The Last Shot

by Michael Adams

  We’re all ears.

  ‘Here’s what I am going to do,’ my little brother says, kid voice stretching around language and tone he’s never used. ‘I am going to count down from fifty. Then my friends will come find all of us. Okay.’

  Evan’s never played hide-and-seek in his life. He puts his hands over his eyes. ‘Fifty.’

  ‘We gotta go!’ Alex shouts. ‘We gotta leave him.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Marv snaps. ‘Danby?’

  I’ve got no idea.

  ‘Forty-nine.’

  I can’t just leave Evan. But I don’t know what—

  ‘Forty-eight.’

  Nathan scrabbles across the marshy ground to where we surround Evan.

  ‘Forty-seven.’ My little brother grins as he speeds up. ‘Forty-six, forty-five.’

  Nathan puts his hands around his own throat, mimics going unconscious.

  ‘No!’ I whisper. ‘Please.’

  ‘Forty-four-thirty-eight-thirty-one,’ Evan chirps. ‘Uh-oh. Twenty-nine.’

  Nathan’s eyes plead with me. ‘Trust me?’

  I nod.

  Evan doesn’t resist when Nathan puts his fingers around his neck and squeezes for a few seconds. He just goes limp.

  Nathan lets him go, quickly checks his pulse.

  My eyes are streaming. My heart’s shredding. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘He’s just unconscious,’ Nathan says. ‘Close the carotid artery and you induce syncope, a faint.’

  ‘Is he going to be okay?’

  Nathan nods. ‘He’ll be out for a while.’

  Alex paces. ‘Good, let’s leave him and go. Or go back. Reason with Jack.’ He looks from Nathan to me. ‘You two, you’re the ones he wants.’

  It’s a good thing I don’t have the gun. If I did I think Alex would be dead.

  ‘You,’ I say. ‘Shut up.’

  Marv rests his hand on Alex’s forehead, as if satisfying himself my little brother’s still alive. ‘Can Jack track him like this?’

  Nathan grimaces. ‘I hope not.’

  Tajik’s whisper silences us all. ‘People, people are coming!’

  ‘But that wasn’t fifty!’ Alex whines.

  I scramble up the root clump. Jack hasn’t got his Minions after us yet. But three of his acolytes have taken it on themselves to form a posse. Angela and Max and a teenage boy. They’ve each got an assault rifle.

  ‘Shit,’ says Alex. ‘Shit, man!’

  They’re closing rapidly. Only Tajik has a gun. Marv fired four times on the bridge. We’ve got two bullets.

  Marv scoops up Evan. ‘Go! Go! Go!’

  We race back onto the path, crouching as we run.

  ‘There they are!’ Max yells behind us. ‘Freeze!’

  ‘Keep going!’ yells Nathan from behind me. ‘Run!’

  We sprint.

  ‘I don’t know how to work this,’ I hear Angela shout.

  ‘Here,’ Max says urgently. ‘Like this.’

  They don’t know what to do with their rifles. We might just get away.

  There’s a chucka-chucka-chucka all around as leaves rip from branches and woodchips spray from tree trunks. They’re spraying fire wildly but sooner or later they’ll get lucky. The path curves just up ahead. If we can get out of sight, deeper into the canopy, outrun them—

  Our escape route’s blocked as two huge men step from the shadows with big guns aimed right at us.

  My mind screams.

  The Cop. The Biker.

  The Minion who carried out Jack’s first murder.

  The Minion who put a bullet in me and Nathan.

  Here to finish us off.

  My legs are pumping too fast to stop and I slide as Nathan yells that it’s okay and the Biker and the Cop shout as I drop—

  ‘Down!’ the Biker roars.

  The Cop is yelling it too: ‘Down! Down! Down!’

  I tumble into leaves and twigs as above me their rifles erupt furiously. I look about wildly. Marv and Evan sprawl in a bed of pine needles. Nathan crouches behind a trunk. Alex and Tajik huddle behind a log. Bullets strip the foliage around us. The Biker and the Cop stand tall, blasting mercilessly back the way we’ve come, bullet casings clinking off the path and bouncing all around me.

  The guns fall silent. My ears ring. I look up.

  The Biker gazes down at me from an iron and pepper cloud of gunsmoke. ‘You okay?’

  I scrabble away from his boots.

  ‘It’s okay!’ Nathan says, crabbing his way across the path to where I’ve grabbed a rock to hurl at the Biker. ‘They’re okay!’

  ‘Put it down!’ the Cop shouts.

  It’s a second before I realise he’s talking to Tajik, who has his gun pointed at the Biker, who now pivots so his assault rifle’s aimed at Tajik. ‘Drop it!’

  ‘Guys!’ Nathan says, putting himself hands-up in the middle of this stand-off. ‘They’re on our side. Look!’

  I peer down the path. The three Specials lie sprawled in the dirt.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Nathan says, closing slowly on Tajik.

  ‘Tajik,’ he says.

  ‘And you guys?’

  Alex and Marv tell Nathan who they are.

  ‘Okay, I’m Nathan, and this,’ he says, pointing to the Biker, ‘is Oscar. Tajik, your gun’s aimed at Louis.’

  ‘Let’s all just chill,’ Louis says, lowering his rifle. ‘Chill, okay?’

  Tajik nods and points his gun at the ground.

  Nathan looks at me. ‘Danby?’

  My fist tightens around the rock.

  Nathan steps towards me. ‘I’ll explain everything,’ he says. ‘Trust me.’

  I let the rock slip from my fingers.

  ‘Get their guns,’ Oscar says to us.

  We look at each other and back at him. No one moves.

  ‘Go! Quick!’ Oscar says, raising his rifle. ‘We’ll cover you.’

  ‘C’mon,’ Nathan says and I nod and numbly follow him.

  There’s blood everywhere, splashed across the path, spattered across a sign for the Great River Walk.

  ‘Shit, man,’ says Alex, joining us, sinking to his knees by Max’s body. ‘Why’d you have to come after us?’

  I feel his sadness. The man who rode with us from Clearview this morning now stares vacantly at the treetops. The woman who cheerfully fed people breakfast is dead because she thought she also had to defend them against us. But it’s the teenager I feel worst for. I glimpsed him in the crowd on the bridge. I know nothing about him. What his name was. Where he was from. Who he lost. How hard he had to fight to stay alive as long as he did—only to end up dead like this because of choices I made.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper.

  ‘Hurry,’ Nathan says, pulling an assault rifle from Angela’s hand, ripping an ammunition clip from her pocket.

  My stomach churns as I pick up the teenager’s blood-slick weapon. Alex wipes his eyes, grabs Max’s gun and stands on shaky legs.

  ‘Make sure they’re like this.’ Nathan holds his assault rifle side on, shows us how to slide a lever from ‘Fire’ to ‘Safe’.

  The three of us look along the river path towards the bridge. There’s no one else coming. Not yet. But the echoes of Evan’s countdown have run out in my head.

  Ready or not.

  We turn and run, pine needles crunching underfoot, and fall in with Oscar and Louis and Tajik and Marv, who has Evan across his shoulders like a lamb in a Bible picture.

  As we hustle along the path, I send my mind out, find Revivees in disarray.

  I-don’t-care-who’s-right-Just-get-away-from-all-of-them-With-you-baby-We-can’t-help-anyone-now . . . Tregan and Gary, resolving to head north and not stop for anything.

  Can’t-believe-the-girl-did-that-Think-the-guy’s-dead?-Does-that-mean-they’ll-come-for-us-He-said-it’d-be-war-if . . . Ravi and Wayne, wondering whether they ought to head the same way.

  Other familiar minds don’t offer any comfort. Anne drinks booze in her stolen mansion and
reads the Bible. Cory’s decided he’ll join the hunt for me and Nathan because it might get him in good with Jack or whoever’s in charge now. There are dozens more individuals and small groups, all over the place, at odds with each other but united in their distrust of us.

  We clatter over a steel walkway, cross a small creek, follow the path up a rise. A fish snaps out of the river and slaps back into the water. Ducks and ducklings arrow across the shallows. Birds trill and chatter from branches. It feels like we’re in the wilderness. But then, just like that, it ends.

  A tall razor wire fence cuts across the riverbank.

  Private Property—Keep Out, a sign warns.

  The path we’re on veers off up through a little picnic area and spills into a cul-de-sac on the fringe of an industrial estate.

  We slow and gather around. I put my rifle’s strap over my shoulder, try to get comfortable with the thing.

  ‘If we get down in the river,’ Louis says, ‘we can get around the fence.’

  Oscar shakes his head at the thick bush on the other side of the fence. ‘No path in there,’ he says. ‘We’ll slow right down. They could be waiting wherever we come out.’

  Nathan points to the wide street flanked with warehouses that leads away from the river. ‘This way?’

  He looks at me. I can’t offer any opinion. Because I can’t speak. I can’t believe Nathan’s pow-wowing with these bastards. Oscar. Louis. Biker. Cop. Killers both. Fear and fury boil up in me. I want to raise my rifle and kill them dead. Except that’d be cold-blooded murder. Exactly what they did. Except they didn’t. Jack did. My head spins.

  They’re not Jack’s anymore. If they were they would’ve shot us on the river path. They would’ve killed Nathan long before he came for me on the bridge. I don’t understand how it worked but hope sparks in me. If they got free of Jack then that means Evan might too.

  Oscar’s nodding. ‘—our best bet. Not that we’ve got much choice.’

  I don’t know what they decided. I just run with them.

  We bustle out of the trees and between shrubs and onto the road. Gates and cyclone fences protect storage depots for pool chemicals, landscaping supplies, automotive parts. There are only a few bodies in driveways and the street’s dotted with cars rather than choked by them. I guess not many people fled to places like this.

  Oscar and Louis swing their guns this way and that as we hurry to the corner. The next road is lined in both directions with more warehouses and wholesalers behind security fences.

  ‘Let’s hide in one of these places,’ Alex says. ‘They’ll never find us.’

  ‘We’ll get trapped,’ I pant. ‘We need to keep moving.’

  ‘No, if we’re really quiet we can—’

  ‘She’s right, son,’ Oscar says, looking from Alex to me. ‘It’s a good idea but there’s nowhere to run once we’re behind one of these fences.’

  Alex scoffs like he’s been insulted.

  ‘What about a car?’ Tajik asks.

  It’s a reasonable suggestion. This street’s navigable.

  Oscar shakes his head. ‘These back blocks are fine. Soon as we hit a main road we’ll be screwed.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Louis asks because Marv’s face shows the strain of lugging Evan. ‘Let me take him.’

  Before I can protest, Louis lifts Evan gently and puts him over his big shoulder.

  The big Cop—who did and didn’t shoot me and Nathan—catches my stare. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘About before. Really.’

  I shake my head. There are no words.

  Oscar leads, assault rifle sweeping the street, and we run rag-tag behind him, past an auto workshop, a furniture factory and a tile wholesaler.

  When we cut across a vacant lot to the next block we see how right Oscar was and how useless a car would be to us. Dead traffic blocks the main road kerb to kerb and fills the footpaths and median strips.

  We jog north, dodging between vehicles. A sign says this is the road to Richmond, which is twenty kilometres away. We go by a car dealership, a petrol station, a pet supply place and the rubble of a burger joint demolished by a rogue eighteen-wheeler. Behind a serious security fence a blocky building sits inside landscaped gardens. The sign by the abandoned gatehouse says Virlab is devoted to ‘Bioscience Best Practice’. If we were in a movie, we’d break in and whip up an antidote that’d save the world.

  But we’re not and so we chug past car after car, jump over body after body. Flies glance off my face like black snowflakes and the stinking air is sticky and heavy in my lungs. As much as we’re surrounded by death, some of the people on the road and behind windshields look like they’re still alive. I wonder if Louis and Oscar have Lorazepam and IV stuff in their backpacks. But even if they do it’s as useless to us as these cars. Reviving people now would be like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for Jack to follow.

  On the other side of a roundabout the procession of stalled vehicles stretches unbroken into the hazy distance. Framed by mountain foothills, under the gritty sky, it’s flat out there. Flat and exposed.

  Oscar stands up a motorbike but can’t get it started.

  ‘We find a few we can get going,’ he says, ‘we ride between cars, hit the fields when we have to.’

  ‘I saw one back there didn’t look too banged up,’ Louis says.

  ‘Too noisy,’ says Tajik. ‘The sound will carry a long way.’

  ‘And I can’t ride,’ Alex says. ‘I don’t think we—’

  ‘Shit!’ I hiss.

  Their eyes sweep to me but I’m squinting at the air space over Penrith.

  Marv smacks his forehead. ‘She’s right.’

  ‘What?’ Nathan says, grabbing my shoulder. ‘What is it?’

  I look hard at him, at all of them. ‘Drones,’ I say. ‘He’s got drones.’

  Oscar tugs his beard. ‘You’re shitting me.’

  I shake my head. ‘He had them up over Clearview. He had at least one in the air down here.’

  Eyes and rifles scan the unfriendly skies.

  I’m focused on the expanse of suburbia just to our east. Terracotta roofs march back across the hills.

  ‘Those houses,’ I say, pointing. ‘Should we get under cover?’

  No one moves.

  ‘Risky,’ Oscar says. ‘Could end up trapping ourselves.’

  Alex has a smug look. Like me meeting resistance somehow vindicates him. We’re the same age. We should be friends. But I can’t stand him already.

  Louis cups his hand at the glare of the road ahead. ‘It’s much riskier out there if he’s got eyes in the sky—or just standing here, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Danby’s right,’ Nathan says. ‘There’s gotta be a thousand houses in there. We’ll be like needles in a haystack. We can hole up till it’s dark and then keep north?’

  Oscar nods. ‘What are we waiting for?’

  He eases the motorbike back down to the road.

  We don’t talk anymore. We run again.

  SEVENTEEN

  Riverside is a massive real estate development. The streets are chaotic. Cars smashed in every direction, people scattered like kerbside rubbish outside apartment buildings. We scramble along footpaths, scurry down laneways, scan skies crowding over us. Crossing an oval takes us into an older part of the suburb that’s lined with showy two-storey houses. We point our rifles at shadows. I’m not even sure I know how to use mine. Luckily nothing moves.

  A sign says this is Mosel Avenue. We round a corner into Pickering Street. Then it’s Yates Circuit. I have no real idea where we are and that’s good. We need to get lost in this suburban maze.

  We slow and look at the jumbled architecture. Porticos and balconies, bay windows and oversized doors, roofs angling every which way. They’re all built to within inches of each other and their property lines. Most of the brick driveways and double garages are empty. We’ve probably passed some of the cars and their owners out on the main road. Even so the death smell shrouds the street. I guess for every person w
ho got behind the wheel someone else was left to fester in each of these McMausoleums.

  Alex vomits into the gutter. I can’t blame him for that.

  ‘Which one?’ Marv asks.

  They all look the same.

  ‘Listen,’ I say.

  We all hear it.

  Motorbikes.

  Nathan runs into the nearest place with an open front door. We scramble after him, hurtle into its big entranceway. Oscar slams the door behind us and deadbolts it. We tumble into the sunken lounge room. There’s shag pile carpet, leather lounges, glass coffee tables and framed photos of a middle-aged mum and dad with their grown-up kids and a massive Christmas tree in one corner. Nathan pulls the curtains closed. Louis lays Evan on a three-seater. I lean my rifle against a grandfather clock and crouch beside my little brother. Nathan checks his vital signs and I wait breathlessly.

  ‘He’s fine.’

  Oscar shuts blinds, barks at Marv and Tajik to check the back of the house and the upstairs.

  But I’m far away. Feel like I’m slipping.

  ‘Danby?’

  I jerk back into myself.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Nathan asks.

  I nod. Not that I really know that I am all right. Would I be able to tell if I was going into shock? I need to not show weakness now. We all have to be strong.

  ‘Can you stay with Evan a minute?’ I say softly. ‘I have to find a bathroom.’

  Nathan’s eyes are big and worried.

  ‘I’m fine.’ It’s hard to even whisper. Hard to walk a straight line.

  ‘Danby, hey—’

  I wave Nathan off. ‘I just need a minute.’

  There’s a little bathroom behind the kitchen. I lock the door behind me, slide down to the tiles, curl into a ball and rock back and forth.

  I failed. Failed because I was stupid. Failed because I was seduced. We’re going to be hunted and killed. All because of me.

  I see myself back in Beautopia Point. Dad’s gun on the floor. Me thinking I should shoot myself and kill Evan.

  It could have ended then.

  ‘Endure above all.’

  I hear Mum say it so clearly I unclench my arms from around my knees and look around like she’s materialised in this bathroom.

  She hasn’t. I’m alone. Except I’m not. She’s in my memory. Can’t ever be removed from there. I picture those three words in the diary beside a beautiful ink drawing of one of her Wollemi pines. The trees were supposed to be extinct. Turned out they’d survived since the age of the dinosaurs.