Rifle at the ready, Oscar goes to the window, looks down at the street through the blinds. ‘They could’ve heard that.’
‘I guess we’ll find out,’ Louis says. ‘But I reckon they were more likely to hear you all shouting at each other for the next hour.’
‘Jesus, man,’ Oscar says, looking back at his friend in shock. ‘Did you have to?’
Louis looks at each of us. When he meets my eyes I’m amazed I don’t feel revulsion. What he just did wasn’t like him executing Ray at Jack’s cold-blooded bidding. Killing the woman seems merciful rather than cruel. Honest, most of all.
‘We can’t save anyone,’ Louis says, ‘not until we save ourselves.’
It’s the truth.
What’s also true is that even as we try to escape Jack, his way of thinking is taking root in us.
‘How?’ Alex asks. ‘How are we gonna save ourselves?’
We gather in the lounge room. I sit beside Evan. Louis stands guard by the window. We talk in whispers, spooked by the gunshot, spooked by the noise we made when we argued.
‘It’s not like we’ve got a lot of options,’ Oscar says. ‘I think we have to keep heading north.’
He looks at each of us for dissent. No one’s arguing.
‘But we need to know where we’re going,’ Nathan says.
‘Right. Has anyone found a map, a street directory?’ Oscar asks.
No one has.
I think about my phone and how easy it would’ve been to pinpoint our location just a week ago.
‘My kingdom,’ I say, ‘for Google Maps.’
Grim nods all around. Except for Tajik. His eyes light up as he yanks a phone from his jeans.
‘I charged it in the NiteRite store,’ he says.
Nathan and I exchange glances. Is our new friend not quite getting that the internet’s gone for good?
Tajik turns his device to us triumphantly. The big screen is bright and shows a green dot on a red map of this suburb. He looks up at the ceiling. ‘The GPS,’ he says, ‘it is still speaking to the satellites up in space.’
We crowd around as he shows us our position in the maze of Riverside’s streets. Zooming out we see how close we still are to Penrith.
‘How far is it from Parramatta to Emu Plains?’ I ask. ‘Not on the road but as straight as the crow flies.’
Tajik pinches and scrolls. ‘About thirty-five kilometres.’
‘I think that’s the radius,’ I say.
The others look at me. ‘Jack lost control over Oscar and Louis when they were in Parramatta and we were west of Emu Plains. It’s when I couldn’t hear the Revivees anymore. You’ve probably experienced it too? Minds fading out?’ I look at Marv and Alex. ‘And fading back in like they did today when we drove out of the mountains?’
They nod.
‘I think Jack’s army, as big as it is, can only operate inside the radius around him. We get outside it and we’ll be safe.’
They look at me.
‘Well, safer.’ I gaze from Oscar and Louis to Evan. ‘And he’ll be free like you guys.’
Alex snorts. ‘Yeah, because that’s what it’s all about, right?’
I look at him sharply. ‘What it’s all about is Jack not being able to use him to find us.’ My voice has an angry edge. But I don’t care. ‘It’ll also mean we can start reviving people with Lorazepam and Jack won’t be able to tune their minds and see us. Isn’t that what we want?’
Oscar rubs his beard. ‘There’s a lot of unknowns in there,’ he says. ‘But it sounds like the best plan we’re gonna get.’
Louis lets the curtain fall back into place across the window and crosses the room to join us. ‘But if one of us could get to Jack and kill him. Then we’d be okay, right?’
All eyes come to rest on me: resident Jack expert and his failed assassin.
‘That’s my theory,’ I say. ‘But I’m not sure.’
‘Okay,’ Louis says. ‘But what we know for sure is that if he is thirty-five kilometres or whatever from people, then they’re free like me and Oscar? So what if we get him away from everyone?’
Marv’s nodding like this makes sense.
‘Didn’t you hear her?’ Alex says from his sulk on the couch. ‘There’s a thousand of them out there. Probably more all the time.’
‘For once I agree with Alex,’ Oscar says. ‘It’d be suicide to fight them head on or try to catch Jack and spirit him off somewhere. What we have to do is get out of this radius. Regroup. Find other people like us. Revive more people. Then work out how we hit ’em hardest and smartest.’
Nathan likes this idea. Louis nods along.
We refocus on Tajik’s phone. Oscar points at the vast patchwork of olive rectangles that begins a few kilometres north of this house.
‘Bush reserves and then farms,’ he says. ‘We can get through this tonight and come out near Richmond.’
Oscar scrolls east from that little town’s business district and surrounding suburban streets and follows a major road east past a huge ‘restricted’ grey oblong labelled ‘Richmond Air Base’ and by a tan oval that’s ‘Richmond Racecourse’.
‘We bypass all of that,’ he says. ‘Come out on the other side of the horse track and head up to this bridge.’ He points at where a road crosses the Hawkesbury River. ‘Once we’re on the other side there’s plenty of open space. Farms. Bush. Head straight north and you’ll have your thirty-five clicks for your radius before you know it.’
With Oscar watching over his shoulder, Tajik uses the GPS app to plot a route that’ll get us through Riverside’s labyrinth and to the edge of the bush. Marv revisits the idea of motorbikes. We discuss the risks of trying to find them in surrounding streets and agree the noise they’d make would be heard for miles and they’d be too dangerous to ride without headlights that’d easily be seen.
‘The only way I can see,’ Oscar says, ‘is to go on foot.’
‘Thirty-five kilometres?’ Alex sputters. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
Louis sighs. I wonder whether he’d put a bullet in Alex if he thought he was putting us at risk. What disturbs me about the thought is I might be able to justify it as necessary for group survival like I did with the woman upstairs. My stomach feels sour and my cheeks redden with shame. I’m glad no one can read my mind.
‘Average walking speed’s about four–five clicks an hour,’ Oscar is saying patiently. ‘We start at dark and we finish at dawn. Eleven hours—it’ll be enough time, even if we’re in bush terrain some of the time. We’ll be fine.’
The grandfather clock bongs. We shudder and stiffen and a second later dissolve into nervous laughter. All except Alex.
Oscar opens the clock’s glass front and does something to the mechanism to stop it chiming again.
‘It’s just gone one,’ he says. ‘We’ve got maybe six hours until it’s dark. We need to keep quiet and get organised.’
He pulls an ammunition clip from his backpack and tucks it into his jeans pocket. ‘Louis, see who needs ammo. We’ve got three clips left. I’m gonna see if I can find a vantage point upstairs to cover the street and backyard.’
‘Remember,’ I say, ‘if you shoot one of them, all of them will know where we are.’
Oscar nods at me ‘Last resort, I promise.’
‘What will be the first resort?’ Tajik asks. ‘If they come down our street and look in the houses?’
Marv jerks his head towards the backyard. ‘Quickly and quietly over the rear fence and run for it.’
Tajik looks skeptical. ‘Won’t they be trying to flush us out?’
I glance at Marv. ‘They can’t search every house.’
‘Maybe we can just hide?’ Alex offers.
‘We are hiding,’ I say.
‘I mean, like somewhere in here, if they search the place. You know, like Anne Frank.’
‘Do you know how that story turned out?’ I ask.
Alex screws up his face like I’m the one who’s missing the point.
&nbs
p; ‘I’ll check when I’m upstairs,’ Oscar says, humouring him. ‘There might be access to the ceiling. It could be a place to hide.’
A satisfied smile spreads across Alex’s face but the last thing I want is to be cowering on rafters in the dark while Jack and his goons tear the house apart below us.
Marv looks around. ‘We need food, supplies, more bags to carry everything.’
‘I’ll check the kitchen,’ I say.
Tajik puts his hand up. ‘I will help.’
‘You and me,’ Nathan says to Marv. ‘Let’s see what we can find in the garage.’
Tajik and I head into the kitchen. The benches and wide island are spotless. I wonder what happened in this house. The woman upstairs might never have gotten up from her Christmas morning sleep-in while her husband high-tailed it in their car.
Tajik steps into the pantry. I open the dead fridge—shut it again quickly in a fog of fumes from Christmas lunch that’s rotted for a week.
Tajik looks across at me from the pantry with a smile. ‘Maybe just dry goods?’
As we strip the shelves, I ask Tajik where he’s from originally and he bluntly sketches a brutal life in Afghanistan and then years stuck in refugee camps and detention centres before getting his visa and working as a taxi driver. When the Snap happened, he drove his cab into a bush reserve. It was days before he wandered out, made his way to Penrith, was swept up by armed men and taken to Jack a few days ago.
‘He asked me all sorts of questions,’ Tajik says. ‘Testing me like the Mullahs used to, that’s what it felt like. I just said I wanted to help. That I had many skills. Had worked as a driver, builder, orderly. He said I could look after people. Change their IVs and clean them. For the first day he kept someone in with me. Friendly. Funny. Made jokes about Jack. I didn’t laugh. He was like Taliban to me. I kept my head down.’
‘You did the right thing,’ I say. ‘If you’d said anything against him you’d be dead now.’
I wonder how many Specials are rotting somewhere with bullets in their skulls for speaking against Jack.
We look at the food we’ve scrounged. Snack-packs of cheese and crackers, corn chips and chocolate bars, jars of peanut butter and strawberry jam, cans of salmon and corn and a few boxes of biscuits and crispbread. It’s not much, not for seven people. Tajik adds some cutlery to the collection. I look through drawers, tuck a cigarette lighter and Swiss Army knife into my pocket and contribute two flashlights to the pile.
‘Here you go,’ says Nathan, laying two backpacks on the island.
While Tajik and I pack our supplies, Marv heaves armfuls of clothing onto the counter.
I raise an eyebrow at the deeply unfashionable assortment of dark skivvies and sweaters.
Alex joins us in the kitchen. ‘I wouldn’t be caught dead in that stuff.’
Nathan rolls his eyes. ‘You won’t be seen dead in it. That’s the whole point. We need to be hard to see at night.’
He’s right. My Hole T-shirt leaves my pale arms bare and they’ll glow in the dark. Same goes for Nathan’s light-blue shirt, Tajik’s yellow-striped top and Alex’s baggy white T-shirt.
I slip into a man’s black cardigan. I have to roll up the sleeves and it hangs to my thighs. I grin and do a little twirl.
‘Be still, my beating heart,’ Nathan says.
Alex shakes his head, mutters, ‘Get a room.’
My fists ball tight. My blood runs hot and I imagine what it’d be like to hurt him like I hurt Jack.
‘C’mon,’ says Nathan. ‘Let’s check Evan.’
In the lounge room, Nathan supervises encouragingly as I hydrate my little brother with an IV. Oscar returns from fossicking in the back shed with another torch and metal shears to get us through the wire fences that’ll subdivide the countryside ahead. Tajik rips red cellophane from Christmas presents and cuts it into squares that he affixes to the lenses of our flashlights with rubber bands, a trick he learned back home to get around in the dark and preserve night vision without being detected by the Taliban or the Americans. When he’s done, I tape a flashlight to the underside of my rifle and do the same for Oscar and Nathan’s weapons.
Nathan sweeps the house for spare socks and Band-Aids to help us deal with blisters on our long march. Marv cuts holes into the bottom corners of a camping rucksack. I help him get Evan into the makeshift papoose, pull his feet through and tuck in his arms. Marv stands and nods at this better way of carrying him. Alex has fallen asleep on a couch. His rasping snores are preferable to anything he might say.
In the lounge room, Louis has taken the bullets from full ammunition clips and spread them evenly across empty ones. ‘We had a look in the roof,’ he says. ‘There’s no room to hide up there. So backyard and run for it is the plan if it looks like they’re coming in.’
He holds up an assault rifle. ‘Fighting is the last thing we wanna do. But if it comes down to it, you need to know how to use these.’
‘Should we wake him up for this?’ Marv asks of Alex.
Louis shakes his head. ‘I don’t think so.’
Oscar stands guard by the window while the rest of us watch Louis name all the rifle’s parts and make his weapon safe by releasing the magazine and ensuring the chamber is clear. He shows us how to insert the magazine, make the gun ready to fire. He reverses the process, makes the rifle safe and illustrates the ‘patrol carry’—stock flat against his shoulder, one hand on the pistol grip with index finger outside the trigger guard and the other down the barrel on the handguard so the muzzle points at the carpet.
‘You need to spend a few minutes dry-firing.’ Louis whips the gun up and sights along its length as he clicks the trigger at the grandfather clock. ‘That way if it comes down to it you’ll have a better chance of actually hitting something.’
He gives us each a hands-on lesson.
‘There’s not much to it,’ he says when it’s my turn. ‘Once you know the basics. Child soldiers the world over use these.’
I’m not sure if he’s calling me a kid. I want to point out it was me who just stabbed the guy who enslaved him. But I hold my tongue and concentrate on letting my fingers familiarise themselves with loading and unloading.
After a few minutes of clicking and clacking, we’re dry-firing from behind arm-rests, deadly serious as we play armies.
The guys start to change into the dark clothing. Nathan picks a black shirt from the pile. ‘A little assistance?’
I help him out of his shirt, wince at the blood-stained bandage wrapped around his chest.
‘Are you sure this is okay?’ I ask.
‘Dressing was new this morning,’ he says. ‘I’m on antibiotics. Should be fine.’
I help him button his new shirt and look up into his dark gaze.
Nathan takes my face in his hands gently and turns my head so he can examine my stitches. ‘No infection. Does it hurt?’
I tell him it doesn’t.
‘Bastard actually did a good job,’ he says.
I snort. ‘A week ago Jack was a homeless busker. Now he’s an expert in God knows how many things. He only knew how to stitch me up thanks to his megamind.’
Nathan shakes his head. ‘Jesus.’
‘He’s far from that.’
He doesn’t smile. ‘How do you think he does it? Raise people up, control them?’
‘Do I think he’s supernatural?’
Nathan nods.
‘By the definitions we used a week ago, the whole world is now, right? Jack? I don’t know. I don’t think he does either. I mean, he’s like us. He told me he couldn’t be heard. That people kinda couldn’t see him because of it. That he crashed out. Then came back and could kinda tune people easier.’
I remember the theory I wanted to tell Nathan just before we were shot—that we were immune or whatever due to taking crazy pills. ‘I asked him about psychiatric medication.’
Nathan looks at me.
‘You and I were both on it. That was my first theory. About why we are Speci
als.’
Nathan shook his head. ‘No, if it was that—’
‘I know. But I asked Jack. He said he’d never been on anything. I didn’t tell him about the Situs inversus. So I don’t know if he’s like us.’
Nathan nods. ‘He might be a rarer specimen.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Situs ambiguous. It’s a condition like ours except it’s really hard to detect where the heart is at all.’
Somehow that fits.
‘It affects maybe one in twenty-five thousand people,’ Nathan says.
‘Do you think there’s more like him?’
Nathan shrugs. ‘Maybe. Probably.’
If it holds true then there could be hundreds of people with Jack’s potential spread across Australia. Tens of thousands more around the world. Surely they can’t all be psychopaths. I imagine good versions of him. Realising they can raise people up, allowing those they awake to simply be themselves, helping them to find their loved ones. Maybe it’s a cause for hope.
‘I got you a little gift.’ Nathan takes something from his jeans pocket. ‘Cosmetics.’
I laugh when I see he’s holding a little round tin of black shoe polish. ‘Seriously?’
‘You whiteys will all need it,’ Nathan says with a laugh. ‘Me and Tajik, not so much.’
We’re armed, dressed in dark clothes, faces streaked with black polish, eating biscuits and drinking sugary cordial. Oscar takes a break from guard duty and Louis takes over upstairs. Alex is still asleep on the couch. I wonder if he’d even wake up if we all just left.
Across the city the Revivees are a little calmer. Tregan and Gary have resolved to walk until the roads are clear enough for bicycles. Ravi’s convinced Wayne they should stay put and see what tomorrow brings. Anne’s grey consciousness barely flickers through the toxic level of booze in her blood. Cory’s getting closer to Penrith and eager to join the hunt. Some of the others have dropped off the radar. I think that just means that they’ve gotten beyond our radius. Something more sinister would’ve sparked a panicked mental wave.
As the house dims with the twilight, Nathan examines Evan and gives him another little dose of anaesthetic.
The Last Shot Page 18