Skyquakers (28 page)

None of this seemed to have anything to do with the drug
addict
’
s room though. He couldn
’
t explain
the calendar or begin to wonder where the squatter had gone, but it was only
the radio that mattered. The broadcaster on the other end, too muffled now to
hear properly, had been begging listeners for months to come and find her at
the Charles Darwin University. As in, the
university of the city of Charles
Darwin
.

Ned was grinning from ear to ear.
‘
She
’
s
here still, right in this city. I can
’
t believe I almost forgot all
about her, but she
’
s here!
’
He held
the radio as though he wanted to kiss it.
‘
I never
thought I
’
d actually find her.
’

‘You don
’
t know her.
’

‘I know everything about her!
’
he cried.
‘
I
know her life story: where she grew up, where she went to school, her favourite
music, her favourite food, even what she got for her eighth birthday. You
wouldn
’
t understand.
’

‘Ned, I know what it
’
s like to
want to meet your hero, but trust me, it never works out how you imagined it.
’

Ned looked back and forth between the radio and the
calendar. He felt as though he was
missing
something. These two objects
sat side-by-side as though they were related to one another, but he was
struggling to see the connection. What did the squatter know that he didn
’
t?
Had Lily been sending Darwinians different messages to the ones he had been
listening to? Had he failed to read between her lines?

Lara was by the window, peering through the blinds. ‘It
’
s almost sunrise.’

Ned had made his decision.
‘
I have to find her.
’

‘
No.
’

‘One
person,’ he said. ‘You told me if we could save one person…’ He held out the
radio. ‘Someone has to rescue Lily.’

They argued until sunrise, like a child to his mother.

‘I
’
m going.
’

‘No, you
’
re not, mister.
’

‘You can
’
t stop me!
’

Ned could not reason with her. She didn
’
t
understand the astounding importance of Lily and what it meant to finally meet
her in person. It was not just for the purpose of proving she existed to everyone
who believed he had been fooled by a Siren’s song; there was something else
now, something he couldn
’
t describe, which was drawing
him towards her. They were so close to one another. He could not leave the city
without first laying eyes on her, hugging her, maybe kissing her, if they had
time. More importantly, Ned believed Lily, of all the humans left to wade in
the sewage of this planet, possessed some sort of knowledge he lacked. It was
only now that, after seeing the squatter
’
s calendar,
he wondered if Lily
’
s radio broadcasts had been
more than a meagre attempt to entertain the last few survivors on Earth. All
this time, she had been relaying something to him, something secretly hidden in
her recordings that only the right ears were meant to hear.

Think, Ned, think!

The Quaker ships that destroyed Darwin would have instantly
flattened any sort of military radio tower being used to form a resistance
against them, but a sweet, little, lonely girl locked in a soundproof room of
an abandoned outback university couldn
’
t possibly
pose any threat…

Ned began smiling more and more. He felt something big
coming, something awesomely devastating. Like the Quakers, he had been fooled
by the innocence of Lonely Lily. She was not a DJ; she was a weapon.

Lara didn
’
t want to stay in Darwin
another minute, but Ned was adamant that this girl needed to be rescued for
more than simply the company. By sunrise he was redressed and had the quad bike
rumbling again. He sat there with both hands around the bars, fit, perky,
determined to continue fighting.

‘This doesn
’
t make sense,
’
she said.
‘
You
’
re going
after some voice you heard on a radio because your
gut
is telling you to? What if it
’
s a trap?
’

‘It is a trap,
’
he admitted,
‘
but
not for us.
’

Lara was reluctant to join him, but she did not want to be
left wandering this city alone. With no alternative ideas on where to go now or
what to do next, she wrapped her arms around Ned’s waist and he roared off,
speeding out of the emergency bay and back through the twisted, demolished
streets of Darwin. In the morning light, the destruction appeared so much
worse. There were areas as large as football fields which had been bulldozed,
bombed, or obliterated into a crater. The roads were littered with debris three
metres high, forcing Ned to find multiple detours and testing the quad’s fat
4WD tyres to their limit as it clambered over and under the rubble. It looked
as though a war had taken place here. Not once did they see a sign of life.

Highway signs directed them to the city’s major university,
north of the CBD, situated along the beaches of what they now knew was the
Timor Sea. They drove unopposed towards the campus grounds, surprisingly
unharmed by the madness that took place in the city’s centre. The university
complex was comprised of three major buildings, each flanked by wide open
fields, palm trees, adorned with contemporary architectural designs and
Aboriginal art. Glass panels made up much of the structural exterior, very few
of which were cracked or broken, and other than some scattered papers, toppled
bicycles, and a fallen palm tree, the place was in a fairly stable condition.
In the morning sunlight, the unsettling sound of silence swept across the
school. Ned parked the quad in the centre of campus, on the lawn just outside
the cafeteria. The engine cut off and they both stepped down, only to stare up
and feel the lingering eyes of no one watching them.

Despite its human abandonment, there was still life to be
seen: some strange camels had ventured onto the campus lawns and were munching
away at the unattended grasses and ferns. The camels were clearly mutant
hybrids, crossed with something similar to a rhinoceros: horns, a slender neck,
but stubby lower limbs and thick, grey skin. Their dopey faces and obvious
herbivorous diets left Ned and Lara only mildly amused. They moved on, leaving
the bizarre animals to graze.

Ned was quick to find a campus map plastered to a wall. He
scanned his finger down the list of faculties until he found the location of a
mixing and recording studio in a building dedicated to the performing arts. He
looked up. Atop a four-storey building sat an enormous dish and several aerials.
It was hard to tell in the daylight, but he swore he saw a light on.

Lara was reluctant to follow.
‘
This
…
doesn
’
t feel right. I think we should leave.
’

Approaching the doors, Ned said over his shoulder,
‘
You
stay here, then. I
’
ll only be a minute.
’

‘Ned
…’

He ignored her.

Inside, another wall-mounted directory indicated the radio
broadcasting studios were on the fourth and top floor. The elevator was useless
without power, so he bounded up the staircase, three at a time, all the way to
the top. He was racing himself now, picking up more and more speed with every
leap. He couldn
’
t slow down, or else his
thumping heart may overtake him and he may pass out before he made it. He
rounded each new staircase without bothering with the floors beneath: they were
cold, abandoned and lightless, and there was nothing in them which mattered to
him.

Outside, Lara stared up at the glass walls, hoping to see Ned
’
s
silhouette flash by a window. She felt nervous. Being without him made her feel
infinitely more alone. She was a sitting duck in a strange, foreign world. She
looked around the eerie campus grounds to see the
cameloceroses
had disappeared from the lawn, and birds with strange wings darted across the
sky with some sort of urgency.

Then a dog barked. It frightened her so much that she almost
fell over, but she turned, and there, standing on the other side of the campus,
was a little black and white dog, with long, curly ears and shaggy fur. He was
on his toes, tip-tapping away, not wanting to come any closer. He barked again.

‘
Moonboy
?
’

Moonboy
barked once more, but it
was overpowered by something much louder.

The sound of
thunder
was so intense, so massive, that it made the glass walls shudder. Ned, running
by them as he scaled the last of the stairs, was halted by the powerful
eruption. He flinched almost. He turned to the windows, still reverberating
from the blast, and could not help but to look up. He and Lara saw the same
thing appear from the ether: a storm. A super cell of colossal size came
twisting downwards onto the campus, onto the whole city, as though a cloudy
wormhole was ripping open through time and space. Clear skies one minute,
darkness the next. A powerful wind began to sweep across all of Darwin. A mass
of cloud and rain swirled and hammered the sky with claps of thunder, void of
lightning. Within minutes of its arrival, the whole city was encompassed within
the cloud’s shadow. It hovered low over their heads, swirling, growing like a
plague with arms and legs and tentacles, spreading to every corner of the city.

‘Shit,
’
Ned panted.

It was the biggest thing he had ever seen. The centre of
this storm began to open up and form an eye. The tunnel grew outwards, creating
a sinkhole through which all life could be consumed. A hurricane had arrived,
the mothership of all storms. Ned looked upon it as a final
screw you
to his continuous out-running
and out-living their every attempt at flattening him. This was their last
stand, finally putting an end to his revolt against them. This was personal
now, he felt. He had successfully pissed off an entire race, enough to make
them waste stupendous amounts of energy on his destruction and, ultimately, the
fallen girl’s return.

Not without Lily.

They couldn
’
t take him until she had been
found, so he raced on, faster than before. The thunder kept clashing as he
scaled the last of the stairs, tripping clumsily in haste to reach the summit.
He could hear the storm roaring outside, pounding against the glass walls.
Purple-pink sparks from the centre of the eye began to ignite as their alien
machinery slowly powered up. The world went grey and dark, covered in a shadow
more tremendous in size and power than he had ever dealt with. Along the
coastline, the seas rose and crashed against the shores with angry churns, while
the palm trees were swept sideways and the birds were forced to flee.

Lara was standing beneath the storm and stared in horror at
the oncoming force.
Moonboy
was still barking,
beckoning her to come with him. She refused to move until she saw Ned reappear,
but he had vanished within the walls of the building. Around her, the campus
was blown with such great force that it looked as though it was rocking and
quivering atop its own foundations. She lunged onto a pole in order to brace
against the wind. Behind her, a palm tree was torn from its roots. It toppled,
crushing an abandoned car left sitting in a parking bay. Something
big
was coming.

‘
Ned!
’
she screamed.

Emerging onto the fourth floor, Ned, at last, made it to the
sound studios. The doors were heavy. The walls were padded. Everything was
thick and soundproof, and when he stepped in, silence instantly replaced the
storm. All the chaos of the outside world vanished, leaving solely Ned with his
own panting breaths. He looked around at these dark, boxed-off rooms. The sound
barriers built into these walls and floors had helped keep a single girl from
being beamed into the sky, and the machinery around this cocoon still hummed,
as though small generators were operating in here. He knew it. He
knew
it. All those sceptics were wrong. She was waiting for him, for anyone; why
else would she have been broadcasting her angelic voice, day and night? What
else would she possibly be waiting for if not a hero?

He checked every room and every studio. Band equipment had
been abandoned exactly where their musicians had been standing. Swivel chairs
were askew and tipped over. The building had taken no damage from fire or any
other onslaught, meaning it must have escaped the Suits
’
wrath.
Lights were even on
,
actual
lights
. Something was powering this place. Someone. Someone was here.

Behind the last door, at the end of the corridor, Lily was
talking into her microphone in her private booth. Ned approached the thick door
and placed a gentle ear against it. He could hear her voice, the same voice he
had listened to for months, the voice which kept him happy and full of joy
during the days and sung him to sleep at night. He had fallen so deeply in love
with this voice, and meeting her left him both terrified and exited. Was she
expecting him? Was she expecting to see anyone? What should he say when he
walked in? Did they have time to fall into each other
’
s arms
before they both evaporated into dust?

Just to see her face, just for a second, before his
inevitable end, would perhaps be enough.
If we save just one person on this
planet, it
’
ll be worth it
. Lily would
be that person.

After one last breath to slow his racing heart, Ned pushed
against the heavy door and entered a tiny cubicle. A microphone hung at
mouth-level, a chair was sitting by a desk, surrounded by a dashboard of
buttons and three large computer screens in an arc around the broadcaster.
Classical coils of tape were rolling, all powered by a large generator in the
corner, which appeared to have been dug up from somewhere and plugged into
every bit of machinery in the room. She knew how to power her station, how to
make herself heard to half the country and yet remain invisible to the Quakers.
Every day, for nearly six months, she had been calling herself the last DJ on
Earth, and encouraging Ned to find her and rescue her.

Ned stared at the unoccupied room where Lily should have
been. Instead of the girl of his dreams, there was nothing. He became breathless.

‘What?
Wh
– no…’

The chair was empty. The microphone was on, but no mouth
spoke into it. The tapes rolled, replaying a voice which spoke over and over,
telling the same stories that Lily told, playing the same songs that Lily
liked, over and over and over again, in a loop which lasted weeks, maybe
months, and then would begin once more, all without a single human hand
operating it.

Lily did not exist. The voice he heard was pre-recorded. If
any actual girl once did sit here, she had left this place long ago. The dust
which lathered the keyboards and circuits proved it.

Ned didn
’
t know what to do. He didn
’
t
understand why.
‘
Why?
’
he asked.
‘
Why?
Why?
’
He spun around her big leather chair, as though it
was all a joke, but there was still no one.