Skyquakers (34 page)

It took hours, but Lara did eventually find Ned again. Under
the blaring hot sun, he was found wandering along a dirt highway somewhere
south-east of Darwin, limping, bleeding, bare-chested and bare-footed. She was
following her compass as she drove, when she suddenly saw the back of his head.
That shaggy hair was all too familiar. She started screaming in joy. She honked
her horn. Ned stopped, staggered a bit, and turned to look over his shoulder. A
car drove towards him before skidding to a halt.

Lara called his name. She leapt from the
ute
and ran into his arms. He collapsed into her
embrace. Lara was in tears, overwhelmed with joy to see him still alive, still
with her on this Earth together. He smiled and hugged her, and told her he was
sorry for leaving her alone out here.

Immediately she tried to get him into the
ute
and take him back to the
hospital, but Ned refused. Despite his condition
–
the
blood, the fever,
the
way his lungs struggled for air
–
he only had two things to say:

First, they were all dead. Baba, Psycho, all of them. That,
she had to accept.

Second, he had to tell her what Lily wrote.

It was unsurprising to learn that Lonely Lily was not a real
person. Lily was an idea, a collection of people, a tool. She was invented by
the Navy and her sole purpose was to combat the alien invasion.

The note was written and left by an anonymous woman, whose
innocent and alluring voice masked the military beacon which had been set up at
Charles Darwin University within a few days of the first storm. She had a
finite set of tapes to play over and over, constantly beckoning in between
meaningless chatter to be sought out by any surviving humans, only so that they
could find her letter, read it, and know the truth.

Very few citizens ever found her. A handful were lucky
enough to avoid the storm, and only a fraction were within her broadcasting
range. Lily congratulated Ned on his achievement, and told him from here on,
everything would be alright.

It perhaps only occurred to Ned whilst reading that every
submarine on the planet was immune to the beams. Thus portions of every
nation’s military were well and truly operational and had been in action since
day one. Australia’s remaining vessels were continuously circling the shores,
looking for people like Ned. They had set up two
‘
Lilies
’
in two other ports, Perth and Sydney, hoping to cover the most ground.
Unfortunately the Sydney beacon was found and bombed. The Perth one was still
in operation, but it had been so long since anyone had been found; they were
beginning to give up hope.

Rescue submarines emerged infrequently and on odd days, in
order to keep from establishing a predictable pattern. For Sydney, it was every
23 days, every 39 for Perth, and every 17 days for Darwin. Calendars left in
Lily
’
s studio and the drug addict
’
s room
showed circles once or twice a month on the exact same days, tracking the next
scheduled rescue attempt.

But the search would end when Lily
’
s voice
finally cut out. Without her, it would be impossible to further relay the
Navy’s message to any survivors and so there was no point in pursuing a dead
cause. In their eyes, the country was already lost. Their only hope was to find
refuge elsewhere. Ned was the last to find Lily in Darwin; he may be the last
human to ever find her. As a reward, he would be taken to a new home where tens
of thousands were awaiting him.

Lily told Ned where to be and when. This he relayed to Lara,
thus upholding the promise he had made to ensure she would be safe.

She drove north, back along that same highway. The hot wind
blew through the open windows and tangled her hair, hiding the tears that she
shed over Baba and the enormous sacrifice he had made. To have witnessed that
thing fall from the sky
…
Ned had seen something no one
had ever seen, or may ever see again. He didn
’
t have the
strength to explain what it was like; he was so sick and injured that he could
no longer walk. Lara used the carpet rolls in the rear tray to construct a bed
and nestled him in. She left him with water and promised to get him help. Ned
refused to go to a hospital; he instructed her to take her back to the cabin on
the cliff. That was what Lily wanted, apparently.

She followed his instructions and drove back along those
same roads to the northern beach. The neglected outback around her was still as
dry and as barren as it always was, and yet the absence of the cloud made it
feel so much emptier. She passed the orange farm where she met that strange
girl. It was suddenly abandoned; neither the girl nor the Quaker farmers could
be seen playing amongst the trees. It seemed as though word of the cloud’s ruin
had spread quickly. She kept looking up, expecting to see another storm take
its fallen comrade
’
s place, but the sky was blue
and filled with only flying mutant bird hybrids. It was a beautiful day.

It was nearing sunset by the time she made it back to the
surfer’s cabin. She halted the
ute
at the edge of the cliff, looking down onto a mess of mangroves and thick
bushland, enveloping pristine blue waters and little rock pools. A wooden
boardwalk, build into the side of rocks and shrubbery, led down to the ocean.
Mutant seagulls flew overhead and the crickets were out in the last hours of
sunlight, making their erratic calls. The place was just as she had left it,
but there was something new. At first, she thought it was a whale: a slender,
black blob sitting idly a few hundred metres from the shore, but it soon became
apparent that it was not a living thing.

Lara started crying and laughing at the same time. In
excitement, she flashed her headlights ten times in rapid succession. Out on
the water, a light flashed back at her. Contact was established.

She leapt out of the
ute
and slammed the door.
‘
Ned! You were right! They
’
re
here!
’
She skipped to the rear of the trailer and
clambered up onto the piles of rugs. She slapped Ned on the leg and laughed
again,
‘
They
’
re really out there! Look!
’

Ned didn
’
t respond. Lara stopped and
nudged him gently. She crawled closer to him and knelt down.
‘
Wake
up,
’
she demanded.
‘
Ned, wake
up.
’

She shook him again. The smile on her lips faded.

‘Ned, wake up. Hey!
’

She stared at the boy. His head was turned to the side, his
mattered hair strewn across his pale face. An arm hung limp over the edge of
the tray, cold and rigid.

‘No, get up.
Get up
.
’
She shook
him again, but nothing changed.
‘
Get up, Ned.
Get up,
you idiot!
’

She lurched back and covered her mouth with her hand. She
gasped, drawing in short, desperate breaths. She yelled at him,
‘
Stop
it! Stop it right now!
’
She shook him and she yelled
at him, again and again. He didn
’
t answer.

She collapsed to her knees, sobbing over him. She wept and
cried and began screaming, but not even the crickets were moved by her voice.
She tugged on his clothes and wept, calling his name over and over. She pointed
to the sea. ‘We’re here! We made it! It’s right there!
It’s right there!
Look! Look at me!’

He didn’t answer.

‘I hate you, I hate you
…
Get up!
Don
’
t do this to me! Don
’
t do this
to me! Please, Ned, just look out there! Just…’

But as the moments slipped
by, it became conclusive that the life inside had departed from the body, and
all attempts to wish it back were meaningless. She stared and could not speak.
She looked around for help and pleaded for it out loud, but no one could hear
her and no one would come. Ned had died somewhere along the way, perhaps as
soon as he laid his head down. A soft breeze blew over him and a fragment of
his hair whipped up
,
only to reveal the pale skin of his
cheek, dry lips slightly ajar, and those weary eyes at rest at last. He was a
frozen image in time of a boy who had fought for all and won nothing, whose
struggles had been an empty pursuit of companionship, of answers which he never
received. To have come this far and lost was painfully unfair; she felt the
sting in her chest, a vacuum that sucked the life out of her. She was
undeserving of his sacrifice, knowing the fault was entirely hers: her actions
had been the most damaging of all, and yet his last agonising breaths had been
for her. She was a stranger to him; strangers were not meant to be this kind to
one another.

It was not right to leave
him here so undignified, but the boats were coming now and she had only a brief
and fleeting opportunity to be taken aboard. Between glances of the haven of
the beach and her hero, she almost considered staying. Ned needed her, right
here and now. She had to be with him. She had to hold him and nurse him back to
health, or else what kind of human would she be?
 

But to refuse his sacrifice
would be an insult to his death, and so she said her last goodbyes, left his
body where it lay, and hastily made for the shore. She scaled the boardwalk
down to the base of the cliff, skidded down the muddy hills and tripped over
mangroves. She took one last glance back up to that cliff, in hopes that the
nightmare was all in her mind, but the
ute
sat there unmoved at the rocky edge, an unmarked tombstone basking in the warm
sun. And upon that lonely grave sat a little alien dog with black and white
fur.
 

Oh
Moonboy
,
come with me!

But
Moonboy
had chosen his allegiance and was far more loyal to his friends than she. The
dog stayed with him, his little nose nestled in the comfort of a dearly loved
boy, as though he was merely sleeping. He was there to protect him. The love
was so painful to admire that she had to turn away and leave.
 

When at last she reached
the water, she collapsed under the weight of an overwhelming storm of emotion.
She fell to her knees and screamed into her hands. When the boats arrived, a
woman in uniform ran to collect her while two others with guns stood guard. She
was taken by her arms and lifted, but she collapsed again. She began screaming
that she couldn't leave. She yelled that he was dead, but they were too hurried
to care. All they wanted to know was if she was alone, if there were any
others. A shake of the head gave them their answer, and so they proceeded to
carry the last of Lily's responders onto their boat. After this, there would be
no more.

She kept resisting, pulling
against their helping hands as though she did not want to be rescued. They
could only take her hysteria as a natural reaction; she could never muster the
words to tell them otherwise, and so, oblivious to her loss, they proceeded to
forcefully drag the last survivor onto their boat.

THE END