by Shane Carrow
“Look,” Geoff said, because he could tell what I was thinking. “You got a better idea?”
And I don’t. Of course I don’t. My big idea since all this started happening was to find Dad. I didn’t have anything beyond that. Neither did Aaron.
So we sail on east in the Sea Vixen, towards some tiny town at the edge of the Nullarbor, with no real idea of what we’ll find there.
March 4
Lots of chatter on the radio – lots of refugees fleeing Albany, swapping stories, talking about safe harbours. Geoff won’t let us talk to anyone – it’s not safe, he thinks – and in any case the Sea Vixen’s radio is old and shitty. Most of the broadcasts are lost in a swirl of static. But I picked up that Kangaroo Island is meant to be safe. Of course that’s in South Australia, near Adelaide, and with us in the Sea Vixen it may as well be in Canada.
They were talking about Kalgoorlie, as well – which is meant to be “safe,” but with caveats that I couldn’t quite make out. I got the impression it was like Albany, but just as unfriendly to refugees. I caught a word which might have been “safe” or might have been “save.” Kalgoorlie… in charge… take people… (save?) Either way, they were talking about it as though it were still a functional town. Something to think about, if Eucla turns out to be a bust.
Geoff reckons we’ll make landfall near Esperance tomorrow.
March 5
We weren’t sure what the situation in Esperance was going to be like. It’s the only sizeable town on WA’s south coast aside from Albany, and we’d heard conflicting reports on the radio about whether it was dead or not.
Geoff’s charts showed an anchorage a few kays south along the coast from the town proper, and we pulled up there. Stunted scrubland, waves crashing along a seaweed-strewn beach, and a house on a low hill. It wasn’t on the map but the sign by the jetty had it as a bed and breakfast.
We’d been arguing for some time about who was going in to scout for a car, but in the end we didn’t have a choice. One person on their own isn’t safe, whether they’re going into town or staying with the Sea Vixen. But none of us are sure how reliable Aaron is in his current state, so Geoff wasn’t going to take him; nor was he going to take me instead, and leave Aaron with Ellie.
So all four of us were going, leaving the boat at the jetty. We hid the supplies – fuel, food, jerry cans – in the scrub along the beach, and made for the bed and breakfast first. There was a low wind howling in from the ocean, whipping stinging sand up against our exposed skin. I tried to calm my heart rate as we approached the house through the scrub. Ellie, Geoff and I had the Steyrs; Aaron had the Winchester. We were probably one of the most well-armed groups of people still alive anywhere along the coast. Four horsemen of the apocalypse, scurrying up a godforsaken beach.
The house was empty. There were no vehicles and it had been mostly stripped by other survivors. A few rats shrieked and scattered as we entered the kitchen - there was a reeking corpse on the floor, an unrecognisable mess of rot and carnage, dead for quite some time now.
I did, at least, find some shoes. I’d kicked off my boots when Aaron had tossed himself overboard, abandoning them to the depths of the ocean, and I’d come up the beach barefoot. There was a pair of size ten hiking boots in an upstairs bedroom that fit me almost perfectly. Socks would have been nice but you can’t have everything.
From there we had to walk into town, my new boots chafing my heels and giving me blisters. There was a loose string of houses along the coastal road – sea-changers, retirees, more bed and breakfasts. All gone now, fled to God knows where. We searched them all and found nothing of value. We weren’t the first people to come through here.
Closer to the town we came across our first zombie: only a few days old, a middle-aged man in a blood-stained white polo shirt, staggering along the road towards us. Geoff put a bullet through his head from fifty metres and he dropped to the bitumen like a sack of meat.
“Not good,” I said.
We closed the distance on his body and Geoff nudged it with his boot, then searched his pockets, coming up with nothing but a flimsy flick-knife. “No,” he agreed. “Not good.”
As it turned out Esperance wasn’t a dead town. Not entirely. We came across a few more zombies, and put them down. But it was mostly deserted - the ocean wind ruffling the trees and sending scraps of garbage skittering down the road.
Close to the main road we saw a group of other people; three, four, then five of them, rifling through a Caltex with a garage attached. They had weapons – cricket bats, baseball bats, tyre irons – but when they saw us coming down the street with rifles they turned and ran, disappearing around the corner.
We searched the servo and the garage. The people we’d seen had made me feel less safe than the zombies. They might not have guns but they were out there - watching us, maybe, along with others. They’d run when they’d seen us. They knew what the score was. This wasn’t like Walpole. Strangers were suspicious now. Even all the way out here, at the edge of the Outback.
Aaron sat on a milk crate at the front of the garage with the Winchester across his lap. He was staring at the ground in front of him. “Just keep an eye out, alright?” I said. “Please?” He made a non-committal grunt. As good as I could expect.
Christ. I can’t blame him. I still feel like all of this is a fucking dream. A nightmare.
In the back of the garage Geoff had found a car. It was an antique-looking, rust-speckled Toyota station wagon. He’d already opened the door and was sitting behind the wheel, fiddling with the steering column. “Jesus,” I said. “Really?”
“You see anything else?” Geoff said. “Everyone’s scarpered and they took their cars with them.”
“I can see why maybe they left this one behind.”
“You know,” Geoff said, his head somewhere down under the dash, “I actually owned one of these back in high school. Probably a ’91 or ’92. It’s a good little car. Reliable.”
“It’s an antique, is what it is.”
“You know what’s good about old cars?” Geoff said, glancing up at me. For the first time since I’d met him, he was grinning. A panel was dangling open from the dash, wires hanging out, and Geoff was twisting and fiddling with them when suddenly the engine roared to life.
I had to give it to him. “You can hotwire them.”
And so we ended up driving a hotwired station wagon back out to the bed and breakfast at the far edge of town, where the Sea Vixen was still tied up at the jetty. We retrieved the supplies from the scrub and loaded the car up. By the time we’d done that it was only one o’clock, but Geoff wanted to wait until tomorrow to leave.
“Nine-hour drive,” Geoff said. “We leave at first light, get there midafternoon.”
“If it’s clear,” Ellie said. “If nothing goes wrong.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s a big if, Dad.”
“We may as well leave now,” Aaron said, without looking up from the floor. “If it’s going to be like that.”
They were the first words he’d said all day. The three of us glanced at each other, unsure of what to say.
“Well, we don’t know what it’s going to be like,” Geoff said. “We don’t know if there might be towns that have thrown walls up, people with guns, all kinds of shit. Maybe we’ll be in Eucla tomorrow night. Maybe we won’t. But we’re not travelling by night. We leave tomorrow.”
Aaron stared at the floor.
“I’ll take first watch,” I said.
I’m sitting here now, by the window in a bedroom on the second floor, Steyr propped against the sill. There’s no moon, but the skies are clear enough out here that the starlight will be enough to see if someone’s coming up the road. The insects are screeching and chirping in the scrub, too – I’ll be able to tell if something is coming if they stop.
900 kilometres. Nine hours. Once upon a time. Jump in the car, watch the desert roll by, stop at the roadhouses for petrol and a packet of salty chips shovelled out of the
bain-marie. And now?
I keep thinking about Collie, where we were stripped of our car at gunpoint. Manjimup, where we met Liam and the others – the predators. Albany, where thousands died in chaos and bloodshed.
What are we going to find on the road to Eucla?
I keep thinking about fucking Eucla, too. We don’t even know it’s safe. It’s just a dot on the map, a place to aim for. Something better than heading out into the desert with a station wagon, a few rifles and a month of food.
I can’t imagine actually being there. I can’t. I don’t know what’s going to happen to us. But I can’t see a happy ending.
March 6
We left at first light. The car was already packed and loaded to go. I felt drained; Ellie had relieved me from watch at midnight, but I’d spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling with my guts a nervous wreck, even after Ellie slipped into bed beside me when Geoff relieved her at three. (He doesn’t trust Aaron to take watches.)
We left the Sea Vixen tied up at the pier. I wonder what’ll happen to her. Some other group will find her and take her, if any more survivors come along this way. Otherwise a storm will come and bash her against the pier eventually, and she’ll sink.
We had to cut right through the heart of town – there was no other way to get up to the main road up towards the Nullarbor. A handful of zombies were stumbling about in the grey dawn, turning their heads to look at us as we cruised past. I thought I saw signs of human life – curtains twitching, or movement in driveways – but maybe it was my imagination. There were still people alive in Esperance, I was sure of that, but they were keeping to themselves.
At least until we got to the north edge of town. We were almost out of it, just driving past some clapboard houses, windswept gum trees, and a few huge commercial lots selling farm equipment, ATVs, that sort of thing – all of them looted and empty, of course. There was a van broken down by the side of the road and a group of people huddled around it. One of them – tall, bearded, wearing a knee-length Driza-Bone coat - stepped out to hail us, to try to flag us down. Geoff swerved right, to go around him, and he stepped out further. When he realised we weren’t going to stop, the gun came out. He’d had a sawn-off shotgun hidden beneath his coat.
We all ducked. I heard the shot go off, but there was no shattering glass, no crumple of metal, at least until Geoff drove us right over a verge and through the car park of a John Deere outlet. He’d pulled his revolver out of his thigh holster and was firing blindly out the window behind us, back towards the van, even as he swerved back up onto the road and pushed his foot to the floor. I was fumbling with my Steyr and trying to wind my window down with my other hand – you wouldn’t believe how big and bulky an automatic rifle is until you try to sit with one in your lap in the passenger seat of a car.
But it was already over. It was done. We were speeding north along the highway. I caught a glimpse in the wing mirror of the van sitting back there at the edge of the John Deere lot, no movement around it, the people who’d been there all scrambling for cover. The road curved up past some more industrial sheds and stands of gum trees, and it was lost from sight.
My ears were ringing from Geoff’s gunshots, but I could hear him yelling: “Everybody all right? Everybody OK? Ellie? Ellie, are you OK?”
I twisted around in the passenger seat. Ellie and Aaron had both ducked down, still holding their rifles, but they were unhurt. All of us were.
Geoff drove a good twenty minutes, until we were well clear of Esperance, out in the tree-framed paddocks of stubbly wheat. Then he pulled over to check the damage to the car while Aaron, Ellie and I kept a close watch on the road to both the north and the south, rifles in hand. All of us were still breathing heavily, bloodstreams shot full of adrenaline.
“Copped a bit of buckshot on the indicator and the bumper,” Geoff said, tapping one of the shattered brake lights. “He shot wide. Fucking lucky.”
It had all happened so quickly. “We had guns,” I said, in disbelief. The Winchester had been resting across the console; me, Aaron and Ellie had been holding the Steyrs while Geoff drove. The idea was that if something bad happened and we had to abandon the car quickly, we still had the weapons. But they’d been visible, too – the outline of them, he must have seen that. “We had guns. How did he not see that we had guns?”
“Maybe he didn’t care,” Ellie said.
“No way. Four rifles, him with a shottie? No way.”
“The others might’ve had guns, too.”
“They didn’t use them.”
“Might not have had time,” Geoff said. “They might have been in the van. Look, it doesn’t matter. We were lucky. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”
We kept driving north. Soon we passed the last gasp of civilisation, Esperance Airport – or airfield, really – where something bad had obviously happened. Hundreds of zombies were milling around in the car park or pressing themselves up against the fence. Geoff cut into the right hand lane, at the edge of the shoulder, to keep a wide berth between us and the zombies that were even now stumbling out with outstretched hands to greet us.
Then it was fields and gum trees and salt lakes, and puffy white clouds in a blue sky. I stared out the window and watched the marker posts rolling by.
I still couldn’t believe it about the guns. I’d thought having as many guns as we did gave us a power; made sure nobody would fuck with us. But of course there are going to be other survivors with guns. Of course there are. Maybe most of them.
We’re a bit beyond people robbing our stuff and leaving us in the bush now. There are going to be fewer and fewer survivors as time goes on. Fewer survivors, more heavily armed, with more experience. More bad memories. More of an inclination to shoot first and ask questions later.
By midmorning we’d made it to the next town, a flyspeck called Grass Patch, choked with undead – probably refugees from Esperance, since there were a few hundred of them, more than ever could have lived there in the first place. We avoided them by cutting down the backroads to the east, down through the wheat fields, and we ended up getting lost. We had to take it easy because we only have so much petrol and can’t afford to waste it going in circles or backtracking. There was a lot of map consulting, a lot of arguing and yelling, and now we’re camping rough at an indeterminate position somewhere well east of the highway. Geoff is in a foul mood; he wanted to be in Eucla by tonight, and instead we’ve only made it about a hundred kilometres north of Esperance.
Personally I’m glad we’ve made it that far at all. We’ve got plenty of food and we’re far enough out at the edge of the Outback that we can risk a fire. I can see the stars out here, and the air smells clean, and Ellie is sitting right beside me. Aaron’s still quiet and withdrawn, but he’s still alive, still with us. Things could be much worse.
March 7
Woke up this morning to the smell of smoke and the western horizon, thick and black. I’d heard a thunderstorm overnight and been worried we might get rained on; it had missed us, but swung past to the west, and now a lightning strike must have sparked bushfires. Geoff woke us up early, the sun just coming above the horizon, to help pack the car and get moving.
We headed east again, deeper into the trackless wastes of the farmland. Geoff and Ellie both had looks on their faces that suburban kids like me and Aaron can’t understand. We’ve heard about bushfires, we’ve seen them on the news, we’ve been told all about how devastating and powerful they are. But Geoff and Ellie know it. They’ve grown up with it. They’ve seen it. So there were no arguments – we headed east, away from the fire, and away from the prevailing winds.
That meant heading deeper east into the farmland. This isn’t the kind of farmland you get near the city. This is the wild edge of the Wheatbelt – vast tracts of land where you can drive along a dirt track for hours without seeing so much as a shed or a windmill. Forget about homesteads. There’s probably just one, tucked away somewhere, overseeing a bunch of wheat fields and shee
p paddocks the size of Luxembourg. The tracks are orange gravel if you’re lucky, but more often sand. I lost count of the number of times the car got bogged and we had to pack sticks under the rear wheel to get it out, all of us tired and irritable and snapping at each other, the black smoke looming on the horizon.
We seem to have avoided the fire, anyway. The smoke on the horizon has lessened. Possibly it went north or south.
So we’re camping again, and have no idea of where we really are. The roadmaps don’t show these farm tracks, extensive as they are – they just show that thin yellow line of the highway leading from Esperance up to Norseman, and then Kalgoorlie. But we still have plenty of fuel and food, and Geoff shot some rabbits with the Winchester for dinner. The water situation might become a worry in the next few days, but we should be okay by then. Geoff thinks we might even be able to follow these trails all the way north to the Nullarbor, and stay off the western highway entirely. Which is fine by me.
March 8
So we can’t drive all the way to the Nullarbor after all. We reached the edge of the farmland today. It’s just bush, if you can even call it that. More like low scrub dotted with salt lakes – you can stand on the roof of the car and get a pretty good view, since it’s flat as a pancake. Not national park, not state forest, not anything. Just wasteland. The Outback. The real deal.
“Christ,” Geoff said. “There are trails through there, I know there are. There are trails all down from the Eyre Highway, down to the coast, they run for miles.”
“Yeah, but can you find them?” Ellie said.
It was a rhetorical question. Geoff stood on the roof of the station wagon for a while anyway, scanning the horizon with his binoculars, trying to spy something out. Eventually he admitted defeat and we started cutting back through the farmland again, trying to head north-west, back towards the highway. At the very least we know we must be well north of Grass Patch by now, so at least we got around the undead there. In a very roundabout way.