The Last Girl (8 page)
Wahhaj couldn’t hear me. For a moment we couldn’t hear him as he disappeared into the song he bellowed like a heavy metal mantra. The only noises were the pleas and prayers of the passengers and the people below watching from apartment windows, bobbing yachts and chaotic traffic. But in those few impenetrable seconds it seemed Wahhaj had a change of heart because the plane started a radically steep climb that’d see it soar high and safe over Sydney.
Relief rippled across the city and the faithful praised God.
God had nothing to do with what happened next.
Wahhaj silenced the hard-rock thunder so we could all share in his self-satisfied genius. He’d thought about his plan long and hard for years. Flying straight into the side of the bridge meant the fuselage, jet engines and burning fuel would explode through the lattice of cables and struts and spray into the eastern side of the harbor. That wasn’t the way.
He pushed the controls forward. The airbus dropped into a death dive. Wings lined up with the bridge’s eight-lane roadway. Nose centred on the apex of its steel arches.
Watch-
this-bitches!
Wahhaj floated free in his seat, like the astronauts did in NASA’s Vomit Comet, and saw this was going to be better than he’d dreamed. A truck driver had just jackknifed. Cars were jammed in both directions. Tiny people scrambled as the plane grew huge above them. There was only screaming: protesting jet engines, souls about to leave bodies.
God-is—
But then Wahhaj was sitting in 15A.
This-is-a-rocket!
The little boy’s parents were scaredy cats. He knew the pilot didn’t want to do anything bad.
This-is-awesome!
Great-God-forgive—
That’s as far as Wahhaj thought before the plane exploded into the bridge in a white hot flash.
A shockwave pulsed. A tsunami washed across the harbour. People watching from windows screamed when flying glass shredded their eyes. An orange-and-black mushroom cloud unfurled over the city as the concussive punch raced up the river. I was knocked to the floor. The house shuddered beneath me. Everywhere alarms shrieked and were then lost in a roar so loud I thought my head would burst.
I screamed. I screamed for my mum.
My mind reached out to hers, a tendril stretching up and away from all of this, streaming west over the suburbs, cresting the Blue Mountains, soaring to the clouds then plunging over sandstone cliffs and surfing waves of eucalypts to arrive at her refuge in Shadow Valley. There she was, wandering between her Wollemi pines, the air tinged with reefer as she smiled and waved me down. But it was wishful thinking, a desperate conflation of how I’d seen her on my last visit and the magic-carpet ride I’d taken to her place via Google Earth. I couldn’t astral travel to Mum any more than I could see or hear her. I didn’t know what that meant. Was she out of range? Had something happened to her? Or were her thoughts impenetrable like mine?
As the roaring subsided, it wasn’t Mum I needed to worry about first.
‘Dad?’
Dad’s eyes blinked open and he instinctively rolled away from the terrible noise and straight into Stephanie’s body and the pool of her blood. As he scrabbled away he remembered the blind hatred that had seized him as he attacked her. Then there was nothing. He figured he must have suffered a murderer’s blackout.
Oh-my-God-I-killed-her.
Dad’s head hurt. But it didn’t just hurt. It seethed with voices.
Oh-my-God-He-killed-them-all
.
The horizon was ablaze. It couldn’t be a coincidence. He wasn’t a forty-something marketing guy anymore. He was a biblical sinner whose blood crime had triggered the end of days. He could hear the heavenly host screaming its Last Judgement.
Killed-them-all-Bastard-Why-did-he—
‘Dad!’ I shouted. Dad!
He didn’t hear my voice over the whirlwind of noise and he couldn’t hear my thoughts. When I struggled to get up, my legs were like wet spaghetti.
Dad saw the police lights strobing against the lounge-room windows and heard the mob of angry minds clamouring in the street outside.
You-can’t-escape-Pay-what-you-did-to-your-daughter-
String-you-up . . .
Terrified, stunned, Dad thought the worst.
‘Danby?’ he cried. ‘Evan?’
Danby? Evan?
Without realising he was doing it, his mind searched for me and for Evan. I wasn’t there. Evan was in darkness. Dad thought he was responsible. That he’d killed us in his fugue state.
‘No!’ I was on my feet, staggering to the stairs.
Dad had the wall-safe open. Unwrapping the .45 he’d bought during his brief dalliance with club pistol shooting. Kept because Stephanie feared home invasion.
I stumbled down the stairs. He’d have to hear me now.
‘Don’t, Dad, don’t!’
But Steve was revving his cop car and blasting its sirens to scatter the mob. Dad didn’t understand what was happening. He just wanted it to be over.
Pull-the-trigger!
A troll voice surged out of the thoughts.
They’ll-rip-you-to-pieces-You-gutless-bastard.
So-sorry-Robyn-Steph-Evan-Danby
.
Another millisecond and Dad might have processed that it was me tumbling off the landing, that the cop car was burning rubber away from our house, that the mob wanted to murder someone else. But he pulled the trigger. I experienced my father’s exit from life before the gun’s blast reached my ears, before the wisp of smoke escaped the scorched hole in his skull, before the abstraction of bone and blood sprayed onto the white wall behind him. Dad was there. Then he wasn’t.
‘No! No! No! No!’
Dad’s body sagged and twisted and bumped off the couch as the gun spun across the floor and came to rest by those novelty socks. I stumbled backwards, heart shattering, fell against the stairs, barely able to breathe through choking sobs.
‘Dad!’ I couldn’t even be alone with my shock and grief because the suffering and horror from the bridge smashed into me ceaselessly.
Can’t-get-seatbelt-off-Door-won’t-open-God-help-Can’t-see-
So-much-smoke . . .
People had been peeled and chopped and crushed. Scorched victims staggered amid burning luggage and beneath corpses hanging like hellish laundry from twisted girders. The roads had been punctured by debris and ripped by the shockwave. Survivors crawling from shattered cars found blazing fuel blocking what might’ve been escape routes. The only way off the bridge was to climb the walkway fences. Brave the barbed wire. Summon the courage to jump. But below them the harbour was on fire.
Gotta-let-go-Can’t-jump-Can’t-burn-Oh-God-not-this-Not-
ready-to-die!-Not-like-this!
Almost as awful were all the
unconcerned
minds in unscathed bodies spread out across the city and suburbs.
Trivially focused.
Got-it-all-on-camera-Gotta-upload-
Get-a-million-views-it’ll . . .
Told-ya so-ing.
Always-said-this-was-gonna-happen-Check-
my-blog-I-knew . . .
Thinking ahead.
I-don’t-care-this-is-my-chance-to . . .
Enjoying themselves.
Awesome-like-best-special-effects-
ever . . .
Everyone’s everythink piled up and up—
Will-this-affect-the-post-Christmas-sales?-No-way-I’m-
going-back-to-Iran!-Leave-me-alone!-Get-out-of-my-mind-
Gotta-get-headphones-What’s-going-on?-But-you’re-my-
brother-So-much-noise-Make-it-stop-Get-away-from-me-Car-
stereo-Can’t-hear-myself-think-Shut-this-out-Can’t-breathe-So-
much-blood-Oh-no-Please-please-wake-up-This-can’t-be-real-
Not-possible-I-have-to . . .
—and pushed me down, down, down.
Down through the stairs, through the house’s foundations, through the dirt beneath and the clay under that, through the crust of the earth.
Killed-Danby-then-shot-himself-I-can’t-believe-it-It’s-true-
Lock-myself-in-TV-room-This-is-my-house-You-get-out-Don’t-
take-the-car-They’re-my-insides-coming-out-You-wouldn’t-stab-
I’ll-freaking-kill-you-Can’t-stop-the-bleeding-Where-is-she?-
Can’t-see-Hurts-so-much-Just-swallow-those-pills-and . . .
The thoughts followed me into the hole—
Help-us-please-Oh-my-God-She’s-dead-I’m-bleeding-to-
death-Better-this-way-How-dare-you?-Not-my-fault-Turn-the-
volume-up-block-it-out-I’m-falling-I’m—
Not-like-this-not-like-not—
—and then they were gone and so was I.
Everything ended in the void. Moments passed like millennia. Maybe it was the other way. It wasn’t light or dark. No macro or micro majesty. Stars didn’t blaze and burn out with the grand turning of galactic gears. God particles didn’t spark brilliantly reconfiguring cosmic building blocks. I was a fossilised grey bacterial speck. The merest shadow of the most marginal and meaningless life form. Embedded in a tiny dying planet. Forgotten and adrift forever in the frigid and infinite nothing.
Then there was the word—echoing across all of time and space—and the word was . . .
Chocopops!
Chocopops!-Chocopops!-Chocopops!
Evan’s appetite often came on suddenly and now the purity of his hunger jolted me free of the endless static sea. I opened my eyes and gasped as though surfacing from deep under water. Across the room Dad’s fingers twitched. I’d only been in that nothing place a few seconds. Seeing Dad like that hurt so much I wanted to go back.
Chocopops!-Chocopops!
I tuned into Evan upstairs, safe in his bedroom cupboard, oblivious to anything except the emptiness in his stomach. My little brother had shut out all the light and noise by burrowing into Big Bear and Sandypants and his other soft-toy guys. That was the darkness and silence Dad had mistaken for him being dead. Now he’d come up for air. Hugging his guys helped him block out the scary sounds outside and the strange scary voices that seemed to be inside him. But there was no way he could ignore the grumbling in his tummy. Mummy said breakfast would be after presents. It must be time now for
Chocopops!
Dad’s gun glinted at me from across the floor. It seemed to beckon me to do what he’d done. I knew he hadn’t suffered. The bullet had ended his pain. It could be the same for me. Over in an instant. Countless others were killing themselves—swallowing pills, slicing veins, fashioning nooses—so they could be free. But I couldn’t leave Evan behind to fend for himself any more than I could shoot him and turn the gun on myself.
Chocopops!
What I realised was that Evan was now out front of the million other minds. It was like being able to zero in on a single person speaking at a loud party. Tuning into him turned everyone else down. That gave me hope this thing might subside enough for us to survive.
I stumbled into the kitchen, trying to be single-minded like Evan, and concentrated on filling a plastic cup with the brown cereal and getting him the bottle of milk he’d use to wash it down.
‘Evan?’ I said softly, opening the cupboard door. ‘Chocopops.’
He blinked up from Big Bear’s embrace.
‘You okay?’ I asked.
I knew he was. The deep grooves of his mind had so far protected him from the worst of what had happened.
‘I brought your Shades too.’
Chocopops-Snotbots!
‘Chocopops!’ he said. ‘Snotbots!’
When Evan reached for his treats, I caught him in a hug. The closeness enveloped me, ushered me deep into his safe place, banished extrasensory sights and sounds. But it was more than that. In that moment I was somewhere that was the opposite of the lonely abyss. Connectedness, oneness, unity. It was a glimpse of what this phenomenon might offer—if only we could resist the power of negative thinking.
Chocopops-Snotbots-Let-go-squashy
.
Evan nudged me out of his sphere and took the cup and bottle and Shades and retreated into his cave. He’d eat the little sugary pellets one by one as he replayed the game he’d mastered months ago. While he was occupied, I had to figure out what the hell I could do about whatever the hell was happening.
‘You stay in there, okay?’ I said, closing the door, wishing I could hide in there with him.
Through Evan’s bedroom window, Sydney was much worse than it had been just minutes ago. Whatever was left of the bridge was lost inside smoke. When I sent my mind there I couldn’t see or hear anything. The people had burned up, bled out or jumped into oblivion. But there was suffering across the city. The spectrum ranged from simple loneliness, swampy sadness and family anger to neighbourhood brawls, car crash agonies and house-fire horrors. Skipping around, like changing channels, brought weird flashes. The zoo maintenance guy running elatedly ahead of the frenzied chimpanzees he’d just set free. The nurse weeping with her own bravery as she switched off life-support systems. The professional clown slathering on make-up because he could surely save the world with a chain reaction of laughter.
Off Beautopia Point, the river was being swallowed up in a sooty haze. Bitter fumes stung my nostrils. But there was something worse underneath the synthetic smoke. Something charred and greasy. Then I knew. I was breathing people particles. My gut heaved and I spewed out the window until my stomach was empty.
I straightened up, wiped my mouth, staggered away from the smell and into my own room. I slumped onto my bed, sent my mind into the cloud of crazy for signs of sanity. They were there—people beaming care at family and friends, good Samaritans pleading for calm to strangers—but they could barely be heard above the human tabloids broadcasting the worst about themselves and others.
‘Jacinta,’ I said, trying to clear everything from my mind so I could find her. Jacinta.
My best friend was hiding under her bed, freaked out by much more than just her parents’ confession and the plane hitting the bridge. In the chaos she saw my dad see Stephanie dead on the floor and think he’d killed her and me and Evan before he killed himself. Jacinta didn’t want to believe I was dead but she couldn’t find me anywhere. She couldn’t believe her downstairs neighbour had sealed himself in his apartment with the gas turned on. She couldn’t believe guys were stripping off in front of mirrors so everyone could see.
