Skylight (Arcadium, #2) (11 page)

“In your own
time,” Kean says, hand on the back of my seat, staring over his
shoulder as he reverses roughly behind an abandoned blue car.

“You found my
car,” Jacob says, grinning.

“Yep.” Kean
kills the engine and gets as low as he can in the footwell. We all
copy.

The horde hit
us like a shock wave. The car jostles about, surrounded by a sea of
frenzied screeching. The air seems to evaporate from our vehicle
and I’m barely breathing. Kean grabs my hand and links his fingers
through mine.

“You can
drive?” I say.

“Well… vaguely,
yeah. It’s not like you have to stay within the lines anymore. Who
needs a license for that?”

I shut my eyes
and move with the jolts. Kean squeezes my hand. Maybe it’s for
reassurance; maybe it’s an accident.

I can’t
understand why he came for me, why he’s taken a huge risk and left
his brother, but I do know that he just saved us.

Now all we can
do is wait.

WE BAKE IN the
car for four hours, crammed into the footwells, our heads ducked
down like we’re asleep. We silently drink almost all of our water
supplies. We breathe, we blink. We think our own thoughts. We wait
patiently for the infected to lose interest in us. Sweat drips down
my nose. I go cross-eyed watching it hang at the tip of my nose. It
plops onto the centre console and begins another adventure.

“I think it’s
clear enough,” Jacob says, still keeping his voice low.

I look up
slowly. He’s right. The infected have spread out and dissipated. If
we get away fast, they won’t catch us.

“I’ll drive,”
Jacob says. “I actually passed my test.”

Kean rolls his
eyes.

“No way,” I
say. “You passed out and crashed the last car.”

Jacob purses
his lips and takes a deep breath. He stares sideways at
Trouble.

Trouble wipes
the sweat from his brow and smiles.

“Looks like
you’re up, Chinaman,” Jacob says.

Kean climbs
slowly from the driver’s seat, trying not to attract any
attention.

“This is
awkward,” he whispers, half crawling onto Trouble’s lap. He flips
over and wiggles into the centre seat, then gestures for Trouble to
get in the front. Trouble moves, lithe and controlled, sliding into
the driver’s seat.

Jacob asks me
to swap with a flick of his finger. I don’t mind, since if
something crawls through the windshield this time I won’t have to
try and shoot it.

I move in slow
motion, crawling into the back. Kean pulls me through, and then
Jacob is in the front in the blink of an eye.

Trouble gives
me a thumbs up, and when I’m seated and belted I return the
gesture. Trouble starts the engine and speeds off, just as the
infected turn to the noise. He weaves through the traffic,
sideswiping a few bodies, and in a few minutes we’re away from the
pack and back on open road.

Jacob switches
on the air conditioning and we share a collective sigh. I haven’t
felt a manufactured chill since before the outbreak. It’s weird how
you can live without these luxuries when you don’t have a
choice.

Kean gives me a
small smile.

I want to say
he shouldn’t have come, but to be honest, I’m glad he did.

“What’s Henry
doing?” I ask.

“He wanted to
stay. To… look after…” He shakes his head and pulls a sad
expression. “He said it had to be this way. I made a choice. I
don’t know if it’s the right one.”

Jacob swivels
in his seat; the glovebox sits open. “And my gun?”

“Henry has it,”
Kean says. “And your tin of Milo. Sorry.”

Jacob shrugs
and turns back.

“I told him I’d
bring you back.” Kean’s eyes lower a fraction. “Do you think I
stand a chance?”

“I don’t know,”
I say.

Kean nods and
shifts the conversation to something functional. “What’s the plan
now?”

“We’re going to
Melbourne Central,” I say. “Along the train line.”

Kean nods
slowly, processing. “An apocalyptic shopping centre hide-out.
Definitely not like any horror movie I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s exactly
what I said,” I say.

Jacob glances
at us in the rearview mirror with eyebrows raised.

“Great minds
think alike,” Kean says.

We pass Monash
University. The tall square buildings are peppered with smashed
windows and there’s not a soul in sight on the grounds. And not a
single vehicle in the open-air car park.

We reach a huge
intersection where Wellington Road turns into North Road — heading
back into the suburbs I’m so used to. Each direction of road is at
least four lanes wide: it’s massive. And they’re set at strange
angles that slice each other like multiple crossing swords.

Jacob pulls a
Melways map book out from underneath his seat and starts flicking
through it.

“Uh…” Kean
glances around. “We’re not going back to…”

“No,” Jacob
says. “Close. You drove to and from Arcadium, so I’m betting those
roads are still clear. I just want the one you arrived on.”

I stare out the
window. “Warrigal Road doesn’t have an accessible station, if you
plan on getting onto the train tracks. It’s just an overpass.”

Jacob looks
thoughtful. “You have local knowledge. Direct me to one that has
track access from the road.”

I lean forward.
“How do we know they’re clear?”

His eyes flash
with amusement. “We don’t.”

Since I’m the
only one from this side of Melbourne — actually we don’t know where
Trouble lived, but since we met him in the western suburbs it’s a
pretty safe bet he’s not an Easternite — this makes it my area of
expertise.

I close my eyes
to think. I picture a map of the roads in my head to figure out
which way is best.

“You want the
Melways?” Jacob asks.

“No way.” It’s
hard though, when you travel roads everyday for your entire life
and then all of a sudden you just don’t; you kind of forget about
them.

“You want to
drive on the tracks right?” I say, eyes still closed.

Jacob must nod
because Kean answers for him. “He says yes.”

“And how far do
you plan on getting?”

“Far as we
can.”

The word we
strikes a chord with me. There was a time when I swore I wouldn’t
work with anyone else, but my two became a five out of necessity,
and now Jacob has tacked himself on. It’s dangerous collecting
survivors, like seeing how many people you can fit on a ledge
before they all start pushing each other off. There’s always a
limit, and sooner or later we’ll find it.

I furrow my
brow and open my eyes. “I think if you take the next right after
Warrigal, that’s Poath Road. It’s definitely got boom gates, but we
avoided it originally because it’s one lane each way. Same with the
next road along. We didn’t know if they’d be completely
blocked.”

Jacob doesn’t
look concerned. “Either one. We’ve still got legs.”

Kean arches an
eyebrow. “Yeah, for the moment we do, but if we run into one of
those roving hordes we won’t.”

“So negative,”
Jacob says. His voice is always so… I don’t know. Unstrained. He
sounds like someone might if they were driving around in normal
times. Casual. Cool. On a milk and bread run. There’s something not
right about it. Even Trouble gets unnerved every now and then. But
not Jacob. You’ve got to wonder what makes a man like that.

“Florence?”
Jacob is staring at me. “You going to give me that direction
anytime soon?”

“I’m not
sure.”

“Choose.”

I blink. “Local
knowledge is not the same as fortune telling.” I pause, visualising
each crossing and trying to think of their layouts. “Stop at the
end of Poath Road, I guess, and we’ll have a look and decide from
there,” I say. “Thing is they’re both in pretty built up shopping
areas.”

Jacob stops the
car and we all peer down the road. It’s clear enough, but still a
risk if we get cornered. Though I suppose we could always wait it
out in the car like we did before. That’s the beauty of tinted
windows.

“Yep, take this
one,” I say with as much confidence as I can muster. I’m not sure
if I do that for Kean’s sake or my own.

Jacob points
Trouble in the right direction, and Trouble keeps a slow steady
pace. It’s not the easiest drive in the world, twisting and turning
and rolling around parked obstacles. Sometimes he has to reverse
and try the other side when there’s not quite enough room to
squeeze through. A couple of times I think Trouble could make the
gap but Jacob directs him somewhere else, like he’s trying to save
the paintwork of his fancy four-wheel drive or something. Which is
stupid, but that’s people for you. They get all precious about all
kinds of useless things when the world collapses.

We get closer
and closer, no faster than riding a bike, and sometimes just
walking pace, but I’d sure as hell rather be inside the car than
out. This place is a ghost town. Rubbish collects along shop faces,
and skips across bloodstained pavements. All the glass is broken,
displays are scattered or looted. Dry paint peels from window
frames. Weeds claw their way across the washed out concrete.
Windows are hollow and dark like open mouths just waiting to eat
anyone that enters.

Trouble
smoothes on the brakes and we stop maybe twenty metres from the
train tracks. We’re blocked out by a colourful wall of abandoned
cars. The white and red painted boom gates are stuck shut, but
thankfully they only cover the incoming lane on each side, so we
can still get through.

“Tell me we’re
not walking from here,” I say. “Infected could be hiding anywhere
and we won’t know until they’re on us.”

“No, but
someone needs to push those cars out of the way so we can get on
the tracks.” Jacob looks over his shoulder and stares straight at
me.

“Why don’t you
do it?” I ask.

Jacob pulls out
one of his demonic looking handguns, so out of place in close
quarters that it makes us all reel away. It’s different from the
one I tried to fire. It’s sharper, larger, deadlier. Kean leans
across me, like a shield, as Jacob does something to the black
chunk of metal and makes it click. From everything the movies has
taught me, I guess that means it’s loaded and ready to steal some
lives.

Jacob glances
across the three of us. Trouble has his hands up in surrender, Kean
is trying to protect me, and I just stare with too-wide eyes,
unable to look anywhere else.

Jacob frowns
slightly. “It seems we all need to have the gun talk. How did you
all survive this long without one?”

We say
nothing.

“I’m not going
to shoot you,” Jacob says, surprised. “I’m going to give you
cover.”

“Oh, right,”
Kean says. “I totally thought you were using it to force us to go
out there.”

Jacob’s
expression flattens, almost to the point where I think he might be
offended that we thought so low of him.

Kean unclips
his seatbelt and starts sorting out in his brain just how he’s
going to get himself out of the car and into the danger. It’s
different for him. He still thinks of Henry before he does
something. Kean
has
to keep himself alive.

I don’t have
that.

“Don’t miss,” I
say to Jacob. But I’ve seen him in action, up close and far away.
It’s scary unreal. He shoots, he doesn’t miss.

Jacob’s eyes
glint. “I’ll try not to.”

I have to make
myself get out of the car as soon as possible or I’ll lose my
nerve, so I tap Trouble on the shoulder to get things started. I
point to him and do a steering wheel movement with my hands.
Trouble nods back at me and pats the steering wheel. Jacob, rather
amazingly, winds down the window and hoists himself gracefully out.
I follow the sound of his movement on the roof as Trouble leans
over and winds the window up again, leaving just a tiny gap at the
top, which is less than I’d like if I were Jacob.

I puff out a
breath to steel myself. “How do we do this?”

Kean is looking
out the windscreen and biting his lip. “Maybe start at the front
and work our way back here? I can push the cars if you steer from
the driver’s side.”

I nod. It
sounds reasonable.

“Try and pop
the car doors open so you’ve got a bit of protection, but don’t get
in. Just steer with your left and push with your right. And make
sure you release the handbrake and put them in neutral or we won’t
go anywhere.”

“Got it.”

“Ready?” Kean’s
green eyes are surprisingly steady.

I nod. “Let’s
get this over with.”

We pop open the
side doors and slide down to the ground. I press my door shut and
crouch-run to the front of the car where I meet Kean. I glance
back, just to check Jacob’s paying attention. He’s got two guns
now, arms stretched out but still. His eyes are scanning the
scene.

“Go,” Jacob
says without looking at us.

We take off at
a run, our feet pattering along the road as we sweep between the
cars. I have to suck in and go sideways to squeeze between two
vehicles so close they feel like they’re trying to crush me.

We reach the
first car in the queue: it’s a scratched silver thing with a dent
in the side door. Poath road is only single lanes but opens up into
double lanes just before the boom gates. All lanes are jammed up,
but we just need to move everything blocking the left one into the
side street and we’ll be able to get through.

Kean taps the
boot of the silver car, just loud enough for me to hear. I look
over and he nods. But when I reach the driver’s side door and pull
on the handle, it won’t budge.

I straighten.
“It’s locked,” I whisper, still gripping the handle.

Seconds later
the air sizzles, rippling as if it’s being torn apart, and the
driver’s side window implodes.