Satisfied that his father was getting the best care he could, the son accepted an offer of water and food and was led away by one of the older men of the village.
***
The middle-aged man woke suddenly, grunting in pain. The young woman tending to him hurried over, stroked his forehead, held a glass of water to his lips. He slurped at it, most of it dribbling down his chin. He coughed heavily. He groaned in pain this time, an animal sound.
His unfocused eyes drifted around the room before he started talking.
“Is my son okay? That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Is that too much to ask?”
The woman nodded, though he seemed not to notice and just looked straight through her.
“Good, good,” he said, his pained expression easing. “You know, I’m old enough to remember when people wanted more than that. Sure, making sure our kids are okay is what it’s been about since we climbed out of the trees, but we used to want so much more: new gadgets, new cars, new clothes. Hell, we used to crave these things, fooled ourselves into thinking we needed them. But times change, and after everything we’ve been through it’s no wonder that what we want is so much simpler.
“Ah, look at me – I’m showing my age with this talk of war.”
The woman smiled but didn’t reply. Not that it really mattered; the man was raving, talking to everyone and no one, his words rushing out of him like water from a burst dam.
“Hell, it isn’t a war and we aren’t an army,” he said. “We aren’t even a resistance, and there are so few of us left that you can’t call us an oppressed people. We’re like roaches and rats and crows, feeding on scraps. They won, and there’s nothing we can do about it. And yet as long as my son’s okay, I’m okay.”
The woman nodded, but the man took no notice.
“He’s almost a man now, strong and tall, broad shouldered and deep voiced. But he’ll always be my boy, and he still has a lot to learn. I just wish… I just… I wish…”
His head fell back. For a moment, the woman thought he had fallen asleep again. And then he sat up, quickly, as if seized by a need to say his piece before his time ran out.
“I sometimes have these dreams, where my son and I are living in a different time, way back before those things arrived. I dream that he had a regular childhood: friends and schoolmates, little-boy-enemies and little-boy-crushes, a normal kid in a normal world experiencing the mundane dramas of homework and bullies, of being picked on and left out, of teenage love and teenage heartbreak. And I sometimes dream that his mother is still with us.
“And then I wake up in some hovel surrounded by rubble, or in some stretch of bush with nothing but stars overhead, and I look at him and my heart just breaks. I’m not bitter, you understand? There’s no point. But sometimes I wonder if surviving has been worth it. I wonder if the alternative wouldn’t have been better.
“Ugh, pass me that water, would you?”
The woman dipped a battered tin cup into the trough of brackish water beside her. She held the cup to the stranger’s lips. He drank deep, a little water running down his chin. His eyes rolled back into his head. He groaned, painfully. He doesn’t have long now, the woman said to herself. She stroked his forehead with a wet cloth, wishing that she could tell him to rest, and that his son will be okay and that the villagers will look after him.
But she couldn’t, and so she just waited for him to open his eyes.
***
Later. The sun was dipping to the west. The man was groaning in his sleep. The woman kept watch, although there was little she could do for him.
He woke abruptly, his bloodshot eyes roaming around the room and taking nothing in.
He began raving again.
“When my son was little, before everything turned to shit, I tried to teach him about them. It was my job, after all, and not just as a father – I taught in a high school back then, mostly English and History. His mother was a nurse, at a clinic rather than a hospital. We were a comfortable, middle-class family living a comfortable, middle-class life: we went camping on long weekends, took the occasional overseas holiday, the usual stuff. Home was a nice house in the suburbs, with a nice little backyard just big enough for my son to play in.
“We went back there only a year or so ago. All we found were ruins. I didn’t try to hide the fact that I was crying. He was so young when we were evacuated that he didn’t even recognise it. He didn’t ask me what was wrong, just kept watch while I broke down. Such a good boy he is.
“Aaargh… God, this hurts so much… I’m sorry…”
The woman took his hand. She frowned: he was burning up, his palms sweaty. She held the cloth to his forehead. He barely acknowledged her.
“We knew about the things before he was born. Hell, we knew about them before his mother was pregnant – the whole world had watched Sydney get attacked, and it seemed like every month or so there was a new ‘incident’. But there were, what, a couple of years of peace between each of the big ones? I don’t quite remember.
“I know that when we decided to have a baby, it had been a long time since anything had happened. We thought we were safe, and we weren’t the only ones – the whole world thought it was safe. We had all those politicians and scientists, telling us that those things were just some freak of nature that had finally run its course. I don’t need to tell you how wrong they were – there was so much more to come… We couldn’t have guessed… We couldn’t… I couldn’t…”
The woman waited for him to get it together, riding out his fits and starts as patiently as Job.
“Back then, life went on and we lived it. What else could we do? The world still turned, the sun still rose and the trains still more-or-less ran on time. Things weren’t so bad; civilisation hadn’t ground to a halt yet. Hell, it hadn’t even come close. We dealt with the aftermath of those things like we dealt with the aftermath of every other disaster: we buried our dead, we mourned our loss, we cleaned up the mess, we marched on.
“Complacency is the most dangerous word in the world, you know what I mean? I was guilty of it, and his mother was too. We weren’t stupid or insensitive – we took time off to help in the Great Sydney Clean-up, donated to relief funds whenever another big attack happened, kept an eye on the Global Seismic Forecast that had become a part of every weather report. But we never thought something would happen to us. The way we figured it, it couldn’t happen to us – we lived at the arse-end of a country at the arse-end of the earth.
“And so we grew complacent. It’s just human nature. Unless there’s a threat right in front of your face, you just carry on as normal. If somehow I could go back and visit my younger self, if I could go back and see his mother again, would I tell us what’s to come? If I could do that, I wouldn’t have had a son. I’d never have gotten to know him, never had someone to love unconditionally, never had the chance to teach him to be a man.”
He looked at the woman, suddenly clear-eyed. She smiled sadly.
“Ah, I’m just a stupid old man. You don’t need to hear all this, I should know better. I’m sorry, miss, I don’t mean to be…”
His words trailed away, his voice weakening, and then he fell asleep once again. His skin was slowly yellowing, and glistening with sweat. The woman dipped the cloth into the trough of brackish water and wet his brow. He’s burning up, she said to herself. She squeezed the rag into his open mouth and he swallowed a little water. She moved away to let him rest. She waited. She was good at that.
At some point, the young man walked into the room to check on his father. In a low and quiet voice, he introduced himself to the woman, telling her that his name is Mike. He told her that he knew her name, and that she was mute. They sat together in silence. Mike held his father’s hand. After a while, he stood and turned to leave, embarrassed by the mess of his father’s mortality. He told the woman that it was nice to meet her, and then he blushed.
She smiled to herself before resuming her vigil.
***
T
ime passed. After a while, the man suddenly woke up and looked around the room in a daze. Confusion and pain clouded his face. He finally locked eyes with the woman, seeing her properly for the first time. She smiled before holding the battered tin cup of water to his lips. He drank deeply again, and then violently coughed most of it up.
He wiped his lips. He muttered an apology. He let his head fall back. He sighed, and then he started speaking again.
“I remember when he saw his first one. I remember it like it was yesterday.
“This was back before his mother died – the world had grown darker, but we were more-or-less hanging in. We’d been in the Sunbury Refugee Camp for three or four years. With his mother being a nurse and me being a teacher, the military weren’t in a hurry to resettle us. Our skills were valuable, they said. We were needed. And so we stayed put. I mean, they looked after us – we lived in a house instead of a tent, we got better meals than the regular refugees, and we were given just enough freedom and privacy to maintain an illusion of normal life.
“But we couldn’t leave. Every time we opened our front door, the real world hit us hard: rows and rows of olive-green army tents, filled with desperate, homeless people; and flat, empty plains stretching to the east. If you squinted hard enough at the right time of day, you could just make out the ruins of the city. His mother and I would instantly sober up and trudge off to work. We still called it that, though ‘help’ might have been a better word. After our third year at the camp, not a month went by without the appearance of more refugees made homeless by yet another attack. Most of them needed nursing, and the children needed teaching. I like to think that even if we’d had the option, we wouldn’t have left. I mean, what choice did we have? We couldn’t just say no.
“Ugh, ow, that’s so painful… Shit, it burns… Ggggrraaargh… Fuck it!”
The woman held his hand. She gave it a squeeze, meant for comfort rather than reassurance, letting him know that he wasn’t alone. He smiled in return, a sour little thing.
“Just give me a sec,” he said. “Ah, hell, that hurts… Just… just hang on…
“Where was I? Right… The day my son saw his first one, I was taking a class up to the top of Mount Macedon. He was one of my students, probably the best of the lot. And no, that’s not just a proud father talking. He was a bright kid, even though he was still pretty young – all the home study I’d insisted on had paid off. Anyway, I wasn’t teaching the class anything in particular or taking them anywhere special, I was just walking them through the bush so they could get some time away from the camp.
“My son matched my pace and we walked side by side. Every now and then, he’d look up at me and smile. Such a simple thing made me so happy. Just thinking about it now makes me smile. And you should have seen it when he smiled at his mother – the room would just light up…
“Sorry… Shit, I’m sorry… You shouldn’t have to see an old man cry like a baby… I’m sorry... Just, just give me a minute…”
The woman waited, and wiped away his tears. Soon, the man got his train of thought back on track.
“The dozen or so other kids making up the class trailed after us. Whenever something caught my eye – a bird that they might not have seen before, a shapely or particularly majestic tree, odd formations in the rocks around us, the usual stuff you used to find out in the bush – I’d point it out, telling them about it if it was something I was familiar with. I kept a keen eye out for anything edible. Even though the world hadn’t fallen apart yet, life was still hard and we were all a bit hungry.
“We’d been walking for a few hours and were almost at the summit, when my son looked back and stopped dead. Another kid, lost in his thoughts, ran into my son and knocked him down. Taking all this in in an instant, I instinctively turned around to help my son to his feet.
“My mouth fell open, and then I froze – an enormous black shape was emerging from the bay, its tangled mess of ‘tentacles’ crushing the industrial buildings crowding Altona’s shore. I could see it clearly, even though we were twenty or thirty ks distant. I cursed aloud, and then the class turned to look to the west as well.
“The air split with the sound of children screaming. I didn’t move, except to take hold of a pair of binoculars that hung around my neck. I lifted them to my eyes as the thing started to drag itself ashore, tentacles as thick as power poles gouging deep trenches into the earth and concrete. When it finally made land, it dragged its obese insect-like body along, crushing everything beneath it as it made for the refineries further inland. Seawater ran off its thick fur, soaking the land below. It raised its head and looked around, segmented eyes glinting brightly. It opened an impossibly wide mouth lined with row upon row of teeth. It let loose a primal roar.”
The man shuddered involuntarily, as if he was back on that mountain. The woman leaned forward, making sure that he was okay. He sighed again before returning to his story.
“I finally pulled myself together and helped my son to his feet. He looked at the beast and didn’t say a word. I asked him if he understood what was happening. He nodded and then looked back at it. I asked him if he was okay. He nodded a second time. His expression didn’t change; serious and watchful, he barely even blinked as he drank the thing in. And then he swore for the first time in his life.
“Despite what was happening, I couldn’t help being a father and told him to watch his mouth. He ignored me, and just muttered something else under his breath. I asked him to repeat himself. ‘The refineries,’ he said. ‘It’ll hit them soon, we’ll have to move.’
“That was all he said. His voice was steady, and they were the only words that were necessary. I was so proud of him that I couldn’t stop myself smiling. But without warning, he looked at me with eyes rimmed with tears, and I remembered that he was just a little boy. I ruffled his hair. I bent down and hugged him. He somehow managed a smile. I stood back up and took his hand.
“I lied to him and told him that everything would be okay.”
The stranger’s words were cut off by a hacking wet cough that made him convulse. Wracked with pain, eyes bulging, he kept coughing before spitting out a wad of fibrous blood. The woman wiped his mouth clean, wrung out the cloth and then once again held it to his forehead. There was nothing else she could do. The woman knew that if she could speak, she wouldn’t tell him the truth. Instead, she would lie, telling him that he’ll be okay.
But she couldn’t comfort him in that way, and so she just watched and waited.
***
Night fell and still the man slept. The woman lit a lantern. Another villager brought her some food. She kept watching. She kept waiting.
He woke with a start and resumed talking as if nothing had happened.
“When I’d gotten the class back to camp, a soldier I’d made friends with told me it was the first time a city had been attacked twice, and that those higher up the chain literally didn’t know what to do next. I was only half-listening – the smoke from the burning refineries was slowly drifting our way, a thick cloud that stained the horizon. I knew it could only mean one thing.
“That night, I started making plans to leave. My son and his mother argued with me, telling me that we’d be needed when the refugees from this latest disaster started pouring in. I ignored them, opening the front door of our house as if I could force them to see sense by showing them what was really happening – noise filled the night, the panicked sounds of frightened people, shouted orders, the roar of vehicles, the mush of a cheap PA system blaring garbled instructions; beneath it was the steady background clatter of tents being dismantled and packed, of refugees being herded onto trucks and train carriages, of equipment being checked and stowed, of soldiers running back and forth.
“The smoke kept drifting our way. Even though it was moving slowly, it would be on top of us eventually. I knew it, and the military knew it too – the camp was lost.
“I told my son and his mother what I thought would happen next – we’d have to relocat
e to another camp, which would someday fall as well. I told them we’d see more and more cities falling, more camps fill to overflowing, more riots and food shortages, death and death and more death. I could see a time when all that was left were the camps, easy pickings for one of those things.
“I described it in detail. I wore them down and they eventually gave up. We packed in silence. Around two or three in the morning, we ran. And we’ve been running ever since.”
The man shed a single tear, and the woman wiped it away. He closed his eyes He started panting, his breath coming too fast. His yellowing skin glistened with fresh sweat. A thin trickle of bloody drool ran down his chin. This is it, the woman said to herself, holding his hand tight.
But nothing happened, except that his breathing settled and he dozed off.
***
Much later, when the woman was almost asleep herself, the man suddenly screamed in pain. His face slackened and he started to cough, bringing up thick blood and watery spit. His limbs shook; his hands clenched and relaxed, clenched and relaxed. The woman tried to settle him as he screamed a second time.
His son ran into the room and sat by his father. He took his father’s hand. The woman allowed them their moment and averted her eyes. The man moaned steadily. His limbs slowly fell still. His eyes glazed and he collapsed back onto the bed. His son kept holding his hand.
He opened his eyes. He smiled sadly at his son, a blood-streaked grimace.
“I was a coward. I’m sorry. I just couldn’t take being moved to another camp, and couldn’t face more desperate people who needed help. I was weak. I forced you and your mother to share my weakness. I forced you both to live like animals.
We Call It Monster Page 20
