Skyquakers (26 page)

Ned shifted his weight and changed the subject:
‘
What
did you do before?
’

‘Before what?
’
she asked, but then it became
obvious.
‘
Oh, I was a student at a youth centre in Melbourne.
I was doing my Master
’
s in Social Sciences.
’

Ned gave her a sour look.
‘
What does
that mean?
’

‘I don
’
t quite know. I don
’
t
even know why I was doing it. I suppose I had ideas about becoming a counsellor
or a lawyer for immigrants, something like that.
’
She placed
the empty can down onto the table.
‘
And you? What did you hope to
grow up and be?
’

‘
I have no idea. I still have
no idea.
’
He shrugged.
‘
I became
good at farming. Maybe I
’
ll be a farmer. A peach
farmer.
’

Lara smiled briefly and reclined in her chair. ‘You’re right,’
she said. ‘It doesn’t help to take your mind off it.’

He pointed out the faint metropolis on the horizon and
unanimously they decided it was their best bet. Having spent the last four or
five months solely on foot though, crossing deserts, labouring in fields,
running from fires and running from storms, Ned looked at the road ahead and
already felt the lethargy in his body. He could not think of anything worse
than having to cross endless uninhabited land again, with no sense of direction
and no way of knowing if he would ever find another living soul. Lara saw his
desire to make use of the quad bike and said that they may as well, so they
borrowed the four-wheeler from the beach house and found the keys for it in a
kitchen drawer. Ned leapt onto the red and black-painted beast and revved the
engine. Lara sat behind him and hugged his waist. The two shot off down the
gravel path, roaring over bushland and small rocks, heading west towards that
faint city on the horizon. The wind flew about their mattered hair. The feeling
of a moving, humming vehicle was so foreign, but gradually it all came back to
him, and Ned became more and more daring with speed as they grew more
comfortable. He was certain the storm cloud would immediately be upon them like
an angry god to the sound of their mischief, but the skies were clear blue and
the world raced by them, completed unfazed by two wild spirits alone on the
planet.

Life is short
, Ned
told himself.

Dirt led to gravel roads, and the steep decline from the
cliff-top beach house eventually flattened out into dusty plains and vacant
outback. The further inland they went, the more this place began to look like
the
Kununurra
: flat and dry, with prickly bushes
dotted here and there, dead tree skeletons waiting for the wet season and farms
left abandoned on large properties.

They hit asphalt suddenly and continued south, waiting to
see when the road diverged west. Ned thought Lara would have been keen to get
back home to Melbourne, but she did not seem particularly attached to that
place, and in the time spent in hibernation she seemed to have long forgotten
it. She described how Melbourne had been largely destroyed during the storm
simply due to sudden human absences: trains with no drivers crashed into
platforms, fires could not be put out,
helicopters
tumbled into skyscrapers with no hands to hold them up. And of her friends,
family: she said she had little hope for them anyway, as though from the day
she was born, she felt that they were all doomed, and what had become of them
now did not faze her much. They were either asleep or dead; either way there
was nothing she could do about it.

The only road signs they drove passed were indications of
nearby rural towns neither of them had heard of. They were too far out from a
major capital for its name to show up yet; they needed to find freeways, bigger
roads. In a one-street town called Lee Point, less than fifteen minutes from
the beach, they found a rusty petrol station next to a B&B. Lara took
advantage of the toilet facilities while Ned swiftly and without second thought
became his old kleptomaniac self again, which fit him like a pair of well-worn
shoes. He stole necessities from the little shop that he had lost at Zebra
Rock: torches and batteries, more matches, a rain jacket, Mars Bars, bottles of
water, fishing wire, bug repellent, and a new backpack to carry it all in.
There were souvenirs strung up on rotating racks, from dorky caps, Southern
Cross flags, bumper stickers, and a kangaroo plush toy wearing a cork hat and
holding a can of beer in its paw.

‘Welcome to Earth!’ Ned said, pretending to hold out the
novelty toy to a
Skyquaker
army upon their arrival.
‘Here, have fucking kangaroo and a beer, mate.’

He found postcards and began sorting through them, in hopes
that they mentioned a state or a city with a familiar name. Most depicted beach
scenery, and unfortunately the serene coasts in these pictures were still
unfamiliar to him. One card was titled,
The Top End
, giving him adequate
proof that they were still in the high north, at least. He decided to take out
a pen and write a note on the back of a card. He left it on the counter of the
petrol station, wedged into the cash register where it wouldn
’
t
fly away.

When Lara returned, he threw her a Mars Bar and headed back
out through the glass doors to return to the bike; he was keen to feel the wind
in his hair again. Lara opened the chocolate bar and bit into it. She too
noticed the postcards and saw Ned
’
s little message. Before he
spotted her prying, she snuck a peek at what he had written on the back of a
card depicting a beautiful Australian beach at sunset, not unlike the one they
had just come from.

Mum,

I am fine.

Didn
’
t make it to Ivanhoe.

Miss you lots.

xx
Ned

She almost laughed and cried at the same time. Taking a leaf
from Ned
’
s book, she pocketed a few postcards and a pen, and
then wedged the note back into its place for some imaginary person to come and
collect.

She returned outside to see Ned was standing perfectly still
among the petrol pumps. He had not mounted his quad bike because something up
ahead blocked the road. In case Lara squealed again, he grabbed her arm and
squeezed it, hushing her.

They had appeared from the wild outback. They had found
interesting scents and were following them with black noses to the ground. At
first there were four, but then two more appeared from the outlands.

‘What the
hell
are they?
’

At first, they appeared to be large dogs. The four-footed
canines sniffed about, digging here and there, and making small growls to one
another. The dogs were a sandy colour, with a white underbelly, and fox-like
ears.

‘Are those
…
dingoes?
’

‘
They used to be.
’

The pack spotted them in the doorway of the station. Like
sharp-minded predators, they turned their attentions towards them and began to
slink from the interesting scents on the road to the interesting prey they
belonged to. Lara gasped a little at the alterations. These wild dogs,
usually a timid, rarely-spotted native animal,
looked as
though they had been fed a high-steroid diet. They were huge; three times
larger than the average dingo, muscular arms so thick that their gate was
widened when they walked, and veins bulging from their necks. Their shoulder
blades protruded high up from their backs, and their hind legs looked as though
they could outrun a horse. Their enormous fangs drooled as they began snarling
and stepping closer, paw after gigantic paw.

Ned pulled her by the arm.
‘
Back
inside.
’

The pack of mutant dogs chased them, barking. Ned pushed
Lara back through the shop door and attempted to pull it shut behind him, but
an enormous furry beast barged through and kept it ajar with its head caught in
the door. It snapped and drooled at his legs, with five others of the pack
trying to scramble over it, snapping and drooling like rabid beasts from hell. Ned
was holding the door in place with every inch of strength he had, trying to
fully pull it shut. Lara was elsewhere, hastily trying to find something useful
in the petrol station to fend off the mutant carnivores. There weren
’
t
many weapon-like objects around, until the sight of a wall-mounted fire
extinguisher caught her eye. She pulled the red canister from the wall, ripped
out the pin, and ran back to Ned. Hose in hand, she doused the dingo hybrid in
the face with a cloud of white gas. It instantly lurched back, allowing Ned to
seal the gap and shut the door. A second dog attempted to barge in and take the
place of its fallen comrade, but it only got a face full of solid glass.

Ned locked the door. The two then stood there, panting,
watching six wild mutts attempting to claw and ram down the barricade. The
glass made a dull
doof
,
doof
noise with each ramming muscular body. There was a desperate hunger in their black,
alien eyes; whatever dingoes ate before was certainly different to what they
preferred now.

Ned looked down at the fire extinguisher in Lara’s hands.
With silent nods, too breathless to speak, they congratulated each other on
their work.
 

They waited it out, but so did the dingoes. The mutated
hounds gave up trying to ram the bolted door down after an hour and instead
decided to lay around the station in strategic posts, in case their prey made a
dart for their getaway vehicle. There was nothing they could do but wait, but
at least the station had enough food and water to serve as a bunker for a few
days, if they needed it. The day was therefore lost while they lounged in their
fortress, drinking and eating anything that was still well-preserved. The chips
were starting to taste less crunchy and the milk in the fridge was now cheese,
but energy bars, soft drinks, bags of lollies, and canned things were all still
edible. While Lara gorged, Ned lay down on the tiled floor and said he wasn
’
t
hungry.

‘You haven
’
t eaten all day.
’

He waved her off and closed his eyes. He didn
’
t
move for hours. Lara amused herself with the stacks of newspapers and magazines
left abandoned on the shelves. The last date on every paper was Veteran
’
s
Day, with no mention of anything askew and perfect weather predicted. Mankind
didn
’
t stand a chance, she realised; this had been
planned for years, decades, and despite all the fancy space technology they
possessed, nothing suggested they had any knowledge of something as big as a
cloud-ship coming towards them. Of course, there were so many possible
conspiracy theories, many which VVEE fans constantly dabbled with: the
government knew about the cloud all along and hid it from the public, or they
were in cahoots with the Quakers for some sort of profit. Sadly for VVEE and
all the theorists, the truth was far simpler: we had a planet and they didn
’
t.
Wherever they had come from, it had been a long and risky journey and she could
see how her escape could threaten everything.

She napped for a while, and she dreamt she was still in her
pod. She could almost feel the puddle of brown water around her, and like a
phantom limb, she constantly kept scratching the back of her neck where her
tube was itching. He woke at around sunset, only to see the dingoes had
vanished back to the bush, giving up to go hunt for feral hybrid rodents and
alien snakes instead.

Ned was asleep under the counter. When she shook him awake,
he was slow to move. He rolled over to reveal his eyes were red and puffy. He
said he didn
’
t feel well. She felt his forehead.
‘
My
god, you
’
re burning up.
’
She
searched the store until she found some ibuprofen on a shelf. She heard
vomiting and went back to Ned to see he was hunched over a pool of colourless
bile and saliva. She abandoned the medication and merely brought him water. She
forced him to drink it, even though he didn
’
t want to.

‘We need to find a pharmacy. Or a hospital.
’

On his back, Ned gave a condescending chuckle.
‘
You
won
’
t find shit.
’

‘What
’
s wrong? Did the dog bite you?
’

But there were no bites, no major wounds, just scratches and
bruises. It must be a bug, then, something he ate, or some bad water he drank
back at the Ord. His forehead and the back of his neck were covered in sweat.
He looked pale. The yellowness in his eyes was concerning. Lara didn
’
t
know much about medicine but she knew enough to know when to be concerned.

Ned
’
s breathing was laboured. He
complained that his stomach both hurt and felt horribly ill. Lying on the cold
tiles of the station, he looked up at Lara and cautiously asked,
‘
Are
you really contaminated?
’

‘No!
’
she cried.
‘
I
mean, I don
’
t think so. I
’
m not sick.
’
But nonetheless, she felt entirely responsible.
‘
We
’
re
going to find you help, okay? Come on.
’

‘No
…’

‘We have to keep moving.
’

She hoisted him up and carried him back towards the quad,
taking careful steps in case the dingoes had an ambush planned. Luckily they
escaped the petrol station without a glitch. Lara drove, with Ned sitting
behind her, leaning against her back with his arms loosely wrapped around her
waist. She sped off down the rural highway, leaving the town of Lee Point
behind in search of the big city. The sky was turning orange. A faint half-moon
could be seen lingering among the first stars. She didn
’
t want to
be out here at night with the wild animals.

Within five minutes of leaving the town, a big highway sign
appeared before them, and the one destination listed was:
Darwin
.

Lara stopped the quad. That sign left her with chills. She
remembered Psycho
’
s story, and if he was telling
the truth, then Darwin would be a smouldering wasteland now, riddled with Suits
and Quakers. It was set ablaze to drag all the humans out of hiding, and its
ports and air bases were bombed to keep any rogue army from forming against
them. She may as well be driving towards a landmine. But it was Ned
’
s
moans that made her go on. She kept telling herself that the damage couldn
’
t
be that bad; Psycho was a braggart and a manipulative bastard boy. Surely
something of Darwin was still standing, and hopefully it contained people who
could help.

‘
Where are we?
’
he moaned.

‘Just hang on,
’
she kept saying.

By following highway signs, Lara discovered the abandoned
capital city of the Northern Territory. Nestled in a harbour of yachts and manmade
wave breaks, the coastal metropolis emerged on her horizon as the sun began to
set behind it. What damage it had sustained from Psycho
’
s attack
was only partially visible in the dying light, but she could see smoke, she
could see buildings were damaged; along the highway, cars were piled onto each
other, trucks were tipped, and there was a crater in the asphalt as though a
bomb had gone off. Every inch closer, she felt more and more trespassing into
Psycho
’
s territory, as though he had left his black mark
on every piece of damaged road and building. She was surprised that there was
not yet a monument erected in his honour.

The collapsed and decrepit city stood eerily silent. The
quad sounded excessively loud and disturbing as it rumbled down the unused
roads, weaving through cracked streets, littered with the debris of a war. She
kept vigilant, but the place was empty. Around her waist, she felt Ned stir,
and with his head resting on her back, he opened his eyes for a brief moment
only to see the broken glass windows of shops, upturned cars scarred by fire,
and buildings which looked as though they had collapsed under the force of a
monstrous earthquake. ‘My god,’ he muttered. He had not seen civilisation since
he left Wyndham, and he had certainly not seen damage like this before. Lara
assumed Melbourne and the other capitals looked very much the same by now.

Signs directed her to a local day hospital, a little further
south of the CBD. It was dark by the time they rode up to the front. She parked
her quad in the emergency bay and carried him inside, one arm over her
shoulder. The front glass had been smashed in, either by a storm or by
desperate hands who knew where to look for drugs. They stumbled inside to a
dark, neglected reception area. Papers were scattered and blown across the
floor and computers were smashed. Light fixtures had fallen from the roof and a
bed lay tipped in the hallway. She carried him to a room where he could lay
down on a bed. She made him drink more water, but he immediately vomited it
back up.

‘You need to rehydrate.
’

In the half-light, she managed to find a bag of saline and a
tray of needles. With little experience in playing doctor, she somehow managed
to get a needle into the vein of his elbow joint, tape it up, and find a pole
to hang the saline bag from. She found a stethoscope and timed his heart rate
in comparison to her own. His was much slower, although the panic and
adrenaline may have elevated hers above normal. With nothing more she could
think to do, she pulled off the boy’s shoes and let him recline in bed with a
bag of fluid gradually seeping into his body, in hopes it would miraculously
restore him. He was feverous, covered in sweat, and shivering uncontrollably.
She managed to get him to take ibuprofen, but there was no way to know if this
would help or exacerbate the problem. She tried to make him suck on lollies or
chocolate, to keep his sugar up, but he refused all food. Eventually, she
simply had to let him rest. When the saline finally began to take effect, he
stopped shivering and fell asleep. Lara found a pillow from the next room and
slept on two armchairs pushed together, always in reach of him.

Ned woke to the sound of a distant voice. He pried open his
eyes to a hazy, dark world. He lifted his head and looked around the hospital
room where he now slept. Through the curtains he saw the sun had set over the
unknown city. There were no lights on, not in this building or anywhere. But he
still heard a voice. Someone was sobbing. It echoed down the corridor of the
abandoned hospital and into his room. The soft voice cut in and out, as though
gasping for air. Ned sat upright attentively, unable to detect exact words, or
even what gender it was, but it was certainly human. He looked to Lara. She was
asleep on a chair, wrapped in a jacket.

He threw aside his sheets and gently lowered himself from
the bed. His bare feet touched the cold floor. Still attached to a saline bag
through an IV line, he took the silver
pole
with him
and carefully emerged out into the hallway. The hospital rattled with the
outside wind,
wisping
through broken windows and torn
vents in the roof. Scattered papers blew across the floor. Doors left ajar
creaked back and forth on rusty hinges. A broken light fixture swayed overhead,
with live wires hanging from it. He avoided them and ducked under. The voice
was still sobbing, crying, and he couldn
’
t tell
which room it was coming from. It sounded very far away, echoing along the
barren hall to reach him, and yet, from time to time, Ned heard crying behind
him as well, as though there was more than one voice, as though it was trying
to trick him. Paranoid, he swung and looked over his shoulder, only to see a
dead-straight corridor leading into darkness. No one was there.

 
I
’
m
going crazy.

‘Ned.
’
He spun again to see Lara
standing in the doorway, yawning.
‘
What are you doing up?
’

Ned wasn
’
t sure. He turned back to the
hallway to listen to the sound again, but it was gone.