The Last Girl

by Michael Adams

  ‘Yummy,’ Evan squealed. ‘Fri-rice!’

  ‘That’s all he wanted,’ Jack said with a laugh. ‘There’s someone cooking in the kitchen. You can have whatever you like.’

  It hurt when I laughed.

  ‘What’s funny?’ Jack smiled.

  ‘“Whatever I like?”’

  The world had gone mad and then it had gone to shit and here he was talking to me like the hipster owner of some historic hotel.

  ‘Hey,’ he said with a smile, ‘we probably can’t do green chicken curry.’

  My veins filled with ice.

  Green chicken curry. The dish I’d ordered on my last visit to Rubber Thaime.

  I finally understood the total violation everyone had felt on Christmas Day, why they’d all suffered so much more than I had. I felt trespassed upon, laid bare, raped. This guy was in my mind.

  Jack’s mouth became an O of surprise and he held up his palms.

  ‘Hey, hey, no—I’m not reading your thoughts,’ he protested. ‘I can’t—any more than you can read mine. Evan said something about “green chicken curry for Danby”. That’s all.’

  Evan was back at my bedside, pushing his toy vehicle up a little mountain made by my knees under the covers.

  ‘UH-oh!’ he said as he let the truck roll back into a crevasse. ‘Green chicken!’

  I sank back into the pillows. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Just spooked me.’

  ‘Do you want to eat?’ Jack asked.

  ‘What I want to do is get to my mum’s place.’ My voice sounded far away. ‘That’s what I want.’

  Jack stood up. ‘It’s too dark to go anywhere now. We’ll talk about everything in the morning.’

  I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to march west, drag Evan behind me, damn the Biker and all his bastards to hell. But I was struggling to keep my eyes open. I wondered if this was shock—or a side effect of the painkillers.

  My little brother smiled at me from his chair.

  ‘He’ll stay with you.’ Jack was closing the door behind him. ‘You get some rest.’

  Sickly orange light filled the windows. Evan slept in the chair by the bed. I propped myself up on my elbows. My head didn’t hurt and my mind felt clear. But I was starving. The door was open and wonderful smells drifted into the room: bacon, toast, coffee.

  Swinging out of the bed, I stood up a little shakily. The dresser was stacked with T-shirts, jeans, underwear and socks, all still store folded or in plastic wrappers, and my boots stood beside new sneakers along the skirting board. A metal basin brimmed with water. Toiletries and a towel were laid out. Even my phone had been cleaned up. I instinctively clicked it on. Still no service but a full battery. There were even packets of chewing gum. Same brand I’d had in my pocket. My host had thought of everything.

  Evan slept on. I let my nightie fall from my shoulders and looked at myself in the cheval mirror. I was clean and the bruises on my arms and legs from car crashes and kayak bumps and the rest of it were already yellowing. I unwrapped my head bandage and lifted crusty gauze and padding. Black stitches stuck out like insect legs from the gash that started above my left temple and carved its way to just over my ear. Maybe that’s why I’d thought of Mary Shelley. Frankenstein’s creator. It wasn’t too bad. I looked kinda punk.

  My face flushed red in the mirror. I’d been wearing jeans and a shirt in the taxi. I guess only an idiot would stitch a person up and then tuck the patient into bed in blood-soaked clothes. I looked at the nightie at my feet and wondered if Jack had taken it upon himself to be the first man to ever see me naked. The idea didn’t trouble me as much it would have a few days ago—and not nearly as much as when I’d thought he was in my mind.

  Splashing my face with cold water got me thinking about the important stuff. I didn’t know why we were here, who our host was or how he’d revived Evan. And I needed answers to make the best decision about what to do next. Jack and all those people out on the lawn looked pretty organised. Maybe they could help us get to Shadow Valley.

  I got dressed. Tried on new sneakers but stuck with my boots. Grabbed some gum and pocketed my phone. Tied my hair back. Evan was still curled up. I let him sleep.

  I stepped into a gloomy corridor, floorboards creaking underfoot, walls lined with paintings of the Australian bush looking like English countryside. I glanced through doorways into deep rooms. There were roped-off displays of furniture, clothing and assorted colonial treasures but no other guests. Following the breakfast aromas took me down a wide staircase to a chequerboard hallway and then to a grand dining room.

  Jack turned from the windows and greeted me with a smile.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, melting.

  The long table between us was piled with platters of bacon, eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, baked beans. Coffee steamed from a silver pot. Condensation jewelled a crystal jug of milk. Ice floated in a tall pitcher of orange juice. Roses erupted from a centrepiece vase. My stomach rumbled.

  Jack laughed. ‘How’s the head?’

  My hand hovered over the bristle of stitches. ‘Pretty ugly.’

  ‘Only half right,’ he said, grinning as he pulled out a chair for me. ‘You must be starving.’

  Jack poured a glass of juice that was the same colour as the sky outside.

  ‘Just so we’re clear—’ His frown lifted as he smiled slyly. ‘One of the women got you cleaned up and changed.’

  ‘I wasn’t worried, I was—’ I stammered, not sure why I was going red. ‘Given the circumstances, it’s fine, really, it’s—’

  I drank the orange juice to shut myself up and cool myself down. It was a wonderful icy sunburst.

  Jack waved at the food on the table. ‘Do you want everything?’

  ‘Please.’

  Jack sauntered around, piling a plate. Whenever I thought he was going to catch me watching him, I made a point of studying our surroundings. Bentwood chairs stood sentry beneath each window. An intricate rug was squared before the cavernous fireplace. Sideboards gleamed with serving bowls and wine glasses. The polish and precision gave the room a military air, the effect heightened by the portrait of a white-haired gent in a redcoat uniform above the marble mantelpiece.

  ‘Governor Arthur Phillip,’ Jack said, setting my breakfast down. He took a cigarette from behind his ear. ‘Is it okay if I stand by the window?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I wasn’t going to be put off by a little tobacco smoke. Not after what I’d smelled out there.

  ‘Please, dig in,’ Jack said.

  I did. Greedily.

  ‘You know the history of this place?’ Jack asked, lighting up. Then added, ‘Sorry, I hate it when people ask me a question when I’m eating.’

  I chewed a mouthful of toast.

  ‘That dude,’ he said, pointing at Phillip’s portrait, ‘built here in 1790 because the soil at Sydney Cove was shit and the First Fleet was starving to death.’

  Jack nodded out at the park’s gentle slopes and the silver twist of river. ‘It was that fertile land out there that saved them.’

  I scooped up baked beans.

  ‘The Aborigines supposedly didn’t have agriculture,’ he said. ‘That’s why they could be deemed “uncivilised”. So this area was occupied with a clear Christian conscience—like the rest of the country.’

  He blew a plume of smoke out the window. ‘Know why the land was fertile?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Because the Aborigines had done firestick farming here forever.’

  ‘Ten thousand years,’ I said, remembering the plaques on the river path.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I knew you’d get it.’

  ‘What?’

  He paced back from the window in a blue cloud to ash his cigarette on a silver platter. ‘The irony. The agriculture the Aborigines supposedly didn’t have was what saved the invaders—and that’s what sealed the fate of the indigenous people. Actually, irony doesn’t cover it.’

  My appetite was fading fast. I wasn’t sure wha
t purpose his history lesson served. ‘What happened was terrible.’

  ‘I’m not trying to guilt you out.’ Jack sat down with a sigh and ran his fingers through his thick hair. ‘I didn’t know any of this until I found out from the caretaker.’

  ‘The caretaker was okay?’

  Jack gave me a little nod. ‘He’s up and about.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and poured us cups of coffee. ‘I knew the basics of our history. But I didn’t really understand until he filled me in on all the gory details. Milk? Sugar?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘If you’d looked out these windows two hundred years ago, you would’ve seen a vast town of convict tents.’ Jack piled sugar into his coffee. ‘Poor bastards turned into criminals because they’d stolen a piece of bread to keep themselves or their kids alive.’

  I took the coffee for its warmth.

  ‘Shipped to the end of the earth as slaves. Convict labour built this house. Built this country.’

  Jack turned to Phillip’s portrait.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he said. ‘Him and the rest of them weren’t bad dudes. They weren’t evil. They were doing what they thought was right. For God and country. But let’s face it. Dispossession, extermination, oppression, slavery: that’s what our country and our whole world was built on.’

  My appetite was gone. I pushed my plate away.

  Jack pulled out a pouch of tobacco and got rolling again.

  I sipped my coffee. ‘Are you saying what happened was payback?’

  ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘If I’d asked you on Christmas Eve whether you’d unlive your whole life and unbuild your society to right all those old wrongs, would you have said “Yes”?’

  I didn’t know what the hell he was getting at.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, keeping a lid on my frustration. ‘All I know is I have to get to my mum.’

  Jack nodded. ‘I’ll help you with that.’

  ‘You will?’ My heart sped up. ‘Really?’

  Jack fixed me with his stare. His eyes were intense, golden and green, but his smile exuded easy confidence. ‘Sure I will,’ he said. ‘But first I really have to show you something. Won’t take long, okay?’

  Stepping out of Old Government House I was greeted by the sight of Evan and a little girl kicking a soccer ball across the lawn. My little brother rarely played well with others. I tried to tune her mind but got nothing. Jack grinned. Was this what he wanted to show me?

  ‘Who is she?’ I asked.

  ‘Michelle,’ he said. ‘She’s six. Her mother and father ran off. Nice, huh? I found her down by the river.’

  Jack pointed down the hill, towards the edge of the park. ‘This way, to the city.’

  He began walking. Turned around when I didn’t follow. I didn’t want to go back to where I’d nearly been killed any more than I wanted to risk leaving Evan behind.

  ‘What about him?’ I said.

  Jack looked from me to my little brother—and then to a big guy in sunglasses standing in the shade of a tree and cradling a shotgun.

  ‘Nick over there will guard them with his life,’ Jack said.

  The man gave us a nod that said there was nothing he couldn’t handle.

  ‘Evan’s safe here,’ Jack said soothingly, assurance flowing from him again. ‘We’ll be safe out there.’

  As we walked down the hill, I saw why Jack and the others had set up base here. There was only one road into the park and it followed the fence and then the river before looping on itself and leading back into Parramatta. Compared with the city streets, that mile or two of bitumen was relatively clear of cars and people. Off the road, there was room to move, plenty of space between the vehicles and victims strewn across the grassy slopes. I guessed that while some people had fled into the park to be alone, the panicked hordes hadn’t driven in here hoping to reach someplace else. I gazed at the fleet of off-road vehicles. Men and women filled petrol tanks from cans and checked engines and loaded cargo areas with cartons. Their minds were closed to me but I saw they were broadly similar specimens: young and fit and intent on their tasks. The military got all sorts of immunisations. Maybe one of their jabs had protected these guys from the worst of it. My medications hypothesis could stretch to accommodate that possibility. I stifled a sob as I thought of Nathan, who hadn’t lived long enough to hear my theory and tell me where it went wrong.

  ‘Are you guys the army?’ I asked.

  Jack smiled at me. ‘I guess we are now. But what we really are is lucky. All of those four-wheel drives you see were already inside the park. Getting the right vehicles off the city streets would’ve been near impossible. We need all the grunt we can get if we’re going to get out of here.’

  ‘Get out?’ I asked. ‘This place seems . . . good.’

  Good: I regretted the word as soon as it left my lips. Could I be more stupid or insensitive? Within a stone’s throw of where we walked I could see two obviously dead people and ten times that number who’d die unless they got help. The air around us was streaked with smoke and the sky was straight out of science-fiction. It was very far from good—but it was like Eden compared with the city streets we were about to enter.

  ‘I didn’t mean “good”,’ I said. ‘I mean it’s—’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ Jack said. ‘This place would be perfect. Old Government House was built for a world without electricity, the river connects us to the coast and there’s plenty of rich soil to raise animals and crops like they did back in the day. We’d be able to defend against fire and if the city and suburbs didn’t burn around us they’d supply us with clothes and medicine and tools and stuff like that for years to come.’

  I wondered who the ‘we’ and ‘us’ were but didn’t say anything.

  ‘They’re the reason we can’t stay,’ Jack said, hand sweeping across the field of the dead and dying. ‘It’s not that they’re a biological hazard. You won’t get sick from them, unless you eat them or drink water from where they’ve been festering.’

  My breakfast bubbled in my stomach.

  ‘Mass burials or cremations after disasters aren’t to protect people from disease,’ he said. ‘Bodies are buried or burned for morale, for a sense of closure, to get them out of sight so people can get on with things. But mostly? It’s to save survivors from the smell.’

  The sour tang of decay was getting stronger as we got closer to the city. Jack produced menthol gel and rubbed streaks of shiny stuff under his nostrils. He handed the tube to me and I smeared it on my upper lip as we passed under a stone archway and onto a city footpath. Just here, on this one stretch of street on one edge of Parramatta’s urban grid, there had to be one hundred dead people.

  My brain ached when I tried to add up how long it had been since Christmas, instinctively wanting to measure the time in years or decades, rebelling at the reality that it’d been just four days. Even if Nathan’s hibernation theory was right, the dying had to accelerate soon.

  ‘Relatively speaking, it’s not too bad now,’ Jack said, inhaling cautiously. ‘But in a few weeks there’s going to be millions of bodies, all of them rotting. The sight of it, the smell of it, will be impossible to live with. The smoke in the air’s bad now. The clouds of flies will be worse.’

  ‘How,’ I said, ‘do you know all of this?’

  Jack looked at me. ‘One of the guys back at Old Government House worked in disaster relief back after that big tsunami.’

  Frustration swelled in me. I didn’t know how he could equate the disasters, how he could miss the obvious. ‘These people aren’t dead,’ I said. ‘They don’t have to die. We can revive them. We can—’

  Jack shook his head. ‘No, we can’t, Danby,’ he said. ‘Not if we want to live.’

  Fear radiated through me. Jack wasn’t armed. We didn’t have a shotgun-toting guard. I’d followed him blithely into territory ruled by the Cop, the Surfer, the Biker and other maniacs, something he was belatedly acknowledging. As if on cue, there was movement down th
e next block, big men heading from the city centre, heads bobbing our way through stalled traffic.

  ‘We should go back,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about them,’ Jack replied calmly. ‘What you have to worry about is—’

  I looked at him. ‘What?’

  Jack sucked on his cigarette. ‘Hard facts.’

  ‘How,’ I said, cracking, ‘can the freaking facts get any harder? What are you talking about?’

  He let the smoke ooze from his mouth. ‘I’m talking about accepting that just about everyone is going to die. About accepting we can’t do anything about it.’

  Before I could argue, Jack strode across the road, squeezed between cars, skirted around a woman in a wheelchair, ducked under a guy who’d hanged himself from a tree branch. When I caught up to him on the footpath, I saw that the guys approaching us were hefting cartons. Jack shepherded me up onto the steps of an office building so they could pass.

  ‘Bottled water, tinned food, medical supplies,’ Jack said. ‘We don’t know what we’ll find out there—it’s better to be prepared.’

  We were close enough to reach out and touch any of the men but none of them looked our way or acknowledged our presence.

  ‘Hey,’ I said to the red-haired guy who was last in line. ‘Hi.’

  At first it was like he didn’t hear or see me, like it had been with Boris in Beautopia Point. But he slowly turned my way.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said dully. ‘I’m glad you’re feeling better.’

  ‘I am,’ I said. ‘Thank you. How are—’

  But he zoned me out and walked on towards Old Government House. Had he and his comrades been ordered not to fraternise with civilians? Were they in shock?

  ‘What’s with them?’ I whispered.

  ‘Nothing,’ Jack said. ‘They’re just . . . adjusting.’

  He stepped back to the footpath. I stayed where I was.