End Times V: Kingdom of Hell

by Shane Carrow

  I glance further down the train, past university students, pensioners, mothers with children. For a bizarre minute, I catch a glimpse of Rahvi standing at the other end of the carriage, gripping one of the hand-holds, looking at me with wry amusement on his face. Just for a split-second, like a single frame in a movie, and then he’s gone.

  “What do you reckon, Matt?” Nick says. “What are you going to do after school?”

  A train roars past us on the bridge in the other direction, a sudden noisy blast of momentum.

  “Fight zombies,” I reply.

  Nick gives me an amused chuckle, but Ben punches him on the arm and gives him a stern look. I’m not sure which of them is which, but it’s clear that I’m not talking to Ben and Nick, or even to fabricated visions of Ben and Nick. I’m looking at my benefactors, Aaron and the Endeavour, slipping into the skins of my old high school friends as easily as pulling on a jacket.

  For a moment I can hear distant shouting, and feel the ghost whispers of pain in my body. I blink heavily and look out the window again. We’re off the bridge now, not too far from Perth Station. The train runs alongside a district of heavy construction, with bulldozers and sandpits fringing half-built high-rise apartments on streets lined with freshly-planted saplings. A billboard declares that “East Perth Is Living;” below that, somebody’s spray-painted “ON NOONGAR LAND.” A group of construction workers in hard hats and fluorescent vests are chatting next to a row of portable toilets.

  The echoes of shouting die away. The pain recedes. The train pulls up at a platform.

  “This is... Claisebrook,” the recorded female voice announces. A few passengers shuffle off, the doors close with a ding, and we’re on our way again.

  To Perth, I remind myself. Springtime, Year 12. Brilliant year. Skipping school to go into the city with mates.

  We spend an afternoon in the CBD, wandering up and down the Hay Street Mall, browsing through JB Hi-Fi and EB Games. I ignore the lack of wind, the curiously low number of other shoppers, the generic faces. I ignore the fact that when I walk down an aisle of video games, most of the spines are blank.

  Occasionally one sharp memory will stand out, rendered with absolute clarity – a busker playing a ragtime tune on a tiny piano, or a particularly pretty cashier. Pointless memories. I don’t know why I recall them so well.

  We stop at KFC for lunch, and go sit in the sunshine in Forrest Place to eat. We watch the goth kids milling about in front of the GPO, the yuppies drinking coffee on the terraces, a homeless Aboriginal man yelling at passers-by. “I reckon,” I say, taking a swig from my Coke, “that the apocalypse probably improved this city quite a bit.”

  There’s a flicker, and suddenly the people around us have a grey pallor to their skin. Suddenly the yuppies are dining on human eyeballs and chunks of brain rather than coffee and pastries. Suddenly all the storefronts are looted or boarded up. Suddenly the walls are covered in bloodstains and survivalist graffiti.

  “Oh, fuck,” I say, as the distant sound of sizzling flesh grows louder, as the pain swells in my face and my chest...

  ...and I found myself back in the torture chamber again, yanked out of the sunlight and thrust into the tiny dark room. Just in time to take a heavy blow across the face from Draeger, knocking yet another tooth loose.

  My whole body was wracked with pain, with a heavy, exhausted agony that felt like it would never go away. That felt like it had always been there. I let out a low and wailing groan.

  “Okay,” Draeger said, before Aaron and the Endeavour could work their magic again. “I’m done with you for today.” He was panting heavily. “I have to hand it to you, Matt – you’re damn good at this.”

  “You’re fucked up,” I mumble, as the guards unlocked my cuffs and dragged me out of the door.

  “Same time tomorrow?” I heard him call from behind me.

  Back to my cell. Tossed onto the mattress stained with my own blood, with one of the guards spitting on me for good measure. Lying there, feeling my swollen face with sore fingertips. I could feel deep cuts, and old bandages. What happens to me when I’m in the memory world? Is part of me still awake back here, still screaming? Or do I just black out? I can’t black out, or Draeger would stop.

  For God’s sake, Matt, Aaron snapped as soon as he could get a hold of me. You can’t keep doing that!

  It was the third time that day that the illusion had collapsed, because of me. Because I’d probed too heavily, or said the wrong thing. The two of them usually had it back up and running within two or three minutes, but even two or three minutes can seem like an eternity when you’re strapped into that chair.

  I’m sorry, I mumbled. I don’t know how it happens. When I’m in there, I just sort of... lose myself. I forget how easily it can come apart. I forget how bad it is to be back here.

  Well... losing yourself is kind of the point, Aaron said. I guess it’s a catch 22. But you have to be careful. Strike a balance, y’know? We can’t have you snapping out of it all the time.

  It can only get easier, right? The more we do it?

  Yes... Aaron said hesitantly. I felt like he was holding something back from me, but I was too tired to chase it.

  I need to sleep, I said. What time is it?

  Only about noon, Aaron replied.

  It feels like it’s been all day.

  Yeah, well, time gets distorted easily in there, he said. But sleep if you want to.

  Without prodding, he started chatting casually about the events of the day, and the previous night. Pointless stuff, idle campfire stories from the other soldiers, back there in the snowy little hollow of the resistance movement. Messages of support from Jonas and Simon and Andy. I can get to sleep easier like that, linked to Aaron, my mind sealed away from the rest of my body. The pain is still there, but it’s more distant. It feels more like weight or cold than actual pain. It doesn’t matter what he’s talking to me about, just as long as he’s there.

  When I woke up again, of course, Aaron was gone and the pain was back. I drifted in and out of sleep for most of the afternoon, and now it’s about seven o’clock and I’m trying to write to take my mind off things.

  The pain is still there. The damage is still there. I can glance down at my chest and see terrible red welts where I’ve been burned or cut up. There’s still a stump on my hand where my pinkie used to be. I’d hate to see what my face looks like now.

  I haven’t asked Aaron whether he feels the pain while I’m wrapped up in the fantasy. Whether his body still receives the usual channelling of the other’s feelings, even though the situation is a little different from normal. If so, I’m incredibly grateful to him, although I guess he’d be feeling it whether he was doing this for me or not.

  I wonder how long we can keep this up for.

  September 25

  They threw me back into my cell in the afternoon, bleeding from every part of my body, wheezing with every breath. I’ve lost the ring finger on my left hand as well, now. There’s a blood-stained bandage trailing around it. I don’t know why. I don’t know if I said something that pissed Draeger off, or if he just did it for no reason.

  I don’t remember what happened in there at all. I spent the day sitting at Cottesloe Beach in high summer. Sunbathing with a towel over my eyes to protect me from the glare. Snorkelling through underwater caves, watching stingrays and wobbegongs glide lazily across the sand. Eating fish and chips on the grass under the shade of the Norfolk pines.

  Back in the cell I was sobbing. Not just from the pain, not just from the loss of another finger. I was sobbing because I’d forgotten, because I’d thought for those beautiful few hours that the dream world was real. I’d forgotten that there’d ever been an apocalypse event, that I was partly alien, that I’d been captured by a psychotic dictator with information that he needed. To come crashing back down into that brutal reality was worse than any torture Draeger could unleash.

  Aaron, I said weakly, lying on my foul mattress, trying not to mo
ve. I want to go back.

  You’re not being tortured right now, he said.

  The pain’s still there, I pleaded.

  Yeah, he replied tersely. I know.

  So what are you waiting for?

  You forgot, he accused me. You’ve been doing it a lot. And we can’t afford to let that happen.

  Why not? I snarled.

  Because we might lose you for good, he said softly. You might lose all your memories, of everything that’s happened since the collapse. You might even lose your mind.

  So that was the inherent risk. That was what he hadn’t told me about.

  I didn’t care. I’m dying here, Aaron, I pleaded. Please. Please don’t make me go through this.

  Aaron hesitated. I could feel his mind connected to the Endeavour, as they had a quick discussion that I didn’t have access to. After a moment Aaron returned, and said, Okay, man. Hold on.

  I smiled in relief. A few seconds later the pain melted away from my bones, the smell of my own sweat and piss disappeared, and I was standing in the kitchen of the Aroma Cafe at Southlands Boulevard, shoving a rack of plates and cutlery through the dishwasher while the manager yelled at me to hurry up.

  Oh, yes. I remembered that job. I’d only ended up working there a month before quitting during a rush on Anzac Day, vowing never to work as a dishpig again. It had been hot, loud, messy, humid and stressful.

  But compared to my cell, it was heaven.

  September 26

  The alarm went off. Every scratching pen in the room immediately went into overdrive as students scrambled to finish writing their final sentence.

  “Time is up,” Mr Francis called out. “Please put your pens down and bring your exam papers to the front of the room.”

  I was one of the first people to my feet, heading down the aisle between the hundreds of desks filling the gymnasium. I dropped my papers with a heavy thud on the desk at the front, earning a stern look from one of our bespectacled teachers, grabbed my bag from the pile and headed out into the morning sunlight.

  It was lunchtime. All the lower school students, who didn’t have exams, were lining up outside the canteen or kicking balls around the quadrangle, chattering about parties on the weekend or assignments they had due on Friday. I pushed through the crowd and found a sunny patch of brick wall, dropped my bag, and leaned against it as I rubbed my temples. I felt deeply sick.

  Ben soon emerged from the steady stream of Year 11s pouring out of the gym, the only other one of my friends who did Geography, the first exam on the two-week timetable. The first exam we’d faced in our lives.

  And yet the whole setup seemed familiar. I felt sure I’d done it before.

  “That wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it’d be,” Ben said cheerfully. “How do you reckon you went?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, brushing him off. There was a terrible ache inside my skull. “There was nothing on my exam papers.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there was... I don’t know. Some of them had stuff on them.”

  Yeah. Some of them had stuff on them. An essay question on the four major Australian geographic zones had, on the page right next to it, a blurry photograph of a group of soldiers – me and my brother among them – posing in front of some huge mound in the snow. On the next page had been an image of a highway, strange figures chasing people through gridlocked cars, and the words “One Death Is All It Takes - Report All Injury, No Matter How Minor.” Then there’d been a big blue logo, or seal, or whatever they’re called; an eagle clutching a bunch of arrows in one hand and a green branch in the other, and PROPERTY OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA stamped beneath it.

  Then they’d all faded away, and become a question about how the plate tectonic system relates to the lithosphere.

  Ben looked at me oddly. “What do you mean they had ‘stuff’ on them?”

  I peered back at him, breathing heavily. Other students were flowing all around us, Years 7 through 12, on their way to the canteen or heading home to study. They were all chattering. Too goddamn loud. My head was killing me.

  “I... I don’t know. I went fine, okay? I got a bad headache though.” I pushed myself away from the wall and grabbed my backpack. “I’m gonna head home and study for English tomorrow. I’ll see you later.”

  I trudged down through the school corridors, past the D&T Department and out to the bike racks. A group of Year 10 girls were playing tennis, while the goth kids were hanging around under the big gum tree at the edge of the oval. Same as they always did at lunch time. Always. Why did it feel so... weird? Why did it feel like I hadn’t been here in ages?

  I cycled home down Karel Avenue, through the mostly deserted suburbia of 11:30am. Saw a group of council workers digging up a gas main, an old woman weeding her front garden, an Australia Post guy trying to wedge a package into someone’s letterbox. My head was still hurting like fuck, and now the two last fingers on my left hand were stinging as well.

  I glided into the driveway just before noon, trying to ignore the mental image I had of me and Aaron sitting on the rooftop and an Army helicopter roaring overhead. I opened the front gate, dumped my bike around the side of the house, and pushed open the front door.

  Aaron was in the kitchen, scraping Vegemite across some burnt toast, clearly having just got out of bed. “Shouldn’t you be studying?” I asked grumpily, heading into the pantry and rifling through the medicine box.

  Aaron snorted. “Like I need to study for English. How’d Geography go?”

  “Shithouse,” I said, popping two Nurofen tablets out of their blisters and gulping them down with a glass of water. “I kept fucking hallucinating.”

  “What do you mean, hallucinating?”

  “I mean I kept seeing shit that wasn’t there, wasn’t really on the exam paper,” I said, heading down the hallway. He followed me as I pushed the door open into my bedroom and flung myself onto my bed. “And I’ve got this huge fucking headache.”

  Aaron leaned against the doorframe, still crunching into his toast. “You should have said something to one of the teachers,” he said.

  I sat up, still clutching my head, and looked around my room with bloodshot eyes. Walls covered in movie and band posters. Ikea chest of drawers with jeans and hoodies stuffed into it. Clothes all over the floor. Desk covered in papers and unfinished schoolwork. This was my bedroom. So why did it feel so completely foreign?

  “And say what?” I muttered. “‘Sorry, Mr Francis, but I keep imagining I can see the Seal of the United States on my Geography exam?’”

  “The what of the United States?” Aaron said.

  “That was the least weird shit I saw,” I said. I reached out to turn my clock radio on. Triple J was halfway through a news broadcast. “…remaining city residents are advised to shelter in place until further notice. All evacuation points are suspended. Residents of the City of Rockingham and the Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale are advised to relocate to the Waroona Displacement Camp. Emergency services have been suspended indefinitely…”

  I jumped to my feet, pointing at the radio. “That!” I hissed. “You can hear that, can’t you?”

  Aaron reached out and grabbed my arm. “Matt. Matt.” I tore my gaze off the radio to look him in the eyes. “It’s just the news! Calm down.”

  “…when Parliament resumes on Monday. Overseas now, where at least twenty-three people have been killed in a series of co-ordinated bombings in Afghanistan...”

  I sat back down on the bed and looked up at Aaron. He was staring down at me with a hard look that seemed out of place... and yet very familiar. “You’re fine,” he said softly. “Everything’s fine.”

  I buried my face in my hands. “Get out of my room.”

  He left, closing the door behind him. The news on the radio finished and a Kendrick Lamar song started playing. I switched the radio off and sat in the room in silence.

  A few moments later I opened my eyes and found myself ly
ing on a filthy mattress in a dingy cell, staring at a concrete wall, my whole body wracked with pain.

  I screamed. I screamed when I scrambled to my feet and collapsed, because I was too weak to stand. I screamed because the mattress was soaked in blood from my own body. I screamed because I was missing two fingers on my left hand. I screamed because I had absolutely no idea where I was or what was happening to me.

  Somebody slammed a baton against the steel door, yelled at me to knock it off. I was scared into silence. I lay huddled in the corner, arms wrapped around my legs, hyperventilating.

  Only slowly did my memories trickle back, all the way from the start. The panic in January, our escape to the east, the discovery of the spaceship, our mission to Brisbane. My capture by New England. My time in the torture chamber.

  It was the fourth time today that my dream world had melted away, deposited me back in the dungeons of Armidale. The fourth time that I’d had difficulty remembering who I was, as well. No torture today – Draeger must have been busy – but I was still sore as hell.

  Why can’t you keep me there? I croaked to Aaron, as soon as I could crawl back to my mattress. Why do I keep slipping out, coming back here?

  We’re trying, he said peevishly. You’re the one who has ultimate control, not us. It’s your subconscious that keeps dragging you back here.

  I don’t want to be here.

  I know. I know, Matt. But it’s something you have to figure out for yourself. Now, where do you want to go this time? School? Work? Holiday?

  Anywhere, I murmured.

  A few minutes later I was sitting in the shade of the fig trees outside the bakery on Rottnest Island, eating pizza bread and talking to my friends as we watched the pretty girls walk past.

  September 27

  I’m scared. I’m so, so scared. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what to do.