The Last Girl (39 page)

Michael Adams has been a restaurant dishwasher, television host, ice-cream scooper, toilet scrubber, magazine journalist, ecohouse lab rat, film reviewer, social media curator, telemarketing jerk, reality TV scribe and B-movie zombie. This one time he watched bad movies at the rate of one per day for an entire year and wrote a book about the traumatic experience, which is called
Showgirls, Teen Wolves and Astro
Zombies
. Michael lives in the Blue Mountains with his partner, daughter, one dog, two cats and an average of three supersized spiders.
The Last Girl
is his first novel. Find Michael on Twitter
@wordymofo
.

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ONE

My gun’s aimed at Jack.

‘Don’t move,’ I whisper.

Not that he can. Nor do I think I can miss him. Not at this range.

‘Bang,’ I say, lowering the weapon with a trembling hand. ‘You’re dead.’

My Jack is six feet tall, similar to the actual version. Other than that, any resemblance to persons living or soon to be dead is purely coincidental. Sketched on the door of Mum’s old outhouse, this Jack has oval eyes, a smudge nose and a half-moon smile set in an oval head. I was going to draw a heart inside his pink-chalk torso but I didn’t know where it should go. Left side? Right side? Nowhere at all? My theory is that Nathan survived being shot because he has the same genetic anomaly—
Situs inversus
—that I do. I don’t know if that holds true for Jack but I can’t risk it. His heart doesn’t matter. I have to go for a headshot. In movies they always say that it’s tricky. That’s why I need to be in close.

I raise the gun again. Try to hold it steady.

It’s an hour after the kinda dawn and Shadow Valley looks like it’s immersed in weak tea. Sepia smoke and cloud hangs low from the mountains to blur the crowns of the gum trees behind Mum’s studio. Haze and hillside merge on the back paddock to reduce nibbling kangaroos to shuffling shadows. But even with all the grit in the air, my target’s perfectly visible, just a few metres away.

I need Jack dead to free my little brother. I’m gutted every time I think of Evan back there in Clearview. Not because I fear for his physical wellbeing—I’m certain Jack will keep him safe for my sake. But I wonder where the real Evan is right now. Is he stuck inside that awful nothing place, frightened and feeling trapped forever? What I want to believe is that Evan’s somewhere happy—maybe in the mental equivalent of his cupboard cave, eating Chocopops and playing
Snots ’N’ Bots
and feeling safe surrounded by his soft-toy friends. That I can’t be sure of any of that—and the fresh realisation that I’ll never see Mum or Dad or Jacinta again—makes my eyes well up. There’s no holding back the tears that surge from me.

It’s a while before I’m wrung out, before I wipe my eyes clear and see the target again. But I feel calmer, composed. It’s like my anger and sorrow’s become cold and concentrated. I raise the revolver—if cinematic memory serves, the little gun’s a .38 of some sort—and point it at Chalk Jack again.

I picture the real Jack’s smiling face. So confident. All that self-belief. It’s going to be his downfall. The smug bastard was so sure of himself—of his power over me—that he couldn’t conceive that I might turn the gun he gave me on him. What pisses me off is that Jack was almost right. If poor Mr November had died according to plan then I wouldn’t have had a clue that Mum was murdered. Instead of still being here, training myself to be an assassin, I might already be back in Clearview in Jack’s arms, feeling all tragic—maybe all romantic. He played me like his goddamned guitar.

My finger touches the trigger and then curls away from it.

The revolver sits heavier in my hand than the .45 did back at Beautopia Point. Then I was all jumped up on adrenaline. But those fight-or-flight chemicals are gone. Even though this gun is smaller—wooden grip, blue-steel barrel, six brass cartridges glinting in the cylinder—it feels like a dead weight.

Jesus—if I can’t shoot at a crude drawing of Jack, what chance am I going to have against the flesh-and-blood version?

I’m no cool movie gunslinger. I’m not worthy of my Wonder Woman bracelet. I’ve been standing here wavering for what feels like ages.

But that’s the point of this New Year’s Day morning practice session. Get used to the gun, get comfortable with how it feels and how it fires. Because I’ll only have one shot at Jack. If I don’t get it right, Evan will be lost forever, Nathan’s chances of evading the minions will dwindle and I . . .

I’ll be dead.

Simple as that. Jack told me he loves me in a roundabout way. But I have no doubt he’ll kill me if I threaten him.

I steady my aim. Best I can tell, I’m gonna put a bullet right between his eyes.

‘Bang.’ I lower the six shooter. Exhale slowly. Raise it again. Take aim. ‘Bang.’ My draw-aim-bang routine gets smoother with repetition.

Now I need to bite the bullet. Fire one, at least.

Thing is, I’m afraid of the real blast the revolver will make. Rationally, there is the slightest chance someone’s still alive and sentient in Shadow Valley and that hearing a gunshot might make him or her reach for a rifle usually reserved for rabbits. Irrationally, I feel like the bang will disturb Mum’s whole rest in peace thing down in the strawberry patch.

I’m being stupid. Wherever Mum is, it’s not with her body in the dirt. Anyway, she’d definitely want me to have the skills to blow Jack out of this world—if only so she could have a turn kicking his ass in the next.

Chalk Jack smiles blankly from the dunny door. I raise the revolver, sight down the barrel at his head and curl my finger around the trigger. I don’t back off. I don’t tremble. I take a deep breath. Exhale slowly. Squeeze.

Crack!

The muzzle flares orange and the weapon tugs against my hand as the gunshot echoes through Shadow Valley. Smudged kangaroos bound into the safety of the denser murk. The noise fades. Silence returns. Mum doesn’t rise from the grave. I don’t take incoming fire.

I take the few steps to the outhouse to check exactly how dead I’ve made Jack. But his head’s unscathed. I haven’t even scored a body shot. Then I see it: a wound in the wood just below his left arm. No: that’s an old knothole I hadn’t noticed before.

Missed.

Returning to my spot, I steady myself and fire again. There’s a flash, the shot rips the air and echoes off the hills. What I don’t see is a bullet punching a hole in the door amid a flurry of paint flakes and wood chips.

Missed again.

I examine the little gun. There’s not much to it. The barrel is no longer than my middle finger and the front and rear sights are no more than metal fins. I can’t see how the gun could be askew or need calibrating. I also can’t see how I can be such a terrible shot.

I take a big step closer. Now the revolver’s muzzle is only a body length from him. God, I knew I’d have to be close—but this close makes my stomach turn when I recall how horrible it was when Dad put his gun to his face.

That memory is like ice cracking beneath my feet and I plunge into doubts that are like frigid black currents. What if I’m wrong about Jack’s guilt? What if I’m murdering humanity’s only hope? What if I’m right but Jack’s really a life support system? What if—with one bullet—I kill not just him but Evan and everyone else he has raised? These questions could encase me in ice, freeze me solid.

I shake my head, try to surface, reclaim calm and clarity.

‘No,’ I say. ‘You’re right about this.’

I know I am. I’ve turned over the evidence in my head again and again. This is my fear trying to talk me out of what I have to do. Of course I’m doubtful. A week ago I was a sixteen year old unwrapping Christmas presents. Now I’m a sixteen year old doing a dress rehearsal for first-degree murder. No wonder my brain’s trying to find some way out of this.

But I know there’s only one way out for me and Evan and everyone—killing Jack.

Relax. Inhale. Exhale. Aim. Squeeze.

Blam!

I hit nothing again. At this rate, I’ll have to hold the gun to Jack’s temple. As much as he might love me, I’m not sure he’ll stand still for that. I step closer again to the outhouse, intimate enough now to see a column of unconcerned ants spilling from a crevice near my target’s inner thigh.

I aim and squeeze the trigger and the muzzle flares and my ears ring louder. Chalk Jack abides unplugged as unfazed ants march on across undamaged wooden planks.

A lot of
un
s also apply to me. Untrained with firearms. Unmoored by what’s happened to the world. Unable to believe every single shot I’ve fired has missed. The toilet door fills my entire field of vision. Physics wasn’t my strongest subject at school but I’m goddamned sure bullets don’t go around corners.

Chalk Jack’s smile no longer seems blank. It seems sinister. Mocking. My skin prickles into goosepimples. Maybe he is a God. I’ve invoked him with my crude totem and then insulted his divinity with my puny attempts to inflict injury. Maybe he can watch me through those vacant eyes as easily as he can bend the laws of the universe so my bullets miss him.

‘No,’ I say, as if my denial only has power spoken aloud. ‘No.’

Jack isn’t here. He can’t see me. Chalk Jack’s not real. He’s just a representation.

Then it hits me that this isn’t only true of my outhouse door drawing.

I look at the gun in my hand.

It’s fitting that everything I know about it—that it’s a .38, that headshots are tricky, that I’m supposed to squeeze not pull the trigger—comes from movies and television.

That’s because I don’t think the gun’s actually a weapon at all.

I think it’s a prop.