Afterworld

by Lynnette Lounsbury

  LYNNETTE LOUNSBURY

  First published in 2014

  Copyright © Lynnette Lounsbury 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the

  National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74331 510 1

  eISBN 978 1 74343 287 7

  Cover & text design by Astred Hicks, Design Cherry

  Cover image by Shutterstock

  Set in 11pt Bembo Regular by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  This book is for Tenzin Lounsbury, who once told me that, ‘We have different minds. Mine is exactly where it is supposed to be and yours wanders all over the place. But I still love you.’ I’m lucky to have you.

  CONTENTS

  PART I: THE CITY

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  PART II: THE TRIALS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  PART III: THE MAZE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART I

  THE CITY

  Given that death humbles us…

  Given that life exalts us…

  The House of Death is for Life.

  THE INSTRUCTION OF HARDJEDEF, CA. 5TH DYNASTY EGYPT

  1

  India hit Dominic Mathers with a putrid gust that almost knocked him back into the airport. After all these years he still wasn’t sure if he loved or hated the place. The air was hot and smelled of sweat and filth and the bloated dead dog that lay in the gutter. It was hard to do anything in India, hard to walk through the maze of desperate people, hard to think with all the noise, hard to move. Already Dom wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

  He looked for his father’s driver. Usually he was standing in a line of other drivers, wearing a second-hand suit and a wide smile, holding a placard with Dom’s name on it. Not today. Dom wandered the line of jostling, yelling drivers and was accosted from all sides by street children, their hands in his pockets, touching his dreadlocks, clawing at his arms, all the time, chattering loudly in a mixture of Hindi and broken English. He shrugged at them, indicating he had no money. He swam through a wave of people to get to the taxi rank.

  At the sniff of business, taxi and rickshaw drivers called to him, pointing him towards their battered bicycles and offering deals that couldn’t possibly put food on their tables. As a foreigner, he was a mark. Someone who spent more in a week than they earned in a month. Everywhere he turned, he was pushed and pulled and yelled at. There was no escape.

  Despite the stifling heat he pulled his hood up over his head and tucked his headphones underneath it. He couldn’t block out the smell, but at least he could drown out the noise. The city became a music video. Everything moved in time to the music, and he could finally concentrate.

  He waited by the corner, head down, trying not to attract attention to himself and wondering what was going on. His father’s driver was never late.

  A hand tugged at his arm. It was a teenage boy. About the same age as him, though thin as a pencil. He gestured for Dom to hand over his iPod. Dom shook his head and turned away. Another boy was on his left. Dom took a quick step backwards. A hand pushed his lower back firmly, keeping him in place. A third boy was behind him. All of them were smaller but more desperate than him. They gestured for his backpack and pulled at the cords around his neck. The headphones came off his ears and he was immediately assaulted by the sound of the boys’ threats – incomprehensible and yet entirely clear. He weighed his options. He didn’t have much in his backpack. His wallet was almost empty, a few books, his passport. It was better than being knifed in the gut. He didn’t really want to lose his iPod though. The boys were getting frustrated, shoving him and yelling. A few taxi drivers watched with mild interest.

  Dom searched the street with one last hope that he might see the shiny silver Mercedes driving up to rescue him. There were hundreds of cars, bikes, animals and people, but no Mercedes. No rescue. He sighed. If he fought the three boys, he would lose. If he ran, they might not catch him. Slowly he pulled his backpack off his shoulders. The boys stepped back half a pace when they saw he was giving it up and he used the moment to swing it in an arc, smashing it into each boy’s head as he turned. The boys reeled back in surprise and he ran, sprinting easily along the footpath. They chased after him, and were only a few paces behind, reaching for him as he ran. He almost laughed at the thought that his basketball coach would never know that all those suicide runs were actually saving his life. The boys were fast, but they probably hadn’t eaten all day and two of them started to lag. He couldn’t see the third at all. Dom allowed himself another glance and when he saw the boys stop and sit on the kerb, he slowed to a jog. He had almost caught his breath when he reached the end of the airport terminal. At that moment the third boy appeared from an internal door and smashed into him, throwing him to the ground. Dom’s head bounced on the concrete and his vision narrowed to a dot. He thrashed at the boy who was tearing at his backpack and smacking at his head. He pulled his knee up to his chest and pushed as hard as he could. The slim boy flew backwards onto the footpath and Dom stood, ready to run again. The other boys had resumed the chase. They were getting closer. His head ringing, Dom turned and immediately tripped over someone’s luggage. Scrambling to his feet, he could feel the thieves closing in, and he was losing stamina.

  Suddenly, a car screeched up beside him, the horn screaming. It was a silver Mercedes, its sparkling hubs scraping against the rough kerb. The window slid down and his sister’s long hair wafted out into the dank air.

  ‘Get in.’

  Dominic launched himself across the bonnet of the car and dived through the open passenger side window as his sister drove away. Untangling himself from his own legs and bag he leaned back in the seat and breathed out.

  ‘You’re late, Kaide.’ He frowned at her grinning face and rubbed his throbbing head.

  ‘Welcome home.’ She laughed at him.

  ‘Where’s the driver?’

  His older sister didn’t answer him. ‘Where are your bags? They take them?’

  ‘Didn’t bring any.’ He saw her surprise. ‘What do I need clothes for?’

  She understood what he meant at once and laughed. Kaide was the kind of person who could use her smile and infectious laughter to get away w
ith anything – and she did. As much as he wanted to be angry at her for arriving late, Dom felt his spirits lifting in her company.

  He watched the city go slowly by, cars and bicycles clattering past his window. A chicken flapped free of a market stall and fluttered over the bonnet only to be caught by another stall owner on the opposite side of the road.

  ‘Watch out!’ Dom yelled, wincing as Kaide swerved just in time to miss a pedestrian who fell back onto the edge of the street ranting angrily.

  ‘We’d get in more trouble for hitting a cow in this country,’ Kaide smirked, clearly unworried about the near collision.

  ‘True. I’m not saying I believe it, but you gotta hedge your bets I guess . . . don’t really want to come back as a piglet.’ He winced as she mounted the crumbling kerb to go around a small herd of cows.

  ‘You’ve been away too long. Forgotten the streets.’ Kaide dug into her bag with one hand while swerving to avoid obstacles on the road with the other. She finally found what she was searching for and handed him a phone. ‘From Dad. So he can call you whenever he wants. Which he won’t.’ Then Kaide lifted an eyebrow. ‘But I might. Just to keep tabs on you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Still your big sister, aren’t I?’

  Dom flicked the phone on and Kaide’s face popped up on the screen, roaring at him. He laughed.

  Kaide loved India, but then Kaide loved everywhere. And everything. She was a lithe and athletic eighteen years old, constantly moving in long fluid motions, her mind a few steps ahead of everyone else. The three years between them wasn’t as noticeable now. Dom had hit some kind of crazy growth spurt last year and grown almost a foot. She was still taller but he had lost his puppy fat and hardened up so they looked less like a cartoon-style pair of misfits. Not that they were ever going to blend in. They were both half European-American, but that was the part that seemed to be most difficult to see. Mostly he looked African and she looked Asian. She was almost six feet tall and had thick, shiny hair that reached down her back. His hair was the most uncontrolled thing about him. He was thinking about shaving it off.

  ‘Your hair looks cool by the way, very gangster! You’re growing up to be almost hot, in an NBA kind of way.’ She smirked. He had wound it into hundreds of tiny dreadlocks a few weeks ago, waxing them to keep them in place. It was an attempt to be less conspicuous in India, where he already felt out of place – the son of a rich man in a poor country. He punched her arm just in case she was mocking him.

  ‘Mum and Dad?’ he asked.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Same as ever. Dad is never home so Mum goes shopping. Lydia and I found a room full of clothes with tags on them last week. They must have been a year or two old. I sent them all home with her, like a hundred dresses. Mum still hasn’t noticed.’ She grinned.

  ‘What’s Dad doing?’

  ‘That’s my big news. He got that clinic opened, at the slum on the east side of the city.’ She watched him while she spoke, weaving her way through the complicated streets.

  ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘Dad got the funding approved and I’ve started doing a few hours there after school. Mum’s kind of narky about never getting it done herself and goes on about me catching something.’

  ‘Like what?’ Dom asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Cholera went through a month ago. Kids still die of measles here.’ Kaide’s eyes were serious for a fraction of a second, before the next burst of thought lit her face up like a light bulb. ‘I actually get to give injections, and I love it. That’s creepy, isn’t it? Very Goth of me.’ She pulled an overly stern face at him and he laughed. ‘Despite my masochist tendencies, I’m glad Dad opened the clinic. He seems happier now.’

  ‘Only took him a decade.’ Dominic remembered when they had first moved to Delhi. He was only five then, but some of the memories were still so vivid it was like they were seared into his brain. He remembered visiting the slum with his mother; she was dressed in her overalls, ready to change the world and build a clinic to immunise a million children. He remembered her throwing fundraisers, lavish dinners where he and Kaide were expected to sing and, more embarrassingly, dance for other diplomats and their families. He also remembered their mother being mocked mercilessly by the other wives. They admired her ideas and fervent passion yes, but it wasn’t fitting for the wife of the United States Ambassador to get her hands dirty. Over time they had worn her down. Something had, because she slowly backed away from the actual planning of the clinic and just focused on raising money. Then, a few years later, she had decided to give the money she had raised to the local international school for their sports and leisure program because ‘there wasn’t enough for a decent clinic anyway and it would be terrible to start something she couldn’t finish’. And besides, this way the money was benefiting her own children as well. Dominic had watched a whole shipment of new football boots arrive from England for his school’s soccer team and felt sick.

  It took only a few more years before all his mother did was attend morning tea and afternoon tea and supper and dinners and post-dinner parties with the other local expatriate wives. She stopped being the interesting woman he remembered as a boy, and became a well-dressed, frowning version of herself who had little passion for life or her family.

  It wasn’t all bad though. As she backed away from her family, Dom and Kaide had spent more and more time together. And they became close friends.

  Kaide was adopted when their parents were working on a government information-sharing program in Japan. And when they returned to Washington his mother had been an activist for an adoption group, trying to make it easier for Americans to adopt internationally. Many years ago, he’d stumbled across an article in one of her journals – something he wished he had never opened – that accused her of suggesting that orphans from other countries were more deserving than American babies. The article wasn’t too damning, but when he saw the date at the top of the page, a hard knot rose into his throat. He was adopted three months later. He felt like the rebuttal in a debate – something someone said to silence the opposition, but then had to live with. Ever since then, he’d seen his parents in a different light. He’d always wondered whether they actually liked the life they had chosen, or whether they just liked the idea of being those people. When he stood back, and watched with his newfound perspective, he felt as though they paraded their ‘rainbow children’ like a plaque they had received for good behaviour.

  Dom had spent the longest part of his life in India, where his father was incredibly busy in his role as an ambassador working on trade deals and some sort of peace with Pakistan and, after her enthusiasm for changing the world had waned, his mother wandered around in a bored daze.

  Even though he liked it more in America, Kaide loved it here. Since she had reached high school their parents had sent her to boarding schools in Singapore, Australia and America and each time it had been politely suggested that she should return home until she could learn to follow the rules. In the end she had convinced her parents that she was perfectly happy with the local Delhi International School and she had been finishing high school there. She spoke Hindi perfectly, much better than he did.

  ‘How was your year?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Junior next year.’

  ‘Mmm hmm.’

  ‘You say less every year, you know that? Next year, you’ll just grunt. You’re a sitcom teenager.’ She laughed again and he sank back into his seat, and began the inevitable task of reducing his school year into highlights. At least she was interested.

  ‘I had a good year. I roomed with Michael Dempsey again and we played basketball together. Made the senior reserve team. Got mostly B’s. Mum will be disappointed.’

  ‘All that wasted potential, Domdom. Especially for an orphan rescued from the ghetto.’ Kaide started ducking Dom’s playful retaliation before she even finished the sentence.

  ‘Better than the rice paddy they found you floating in. I got an A for Math and a C- for
this stupid new health subject we have to do. Had to write a paper on vegetarianism.’ Dom shuddered as he thought about it and gazed at the small herd of cows his sister was impatiently honking at. ‘You wanna do a road trip or something this summer?’

  ‘Maybe. I have to do some summer school.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I might have forgotten to go to school for a month when the Goa festival was on. I’ve only just been allowed back out of the house.’

  ‘Just don’t get grounded while I’m here.’ He reached into his bag and pulled out a bag of peanut butter cups and handed them to her. She squealed and swerved trying to get them open while she drove. Dom snatched them back to avoid an accident, and ripped a couple open for her.

  ‘Fanku,’ she managed through a mouthful. ‘Girls?’

  ‘What?’ He knew what she meant, but pretended not to. They were almost home.

  ‘Kisses? Hand-holding? Movies?’ she mocked him, raising an eyebrow. ‘More?’

  ‘Shut up. Where are we going?’

  ‘I’ll take that as a nothing at all then.’ She laughed. ‘It’s too late to bother going home. I’m taking you straight to the clinic. Dad’ll meet us there before he goes to the office. I asked Mum to come too. Who knows if she will though.’

  They rounded another crowded, filthy street and were out of the main part of the city. The buildings dropped off in size and increased in density, dozens of tin huts crowded together, brightly coloured tarpaulins and sarongs draped over roofs and doorways.

  Dom’s pride forced him to open up. ‘I had plenty of girls begging for me, Kaide, if you must know. A few dates. Kissed Sierra Page. But she had an annoying laugh and she didn’t know where India was.’

  Kaide smirked. ‘Don’t worry, someone will love you one day. Even your hair.’

  Her driving became much more conservative as she inched her way through the dark and narrow streets. Candles and lamplight seeped from the houses on either side of the road, and the rising sun was almost visible through the smog, but it was quite gloomy, and she had to concentrate to avoid animals, potholes and scrap metal.