Carousel

by Brendan Ritchie

  ‘Really?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah. Taylor and Lizzy were at Southbound,’ he said. ‘I was getting chips when they were playing. I haven’t told them.’

  I laughed. Rocky joined me, coughing.

  ‘Good idea,’ I said.

  Rocky nodded. ‘Do you like Lizzy best?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh no. I mean, we hang out more. But I still really like Taylor. They’re just different,’ I replied.

  ‘I like them both,’ he said.

  It was really genuine and I got an inkling of Rocky’s bond to the Finns.

  ‘Did you like Rachel?’ he joked.

  ‘She was pretty mental,’ I replied.

  Rocky smiled and coughed a little. I got him a water from beneath the table.

  ‘Hey, how come you asked her what bus she was on?’ I asked.

  ‘I take the five-oh-nine,’ he replied.

  ‘Was Rachel on the bus with you that morning?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t think so. I took the early one,’ he replied. ‘Sometimes me and Geri meet before work. There’s a vending machine at the stairs behind Target,’ he replied.

  My head was spinning.

  ‘Did you meet her that morning?’ I asked.

  ‘Played Crow and waited around,’ he replied. ‘Then I went inside.’

  ‘She didn’t show up?’ I asked.

  ‘Sometimes she sleeps in,’ he replied.

  ‘Did anything happen while you were outside, Rock?’

  He glanced at me, eyes with a glimmer of something.

  ‘It was really windy. Just for a second.’

  I nodded and tried hard to process what I’d just been told. Having said what he needed, Rocky sat back and picked up a magazine.

  19

  Rocky’s improvement was fleeting. The afternoon of our conversation he was back on the couch with a fever. Lizzy quickly switched him over to our last antibiotic option. This seemed to give him a slight boost. He became restless in between sleeping and we allowed him to roll around on a BMX in the adjacent corridor. During one of these sessions he disappeared for half an hour, leaving Taylor close to hysterics.

  Two days later I was sitting with him when he started coughing and wasn’t able to stop. I shifted him to the edge of the couch and put a bucket on the floor to catch the fluid coming up. The coughing sounded deep and raw and made me cringe, but it was his breathing that really freaked me out. There just didn’t seem to be time for him to inhale any air. Crouching beside him with my hand on his back I noticed his face was mauve.

  I grabbed my radio and tried hard to sound casual.

  ‘Hey. Can you guys come back, please? Rocky has a bit of a cough and I want to get him some more water,’ I said.

  It was a weird thing to say and I was hoping that this would tell the Finns that I was freaking out, without me having to say it directly.

  ‘Yeah, Nox,’ said Lizzy.

  ‘Be there in a sec,’ said Taylor.

  I was still crouched beside him when they arrived back. The look on my face must have been pretty rough. Taylor replaced me quickly and put her head close to Rocky’s.

  ‘Just breathe when you can, Rock, okay,’ she said, soothingly. ‘I know it’s hard but just suck it in when you can.’

  Rocky nodded slightly. Lizzy quickly reloaded an asthmatic ventilator from the table and passed it to Taylor. She coaxed it between Rocky’s lips and he inhaled a little. Rocky wasn’t an asthmatic but opening up his lungs with the Ventolin was one thing we could do that sometimes helped. The presence of Taylor also seemed to calm him and the coughing eased. He raised his head and leant back against the couch again. Sweat lined the pasty, discoloured young skeleton of his face.

  I glanced in the bucket and noticed the fluid was stained pink with blood. I looked up at Lizzy. She avoided my gaze.

  A half-hour later Rocky was back on the couch like normal. Taylor left him and joined Lizzy and me at the kitchen table. She grabbed a couple of Twix bars and some water.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Lizzy.

  ‘Back to the dome. We have to get him out of here,’ she said.

  I waited for Lizzy to bite, but she didn’t.

  ‘Keep your radio close,’ she said.

  Taylor nodded.

  ‘You too,’ Lizzy said to me, before leaving us for the couch.

  I glanced apprehensively at Taylor. She put her radio in her pocket and I followed her back out into the darkening centre.

  It felt like the sun had gone down outside but none of the evening lighting had kicked in yet. The corridors leading back to the dome were dull and lifeless, and the opening didn’t offer its usual illumination as we approached.

  ‘Let’s forget the ladders and use a rope,’ said Taylor.

  ‘Hook it on the opening?’ I asked.

  Taylor looked at me and we thought it over.

  ‘I think there are ropes with hooks in Army Depot,’ I said.

  I left Taylor clearing a space among the plants at the floor of the dome and raced across to Army Depot. Lights timed on and off all around me as the centre seemed to greet our twilight mission with its own instability. The array of ropes was considerable and they were graded for strength and weight with a system that was hard to understand in the torchlight. I heaped an assortment over my shoulders and powered back to the dome, taking corners dangerously close to shopfronts and stands, splitting through patches of total black with just my memory of the centre to keep me upright.

  By the time I arrived Taylor had cleared a large patch of plants directly beneath the dome and rolled in the hand-operated forklift. She had it extended to full height, still leaving the top of the dome a dizzying distance above. We assessed the ropes under decent light but couldn’t figure if any would be long enough on their own.

  ‘Let’s just throw one up there,’ I said.

  I unravelled a red climbing rope and walked out into some open space. Taylor followed. The rope had a small grappling hook attached to the end. It didn’t really seem suitable for what we were attempting. But few things would be, given the smooth glass ceiling of the dome above. I positioned my hand a metre or so down from the hook, swung a few times, and let it fly upward.

  The rope travelled up maybe a third of the way to the top, then fell back down amid the lettuce growing to our right.

  I climbed up onto the platform of the forklift and tried again, this time aware of how much force it might take to reach up to the open edge of the dome. It got maybe halfway before it came tumbling back down and sent us ducking out of the way.

  Taylor tried a few times, once getting a touch more than halfway.

  Neither of us felt like we could afford disappointment. Taylor went straight over to a ladder and placed it against the wall where she had climbed before. I handed her a pile of rope and held onto the bottom while she headed upward. She stopped a step from the top and turned half around to face the open dome. She gripped the rope and threw the hook awkwardly upward.

  It drifted maybe two thirds of the way up to the top before falling back down.

  I kept a hold of the ladder while she quickly recoiled for another throw. I considered telling her to be careful of her balance facing outward on the ladder, but worried it would sound obvious. She swung hard and flung the hook skywards a second time.

  The ladder shuddered in my hands.

  I held it tight and looked up just in time to see Taylor lose her footing and slip downward. There was a clink from somewhere above as she smacked down onto the next rung and slipped out into open air. I watched in horror, still gripping the ladder as Taylor fell awkwardly, inevitably toward the floor.

  The bright rope spun around her like an angry snake until suddenly it became taught.

  Taylor stopped falling and swung viciously back upright. For a moment I didn’t understand. Then I saw her hands gripping the rope. Her throw had landed.

  We had a way out of Carousel.

  I bolted away from the ladder and positioned myself beneath
her in the middle of the room. She had only been five or so metres above the floor when the rope had caught her.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I yelled.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Taylor softly.

  She dangled for a moment.

  ‘Come down. It’s hooked up there so just come down and rest for a sec.’

  She eased her grip on the rope and slid down a fraction. I waited beneath her. She slid a little more.

  There was a cracking noise above.

  Before either of us could say anything there was another and the rope went slack.

  Taylor fell the remaining few metres.

  My arms shot out automatically but I wasn’t ready for the force of her fall. She thumped into me and dropped through onto the floor. Glass crashed down beside her, then onto my shoulder and head. We crouched and waited for an avalanche to fall and shred us to pieces. The last image in my head would be the silhouette of Taylor Finn dangling beautifully from a rope in the half-light of an abandoned shopping centre.

  There was a tiny tinkle, then silence.

  I looked over at Taylor. She groaned a little and pulled her knees into her chest.

  ‘You okay?’ I asked.

  She nodded without looking up.

  ‘You?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied, checking my head for blood.

  I looked warily up at the dome. We had pulled down a square of glass with the rope, but nothing more. For a moment I wondered if we might try again. Without the jarring of Taylor’s fall from the ladder maybe the dome would hold while the four of us climbed up and out.

  Then I saw the cracks. Long fractures in the glass running away from the missing panel. One of these reached all the way to the top of the wall below. Others were smaller but split out into multiple fractures that spanned large sections of the glass.

  I glanced across at Taylor and found her gazing upward too. We had turned the dome into a deathtrap of hanging glass.

  20

  The following days were a horrible, extended blur of panic and helplessness. We abandoned our attempts at escape and tried frantically to dam the swell of sickness that was swiftly engulfing Rocky. We ravaged shelves of medical books to find out more about legionnaires and locate treatments that our imprisonment could facilitate. We stripped Friendlies and the other chemists of strong painkillers, Ventolin and anything that might help him breathe. We smashed into the storage room of the dental surgery and found an oxygen machine. We messed with the gauges and tested it on ourselves before fixing the mask to Rocky and watching him rip it off, gasping for air and coughing more fluid into his buckets.

  We took turns to cry away from Rocky, only returning when we were sure we could stay composed. None of us had seen sickness up close like this. It was like Rocky was collapsing from the inside and there was nothing we could do to help him.

  After days of panic we eventually calmed. We let Rocky relax from his rigid upright position and bundled him with cushions, Lemsip and television. We stayed with him and filled the room with life; laughing at the TV, eating our favourite junk foods. Lizzy played covers on her guitar while Taylor and I held epic Mario Kart battles. All throughout, Taylor and Lizzy chatted away with a bravery that was hard to measure, offering constant comfort with the sound of their voices. They remained chirpy and funny and gave no hint of the churning lumps of grief rising deep into their throats. I loved them badly for what they gave Rocky during those days.

  Deep into the night I was curled on the couch, listening to Rocky’s ragged breath, hoping not to hear it stop. Straining my ears, I heard another noise. A deep rumbling that rolled toward us from somewhere north, then faded with a long sigh. I listened closely as it came again. Still mysterious and undisclosed. I looked around at the dim outline of the room. The dull grey of televisions and laptops flickered with light. Moments later another rumble rolled through.

  A thunderstorm was approaching.

  Lizzy watched me as I quietly sat up. She was awake beside a sleeping Taylor. I glanced at Rocky on the couch across from me. He was awake also. Once more distant lightning bounced around the walls. Rocky looked at me and I saw something in his gaze. He wanted to leave JB’s. He wanted to see the storm.

  I looked over at Lizzy. She hesitated, then gently nudged her sister awake.

  We gave Rocky a couple of painkillers and carefully lifted him onto a mattress positioned on the manual forklift Taylor had pulled across from the dome. He winced, but made no complaint. Big grumbles of thunder reached us now. Every year Perth was battered by two, maybe three, epic summer storms. For Rocky, this one had come early.

  We piled the mattress with blankets and cushions and set out toward the back entrance. I pulled it gently through the darkened corridors, its wheels and our shuffling feet echoing through the centre amid the deep, growling thunder from the north.

  I checked on Rocky several times. He was pale and gaunt, but placid on the weird, hovering bed. Taylor and Lizzy Finn walked beside him like tiny elfin sentinels in some strange ceremony or vigil. Blue light bounced around us, reflecting off walls, floors and ceilings.

  I rounded the corner and the large glass-paned eastern entrance came into view. It flickered wickedly with light and energy as the storm rolled closer. I glanced back at Rocky. His eyes danced with something I hadn’t seen in him for a long time. They shifted from the glass to mine, and stayed there.

  I pulled the platform a fraction faster. Rocky gave a tiny nod.

  I banked it left and brought it around in a one-eighty so that I was pushing it now with Rocky in the lead. Taylor and Lizzy watched me but didn’t speak. Thunder cracked and boomed outside.

  I placed the handle in forward lock and picked up speed. Pushing it out in front of me I began to run. Rocky’s hood filled with wind as he coasted through the corridors once again. Ahead of us the glass towered over, pulsing neon like a portal. There was nothing but the rush of air and rolling thunder and for a moment I forgot about Carousel and the legionnaires and the whole crazy world that had become our own.

  We closed in on our reflections and I slowed us to a gradual stop. Rocky was shadowy beneath his hood but I could still see his eyes. They rose to find mine in the glass ahead. Taylor and Lizzy caught up to us, smiling and puffing and as awesome as they had ever been. Together we pulled up to watch Rocky’s final storm rip across the city.

  21

  It was early morning on a Wednesday, or a Thursday. The Finns and I tried to do something different on weekends so that we could keep a sense of the weeks passing. But weekdays in Carousel still tended to blur. I pulled on some Asics and a hoodie and slipped silently out of JB’s into the sleeping centre.

  I scanned the iPod for a playlist while my feet took me to Pure ’n’ Natural on autopilot. The island was quiet and empty. I took an apple-berry juice box from a trolley outside and downed it while I stretched. The corridor to the east was dark and hidden. I checked the time and waited for a few seconds. There was a hum, then a flicker, and the lights timed on.

  I set off eastward at a three-quarter run.

  I stuck to the corridors that were lit, swinging a wide arch across the north-eastern edge of the centre, diverting under intersections where overhead vents offered fleeting wafts of cool, semi-fresh air. My legs felt sore and tight, but strong beneath me. They could carry me from one end of the centre to the other in under twenty minutes now. Under five on a bike. Our diets had become increasingly rigid and rationed, but I felt healthier than ever before. My body stripped nutrients from my food like a machine, keeping every scrap that it needed and expelling the rest. A brutal, efficient survival machine. I gave it whatever I could and pushed it hard in return.

  Together we prepared for a faceless, dateless moment.

  I swung right and the eastern entrance loomed brightly at the end of the corridor. The sun hadn’t risen but the clouds were rimmed with pink. I slowed to a half pace and took in the view. It was still our best window to the outside world. Mostly concrete, but also sk
y and a small patch of the hills. These days its sameness offered neither reassurance nor disillusionment. It was just the view from our back window.

  My heart thumped a little as I walked over to the garden bed running along the base of the window. I scanned the fake wooden walls for breaches of liquid or soil. It was clean and secure. I looked cautiously over the soil inside. It was damp and fertile looking, but nothing grew in the long, rectangular expanse. I took a watering can and showered it sparingly with water from one end to the other. Last summer, we had just about drowned the plants under the dome with constant, anxious watering. Here at the back entrance it was warmer, but I still had to be careful. We couldn’t afford to fail this time. We needed something to germinate.

  I sat back from the garden and rolled out a yoga mat. Outside, the colours had changed, but the sun remained hidden. I ran through a simple routine I’d learnt from a DVD and let the breathing wake me properly. When the sun spilled onto my forehead I rose and jogged to Myer to start writing.

  Despite now living in JB’s with the Finns, I chose the third level of Myer to do my writing. For a long time I didn’t venture up to the level above my previous bedroom. It was predominantly furniture and kids’ toys. Taylor and I had a brief obsession with remote-controlled stuff that had us clambering breathlessly up both escalators to search the shelves for cars and trucks, but otherwise it was left alone with the other seventy percent of Carousel that we didn’t enter.

  Most of the desks were made of thick and heavy timber and I probably could have got the Finns to help me lug one downstairs if I wanted. But one day I sat at one with my laptop and it felt like a good place to write. Distraction was everywhere in an abandoned shopping complex. But, with its pastel lounges and dusty rows of kids’ toys, Myer’s upper level was mundane enough for my attention to be elsewhere.

  And I was actually making some progress.

  After a bunch of abandoned novellas and screenplays, I had turned my attention to shorter work. My only satisfaction, or maybe confidence, from writing so far had come from working on short stories. The stakes seemed lower and by the time a story rose up to intimidate me, it was often almost finished and I could battle through the final pages. The only thing that concerned me was that, on their own, they still felt insignificant and somehow amateur, no matter how much Lizzy would rate them. I was writing in Carousel for a lot of reasons. To fill the days, to have a focus. But also to be a writer. And a bunch of disjointed, random short stories didn’t seem to offer me that. So I decided to group them together under a loose theme and produce a book. It had meant culling a few stories, and working on some new stuff, but overall I felt a lot more comfortable. The fact that any publication was entirely hypothetical didn’t feel like an issue.