End Times: The Wasteland

by Shane Carrow

  I was perplexed how it could have happened. We’ve only had sex a handful of times. The first was in the refugee camp outside the walls of Albany, on the mats under ragged sleeping bags, Aaron asleep only a few metres away. Silent, urgent sex in a world going to shit, a time when we thought we might be dead the next day, just bodies pressing against each other in the darkness. Once again on the Sea Vixen; once at the abandoned bed and breakfast after we made landfall at Esperance. I don’t know why I’m adding them up in my head. It doesn’t exactly matter which it was that got her pregnant.

  The point is we never used contraception. We didn’t have condoms and I didn’t ask (didn’t care, really) if she was on the pill. It didn’t seem like it mattered. When the world is collapsing around you and you’re sleeping in a refugee camp with rumours of an army of the undead on the march down from Perth, concerns about safe sex sort of go on the backburner.

  But here we are.

  The other thing is that it puts your mind on a pretty clear date in the future, in a way that I haven’t done since I was thinking about what the hell I was going to do this year after graduation. We’ve spent the last three months on the run, struggling to survive, living meal to meal and day to day. Thinking about a date nine months in the future makes you wonder whether you’ll even be alive nine months in the future.

  Eight months, really. The doctors say she’s one month in.

  Anyway. I apologised for reacting that way, held her, soothed her, then undid that damage repair by asking if she’d considered an abortion. Which isn’t crazy, really – I mean, we have a medical clinic and two doctors here.

  She flat out rejected that. To her credit she didn’t get angry with me, because I’d phrased it as carefully and as honestly as I could: things were too dangerous to be bringing a baby into the world right now, and if something goes wrong here and we find ourselves on the run again, she could end up eight months pregnant, back out there on the wrong side of the wall. Or, just as bad – trying to survive out there with an infant baby. All of these things are true and valid reasons not to be pregnant right now, never mind the fact that zombie uprising or not, I don’t particularly feel thrilled about becoming a father at eighteen.

  “I get it,” she said. “I do, okay? Dad said the same thing. But I just don’t believe in it.”

  So Geoff knows. So that was why he’d seemed odd last night; he wasn’t sure if she’d told me yet.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “You’re not religious.”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with it!” she said. “You don’t have to be religious to be against it. Don’t bother pushing this, Matt, because it’s not going to happen.”

  I could see it in her eyes; she wasn’t kidding. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I really am. You and Aaron both. And this is your baby too. But that’s one thing that’s off the table.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I mean it,” she said, still crying a little. “I thought you were dead. When I saw you drive in it was like a ghost or something. I really thought you were gone. It was a miracle. And I don’t just... not because of this, Matt. Even if I wasn’t pregnant. I’m so happy you’re here. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I said.

  I’m not sure I do, but that’s not a statement you ignore. But fuck. Fuck. Does that matter? When the dead rise from the grave to eat the living, when we’re frankly lucky to be alive in some bumfuck stronghold in the middle of the desert, does relationship feelings la-di-da bullshit even matter any more?

  I need a drink. I have never needed a drink any more than I have right now.

  5.30pm

  I didn’t get a drink, of course. The Amber Hotel apparently ran dry at the end of February. What I got was a day of long, stressful walks, pushing myself around like a robot, banked up with stress.

  I ended up finding Aaron and telling him all about it. We went on a walk away from town; there’s no rules about leaving, the sentries have an eye on everything within fifty kays and some of the infrastructure like the airstrip and the desal plant are outside the walls anyway. We crossed the plank bridge over the ditch at the south end and walked towards the ocean.

  “Jesus,” Aaron said. “What were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t,” I said. “That’s sort of the point.”

  “Well,” he said. “Fuck.”

  “You know, the thing about this?” I said. “I’ve still got that thing in the back of my head that I had whenever I was sleeping with someone before this. That guilt. ‘Don’t get a girl pregnant, because you’ll fuck up your life! You’ll be the teenage dad, and saddled for life with someone you might not even like!’ Except... well, all of our lives are fucked up already, aren’t they?”

  “You felt guilty when you had sex?” Aaron said.

  “A little, yeah,” I said. “Blame sex ed.”

  “Or the Catholic Church.”

  “The fuck do they have to do with it?”

  “I dunno,” Aaron said. “Dad, Nana. Your upbringing.”

  “Dad didn’t raise us Catholic.”

  “Well, no, but maybe it got in by osmosis or whatever.”

  “I don’t have fucking Catholic guilt!” I said. “I just didn’t want to get anyone pregnant, and now I have.”

  “Hey, man, at least you’re having sex at all,” Aaron said – I know he’s a virgin.

  “Oh, don’t even,” I said.

  We arrived at the ocean. Tourism pamphlets about the Nullarbor had led me to expect dramatic cliffs, but at Eucla the land drops down gently, through scrubland and sand dunes, to distant foamy waves breaking on the shore. I pulled my jacket tighter against a blustery, salty wind and stared out to sea. Beyond that horizon was thousands of kilometres of empty ocean, all the way to the white ice of Antarctica.

  “Well, like you said,” Aaron said. “Our lives are already fucked. So what does it matter?”

  “It matters because she’s going to get pregnant,” I said. “She’s going to get big, and awkward, and vulnerable. And then she’s going to have a small crying baby. What do you think that would have been like on the road? Back in Albany? Or Perth?”

  “We’re not in Albany,” Aaron said. “We’re not in Perth. Eucla is safe.”

  “For now,” I said. “What about in nine months?”

  “Matt,” Aaron said. “Come on. What was it you said to Brian and Cara? When we left Kalgoorlie? You said if Eucla was fucked, we were all fucked.”

  Brian and Cara are only alive because we took them with us, I thought. You and me alone might have been okay.

  “I guess you’re right,” I said. “Yeah.”

  “You’ll be okay,” Aaron said, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be right here with you. Both of you. So will Geoff. We’ll all be okay.”

  We walked back up to the town. I’m glad Aaron seems to be coming out of his funk. I couldn’t blame him for how he was. He killed our dad in a horrible accident – he could curl up into a depressed, guilty ball for the rest of his life and I couldn’t blame him for that. I’m glad he’s adjusting. I never expect him to get over it, and he’s definitely not the same as he was – but I’m glad he’s not completely hopeless anymore.

  On the other hand. All that about Ellie – about not wanting her to be pregnant, not wanting her to put herself at risk. All of that is true. But so is the other stuff. The high school stuff. Not wanting to be shackled. Not wanting to be tied down. I’m not a fuckwit, I can see how ridiculous that sounds. Present situation and all.

  But I still feel it. I don’t want this baby. I’m not ready for this.

  April 3

  I had another talk with Ellie, up in our room in the hotel. I mean, I’m not ready for this, she isn’t either, but fuck – at least she gets a choice. Apparently I don’t.

  “I’m not doing it,” she said.

  “I wasn’t asking you to,” I said. “Just think about it...”

  “You want me to,” she said. “I get it
, fine, whatever. I can’t, Matt. Not now. How many people have died already?” She paused. “How many people have you killed?”

  I stared at her for a moment – taking it seriously, thinking carefully. “Six,” I said. “Six people.” The three conscripted boys in Albany that I’d shot; the guy with the hatchet at the edge of the highway that had ambushed us on the way to Norseman, and his mate with the Ruger .22; that redhead slavemaster fuckhead at the edge of Kalgoorlie, choking him to death in a sandy trench with my own chains.

  She was looking at her feet. “I never told you this. But I shot someone before I got to Albany. Near mum’s farm, back up near Jelcobine, way back at the start. They attacked me and the people I was with, they started it, but... I don’t know if I killed him or not. It was night, I know I hit him, but I don’t know if he died. I just ran out of there...”

  She wiped tears away with the back of her hand. I put a hand on her back, pulled her close to me. “I know we have to do it,” she said. “I know what it’s like, I know how horrible it is, how you can never stop thinking about it. I hate it. And I’m not having an abortion. No more death. Too many people have died. I want something good to happen.”

  Much later I was staring at the ceiling, Ellie curled up asleep with her face against my shoulder. I was thinking about what she’d said – I know how horrible it is, how you can never stop thinking about it.

  I’ve killed six men. And I hardly ever think about them. If I do, I don’t feel horrible about it at all – just relieved. Glad that it was me that walked away and not them.

  I guess we’re just different people.

  April 4

  Aaron and I had our first shift on the sentry roster today. Sergeant Varley showed us the pinboard map in the police station, explained the set-up. Every adult who’s able-bodied, has unimpaired vision and isn’t required for other important duties goes on the roster. It works in eight-hour shifts: one from 11:00am to 7:00pm, one from 7:00pm to 3:00am, one from 3:00am to 11:00am. There are only five people per shift, so with the amount of people on the roster you only end up doing one every three or four days.

  “One here,” Varley said, pointing at the map, “one here, one on the roof of the servo, one here on the eastern parapet, and one doing the rounds. Two people always watching the east and two people always watching the west. Sometimes we double up the night shift if it’s overcast or there’s no moon; cars without headlights can be harder to spot until they’re almost here.”

  “You don’t have eyes watching north?” Aaron asked.

  “Watching an empty desert?” Varley said. “No, mate, we don’t. Nothing’s coming out of there. Anything coming will come from either east or west.”

  “What about the ocean?” I said. “There were a lot of other boats coming out of Albany.”

  “We did have a watch, but we only saw a few boats in the whole of last month, so that’s what the moving patrol’s for now, as well as making sure the others haven’t fallen asleep. Nope, 99.9% of the arrivals we see are going to be coming along the highway, one direction or the other. We see on average about one vehicle a day. Mostly they go straight through. It’s been petering off a bit lately; haven’t see anyone since you guys.”

  He showed me the logbook, which had NISSAN TRITON x1 – 4 PPL TAKEN IN scribbled underneath “March 31.” That was us. I scanned up the page from that:

  March 25 No sightings

  March 26 Yellow sedan 4/5 occupants DNS Eastbound

  March 27 Dual sport motorcycle 1 occupant DNS Eastbound

  March 28 Convoy x3 sedans x2 utes DNS Westbound

  March 29 No sightings

  March 30 No sightings

  “What’s DNS mean?”

  “Did Not Stop,” Varley said. “Most people just blow right through at a hundred kays an hour.”

  “So what if they do stop?” I said. “I’m pretty sure when we came in you had a lot more than five people pointing guns at us.”

  “Clever boy,” Varley said. “When you see any vehicle approaching – as soon as you spot it, while it’s still a speck on the horizon – you call it in. We’ve got radios always on in the roadhouse, the pub, the police station – that’s enough to get a few people’s attention and then they yell for arms. Everybody scrambles and we’ve got about ten minutes to get into position.”

  For this we left the police station, and he walked us out to the front of the gates, to the gum trees and the scrub where the short road to Eucla turns off from the main highway. “Scatter ourselves around here,” he said, “and we can get the drop on someone as soon as they pull up in front of the gates. Now, usually when someone does that they’re like yourself – looking for sanctuary. Sometimes they just want to trade for fuel or food, or just talk. And sometimes they’re looking for trouble and reckoned we might be a soft target. When that happens we let them surrender, take their guns and send them on their way. So: no matter what you’re doing, when you’re not on guard duty, you hear the call to get out here, you get out here.”

  Aaron and I looked around, at the little patch of dirt and gravel and scrappy gum trees, where just the other night we’d found ourselves held at gunpoint. “I have to ask,” I said.

  “How often does it go the other way?”

  “What other way?” Varley said.

  “How often have you had to shoot people?” I said.

  Varley tilted his head, pursed his lips. “Not for a while now,” he said. “Don’t you worry about it. Just watch the road, call in what you see, and let us worry about the rest. Like I said – most people drive right on past.”

  And that was it. Aaron was assigned to the eastern side, while I was on the western, looking down across the same plain that we’d come from. The sentry spot, complete with folding chair and beach umbrella and binoculars, is about five hundred metres west of the townsite itself, at the edge of the escarpment, to give the best view.

  I was there two hours and already bored shitless. There’d been not a speck of movement on the western road. Couldn’t even talk to my sentry partner, since he was a hundred metres away on the roof of the servo. It was a relief when the circuit sentry came past – guy called Simon, about thirty, pretty chatty. We traded stories. He’d been a sheep farmer near Esperance, had holed up on his farm for a while before the increasing zombies and refugees had driven him further east. He’d been in Norseman, too – the town where me and Aaron and Tom had been separated from the others, taken to Kalgoorlie – but that had been near the end of February, and that had been when the raiders from Kalgoorlie started poking their noses around. “Got the fuck out of there after that,” he said. “Just got in the car and kept driving till I was out of petrol.”

  “So you’ve only been here...?”

  “Oh, about a month. Not that long. Lot of people here came out when everything first started going to shit – they were running from what they saw on the news, really, not what they’d seen themselves. Not that they weren’t smart to do that. But a lot of them don’t really... well, I guess they don’t really grasp the reality of what’s happening back there. Some of them have never seen a zombie in real life. And it’s zombies, that’s all they’re scared of – they don’t realise it’s people they need to be scared of, too. Varley’s a smart bloke, he gets it.”

  “Is he from here?” I asked.

  “Perth, I think. I mean he lives here, he was posted here years ago. But that’s not what I meant. It’s being a cop, you know? In the first place. He knows what people are capable of. So does everyone he’s been out there,” he said, gesturing to the west.

  I looked at the number tattooed on my hand. “Fucking tell me about it.”

  “Mmm,” Simon said. “So – I hear your girlfriend’s having a baby. Congratulations.”

  “Jesus Christ, does the whole town know about that?” I said. “And don’t congratulate me on it, fuck. I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack every morning when I wake up and remember that.”

  “I reckon it’s a good
thing,” Simon said. “Everyone should be a parent. Every bloke should be a dad.”

  I snorted. “Eventually. Not at eighteen. You got kids, then?”

  Simon stared out at the western horizon, pretended to pick something from his teeth. “No,” he said eventually. “No, I don’t.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  He glanced down at me. “Oh, not like that, mate,” he said. “Not like that. I never had kids. Anyway. Congratulations. Six hours left, see you again in a bit.”

  Never had kids – but his hand had a wedding ring. Guess I need to be a bit more tactful with questions like that. Everyone you meet has their own story.

  April 5

  Ellie and I went and talked to the doctors at the medical centre today. I mean, Ellie’s already been to see them plenty, obviously; but she and they both thought it would be a good idea for me to talk to them. “You’re like a caged tiger,” she said. “Come sit down with them.”

  I didn’t sit down with them. The three of them sat, in the surgery, while I paced around the room, like the caged tiger that I apparently am. (Who the fuck cages tigers?) Dr. Lacer is about 25, fresh out of uni; he’d been stationed here with the RFDS when everything went to shit. Dr Buffin is in his forties, and had fled Esperance with his family when things started falling apart. Lacer gave Ellie a basic check-up, blood pressure and all that, while Buffin gave us his best bedside manner. “The thing to remember,” he said, “is that humans have being doing this for millions of years. It’s literally the most natural thing in the world. I’m not an obstetrician, and neither is Greg, but Ellie really couldn’t be in safer hands.”

  I picked up a plastic model of a skull, a little cutaway section showing the brain inside.

  “That’s not what I’m worried about,” I said.

  “It’s the most natural thing in the world to be worried,” Dr. Buffin said. “Mate, I was scared shitless when I had my first kid. But it’s the best thing in the world. And it’ll be okay. We’ve got all the equipment we need, all the medication we need.”