Everywhere Everything Everyone

by Warner, Katy;

  I nodded. I remembered. I also remembered not thinking much about it, not back then. Nobody did.

  ‘Mum kept writing, even without the newspaper, but then they started blocking websites and shutting it all down and so …’ his voice faded away to nothing. He rubbed his hands over his face. For a moment everything was still. All I could hear was the humming of the insects.

  When he finally spoke, his voice was clear. ‘There was a car accident and they told us she died. But I think they took her. Like they took your dad.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Z,’ I said.

  We sat there, not saying anything, and it felt completely OK – that silence with him. His fingers brushed the side of my hand and it sent shivers up my arm and through my body and my heart thumped so loudly I was sure he would hear it. I turned to look at him at the same time he turned to look at me and he smiled that smile that made me feel like I was melting and I tried to smile back but my lips were trembling and then I was moving closer to him as he moved closer to me and my body sparked and my eyes closed and his lips found mine and we kissed, softly and deeply, and I never wanted it to end.

  CHAPTER 9

  The cold and mosquitoes meant we slept inside the car. Or tried to. We talked and laughed and kissed some more because it was difficult not to, now that we’d started. If I was about to be grounded forever, I had to make the most of this night. I might never see Z, or anyone, ever again. Mum would make sure of it. But right then I didn’t care cos there was this new feeling bubbling inside me and it made it easy to smile and feel like, maybe, everything would work out.

  Z fell asleep before me and I stared out the windscreen, into the black nothingness of the bush, and replayed the stuff he’d said about his mum. She sounded amazing. Of course she did. I did the same thing when I talked about my dad. My memories of him were like those perfect paintings in the gallery, framed in gold.

  I looked over at Z, quietly snoring beside me. I wanted to gently wake him and say I found you because that’s how it felt. Like this was something that was meant to be. Me and Z. But I let him sleep and wrote another long, apologetic message to Mum instead. It wouldn’t send.

  It was still dark when our alarms went off. My neck ached from the weird angle I’d slept on and I knew I had morning breath. My mouth was dry and I needed water but we’d run out. I slipped out of the car before Z and stretched and sighed loudly and tried to wake up. I wasn’t sure what to say to Z. The night before had been so easy and it had all just sort of happened, but now everything felt a bit awkward. Maybe he’d only kissed me cos he felt sorry for me or something. What if he hadn’t even liked kissing me? I didn’t really know what I was doing and maybe I was terrible at it. I knew I was overthinking things. But I couldn’t help it. All that stuff I’d felt the night before was quickly being replaced by panic.

  ‘Good morning,’ Z said.

  ‘Hey,’ I muttered, covering my mouth in case he could smell my breath and be even more grossed out by me than he probably already was. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Act like nothing had happened, or say something? But what would I say? How about those kisses? My mind was racing when, out of nowhere, Z pulled me into a tight hug.

  I hugged him back and I wanted to stay like that, and not face the real world, forever. Well, with a proper bathroom and toothpaste and water and food and stuff but still, just me and Z and nothing to worry about. He kissed the top of my head and those little sparks started fizzing inside me all over again.

  ‘Is this weird?’ he said as he took my hand. We started walking down the steep track towards the road.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said, and laughed, and he laughed, and I tried to stop worrying and overthinking and just breathe.

  Our plan was to find a ride as soon as possible and, preferably, before the Unit found us. The Unit would have a lot of questions about two kids, in school uniform, walking the streets at four-thirty in the morning. The thought of facing angry parents and the Unit was too much – Mum and Astrid were going to be enough for me to deal with as it was. According to Z the walk to the city would take about six hours and from there I’d catch the bus home – so I wouldn’t get to Mum until about eleven, which was crazy. We had to take the first ride we could. No question.

  ‘We could run, that’d take some time off,’ I said, and started jogging to warm up.

  ‘Nah,’ Z said.

  ‘Just till we find a ride,’ I said, and took off, slowly, waiting for him to catch up.

  ‘I’m useless at running,’ Z shouted behind me.

  And he wasn’t exaggerating. He actually was useless. And it was hilarious. He kinda shuffled his feet and swung his arms around madly. I doubled over laughing. Z finally caught up and started laughing too and we just stood there on the side of the road, laughing our heads off until we could start walking again.

  We were lucky cos it didn’t take too long for someone to take pity on us and pull over. A small delivery truck with a cartoon cow painted on its door. I thought we could trust a cartoon cow. No serial killer would drive something that looked so cute. Would they? The driver leaned across to the open passenger window.

  ‘You right?’ she yelled over the idling engine.

  Z and I looked at each other. He shrugged. I nodded. She sounded like a nice enough, normal enough person. We climbed in.

  We didn’t talk much, which was fine with me. Z, being Z, attempted small talk and asked the driver all these questions about milk and yoghurt and cheese. She mumbled one-word responses – Yeah, nah, dunno, maybe. In the end Z gave up and we bumped along in silence. I don’t know who was more relieved, her or me.

  But then she suddenly pulled onto the side of the road, muttering to herself. I looked at Z. He shrugged, raised an eyebrow and didn’t seem concerned at all. I, on the other hand, thought we were about to be murdered. Thought the whole delivery driver thing was an act, and that she probably had a truckload of bodies in the back, all of them lured in by the cute cartoon cow …

  ‘Check this out,’ she said as she got out of the truck.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ I whispered to Z.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, and undid his seatbelt.

  I shook my head. No way.

  ‘Hurry,’ she shouted from the roadside.

  ‘It’ll be fine, I promise,’ Z said. ‘Come on.’

  I followed him out of the truck, still convinced something bad was going to happen.

  And I was right.

  Armoured vehicles and tanks rumbled down the road, one after the other after the other. They cast a shadow over us, shook the earth under our feet, made me feel so small and insignificant. And scared. What the hell was happening? Even when the riots happened there had not been that many tanks. The three of us just stood there, numb and speechless as the convoy passed by. Z reached for my hand and squeezed it tight.

  CHAPTER 10

  We stood on the side of the road long after the monsters had disappeared from view. The sky had finally woken up and was full of reds and purples. Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning. My grandma used to say that. It never made sense to me until then.

  The driver went back to her truck. We could hear her on the radio. Come in Ron, she kept repeating, do you read me? But Ron didn’t answer. All she got was static.

  We drove on in silence. I kept hold of Z’s hand, or maybe he kept hold of mine.

  ‘Reckon all that’s for a drill or something,’ the driver suddenly blurted out. It was the most we’d heard her talk. We nodded in agreement – it was a logical, perfectly reasonable explanation. Of course that’s what it was. A drill. The government showing off. Reminding us how tough they were. But as much as my brain wanted to believe it, my gut kept twisting and nagging at me. Something was off.

  She dropped us off near the sparkling shopping mall that Mum and Astrid and I never went to cos who could actually afford any of that stuff? Not us. From there I’d be able to find my way to the bus stop and get the number twelve and I’d be in
a heap of shit but at least I’d be home.

  I stood with Z, trying to find the right thing to say to him. Thanks for last night? Good luck with your dad? You’re a great kisser and I’d like to keep doing that with you. It all sounded lame in my head, so I said nothing, just waited for him to break the awkwardness the way he always seemed to. Except this time, he didn’t. He kept his eyes down, studying his shoes. I wondered if I should just go. Walk away. Maybe all that had happened between us didn’t mean he actually liked me. Maybe I’d got carried away with that feeling of something almost like freedom. Maybe it was all a huge mistake and he just wanted to be friends and I’d stuffed it all up. Taken it too far. Like I always did. I didn’t know who I was angrier with – me or him. Screw it, I thought, you can’t kiss someone and then let them walk away, right?

  ‘You just gonna stand there?’ I said.

  He looked at me.

  ‘You can’t just go all quiet on me,’ I said. ‘You can’t ignore me. It’s not fair. Not after everything –’

  I stopped myself. I could feel the heat rising in me and knew I had to calm down. It didn’t matter. He was just a boy. Why the hell did I care so much?

  ‘I’m going to come with you,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s my fault, Santee, and I should be the one to explain it to your mum.’

  ‘No way,’ I said, but I couldn’t help smiling because – Number Eight on my Z list – he was truly a nice guy. Which probably sounds clichéd but it’s the truth. He was actually really, really nice and it was kinda sweet that he thought he could explain anything to my mum. Mum wouldn’t listen, she’d be too busy being disappointed and then killing us. Both of us.

  We started walking towards my bus stop.

  ‘Maybe I can offset some of the damage?’ he said. ‘I’ll charm her. I can be charming, you know.’

  ‘You? Charming? Really?’ I laughed.

  He pretended I’d stabbed him the heart. We were joking and laughing and being idiots and then …

  Everything changed.

  There in front of us was a wall.

  A wall.

  We stopped.

  We could go no further.

  It didn’t make sense.

  I could see it, I knew it was there, but I didn’t believe it was there. It was like my brain was having trouble keeping up with my eyes. Or something. This was not right. This was not happening. Everywhere I’d ever been, everything I’d ever known, everyone – it was all about to change. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.

  They’d split my world in two.

  CHAPTER 11

  Tall, solid concrete blocks made a wall that cut the road right down the middle. Barbed wire was sprawled across the top of it like evil icing. We followed the wall further along the road, looking for some sort of opening. I couldn’t breathe properly. My heart hammered, fast, fast, fast, in my chest. There had to be a way through. There was life over there, on the other side.

  My life.

  I started to run the length of the wall. I could hear Z struggling to keep up but I had to keep going. I had to get to the end of this nightmare.

  The roads were eerily empty. Up ahead, traffic lights flashed amber. Anyone who drove through them would have a head-on collision with the wall. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Maybe a car or a truck or a bus could smash through the concrete and break through to the other side. If I’d had a car I’d have tried it. At that moment I would have done just about anything to get home.

  The wall followed the road and then made a sharp turn, cutting off another section of the city. And then: there, up ahead. A gap. No wall. Not yet. Cranes were moving massive chunks of concrete into place and people in fluoro vests and hard hats shouted to each other over the noise. Barriers with flashing signs that said WRONG WAY GO BACK and a heap of barbed wire blocked the way, as did the Unit Officers who stood nearby, but still, there was no wall there.

  That was my way through. It had to be. I could jump the barbed wire, outrun the Unit and sprint all the way home. Me and Mum and Astrid would cry and hug and kiss each other and they’d say, Never do that again, and I’d be grounded for the rest of my life, but I’d deal with it. And I’d never do anything to hurt them again. Ever.

  My chance to get home was right there. I tried to ignore the barbed wire’s sharp, shining teeth as I sprinted closer.

  ‘No.’ A woman in a fluoro vest and hard hat approached me from the other side of the barbed wire. She had one of those handheld screen things and a walkie-talkie that hummed with voices I couldn’t quite understand.

  ‘I’ve got to get through,’ I said. ‘Please.’

  ‘No,’ she said again. Behind her were the armed Unit Officers, and beyond them, more concrete slabs were going up. Were they closing me in or out?

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said, my voice wavering.

  ‘Get out of here,’ she said, and turned away as if that was it. End of conversation.

  ‘Hey!’ I shouted after her, but she kept walking.

  ‘What did she say?’ Z finally caught up and stood by my side, out of breath.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. Everything was twirling around inside me and I didn’t know if I wanted to cry or scream or run or fall to the ground and sleep for a million years.

  ‘Hey!’ Z shouted at the woman. ‘Hey! Come back!’

  She ignored us and started what looked like a Very Important Conversation with the Unit Officers. One of the officers looked over her shoulder, right at us. It was like he was trying to stare us down or read our minds or memorise our faces so he could add us to the Potential Threat list or something.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Z waved to the officer.

  The officer’s gun glinted.

  Z waved again. ‘Can you help us?’

  What the hell? I pulled his arm down. ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

  ‘You sure?’

  I didn’t think there was a choice. The way the officer watched us, the way the woman with the hardhat dismissed us, the barbed wire, all of it made it pretty clear we were definitely not meant to be there.

  ‘There’ll be another gap, further down,’ I said, and turned to go.

  But suddenly we weren’t alone. Just as we started to move away we saw them, coming in from all directions. People. They looked like a crowd of zombies, all shuffling together, some pointing at the wall, some half asleep, confused. My heart thumped, thumped, thumped. I looked at Z, his eyes wide and unblinking as the crowd started yelling and then, suddenly, they were running towards us. A stampede rushing to the barbed wire. We were swept up in the sea of bodies, and tried desperately to keep hold of each other and not drown as we all crashed up against the barrier.

  A woman slipped. I heard her scream as she struggled to pull herself out of the barbed wire’s razor teeth. She thrashed and kicked and screamed but no matter what she did, she couldn’t get free. Someone reached for her arms and tried to pull her up but she yelled out, Stop, stop, stop. The Unit just watched and waited. For what, I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to find out. I had to get the hell out of there. There were too many people. Too much noise and heat and blood boiling. I grabbed Z’s hand and started to weave past people, away from the wall.

  ‘Wait,’ Z said. He pulled me back, pointed to the other side of the barrier.

  ‘Mum?’ I whispered.

  It wasn’t Mum, but she might have been there, somewhere, in the crowd that had gathered on the opposite side. We pushed closer to get a better look and I searched for a familiar face or shape or voice. Everyone began shouting out to the other side. They screamed, I’m here, I’m here. And I found myself screaming too, Astrid and Mum, and, Santee, I’m here, tell them Santee is here. I wanted someone, anyone, to know who I was and where I was and maybe, somehow, get a message to my family. But all the voices mashed together and I couldn’t hear any words coming back from the other side. I couldn’t hear my name or Mum’s voice or anything. It was all just a mangled mess of despera
te cries and my throat felt full of razor blades from all the yelling and it was no good, no good and I pressed my hands to my eyes to try to stop myself from crying.

  A woman pushed past me carrying a bundle and, as she approached the barrier, I realised it was a baby and she was attempting to pass it over the barbed wire to the other side. The Unit was gesturing no, stop, no and the baby was wailing but still she kept trying to get it over. And then I heard a man say, Go, go, go, and a group of people cleared a path through the crowd and tried to get a run-up in order to jump the fence and one got caught in the barbed wire and it must have hurt because over all that noise I could hear his noise the loudest. And another made it and was madly unravelling his clothes and his skin from the barbed wire and there was a lot of blood. I thought maybe I could get across, too. I knew I could run faster, get a better run-up than he had, jump further. I had to try. I had to.

  ‘Don’t do it,’ Z said, as if he’d read my mind.

  I wanted to say something smart and funny back to him but I couldn’t think of anything. There was too much noise, too many bodies. I looked at the barrier again. I could jump it. I knew I could. But the Unit was advancing, guns raised. The first man was still struggling in the wire and someone else slipped as they tried to help him and the metal teeth pushed deeper into his skin and he howled in pain. Someone else had covered the barbed wire with clothing, like padding, and was helping people up and over. Some ran straight into the Unit and were handcuffed, others darted around them and made a run for it. We cheered them on. Run, run, run. But it didn’t last. The Unit lost patience and started firing their guns into the air, then into people’s backs as they tried to run away.

  I saw them fall to the ground, arms splayed and legs twisted, heads hitting the bitumen. Frozen in a final attempt at escape. Just like that.

  That could have been me, I thought. And I sunk to the ground, crouching, head in hands, and let the tears fall.

  Everyone stopped shouting and pushing and jumping and baby-passing. Everyone stopped everything except getting the hell out of there. Guns will do that. Suddenly no-one was quite as brave or outraged as they had been. Instead, they shook their heads and threw up their hands in disbelief and wiped at wet eyes and said how awful and terrible and bad it all was. But nobody did anything.