The Last Girl (14 page)

ELEVEN

I woke up gasping and sweaty and terrified. A dream of a screaming world faded from my mind as ash drifted down through the trees like dirty snow. Weak brown light filtered from a rusty sky speckled with tiny bats. Down by the coppery river, a cormorant circled, wings outstretched, searching for the sun. I checked the phone. Six past six. Still no network.

Evan was breathing steadily in my arms. I eased out from under him and stretched my legs painfully. A rabbit scampered behind a tuft of grass. Frogs started a croaking chorus. What I didn’t see or hear was any human activity. I held my breath, closed my eyes, opened my senses as wide as they’d go. No one. Not nearby. Not far away. Just the warm smoky wind rustling dry leaves and birds calling tentative greetings to the strange morning.

I jumped up, joints popping and bones creaking, giddy with the rush of blood to my head but joyous at the thought that the telepathic fever had burned itself out while I slept. I looked down at Evan. Was he still catatonic? Or now just asleep?

‘Evan?’ I said. ‘Wake up, sweet pea.’

He didn’t stir. I shook his shoulder gently. Nothing.

I’d have to wait for someone to wander past. If I could tune into his or her mind, they’d tell me what was going on. If I couldn’t, it’d mean the mind-sharing thing was over.

I sat back down. For once I had nothing to distract me from my actual physical world and its sharpness and solidity surprised me. Trees armoured with gnarled black bark. Tiny sapphire-flecked wrens flitted so weightlessly they barely stirred the branches.

My heart lurched as something crunched towards me. Maybe an escaped murderer, infinitely more dangerous now if I couldn’t read his mind. Then a black bird followed its yellow beak out of the scrub. When my heart restarted, I plucked a dandelion and puffed on it to count the seed paratroopersfloating away. I got to thirty. Then I did another.

As I sat and sat, it sank in that it wasn’t only minds or voices that I couldn’t hear. The mechanical background music of civilisation had been silenced. Motors, brakes, sirens, choppers: surely there had to be some of that if the recovery process had started. Or was the devastation so great that survivors couldn’t get themselves organised? Surely someone would be along the path or river soon.

Next thing I knew I was wet and warm. Evan had pissed his pants and it’d soaked into me too. I checked my phone. After two! I couldn’t believe that I’d drifted off for hours. At the same time I felt like I could sleep for days.

I still couldn’t find anyone anywhere.

My insides went cold. I didn’t want to think about it. Couldn’t help myself. Maybe it wasn’t that I
couldn’t
read minds. Maybe there were no minds
left
to read.

‘Bullshit!’ I shouted, jumping up, daring someone to hear, hoping someone would. ‘
Bullshit
!’

The only response I got was pigeons flapping from a nearby tree. No one yelled back, ‘Hey, over here!’ or ‘Who are you?’ or ‘Come out with your hands up!’

This was stupid. I had to find out what the hell was going on and where the hell everyone was. There might be an emergency assembly point just out of earshot and I was missing vital instructions on how to revive loved ones and where to go for food rations and crisis accommodations.

To find out anything, I’d have to leave Evan for a while. I thought he’d be safe in the foliage. But what if he woke up and wandered off? I might never find him. I puzzled over it for a second. Then, Lord forgive me, I used the sleeves of my jumper to tie him to the tree trunk. I’d give myself thirty minutes to get back.

The river path was empty in both directions. I paused to drink at the fountain and then walked east along the river. It wasn’t long before the track took me inland and through a pine forest. When the path opened out again it led up a low hill.

This was Woo-la-ra. Aboriginal for ‘the lookout place’. The sign made it clear it wasn’t a sacred site but rather a man-made mound built around a toxic waste dump and planted with native grasses. Whatever was buried under me couldn’t be much worse than air that was as grainy as an old film and rough in my throat as I trudged up the hill.

On the path’s final rise I stopped.

‘Oh, Christ.’

A heavily tattooed young guy wearing only red Speedos was sprawled on the dirt track. He was face up, pasty arms thrust out, feet crossed at the ankles. A crow had perched on his chest.

‘Hey! Get off him!’

The bird screeched into the sooty sky. Despite the crow’s predations, the dude looked peaceful. His eyes were closed and his long hair framed a thin, bearded face. Next to Bogan Jesus was a little graveyard of stubbed-out cigarettes and a drained bottle of Jack Daniels.

‘Hello?’ I said.

But I knew he was past resurrection. The guy wasn’t a Goner. He was gone. What I’d taken as gnarly tattoos were streaks of post-mortem marbling coloured in by early decomposition. There was a livid purple tideline where his body rested on the ground. Now I heard the buzz of flies and saw the empty pill bottle clenched tight in one fist. A warm gust brought a whiff of him strong enough to cut through the smoke. I retched and stumbled into the tall grass and didn’t inhale again until I was up the hill and upwind.

Woo-la-ra’s peak was manicured, arranged with park benches and silver plaques pointing to distant landmarks. But what should have been a panorama of Sydney offered only glimpses of a landscape being set in amber.

I squinted at the city in the distance, sailing in and out of the sallow haze, Sydney Tower like the tallest mast on a ghost ship. A fireball bloomed near The Rocks, creating a shadow flash of the shattered Harbour Bridge in the gloom. Then an oily squall drew a billowing black curtain across the skyline. From here to that dark horizon, blaze after blaze poured more toxic ink into the atmosphere.

My clearest view was of the apartment edifices just beneath Woo-la-ra. People hunched motionless on balconies with dead phones and tablets. More bodies dotted the gardens and walkways fringing the complexes. Action figures strewn by some careless kid. Streets and paths and lawns were clotted with cars. Drivers slow-cooking in the heat and humidity.

My eyes followed the main road into Olympic Park. There were hundreds of people. Not one moved. Even from here I could see some were dead. But most looked like they were in stand-by mode as eddies of smoke swirled around them. The ones who were still upright spooked me most. I kept thinking they were faking, that they’d suddenly spring back to life.

Weren’t the living dead supposed to shamble around? Rip us apart for food? Symbolise all that was wrong with humanity? I didn’t know what to make of this. Should I fear these figures or be fearful for them?

Goners
. I chided myself for thinking it again. They weren’t doomed. Like Evan wasn’t. Surely they’d all wake up when they got hungry or thirsty enough, wouldn’t they?

To the north yachts and cruisers drifted on the river, while on the far shore nothing stirred in a McMansion development. To the west there stood a sky-high brown wall where the Blue Mountains should have defined the horizon. I didn’t know whether that smokescreen had been created by fires in the outer suburbs or blazes in the distant bush. Maybe it had all burned overnight and Mum and Shadow Valley were already cinder.

No! I couldn’t think that way any more than I could let myself think about the sick feeling swelling in my guts.

‘No way, uh-uh, statistically that can’t be, there’re others, has to be, I—’

I was muttering. Exactly what the last girl on earth would do when she went stark raving mad. I could not think like that. I would find other sentient people. I would find help for Evan. I would get to Mum and she would be fine. If I didn’t believe those things I might as well grab some dirt next to Bogan Jesus.

Parramatta’s modest skyline offered hope. On the other side of the nature reserve and parklands, past a shiny silver refinery and industrial estates, the city’s glass-and-steel towers stood intact. Nothing there seemed touched by fire. That might not last. All the more reason to get Evan and get going.

I untied my little brother and carried him back to the kayak. Maybe I should paddle out to the speedboat floating east. Get it started and we would get to Parramatta faster. I quashed the idea. Told myself it was stealing. But I really was too freaked out by the prospect of climbing aboard only to find a zoned-out or blue-tinged body.

With Evan in the cockpit, I pushed the kayak into the shallows. I was about to climb in behind him when I spotted the monster. A crocodile—coming downriver. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’d seen the chaos at the zoo but could an escaped croc have swum this far up the harbour already? I tried to haul the kayak back to shore with mud sucking at my every step. The croc’s black torpedo body was almost on me when I realised my mistake. I never thought I’d be relieved to see a dead body. But that’s what it was: a half-submerged biker in black leathers and helmet. The man floated past me face down within arm’s reach. Then another corpse bobbed by. She was also mercifully face down. Blonde hair billowing, arms and legs splayed, tracksuit puffy with air pockets: the girl looked like she was skydiving.

I fought to regain my breath. Steadied myself and the kayak. Yanked my feet out of the mud and took us onto the river. As I paddled slowly west, more bodies floated past. But I was less disturbed by the watery dead than by the living left on the land. Men in prison jumpsuits, guards in uniform, mums and dads in casual clothes, boys and girls in bright new outfits—they were like litter around the cafe, playground and grassy hills. When I cried, nothing came. I’d run out of tears.

I took in the traffic glut on the Silverwater Bridge with weary resignation. People had remained cocooned by their air conditioning and stereos until nothing worked anymore, nothing made sense, nothing was all they could embrace. Those who had got out didn’t get far. Faces pressed against the pedestrian fence, like primates passed out against their cages, bars held in their clenched fists. Their eyes were closed but I still felt accusatory stares, imagined them hating me for surviving when they’d succumbed. In fact, I would’ve welcomed hatred, anger, anything. But not a mind flickered. Not on the bridge. Not in the shadows of its abutments. Not in the surrounding suburbs.

At least the people of Pompeii had been able to huddle together when the end came pouring down. Most of these guys hadn’t even had that comfort. They were spread out as though obeying some unseen grid because when privacy had evaporated personal space had been the only thing left.

The river closed on the other side of the bridge. A few desperate souls had crashed out knee deep in mud and clutching mangrove trunks. I saw where the high tide had reached up their bodies. They’d been lucky not to drown. Then I saw the unlucky one. He was just head, torso and arms wrapped around a branch hanging low to the water. Nothing left beneath the waist. I wondered whether he’d been run over by some frantic speedboat. It didn’t matter. I just wanted to put the sight behind me. I paddled faster and was glad there was nothing in my stomach to throw up.

The refinery monstered up from behind the swampy shore. Shiny towers and silos. White storage vats. Spiral staircases. It looked like something out of a sci-fi film but there was nothing more down-to-earth. Civilisation’s blood had been processed here, pumped in as crude oil, sent back out as petrol and diesel and whatever else. Signs on channel markers—‘Danger!— Submarine High-Pressure Pipelines!’—warned that right below us lay a network of veins and ventricles. Surely when the Christmas Day shift lost their shit someone flipped the safety switches? Surely even if no one had, there were automatic mechanisms to stop the place going supernova?

I paused mid-paddle in a moment of preternatural silence. It was like the universe was considering my questions. Then came the answer. Sirens whooped. Warning lights flashed. Workers didn’t scramble to emergency stations to avoid catastrophe. No one was going to save us but me.

My paddle bounced off something rubbery in the water. Fat guy. Big and bloated. As I went to push him away with the blade, he rolled so that a pudgy arm flailed up at me. I yelled as a grey snout ripped a chunk from the corpse and the river churned with thrashing fins and tails. Sharks thudded against the kayak’s hull. Black eyes rolled in grey bullet heads and razor teeth flashed from gummy mouths. The sharks weren’t large but what they lacked in size they made up for in numbers. I held the paddle over my head so it wouldn’t be bitten in half and the boat rocked hard in the pink frothy water. If we capsized we’d be wedged upside down in the feeding frenzy. We’d be sardines.