Loosed Upon the World

by John Joseph Adams

  She doesn’t get to finish her sentence. Somebody calls out, “Lightning!”

  Janny looks up, startled, points to the empty airspace above the Base. Racers stand there frozen, jam jars of fermented melon hooch clutched in their hands.

  “I don’t see any—”

  “Wait—there it is again!”

  This time, they see and hear it too, a cracking split. Like thunder but not. Thick spikes stabbing at the fallow dirt. Aftershocks of colour, green and red.

  There’s a scrabble for phones as a volley of sharp, thick beams shoot upwards from the Base. High-pitched whining that fades, then swells, then fades. A sonic boom followed by overbearing silence. The town dogs start barking and howling all at once. Nothing to see now. No more laser lights. The racers stuff their phones into pockets and head for their cars.

  Cracker’s already seated behind the wheel of his precious Dodge Charger. Harper runs up to cadge a lift.

  “Stay here,” he warns as he’s revving up his engine.

  “Are you shitting me?”

  But he’s got this serious look on his face and he’s not going to give her a ride. No matter. She waits till he takes off, then climbs in beside Bing Reh in his 1951 Ford Five-Star pickup. The racers are heading to the salt, their vehicles overloaded. Everyone’s in a hurry to get out there.

  The Base has fallen still and silent. No more lasers. No more lightshow. No Blackhawks either, which seems odd, considering.

  There’s more light than there ought to be, all coming from a suspicious patch of sky above the salt.

  More lightning strikes drown out the growl of engines.

  “Looks dangerous!” says Harper. Bing nods, eyes on the road. Half drunk or not, they have to go check it out.

  Her heart pounds, thinking, Lachie, please stay under cover; whatever you do, stay away from that chain link fence.

  Things are not as they had seemed when viewed from the edge of town. The lightning’s localised, not spread across the sky—they got that right, but it isn’t striking anywhere close to Base. The salt flats are soaking up the brunt of it. Singed salt particles fling themselves at Harper’s nose. She sneezes, half expecting blood. Too dark to tell what she wipes across her jeans.

  There’s no stopping Cracker. He aims his Dodge straight out into the thick of it. Looks like he’s deciding to play chicken with the lightning. Bing slows down. Harper knows what that means; he’s giving her the opportunity to get out. And she should get out, because not doing so is crazy, but instead, she nods and the pickup’s engine roars and surges.

  She can smell that smell no one ever smells anymore, that heady, moody tang just before a thunderhead lets rip. Plant oil sucked from dry rocks and soil mixed up with ozone and spores. Chemical explanations half remembered from biology class, never dreaming back then how rare the experience of rain would become in future times.

  They gather, staring at the crazy lights.

  “Red sprite lightning,” says Bing, “Or something like it.”

  Nobody argues. They’ve all seen strange stuff above and around the Base. Clouds that didn’t look like clouds when no clouds hung in any other patch of sky. Lenticular shapes like UFOs, only insubstantial. Ephemeral, like ghost residue of clouds. Not made of metal like anything you’d expect.

  “Check it out!”

  Sharp intakes of breath all round as a thick red lightning bolt travels horizontally from one cloud to another. Hits the second hard like there’s something solid at its core, shatters into separate fragments, which coagulate into orbs.

  Balls of crackling light drift down, hover, pause, pink neon glow emanating from their centre mass. Pulsing. Like the crackling orbs are breathing.

  “Man, I don’t like the—”

  “Shhh.”

  More crackling, louder, like automatic weapons fire. They cover their ears and duck, only it’s not ammo. It’s coming from the glowing orbs, close to the ground now, pulsing with red and light. A high-to-low-pitched whistle, almost musical.

  A blood-red cloudshape jellyfish emerges, dangles tentacles of pure blue light. Drags across the surface of the salt. Almost moves like a living, breathing creature.

  The air hangs thick with acrid ozone stench. Some of those lightning stabs are getting close.

  Beneath the cloudshape, thick swirling coils writhe like a nest of snakes. Pale clouds forming angry faces, elongated skulls, animals with jagged teeth.

  Somehow, some way, they lose track of time. Dawn is so insipid by comparison, they almost miss it when it finally arrives. Their eyes are dazed from the flash and flare. Colours dancing across their inner vision.

  * * * *

  Harper isn’t the one who first spots Lachie. She’s staring in the opposite direction. Up into a pink-and-orange sky at the dark gnat wobbling across its luminescent swathe. Elvis in his patched-up plane, heaven-bound with a hangover, she hopes, of Biblical proportions. A plane packed tight with cigarette-size sticks of silver iodide if Janny’s right. Cold rain. Pyrotechnic flares. At best it’s alchemy; at worst, yet another hick-town scam. Perhaps he will coax moisture from the wispy cirrus. Not enough to make a difference. Just enough to make sure he gets paid.

  “Harper!”

  Cracker’s voice. She turns around as, dazed and moaning, three figures stagger across the salt. Somebody’s got binoculars. They shout the names out: Lachie, Danno, Jason. Staggering like zombies, only this isn’t some kind of joke. They get back in their vehicles and race out to intercept the scarecrow men. Clothing torn up, singed, and smoking. Eyes wide and shit-scared sightless.

  Harper’s screaming, Lachie Lachie Lachie, when she comprehends the state he’s in. He doesn’t react. Doesn’t even look at her. Doesn’t stare at anything. Just ahead.

  All three are hurt bad. Jason is the worst.

  Everybody’s shouting at everybody else. Eventually, Lachie cocks his head at the sound of Harper’s voice. She goes to fling her arms around his neck but Janny grabs her wrist and holds on tight. “Needs Doc Chilby,” she says grimly. Harper slaps her hand away but she doesn’t dare touch Lachie, because Janny’s right.

  “Base’s got a hospital,” says Lucas Clayton, son of Reg. “State of the art.”

  Nobody else says anything, but everybody’s thinking it. If they take the injured boys back to the Base, they’ll never be seen again. That lightning was not the natural kind. Whatever just happened here is Base-related.

  A siren wails in the far off distance. The sound makes everybody jump.

  “Doc Chilby will know what to do,” says Bing.

  Lachie and Danno get loaded into the back of Bing’s pickup. Harper spreads down a blanket first, a ratty old thing balled up and wedged beside the tool kit. She tries not to wince at the sight of those burns. Keeps saying, “Everything’s gonna be okay,” although it isn’t.

  The third guy, Jason, is laid gently across the back seats of a Holden Torana. Softly moaning like an animal, he seems the most out of it of the three.

  They don’t notice the Blackhawks until too late. The cars split up—a reflex action—fanning in all directions, two vehicles heading for Doc Chilby’s by different routes, the others planning to drive decoy all over until they’re apprehended or run out of juice.

  Harper presses her back against the cabin, crouches, hanging on with one hand to the pickup’s battered side. The ride is reasonably smooth until they reach the limits of the salt. Each bump and pothole sets the injured men off moaning.

  By time they reach the town’s outskirts, Lachie is delirious and screaming. Impossible to keep the salt out of their wounds. He tries to sit up but the passage is too ragged. Harper holds her breath, heart thumping painfully against her ribs. Hang on, Lachie. Hang on till we get there.

  The sky is streaked with morning glow, the Jesus plane now the size of a lonely bird. A few clouds scudding, clumping stickily together. More than usual.

  Any minute now the pickup will get intercepted by soldiers in full combat gear. Or a hazmat t
eam in an unmarked van—they’ve all seen that in movies on TV.

  But the streets are empty. Everyone’s still clustered around the revival tent or passed out on the ground. All necks are craned, all eyes on the Jesus plane looping and threading its way through a puff of clouds like a drunken gnat. Rosaries muttered, beads looped tightly around arms and wrists. Clutched in hands, pressed against hearts and lips. Holy Mary, Mother of—Jesus, is that rain?

  Thick, fat drops smack the dusty ground.

  Proper rain for the first time in three long years. Rain coaxed from clouds not even in sight when the plane began its journey.

  Looks like Elvis is no charlatan after all. Elvis is the real deal. Elvis can talk to Jesus and make it pour.

  And then they’re dancing, arms flung into the air. Laughing and shrieking and praising the heavenly host. “Ave Maria” as bloated splats drill down upon their heads, soaking their shirts and floral print dresses, muddying up the packed-dirt hospital car park. Mud-splattered boots and trouser legs.

  There’ll be time for Jesus later. Harper stays by Lachie’s side as the injured men are unloaded off the pickup. Straight through to Emergency; lucky such an option still exists. Terina Community Hospital once boasted fifty beds; now only ten of them are still in operation. The place was supposed to have closed a year ago. They’re all supposed to drive to Parkes if an accident takes place. Supposed to use the Base if it’s life or death.

  One of the racers must have thought to phone ahead. Two nurses stand tentatively inside the sterile operating theatre. Waiting for Doc Chilby to scrub up. Waiting for something. Harper doesn’t find out what—she’s hustled into another room and made to fill out forms. Their Medicare numbers—how the fuck is she supposed to know? Didn’t they have their wallets in their pants?

  “Don’t call the Base,” she says, but it’s too late. That helicopter stopped chasing them for a reason—there’s only one place in town they can go for help.

  An hour of waiting before a nurse brings her a cup of tea. Two biscuits wrapped in cellophane and a magazine with blonde models on the cover. The magazine’s two years old, its recipes ripped roughly out of the back.

  “Is Lachie gonna be okay?” she asks.

  The nurse is about her age or maybe a few years older. Nobody Harper knows or went to school with. The hospital has trouble keeping staff. They rotate young ones from the bigger towns, but they never stay for more than a couple of months.

  “That other boy died,” the nurse says eventually. “I’m not supposed to tell you.”

  Harper knows the nurse means Jason even though she didn’t say his name. He’d been in the worst shape of all three.

  “Were they all from the Base?”

  “Yeah, reckon.” The nurse doesn’t seem to think anything of the fact. Definitely not a local, then. To her, the Base is nothing more than it seems.

  The nurse chews on her bottom lip. “Never seen anything like it. Multiple lightning strikes each one, poor things. Left its mark on them, it did. Tattoos like blood-red trees.” She points to the base of her own neck by way of demonstration. “What were they doing out there on the salt in the middle of the night?”

  Harper doesn’t have an answer. The nurse is not expecting one, not even wild speculation. She wanders over to the window and lifts the faded blue and purple blind. “Still raining, I see. “Least that’s something.”

  Still raining. Words that take awhile to sink in. Harper unfolds her legs from underneath her, heaves up out of the sagging beige settee.

  The nurse’s heels clip-clop against linoleum as she leaves.

  The opened blind reveals a world awash with mud and gloom. Water surges along the gutters like a river. Slow-moving cars plough through, their wheels three-quarters covered. More water than Harper has seen in a long, long time.

  “When can I see Lachie?” she calls after the nurse. Too late. The corridor is empty.

  Harper slips the crinkly biscuit packet into her pocket, hops down the fire escape two steps at a time.

  The water in the car park is brown and up to her knees already. A couple of men in anoraks wade out in an attempt to rescue their cars.

  * * * *

  The rain keeps falling, too hard, too fast. Main Street is barely recognisable. Whole families clamber up onto roofs, clinging to spindly umbrella stems—and each other. Half drenched dogs bark up a storm. Nobody’s singing songs of praise to Jesus.

  She pictures the revival tent swept away in a tsunami of soggy scones and lamingtons, trampled as panic sets in, random and furious as the rain itself.

  The deluge is too much, too quick for the ground to cope with. Hard-baked far too many months to soak it up. There’s nowhere for the surge to slosh but up and down the streets. Vehicles bob along like corks and bottles.

  She doesn’t want to think about the cattle in the fields. Dogs chained up in unattended backyards. Children caught in playgrounds.

  She’s wading waist-deep in filthy swell when a wave breaks over her head. A wave on Main Street, of all unlikely things. Next thing she knows, she’s going under, mouth full of mud and silt. Scrabbling for a slippery purchase, bangs her shins on something hard, unseen. This can’t be happening. The rain keeps falling, mushing everything to brown and grey.

  Her leg hurts but she keeps on moving, half swimming, half wading, crawling her way to higher ground. To the knoll. She doesn’t recognise it at first. Not until she stands and checks the view. A line of lights snaking out from the Base and heading in her direction.

  She’s shaking, either from the cold or shock. Bit by bit, the sky is clearing, bright blue peering through grey rents and tears. Clouds the colour of dirty cotton wool break up. Voices shout from rooftop to rooftop. A sound that might be a car backfiring—or a gunshot.

  She wipes grit from her eyes with the heel of her palm. Hugs her shoulders, slick hair plastered against her face.

  “Leg’s bleeding.”

  It’s Janny. She glances down at red rivulets streaking her muddy calf.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Can you walk?”

  She nods.

  “Better get you up to the hospital, then.”

  Steam rises from the rapidly warming sludge. A cloying smell like rotting leaves and sewage. Damp human shapes mill about, disorganised. Unanchored.

  She watches three men in anoraks attempt to right a car. Others stand staring stupidly at the mess. Like they don’t know where to start or what to do.

  She limps back up to the hospital with Janny by her side. Only two army trucks are parked out the front of it. Doc Chilby stands her ground in a sodden coat, arms folded across her chest. Four soldiers briskly unload boxes, stacking them up on the verandah out of the mud.

  Doc Chilby argues with another soldier. “We didn’t ask for anything. You’re not taking anyone out of here—that’s final.”

  The soldier has his back to Harper; she can’t hear what he’s saying. Only that the doc is getting flustered, flinching every time a Blackhawk thunders close. She repeats herself but the soldier isn’t listening.

  The nurse who told Harper that Jason had died stands smoking on the verandah.

  Loud voices emanate from inside the building, then a sudden surge of soldiers swarm. That nurse starts shouting, Doc Chilby too. Three stretchers are borne swiftly down wooden stairs. Weapons raised. Threats issued. The steady thrum of Blackhawk blades drowning out all attempts at negotiation.

  The Base has come for its wounded contract workers. Wounded doing what, exactly? Harper has been watching without comprehending. Now wide awake, she adds her own voice to the shouting. Ignores the nurse signalling frantically from the verandah, the ache in her leg and the Blackhawk’s thudding blades. She runs after one of the trucks—too late, it’s out of reach. Picks up a rock and throws it. The rock bounces harmlessly off the taut khaki canvas. She almost trips as she reaches for something else to throw. The road’s sticky and slippery from rain.

  The convoy lumbers like
a herd of beasts. A minute later and she’s standing helpless in the middle of the road, a chunk of rock gripped tightly in her hand.

  Her bleeding leg gets sprayed with mud as a car pulls up beside her. Cracker in a rattling old army Dodge from his collection. The M37 convertible minted 1953. Same colour as the green-grey mud. Dented. Spotted with rust and a couple of bullet holes. Thick treads built to handle difficult terrain.

  Neither of them says anything. The crazed glint in his eyes fills her with hope. She climbs into the passenger seat. He floors it, following close behind the trucks at first, then lagging. The old Dodge putters and chokes, but it holds its own.

  A bright new day. Sun and daylight are banishing the nighttime landscape’s sinister cast. Red-and-blue jellyfish lightning seems like another world ago.

  Cracker races, slams his palm down on the horn. The convoy of army trucks ignores him. He keeps his foot pressed to the accelerator. Harper keeps her gaze fixed on the Base.

  They can’t get in. They’ll be turned back at the front gate. Threatened with whatever trespassers get threatened with. Whatever happens, she’s ready for it. So is Cracker.

  The Base’s electronic gates do not slide open. The truck convoy halts. Cracker stops too but keeps the engine purring. Just in case.

  A soldier gets out of the truck ahead and slams the cabin door. He’s armed but he hasn’t drawn his weapon. She’s still gripping that rock chunk in her hand.

  “Get out of the vehicle,” booms a megaphone voice.

  “Not fucken’ likely,” says Cracker.

  “I repeat: Get out of the vehicle.”

  Nothing happens. Nobody moves. The Dodge keeps grunting and grumbling like a big old dog.

  Harper turns the door handle, slides out of the passenger seat. “You can’t just do whatever you like,” she shouts. She’s shaking hard and she knows she’d better drop the rock, not give them any reason. She’s waiting for that soldier to draw his gun. “You’ve got no right,” she repeats, softer this time.

  He approaches, one arm raised. “Ma’am, this country is at war.” The walkie-talkie on his shoulder crackles but he doesn’t touch it.