Grants Pass (24 page)

Ink Blots

Amanda Pillar

“
Specialists
estimate that only one in 10,000 people will survive the genetically altered
viruses that have been released across the world in an act of terror.”

The Age Newspaper

Margie put the paper down and ran
a hand across the crinkled surface. The faded date read August 29th — that was
eleven months ago. She traced the date again and again, absorbing the ink,
feeling it soak into her skin. It flooded through her; the words branding themselves
into her mind.

Leaning across the kitchen bench,
she scanned the headlines of the other papers scattered across the black
granite surface. The bench top felt smooth to touch, cool against the
indeterminate flavor of the newspapers. Their words swam lazily through her
vision, some dominating, others slinking into the background. Pinching the
bridge of her nose with her index finger and thumb, she fought to stay focused,
but lost. Images swam behind her closed eyelids, colors, bodies…text.

She opened her eyes and looked at
the pile of black and white sheets. The letters continued to backstroke through
her vision and she shivered. They were taunting her.

The thin sunlight that crept in
through the windows slowly sunk into her; washed through her onto the paper.
The words seemed to crystallize, deciding to obey the light. “Cure Found” was
followed by “More Die”. A sense of defeat surged through her body, dimming the
meager warmth of the sun.

Initially, she’d collected the
papers as a way of keeping the hope alive. Margie hadn’t believed that the
viruses were going to kill everyone. But hope began to fade, much like the ink
on her papers. During the riots that had followed the Prime Minister’s ‘Speech
of Doom’, she’d spotted
“Kayley’s Dream: Grants Pass”
printed in bold
across the front of a newspaper’s first page. Apparently, some important
analyst in the States had announced that the people of Australia needed plans
like Kayley’s.

Her post had been quoted underneath.

That had been the last paper she had
ever bought. Probably one of the last ever printed.

Kayley’s dream had been an escape.
Not a physical one; Grants Pass, Oregon, was 13,280 kilometers from Melbourne.
She’d looked it up in the atlas. It had meant that more ink was absorbed by her
fingers, but she’d had to do it. Kayley’s words had become a symbol of
something — action, she supposed. But so far, she hadn’t managed to do anything
about the inspired hope. Margie knew she was trapped, isolated as Australia
was. Even crossing to Tasmania was out of the question. The only part of her
dream left was the papers.

Margie was dying from the truth of
ink stained pages.

Listlessly, she flicked through the
sheets, her fingers touching only the white edges, avoiding the text. Her soul
— that shrunken, withered pulse inside her — wanted to find something new;
something she hadn’t read before. But there was nothing new. There never was.
Useless dreams, that’s all it was.

Her soul ran from the ink.

“
You can’t
keep doing this!”

The sound shattered her reverie, and
she turned around, startled. Her heart was pounding, and she could feel her
hands shaking. Was someone there?

Margie called out into the silent
house, but there was no answer, just a sick sense of
déjà vu
. It had
been her own voice yelling at her. Feeling hollow, she brought a shaking hand
to her forehead. She hadn’t even recognized the sound of her voice; it had been
so long since she’d spoken to anyone.

“
I’m all
alone.” The tasteless words seemed to solidify the statement; what it meant.
She was the only human for miles.

Standing, she pushed back the chair
and walked towards the floor to ceiling windows of her dining room. Her feet
felt heavy, like reality was weighing them down. Unconsciously, her hands kept
rubbing themselves together; the dry skin rough to touch — different to the
papers. Both ink stained.

Looking out the windows she stared
at the backyard, at the overgrown swath of colors that varied from dead brown
to misty, wishful, green. She felt cornered — cheated by past ambitions. Her
pride, her tidy home, her gloriously shallow existence; they made her a
prisoner now, stuck between four walls, too afraid to leave for good. Before,
her prison, the bricks and mortar, had been a statement of her success. She had
felt superior to her friends, family.
Look at me
, the two million dollar
mansion had cried,
I’m going to save the world from crime
. Save it from
what? Stupidity? Selfishness? Greed?

The world hadn’t needed saving.

It was doing just fine without
humanity.

Now the house meant nothing; it was
just shelter, keeping her safe from the yowls and cries of starving animals;
the ones that had survived SVHF, that is.

Margie watched through the window as
a fur covered bundle of bones prowled through the yard. Light flashed,
distracting her, drawing her eyes away from the garden and focusing them on her
reflection in the glass. She winced. Shaggy brown hair, tired blue eyes and a
face that was all angles. She turned away.

She didn’t like going outside; hated
it. There, the watery sunlight was real — the rays tangible, weighty. The cold
air battered her and the scents stung her nostrils; potent reminders that
nature didn’t care about her. Not about anyone.

“
You can’t
stay in here.”

This time, she would have liked to
pretend that there was someone else; that she hadn’t finally hit the point
where she had absorbed so much ink that she was talking to herself. But she
couldn’t lie; not to the scrawny cat outside, not to the windows, not to her
shrunken soul.

Margie went back to the papers.

****

Margie was driving. She was
wearing sunglasses against the weak light. The skeletons on the side of the
road, in the front yards, took on an almost watery appearance through her
lenses. It made them less real. Some of the bones were scattered across the road,
but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like there was anyone else driving. She could
dodge them as she pleased.

She owned the road.

She owned the world.

She owned nothing.

Margie didn’t know where she was
going; there wasn’t really any point in heading anywhere specific. She blinked
to find herself driving down the Nepean Highway, on the way out of Melbourne,
towards the south-east. She’d driven there before, of course. Not long after
all the power and gas went. She’d driven everywhere soon after it had all stopped
for good.

Her hands hadn’t absorbed so much
ink then. Her blood had still been hers. Not that that had done her any good.
Back then, she’d thought of being another Kayley. Of making the world work. But
there’d been no one else to work with.

She’d done the math. Her papers had
told her there would be one in 10,000 people left. That meant there would only
be around 400 people left in all of Melbourne. Her atlas said Melbourne was
8,806 kilometers squared. More ink had to be absorbed by her skin for this
information, but she’d had to know. The polluting of her blood had told her
that there was one person per 22 kilometers squared. She rubbed her fingers
together. You couldn’t see the stains, but they were there.

Margie drove slowly. “There ain’t no
peak hour anymore,” she muttered. Animals, once shy of the roads and the
painful deaths they meant, tended to cross whenever they felt like it. Margie
had never thought to see large cats roaming the streets of suburbia, but then,
her papers had told her that people had campaigned for the zoo animals to be
let free.

Free.

What did that mean, exactly?

Free to die from SVHF? Free to roam
the streets, starving for lack of food?

It had been crazy.
They
had
been crazy with their ideas. People had died on the side of the road, in their
beds, hospitals. People had died on her manicured lawn. Margie had locked her
doors, stayed inside. Hoarded the canned food she’d bought out of panic. And
look where she was. Alive. And they were all dead.

They were lucky.

She was ‘free’.

What would Kayley do?

****

Margie sat in the front seat of
her car. She had the best parking spot, high on a cliff face, staring out at
Port Phillip Bay. Its surface barely rippled. It was a mirror, showing the
world above it; distorted and yet pure. It held no lies, no illusions. Not like
her ink stained hands. They held lies upon lies from all the papers she had
touched.

She turned on the radio, randomly
flicking channels. She’d wait a few seconds, trying to find a pattern in the
chaotic sound, but there was none. Inevitably, she moved on. At first, she’d
hated the radio. Couldn’t stand the static. Now it was the only sound she
heard, apart from her CDs.

Her fingers hit the dial again,
paused at the next former station and moved on.

“
Hello—”

Margie froze.

No, it was just her mind.

She dialed the radio back, but there
was only static. Maybe it was further? No, she should stop. She was taunting
herself. But her fingers — those ink stained liars — moved the dial of their
own accord.

“—
if anyone
can hear me, please keep the radio on.” Margie bit her lip so hard she could
taste the tainted copper of blood and ink.

“
It’s not
real,” she whispered to herself. It had finally happened. She was insane. The
ink had done it, filtered through her until it had eaten away at her brain.

“
I live in
Melbourne, Australia. I survived the plagues. If you’re interested in meeting
me, come to Flinders Street Station. I’ll be underneath the clocks at 4:30pm
every day.”

Margie’s fingers tightened on the
wheel. Her lying fingers. She was insane. This wasn’t real, it wasn’t
happening. She was imagining it. She breathed in the scent of the car; the
metallic smell of tin cans and the gas bottles she’d raided from a store on her
way to the beach.

What if it is true?

****

“
You can’t
tell me that some survivor (probably male), wouldn’t get it in their head to
become some sort of warlord and try to rule their own little bit of land. You
know it would happen. Personally, I’d rather band together with people I
already know than some random tough guy who has figured out how to rule through
strength and fear.”

More words on paper. More ink.

Margie stared at Kayley’s letter,
waited for the sentences to burn themselves into her mind. Now, it was more
than just ink running through her veins, mixing with her blood. The dream had
started again; hope was back.

Part of her, the part of her that
knew she was lying to herself, said she should give up. That there was nothing
there; it was all a figment of her imagination. That it was all an elaborate
ploy by the light and ink to give hope to her withered soul. But the shadowy
part, the part that had watched as people died on the streets, said that it was
worth it.

So what if the man was one of
Kayley’s warlords? Would it really be that bad? Margie knew that she didn’t
have much time left. All the words on all her pieces of paper were eating her
alive. The diseases may not have killed her, but solitude would.

Margie had to go.

****

She sat staring at Flinders
Street Station. It didn’t look how she remembered; the beautiful yellow of the
building was stained with rust colored smears and graffiti. Maybe it wasn’t
safe to leave the car. Maybe she was being stupid.

Her fingers itched. The ink was
telling her to stay.

Margie left the car.
I hope he
doesn’t have a gun
. Guns had been illegal; Australians didn’t
have
the right to bear arms. But that didn’t mean that they weren’t available.
Especially now.

She walked across the road, towards
the clocks that were situated under the tower at the station. Most of them were
shattered. Crossing over the out of use tram tracks, her eyes rested on the
building ahead. Her breath seemed to be coming faster in her chest; dots began
dancing in front of her eyes. Ink blots. They’d gotten into her vision.

Feeling a new kind of desperation,
Margie hurried her pace; almost panting by the time she reached the bottom of
the stairs.
Hurry, hurry, hurry
. It was a chant in her mind. If she took
too long, it would all be over. The words would win. She would be alone.
Insane.

“
Hello,” a
deep voice said.

Margie jumped, feeling shaken.
Frantically, she looked around. Federation Square with its ugly buildings — a
work of art, they’d said, but not to her — the Young and Jackson pub; St Paul’s
Cathedral: No one.
No, no, no
. She really was insane. Tears prickled her
eyes, and she felt her hollowness expand; like a maw ready to close.