Skyquakers (25 page)

When he woke, he was lying in sand. The continuous motion of
waves lapping at his feet pulled him from darkness. Overhead, the sun was
setting. Orange colours swirled across the sky and the first of the brightest
stars were beginning to emerge. A hand stroked his hair and at first he thought
it was his mother
’
s. Drifting back into proper
consciousness, Ned shot up and seized the stroking hand in a powerful, angry
grip.

Lara lurched back.
‘
It
’
s
me. Are you okay?
’

Ned shuffled backwards, panting wildly. He was on a beach, a
very pristine, tropical beach with white sand, mangroves, and endless ocean. He
looked out towards the sea, the sun settling lazily to his right, and simply
remained staring as if he had not seen water in years. Where was the desert?
The Ord? The red, scorched earth and the dry fields? This was not the
Kununurra
. This was not where he slept last night.

He stared back at Lara. She was kneeling beside him and also
covered in sand, as if she had only woken up minutes before him. He then
noticed what she was wearing: Elizabeth’s pyjamas. He touched the fabric of her
pants, as if not sure to believe they were real. He stepped away, shaking his
head. He got up, but fell backwards on his first try. He began spinning in
circles.

‘Ned—’

‘Where are they?
’
he screamed. He shook his head, ran his fingers through his hair,
gritted
his teeth. He remembered everything. He began to
feel his heart flutter, the panic rising to his throat. ‘No, no, no, no, no!
Where are they? What did you do?
What did
you do?
’

‘Nothing! I have no idea where we are either!
’

He collapsed to his knees and pushed his forehead into the
sand. He started crying. Lara knelt by him in silence, watching him. He punched
the sand over and over, making shallow craters. He cried and cursed and tried
to grip the earth as though he needed something to hold on to, but the tiny
grains kept slipping away through his fingers. He sat back on his knees, looked
up to the sky, and he screamed.

Ned gathered twigs and dead logs from the surrounding bushes
and mangrove forests. He dug a pit, arranged the wood, and sparked a flame
using some matches in his pocket, the only keepsake that had remained on him.
Lara didn’t say anything and he didn’t say anything to her. She just sat there,
useless, while he ran about and did his survival duties as he had learnt to do.
Once brewing, they sat on the beach on opposing sides of the fire, not saying a
word to one another for hours. Above them, the orange sky gradually went dark
blue. The rest of the stars came out. The night still revealed nothing about
where they were and how they got here, but Ned could come up with one possible,
albeit strange, explanation.

‘My dog,
Moonboy
, has a habit of
disappearing. I think he took us with him this time.
’

Lara smiled, but only briefly.
‘
Where is he
now, do you think?
’

Ned shrugged.
Moonboy
did what he
wanted, appeared where and when he wanted.

‘We could be on the other side of the country,’ she said.

‘We could be on the other side of the world.
’

‘I doubt it,
’
said Lara.
‘
I
found a Fosters stubby in the bushes before.
’

Ned gave a little sigh of relief, as though it was
comforting to know he was still on home turf, but this beach did not look the
least bit familiar; Western sand was a lot redder than this, due to all the
iron. In all honesty, he lacked the energy to care where he was, or how far
away from home he was; those concerns were pointless now. Whatever home he had
come to know felt like nothing but a fleeting mirage, a bad dream. Now he was
awake, wide awake. To think none of it had ever happened was terrifying; to
believe it had happened was even more so.

He continued to sit and brew in silence until Lara
eventually said,
‘
I
’
m sorry.
This is my fault.
’

Ned stared at her. Behind red flames, his tired eyes looked
demonic. He gave no indication that he would accept her apology.

‘Why did they want you?
’
he
demanded.

‘Because I escaped, I suppose.
’

‘How did you escape?
’

‘I don
’
t know.
’

‘
Fuck
,
’
Ned spat,
‘
how
did you escape?
’

‘I don
’
t know! Someone must have
saved me, and if it wasn
’
t Psycho, then I can
’
t
think who it might have been.
’
She said a name which
heightened Ned’s attention. She could see he was about to ask. ‘The guy in the
suit. I don
’
t know his real name. He
defected
across to them.
’

‘Why?
’

Lara didn’t know. She had many theories, but at the end of
the day, she just didn’t know.

Ned began snapping a twig, bundling the two halves together,
snapping them again. Each new bundle required a little extra force than the
last, building thicker and thicker bales, allowing the rage to exponentially
build. He hissed, ‘He killed them. My friends, my
family
—’
Red eyes burned through her. ‘He killed them.’

‘It
’
s not his
—’

‘
He. Killed. Them.’

‘It’s not his fault!

‘Who
se
is it, then?
’
he shot.

Lara kept herself from raising her voice; she was too tired.
She simply looked at him from across the fire and murmured,
‘
I
’
m
so, so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. You should have left me in the
field.’

He threw the sticks into the fire. ‘Yeah, I should have.’

Ned went for a walk, claiming he was going to look for food.
Lara tried to say that she wasn
’
t hungry, but he left anyway.
He didn
’
t look for food; he just wanted to be alone. He
discarded his shoes and walked along the mysterious beach, letting the wet sand
sink between each toe and bury his feet inch by inch. Every soft wave pushed
the sand from under him and his weight filled the empty void. If he stood here
long enough, maybe…

Bury me whole
.

But the sand was too kind.

On the horizon, he saw an enormous fishing trawler,
abandoned and left to float with the currents until it had become grounded in
the shallows. He wanted to see a light flicker from one of its windows, a sign
of life, but it was black and immobile, as it had probably been for months.
Further along, he found a spot where beach-goers had once been lying, their
towels and cricket equipment and blow-up toys left to gather sand. He took the
towels, to use as blankets, and found two bottles of water in plastic bags.

When he returned to the fire, he was disappointed to find
Lara was still there. He half-expected to see she might have run off. He more
so believed she was just a mirage too; another fleeting dream he had conjured
in his head, just like the other imaginary people. But she was still by the
fire in someone else’s pyjamas, placing another log on the flames and poking it
with a troubled expression on her face.

Ned gave her a towel to use as a bed or a pillow, and water.
She thanked him, but he didn
’
t acknowledge it. He sat once
more on the opposite side of the fire. It was second-nature to avoid being near
her, as though she really was
‘
contaminated
’
.

Lara placed the towel down and sat on it. She crossed her
feet and said,
‘
Tell me about yourself.
’

Ned looked up.
‘
What?
’

‘
Whereabouts in WA are you
from? How old are you? You must still be a teenager, right? Do you have
siblings? Where did you go to school
—
?
’

‘School? Why the hell would I want to talk about school? Why
would I want to talk about any of that?
’

‘I
’
m just trying to take your
mind off things.
’

Ned gritted his teeth.
‘
For nearly
five
months
,
I have been doing nothing but trying to take my mind of things. It doesn
’
t
work. Ever.
’

She pulled herself out of the conversation.
‘
Sorry.
I was just trying to make small talk.
’

‘Talk? You want to talk?’

‘Forget it.’

‘No, let’s talk. Let
’
s talk
about you. Let
’
s talk about aliens and
spaceships and the fact that everyone I’ve ever known is
dead
—’

‘Ned, don’t—’

‘
Shut up
. Let
’
s finally
sit down and talk about the things that matter, yeah? It
’
s time I
stop ignoring the obvious.
’

‘The obvious what?
’
she demanded.

Ned
slammed
his
bottle of water into the sand. He swore at the same time.
‘
You
came from up there! You saw them!
’

‘I don
’
t want to talk about it.
’

‘Too bad! You don
’
t have a fucking choice!
You
are finally going to give me something.’ He leant across the fire with
piercing, unrested eyes. ‘So, tell me. What do they look like, where did they
come from, how did they find us, what do they want, and how do I kill one?
’

Ned
’
s rant left him fuming. His
face looked redder than the flicker of the angry flames. Lara did not know
where to begin, but clearly she was quite reluctant to answer any of his
questions.

‘
Tell me! Fucking tell
me!’

There was no point trying to start an argument with him.
Lara kept calm and spoke softly,
‘
I slept in a little, glass pod
the entire time I was up there. The ones who put me there are the same ones
responsible for what happened to your friends.’

‘My friends are dead because of
you
!’ he screamed at her, ‘so you better have been worth dying
over. There better be something that made you more special than everyone else
on this fucking planet, because they’re all dead and you’re alive. So why? Why
did this happen?’

‘I didn’t choose this.’

‘All they wanted was
you
.
They’d all still be alive if—’ He was stopped by tears. He hunched over and
began sobbing in the sand.

Lara lowered her head and hugged her knees. She had seen
their bodies too. She didn’t think Psycho had it in him, but she was very, very
wrong about that boy. She should have never indulged in his fantasies; she
could have just stayed home, obliviously living her mundane life, taking
sleeping pills every night to combat the nightmares. Instead she met a boy for
coffee and shortly after he was responsible for genocide.

When Ned recovered, he told her the shocking reality, ‘Seven
billion people, and you’re the only one who’s come back.’

‘What do you want from me?’

‘Answers.’

‘Well I don
’
t have them. So what do we do
now?
’

‘
I don
’
t know. I
don
’
t know!
’
He sat back in the sand and
fiddled with the plastic wrapper on his water bottle.
‘
I
’
ll
kill him,
’
he muttered.
‘
If I ever
see him again,
I
’
ll kill him
.’ He looked to
the sky. ‘
Do you fucking hear me?
’

That night, Ned had nightmares. They were both asleep on the
beach, the fire burning down to its coals, but then, with no provocation, he
began screaming. The sound was so sharp, so piercing in an otherwise gravely
silent night, that it startled Lara and immediately woke her too. She shuffled
across the sand to the other side of the fire, to where he was tossing and
turning on his towel. She shook him by the shoulders and woke him, but he
continued screaming and crying, as though the nightmare hadn
’
t
ended. She held him, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and let him sink
into her chest. She cradled him for an hour before he managed to close his eyes
again, and even then, the burning images still haunted him. Forever.

Ned woke with the dawn. He was itchy from tiny bites all
over his arms and legs. He should have used his towel as a blanket; the
mossies
had been eating him all night.

As for the fallen girl, she was in the water. She took
advantage of the strange and isolated paradise, the blue aquatic shore, the hot
rising sun, and the fact that she had not properly bathed in months. Ned saw
her thigh-deep in the ocean, about a hundred metres out; the bay was shallow,
and she could probably go out nearly a kilometre before needing to paddle.
‘
Watch
out for Loch Ness crocs!
’
he wanted to shout, but
frankly, he didn
’
t care. He saw gulls in the
sky, but they were not like normal seagulls; each bird had two long, thin tails
floating majestically behind them, like the streamers of kites. He saw Lara
staring at them in wonder. She had not seen the New World yet, the strange
combinations which now flew and crawled and hopped around. He saw them as
plagues, locusts unleashed to devour the planet whole and the people along with
it, stripping lonely wanderers to their bones until a carcass of a species was
left to walk a carcass of a planet.

Fuck the birds.

With the sun now on his side, Ned went for a longer walk
across the beach without fear of being attacked by creepy hybrids in the
bushes. With nothing but a cliff-face to the east, he trekked the sand west and
came to find a series of colourful beach boxes facing the open sea, once owned
by holiday-makers. A few had their windows smashed in or their wooden doors
kicked down, and inside they were littered with empty cans and water bottles;
people like him were here once, but that may have been ages ago. Inside one of
these makeshift bunkers he found clothes in a backpack: t-shirts, shorts, clean
socks, and some for Lara too. In another he found a toothbrush and took advantage
of it, along with the sunblock and the
Stingose
cream, for his bites. He took it all back to the beach to find Lara drying her
hair with her towel. She had thrown off Elizabeth
’
s pyjama
bottoms and was standing in only a wet singlet and her underwear. Ned held out
some new clothes for her. She thanked him and took them. The shorts were far
too big and she had to lace them up tightly; she had lost a lot of weight, she
said, because she had been fed through a tube while she was asleep. She showed
him the hole in the back of her neck, a fleshy circular stub which was already
closing and scabbing over. Ned didn
’
t show any interest.

‘We need a sign,
’
she said.

He paused.
‘
Like
…
from God?
’

She stared at him moronically and laughed.
‘
A
street sign, you idiot. So we know where we are.
’

Ned shook his head.
‘
I
’
m
done.
’

‘What?
’

‘I
’
m done. No more. I
’
m
over it. I
’
m not going anywhere.
’

‘And what will you do here?
’

‘I don
’
t know. Lie down and die,
perhaps?
’

‘How will that help anything?
’

‘It won
’
t!
’
he cried.
‘
It
won
’
t help anyone, but I
’
m just sick
of trying. No matter what I do, I can
’
t win. Everyone who has ever
helped me, every chance of happiness I get,
it all gets
taken from me. So, what
’
s the use? What
’
s
the point in bothering to outrun them?
’
He looked
at her, wanting a real answer.

‘If we save just one person on this planet, it
’
ll
be worth it,
’
Lara said.

Ned had darker ambitions now.
‘
If I get to
kill just
one
of them, it
’
ll be worth it.
’

Ned led the way to find food, water and shelter, because he
was an expert at it now. They left the serenity of the beach and turned to the
inland mangrove forest. It was a struggle to get through, forcing them to weave
through tight-knit branches and raised roots, with dense foliage that scraped
against the skin of their arms and legs. A machete would have been handy in
this case, but like all his other weapons, such tools had been left behind at
Zebra Rock when he was whisked into the ether.

The mangroves thinned out the further inland they went, and
eventually they found a clearing where tall palm trees stood angled from years
of hurricane forces. Beneath the canopy, the lower ground was thick with
trapped humidity, and within half an hour their clothes were wet with sweat. A
cacophony of nature’s war cries constantly surrounded them, leaving them in awe
at the strange new plants and animals that now inhabited this world. Miniature
primates perched on the trees and ate odd pink fruit, lemurs perhaps, but
surely those weren’t native here. Ned pointed out the green underbellies and
the strange black eyes: signs of mutagenesis, according to Tim’s taxonomy.
Deeper inland they found enormous anthills, built like dirt temples, where
millions of fire ants had taken advantage of the brief lack of reptile and bird
predators and flourished exponentially in numbers. Lara asked if they bite.

‘Everything bites,’ he said, and they made sure to steer
very clear of the colony.

They were not in the south, Lara declared: Melbourne beaches
didn
’
t look like this. Her hometown’s waters were cold,
rough and choppy, with fewer palm trees and featureless landscapes. This
coastal wilderness was mostly uninhabited, even before the invasion: no nearby
roads or towns could give them any indication as to what the closest city could
be, but both had a feeling they were still in the Top End. The water was warm,
the air too; they were certainly amongst the tropics. Lara asked if Ned had
ever done this before with his dog, and ‘vanished’ with him to some unknown
corner of the world. Ned wasn’t in the mood to humour her.

They began following goat tracks left by campers, or maybe
survivors, who had been here before them. A trail of canned foods, cigarette
lighters, and beer bottles were like breadcrumbs through the bush, tracing the
steps of the last living humans. Perhaps, like the biologists, a few had been
swimming at the time and escaped the beams, only to emerge and find the world
had abandoned them. Ned looked down at the cans and wondered if these people
had felt the loneliness he felt. It was likely that they were all dead now,
either hunted and killed, eaten by wild hybrid animals, or perhaps they turned
cannibalistic on each other once the food ran out, leaving them to fall victim
to themselves.

Their trail went upwards until they found a wooden boardwalk
and handmade steps, built into the side of a steep-rising hill and ultimately
leading them to a cliff-top beach house. They climbed the wooden staircase to
the summit and came to a spectacular two-storeyed home overlooking the secluded
bay. The house was littered with surfboards, flippers, wetsuits hanging to dry,
and, under a white sheet, a fat-tired quad bike. Ned tilted his head in
amusement.

‘This place is cool, and it looks like no one else has been
here yet,
’
Lara said. She slid the glass doors open and made
her way inside. Suddenly she screamed.

Ned felt his heart skip and ran to her. He burst through the
doors only to find her frozen at the entrance to the kitchen. On the kitchen
table, a furry possum-like creature had broken in and was nibbling on a box of
old honey oats cereal, left abandoned next to a bowl and spoon. The little
critter crunched on cereal,
its
big, round, black eyes
staring at them innocently. Of course, it was not a possum entirely. Its tail
was rounded and appeared to be made of some sort of rubbery skin, as though a
beaver tail had been sewn onto it. The creature was more or less an alien
platypus-possum hybrid. Its eyes were not like normal marsupial eyes, and on
its back it bore three thick, green stripes cutting across its grey fur from
head to beavery tail.

Ned found a broom and shooed it away. He locked the glass
door behind it.

Lara went to the cupboards and pulled them open.
‘
I
can
’
t believe I haven
’
t eaten in
four or five months.
’
She pulled out a can of
peaches.
‘
Yum!
’

Ned went upstairs. Most of the upper level was an enormous
deck, furbished with outdoor
seatings
, banana
lounges, and hammocks swinging in the breeze. It gave him a perfect view of the
beach below, the thick bushland beneath them, and the endless ocean. To the
east, there were rocky cliffs, impossible to scale. To the west, the faint
outline of a metropolis could be seen in the far distance, obscured by morning
fog. It was still impossible to tell where they were, but it was the first sign
of civilisation they had been hoping for.

By the time he came back downstairs, Lara had already eaten
four cans of peaches.
‘
Sorry,
’
she said,
looking at the mess she had made on the table and around her mouth.
‘
I
was starving.
’

Up on the top deck, the two reclined in lounge chairs with
warm cans of Solo and admired the view for a while. The day was only early and
yet the sun was blazing hot. They covered their arms and noses in sunblock and Ned
used more
Stingose
on his bumps. Lara offered him
some peaches but he said he wasn
’
t hungry. He assumed the
unsettling feeling in his stomach was the guilt and remorse that still lingered
from yesterday. The world was a dozen less now. It looked and felt so much
emptier.

Ned spontaneously began talking about the settlers, even
though Lara hadn
’
t asked. He told her their
names and where they were each from, and how long they all lived at Munroe
’
s
gallery together at Zebra Rock. He described his pilgrimage across the
Kununurra
desert with an Aboriginal wanderer, who had saved
him and the others from certain death. He told her of the farms they took over
and the agrarian way they had worked and lived, planting and watering and
harvesting from a variety of properties to feed themselves. Water was boiled
from the Ord. Meat was scarce for most of his stay. He told her of their
baseball games and their poker nights and their jokes around the fire and the
love which sprang up from the ashes of a global catastrophe. He told her of
James
’
red eye, Tim
’
s
inventions, Michael
’
s love and Sarah
’
s
abandonment. He told her of their transition from a family to an army, the day
Andrew died, and how he came to learn how to shoot a gun. He told her of the
fire they started and the
Skyquaker
he had watched
suffocate. Most of all, he told her about how innocent and loving and wonderful
they all were. Towards the end of their days, it may have felt like they were
at each other
’
s throats, but they had been
more of a family than any other family he could remember right now. It should
not have ended the way it had. Those people did not deserve, in the last
minutes of their lives, to feel so terrified and helpless, and have to beg to
not be killed. Sure, they knew it would eventually happen: the Suits who had hunted
them from Darwin would one day turn up again, and the way they died was almost
exactly how Ned had imagined they all would; but it still felt like a dream. He
still felt that they were all back at Zebra Rock, waking up to soon find Ned
missing from his bed. They would be searching for him around the Ord, calling
out his name and hoping he would come home. He wanted to be with them so badly,
even in death, if only to save him from endless and intolerable solidarity.

Once it was all said, Ned felt a heavy weight lift off his
shoulders. He gave a sigh and sank a little further into his chair. He rested
his head back and closed his eyes, absorbing the sun and the warm breeze.

The point of the story, perhaps, was that they didn
’
t
deserve to die, and if it wasn
’
t for Lara, they may have
still been alive and happy in the
Kununurra
. The
Quakers could have taken over the whole country and occupied every city on
Earth; none of them would have noticed, but now the tragedy had set in again.
The reality of the whole world was flooding back and once more Ned was alone
and utterly terrified. He felt as though there was nowhere to go from here: his
last chance of happiness was gone. There could not possibly be any conclusion
to his life other than in death. The world was barren, eroding, and so was he.

Lara shook her head.
‘
There must
be others.
’

‘There are no others.
’

‘There must be. Think. How many people were forgotten and
missed like you? How many are still hiding in bunkers, waiting for us to find
them?
’

Well, Ned could think of two humans who still roamed the
Earth, assuming they were still alive: Sarah, for one, who left the settlers,
and Jackrabbit, who was God-knows where.

And Lily, the last DJ on Earth, if, of course, she was not
merely another illusion.

He glanced at Lara and saw she was very withdrawn, just
sitting and scraping the bottom of another peach can with a spoon. He could see
she had been trying, at least, to make conversation, and she truly felt
responsible for what she had brought upon Ned. She said softly,
‘
I
agree. They didn
’
t deserve to die at all.
’