We Call It Monster

by Lachlan Walter

  They sat there in silence, looking at the smoke that shrouded the land.

  “Not a bad day for it,” Dolores said.

  “You got that right.”

  Jackson finished his cigarette, stubbed it out and flicked the butt away. Dolores did the same, and then they became serious once again – good soldiers always know when it’s time to rest, when it’s time to march and when it’s time to go to war. Dolores helped Jackson to his feet before pulling the pair of binoculars from the backpack of salvage. She took a good look at the clouds of black smoke, and couldn’t see through them. To their left and right was just more desert.

  “You ready?” she asked.

  “Yep.”

  They set off, heading straight for the centre of the smoke. Even though they were focused, they still relaxed a little. It was as if being so close to their destination meant that they could finally let their guard down.

  “How long do you reckon?” Jackson asked after they had been walking for a while.

  Dolores thought it over. She looked over her shoulder at the ground they had already covered, and then looked ahead at how far they still had to go.

  “A couple of hours, maybe.”

  “Right, then.”

  They walked on. The smell of smoke steadily grew stronger, the smoke itself steadily grew thicker. At some point, Dolores and Jackson stopped to cut squares of cloth from the lining of their flight suits. They wrapped the squares around their noses and mouths, and tried not to rub their streaming, bloodshot eyes. Neither of them looked very happy at having to make-do, but at least they could breathe easier.

  “Is this what life’s like for ordinary people?” Jackson asked no one in particular, his voice muffled behind the cloth.

  “What?”

  “I said: is this what life’s like for ordinary people?”

  “No. Mostly, they just die.”

  There was no humour in her words; it was a chilling matter-of-fact statement. She lifted the binoculars and looked into the smoke again.

  “So this is what it’ll be like from now on?” Jackson asked her.

  “Pretty much.”

  Dolores dropped the binoculars and gave Jackson a cold, hard look. “They meant what they said, back at the briefing. That assault on the harbour was it, the end, goodbye, thanks for playing.”

  “Doll…”

  “Shut up, Whacko. And get real.”

  There was once again an edge of hysteria to her voice, but this time she seemed to relish it. It was as if she had been strong for so long that only now could she let go of a lifetime of fear and panic and rage. It swamped her, overwhelming her and taking her over.

  “Everything we had left was out on the water!” she screamed. “Absolutely everything. Every chopper, every ground troop that hadn’t deserted, the last of us fliers, all of our hardware, even the few tanks that hadn’t been lost in the cities. It was a total evacuation. And you know that when they say total, they mean total.”

  “But…”

  “But nothing. The Army and the Air Force? They don’t exist anymore, they’re gone. Same with the Navy. At best, we might have a few rogue subs still skulking down deep.”

  “Doll, just calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do!”

  Something in Dolores snapped and she screamed the words in Jackson’s face. She had been fighting it all night and most of the morning, but she suddenly couldn’t stop herself remembering the attack that had brought them here. Darwin Harbour had been a frenetic place. Frigates and corvettes crowded the water, tugs and ferries carted equipment and people from shore to ship, choppers buzzed through the sky keeping watch for beasties, and a handful of armoured speedboats were doing the same in the waters beyond the harbour. They buzzed around the battleships resting out there, like metallic gnats or mechanical midges. Inland, a procession of transports and troop-carriers had been crawling through the flattened city, each laden with refugees and troops bound for the frigates and corvettes.

  The air had thrummed with the noise of hundreds of engines roaring and thousands of voices babbling and shouting. The air stank of exhaust, sweat and panic.

  Dolores remembered that she had been in one of the few choppers left, along with Jackson and the rest of their hastily assembled crew. Everyone was tense, the frantic energy underlining the evacuation fraying nerves and setting teeth on edge. But the soldiers tried not to let it show – they had a job to do, their most important job yet. Even so, you could still see it in their eyes.

  Dolores remembered that they had just finished a sweep of the harbour’s northern edge when it happened: six beasties leapt from the water at almost exactly the same time, capsizing the ferries and tugs, overturning the speedboats and flooding the frigates and corvettes. There had been no warning; they had somehow avoided the mines at the harbour-mouth and dived deep enough to avoid the crews manning the choppers.

  Dolores remembered that her jaw had literally dropped at the suddenness of the attack. She remembered the pilot of their chopper peeling away and then beginning an attack run. After that, everything was a blur of action. It was these blurred moments of action that she lived for. Lost and struck dumb, she finally admitted to herself that they were gone.

  “Dolores?”

  She barely heard Jackson call her name. He tried again, louder this time. She finally heard it and started to squash down her panic.

  “Sorry, Whacko. Sorry you had to see that.”

  Jackson smiled at her, a sad little smile full of understanding. “No worries.”

  ***

  Dolores and Jackson stood in the middle of the road, looking at the thick wall of black smoke. Without a second thought, they walked straight into the centre of it. It embraced them, holding them so tight that it almost smothered them. They could barely see. Once again moving as one, they doffed their sunglasses and tucked them away. They squinted at the murky gloom. Dolores pulled out a torch, flicked it on then shone it around. Jackson did the same. All they saw was more smoke.

  They walked faster, letting the road beneath their feet lead them on. After a while, the wind started to pick up and change direction and the smoke swirled and danced. Thunder tore through the sky. The wind steadily grew stronger, bringing with it a delicious icy-chill. Thunder rang out again. The smell of rain was suddenly competing with the smell of smoke, before disappearing as suddenly as it had appeared.

  Dolores soon realised that the air ahead was clearing, the wind blowing the smoke to the west. She and Jackson walked faster still – she almost ran, while he hobbled along as quickly as he could. Dolores’ lungs heaved, and yet she pushed herself harder. The ‘thunk’ of Jackson’s crutch on the hard surface of the road was a metronomic drumbeat, backed by a chorus of groans and grunts.

  When they were finally free of the smoke, they collapsed into the dust on the side of the road. They took their time. They slowly got it together. They guzzled down some water, washed their eyes clean and didn’t spare a thought for the waste.

  “You okay?” Dolores eventually asked.

  Jackson didn’t even have to think about it. “Yep, how about you?”

  “She’ll be ‘right.”

  They both almost laughed.

  “Shall we?” Dolores asked, getting to her feet.

  Jackson sighed aloud, drawing it out and making obvious his reluctance. But still, he let Dolores help him up. The wind whipped them; the tang of rain was sweet and pure now that the smoke had cleared. Dolores and Jackson breathed it in, savouring it, letting it scrub away all they could smell and taste: an acrid stink and a flat bitterness. Satisfied, they finally turned and looked back the way they came, to the sealed road that they had been tramping down.

  They froze, disbelief written all over their faces – only a hundred metres north of the road and maybe half a kilometre from where they were standing, lay the fused wreckage of three downed choppers. While lost and stumbling through the plumes, they had walked straight past it. It was still smoulder
ing, throwing off thick sheets of black smoke that were caught by the wind and pushed to the west, swallowing up the road they had just walked. Long strands of something glistening and organic were entwined with the wreckage; each was as wide as a wrestler’s arm. Some of them dripped a clear fluid that set the earth itself alight. Some of them still moved.

  “Shit,” Jackson said.

  Dolores couldn’t speak. Barely realising it, she closed her eyes as she once again couldn’t stop herself remembering the attack that had brought them here. Her memories came in flashes and bursts, still images that filled her with horror.

  “Doll? You alright?”

  She was too far away for Jackson to reach her. Her body twitched, a minute shudder. An enormous rumble of thunder shook the earth and lightning split the sky, but Dolores didn’t even flinch.

  “Doll?”

  She was gone, lost in her memories of the chopper pilot beginning an attack run on the beasts in the harbour.

  She remembered one of the beasts launching itself out of the water and unfurling a pair of impossibly-wide wings. She remembered jumping from the chopper and landing on its back, just before it took flight. She remembered Jackson at her side. She remembered clipping their flight suits to the rocket-harpoons embedded in the beast’s hide, the stink of burning flesh as they drilled into its body, it bucking and twisting. She remembered bailing out and splashing down when they couldn’t hold on any longer. She remembered miraculously being fished out of the water and winched back to their chopper.

  She remembered the beast picking up their Mobile HQ in its enormous talons and taking off inland, with four choppers in pursuit.

  She remembered that one of those choppers had been hers. They had flown for hours, launching missiles and rocket-harpoons at the beast whenever they got a clear shot. At some point, it had hovered right above where she now stood, before dropping the Mobile HQ to the ground. The tank-like HQ had fallen on its back and cracked open like it was made of eggshell rather than plate steel and cast iron. And then the beast had stared at the four choppers, its eyes cold and unknowable. It seemed to smile at them, opening a beak-like mouth that was longer than a football field. It whipped its tail through the air, a tail as thick as a truck. It did this lazily, with almost cat-like playfulness. Without warning, the tail split in half. The two halves split into four; soon, four became eight and eight became sixteen. This happened again and again and again. There were dozens of them, then hundreds, and then thousands. Some reached for Dolores and Jackson’s chopper. Some reached for the others, which had begun their attack runs.

  Dolores remembered some of the tails taking hold of her chopper’s rotor and crushing it flat. Instead of letting the chopper spin out of control, the beast strengthened its grip and then literally hurled the chopper away. Dolores remembered flying through the air, heading west. She, Jackson and the rest of the crew rattled about inside, straining for handholds; most of the crew fell to their deaths as the chopper tumbled end over end. She remembered Jackson taking hold of her and pulling her away from the open door. She remembered screaming.

  She didn’t remember crash-landing.

  She realised that she was shaking. Her heart thumped, not with fear or panic but with excitement. She felt a smile form on her lips. Something inside her broke and she started to cry as the horrifying truth slowly shone through: some part of her had loved every minute of that battle, and had loved every battle she had ever been a part of. The adrenaline and the danger and the excitement and the rush, they had been her whole life. She finally understood that she had no idea what to do now that they were gone. They were her whole world; she didn’t know any other way to live. She only knew how to fight and fight and keep fighting.

  Jackson hobbled over to her. He said something, but the oncoming storm tore his words away. Instead, rather awkwardly, he hugged her, something he had never done before.

  Dolores’ tears slowly trailed off and she broke their embrace.

  “Are you okay?” Jackson shouted over the raging wind.

  “I’m okay,” she replied, her voice soft.

  She looked at him, regret and sorrow and self-disgust in her eyes. Jackson knew that she wasn’t really okay. Neither of them were. They never had been and never would be. He didn’t know how to fix her pain, but he did know a way to soothe it.

  “You remember Old Man Mountain?” he asked.

  “I’ll never forget it,” Dolores said, wiping her eyes.

  “Do you remember the father and son who turned down our offer of a ride?”

  Dolores thought about it. She thought about it some more. She came up with nothing. “Are you sure you’re not just making stuff up to distract me?”

  Jackson smiled to himself before shaking his head. He couldn’t remember whether Dolores had been there or not, truth be told, but he remembered meeting the father and son like it had happened last week.

  Ten years ago, give or take, the crew had been evacuating civilians from Old Man Mountain’s path, as he trudged across the wilds of western New South Wales. They had seen him reach his destination, fight another beast, and then lie down on the earth and go back to sleep. Satisfied that they were safe, the crew started shepherding the civilians onto an armoured transport. Two of them had refused, intent on disappearing into the bush and going their own way. Jackson took them aside and grilled them. The father wore a tarnished wedding ring, but there was no sign of his wife. The son watched Jackson with bright and intelligent eyes, and hadn’t said a word. The father explained that he and his son were happier on their own. After first trying to talk them around, Jackson had then asked what they would do out there on the land.

  “We will survive,” had been the father’s answer.

  Jackson told Dolores the story, and it came gushing out of him like water from a breached dam.

  “That’s what we’ll do now, Doll,” he said. “We’ll carry on. We’ll survive. One day, we might even live.”

  It wouldn’t have seemed possible, but the wind started to blow even harder. Thunder echoed around them; the storm was closing in fast. Jackson hugged Dolores a second time, this time less awkwardly and with more sincerity.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said.

  Dolores finally spoke. “How do you know?”

  “We’re a couple of tough old bastards and we’re good at what we do. A little thing like the end of the world won’t even make us break a sweat.”

  Dolores laughed. “Thanks, Whacko. You sure know how to make a girl feel better about herself.”

  “That’s because I’m such a gentleman. Now, you okay?”

  Once again, the question was redundant. But Dolores appreciated it anyway.

  “You bet.”

  “Right then. So how about a little help with my leg, eh?”

  Dolores broke their embrace, smiled at him then threw him a mock-salute. She took his hand and helped lower him to the ground. She sat beside him. She plucked the pouch of black-market tobacco from a pocket of her flight suit and tried to roll a couple of cigarettes, but the wind almost immediately tore the pouch from her hands.

  And then it started raining.

  At first it was just spitting, barely a dribble. The storm soon put its back into it, unleashing a torrent that quickly turned the sand to mud and rendered the three wrecked choppers little more than a fused lump of twisted plastic and metal. When the smoke finally cleared, it revealed the broken body of their Mobile HQ lying to the north of the road. It seemed to have escaped the fire. Dolores snatched up her binoculars. Some of the hatches and compartments that lined its walls were hanging open, their contents trailing across the wreckage. Some seemed to have survived the impact, their doors locked tight. One hatch that had apparently escaped any damage was emblazoned with a bright-red cross, a worldwide symbol of hope.

  Dolores laughed with real humour, for the first time in a long time.

  ***

  Dolores and Jackson sat side-by-side in the pouring rain. Under an endless outback
sky, stranded in an enormous desert, they slowly came up with a plan. They decided what to do now that there would be no more orders, no more battles, no more wars.

  They made a vow to stick together. They made a vow to keep on. What choice did they have? They were still soldiers, after all.

  A NEW WORLD ARISES

  YEARS 16-35

  Survivors Surviving

  The Land of Ruin and Slurry

  And This Too Shall Pass

  Survivors Surviving

  A few years after the end of the world, in a falling-down house on the outskirts of a ruined city, a middle-aged man lay asleep on a bed of rags. He was dying, and he knew it.

  In the corner of the room, a young woman sat on a rickety chair, watching him closely. It was her job to tend to him as best she could. Considering their circumstances, this amounted to little more than bringing him water and soothing his fever with a wet cloth to the forehead. There wasn’t anything else she could really do aside from try and feed him, and he had swatted away her last attempt.

  She didn’t know him. She didn’t even know his name. It had only been a couple of hours since he and his son had staggered into the modest village the woman called home. His son had almost been dragging him along while he ranted and staggered, and was calling out for help in a hoarse voice. The son was lanky and thin, just like his father. His eyes were older than they should have been.

  A crowd had gathered, a motley collection of survivors. The man had been carried out of the summer sun. The son had hovered, silent and suspicious, watching his father as he was placed on the bed of rags. The young woman began tending to the father, stripping away his tattered clothing, washing him clean, examining him for signs of injury. She was good at her job. She worked in silence, focused on her patient.