‘Hi, I’m Danby,’ I said loudly, hoping to snap her out of her daze. ‘Who are you?’
Her hazel eyes dialled from off to on.
‘Lauren,’ she said. ‘I’m a nurse.’
Jack had been denied his nurse before. Now he had one. Like a kid ticking off another card in a collect ’em all set.
‘Not your name or what you do,’ I said. ‘Who are you?’
Lauren blinked at me.
Jack looked annoyed, like I’d broken some unspoken etiquette.
‘You go on,’ he said to her. ‘We’ll be there later.’
She strolled through people in desperate need of her skills, bare feet finding clear patches amid the crumpled figures and broken glass, like a pretty party waif drifting home through a battlefield.
What disturbed me was that Jack hadn’t told her or any of them where to go. At least, not out loud. He and I weren’t mentally connected but he had something going on with the people he raised. When Lauren disappeared around a corner, I tried to keep an even tone.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Tell me.’
‘When I started walking out of the city, I recognised some of the people on the streets,’ Jack said. ‘I’d seen a few of them, day in, day out, rushing here and there, glued to their phones and tablets, and here they were, dead or dying, still with their faces in their gadgets.’
We sat side by side on a low brick wall.
‘I saw this stockbroker douchebag,’ he continued. ‘I remembered him from Resist in Martin Place. I was performing protest songs, you know, amping up the morale, or trying to, and this guy came across our lines with a few of his buddies. They all smelled of a boozy lunch. This douchebag, he said to me, “Want a revolutionary idea? Get a job!” And he dropped a McDonald’s application form in my guitar case. This really cracked him and his mates up. While they were walking away I made up this little ditty about them and everyone started laughing. But it really pissed off the douchebag and he marched back. I was hoping he was gonna hit me because that might start a riot and it would have been on.’
Jack grinned at me. I’d been fourteen when Resist was at its peak and wanted desperately to join its ranks. In a rare exercise of parental control, Dad had forbidden me from going anywhere near the occupation. He agreed most protestors were peaceful but reckoned there were always radicals looking to start trouble. But I still daydreamed about running away, meeting a boy with ideas as big as my own and changing the world together. A few weeks later we saw what happened. I might have been among the dead if I’d been there when the bomb went off.
‘But instead of hitting me,’ Jack went on, ‘this douchebag leaned right into my face and said, “One day we’ll exterminate your kind in death camps.” My kind?’
Jack laughed. ‘Teenagers? Guitarists? Activists? Hatred poured off this guy. He was deadly serious.’
Jack shook his head like he still couldn’t believe it.
‘You don’t forget someone like that,’ he said. ‘So I’m walking through Ashfield and there he is! In the gutter outside one of those fortress apartments. Expensive clothes all torn. Face scratched to hell. One hand wrapped around his phone and the other one up in the air. Like he’s in some fancy restaurant closing a deal and summoning his waiter.’
Jack chuckled again.
‘I couldn’t resist,’ he said. ‘I high-fived the asshole. But everything changed when I touched him. Suddenly I know this guy inside out and back to front. His name is Mike—the Mikester, the Mikenator—and he pulls down five hundred thou a year. He doesn’t think that’s nearly enough. What really spun me out is that he was still down there inside himself. All I had to do was speak and he’d wake up.’
I saw why Jack had given me repeated demonstrations before he told me his story. Otherwise I wouldn’t have believed a word.
‘How?’ I asked. ‘How it that possible?’
‘I’ve always been a real people person,’ he said, blowing smoke at the sky.
My mouth dropped open.
‘I’m kidding,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why. The best way I can describe it is like they’re behind a soundproof door that’s locked from the inside. But somehow they can hear me and they open up and come out. Does that make any sense?’
It sounded similar to what I did with Evan back in Starboard when I envisaged myself trying to rescue him down in a hole. The big difference was that Jack could make the connection.
‘What do you say?’ I said. ‘To make them wake up?
Jack glanced at me, as if deciding whether he should share his secret. ‘Oh—I say . . . well . . .’ He looked sheepish. ‘I say, “Open your mind.”’
I looked at him. ‘Seriously?’
He nodded.
‘So if I say it, will it work?’
Jack shrugged. ‘You can try.’
I hopped off the wall, took a few steps and knelt by a scrawny guy in shiny sunglasses. Jack watched me with a pained expression. Was he worried I’d fail—or succeed?
‘What do I do?’ I said.
He dragged on his cigarette. ‘Just touch him. Find him. Focus. Then say it, I guess.’
I closed my eyes, as though it’d sharpen my other senses, and rested my hand on the guy’s forehead, like it might be more receptive closer to his brain. I tried to hear and feel the man’s consciousness or soul or essence or whatever. All I heard was his scratchy breathing. All I felt was his clammy skin. ‘Open your mind.’
I opened my eyes. His stayed shut.
‘Getting anything?’ Jack asked.
I looked over at him and shook my head. I performed my hocus-pocus again. Nothing.
‘Can you help him?’ I asked.
It felt terrible to leave this guy now.
I stepped back and Jack took over.
‘You’ve got good taste,’ he said, hand where mine had been. ‘Hugh here’s not in the best of health but he is a chopper pilot. That will come in handy.’
Jack leaned in and whispered.
Hugh stirred but didn’t wake up like the others.
‘He’ll need an IV and antibiotics,’ Jack said. ‘But he’ll be okay.’
A shadow fell across us and the helicopter pilot. When I looked up, the red-haired minion who’d said he was glad I felt better leaned in to scoop up the man whose career choice had saved his life. When they had gone, Jack grinned my way sympathetically.
‘It’s not as simple as just waking them up,’ he said. ‘You should be glad you can’t do it.’
‘Yeah.’ I wasn’t but I felt he was. He wanted to stay The Man. ‘Sure.’
‘I’m serious,’ he protested. ‘With great power comes great responsibility and all that.’
I snorted. Now he wanted to be Spider-Man?
‘When I woke up that stockbroker guy, Mike, it was like I had hacked him,’ Jack said. ‘It was like I was me but I was also inside him.’
I took a swig of my sports drink. ‘We all had that, seeing through other—’
Jack held up his hands. ‘I wasn’t just hearing or seeing what he heard. I was him.’
I shook my head.
Some part of me had known this was coming but I still didn’t want to believe.
‘I didn’t believe it either,’ Jack said. ‘That Mike guy? Almost as a joke, I willed him to carry my guitar and amp and backpack. And he did. Then I realised I didn’t just know and control him but that I could access everything he knows. It wasn’t a sudden flash. It was like this stuff has always been in my mind. I don’t even have a bank account but now I could talk for hours about credit default swaps, short selling, hedge funds, all of that financial shit that’s so meaningless now.’
Jack sounded pleased with himself, with this new world. He’d wanted Resist to spark revolution. The Snap was something like that. Re-evolution maybe. With him as some kind of ringleader.
‘Still I didn’t believe it,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’d heard one of his asshole friends call him Mike. Maybe it was a coincidence that he’d come back to conscio
usness when I spoke to him. Maybe he was carrying my stuff because he was in shock. All that financial mumbo jumbo in my head? I could’ve been making it up, right? It wasn’t like I was going to stop to check an economics textbook.’
Jack snapped his fingers. ‘So I try it again and the next guy wakes up too. Pastry chef, speaks French, lived in New York for eight years. Suddenly, I can make a croquembouche, speak French with a Parisian accent and find my way on foot from the Bowery to Brooklyn. The next one’s a truck driver. If I raise him, I’ll know how to drive an eighteen-wheeler but I’ll also know what it’s like to be a serious meth-head. So I left him. But I kept walking, kept touching. It’s amazing, Danby. Every person I raise, I learn more. I’m learning how much I didn’t—’
‘What’ve you done to Evan?’ Zombie to minion wasn’t any sort of improvement. ‘What the f—’
‘He’s fine,’ Jack said firmly. ‘He’s safe.’
‘Was that him or you? Last night with me? Playing with that girl?’
‘Both,’ Jack said. ‘Evan’s still himself. He’s still in there. I’m just holding him up for a while.’
‘Holding him up? Can you let him go?’
Jack held up his hands. ‘Let me finish what I was telling you?’
I blinked at him. Gulped painfully. Nodded.
‘God didn’t say to Noah, “Grab animals at random.” He said, “Get two of each.” Imagine if Noah’s kids had rocked up with, like, fifty giraffes and said, “Dad, can we keep them?” ’
I couldn’t even force a smile.
Jack studied me, took a deep breath, held it for a moment like he was about to dive in.
‘First I saw that selfish bitch Cassie. Then her party animal friends. Then there were five and ten and fifteen more minds out there. I could see what you and him were trying to do. But I also saw it couldn’t work.’
‘It was working,’ I said.
‘Not really. You saw what they were doing.’
‘Not all of them,’ I protested. ‘Not even most.’
Jack looked at me like I should know better. ‘Not just the ones who were getting high and looting and the rest of it. Reviving family, friends and neighbours? Sure it’s heart-warming but are those the people who’re gonna bring us back from extinction?’
‘It was working,’ I repeated. ‘We just needed time.’
‘We don’t have time,’ he said. ‘Tax accountants, human resource managers, brand strategists, advertising executives, hotel concierges—they’re no more necessary than fashion students who sideline as catalogue models.’
I narrowed my eyes at him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But you know it’s true. What we need are people who can build houses, grow crops, deliver babies.’ Jack glanced at my head wound. ‘Sew up injuries like that, repair engines, raise livestock, all of that. I’ve checked thousands of people to find firemen, mechanics, engineers, the paramedic whose knowledge helped me stitch you up. Carpenters, plumbers, metalworkers, chemists, a horticulturalist, strong guys to do the heavy lifting.’
Bile rose in me. There was no way for me to avoid the conclusion my guts had reached back at the MobiFfone shop. Jack was neglecting to mention a few people in his collection.
‘Don’t forget your Cop, Biker and Surfer and the other thugs,’ I sneered. ‘You—you—you killed people. Had them killed. However it works. You’re a murderer.’
Jack met my stare. ‘I had no choice.’
‘You’re full of shit.’
I wanted to hit him. Bust his nose all over his face. Break his smile into little pieces. Bury his eyes under bruises. If looks could kill he would have spontaneously combusted under my glare.
‘You really think so?’ he said. ‘How long before your dozens became hundreds and then thousands and then tens of thousands? That was the plan, right? How long before all those entangled minds went crazy again?’
I shook my head so hard my vision swam. ‘You don’t know that’s what’d happen.’
Jack’s smile and nod said he knew I’d considered that very possibility.
‘Even if it didn’t,’ he went on, ‘do you think the people you revived and whoever they randomly woke up were going to organise themselves to produce food, clear roads and rebuild infrastructure? You know they weren’t. They were going to take care of themselves and their immediate circle and they were going to compete for what was left. Best case scenario it’s a few months before people are killing each other for tins of food. Killing us. Dragging everyone down. Better to stop it before it was too late. Better to really start over.’
What cut me deepest about Jack’s crazy talk were the stabs of sanity.
‘You didn’t have to kill anyone,’ I said. ‘You could’ve—’
‘Asked people to stop reviving their friends and family? I had to set an example strong enough to shock you all. We have to face the truth, Danby.’ Jack sized me up. Bit his lip. Decided to say what he had to say. ‘The people who died would’ve only ended up hurting themselves or other people.’
‘You’re crazy!’ I balled my fists, nails digging into my palms. ‘That’s not true.’
‘It’s not? Well answer me this: how long was a fast-food cashier with a history of severe depression going to last? How long before her redneck brother was shooting people for looking at him the wrong way?’
Jackie: shot cowering under a desk. Tim: blown away defending his own home.
‘How were drug addicts going to contribute to the greater good?’
Cassie, Sammy, James: burned alive for being selfish slackers.
‘How long do you reckon it’d be before he drank a case of wine and made his family pay for thoughts they couldn’t help thinking about him?’
Ray: gunned down trying to save Lyn and their kids.
‘And me? And Nathan?’ I asked. ‘You shot us.’
Jack averted his eyes, reached for his tobacco.
‘You were an accident,’ he said. ‘I thought he was a threat.’
‘A threat? Nathan was my friend! We were together!’
Jack looked at me sharply.
‘Not like that,’ I said. ‘We were working together.’
He nodded. ‘I get that now. But see it how I saw it. The first time I saw you, through Cassie, you were afraid he was going to hurt people again. “Please—you promised no more blood.” Those were your exact words. He had a nail gun, for Christ’s sake.’
Our cruel defensive joke. Meant to scare Cassie into leaving us alone. ‘Jesus, no,’ I protested. ‘He wasn’t serious.’
Jack arched his eyebrows. ‘The other time I saw him was through the girl he stalked so badly she went to the cops. She was frightened of him—and she was glad you’d taken her place. “Better her than me.” Remember?’
‘No,’ I said weakly. ‘She didn’t know—I mean—he was sick but—’
There was nothing to add. We’d both been in Tregan and felt how scared she was of Nathan.
Jack sighed, ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to end it without violence. My guy promised you wouldn’t be hurt if you came out.’
I wanted to scream. ‘We were supposed to believe that? After what happened to the others?’
His eyes darkened. ‘Your friend was the one who yelled and came up with a gun. I can control the minds but there’s also muscle memory involved. The Cop was trained to shoot first, think later. I’m sorry it turned out the way it did.’
I sat in silence, trying to absorb everything.
‘But I’m not sorry about what I’m doing here,’ Jack said after a while, waving a hand at the street. ‘It’s no different to the disaster plans governments had in place.’
He met my cold stare without blinking.
‘You think if an asteroid had been about to hit earth that the official survival bunkers would’ve been open to you? To Evan? To your family? No, they would’ve been filled with politicians, billionaires, scientists, academics, celebrities. What
would they have done if you tried to get in? They. Would. Have. Shot. You. At least this way we get to rebuild from the bottom up.’
I swallowed painfully when I remembered what the Cop— what Jack—had said about Legion. ‘Do you think you’re . . . God?’
Jack shook his head. ‘It’s more like being . . . Google.’
There was no expression to match my emotions.
‘Then what about that religious stuff?’ I asked after a while. ‘ “No one comes to life” and all that?’
Jack shrugged. ‘More than half the people you woke up had some Christian background. I thought if I put the fear of God into the mix, they might take more notice.’
Nathan and I had feared a zealot. Jack’s practicality was somehow scarier.
My mind skipped out to the other Revivees, still flinching at shadows.
‘Are you going to kill all of the people we revived?’ I asked.
‘Of course not,’ Jack said. ‘They just have to keep to themselves.’
‘What about me?’
‘No!’ Jack looked wounded. ‘I want you to come with me.’
‘I have to get to my mum in—’ ‘I know,’ he said. ‘In the Blue Mountains.’
Ice water ran in my veins. He knew because Evan knew. I was glad my little brother’s knowledge of Mum’s hideaway wasn’t any more specific than that.
‘How far up is she?’ he asked.
‘Not far. Why?’
Jack grinned. ‘Well, I’m heading to Clearview. I can get you there at least.’
Clearview! A cute village in the lower mountains. It’d put me within twenty kilometres of Shadow Valley. I tried not to let my excitement show. Or my suspicion that he was delusional about going anywhere given the state of the roads.
‘But you need to make up your mind,’ he said. ‘Because I’m leaving in a few hours.’
I trailed Jack through the streets as he raised people here and there. Given what he’d told me and how much human suffering stretched in every direction, it was stupid that seeing the labrador stiff and dead on a car bonnet was sadder and more shocking than anything.
The Last Girl Page 21