After the Lights Go Out

by Lili Wilkinson

  Mateo nods. ‘So selfish. I mean, come on, aren’t we all in this together?’

  ‘Right,’ says Blythe, without so much as a twitch.

  Mateo chews on his red jelly snake. ‘This kind of feels like summer camp,’ he says. ‘Too much junk food, no TV, swimming in a lake. Except at summer camp we had hot showers.’

  Blythe groans. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a hot shower.’

  I know for a fact that Blythe had a hot shower this morning. She lies to Mateo so easily, so calmly. Is that what I look like when I’m lying to him?

  The day feels tarnished. I sit up. ‘We’d better head off. We don’t want to be biking home in the dark.’

  We bid farewell to Keller and Mateo, who look less than thrilled to be returning to town together. Then we turn our own bikes towards the Paddock. I can still feel the cool shock of the water behind my eyelids, and the deep belly warmth of Mateo’s kisses. But over it all is a blanket of static, the heavy weight of uncertainty.

  ‘Careful,’ warns Blythe when I emerge for breakfast the next morning. ‘I am so full of farts today. You might suffocate if you come too close.’

  I pick a seat on the other side of the room, then bring up the subject of sharing supplies again. I tell the twins about Clarita, about how much work she’s done for the town, about how few medical supplies they have. About how overwhelmed she’s feeling.

  They’re sympathetic, but won’t budge.

  ‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ Grace says. ‘You know how long this could last. If we spread our resources too thinly, then we all die.’

  She sounds so cold saying it out loud like that. But…she’s right. This is what Dad has always taught us. Survival is everything.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ says Blythe with a wink. ‘When the time comes to repopulate the species, we’ll get Keller and Mateo in here for a bit.’

  Grace makes a face. ‘Blythe!’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Blythe says, putting a hand on Grace’s arm. ‘We need someone for you too.’ She cocks her head to one side, thinking. ‘There aren’t a lot of options, I’m afraid. How about Peter Wu?’

  Grace makes an exasperated noise.

  ‘I mean,’ says Blythe, ‘I know you had a crush on Jay Randall, but there’s a very good chance he’s dead now.’ She pauses. ‘Unless of course you’re into that.’

  Grace storms out of the room.

  ‘Too soon?’ Blythe says to me, then cackles to herself.

  But then she stops laughing, and I stop breathing. Even Panda stops eating and looks up. Grace reappears, all the blood draining from her face.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Someone is at the door to the Paddock.

  9

  Blood roars in my ears as I try to rationally sort through our options.

  We could pretend we’re not here, and wait for whoever it is to leave. Or we can open the door. I feel my gaze drawn to the old iron trunk, with its heavy combination lock. The person at the door could be an enemy. I’m the only one who knows how to open the trunk and use what’s inside. It’s my responsibility.

  Am I ready for that? Could I really do it?

  The twins are staring at me with identical expressions on their identical faces, waiting for me to make a decision.

  ‘What if it’s Dad?’ Blythe mouths.

  Dad would just let himself in.

  Unless he’s forgotten the code for the door. Maybe wherever he’s been, whatever he’s been through, has been so traumatic he can’t remember it. Maybe his hands are shaking too much.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  There’s a voice now, on the other side. It’s muffled because of the thick lead-lined steel door, but I can make out the words.

  ‘Blythe? Grace? I know you’re in there!’

  I look at Blythe, horrified.

  It’s Keller Reid.

  Before I can do anything, Blythe flies across the room and hauls the door open. Grace sinks onto the couch, her hand over her heart.

  Keller Reid stands in the doorway with a smug expression on his face. He reminds me of the messenger guy in The Sound of Music who is all lovely to Liesl von Trapp but then doesn’t hesitate to sell the whole family out to the Nazis at the first opportunity.

  ‘How did you find us?’ I ask, glaring at Blythe.

  ‘It wasn’t me!’ she protests. ‘I didn’t tell him, I swear.’

  ‘She didn’t,’ Keller confirms. ‘I figured it out myself. I’ve been delivering mysterious parcels to your dad for the last year, Pru. And then you knew all about the car, and you’ve all been so calm and relaxed when everyone else has been panicking. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out. Yesterday I sent Mateo back to Jubilee on his own and followed you.’

  I can’t believe we’ve been so careless. I didn’t even look over my shoulder as we walked along the ridge last night. I imagine Keller lurking in the thicket, watching as we opened the trapdoor and went down the stairs. He must have gone home then, and come back this morning. It’s chilling to think about. If Keller Reid could so easily find the Paddock, then others can too. We’re vulnerable. It isn’t the bastion of safety that Dad envisioned it would be. And yet – I’m still not completely convinced. Sure, Keller could have guessed Dad was keeping secrets. Maybe he even guessed that Dad had a bunker. But Blythe must have told him something.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ says Blythe, drawing him in and gesturing towards the couch.

  He sits next to Grace and gives her a friendly elbow in the ribs. Grace starts a little, and I see a pinky blush stain her cheeks. Blythe sits on the other side of Keller, and it seems like such an obvious metaphor, his creepy face coming between the twins, keeping them separate when they should be together.

  ‘This is a pretty impressive operation,’ Keller says, looking around. ‘You’ll have to give me a tour.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ I say, cutting off whatever ridiculous reply Blythe is planning. My mind is racing, trying to figure out how to convince Keller to keep our secret.

  ‘How did your old man afford it?’ he asks. ‘All this?’

  ‘Our grandparents died,’ Blythe tells him. ‘Dad inherited a chunk of money. In their will they said they wanted Dad to use it to help us out with uni expenses or house deposits when we got older. But Dad thought the best way he could help us would be to drag us out to the desert and drop over a million dollars on a stupid bunker.’

  ‘He was right,’ Grace says, her mouth pinching into a thin line.

  ‘So…’ Keller is peering down the narrow corridor to the other rooms. ‘Is he here?’

  ‘Who?’ asks Blythe.

  ‘Your dad,’ says Keller, like it should be obvious.

  ‘No,’ I reply. ‘He died at Hansbach with all the others. You already know that.’

  ‘I figured it was a ruse. I guess I thought he’d be harder to take down.’

  Keller says this with the kind of smile that I’m sure foxes have when they discover the door to the henhouse has been left unlocked. I really, really want to punch him.

  Grace gets up and fetches Keller a glass of reconstituted orange juice, and Keller asks too many questions, about how the bunker is powered, what kind of supplies we have, what our defences are. I try to deflect each time, but Blythe gives away far too much, and Grace doesn’t stop her.

  ‘Anyway,’ Keller says at last, with a rueful smile. ‘I guess I’d better head back to town. Thanks for letting me visit, girls. It’s been…really hard. Losing my dad and all. Lonely. It’s great to see that you’re all doing okay.’

  He stands to go, letting his floppy hair fall appealingly into his eyes. Snake. As if we let him visit. He spied on us! And now he’s trying to slither his way in here, using his charm and our guilt. Well, it isn’t happening. There’s no way Keller Reid is staying in the Paddock.

  ‘Stay for breakfast,’ Blythe says. ‘You should feel free to come whenever you want. We’ll share our stuff with you.’

  I turn to her, spluttering with outr
age.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, Pru,’ says Blythe. ‘You know as well as I do how vulnerable we’ll be if Keller tells anyone about the Paddock. We could lose everything. We need to give him an incentive to keep quiet.’

  I stare at her. ‘Are you saying you want to bribe him with our supplies, because you don’t trust he’ll keep his mouth shut if we send him back to Jubilee?’

  Blythe shrugs. ‘It doesn’t matter if I trust him or not. Dad wouldn’t trust him. Dad would want security.’

  Dad would probably shoot him. He’d love to have an excuse.

  I glance over at Keller, expecting him to look outraged at Blythe’s implication that he isn’t trustworthy. But instead he is smiling at her in admiration. He would definitely betray us to the Nazis given the chance.

  ‘Let’s vote,’ says Blythe. ‘All those in favour of letting Keller have regular access to the Paddock?’

  She raises her own hand, and Keller sheepishly does too. I nearly explode when I see Grace lift her hand with a timid smile.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ I hiss at her.

  Her smile falters. ‘Blythe is right. We need to protect ourselves.’

  And so Keller Reid becomes an authorised visitor to the Paddock.

  Dad liked to tell us about what would happen in the days immediately following The Big One. There would be many deaths – those in hospitals or nursing homes who were dependent on medication and technology. This would make the unprepared realise the gravity of the situation, and the golden horde would descend.

  The golden horde was a term he’d picked up from some survival blogger, referring to all the rich privileged people living in the big cities who would flee to the country once the shit hit the fan, and expect to be fed and supported by rural folk. Avoiding the golden horde was one of the main reasons Dad chose Jubilee – it’s far too remote to attract any refugees. Jubilee also won’t experience any of the pressures of the big cities – we aren’t so dependent on electricity. We don’t have a sewer-based waste treatment system, and even when the water tower goes dry, it isn’t that hard to fetch water from Lake Lincoln. But there is one area where Jubilee is vulnerable, and that’s food.

  Apart from a few strips of land along the banks of Lake Lincoln, the earth here is too dry and sandy to cultivate much produce. There aren’t any commercial market gardens or farms nearby. Everything we consume is shipped in. The only thing we produced locally was the bread Mr Kausler baked.

  Most people have less than a week’s worth of food in their house, Dad used to say smugly. They won’t know what hit them.

  This was the tipping point, he’d say. When the unprepared started running out of food, desperation would set in. People would turn. There’d be looting, violence, vandalism. Neighbour would turn against neighbour and chaos would reign. That’s why he told us to stay put, to bug in.

  Wait until things calm down, he’d say. It’ll only take a month or two.

  What he meant was, wait until most of them starve to death.

  Ten days after the power goes out, the twins and I cycle into town and I can feel that something is different. There’s an energy in the air, like someone has flicked a switch. I see curtains twitch, and feel a prickle down my spine.

  Throughout Jubilee we spot the telltale signs of hunger, boredom and desperation. The unoccupied buildings have been ransacked. Doors are open, some windows are smashed. There is rubbish in the gutter, empty wine bottles and tins and packets.

  The clouds are so low and heavy I feel as if I could reach up and touch them. The wet season still hasn’t begun, and I wonder if the solar storm could be affecting the weather. I’m going crazy waiting for it to rain, always poised on the brink, like a sneeze that never comes.

  We pass Simmone’s Café. The glass storefront has been boarded up with plywood. I see Laurine Zubek poke her head out of her front door as we cycle by, her eyes narrow with suspicion.

  We’ve reached the tipping point.

  Two small faces peek around a corner – Paddy Nowak and Emma Zubek. They don’t run alongside us and cheer this time. Their eyes are wide and their faces grimy, and they look lost, even though they’re both only metres from their houses.

  We are ostensibly here to help Peter Wu organise the memorial service, but I want to see Mateo first, so I tell the twins I’ll meet them at the Heart later on. I’m about to walk in the door of the hotel when there’s a sudden explosion of sound behind me, and I turn to see Jan Marshall banging on the door to Barri’s salon, shrieking at her to show her face.

  ‘Come out, you selfish, lying bitch!’ She hammers on the door. ‘Don’t think I won’t smash this door.’

  Through the big glass window, I see Barri emerge from the back of her shop. She looks thinner, haunted by sleeplessness and grief and hunger. But when she sees Jan she raises her chin slightly, a moment of defiance.

  ‘Open this bloody door.’

  Barri crosses the floor slowly, like she’s in no hurry. Her eyes glint with some hidden emotion. She unlocks the door and opens it, standing face to face with Jan.

  Like insects creeping from rotten wood, people come out to witness the impending fight. The twins reappear and come over to stand next to me.

  ‘What’s going on?’ whispers Blythe.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I whisper back.

  I see Simmone and David Bratton emerge from the back of the café. Violet Hickory and Georgie Nowak watch from over by the Heart. Keith and Clarita stand close by.

  ‘You’ve got balls, Barri Taylor,’ Jan hisses. ‘Facing me after what you did.’

  Barri doesn’t say anything.

  ‘You’re not even going to admit it, are you?’ She turns to the rest of us, happy for an audience. ‘She broke into my shop. She stole from me!’

  Barri snarls. ‘You think you’re King Shit, don’t you, Jan?’ she says. ‘Sitting back there on your mountain of food with your door shut.’

  ‘You had no right—’

  ‘Didn’t I? What right do you have to keep all that stuff while the rest of us starve to death? There are kids out here! And Georgie – she’s pregnant, for god’s sake!’

  ‘Right, right, so you’re the town’s Robin Hood, all of a sudden.’ Jan’s voice is thick with sarcasm. ‘Robbing the rich to give to the poor? Is that how it is?’ She looks over at Georgie. ‘You seen any of this loot then? No? Didn’t think so.’ She turns back to Barri. ‘You’re selfish.’

  ‘At least my kids still call me,’ Barri says. ‘At least they still come home for Christmas. When was the last time you heard from your kids?’

  There’s a moment of silence as both of them remember that nobody has heard from anyone. Tears start in Jan’s eyes, but she dashes them away angrily.

  ‘Mick always said you were a bitch,’ she said, her voice low.

  ‘Yeah?’ Barri leans in, her voice even lower. ‘Well, maybe he was trying to throw you off the scent. Because he didn’t seem to think I was a bitch that night after the Brattons’ anniversary party. When you went home with a headache? He seemed to think I was pretty great that night.’

  Jan lets out an animal-like howl and hurls herself at Barri. The two women wrestle awkwardly, grunting and pushing.

  ‘Okay,’ says Violet, as she and Keith pull them apart. ‘That’s enough.’

  Jan struggles against Keith, scratching his forearm with her long pink nails. He steps back suddenly, holding up his arms in surrender.

  Barri has clapped a hand over her mouth, as if by doing so she can put the words back in. ‘Jan,’ she says, her voice muffled. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t—’

  Jan cuts her off. ‘Mick kept a shotgun in the back shed,’ she says, looking around at us all. ‘Next person who enters my shop will cop it.’

  She turns and marches away, and there’s a moment of silence as we all process what happened. I feel rattled. Dad was right. Neighbour is turning on neighbour, just like he said.

  Ninety per cent of people will be dead within the first ye
ar.

  How many people are left in Jubilee now – fewer than twenty? I wonder whether any of them will make it.

  Jan’s position seems so indefensible. Whatever happened at the Brattons’ anniversary party aside, Barri is right. Jan is hoarding her food. She is letting her neighbours starve.

  So am I.

  But I’m doing it to protect my family. Jan is alone.

  Does that make a difference, in the end? I look around at the empty buildings, the drawn curtains, the rubbish on the streets. I look at the knot of onlookers. They don’t talk to each other. I see a hardness in their expressions, a hollowness to the eyes. Dad used to say that humanity was nine meals from anarchy. And in this, like in everything else, he was right.

  For the first time since the EMP, I want to return to the Paddock, lock the door and stay there, away from the unpredictability of desperate people.

  Grace looks over at me and Blythe. ‘Did you know?’ she asked. ‘About Barri and Mick?’

  I shrug. ‘No idea.’

  ‘How awful for Jan.’

  ‘The upside,’ says Blythe with a toss of her head, ‘is now we know who to eat first.’

  Blythe has never been great with volume, and her voice carries clearly through the little crowd. A few people turn and frown at her.

  ‘What?’ she says, genuinely confused. ‘Oh, come on. You were all thinking it.’

  There is no response. Blythe sighs. ‘Whatever,’ she says. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  She and Grace head into the Heart.

  Violet raises her eyebrows, and escorts Barri back into her shop. ‘Let’s have a chat,’ she says. Georgie and Paddy head back to the garage, and Simmone and David return to the boarded-up café.

  Clarita walks over to Keith and reaches out for his scratched arm. ‘Let me see that,’ she says. ‘You can’t risk an infection these days.’

  Keith snatches his arm away. ‘Don’t,’ he says, his voice sharp. ‘Let me take care of it.’

  He steps backwards, as though he’s afraid Clarita’s touch will poison him.