’ Jack asks him.

  The guy’s shoulders slump.

  ‘You go on,’ Jack says to us. ‘Won’t be a minute.’

  We continue into the plaza, flanked by glass shopfronts. Cafe, shoe store, lingerie boutique, tanning kiosk: all dark and closed but intact and looking like they might reopen at any minute. We pause at an information desk whose h
olographics once previewed hundreds more shopping destinations.

  I gaze back at Jack. He chats quietly with the guards. The men nod. Fragments of conversation reach us: ‘It’s hard not to think about them’; ‘Not sleeping well’; ‘No, you’re right’; ‘I’ll be okay’; ‘Gonna take time’.

  Jack shakes their hands and makes his way to us.

  ‘They okay, man?’ asks Alex.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Just trying to deal, same as we all are.’

  My head whirls with who’s who. Did Jack just counsel a couple of Specials? Are they Minions whose real selves are showing? Or is Jack keeping up appearances to keep Marv and Alex and Max calm?

  We gather around Jack. Evan stands off to one side, hands cupped against the glass of a toy store window.

  ‘So what now?’ Alex says.

  ‘What he means,’ Max says, ‘is how can we help now?’

  Alex snaps his fingers. ‘Please tell me you’ve got some games consoles that need testing.’

  Jack smiles, taps his walkie-talkie. ‘I’ve heard we’ve got more IV stuff coming in soon. When it’s here, you can assist with the rehydrations. But for now do you mind helping sort stuff in the supermarket?’

  Alex sighs petulantly. ‘Can’t I be a guard?’ He mimics holding a gun. ‘Y’know, give that guy a break if he’s not up to it?’

  Max gives Alex’s shoulder an annoyed push.

  ‘What?’ Alex says. ‘How hard can it be?’

  ‘Playing shooters since birth doesn’t make you some Black Ops soldier.’

  Jack winks at me, holds up his hands to both men. ‘Guys, relax. Everything everyone does is helping, okay?’

  Max nods. ‘Sure, Jack, whatever you need.’

  Alex looks at his sneakers. ‘Sure, whatever, man.’

  Nick waves his hand. ‘This way, gentlemen.’

  Once he’s led the odd couple away, Jack turns to me with a smile. ‘I thought they’d never leave,’ he says. ‘Alone at last.’

  I frown. ‘Not really.’

  Damon and Evan are nearby, checking out a Sesame Street carousel.

  ‘It was a joke,’ Jack says. ‘But it really is just the two of us.’