The Last Girl (13 page)

What maybe went in our favour was that we were invisible. Minds on the shores, and in other boats, couldn’t tune into me or Evan and the kayak melted into the smoky mess of sky meeting water. But that could work against us if another boat came our way. All I could do about that was keep close to the shore where we were less likely to be hit.

Darkened suburbs scrolled by. Flashlights stabbed through the darkness. I steered between yachts at a marina, through the shallows alongside a bush reserve, across the burning frontage of a waterside apartment complex.

An iron bridge brooded from the gloaming. Its entire span was choked with cars. People cowered in smashed vehicles and tried to hide inside whatever wall of sound their stereos could conjure. Horns were honked by slumping heads. Headlights projected drivers as shadows in the smoke as they fled across cars. On the shores mobs who’d spilled from the bridge and down from the suburbs clashed in a punching, biting, kicking, cutting and bashing war of all against all. It was like everyone had decided that death was the only escape: it didn’t matter whose.

I had to risk the middle of the river. Better to chance crashing with another boat than to go near whatever had replaced humanity inside that homicidal frenzy. There weren’t any vessels that I could see. But that didn’t mean we were safe. As we approached the middle pylons, I flicked across fevered minds, expecting to lock onto another suicidal swandiver. It wouldn’t need to be a direct hit to kill us. Waves from a near-miss could capsize the kayak. We were wedged into the cockpit so tightly we’d drown before I got us free.

Then the horror was behind us. The river ahead was clear of boats and the industrial shoreline was uninhabited. Every muscle ached but I didn’t slow for fear of losing momentum. I set an achievable goal. I’d rest when I got to the next flashing red channel marker. But when I reached it I promised myself a break at the next one. Then I forced myself on at the next one and the next one after that. That was how I kept going.

I paddled us past warehouses and depots. We slid beneath a disused railway bridge. Went by an eerily quiet apartment complex. The river opened into mangrove-lined Homebush Bay, crowned by Sydney Olympic Park’s arches. My exhausted mind slipped away from me. Saw people streaming around a stadium. Heard what sounded like the roar of excited fans. Maybe some sporting event was finishing. Then I realised these were discombobulated souls trying
not
to become crowds as they wandered Olympic Park’s arenas and boulevards.

My neck hurt from the car crash. My abdominals felt like they might snap and my thighs were burning. I’d tried to welcome this physical pain as a distraction. Now my body screamed in unison with the universe.

I couldn’t go on. Then I didn’t have to. I wasn’t on the river anymore. I was in deep space. Being sucked towards a pulsing red dwarf. Except that wasn’t right. In space you couldn’t hear anything and you moved without effort. But I was being pulled through noise and friction. This was inner space. Had to be. Me being pumped through my own blood towards my own heart. Only I wasn’t moving anymore. I was stuck in sludge that tasted of salt and copper. Everything pulsed red and black. Was I inside my own heart attack? No—this wasn’t my death. It was the birth—of everything. Back in time, billions of years. I was part of the primordial soup being lit up by exploding lava. Lightning would strike and all life would start with me as the first organic molecule. Everything I thought I knew hadn’t happened yet. But then it had—and I slammed back into myself.

I was Danby, dehydrated and delirious and slumped against my little brother’s back in the kayak I’d just paddled straight into a muddy mangrove flat. I made myself sit up, rubbed river water out of my eyes, took what measure I could of the landscape from the red-black pulse of the channel marker behind me. Above where I’d landed was a walking track and beyond that was dense, dark bushland. There were millions of people in every direction but I couldn’t sense anyone close by.

When I yoga-moved out of the cockpit, my feet sank into the mud. I tied one of the kayak’s bungee cords to a mangrove branch so my ride wouldn’t be carried off with the tide. I hauled Evan up and slopped us onto dry land. I checked his respiration and pulse. He was in better shape than me. Breathing easy while I rasped for air.

Looking around, I was met with a minor miracle: the shiny silver of a water fountain. I hauled myself up its plinth and took sips that were cold and revitalising. Then I splashed my face to wash off the salt and blood and mud.

A sign beside the fountain said that the black bushland behind the cyclone fence was Newington Nature Reserve. It didn’t take long to find a flap of wire that’d been pulled back at ground level, probably by kids who treated this as their personal adventure park. I squeezed us through and dragged Evan into the shadows between the towering trees.

Everything hurt, everything was unfair, everything was wrong and everything had to be turned back the way it was. There was a simple way out of this. Had to be.

Wake up. Wake up. Wake. Up. Wake. Up.

I clicked my fingers in front of my face.

‘Snap out of this, snap out of it.’

But I didn’t.

Snap.

I turned the word in my head. It was the sound of something breaking in a split second—but it was also what people said when they thought or did something simultaneously.

The Snap
—
that’s what had happened to us.

It wouldn’t unhappen. You couldn’t unsnap anything. I had to accept that. Denial was dangerous. So many people had died—were dying right now—because they couldn’t or wouldn’t face this new reality. Not having my thoughts exposed had given me a better chance. But I could never forget that death was on our heels if we were to stay far enough ahead to stay alive.

I cuddled Evan tight to me, my back against a tree trunk, and let my mind wander across our surroundings. We were lucky to have landed on this spot. The apartment complexes along the reserve’s eastern side still had electricity and the residents who’d fought to stay didn’t want to leave after witnessing the chaotic darkness elsewhere. But sooner or later their power would fail and batteries would die and then they’d only have each other and the walls to bounce off. That’s when fleeing into shadowy parklands might become attractive.

Mosquitoes whined and dive-bombed. Wasn’t smoke supposed to ward off the little bastards? There was enough of it in the air. Waving them away was useless so I stretched my jumper around Evan and rubbed mud from my boots on our exposed skin. It helped a little.

How long had it been since the Snap? The overload of bad shit and the prematurely dark sky had me all out of sync. Waking up, opening Christmas presents: that was someone else’s life, lived a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Even the phrase ‘long time ago in a galaxy far, far away’ seemed like it came from that ancient alien place. I wriggled around, got my phone from Evan’s pocket and clicked it on. It was just after one in the afternoon. It felt surreal that less than four hours had passed. Maybe time had stopped working. Maybe it didn’t matter now.

Except it did. More than ever before in my leisurely little life. That’s because it was vital I kept track of how long Evan had been without fluids and food. I knew the time we could survive without life’s essentials was roughly measured in threes: three minutes without oxygen; three days without water; three weeks without food. Evan had the cereal and milk not too long ago. He’d be okay for a while. But I had to find a way to wake him up—or at least get water into him.

I needed to keep scanning. Make sure we weren’t about to be discovered. As much as I hated to, I delved into the nearest mind I found—and from there drilled down into what was the biggest danger nearby.

Gordy was eleven and balled up in a hollow log a few hundred metres away. He and his mum had been about to visit his dad in Silverwater Jail when other dressed-up families started yelling and tearing at each other. A klaxon screamed behind the razor wire and there were shouts and the
pop pop
pop
of gunfire. Right then Gordy knew his whole life was lies. The man doing time for manslaughter wasn’t really his father— and it hadn’t really been manslaughter.

Gordy sprinted across the car park, already like a dodgem-car arena, and through the riverside park, where families trying out new bikes and kites were all snarling up at each other. He vaulted up and over the Newington Nature Reserve fence like an Olympic athlete. Stumbled into the trees and hid inside the log and blasted Universe 25 through his earbuds.

Now the cheap player’s battery had run out. Gordy couldn’t help being in the prison yard where his horrible fake father was bashing his poor cellmate even as he blasted threats at his cheating wife and the little bastard she’d foisted on him.

I’ll-find-youse-both-when-I’m-outta-here-You’ll-both-be—

He’d make her pay—then the kid. First he had to shut up his cellmate. Maybe that’d silence the thousands of other voices clamouring in his head. But as he raised his bloody fist to finish the job it was like the world fell away beneath his feet. He was gone—and Gordy blinked out with him.

I gasped in the darkness, horrified by what would become of Gordy but glad he’d been saved from the prison maniac. Maybe the scores of minds toppling like dominoes was a good thing. It might at least stop some of the escaped convicts and crazed civilians from murdering each other in the suburbs surrounding the prison and along the shoreline farther down the river. I felt awful for wishing everyone would drop into oblivion before anyone stumbled onto our hiding spot.

Someone came closer along the river path. An old bugger named Thomas who hated visiting the city and partaking in Christmas. At the insistence of his daughter he’d done both because she and her idiot husband wanted to show off their fancy new waterfront apartment. Thomas had been hiding in bed and grumbling at the prospect of jumping grandkids when his family and about a million of their tight-packed neighbours all seemed to start yelling.

Thomas yanked out his hearing aid, thinking some wi-fi gizmo was causing interference. But it made no difference. How was he being deafened when he was already almost deaf? Unless . . . he was finally losing his marbles and these voices were inside his head. Thomas let himself out, still in his dressing gown and slippers, intending to walk around the block to make sense of things. When that didn’t work, he just kept going.

Home was over one hundred kilometres away. Thomas knew he wouldn’t make it. But at least the universe saw fit to let him see his birthplace one last time. It was only a flash—pulsing minds working momentarily like a relay down the coast—but in that second Thomas was gazing on the blue water and tasting the salt air of his beloved bay.

I had an idea as the old man shuffled away. Maybe I could find Mum using the same method. Sending my mind to the west, I hooked into a frightened primary school teacher and scoured her mind for any thoughts she was receiving from the Blue Mountains, trying to find Mum in the maelstrom. It didn’t work. I tried again. And again.

My mind pinballed that way for hours. Like using a kaleidoscope to find a needle in a haystack. Bus smash. Train wreckage. Another crashed plane. Escape frenzy. Paracetamol overdose. Chainsaw attack. Falling blackness. Horrors piled up and I lost count of how many died or crashed with me as their witness. Still I didn’t stop. Six, sixty, six hundred or six thousand degrees of separation: someone had to be able to show me my mum.

Suddenly minds lined up—freaked house husband in Seven Hills to hyperventilating florist in Penrith to suicidal butcher in the lower Blue Mountains suburb of Greenglen—and I was in Mum as she slurped wine and splashed ochre across a huge canvas.

Can’t-sink-down-Try-calling-Danby-again-Gotta-hang-on
.

Then she was gone. I bit my knuckle so I didn’t cry out in frustration and jubilation. Hours for a second’s insight! But at least I’d found her! It had been worth it for the sense of her it gave me. She was taking a mental battering but she was physically okay. She was doing everything she could to distract herself and hold on for my arrival. I couldn’t let her down. But I couldn’t get us going again until I was sure we weren’t about to encounter an escaped prisoner along the river.

Shuffling beams of light caught me through the branches. My mind jumped to a woman weeping as she pedalled her bike along the river path. She wasn’t looking for us or anyone. She was trying not to be found. I let myself breathe when her headlight skimmed away.

As much as I wanted to find Mum’s mind again, I had to keep my focus on our immediate vicinity. No harm had been done by the bike woman getting so close. But I shuddered to think what would happen if I missed a murderer stumbling through the bush towards us.

Hour after hour, I stayed alert and kept watch. No one came through the trees, but weighed-down souls staggered regularly along the river path. Their names and stories were different but what they shared was the deep fear that they couldn’t last much longer.

My head dipped and then jolted. I risked checking my phone quickly. Its glare startled me. So did the time. It was one in the morning. I’d been hiding like a frightened forest creature for half a day. I was exhausted but I couldn’t risk falling asleep. I might slip back into the dark and empty place. I might wake up with some psycho killer looming over us.

No sleep till Shadow Valley. That was the vow I made before I passed out.