Authors: Andrea K Höst
"Oh."
Noi lowered the bolt cutter, gazing into a room dominated by
a king-sized bed. A pale cream spread
had been drawn over the occupant. Two
steps and a twitch of the cloth and they had found an obvious candidate for
'him'.
"I almost wish she'd come at us yelling '
Brainnnsss
!'. Then I
could justify running away."
Madeleine nodded, staring at a thick-set man in his sixties,
whose cheery strawberry-striped pyjama pants cut into a swelling stomach, the
skin unpleasantly mottled. Probably one
of those who had died the very first night.
"Could we even lift him?" she asked. "Where would we take him
to
?"
"One of the other apartments?" Noi was frowning, but no longer held the bolt
cutters at ready as she worked through the problem. "I think it's doable. We'll need something to shift him with, but
I've got an idea for that. Come
on."
Calling out that they were going to get something to help,
Noi led the way down to the wharf's echoing central hall.
"You head back to the restaurant and grab a couple of
pairs of gloves. They should be in the
box in the storage room to the left in the kitchen. Meet back at the elevator."
That was easily accomplished, and Madeleine found Noi had
beaten her, and was lazily spinning a wheeled platform topped with a gilt metal
framework.
"Luggage thing from the hotel," she explained. "All we have to do is get him off the
bed."
The mystery woman hadn't shut them out. The dead man was still large and unwieldy.
"His arms and legs will trail off the sides,"
Madeleine pointed out, reluctant to touch the man even with gloves.
"How about this?"
Noi dragged the cover fully off the bed, then pulled out the
near corners of the blue bed sheet. Catching on, Madeleine lifted the section of cloth nearest her.
"Hold your side a little lower," Noi instructed,
then lifted hers, straining, and flopped the man onto his side in the very
centre of the sheet. "Now if we tie
the corners across, they'll be like handles."
It was still awkward, and moving him made the smell worse,
but they managed to haul the sheet-bag to the side of the bed, and line the
baggage cart up so the man could be pulled through the tubular metal frame to
lie more on than off. They exposed a
large stain on the mattress in the process, and Madeleine gagged at the stench
of it, and hastily followed Noi as she pushed the cart effortlessly out of the
apartment. After a moment's debate they
returned and hauled the mattress out as well
"He's gone now," Madeleine called back from the
doorway. "We...let us know if you
need anything else."
She pulled the door closed and caught up with Noi and the
cart, two doors down at one of the apartments they'd cleared already, to help
her slide the heavy bundle to the floor. After bringing the mattress, and a quick detour to the apartment
bathroom to abandon gloves and wash hands, they left the empty cart still in
the room and shut themselves outside, heading back to their trolley of
supplies.
"Time out for existential crisis," Noi said,
sitting down. The words were light, but
the girl grey, eyes squeezed shut, arms wrapped around her knees.
Madeleine sat down to wait, understanding that Noi was here
because her home was filled with the bodies of her family, her wry good humour
a façade of normality plastered over extreme grief. Madeleine's ongoing worry about her parents
was a minor thing by comparison, and had lessened after last night's rain,
though she wished she could get through to Tyler. Her phone was on its last legs, too, nearly
out of charge.
A distant shout: "Are you two okay?"
Across the central hall, standing on the matching walkway of
the parallel southern apartment building, was a girl in a dark purple gown and
violet hijab, and a tall, hollow-cheeked man with a neatly trimmed beard, both
of them loaded down with shopping bags. It was such an everyday, ordinary sight that Madeleine had a moment's
dislocation, and told herself that there was no chance at all that they'd found
an open supermarket.
"Yes!" Noi called. "Glad to see you! We've just
been going door to door checking on people."
The man said something to the girl, who nodded, and called:
"Good idea! Wait a sec and we'll
come across!"
"I think our luck's turned," Noi murmured, as the
pair took their bags into a nearby apartment – greeted by a weary,
green-stained woman – and then made their way over.
"I'm
Faliha
Jabbour
, and this is my Dad," the girl said, when they
arrived. She was about fifteen,
round-cheeked and blue-palmed. "What's the plan?"
Noi introduced herself and Madeleine, and explained their
progress so far.
"So few?" Mr
Jabbour
asked, his English slow and heavily accented but understandable. "We must hope for better."
"We should do our floor first,"
Faliha
said. "Check on Penny and
Tesh
."
Her father shook his head. "For the sake of safety, it is perhaps best to remain within quick
reach of each other." He gave
Madeleine and Noi a grave glance, clearly not wanting his daughter to face the
apartment of friends.
"We can leap-frog," Noi said. "There's only one bolt cutter
anyway."
Leap-frogging worked well, vastly speeding up their
progress.
Faliha
knocked, called out, and unlocked the doors, but waited outside while her
father checked the apartments. And soon
they were joined by Carl, then Asha and Annie, Mr Lassiter, and Sang-Kyu: all
the Blues in three hundred apartments and a hotel. There were also twenty-four Greens, most of
them barely able to shuffle to their doors. Asha and Annie brought back to their apartment a Green boy only eleven
or so – the youngest survivor Madeleine had seen so far – while Mr Lassiter,
supplementing rusty high school French with a translation app, took in a very
ill tourist who could barely speak English. The baggage cart was called into use again and again.
Once every room had been checked, all the Blues went down to
the restaurants and sorted through them while Noi and Sang-Kyu cooked up a
couple of massive vats of curry – one chicken, one vegetarian – discussing what
constituted Halal with
Faliha
and what was vegan with
Asha. And what their food prospects
would be in a few weeks.
Madeleine helped clean up, watching their faces. Everyone red-eyed, smiles fragile. The sun was setting by the time they broke up
to deliver curry and head to their respective homes. A gorgeous autumn evening, with a ribbon of
smoke smudging the northern sky, and a mute tower of black watching, and
waiting.
ooOoo
"What's your cousin like?" Noi asked, as Madeleine
unlocked the apartment door. "Worth
the hero-worship?"
"I guess. I don't
know anyone else who is so resolutely…his own self, which is an odd thing to
say about an actor. He says he only ever
plays himself, though, just in very strange situations."
"An actor? Anyone
I'd have heard of?" Noi parked the
trolley of food, glanced around Tyler's spacious apartment, and fixed on the
portrait. She gave Madeleine an
incredulous glance, looked back, then said: "Okay, I so should have
realised that. You've the same colour
eyes. Why didn't you say anything when
we were talking about him before?"
"Habit? Once
people know I'm Tyler's cousin, that's all they see me as. My parents moved to Sydney so I could get
away from people trying to be my friend or picking fights with me because of
Tyler."
"Did you actually
paint
this?" Noi asked, picking up a brush.
"Yeah." Madeleine tried to sound casual, to not show how closely she was
watching
Noi's
face.
"Shit, why would you need to worry about being thought
of as just someone's cousin?"
"I think I'd have to do something pretty spectacular to
overcome Tyler," Madeleine said, and laughed quietly at herself for liking
Noi more because of the way she was looking at the painting, impossible as it
was not to be that way. "I've been
sleeping on the couch so I could see the TV," she added. "But there's a spare room if you want
it."
"Couch is good," Noi said, glancing at the large
leather half-square. "I don't
suppose your cousin runs to enormous vats of bubble bath? I want to soak, but after this morning I need
bubbles to make it not like that woman."
"There might be, but I should clean the floor
again. I broke the mirror."
Noi followed Madeleine to the bathroom, stared but did not
comment on the amount of damage, and opted to re-purpose some of Tyler's enormous
supply of shampoo. While the older girl
was in the bath, Madeleine found herself fussing about, fixing pillows and
blankets, hunting through Tyler's clothes for things Noi could wear, anxious to
please. Not her usual behaviour,
especially when she was itching to get at her sketch pad, but nothing was
usual. She moved about restlessly, spent
a few minutes on the phone to her parents, then let herself do what she'd
wanted for hours.
So many people. Small,
quick sketches at first. Noi holding a
cup of tea with little finger raised, outwardly serene. Fisher tumbled on the stair. Nash, head thrown back, ready for
action. Pan, all grin. Gav, blushing but sure of himself. The woman in the bath, naked breasts bobbing
in crimson.
Faliha
,
knocking on a door, eager and afraid. Mr
Jabbour
, his smile sad. Carl, with an Iron Man physique, but
hesitant, looking down and away. Asha,
short blonde hair sticking up, checking warily over her shoulder. Annie, shoulders sagging. Mr Lassiter, superbly neat, running an absent
hand over the close-cropped black fuzz on his head. Sang-Kyu, giving a thumbs-up signal.
This first rush done, she came up for air and discovered Noi
curled beneath the quilt on the other half of the couch, already asleep despite
the early hour. Madeleine hadn't even
heard her come into the room, and wondered why she hadn't said anything. Or perhaps Noi had, and been ignored, as
Madeleine was too used to doing when interruptions came when she was
drawing. Stupid and rude of her, and not
how she wanted to treat Noi.
The girl had pulled her mass of curling hair up into a
topknot, but a few black spirals escaped to spring across her face and,
captured by the image, Madeleine shrugged off her annoyance and began a new
sketch, a very detailed one. Then she
moved on to more pictures of Noi, and of the four boys and their apple-green
car, and tried to decide if they were as likeable as they'd seemed, or if she
was just reacting to the situation. Madeleine was used to distrusting people and holding herself in reserve,
and yet she'd met Noi and teamed up instantly, and did not want that to
end. She didn't even dislike the idea of
joining the four boys at their school. Still,
she could surely accept the need for allies without forgetting to be wary about
relying on others.
When hunger and weariness finally broke through she snacked
and showered, then killed all but the hall light. With the TV off, the city skyline became more
dominant, blazing away at however many kilowatts per hour, keeping the corpses
lit. Once again she heard a weird
electronic music, almost like an
untuned
radio.
Had her mother sounded strange? Even though her eyes were sandy-tired,
Madeleine couldn't make herself stop analysing their brief discussion. Had there really been something there, or was
she just looking for the next disaster? The day's activity should have left her feeling, if not cheerful, at
least hopeful. There were people around
her who were friendly, and she'd solved the problem of food for a solid chunk
of time. Instead of reassured, she was
on edge.
A noise in the dark. Madeleine shifted, unsure if she'd been sleeping, and tried to process
what she'd heard. A close sound, stifled
and secret. A minute or more passed
before she realised it was Noi, crying.
Pinned between a desire to do something, and knowing that
nothing she might do could make any real difference, Madeleine lay listening to
the muted betrayal of pain. If Noi was
anything like Madeleine, she wouldn't want anyone to know she was crying anyway,
so it was better to stay still and quiet, not go blundering in.
The question of whether that was the right way to treat Noi
occupied her until long after the last tiny sob had faded.
Sunlight crept beneath Madeleine's eyelids, but it was a
sumptuous roil of cinnamon and chocolate which woke her. She scrubbed a hand across her face,
stretching, and blinked at a man on television filming himself in front of a
Spire. The only sound was from Noi
clunking something in the kitchen.
For some minutes Madeleine didn't move, watching the man
holding up a star-studded arm, displaying it as best he could next to the
Spire's whorl of light. Then she shifted
her attention to the easel, to Tyler who was somewhere out there probably
dead. Painted eyes gazed back at her,
uncompromising, and she realised that she felt no impulse to return to the
portrait because it didn't need it. The
roughly blocked background, the quick strokes she'd used for everything except the
highlight points of head, hand and hair, worked perfectly.
"Which do you prefer for shops: King's Cross or Bondi
Junction?" Noi asked as Madeleine sat up. "There's a fair few things I need, and from what
Faliha
was telling me it's probably not a good idea to wait
too long."
"I've never been shopping at either of them,"
Madeleine said. Finding the room
unexpectedly chilly, she pulled the koi dressing gown around her. "What on earth are you cooking?"
"Fudge, and caramel squares. I figure we need to always carry something
with a big sugar hit – little blocks of emergency energy. There's pancakes for breakfast, or will be by
the time you're dressed."