Skyquakers (2 page)

He started saying
‘
they
’
in his
head a lot, to the point where it began to bother him. This entity, this mass
of cloud and its laser beams, was sentient at the very least. It knew where to
find people: in homes, or in schools and buildings, or wherever it saw a
lightbulb go on. Only something intelligent could operate a lightbulb.

But who were
they
?
He refused to say the
‘
A
’
word until
the tenth day.

‘Fine, fine, fine!
’
he yelled at no one. He threw
down a can of baked beans and shouted it in his garage.
‘
Okay, I
’
ll
say it! I
’
ll say it, alright?
Aliens!
’

It didn
’
t change anything, deciding it
was aliens; it did not reverse the process and bring back his mother. It did
not restore the town to its former glory and put society back into motion.
Instead, Ned received no reply other than the dead silence of abandonment. All
of life remained on pause.

He came up with wild theories when he was bored or was
struck, more often, with utter confusion. Surely, somewhere on Earth, with all
their satellites and Hubble telescopes and space stations, people must have
seen this thing coming. Space was really, really big, and Earth was only a tiny
marble in a black, endless vacuum; how did they miss this one coming right at
them? Scientists could predict a comet passing years
–
decades
–
in advance, couldn
’
t they? How could something so
massive strike without any warning at all?

Or maybe the storm wasn
’
t
detectable in the way a big metal ship or a passing piece of space rock was;
alternative-dimensions, rips in time-space, a black hole, or something from the
future. Maybe it was a disease, like a plague, but then what were the beams?
His mind went off on all sorts of tangents, but none of his theories could ever
be proven, not without first knowing what the enemy was. Was it mechanical? Was
it biological? Was it even from this universe?
All these
thoughts hurt his head too much, so he stopped.

By two weeks, the loneliness had become a disease, a plague
which had infected him and every standing home and cattle shed in this barren
town, making them all look grey and lifeless. Time had stopped. Days rolled
over, one after another, without him noticing. Ned hadn’t heard a spoken word,
not even from himself, in almost a week.

Where was everyone? His neighbours? His mother? He wanted to
know she was okay. He wanted someone or something to come down from the sky and
just tell him that she was alive, and that they were all up there having cups
of tea and playing Scrabble together. He had nightmares about entirely the
opposite, and his mind envisioned torture chambers and big, lanky monsters
ripping her ribcage open, just to see what made her tick. He woke himself up
many times in his fridge-bed with these nightmares. He kept the hunting knife
close to him, for some reason. He imagined if he was ever beamed up into the
sky, he would appear before them in their ship with a knife, and he would fight
to the death to get away from them.

We are not alone, and yet I am alone. The irony.

The power had long gone out, but Ned still inspected the
surrounding houses every now and then, testing their televisions to see if he
could, by luck, catch any news updates, or find any Wi-Fi or working mobile
phone to use to reconnect with the world, but all he found was a black, bar-less
void in the global communications network. Even if there was still power, no
one could report what had happened because there was no one there to report it,
only Ned, and what would he say to the empty world?

‘Live from Wyndham, this is Ned reporting,
’
he practiced as he pushed his wheelbarrow of bottled water down the
littered streets.
‘
As you can see, we are
experiencing a Category 5 apocalyptic fuck-up right here.
’

Radios were different. The ones which ran on batteries often
still worked. It took more than two weeks for him to realise this, and when he
found a hand radio in his mother
’
s drawer, which she sometimes
used for horse races, he turned it on to immediately hear the voices of other
human beings. Most were in another language. The signal was weak, the voices
exhausted and losing touch with the rest of the world, perhaps dying or
starving, or going mad, but nonetheless they were human. On 104.1
A.M.
, he heard
Nickelback. Christ, really? He hadn
’
t heard music in weeks, but
Nickelback was the last thing anyone on Earth wanted to hear. But then when the
song ended, a girl
’
s voice came to the
microphone.

‘
That was
‘
Saving Me
’
,
by Nickelback. You
’
re listening to Lonely Lily,
the last DJ on Earth,
live
24/7 from Charles Darwin U.
If you
’
re out there, you know where
to find me
.
’

Ned jumped up and down and started shouting and dancing in
excitement. He knew it! He just knew it! Oh, Lonely Lily, if that was her real
name, she was not alone at all! But the beams! How?
he
wondered. Well, radio studios were made of soundproof glass with lots of
padding and electrical equipment in the walls; perhaps it all deflected the
beams in the same way the fridge had. Who knew what other barriers naturally
existed out there? Who knew how many thousands
–
millions
–
were still around, waiting to hear Lonely Lily and discover they too
were not the last ones? Oh, it was a good day; a very good day.

He listened to Lonely Lily on the radio all day, everyday.
He listened to her voice in the bathtub, took her with him on his wheelbarrow
runs, even had her serenade him on his yellow raft as the two of them rowed
around the bay at sunset; this voice, just a voice, became his best friend.
When he could no longer take the torment of the never-ending silence, or when
he felt the most depressed, Lonely Lily was always there. She spoke to him, she
sang to him, and she occasionally cracked jokes with her intangible audience,
if only to keep some sort of sound ringing out throughout the world.

‘
Men are like parking spots
,
’
she said,
‘
all
the good ones are taken and the rest are handicapped! Ha!
’

‘Oh my god, Lily, that
’
s so funny!
That
’
s, like, the funniest thing I
’
ve
heard, ever!
’

Friday nights she played indie jams and acoustic covers of
classics. Tuesday afternoons was Animal Imitations Hour, when Lily would make
an ambiguous animal noise and give her audience a few songs to guess.

‘
It was a goose stuck in a barbwire fence!
Anyone
guess that?
’

‘Lily, you
’
re so funny!
’

Lonely Lily slept very little, only a few hours a night in
her protective cube, he imagined, and during times when she was away from the
microphone, she played a long playlist of songs with no indication that she
would ever return.

‘
If I
’
m not here tomorrow,
’
she said to him every night,
‘
then here
’
s
the last song forever.
’

After the initial shock of finding another survivor
–
that was a bad word to use,
‘
survivor
’
,
but it was becoming more and more natural to say
–
Ned
wondered why Lonely Lily never addressed the elephant in the room: the storm,
the beams, and the radical change which had crushed all of their livelihoods.
Maybe she was living in the same fantasy as him and believed it was all a
misunderstanding, a quiet game everyone was playing, and soon it would all be
over and people would return to their normal lives, unaware that anything had
ever gone wrong. She was in denial, like him, but subtle hints gave away her
true loneliness: Lily would sometimes, between songs, begin a short soliloquy
about her former life. She would tell him what she got for Christmas last year,
or about her favourite dog which she missed, or about how ridiculous the
concept of reality TV was and how many hours of their lives they had spent
indulged in the meaningless lives of others. These were all the fragmented
clues of someone who knew she was doomed, and Ned felt as though she was
gradually writing her own eulogy. Eventually she would run out of stories to
tell, and once everything was told, there would be no point existing anymore.
One day he would turn on the radio and hear only static on 104.1 and she would
be gone. He dreaded that day. Desperately, like suffering a long-distance
relationship with a girl with whom, after merely a week, he felt he had spent a
lifetime with, Ned anxiously needed to hear her voice every morning, and every
night before he slept, just to know she still loved him.

‘
I have to go now,
’
she said.
‘
As
always, you
’
re listening to Lonely Lily,
live from Charles Darwin U, the last DJ on Earth
.
’

‘Don
’
t ever leave me, Lily.
’

By the end of the third week, he had searched the town high
and low, inside and out, and had found no other life forms sheltering in
fridges or hiding in any possible cracks where the beams may have missed them.
He had grown insanely bored on his own, long abandoning books and Gameboy games
for the thrill of smashing a BMW with a golf club, for no particular reason
other than the therapeutic remedy of it. He had explored every house, ransacked
every pantry and garage, and had stocked his own home high with canned foods,
chocolate bars, tinned fruits and general living supplies. He had not seen an
animal larger than a frog in a very long time, nor had he seen the footprint in
the sand of any creature other than himself. He wore other people’s clothes,
finding no need to wash his own if he had thousands of other wardrobes to
choose from, and he imagined himself living other people’s lives as he wore
them. Who had these intelligent beings been, the ones smiling in the family
portrait on the wall? He didn’t believe they were real anymore; just mannequins
whose faces gave the illusion that real people lived in this dollhouse, like
some sort of nation-wide IKEA showroom. Wyndham was a fairly large rural town
considering its distance from any major city, and yet to Ned it was now
uncomfortably small. He had seen every inch of this place, trekked the beaches
ten kilometres in either direction,
explored
every
opal shop and the backrooms of every grocery. He expected the houses and
buildings would start falling apart soon, and although he logically knew it
would take several decades before the cracks would begin to show, he still felt
as though such a time was not too far away.

There were instances when Ned truly believed he had gone
insane. One morning he got up, got dressed in his white shirt, knee-high grey
socks and leather shoes, and went to school. He sat at his desk, took out his
books, and started to do some homework which was now several weeks overdue. He
peeked in the teachers’ drawers for their textbooks, as though trying to
establish what lessons he should have caught up with, then at lunch time he
went to the gymnasium and played basketball against himself, commentating his
every pass and goal as though a crowd were cheering him on. Then at three, he
packed his things and went home again. Never in his life did he believe he
would miss something as mundane as school in the aftermath of human existence.

At the more lawless end of the spectrum, he decided to drink
beer (properly) for the first time, but it was grosser than he thought, so he
drank scotch instead. That was a bad night. It only made him depressed and angry.
He spent most of that evening on the roof of his house, the radio beside him
playing muffled music, where he drank and sang and danced along to Lily’s songs
with such enthusiasm that he almost toppled off the roof entirely. He made a
lot of racket that night, more than he had dared to ever make while an
omnipotent weapon was still searching the globe for lost creatures like him,
but tonight the skies were clear, the moon was bright, and the blackened town
was his kingdom to rule from above. Except, of course, it was all a farce, and
when the alcohol began to really take effect, the shadows of abandoned
buildings began to look as though they were sinking further and further beneath
him, and Ned, a king of dust, realised he was becoming more detached from
reality with every passing day. He looked to the sky, the stars and the moon,
and began to yell and scream at the universe. He threw an empty bottle at it,
only for it to fall lazily back to Earth and shatter on the pavement below. He
shouted that this was
their
fault and
that he hated them, whoever they were.

The next morning, Ned had a bad headache, but the sound of a
beam woke him with a start. He hastily stumbled from his bunker in the garage
and saw the pink light through the window coming from afar. He climbed to his
roof, littered with last night’s mess, for a better view. Far beyond the town,
the big, grey cloud swirled, and from its core a streak of light shone down to
the ground with blazing intensity. He squinted through the purplish glare and
noticed this lone beam was somewhat different to the others he had witnessed:
it was wider, stronger, and lasted minutes, not seconds. It worried him, as
though this was a new development in whatever was happening here, and yet, it
could be just the opposite. Were they back? Were people coming home?

Firstly, he ran to Lonely Lily and turned on his pocket
radio to hear a song playing. When it ended, her voice returned. He had an
inkling that, although Lily failed to acknowledge the global population
’
s
disappearance, if the opposite were to occur, she may be spreading her message
of joy to all of Australia that she was no longer alone in her tower. Lily,
however, seemed content and unfazed by the outside world, as usual. Perhaps
this was not such a joyous occasion then.

Ned returned to the roof and used binoculars to observe the
beam. It was still there, humming away, sending down a tunnel of pinkish-purple
light to the earth. He sat there nursing a bottle of water and watched it from
his high post, just one beam shining continuously just beyond the borders of
town. He used his binoculars again and swore, despite the intense brightness,
that he could see little specks of light coming
down
from the sky
,
instead of
going up. The point where the beam hit the earth was obscured by land and
hills, so he could not see what was happening, but he could certainly hear it:
the
boom
as the light struck the
ground, the whirring of jet-like turbines, picking up the dust and echoing
across the bushland.
Skyquakers
, he called the
invisible masters of the storm. Cool name; he made it up himself.

So, what now?

It was dangerous, he knew, but if there was ever a chance to
spot the return of the humans, then Ned wanted to be the first one to welcome
them back with open arms. Likewise, if it was something less inviting coming to
his planet, he wanted to be the first guy to grab a big, pointy stick and tell
them to go home. He began to feel the excitement brewing. This was it: it was
over. Everything was going to be okay. Almost a month on his own, but somehow
he had survived. Had it been a test? A cruel, cruel joke? Did he pass?

With haste, he rounded up some things: his knife, his
binoculars, and his bicycle. He rode towards the beam, just outside of town. It
was still there, humming away, giving off a bright light and thunderous sounds.
He rode to a plateau scattered with spiky shrubs called Five Rivers Lookout, a
mound which overlooked a wetland. At the top of the plateau, he abandoned his
bike and crept to the edge on his stomach, watching through the binoculars.
This beam was enormous. Ned estimated it to be at least 500 meters wide. Specks
of light floated down from a spiralling eye in the clouds like loosely-thrown
confetti, and, in the same fashion that he had seen the beams vaporise solid
objects and absorb them skywards, they now appeared to be creating solid things
on the ground using a reverse mechanism. Ned watched glittery dots float down
and form a shape on the earth, growing speck by speck into a solid, rectangular
object. It was a slow process, creating the four walls inch by inch,
solidifying from nothing but dust. It was unclear what the object was going to
be yet, but it was wide and metallic, like a large warehouse or some sort of
enormous aircraft hangar. He scanned the walls, trying to get his bearings on
how big it was going to be, and then he saw a living creature emerge.

‘Holy
sh
—!
’

He tore the binoculars from his eyes, as though he had seen
something too bright. He took a few deep breaths before he dared to look back.

From behind one of the walls came two figures. They appeared
to be inspecting the structure, watching it grow from the dust, chatting to
themselves about it with head nods and hand gestures. They stood inside the
pink beam unharmed, dressed in glossy, high-tech astronaut suits with oval
heads, rubber gloves, and thick boots. On each of their backs was a scuba tank,
strapped to their shoulders, with a hose connecting it to their hoods to allow
them to
breathe.
The suits were grey, plain, without
any symbol or flag, giving Ned no indication of anything. The only thing which
frightened him was their height. From a distance, it was hard to compare, so he
took reference from a nearby tree. By the height of that tree, Ned concluded
that those two walking, talking figures were about two and a half metres tall.
At least.

Skyquakers
.

There was a third figure now. A human appeared. He was so
small compared to them. He wore a business suit with a tie and nice shoes,
leather ones. He had slicked back hair and was well-groomed. He looked
up and spoke with the hooded giants, who cranked their long necks down to see
him. This human was also unaffected by the beam, and remained as a solid entity
within its circle as around him the warehouse continued to grow taller. The
three spoke for a while. The human pointed around, directing their attention to
a tree, to the rivers, to the ocean, and then, finally, he pointed directly at Ned,
and the two hooded things turned and glared directly at him through their
masks.

Ned ducked and scurried backwards on his belly, until he was
partially down the side of the mound, hidden again. He felt his heart race. Did
they see him?

It was impossible to judge what the
Skyquakers
were, where they had come from, or what they were looking for, but instantly Ned
knew he was no longer safe in this town. He began to see the big picture now:
these beams were clearing the land of the former inhabitants to
make way
for something; something new and intrusive. This new construction was
undoubtedly only the first in a series of warehouses which could soon spring up
around the area, and very soon Ned could find himself surrounded. These were
not the only Quakers he would ever see; more were coming. They had come from
the sky to establish something here on the ground: perhaps a new colony, a city
of their own, or even a military base to attack the rest of the world. They wanted
something from this place, and things like Ned were simply in their way.

After that, Ned considered leaving town for good. If there
was no one here, and not much food left other than piles of cans, then there
was little point in staying. He did not want to go; he was certain with these
new beams that change was occurring and he did not want to miss a second of it,
but they were far too close for his liking. Any Quaker who dared to wander
closer to town may find evidence of him living here, sparking alerts and
resulting in more thorough hunting parties. He may as well get out while he
could.

Besides, somewhere out there, somewhere in the whole of
Australia, there had to be another idiot who locked himself in a fridge and
survived. Lonely Lily was one survivor, so there had to be more. Getting out of
Wyndham safely, though, was going to be problematic. Manoeuvring through the
town was not an issue; every home had a fridge to keep him safe in an
emergency. On the dusty highways and open bushland, with hundreds of kilometres
between townships, however, he would be exposed to the sky, without shelter or
barriers to keep him safe from being abducted. There was no telling how far he
would get.

Ned made his decision after careful planning and
deliberation. He found a street directory and calculated how long it would take
to hop between here and the next town. Hours
–
days
–
of walking in the heat did not sound enjoyable, especially if he
planned to take some less-travelled bush routes to keep his movements unpredictable.
The Great Northern Highway was basically the one and only road out of Wyndham,
which led south directly into a realm called the
Kununurra
.
The
Kununurra
was a desert: a dead, flat, unforgiving
place with no shade and no water in the heat of summer. In the wet season, it
transformed into a flourishing wetland, but this season was very brief, and Ned
could not wait around another few months just for the hope of rain. The highway
cut through the desert, but the trail was so horribly exposed, offering nowhere
to rest or hide from the blistering sun, and given its length and unpaved
roads, it was often not attempted without a 4WD. Ned was going on foot, so to
not draw attention to himself, and he was already dreading the journey ahead.
The
Kununurra
was not going to be merciful, but where
else was there to go? West, there was Broome, over 1,000 kilometres away. East,
Darwin was just about the same distance. In the desert, he would have no water,
no food, and no relief from the flies and the heat. On foot, it would take him
two days to reach the other side. He could ride his bicycle, but it would not
make it over the rocks or through the sand. It was going to be painful either
way, but eventually he would reach a river called the Ord, and on the other side
he would find greenery and a flourishing farming town in the country’s desolate
centre. He aimed to reach this new world as though it was some sort of
forgotten Eden, and the thought of arriving to a town of welcoming people made
him keen to pack up and go.

He slept one last time in his fridge and then left at
sunrise the next morning. He wrote a note on the fridge door in black marker
and left it standing for his mother to clearly find:

Mum,

Left for Ivanhoe. The fridge can keep you safe.

xx
Ned

When he finally said goodbye to Wyndham, it said nothing
back.