The Last Shot

by Michael Adams

  I walk among his patients, awed by how dedicated Jack is to saving people, freaked they’re being watered like a crop he can harvest at will.

  A brown-skinned man in his forties emerges from the back office carrying a carton of adult diapers. His blue eyes widen in surprise when he sees us.

  ‘Jack, hello.’

  ‘Tajik,’ Jack says. ‘This is Danby.’

  The man tilts his head at me uncertainly. I think he’s a Special.

  ‘Tajik’s on orderly duty,’ Jack says. ‘How’re they doing?’

  ‘Better all the time, yes.’ Tajik crinkles his nose at the job he’s about to do. ‘I will continue?’

  ‘Don’t let us keep you,’ Jack says. ‘Please.’

  As Tajik changes an African man, Jack fossicks in his backpack and produces a zip-lock bag containing a bundle of capped syringes.

  ‘What’s that?’ I ask.

  ‘Lorazepam,’ Jack says. ‘We’ll do this your way. We wake up one of these guys with this stuff and whatever you say to him or her you’ll be saying to Nathan and everyone else.’

  Now he’s proposing to use Lorazepam. Better late than never but I shake my head at how much of this might have been avoided. Still at least Jack has come full circle. I follow him from bed to bed. As he touches people, Tajik sneaks glances at me. When I try to make eye contact he busies himself changing the IV on a blue-haired hippie girl in a tie-dyed shirt.

  Jack’s attention is on a blonde woman whose sneakers hang over the edges of a bottom bunk.

  ‘This one,’ he says, resting his hand on her forehead. ‘She’s good.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Most recently worked security at the football stadium down the road,’ he tells me. ‘Parents died when she was a teenager. Only child. Hasn’t had a boyfriend in years.’

  I’m not sure I needed such a detailed CV.

  Jack moves on, from waterbed to air mattress to a racing-car cot where he rests his fingers on the cheek of a small man whose wispy hair flares on the pillow like a halo.

  ‘He’s good,’ he says. ‘Divorced. IT obsessive. Kinda reclusive. He’s our back-up if the Lorazepam doesn’t work on her.’

  Jack grabs his walkie-talkie. ‘Nick, you there?’

  Tajik watches us carefully. There’s a squelch of static. ‘Go ahead, Jack.’

  ‘We’re at NiteRite,’ he says. ‘Can you get a few guys up here to give us a hand?’

  ‘Copy that. On their way.’

  ‘Tajik,’ he says. ‘Get them ready to be moved?’

  As Tajik sets about removing the catheter from the blonde woman’s wrist, I get why Jack chose her—and the small man.

  ‘Jack,’ I say, ‘just because these guys are loners doesn’t mean they won’t freak out when they wake up.’

  I think back to our Revivees’ disorientation. That was after just a few days. It’s been a week now.

  Jack glances at me. ‘I know, but they’ve got fewer people to worry about. What we need is for whoever we revive to just focus on what you’re saying for a few minutes.’

  ‘And what is it I’m going to say?’

  Three men appear in the doorway. Two are fresh faced and big shouldered like the footballers who used to be worshipped at my school. The third guy’s in his thirties. With his scratched face and shirt and suit pants that have seen better days, he looks like a businessman still trying to get home a week after his Christmas party.

  ‘Can you guys help Tajik with these two?’ Jack says.

  The young men carry the woman out on a stretcher, Jack clearing a stack of cartons from their path. Tajik and the other helper pass me with the small man between them. I fall in behind them and smile when the Minion’s shirt sleeve rides up to show off a vanity tattoo on his inner arm. $MYKN8R$: it reads inside a licence-plate frame. This guy was probably the kind of douche who would’ve been mates with Mr Imma Legend GR8LAY from back on the highway. I feel bad for thinking that but I can’t help it.

  Jack and I trail behind to the stilled escalators.

  ‘Only you and I know about the ambush,’ he says quietly. ‘Don’t mention it to Marv and the others. I don’t want to give them another reason to be scared. Don’t want them to think that they might get shot or blown up at any moment.’

  I gulp. Me and Jack being killed by Nathan and his men. That’d be the final bloody irony. ‘Do you think we’re safe?’ I ask.

  Jack glances at me. ‘I hope so.’

  I look across the mall at Vane & Vane. True to his word, Jack has Minions in there, removing Mum’s painting from the window. We come onto the second floor, descend more escalators.

  ‘When you talk to Nathan, don’t mention the attack,’ Jack says quietly. ‘I don’t want to dwell on the negative. Just tell him we need to start over, that we can work together, that he’s not in danger, that we need his help. Tell him he can bring whoever he likes with him. We just want to talk face to face. After that, if he wants to leave, he can go.’

  Can I go with him? I want to ask it—purely theoretically—but there’s no point. Besides, even if it wasn’t for Evan, I don’t think I’d want to anymore. Not if Nathan’s capable of cold-bloodedly massacring people like that.

  ‘Ask him to come to the Victoria Bridge,’ Jack says, looking at his watch. ‘You know the one I mean?’

  I nod. ‘Nathan might not.’

  ‘Tell him to follow the railway west.’

  ‘You want all of that word for word or can I freestyle?’

  Jack laughs. ‘Freestyle. That’s the whole point. Tell him what you’ve seen, the progress we’re making. You be you, speak from the heart, that’s what will get through to him. Are you up to it?’

  Last time Nathan saw me I was hugging Jack in Parramatta but giving a secret thumbs-down sign over his shoulder. Talk about mixed messages. I hate to think how he’ll react to me appearing to him as Jack’s public relations officer. Then he really might classify me as an enemy deserving of attack. Just as weird is thinking how it’ll be if Nathan joins us. Me, him, Jack: I’m not sure how that would work.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I say, stomach hollow. ‘I don’t know if he’ll believe me.’

  Jack squeezes my shoulder. ‘I believe in you. You’ll do fine.’

  I smile. ‘So when do we do this?’

  ‘Now. We need to sort this out so we can all get back to saving people.’

  We’re joined by Damon and Evan at the bottom of the escalators, and Alex, Max and Nick fall in with us as we follow the stretcher-bearers to an exit where Marv waits. Jack’s getting the whole gang together.

  As we walk out onto a side street, I keep in step with Marv. ‘It’s me, really me.’ I say with a sidelong glance.

  Marv’s smile is relieved—and real. ‘Thank God for that,’ he says. ‘What’s going on?’

  Christ—where do I begin? Not here. Not now. ‘I’ll tell you what I know as soon as I can, okay?’

  He nods.

  We come out of the cleared zone and hit a traffic-jammed major road.

  ‘That’s where we’re going,’ Jack says.

  On the other side of the four lanes is a pretty little park where people are clustered amiably in the shade of oaks. No one’s armed. Everyone looks freshly scrubbed. It’s like we’re late arrivals at a church picnic. I can’t tell if the people waiting for us are Minions or Specials or a mixture.

  I wasn’t wrong about Jack being a showman. It’s obvious where he’s going with this. He’s providing a happy crowd against a picturesque backdrop for my peace overture. I feel queasy that this will be like a cheesy public service announcement. My name is Danby Armstrong and I authorised this message.

  What makes me grin is the plump cockatoo perched in the upper branches of a purple jacaranda. White, screeching: ordinarily it could be any one of a million birds but I know in my bones that it’s Lachie. My familiar has followed me down the mountain and is still keeping an eye on me. Maybe that’s delusional thinking. I don’t care.

 
; The stretcher-bearers angle between cars to clear bonnets and bumpers. Jack and Damon ford the traffic, followed by Max and Alex and Marv. Evan shrugs off my hand and scoots through the stalled cars, like it’s that maze he loved at Luna Park.

  I make my way between vehicles, can’t help looking at the poor bodies and souls sealed up in their car tombs. A big-haired woman is hunched forward in her Volvo, steering wheel tight in manicured grip, as though she still expects to escape this eternal peak hour. Her neighbour in a Prius looks more relaxed, in a reclined seat and Shades, hands behind his head like he’s making the most of the wait. Seeing Earth After People this morning makes me wonder how long it’ll be before all the bodies rot and the cars rust and the road’s so buried under dirt and grown over with plants that it’ll be like none of this ever existed.

  Cheery thought, Danby.

  I snap out of my morbid musings and glance up and around. Jack’s on the far kerb, staring at a telegraph pole—or something on a telegraph pole. As he turns back to me, bone pain blasts through my shin and shoots up my leg.

  ‘Ow!’ I gasp and drop to grab where I’ve smashed myself into a car’s tow bar. ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  I hop up in place. Across cars, I see Jack’s concerned face.

  ‘No, I’m fine!’ I wave him off. ‘Just bumped my leg.’

  ‘You sure?’

  It hurts like hell but I give him the thumbs-up.

  ‘Be there in a sec. You go on.’

  Jack makes his way into the park with the others. I lean against the Prius and roll up my jeans. The shin’s red but nothing’s bleeding or broken. My pride’s more injured than my leg.

  I rub my shin and distract myself from the pain by thinking about what I’m going to say to Nathan and everyone else. I realise I am actually nervous. Not about what to say. About saying anything. How ridiculous: even the apocalypse hasn’t cured my fear of public speaking.

  Pushing off the Prius, I gently test my weight. I’ll be limping for a while. Now, as if lightning might strike twice, I keep my eyes on where I’m walking and don’t look up until I reach the kerb.

  When I step onto the footpath, my eyes land on one of Mum’s flyers. It’s taped to a telegraph pole—the telegraph pole Jack was staring at moments ago.

  ‘Turn Your Trash Into Treasure!’—the flyer says in jaunty letters that Mum and I hand-coloured that afternoon we last played chess. Underneath there’s the A-to-Z list—artworks to zoetropes—of things for which Mum might pay good money. The bottom of the flyer is ragged where passers-by have ripped off the tabs that bore only her telephone number.

  It’s another bittersweet reminder of Mum and—

  Why was Jack looking at it?

  There’s no name on the flyer. It doesn’t say ‘Call Robyn West of Shadow Valley.’ It could’ve been sticky-taped here by anyone.

  My mouth goes dry and my face numb.

  There has to be an explanation. I just can’t think of one.

  Did I tell Jack Mum was a second-hand dealer? Must have . . .

  I didn’t. I’m sure I didn’t. Is it something Evan knows? I don’t see how it could be.

  My limbs are rigid. I feel seized, heart caught mid-beat, lungs deflating as air wheezes from me. I can’t move.

  Then it’s like I hear Mum whisper in my head.

  ‘Move, Danby!’

  I snap my face forward and jolt into motion just as Jack turns back to me.

  ‘How’s the leg?’

  ‘Fine,’ I say, mind reeling as I robotically cover the distance between us and join him at the edge of the park.

  ‘Really?’

  I nod. I can’t even feel the hurt shin. Adrenaline has me anaesthetised.

  ‘I can be a real klutz sometimes.’ I paste on what I hope is a goofy grin.

  Jack regards me with a curious expression and gazes over my shoulder at the stalled traffic.

  Does he know I saw the flyer? Does he realise I saw him looking at it? I don’t think so. When he turned around I was down amid the cars. Then I was up but yelping and flailing like a seal at my hurt leg.

  Jack peers back at me.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask.

  He holds my gaze. ‘Just be careful,’ he says. ‘The last thing I want is for you to get hurt.’

  It doesn’t sound warm. It sounds like a warning.

  I’m being paranoid. That’s what this is. Jack looks into me with those golden eyes. I can’t meet his stare so I bend over and roll up my jeans to show him the red welt.

  ‘Yowza,’ he says. ‘You okay to walk?’

  ‘Just a flesh wound,’ I say. ‘I’ll be more careful.’

  I glance up. He grins down. Gives me his hand. ‘We need you over here.’

  I let him lead me along the garden path.

  Up in the tree, Lachie screeches, flares his feathers, flaps his wings.

  With Jack’s back to me, I’ve got a moment to think.

  There has to be an explanation. Maybe I told him about Mum when I was out of it on painkillers in Old Government House. Or maybe he was just staring at the flyer because he thought . . . what? That he might do a little post-apocalyptic selling of unwanted items?

  I’m listening to my gut. It insists Jack had no reason to take notice of that flyer. Not in a world filled with debris and destruction. Not unless it meant something to him because he’d seen it before.

  They were stacked everywhere in Mum’s house.

  But he can’t have seen them through a Minion because Mr November’s alive and well in Clearview.

  My mind is a jumble. Lachie screeches.

  Jack smiles up. ‘Is that the bird that was with you? Lachie?’

  I force a grin. ‘They all look the same. But I think so.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Jack says, ‘he’s noisy.’ He steers me to a patch of grass in the centre of the lawn. Evan comes dutifully to my side and takes my hand. I face the NiteRite woman, who sits slumped in a director’s chair, like someone who’s fallen asleep at a party. Nick shepherds Marv and Tajik and Alex and Max and other people into a clump behind me.

  ‘That’s it,’ Jack says with a chuckle. ‘Like a school photo.’ He winks at me but his smile falters. ‘You sure you’re okay?’

  My eyes are the thinnest membrane between us. Maybe Jack doesn’t need to read my mind. Not when my confusion’s so intense it could spin spirals into my pupils.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Just a little bit nervous.’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ he says. ‘We’ll be ready as soon as she wakes up.’

  Jack crosses to the woman, kneels by her and takes two syringes from his pocket as another Minion swabs her tattooed bicep.

  Syncosis: that’s what he called the Snap when we were talking beneath the Christmas tree in the mall. Then he’d corrected himself, hastily rolled a smoke. What he’d used was the name Mum gave to her last painting before she died in the studio. The one the dirt bike guy had brushed against before he died on Shadow Valley Road.

  My head spins as my heart speeds up.

  ‘Going to give her a relaxant first,’ Jack says over his shoulder. ‘I think it’s better if she’s chilled when she wakes up. We don’t need her—’

  I zone out for a moment, concentrate on that handsome profile, the movement of his lips and mouth and jaw.

  Things tumble into place. Outside Vane & Vane he knew that painting had been done by my mum. I’d never said she was an artist. I’m sure of that now.

  Like I didn’t tell him Lachie’s name. But I did mention it to Lana and John. Shit. Shit. Shit. There are too many loose ends to ignore. I don’t know if Jack’s let his guard down because he’s convinced I’m on his side or whether he can’t focus on the fine details because he’s managing so many minds.

  My stomach’s watery. My gut wishes it didn’t know any of this.

  ‘Shit,’ I say under my breath.

  The stretcher-bearing Minions stand to the side of the park. I stare at the guy with the scratched face and e
xpensive but ruined trousers and shirt, I remember his vanity plate tattoo: $MYKN8R$. Mikenator. Mike. The stockbroker. First person Jack raised up. The guy he said slipped back into catatonia when he tried to ‘let him go’. But it’s Mike right there. Jack lied about him. He might be able to release every mind in the blink of an eye. He might not be able to do it at all ever. I tighten my hand around Evan’s. Evan who’s not Evan. Who might never be again.

  ‘Okay, Danby?’ my little brother asks.

  I smile down at him, aware his big eyes are Jack’s.

  ‘Everything’s going to be fine, kiddo,’ I say.

  Fury burns in me. Fury that Jack made me doubt myself. Fury that he fooled me into feeling for him. Fury that I didn’t deliver my scorpion sting when I was on the back of the motorbike, in the hallway . . .

  What I didn’t do doesn’t matter. What matters is what I’m going to do.

  ‘Okay,’ Jack says, standing up with the empty second syringe. ‘She’s got five milligrams of Lorazepam in her.’

  I paste on a smile as he crosses to me.

  ‘I’ll stand behind her,’ he says. ‘You’re the one Nathan trusts. But it’ll be good for him to see people we’ve saved behind you. Once you’ve said what you need to, we’ll take the woman aside and explain everything. Keep it short, simple. Everything make sense?’

  What makes sense is this: he’s using me to trap Nathan.

  My plan can’t work the way I wanted. Best I can do is improvise. I shrug the pannier from my shoulder.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ Jack asks, sounding annoyed.

  ‘I’m starving,’ I say. ‘Chocopops aren’t much of a breakfast.’

  I pull out the little Santa box and lift the lid.

  ‘Mum’s Christmas cookies,’ I say, biting into a chocolate biscuit whose red and white icing vaguely resembles a reindeer. ‘Bit of a tradition.’

  Jack frowns as I chew the moist chocolate.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say with a mouthful. ‘Do you want one?’

  Jack smiles and takes the next cookie. Green and white icing.

  ‘Christmas tree?’ he says.

  ‘Hmm-mmm, something like that.’

  Jack bites into the biscuit and I pass the point of no return.

  ‘Yum,’ he says. ‘Your mum knew how to bake.’