Underdog

by Tobias Madden

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ I screamed at Mum. ‘You’re just going to leave her to die?’

  She barely flinched. Her hat was pulled down low over her eyes and her hands were shaking as she held the beer. She looked up at me slowly, then pushed the beer away.

  ‘Don’t start, Remi.’

  ‘We have to go get her.’

  ‘What do you want me to say? She doesn’t want to leave,’ said Mum, pushing her hat off and then putting it back on. Nothing I could say would get through to her. I swung out and punched the back of the dining chair closest to me.

  ‘Grow up,’ spat Mum, not even looking at me.

  ‘I’m going to get her,’ I yelled. My whole body was alight. I felt strong, like I could pick up the table and throw it across the room if I wanted to. That’s when Frida, my baby sister, just four months old, started crying. I don’t know if that’s the only reason I didn’t start throwing the furniture around, but it sucked some of the intensity out of me. Mum looked up at me, eyes blank. Then she sighed and pushed herself up from the chair. She walked right by me without a word and went into Frida’s room.

  I took out my phone and dialled Nan’s number. It went to voicemail. I tried again. Voicemail. I snatched Mum’s car keys from the bench.

  I loaded up the car in a fit of anger, grabbing anything I thought might be useful, which turned out to be a whole lot of shit that wouldn’t be. I was putting the last bag in when Mum followed me out holding Frida, who was still screaming her lungs out.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ said Mum.

  ‘I told you. To get Nan. You coming or what?’

  Mum stared at me a minute, blinking too slow. I was prepared for a battle, prepared to argue with her and force her in the car if I had to. I was stronger than her. But she just looked at me from under that old red hat and said, ‘Fine.’

  ‘What do you mean, “fine”?’

  ‘I mean, I’m done fighting with you, Rem. If you want to be selfish and take our only means of transport and drag Frida through the flood, only to hear in person what you already know to be true, so be it. We’ll go.’

  That made my stomach twist. I hadn’t considered Frida. But it would literally take an extra hour, max, to pick up Nan first. Plenty of time. I took Frida from Mum and gave her a big kiss. Mum rummaged through Frida’s baby bag and scooped the last of the formula into a bottle. She handed it to me.

  ‘Ration it,’ she said. ‘I’ll drive.’

  I strapped Frida into her car seat while Mum finished loading the car. Frida and I sat side by side in the back, and I dangled an owl toy in her face to distract her from her hunger. The owl had crunchy ribbons to touch, bells to jingle, and a little mirror that Frida liked to look at and then look behind to try and find the baby she saw reflected there, not understanding that it was her. She was content for a few minutes, her tiny hands grabbing at the owl, but then she spotted the cold bottle of formula in my hand and screamed again. Mum slid into the driver’s seat and turned on the car.

  ‘Just a little bit of milk at a time. We’ll get more at the camp,’ said Mum, without looking back.

  I held the bottle to Frida’s lips and she drank greedily. As soon as I pulled the bottle away she began to scream again. I stuck a half-chewed rusk stick in her mouth, but she kept on screaming, tiny fists banging against the sides of the car seat.

  ‘It’s okay, little boo, you can have some more milk soon, shh, shh,’ I cooed, but that only made her scream louder.

  ‘Frida, baby, nice and quiet for Mummy now, come on, baby,’ said Mum as she pulled out of the driveway.

  Frida was not nice and quiet, but at least her cries drowned out the sound of the evacuation alarm. The beep, beep, beep had mostly faded into the background by then, but on my bad days it was all I could hear. It drove me crazy.

  ‘Fuck this,’ Mum muttered to herself. ‘Fuck all of this.’

  I sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star to Frida to drown out Mum. I tightened the cap on the bottle so that hardly any milk came out when Frida sucked, then gave it back to her to nurse. She wasn’t happy, but stopped screaming long enough for us to get out of the estate.

  ‘She’ll sleep soon,’ Mum said to herself again. ‘Everything will be fine, she’ll sleep.’

  A few of our neighbours left at the same time as us. I watched them through the window as we passed. Some looked completely traumatised at the thought of leaving their precious bricks and mortar behind, others—renters like us, I supposed—barely glanced back as they loaded their photo albums and clothes into their cars. The radio was repeating the emergency broadcast, telling us where to go and what to bring and how far the flood waters had reached.

  Frida started screaming again five minutes onto the highway. We’d just passed the turnoff for the airport, the traffic backed up as far as I could see, people desperate to get out, even though a ticket to anywhere cost more than a house by then. That’s when I realised we were going the wrong way.

  ‘Turn around, Mum.’

  Mum pressed her lips together, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. ‘No.’

  ‘We’re not leaving without Nan.’

  ‘She doesn’t want to leave.’

  ‘She wouldn’t let me leave without saying goodbye!’ I yelled. ‘We have to go back for her. She’s all alone.’ I unbuckled my seatbelt, knocking Frida’s owl to the floor. The car started beeping, telling me to put my seatbelt back on. Frida started screaming again.

  Mum slammed on the brakes. ‘Put your seatbelt back on, Remi. I’m not doing this with you. She doesn’t want to leave. All your nan cares about is herself, that’s all she’s ever cared about. You’re better off forgetting about her. She sure doesn’t give a shit about us!’

  Parents are usually right, but in this case, Mum was wrong. I took advantage of the car being stopped, grabbed my backpack, yanked open the door, and jumped out.

  ‘You get your arse back in this car right now!’ Mum was pissed. Frida was pissed. I was pissed.

  I slammed the door shut. Mum pulled the car onto the shoulder of the highway, cutting off my escape route. She got out of the car, face red, tears streaming down her cheeks. That made me stop. Mum and I fought all the time, but there were only three times I’d seen her cry: when my brother Joe died; when her dad died; and when she found out she was pregnant with Frida.

  ‘You can’t stop me,’ I said.

  Mum ran her hands over her face. Inside the car, Frida was still bawling.

  ‘Remi, please, baby, I know I sound harsh, but you don’t know her like I do. You can plead and cry at her feet until your throat is raw, she won’t budge.’

  ‘Yes, she will. If I ask her to come, she will, I know it. Let’s just turn around, throw Nan in the car, then head for the camp. What’s the big deal?’

  Mum looked me dead in the eye, her patience for me gone. ‘What’s the big deal?’ She grabbed me around the wrist. ‘What’s the big fucking deal, Remi? The big deal is that you are not the only person in this family, mate. Look around you! Frida is in there screaming her lungs out because she’s starving. I’m exhausted. Yet all you care about is Nan.’ She was crying hard then, almost as hard as Frida. She let go of my wrist, leaving a red mark behind. She dropped to her knees on the bitumen and looked up into the sky.

  ‘Mum,’ I said. I reached out a hand to touch her, but she batted it away. I softened my voice. ‘Mum, you know how much she means to me. I care about Frida too, and you, but I need to say goodbye.’

  After a moment, she let out a sigh, wiped her tears on her sleeve. She stood up again. Mum never let herself appear weak for long. ‘I’m sorry, baby, I really am. I know I’ve not been the greatest mum, but at least I’m here. Your nan has made her decision. I know you love her, but there is no way in hell I am going to let you just fuck off into this flood and risk losing you, too.’

  I didn’t know how to tell her I was going whether she ‘let’ me or not.

  Mum must have
read it in my face. ‘You’re going to go anyway, aren’t you?’

  I nodded. ‘Sorry, Mum.’

  ‘You’re just like her, you know,’ she said, and she was right. ‘Stubborn as all hell.’

  ‘I know we don’t have the tightest of relationships, Mum, but you know I love you, right?’ My feet were bouncing back and forth, my mind already plotting how to get to Nan.

  Mum pulled me into a hug. It felt weird hugging her. We never really did that.

  ‘I’m not sure why you love me,’ she said.

  ‘Mum, come on, don’t do this.’

  ‘I love you too, Rem,’ she said. ‘I really do.’

  ‘All right, Mum, let’s not get too emo. Let’s just go already.’

  Mum looked over at the car. Frida had fallen asleep, exhausted from all the screaming. ‘We can’t, babe,’ she said. ‘I have to get Frida to the camp or she’ll…’

  ‘Yeah, I know. It’s cool, I can take care of myself.’

  ‘I know you can,’ said Mum, a sad look in her eye, the look I couldn’t stand because it made me feel sorry for her, even though I was still so mad at her. ‘Promise me you’ll come straight to the camp after.’

  ‘Promise. Everything except the “straight” part.’

  That almost made Mum smile.

  ‘You know where the camp is, right?’ she said, ignoring my joke.

  ‘Yes, Mum.’ I rolled my eyes. Now she cared.

  ‘And you know how to get there?’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  ‘How are you going to get there?’

  ‘I dunno, steal a car or something, I guess?’

  That time, Mum rolled her eyes at me. ‘Do you have water?’

  ‘Yes, Mum. I won’t be long, like a few hours, max.’

  ‘You call me if you get into trouble, you understand? How much battery does your phone have left?’

  ‘Heaps, Mum, just get Frida there safely and don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.’

  Mum stared at me for an uncomfortably long time. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Fuck off, then.’

  I gave her a nod, then ducked back into the car to kiss Frida goodbye, breathing in her newborn baby smell. She looked so cute when she was asleep, with her tiny fingers and her squishy cheeks. I had to pretend she was just on her way to daycare or something, because the thought of my little sister heading off to a refugee camp made my stomach turn.

  Mum got back in the car and pulled out onto the road. I didn’t watch them leave. I’d been on my own before, and even though it didn’t feel like I would be fine, I had to tell myself I’d be fine, or I wouldn’t have been able to keep going.

  We had travelled far enough east that the ground was still dry. Nan lived just north of the city, a twenty-minute drive from where I stood on the side of the highway, but I had no ride, and the temperature was close to forty degrees. I debated hitchhiking, versus walking, versus stealing a car. The decision wasn’t hard, because I hate random people, and the heat and I are not friends.

  I ducked through the scrubland on the side of the highway and made my way down into the adjacent suburb. Nice houses, dead lawns, just like all the new estates, ours included. I had to try three cars before I found one unlocked. Stealing, I felt okay about. Smashing windows, not so much. I never really thought of myself as a criminal, but it was surprisingly easy to be okay with stealing a car when your entire city was about to be annihilated. Was that how it always began? The looting and shit that went on in situations like this? What would you do if you knew you could get away with it?

  I’d lied to Mum when I said I had heaps of battery left. It was really freaking hard to keep a charged phone when there was no power. I was down to 20%. With 3% of that, I googled how to hot-wire a car. I spent twenty minutes trying to find the wires to hot-wire. Failed. I googled some more, sweating like I’d just eaten ten ghost chillies. I was getting nowhere, when some chick came out of the house opposite, wearing shorts and a singlet, hair up in a bun. She checked both ways, then crossed the street to me.

  ‘Trying to steal a car, hey?’ she said.

  ‘Who, me?’ I said, trying to be cool, but failing, because yes, I was stealing a car, and the chick was kinda hot.

  ‘Nah, the person beside you.’

  I looked beside me without thinking. ‘Oh. That was dumb,’ I said to my shoes.

  She laughed, then chucked me a set of keys. ‘We have two cars. Can only take one with us. You can use the other. But it better be for something good.’

  I stood there, silently staring down at the keys, wondering what the catch was.

  ‘So, is it for something good?’ she asked.

  ‘Gotta go rescue my nan.’

  The chick smiled and nodded. ‘Better get on with it then. Whole fucking place will be underwater soon, and I don’t have a boat you can steal.’ She turned and pointed at a white car parked across the road. ‘Drive safe.’

  She started back across the street.

  ‘Uh, thanks?’ I called after her.

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ she said, before disappearing back inside her house.

  I drove with the sinking sun in my eyes. At that time of the day, the highway would usually be bumper to bumper. Peak hour. But all the traffic was headed in the opposite direction. It was just me on my side of the road. If I ignored the traffic jam on the other side of the highway, I could pretend I was someplace else, cruising up toward Ningaloo, summer road trip, care-free.

  If only.

  I tried not to think about Mum and Frida. They would be fine. Everything would be fine. I’d see them soon, no worries. Just had to find Nan, convince her to come with me, then we’d get out of there and make our way to the camp. Easy.

  I put all thoughts of them out of my mind and focused on the car instead. I tried to guess what kind of person the chick who owned it was. The kind of person who gave away her car, obviously, but people did weird things when the world was ending. There was nothing much in the car other than a half-empty bottle of water and a completely empty bag of Macca’s. That made me hungry. The car smelled nice, like vanilla, and there was a Jack’s Mannequin CD in the stereo. I turned up ‘Swim’ and enjoyed the irony and nostalgia of the song.

  I parked outside Nan’s apartment block, the water already a couple of centimetres up my tyres. The water was still slow-moving, seeping into all the cracks and crevices first, filling the stormwater drains and the channels people had dug in their front lawns, but I was cutting it fine with this visit.

  The building was one of those ancient, ugly, brick blocks—a sky-high eyesore. It looked abandoned, the gates wide open, the smell of decay and waste already thick in the air. Two dead cats and a dog had been left by the bin. I shoved my shirt over my nose, but that didn’t keep the stench out.

  I took the stairs two at a time, having to jump over a dead body on the flight just before Nan’s floor. I tried not to think of it as a body. I imagined it as a pile of laundry instead, abandoned by some careless resident as they prepared to evacuate, the bundle too heavy and mundane to bother with. That’s all it was. Just clothes.

  I found Nan’s front door open. From where I stood out on the landing, I could see her on her balcony, seven stories up, watching the flood rise. I stepped softly into the apartment. There were no sounds except the evacuation alarm from the city, louder here than at home. I didn’t know how Nan could stand it. She was in her favourite chair, where she sat every day to watch the sunset. The light that evening made her look both very young and very old at the same time. She was eating a pear, one slice at a time, like it was just an ordinary day. There used to be birds there, magpies and kookaburras, that would land on the railing and sing their songs. Now there was just Nan, her pear, and the incoming flood.

  ‘Nan, it’s me,’ I said.

  She coughed, but didn’t turn around. I took a few more steps into the darkness of the apartment and waited. Had she heard me? I didn’t want to startle her. I was about to call out again when she finally spoke.r />
  ‘If the world ended today, would you die happy?’

  I stood, frozen, not sure how to answer.

  ‘Well, Remi? Would you?’ She turned to face me, one eyebrow raised in that old, familiar way.

  ‘Asking the hard questions there, Nan. I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I guess not.’

  ‘Then you better get out of here, missy.’

  ‘Come with me, Nan. I have a car, we can make it to the camp, easy as. Mum and Frida are already on their way.’

  Nan bit another slice of pear, the second-last one, but said nothing. I could see her mind ticking over, collecting her words carefully, the way she always did. I looked around the apartment as I waited. All she had was a bed, a chair, her writing desk, and her books—hundreds of books. She had photos of our family tucked inside the pages as bookmarks, the edges frayed and faded. There was a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale on the kitchen bench, stuffed with photos. My heart sank at that. That was for me. I knew it.

  Without the reading lamp glowing in the corner, or the radio humming those old songs she loved, the apartment seemed more like a time capsule than a home. It still smelled like her, but the scent was fading, being replaced by the scent of the flood: empty buildings, stagnant drains, abandoned pets, burning piles of garbage from the eastern suburbs—the last-ditch attempt of some batshit mayor to save their town from inevitable diseases.

  ‘You’re making me nervous lurking about in the shadows like that, Remi Marie. Come and sit down,’ said Nan, waving her hand at the seat beside her.

  I sat next to Nan on the balcony, sweat instantly pooling under my thighs. From up there, the water looked calm. Beautiful, even. It reflected the light of the setting sun, orange glints like sparks from a fire. Nan finished her pear and reached across the table for her pouch of tobacco. She slid it across to me. I took out the papers, filters and the last of the tobacco, and rolled her final cigarette. I had been rolling Nan’s cigarettes ever since the arthritis had stopped her being able to do it herself. I passed the smoke to her and flicked open her old lighter, the one Nana May had given her on their third date. I used to tease Nana May that giving a girl a lighter wasn’t very romantic, and she’d always reply, ‘Might not be romantic, but it certainly started a fire.’ Then she and Nan would give each other a look and laugh at the memory, still so in love with each other after all those years. I always wanted a love like my grandmothers shared.