by Claire Zorn
‘Fin? Fin. Are you okay?’
She is holding a cricket bat. She drops it to the floor where it lands with a clunk. She crouches down beside me and for a moment I let myself believe that it is her. Just go with it, Fin, accept a few moments of bliss before you come to your senses. I close my eyes and open them again. A lock of dark hair falls over her shoulder.
‘Lucy?’
She puts her hands on my cheeks, her palms are cool and soft.
‘Fin?’
I would laugh, but it hurts too much.
‘Holy shit, Fin, he was going to kill you.’ She takes her hands from my face and covers her mouth. Next to her, the man is crouched down beside a human mass. The human mass is definitely not moving, definitely not conscious. He is on his back with his face turned to the side.
‘Well, I’d say you got ’im, Luce,’ says the man. I sit up and a jarring pain rips through my ribs. I touch my fingers to my cheek and they come away wet with blood.
‘Is he okay?’ she asks.
‘He’s not dead. He’s gonna have the mother of all headaches when he wakes up.’
Lucy puts my arm around her shoulder and her arm around my waist, the man comes to my other side. Slowly they help me up. The room spins.
‘Where’s Max? Where’s my brother?’
‘Was he the young kid?’ asks the man. Is he Lucy’s dad? He doesn’t seem old enough.
I nod.
‘Starvos hit him before he came inside for you. There was another guy, a guy in a car?’
‘Noll.’
‘He came running. We put the kid in the car. I told him to get out of there. I also told this one to stay outside. Instead she comes in swinging a cricket bat.’
We hobble outside. The man stops.
‘Go get the gun,’ he says to Lucy.
She frowns.
‘Pick up the gun. We should keep it.’
The street is an ocean of dark. Lucy and the man steer me across and as we get closer I see light coming from inside Lucy’s house further down the street. The flesh on my side feels like it is tearing away from my ribs. We go up Lucy’s driveway and then up some stairs. I see a woman standing in the doorway, she is maybe mid-fifties. She sees me and presumably the condition of my face and rushes forward to help me inside. That’s the point when I pass out.
Twenty-five
Awake. I think.
The strong, tangy scent of metho. Warmth – a fire. I touch my fingertips to my cheek and feel the papery film that holds cotton wadding to my face. Breathe in. Breathe out. Stabbing, stabbing, stabbing in my side. Hunger. Memory.
‘Where’s Max?’ I don’t even know if there’s anyone there to answer me. I try to move my head to the side, to see around me but my neck is too stiff. There is blood in my mouth.
‘Hello?’ Must stop passing out. Waking up again is terrifying.
Footsteps. ‘Fin? Fin, you’re awake.’
Am I?
‘Can you hear me?’ Lucy. Her face hovers over me and she examines me like I am a puzzle. I can’t help but smile at her.
‘Hi.’
She smiles.
‘Where is my brother?’
‘He’s with Noll, remember? More to the point, who is Noll, exactly?’
‘Arnold Wong. We kind of teamed up with him.’
‘From school? That’s random and unexpected.’
‘I know.’ I try to sit up, but my muscles won’t let me.
‘You need to stay still,’ says Lucy.
‘I have to get back to Max.’
‘I know, but you need to lie down. Fin, listen to me. You’ve got concussion, your brain needs to reboot.’
I close my eyes, giving in.
The couch I’m lying on has been padded out with blankets and pillows. Lucy explains to me that her family went to stay with her aunt and uncle further up the mountains not long after the missiles. They figured they were better off sticking together early. She had come back that night with her mum and her uncle to get more food and clothes.
‘In the middle of the night?’
‘My uncle thought it would be too dangerous in the day – people might try and take our food.’ I open one eye and see her arch an eyebrow. ‘He was kind of right.’
Lucy sits on the edge of the couch, at my feet. I am mentally preparing to get up and go to Max but every time I lift my head from the pillow I feel like I’m going to vomit. I try to piece together what has happened.
‘How did you know I was in there?’
‘I saw the flashlight from my bedroom window. I didn’t know it was you for sure, but I recognised your shape, when you were standing at the door breaking in. Then I saw Starvos come down and hit your brother. That’s when I grabbed my uncle. He wanted me to stay outside but . . .’ She shrugs. ‘The cricket bat was behind the counter.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. But know that I’m not going to come save your skinny arse every time you try and rob a crazy guy.’
‘Okay. I’ll stop relying on your cricket skills so heavily.’
‘Appreciate it.’
‘You make a habit of confronting crazy guys with guns?’
‘I try not to. And I’m not sure whacking someone from behind counts as confrontation.’ She pauses. ‘And I don’t know if he’s necessarily a crazy guy. He was just trying to protect what was his.’
It’s what I already know and what I have avoided in my head ever since we came up with this plan. Trying to save yourself and your family isn’t crazy. People will try to hold on when their world starts to tilt, they will grab onto whatever is in reach. Doesn’t matter if it means throwing punches at your neighbour or pointing a gun at someone’s head.
Lucy sighs and tilts her head back, gazing at the ceiling. ‘But he was going to kill you. I’m certain of that much.’
After a while I tell her about Dad and Kara being missing and about Mick and Ellen.
‘I was worried about you, about whether you had enough food and that. I came here looking for you.’
She looks at me for a moment. ‘Did you?’
‘Yeah, of course.’
There is sadness in her smile. ‘I wondered if you would. I didn’t think the snow and the blackout would go on this long.’ She picks lint from the blanket and rolls it into a little ball. ‘Do you know where your mum is?’
I shake my head. ‘But I’m going to find her. She’ll have a better idea of what’s going on. That’s why I was at Arnold’s. We figured we’d band together, find more food and get out of here.’ I tell her about our theory of the government abandoning us and the Ketterleys and my encounter with the army truck.
‘My dad thinks the same about the government,’ Lucy says. ‘He didn’t say anything to us but I heard him talking to Mum.’
There is a knock at the front door. Lucy gets up and takes a look out the window. She goes to the door and I hear a male voice, too quiet to be Starvos come for vengeance. I hobble to the door just in case it is and I’m required to do something manly. Arnold is there in a big parka with a flashlight and a sceptical look on his face.
‘I wanted to check you were alive,’ he says.
‘I’m alive. Where is Max?’
‘My place.’
‘Is he okay?’
‘He’s okay, Fin.’
‘Did Starvos hit him? Where? In the head? Did he black out?’
‘Pistol-whipped I believe is the term––’
‘Bastard!’ The guilt I feel about taking Starvos’ food dissipates.
‘He’s okay, Fin,’ he says. ‘I patched him up. From appearances he got off lighter than you.’
‘Starvos was going to kill him,’ says Lucy.
‘Then Lucy stepped in with a cricket bat,’ I explain.
‘Really? Is h
e hurt? Mr Starvos, I mean.’
‘Noll, he was going to kill me, he hit Max – a friggin’ kid.’
‘I understand. I’m just asking.’
‘I knocked him out. He’s fine, he’s rosy,’ says Lucy.
‘Okay,’ Noll said doubtfully. ‘Well, I’m going to go back to Max. I don’t want to leave him on his own for too long.’
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘It’s nothing.’
We can hear Lucy’s mum coming down the hall. She’s going to be pissed – in a really polite way – that we’re drawing attention to the house.
‘You should try and sleep,’ Noll says. ‘I’ve parked the car in the garage in case Mr Starvos comes looking for it. We’ll leave in the morning.’
My throbbing head feels slightly better on a pillow again. Lucy says goodnight and vanishes down the hallway, presumably to where she is sleeping. I am acutely aware that she is less than twenty metres away from me, under the same roof. And that she saved my life.
In the morning I wake early. I roll onto my side and feel every bruise. It still hurts to breathe. Mrs Tenningworth comes into the room to offer me half a can of spaghetti. She seems to be genuine in offering me food that should rightfully be for her family, but I knock it back. Politely. Food supply won’t be an issue for us for a little while.
‘Can I have a look at your face?’ She gently tilts my head back, the crook of her index finger under my chin. ‘What’s the plan?’ she asks in a casual sort of way, like she’s asking me about a camping trip.
Oh, you know, nick off with our stolen food in a dead woman’s car and see if we can find anyone else to rip off, the usual.
Instead I tell her about Mum and explain our plan to try to find her.
‘She will know what’s going on, what we have to do to . . . get through this.’ I almost say it, the S word: survive. Mrs Tenningworth drops her hand from my chin and pulls back a little, looking at my face like she’s assessing it for bits that might fall off.
‘Lucy told me about your mother, that she will be able to help. Fin, Lucy likes you . . .’
‘Oh, we’re just friends.’
‘She thinks you’re a decent person and I’m going to trust her on that.’
‘Um, thanks.’
‘I think you could convince her to go with you.’
I swallow.
‘It’s not safe here any more. A few nights ago some people invaded a house up the street from where we are staying. Took all the family’s food. We don’t have much left anyway. And I’m pretty sure that it’s going to become impossible to keep us all . . . alive. We don’t have enough fuel to make it into the city, but . . .’ There are tears brimming in her eyes as she clears her throat and sits up a little straighter. ‘This is an opportunity and I think I would regret it later if I didn’t . . . If I didn’t send her with you. Her sister would never agree, but Lucy . . . you could convince her, Fin. Try, won’t you?’
Mrs Tenningworth stands up, placing her hand briefly on my shoulder before she leaves the room.
Lucy wanders in while I am folding my blankets. Her hair is wound into a messy knot behind her left ear, fastened with a clip in the shape of a squirrel. As she takes the blankets from me I notice that she smells faintly of vanilla and coconut. I am wearing the same hoodie that I have been for the last two weeks and my left cheek is held together with tape.
‘Well?’ she asks. ‘Nightmares about large, hairy men and instant noodles?’
‘A few. You?’
‘No. Only cricket bats.’ She sits on the couch, brings her feet up and tucks them under her. She has the posture of a ballet dancer. ‘So . . .’
‘So . . . terrible weather.’
‘Don’t be such a downer.’
‘At least we never had to do that history assignment.’
‘I worked my arse off for that history assignment! Total waste of time.’
I wish Lucy hadn’t mentioned her arse. ‘I know,’ I reply weakly.
She sighs. ‘It’s not fair, Fin. We won’t get to do all the things we should.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like have awkward phone conversations, go to the movies, make out in cars, have fights.’
‘You think we would fight?’
‘I don’t know. Isn’t that what people do?’
‘I wouldn’t fight with you if you were willing to make out with me in a car.’
Silence. Oh shit. Too far. I thought she was talking about me and she wasn’t and, oh shit, now my ears are on fire. I glance at her. She is looking at me, she looks very serious. Stuff it. I lean over and gently place my hand on the side of her neck, my thumb on her cheek and she closes her eyes and I kiss her. My chest feels like it’s going to explode. We kiss and then stop, breathe, and she puts her hand on mine and looks at me but doesn’t smile.
‘Come with us,’ I say.
‘I can’t leave my family, my sister.’
‘She can come too.’
‘But my parents . . .’
‘They want you to get out, Luce. My mum will be able to help us. It’s . . . I think it’s your only chance.’
She puts her head in her hands. My anger at the world coils inside of me. It’s a directionless seething, there’s no name or face to aim at. I want to be the guy who has an ingenious plan, something to offer her. But I am utterly helpless. With her eyes still closed she beats at the lounge with a fist, harder and harder. Then she opens her eyes and looks up at the ceiling and I see a tear slide down her cheek.
‘Stuff it,’ she whispers. ‘I’ll come with you.’
Twenty-six
I leave her and walk the short distance back to Noll’s house. I open the door and Max is standing there. The skin around his left eye is plum-coloured and swollen. He gives me his trademark killer smile.
‘Check it out, man!’
I grab him and hug him, holding on as if I’m afraid he’ll float away.
Noll comes to the door. I tell him Lucy will be coming with us.
‘That’s good. The more there are of us the better, I think.’
‘Did Max sleep?’ I ask.
‘He did. I stayed up and kept an eye on him for a while. I wanted to stay up all night, just to be sure he was okay. But I couldn’t, I fell asleep. I’m sorry.’
‘You were going to stay up all night to look out for my brother?’
‘You asked me to take care of him.’
‘Yeah, but . . . Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘The car is ready to go? All the food still in it?’
‘Yes.’ Noll looks like he wants to say something more.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Did you leave enough food there for Mr Starvos and his family?’
‘We didn’t take it all. There was still a bit . . . I think. He was going to kill me, Noll. He told me he was going to kill me.’
He nods. ‘How badly was he hurt? Do you think he would have woken up?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t see what choice we had. Lucy . . . Noll, she saved my life. He was going to kill me.’
‘I understand. We should go.’
Lucy takes a bag from off the top of her wardrobe and I sit on the edge of her bed. The room feels like a relic, a memory. The walls are crammed with photos, pictures torn from magazines, movie and band posters. There is a huge Radiohead poster at the head of the bed and another framed picture of Pablo Picasso holding a pistol.
Mrs Tenningworth comes into the room with an ice-cream container.
‘First-aid kit,’ she says. ‘Bandages, antiseptic cream, painkillers.’ She disappears down the hall and returns with a plastic lunchbox full of cutlery.
‘Mum, I’m pretty sure we won’t be having dinner parties.’
Mrs Tenningworth puts it in th
e bag and then looks through what Lucy has packed.
‘How many pairs of socks do you have? You need more than that, here . . .’ She opens a drawer. Lucy softly places a hand on her shoulder.
‘Mum––’
‘Where’s your red cardigan? I only got that for you six months ago.’
‘Mum.’
‘What? I’m your mother . . .’ She is crying. ‘I’m your mother and I’m supposed to let you go out there . . . because I can’t do anything else. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, my darling. I can’t do anything else.’ She pulls Lucy to her and I look away to give them space.
‘Fin, you must look after each other,’ Mrs Tenningworth says to me. ‘You must.’
Noll has parked the car on the street. He and Max wait while I carry Lucy’s bag from the house. Lucy’s uncle pulls me aside on the front porch. He holds out his hand. In it is Starvos’ gun. I take it from him. It’s the first time I’ve ever held a gun and it’s heavier than I expected. Lucy comes out of the house, stopping when she sees the gun. She looks at her uncle, he says nothing, just nods his head. I reach around and tuck it into the band at the back of my jeans like I have seen dudes do on television. I hope the action comes across fluid and natural, like I am used to doing hardcore things with weapons all the time. I have to regain some dignity after having my arse saved by a chick with a cricket bat. It does make her a bit Lara Croft though, and I don’t mind that.
I carry the bags to the car and Lucy says her goodbyes. I don’t watch. I can’t imagine leaving Max behind, it would be like cutting off my own arm, tearing it off.