‘Of course not! But we pick our battles. Wound treatment, broken bones, fungal infections. All those little things that were so easily fixed with a trip to the pharmacy are suddenly more dangerous now. An untreated infection could be life-threatening.’ Clarita turns to me. ‘How many people with medical training are there back in Jubilee?’
Mateo and I exchange a look. ‘Jim Willis was here,’ I say slowly. ‘For your seminar.’
Clarita’s shoulders slump. ‘He was in the sick bay. Doing stocktake with the nurse. Who else?’
‘That’s it.’
‘What about a dentist? Pharmacy? A vet?’ Clarita can’t keep the tremble out of her voice.
‘The nearest dentist is in Matadale. The pharmacy ran out of Jim Willis’s clinic. And Vicky Vassili is our vet. She’s visiting her sister in Perth this week.’
I wonder where Vicky is, and if she’s trying to find her way back to Jubilee, or to Garton, where Ana’s school is.
Clarita takes a deep breath. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Okay.’
We sit there for a moment in silence. There is no good news. Everything is getting worse.
‘But we still don’t know what happened,’ Mateo says at last. ‘The power could come back on tomorrow.’ There’s a hopeful note in his voice, but I can tell he knows it’s unlikely.
‘We’re pretty sure we know what happened,’ says Clarita. ‘Come on, I’ll introduce you to Keith.’
She leads us past the sinkhole and the rubble to the remains of the accommodation wing, and bangs on the first intact door.
‘Come in,’ yells a voice.
Clarita pushes the door open. The mining accommodation looks like a block of motel rooms, each one with a bed, a TV, a wardrobe and a bathroom. This one is dimly illuminated by half a dozen sputtering candles. A man is reclining on the bed, attempting to read a book in the half-light. He’s skinny, with prominent cheekbones and faded tattoos snaking around his wrists.
He looks up as we all file into the little room, and puts down his book.
‘This is Keith,’ Clarita explains. ‘He was driving a shipment down the highway from Hansbach when his truck stalled. He spent the night in his cabin, and then walked back yesterday. He arrived dehydrated but otherwise fine.’
Keith sits up with a tight smile and swings his legs over the side of the bed, leaning forward to shake our hands as Clarita introduces us.
‘Tell them what you know,’ she says to him.
Keith rubs a hand over his stubbled chin. ‘I was heading here to pick up the latest shipment to take back to Garton. It’s my daughter’s birthday tomorrow and I wanted to be home for it. I had the radio on, but the reception was really crummy. I’ve got digital, and usually it’s fine, even out here. But I did hear this emergency news broadcast. Some bloke from NASA with a warning. Something called a CME.’
‘Coronal mass ejection,’ says Mateo. ‘A solar storm.’
I glance at him sharply. I know what a CME is. How does he?
He catches my look and shrugs. ‘I’m a science nerd,’ he says. ‘It explains why the sky is so crazy. The aurora borealis.’
‘Australis,’ Keith corrects. ‘The aurora borealis is in the Northern Hemisphere. Down here it’s the aurora australis.’
‘Right.’
‘The guy on the radio said the CME looked like a big one,’ Keith says. ‘He warned it could knock out satellite and GPS over the next few days.’
I glance at Mateo, who is nodding, and decide to play dumb.
‘Can a solar storm create an EMP?’ I ask him, knowing full well it can.
Mateo nods. ‘It’s happened before. Something called the Carrington Event in the eighteen-fifties. It fried all the telegraph machines – the people who were operating them at the time got nasty electric shocks.’ He pauses. ‘Of course we’re so much more reliant on electricity now.’
I see Keith’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallows.
‘I’m sorry you missed your daughter’s birthday,’ I tell him.
‘Yeah,’ he replies, his voice quiet. ‘Me too.’
Clarita suggests Mateo and I stay in the accommodation block to get some rest. Keith donates a couple of candles, and we head out the door. Clarita goes back to the canteen to check on her patients. Mateo and I pause awkwardly outside the cabin next to Keith’s.
‘Do you…’ Mateo stops and looks around. ‘I’m not trying to creep on you,’ he says. ‘I guess I…’
‘I don’t want to be alone,’ I tell him, and he looks relieved.
‘Me either.’
The cabin is small, identical to the one we were just in. Everything is dimly lit in the green light of the aurora. We station our candles on the two bedside tables. I check in the wardrobe and find someone’s neatly folded clothes – a few T-shirts, some boxers and a pair of tracksuit pants. I take a T-shirt and a pair of boxers for myself, and hand Mateo another shirt and the trackies.
He makes a face. ‘You don’t feel weird?’ he says. ‘Wearing…a dead man’s clothes?’
‘Sure.’ I shrug. ‘But I also feel weird wearing these filthy clothes I’ve had on for the past two days.’
I head into the bathroom and balance my torch on the vanity. I reach over to the shower and turn the mixer on, but nothing comes out. I try the sink. Nothing.
‘The mine must have an electric pump for the water,’ says Mateo. ‘Means we can’t use the toilet either.’
I scowl and yank the top off the toilet cistern, grabbing a towel from the rail.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Mateo asks, standing in the doorway.
‘I need to wash. I’m dusty and sweaty and gross, and I want to be clean. Some privacy would be great.’
‘You can’t wash in toilet water,’ Mateo says, aghast. ‘That’s disgusting.’
‘I’m not using the water in the bowl,’ I tell him. ‘The cistern water is perfectly clean. It’s the same water that you drink.’
He is deeply unimpressed, but I shoo him from the room and shut the door. I strip off my filthy clothes and dip the towel into the water, sponging myself off the best I can. It isn’t much of a wash, but it makes me feel a million times better. I dry off using another towel, and pull on the T-shirt and boxers. Everything is too big, and it hangs loosely from my frame. I wonder which room was Dad’s, and what clothes he left behind. I try to remember what he was wearing when he left home, but I can’t.
Mateo is lying on the bed, pointing the remote at the blank TV and clicking the buttons.
‘Anything good on?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘Nope,’ he says. ‘Typical.’
‘There’s plenty of water left,’ I tell him.
He shoots me a dubious look, but heads into the bathroom and shuts the door. When he reappears he’s wearing an oversized Australian flag T-shirt that makes me laugh out loud. Is it wrong to laugh when your father is probably dead? This is new territory for me.
We lie side by side on the bed and I switch off the torch. The blinds are up, and the room is bathed in the eerie green and pink wash of the aurora. I feel like something heavy is sitting on my chest. I close my eyes and try to picture Dad. I’m sure he was wearing a button-down shirt, but which one? The blue stripes? The green and orange check?
‘Are you okay?’ I ask Mateo.
‘Nope. You?’
‘Nope.’
‘I’m worried about my mom,’ he says. ‘My other mom. She’s in Melbourne, and she doesn’t know anyone there. Doesn’t know the city.’
‘You think this is happening there too?’
‘Maybe. Yeah.’
I think about my own mother. Is she still alive?
‘What are you thinking about?’ Mateo asks.
‘A juicy burger with extra pickles,’ I say.
‘Me too,’ says Mateo, and we both know that we are lying.
‘But without the pickles,’ he adds. ‘Pickles are unacceptable.’
‘There’s a vending machine outside,’ I tell him.
‘I’ve only got notes,’ he says. ‘Do you have change for a twenty?’
I start to laugh, and it feels terrible and great at the same time. I feel giddy, like I’ve just climbed off a rollercoaster.
Mateo stares at me for a moment, then understanding dawns on his face and he scrambles out of bed. I hear his footsteps outside along the walkway. There’s a moment’s silence, then I hear several loud bangs, and the crack of safety glass breaking.
He reappears with his arms full of junk food.
‘What did you use to break the glass?’ I ask.
He raises an eyebrow at me. ‘This is a mine. There’s no shortage of rocks.’
I sit up and we open Burger Rings and Twisties and Pods.
I remove the Picnic and the Snickers bars, sliding them across the doona cover so they are quarantined on their own. ‘Peanuts,’ I remind him.
‘Right,’ he says, and hurls them off the bed into the corner.
Mateo is fascinated by Australian junk food, and as I watch him taste everything, I can almost pretend that everything is normal. But eventually Mateo falls asleep, his breathing steady and low. And then I’m alone with my thoughts.
I can’t stop thinking about them. The men below me right now, their bodies crushed under soil and rock. Did any of them make it to the underground safety chambers? In some ways it would be worse for them. They don’t know that the power is out everywhere. They’ll be patiently waiting to be rescued. There are supplies in those chambers. Food and water and first-aid kits. They could survive down there for weeks, waiting, waiting.
But nobody will come.
I’m so tired, but I can’t switch off my brain. I can’t stop feeling guilty.
I thought Dad was paranoid. I went along with it all because I know how much he loved us, but I never really believed it.
It’s entirely possible the EMP has knocked out the power for the whole country. Or even the Asia-Pacific region. It could even go further than that. It could be everywhere.
If we’d stayed in the city, I probably wouldn’t’ve made it. Maybe it would have been quick – a car accident at the very moment the EMP hit. Maybe it would have been an infectious disease. Maybe I’d be one of the poor souls to get stranded in a lift – a slow, torturous death by dehydration and starvation.
I gulp down a sickening burp of horror as I realise that if this is as serious as I think it is, there isn’t much hope out there for Mum. For Zaina or any of my friends back in the city. Ana might be okay – her boarding school is on a large country estate, and if they’re smart they should be able to hole up and survive there for quite a while.
For the first time since we came here, I really want to go to the Paddock.
Dad was right.
He really did know what was best for us. He’d dragged us kicking and screaming into the wilderness, and he’d saved our lives, and almost certainly lost his own.
Through the window, I can see sparks falling from the sky. Last night they were little streaks of white, but tonight they’re red, like a rain of blood.
7
I wake in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room. Weak daylight struggles through the window, illuminating the miner’s cabin.
The unbearable chasm of grief opens up inside me as I remember the revelations of the night before. The explosion. The buried miners.
Dad.
Mateo’s warmth next to me in the bed is a lifeline. I roll over to look at him.
He looks vulnerable and childlike without his glasses. His lashes are long and thick. There’s a spray of dark freckles across the bridge of his nose. His lips are full and relaxed. His rainbow hair is tousled, sticking up in all directions and curling gently over his forehead. The green stud in his nose twinkles in the morning light. There’s a faint haze of stubble on his chin, and I wonder how often he shaves.
He opens his eyes, and I feel like a massive creep for perving on him. But he smiles at me.
‘Hey,’ he says.
‘Hi.’
‘Is everything still shit?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
He nods, and we stare at each other for a while.
We don’t touch, but it feels intimate nonetheless. We shared a bed. I’ve never done that before. There hasn’t been any kissing since the disastrous epipen incident, but I feel as if there might be more. I think I want there to be more. Kissing seems like a pleasant distraction from the end of the world.
The quiet intimacy of the morning doesn’t last, though. We chew our way through some junk food for breakfast, and then change into more of the dead man’s clothing.
The heavy clouds have returned and the humidity is back, making everything difficult and slow. Mateo heads to the canteen, where Clarita has already been up for hours tending to the wounded. I make my way to the carpark. There aren’t many cars as most people fly in to Hansbach. I use the coathanger I took from the wardrobe in the cabin to break into Dad’s Jeep. I don’t know what I’m looking for – something. A message. A sign.
His thermos is in the cup-holder. There’s a protein bar wrapper on the passenger seat. But otherwise nothing. I climb into the back and poke around.
His bug-out bag isn’t here. I check all the likely hiding places. It’s definitely gone. It wasn’t in his office. Could he have left it in his cabin?
Or could he have it with him?
‘I’ve organised them according to a START triage system,’ Clarita explains, pointing at the beds.
‘Start?’ I ask.
‘Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment.’ Clarita indicates the line of beds. ‘There are four coloured tags: Green, Yellow, Red and Black.’
She points to where there is a piece of copy paper taped above each patient with a coloured X on it.
‘The Green tags are walking wounded. They are probably complaining the most, but that means they are in the least amount of danger. The Yellow tags can’t move due to broken bones or concussions, but they can breathe and their heart is behaving like it should. Red tag patients require immediate treatment. They’re having trouble breathing, or they could be suffering excessive blood loss. Urgent stuff.’
‘What about the Black tag?’ I ask.
Clarita doesn’t answer for a moment. ‘They’re in another building,’ she says at last.
‘Black tags aren’t breathing at all,’ Mateo tells me. ‘They’re dead.’
Under Clarita’s instruction, Mateo and I change bandages, clean wounds and administer pain relief to the eight or so Green and Yellow patients, while she works on the six Reds. Before long I am streaming with sweat, having to stop regularly to dizzily gulp water and mop my brow. Clarita seems tireless, moving from patient to patient with barely a break to sip water or wolf down some food that Keith brings her from the canteen. Keith designates himself our valet, fetching and carrying and making sure we’re all fed and hydrated. He stays away from the patients as much as he can.
‘It’s the blood,’ he tells me apologetically. ‘I’m not good around blood.’
Every time I approach a new bed I’m hit with a shock of recognition. These men are my neighbours. I’ve hung out with their kids, been to their houses. It’s frightening to see them so incapacitated and vulnerable.
Clarita is amazing. She’s bossy in a good-humoured sort of way, joking with the men but taking none of their shit. She moves from bed to bed, remembering everyone’s name, their medical history, the names of their wives and children. She works quickly and efficiently, and I can see how skilled she is.
‘Let me get up today,’ begs Greg Fischer. ‘I feel fine, I promise.’
Clarita snorts. ‘You think you are fine? A fifty-pound boulder fell on your leg. You’re lucky to be alive.’
Greg’s face reminds me of a scolded schoolboy. He doesn’t try to argue with her.
Clarita moves on to the next bed,
where Paul Randall is lying, his face a mask of pain. ‘You’ve broken some ribs and I think you’re bleeding internally,’ she says. ‘The good news is, I can stop the bleeding and stabilise the wound. The bad news is, I have a limited amount of painkillers and six patients who need my attention more than you.’
Paul groans. ‘How long will I have to wait?’
‘Probably five or six hours.’
‘Five or six hours?’ Paul’s voice is hoarse. ‘With not so much as an aspirin?’
‘It could be worse,’ Clarita says with a shrug. ‘You could be dead.’
We work hard. Clarita gives me plenty of guidance, but I know a lot of this stuff anyway. By mid-afternoon, Greg Van Hasselt and Kim Ng have improved enough to be reclassified as Yellow, and Laurie McCall’s collapsed lung has been aspirated, moving him from Red to Green.
‘Sorry about your dad, love,’ Spud Symons says to me as I change the dressing on his shoulder. He’s in pretty good shape, only a Green. He was in the head frame when the explosion happened, about to descend into the mine. He was thrown clear of the frame, but his arms and chest are covered in cuts and bruises from the impact of his fall, and from the rain of rock and rubble that followed him. He was lucky – except for the bandage that I’m applying, he’s got one broken finger, splinted and taped.
‘Thanks,’ I say, stretching a clip onto the bandage to keep it in place. I pick up his shirt and stare at it for a moment. I still can’t remember what Dad was wearing when he left. Does that make me a bad daughter? Shouldn’t I be able to remember?
‘The nurse is pretty good, ay,’ he says to me, loud enough that Clarita can hear him. ‘She’s bloody bossy, but easy on the eye.’
Clarita rolls her eyes from where she’s attempting to reset Greg Fischer’s broken femur.
My hand brushes against Spud’s stomach as I pull the shirt around him, and he grunts and flinches away.
‘Watch it,’ he growls, his tone totally changed.
I frown and deliberately place my hand on his belly, pushing gently.
‘What the fuck d’you think you’re doing?’ Spud barks, his voice ragged with aggression.
‘Clarita,’ I call. ‘You’d better come and check this out.’
After the Lights Go Out Page 9