The Last Girl (21 page)

‘Be positive, guys.’ That was Traci.
Another-pharmacy-on-
way-home.

‘I think they’re getting it,’ Nathan said brightly. ‘You and me, Danby, I think we’re saving the world.’

‘Do you?’ I asked. ‘What about Anne?’

We locked onto my sundress Revivee, heading for her rich sister’s house and wine cellar.
My-time-now-You-losers-do-
whatever-you-want.

‘Cory?’

One of Nathan’s. Young guy.
Man-I-use-this-stuff-I-can-
revive-the-hottest-chicks-and—

Disgusted minds rounded on them both—
How-can-you-
think-that?-Time-like-this?—
but they didn’t care.

Just-being-honest-You-can’t-talk-you’re-Whatever-
just-leave-me-the-hell-alone-I’m-reviving-my-family-You-
should-do—

Nathan shook his head. ‘At least they’re not killing each other.’

He was right. But I was disappointed that our Revivees were all on singular missions. ‘Not one of them trusts each other enough to join forces,’ I said. ‘Not one of them’s considered reviving a stranger just to be kind. No one’s changed at all.’

Nathan squeezed my hand gently. I felt myself relax a little under his gaze. ‘They’re strangers, they’re frightened. Of course they want to help family and friends first. Give them a bit of time to do that and then maybe they’ll learn to think cooperatively and constructively. Let’s see how they go?’

I nodded.

By the time I’d swapped Evan’s IV bag, Nathan’s faith in humanity looked like it was being vindicated.

The woman named Ravi had made it to her home in Westmead and found her husband Wayne huddled in the cupboard. A few minutes later, he was awake, the two of them crying, him sorry for screaming her away, her sorry for running off. They peered out through the curtains in their lounge room, frightened by the orange glow of fires on the eastern horizon but glad they were alive and together. Ravi and Wayne’s minds still clashed sometimes, and every tangential thought threatened some trivial derailment, but they recognised their survival depended on setting bullshit aside and were groping towards true togetherness. It was deepening their love—and making them more determined to do whatever they could to save their family and friends.

Others were on the same track. Traci had made her way back to her family home. Her elderly father was dead but she’d revived her mother, sister and niece. Now the four women were wordlessly making up more syringes with the supplies Traci had collected and were sharing mental strategies to help the extended family. Jackie hadn’t found Tony at home but before she headed out to see if he was holed up at the pub, she injected Sally, her neighbour, and the single mother’s toddler son, Angus, and left them half her supplies. Now Sally studied our instruction sheet so she could make up more doses for her brother and his family.

‘I’ve gotta tune out.’ Nathan yawned and pushed the coffee table out of the way to stretch out on the carpet. He pulled his baseball cap down over his eyes. ‘I need to rest a while.’

The patch of carpet between Nathan and Evan’s couch was irresistibly inviting. Being between two other humans seemed like the safest and most natural place left in this world. No matter that one was my catatonic little brother and the other was really still a stranger. I kneeled beside Evan and stroked his forehead for a while. Then I eased myself down beside Nathan. I couldn’t help be conscious of how close our bodies were. I wanted to be even closer but I was wary of how he might interpret me curling into him for comfort.

I turned off my flashlight. The darkness in that windowless reception room should’ve been total. But my mind couldn’t help going out to Revivees.

My heart sank as I saw Anne had claimed her sister’s Parramatta mansion. Her Lorazepam went unused as she drank fine vintages and tried on designer dresses while the lady of the house lay slumped catatonic on a chaise longue.

Cory was cruising a mall, shining his light app on crashed out girls, telling himself he was only mucking around, that he wouldn’t really do anything bad. Robert, a man Nathan had revived, made me even sadder. He had found the DrugRite and was collecting barbiturates to make a mercy-killing cocktail he would inject into his wife and kids before he used it on himself.

My stomach twisted with guilt. These people wouldn’t be inflicting themselves on the bereft world if it wasn’t for me and Nathan. But Ray, my Hawaiian shirt guy, wouldn’t let me succumb to despair because, of all of them, he had really changed.

Ray was walking east, determined to make it to his wife’s apartment in Strathfield and make amends. Christmas morning had been his first chance to see the twins since he was paroled and his big opportunity to talk Lyn around and convince her that the anger-management classes in prison had worked. Ray vowed not to stuff it up. But hanging around the halfway house on Christmas Eve, listening to the tinny TV sounds of men alone in their rooms, was too much to handle, and so he and Benny from the next cubicle had pooled their meagre resources and bought six bottles of cheap wine. There was no harm—they just drank and laughed and listened to music until the dawn sky was as pink as their eyes.

But when Ray woke to the plane exploding into the bridge it was like a nightmare chasing him into the day. Horrible visions, sounds, feelings, sensations jumbled through him—a riot in Silverwater Jail, suburban mums and dads baying for blood, jolts of pain as bones broke and skin split in a bus tumbling across a bridge—and then Ray was with Liam and Doc as they wailed amid Christmas wrappers at their frantic mother.

Don’t-yell-Mummy-I’m-scared-So-loud-Where’s-Daddy?

Lyn screamed—at the boys, at herself, in his head—and her fear and fury rippled through him so violently he vomited over the side of his narrow cot.

Shut-up-boys-Be-quiet-Can’t-think-Ray-you-bastard-
Drunk-Always-drunk-here-I—

Then she was gone—like Ray had accidentally changed a television channel—and he was in Benny’s head next door as the poor gimp blasted Led Zep on headphones and pounded a bottle of port. Ray’s mind raged randomly through intoxicated and insane minds in other rooms and out into surrounding streets that were like war zones. Inside his own skull was worse than any prison cell. But at least he could escape his room. So he bolted from the halfway house to the LiquorBarn. The place was a shambles of broken glass and booze and blood-soaked bodies. Wild-eyed freaks surged in and out, grabbing whatever they could. Ray was one of them until he got his hands on two bottles of wine.

Ray staggered clear, guzzling warm chardonnay as he weaved between people. The first bottle didn’t really help. The second one made his legs so rubbery he had to sit down. His mind tripped to his family again. Lyn huddled with their twins in the empty bath. Like this was an earthquake.

Mummy!-Please!-Don’t-want-to-die!-So-loud!-Ray-where-
are-you?-Everything-pushing-Love-you-Liam-Doc-but-get-
away-shut-up-no-no . . .

Lyn hugged the boys even as she tried to repulse their minds. Then it was like the tub beneath them caved in and they were tumbling into the abyss.

‘No!’ Ray protested from his pawn-shop doorway but he was going down with his family into the enormity of the earth.

Ray replayed his mistakes relentlessly as he walked east. ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’—he remembered reading that on the ceiling of a cafe where he’d asked about a dishwashing job. That connection tugged at me and made me wish I could reach out and reassure Ray everything would be all right, tell him his renewed lease on life was helping me believe things might be okay. As he climbed around the remains of a burned police car, I felt proud when Ray mentally gave thanks to whoever had given him a second chance to be the man he should’ve been the first time around. By God, Ray was going to save his family—and then he would revive as many people as he could and really pay back his debt to society.

Ray couldn’t hear me but he wasn’t alone. Minds out there helped him where they could. Ravi and Jackie weren’t quite a GPS but between them they knew these suburban backstreets better than he did. Their advice meant he avoided a few dead ends. But it was more than that: they gently kept him on the right path whenever he thought about finding just one drink. These guys, these strangers, were better than any Alcoholics Anonymous group. They could see past everything to the good person he really was.

‘Ray?’ Nathan said in the dark.

‘Ray,’ I agreed.

‘There’s hope.’ He briefly found my cheek with his hand in the darkness. ‘I’m so glad we found each other.’

As I lay there, I gave thanks for Nathan. But I felt sick for him when I remembered what he had started to tell me before Cassie had rudely interrupted him.
The night shift
. Of course: medical students interned in hospitals. As bad as my flight from Beautopia Point had been, Nathan had probably had it worse. Patients, doctors and nurses battling their own and each other’s demons in wards and waiting rooms. I wondered how long Nathan had tried to save others before he realised he’d be lucky to save himself.

‘You never told me,’ I said, ‘what it was like for you?’

Nathan sighed in the darkness. ‘I’ll tell you everything in the morning,’ he said. ‘I promise. I’m just so tired now. Goodnight, Danby.’

I felt him roll onto his side.

‘Goodnight.’

A moment later Nathan was snoring lightly.

We’d saved some people. Now they were saving each other. Our plan wasn’t perfect but it was working.

What I wanted to know was how many other people were out there like us. If the ratio was 1 in a 1000, there would be 25,000 people in Australia. Even with a dismal percentage like that there’d still be eight million survivors worldwide. From Mr Mooney’s history class I recalled that the global population had been around that at the start of recorded history. But this wasn’t the new 4000 BC. I had found Nathan and he had known about Lorazepam. Others would be doing the same thing. Tens or even hundreds of millions would survive.

The big challenge in these early days would be finding each other. Without transport and telecommunications, it was like the world had been wound back. People who were suburbs away might as well be in other states. But that was where the telepathy might work in our favour. They didn’t know it but the Revivees were already our radars. If they ran into anyone like us then Nathan and I would know about it. But we would also be frustratingly unable to communicate
our
presence. What we needed was to revive someone who would stay with us—and whose mind wouldn’t drive us crazy. Through them we’d be able to broadcast to other Revivees.

Before I fell asleep, a chilling calculation occurred. If the sample of me, Nathan and the Party Duder held true across the wider population then 33.3 recurring per cent of those who were immune would also be psychotic murdering rapists. I was sure that civilisation couldn’t survive that.

SEVENTEEN

When I awoke my eyes were inches from beige carpet. I didn’t know where I was. Rolling over, I saw Evan with his IV. Everything came back. We were in the accountant’s rooms. This was the reception area.

‘Nathan?’

The place was so small that if he was in the office or the kitchen or the bathroom or even on the balcony he would’ve heard me.

A note was stuck to the wall. I stood up and peered at the scrawl.

4.30 a.m. Evan has fresh IV. Gone to help someone.
Back as soon as I can. Hope we’ll still be
friends
.

I looked at my phone. Just before seven. Nathan had left me in the dark. To help someone. I flashed to me asking him if he had anyone. He’d deflected with the joke about the share house. ‘Someone’ meant someone special. I wasn’t jealous. Just angry. That he hadn’t told me. Mum was my priority. He could have his. But now he’d abandoned me—us. Anything could go wrong and I wouldn’t know it. If he brought her back here, how would we cope with a shared mind?

I sent my senses wide open out there. I skipped over Cassie and her friends, coming around after a night on the needle in a pub. I saw Ray, thirstier than ever but still sober and within striking distance of Lyn’s place. I flitted past Jackie, still searching for Tony. Other minds spun through mine—Traci, Ravi, Cory, Anne and the rest of our Revivees and the people they’d woken up—but no one had eyes on Nathan.

Then I locked onto a girl named Tregan and dropped straight into her experience in a bush clearing. Her head lolled. Her brain ached, her heart beat heavy in her temples. Her tongue was sluggish, her skin flamed with sunburn and insect bites. But she barely felt the pain for the exhilaration.

I’m-back!-I’m-alive!-I’m-alive!

Then Nathan came into view and she felt only fear.

‘Slowly,’ he said, cupping her neck, holding a bottle to her parched lips. ‘Tregan, drink slowly, it’s electrolyte, I’ve already hydrated you, you’re going to be okay.’

‘You,’ I heard her say, looking from his sweaty face to the empty IV bag among the weeds. There was a syringe, too. ‘What—what—what—?’

Flashes hit Tregan: driving with Gary on the Great Western Highway, their minds overlapping, the argument, the plane screaming over the city, her fiancé slamming on the brakes to avoid a flipped tow truck, her throwing open the door to stumble into the bush, the weight of the world caving in on her.

‘Nathan,’ she said. ‘What have you done to me?’

Drug-like-Datura-DMT-could-cause-hallucinations-
Bastard-kidnapped-me-God-has-he-hurt-Gary?-Sick-he’s-sick-
but-I-never-thought—

Nathan stepped back, hands raised.

‘Tregan,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry for everything before. But this isn’t what you think.’

When-people-say-that-it’s-always-exactly-what-you-think.

‘When people say that it’s always exactly what you think,’ Nathan said.

How-did-he-do-that?-Bad-dream-has-to-be . . .

‘It’s not, Tregan,’ Nathan said, crouching down. ‘I wish it was a bad dream.’

Made-himself-smaller-less-threatening.