We Call It Monster

by Lachlan Walter

  Max’s words poured out of him, his slight panic crystallising as he realised that he didn’t have any other option but to hope.

  “Fingers crossed,” Kim said, meeting Max’s eye and smiling sympathetically. “So, what’s the…”

  And then the crack-boom of an explosion cut off her words and rendered her question moot.

  ***

  At first, no one really did or said anything. Max and Kim and the passengers aboard their bus, the other drivers and other passengers aboard the other buses, all of the guards – they just let the echo of the explosion wash over them and watched as the sky to the north caught fire. Some of them had witnessed similar violence in the past; some had seen it up close and some had seen worse; some had only seen it from a distance, evacuated to a camp or escaping to safety before it became a firsthand experience. All of them had been touched by it.

  The guards were the first ones to pull themselves together. Back in the old world, most of them probably would have struggled to make it as mall cops, unfit and barely-of-age as they were. But this wasn’t the old world: they knew what they had to do, knew that it was their job to nip panic in the bud before it blossomed and bloomed.

  They quickly gathered in a huddle. Some of them spoke into their walkie-talkies. They hurriedly came up with a plan. The huddle soon broke apart.

  One of the guards strode towards Max and Kim: the same pimply-faced kid that had greeted them with bad news. Other guards headed for the other buses, one to each; the remaining guards all disappeared behind the locked gate leading to the camp. These guards sprinted or ran or jogged, whichever they could manage, all heading in the same direction.

  The roar of another explosion tore through the night. Another flicker of fire and flame lit up the northern sky.

  “What’s going on?” Max asked the pimply-faced guard once the echoes of the second explosion had faded away.

  “No idea.”

  “Don’t give me that. What does ‘no idea’ actually fucking mean?”

  It was Kim that spoke so coarsely, her question shaped into a blunt instrument. Max couldn’t blame her. No one really could; it had been a trying day, a trying week, a trying month, a trying year, a trying decade.

  The guard just looked taken aback.

  “Kid, the lady asked you a question,” Max said with a smile. “And I don’t think she’s in the mood for games.”

  Kim returned his smile, and then they both stared at the guard. He sighed, avoiding their gaze.

  “It means that I don’t know what the hell’s going on. None of us do. The radio in the lookout tower’s been broken for weeks, so we’ll just have to wait ‘til they send a runner out to word us up.” He scowled at Max and Kim, becoming ever-so-adult for someone so young. “What did you expect? Prompt and efficient service? You should have tried the Hilton. Actual guards? They’re all dead or dying. The might and wonder of the modern military machine? If you hadn’t noticed, I’m unarmed and we can barely keep the lights on. Fuck me, how thick are you people?”

  “Hang on,” Max said.

  “Don’t give me that. If you hadn’t realised, we’ve got more important things to worry about.”

  Another crack-boom sounded around them and the northern sky glowed brighter. It was as if the universe had summoned all of its mordant wit to appropriately punctuate the guard’s point.

  “Get real, people,” he said. “And open your eyes.”

  “He’s right.”

  Kim said it sadly, her voice barely a whisper. She reached out, squeezed Max’s shoulder and they finally gave the guard their full attention.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Now, I’ve been told to keep you guys here and to make sure that no one wanders off. You want to tell everyone, or do you want me to do it?”

  “I’ll do it,” Kim said. “You boys look busy.”

  Max shot her a look, glad that she had taken the burden. She smiled in reply, straightened her shoulders then climbed back up the step and disappeared inside the bus.

  “Thanks, Miss,” the guard called after her, turning to Max as soon as she was out of sight. “Walk and talk with me.”

  Max raised his eyebrows.

  “You alright?”

  “Course I am,” the guard said. “I just need to tell you something, before people come streaming out, and I don’t want anyone to overhear us.”

  “Okay then.”

  Max followed the guard until they were fifteen or twenty metres from the bus. The guard looked at Max for a moment without saying anything, before shaking his head as if making up his mind.

  “You alright, kid?” Max asked.

  “It’s Luke. And please, enough with the kid.”

  Max smiled ruefully. “Sorry, Luke,” he said, emphasising the guard’s name.

  “Thanks.”

  “So, what’s up?”

  Luke put his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels for a second.

  “I don’t really know how to say this, so I’ll just spit it out: the sooner you guys fuck off to Camp Wombat, the better.”

  “You what?”

  Luke actually whistled under his breath.

  “I don’t get it,” Max said.

  Luke gestured at the orange glow that filled the northern sky. It was a burnt orange now, streaked with darkness and cut-through with smoke. “Look around, mate.”

  “It’s just a fire,” Max said baldly.

  “Jesus,” Luke said, stretching the word out until it sounded more like ‘Je-sus.’

  “What?”

  “It’s not just a fire – it’s a goddamn inferno. You do know what’s north of the camp, don’t you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Y’all ain’t from around here, are ya?” Luke’s voice was honey-thick with a put-on redneck drawl, and Max couldn’t help smiling.

  “You got me,” Max replied.

  “Right. Well, only fifty or sixty k’s away is the city. Between us and it there’s nothing but suburbia.”

  “Which city?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Sorry?”

  “It’s the same as any other, you with me? It’s been stomped and bombed so many times that not even a local would recognise it.”

  “Oh. Right, fair enough.”

  Max and Luke stared at each other as the casual banality of Max’s words sank in. And then they got back to it.

  “Anyway, mate, what I’m trying to say is that there’s no point sitting around waiting for someone to help,” Luke continued. “We’re fucked, even if, by some chance, that was just a servo or a factory exploding rather than another beastie frolicking in the ruins. All it’ll take is a change in the wind. The suburbs will go up first, they’re nothing but dry timber and grassland, and then it’ll be our turn. You don’t want to be here when that happens, you don’t want to be fighting for a seat on your own bus.”

  Max laughed under his breath, almost unable to help himself. It was a cruel laugh, almost a scoff.

  “Pull the other one, kid,” he said, once again deliberately using Luke’s belittling nickname. “I mean, surely you’d evacuate everyone in the camp. I can’t believe you’d just leave them to live or die.”

  “I wouldn’t. And thanks for the fucking compliment, by the way.”

  Max took a step back, suddenly ashamed of himself. He looked at the ground, into the distance, at the orange glow in the northern sky – he looked anywhere but at Luke.

  Luke just looked at him sadly. “I was going to say that I’d try and help, sure I would. And others would too. But I don’t know about everyone. Desperate times do bad things to people.”

  He looked Max in the eye. He didn’t smile. He sniffed at the air and took a deep breath. For a moment, Max thought that he could smell smoke.

  “It’s not your imagination,” Luke said, and waved towards the bus.

  “You guys need to get out of here.”

  The Beginning of the End, Or the End of the Beginning?

  Camp Wombat:
Day 782

  Nothing happened today. Hot again. I reckon it must be February by now.

  Camp Wombat: Day 783

  Nothing happened today. Hot again.

  Camp Wombat: Day 784

  Nothing happened today, apart from a fire in the camp’s kitchen. No one was hurt. Hot again.

  Camp Wombat: Day 785

  Nothing happened today. Hot again.

  Camp Wombat: Day 786

  Well, something actually happened today. And it looks like I’ll be getting out of camp for a while. I guess if you look hard enough, you can find good news in everything.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning.

  I was sitting on my cot eating cold baked-beans from a can when a soldier rushed into my tent. He didn’t knock, didn’t announce himself, just burst through the tattered canvas flap that serves as my front door. I looked him in the eye, a forkful of beans raised to my mouth. Without thinking, I slurped the beans down. I was a bit nonplussed, to tell the truth – in all my years being ferried from camp to camp, I’ve learned that a soldier at your door can only mean one thing: that you’ve caused some trouble. But this morning, I couldn’t think of anything I’d done wrong. You know me. You know I keep my head down.

  The soldier’s expression didn’t change as I kept slurping down my beans. He just held his six-foot frame a little straighter. “Are you Kim Churchill?”

  I couldn’t help nodding at my name.

  “If you’ll come with me…”

  He turned on his heel and walked out the door. “Now!” he yelled.

  He didn’t have any authority over me – I’m a refugee, not a prisoner. But like any soldier, he did have the ability to make my life harder than it needed to be. And life is hard enough, thanks.

  I settled the can of baked beans on that rickety table I knocked up from scrap, got to my feet then hurried after him. Outside, the summer sun was beating down. The air stank of rubbish and sewerage, with a whiff of stale sweat underneath it. The dusty alleys winding between the innumerable tents were mostly empty – in this weather, we all do our best to beat the heat, huddling in the shade of our tents. But as we walked, someone occasionally twitched back a canvas flap and took a look at the solider and I, before disappearing back into the shadows.

  The sun hammered me. I wished that I’d brought my hat.

  “Where are we going?” I asked the soldier bluntly.

  He didn’t answer, just kept walking. I followed him. On the one hand, I wanted nothing more than to return to my tent and get back to staring at its canvas walls. But on the other, like I said, life is tough enough. And besides, even the kind of life I love can get boring sometimes.

  The alleys soon gave way to sealed roads and footpaths – we were almost at the camp’s centre and command-post, that cluster of reclaimed houses and shops. The streets were quiet. I didn’t see more than three or four other people. The soldier and I kept on, passing through the centre of ‘town’ before stopping at an unremarkable building adjacent to the barracks.

  “After you,” the soldier said, opening the door and ushering me in.

  I walked into a shadowy room; he didn’t follow me in, just closed the door behind me. I was sun-blind, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust.

  “Ah, good, we can begin,” said a lanky soldier who was all elbows and knees.

  He sat perched on a desk at the front of an almost empty room that must have once been a shop. Hessian curtains covered the windows and an oil lamp hung from the stump of a broken ceiling-fan. A handful of chairs faced the desk, two of which were occupied by fellow refugees who were both dusty and rag-covered, just like me.

  They acknowledged me – one of them waved, the other glared.

  “Kim Churchill?” the lanky soldier asked.

  Once again, I couldn’t help nodding at my name.

  “Please, take a seat.”

  I did so, choosing a spot between my fellow refugees.

  “I’m Captain Shrewsbury,” the soldier said. “Formerly of the army’s now-defunct R&D division.”

  “Defunct?” I asked without even thinking about it. “I figured that you guys would be in demand.”

  You know how it goes after years spent in the camps: your polite edges dull, and you become hard. I can barely remember being any other way.

  The refugee to my left, a gaunt old man, snorted contemptuously. “Have you been living under a rock? Or are you just stupid?”

  “Leave her alone,” the refugee to my right said. His voice was soft. He looked young.

  “Thanks,” I whispered.

  “Any time.”

  “People, focus, please,” Shrewsbury said, his voice loud and hard. “Now, as I was saying – I am formerly of the R&D division. I say formerly because I’m all that’s left of it. Everyone else – roughly two and a half thousand people – died in the WA attack.”

  The three of us fell silent as Shrewsbury’s words sunk in. We’ve all lost someone in this long and bitter war; survivor’s guilt is the air that we breathe. But to wake up every morning with that kind of weight in your heart… I think I’d go mad.

  “They’re all gone. I was one of only two people that made it out,” Shrewsbury continued, his face darkening. “And so you’ll extend me the respect I deserve.”

  He almost thundered these last words, and we gave him our undivided attention.

  “Good, good. So now that you know who I am, let me introduce you. Kim, this is Lyndon Barnes.” He gestured at the refugee to my right. “And this is Professor Simeon Ellis.” He gestured to my left. “Fellas, this is Kim Churchill.”

  I quickly realised that Simeon’s going to be the difficult one; aloof and haughty despite everything that’s happened, he could barely bring himself to shake my hand. But Lyndon strikes me as much more relaxed, his smile easy and wide. He was pale and fresh-faced rather than young, as I’d first thought. I reckon he’s the kind that, in the world before, did his best to avoid the great outdoors.

  “If you’re done, we’ll get to business,” Shrewsbury barked at us. And then he smiled to himself. “Now, the reason I brought you all here is to tell you that you’ve been drafted.”

  That knocked me for six. I didn’t know how to react. Drafted? I’m not a team player. “You what?” I asked.

  “I’m no soldier,” Lyndon complained.

  Simeon said nothing. His arms were crossed over his chest and his eyes were fixed on Shrewsbury, patiently waiting for him to say his piece.

  “This isn’t a request,” Shrewsbury said.

  I actually laughed out loud. “You want our help? A middle-aged woman, a soft kid, and an old fart? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Shrewsbury’s face hardened. “You sell yourselves short, Kim. Back in the day, Professor Simeon here taught chemistry at Melbourne University. Lyndon was a PhD student, studying botany at A.N.U and doing the odd bit of consulting for the army. And you were chief veterinarian at Adelaide Zoo, if I’m not mistaken.”

  I hadn’t thought about that part of my life in years. It was gone, over, lost. I pushed the memories away; we weren’t there to talk about my past. I even hate writing about it now.

  “We have in this room a chemist, a botanist, and a vet,” Shrewsbury continued. “I’ll let you figure out what comes next.”

  “Is this about the jungle in the outback?” Simeon asked, sounding triumphant.

  Shrewsbury frowned. “Well done, Professor. It is indeed, though I’ve got no idea how you heard about it.”

  “Your soldiers don’t get many perks, Captain. That makes them easier to bribe.”

  Thank something for the soldier-grapevine. Even with my lack of people skills, I know that the war’s not going our way. It seems like every other day a story floats around about yet another city falling. On top of that, months have passed since any fresh refugees have knocked on our door, and the military can’t seem to press-gang people fast enough. I’ve even heard about some military ‘facility’
out in the desert that was attacked and overrun four or five months ago. But this news was just gossip and rumour and half-truths. Real facts, real knowledge, the truth about the state of the world; of these things we know basically nothing.

  “What jungle are you people talking about?” Lyndon asked, his voice shaking.

  I had almost forgotten about him. I turned and looked at him. His watery eyes bugged with fear and apprehension.

  “I’ll show you,” Shrewsbury said.

  He snatched a pile of photos off the desk next to him, holding one of them up in front of us. It was scratchy and worn, processed in an old-fashioned machine, on yellowing paper, with chemicals that had probably gone bad. That’s just life – we don’t have the resources or the manpower to produce anything better, not anymore.

  As primitive as it was, the photo still showed us something that brought us to our feet. Even though the colours were faded and it wasn’t the crispest of images, we could easily see that it was an aerial shot of a brightly coloured jungle, the foliage splashed with reds, purples, blues and oranges. The trees themselves were somehow wrong – twisted, spiralling, feathering, fragile, drooping, bulbous. Strange metallic spires and spikes poked through the canopy, and the whole thing was ringed by a red desert, empty except for a thin line of hills and the odd cluster of rocks.

  I’ve never seen anything like it.

  “Give me that,” Lyndon said, plucking the photo from Shrewsbury’s fingers. He held it close to his face. He squinted, looking hard. “Where was this taken? This… this is just… this is just impossible…”