The Last Girl (30 page)

I gasped.

‘Don’t worry,’ Jack said. ‘They’re staying here. They’ll secure the park and the house in case we have to come back.’

He had no reason to suspect Nathan was still alive. But I worried his skeleton crew of thugs might stumble upon him if they plundered Parramatta for supplies.

‘No killing,’ I said.

He turned to me. ‘I gave you my word.’

Half of me was glad the killers were being left behind to suffer flies and firestorms. The other half knew it wasn’t fair because the real culprit was in the front seat. If the Biker and his cohort died here then they were as much victims as Ray and the rest. My head and heart ached with the contradiction—and at leaving Nathan behind in this hell.

The convoy started to roll. The lead vehicles bumped across the grassy field and we followed the path they wove between vehicles and bodies. A minute later we were through a gate and had bounced up a service road that took us onto the railway connecting Sydney with the Blue Mountains. Our chunky tyres crunched over the blue-metal gravel, big wheels straddling the tracks as though the axle width had been calculated for the task. We weren’t setting any speed records but it felt like a miracle to see Parramatta’s skyline, now dwarfed by the refinery’s black mountain of smoke, recede in the rear window.

Tension began to drain from me as I sank into the leather seat in the cool gust of the air conditioner. But I shifted and felt stifled when it dawned on me that we had more than a dozen vehicles in our convoy and they couldn’t have all been conveniently vacant. I tried to banish my guilt. It was as useless as wishing I could revive the Goners I saw in the weeds along the railway embankments.

I had to look at the positives. Nathan was back from the dead. He’d surely find other survivors. Evan and I were alive. We were heading in the right direction. The few cars that had encroached on the tracks were easily nudged aside by the powerful lead vehicles. The railway was a fire break, inside which we passed safely through swatches of burning suburbia.

We might make it to Clearview. From there I had a good shot at Shadow Valley.

My mind went to Tregan and Gary at their camp on the shore of a reservoir. They had a tent, sleeping bags and a small stash of groceries from an abandoned campervan and were hoping such minor looting wasn’t punishable by death. Every sound in the trees behind them ignited panic. Other Revivees were also convinced they were being stalked by unseen killers. I wished I could tell them the danger had passed. I wished I could fully believe it had.

My imagination went to Nathan. I pictured him so alone in that dreary office. Unaware I had left the city. Unable to communicate his presence to the Revivees. I felt like the worst person for leaving him. I told myself again it was the right thing to do. Then I had a thought that almost made me cry out in agony. We had left the back door of the accountant’s office open when we fled. The movement of the venetian blinds could’ve been caused by a breeze. The flyblown body in that taxi might really be my dead friend.

Jack popped open the glove compartment. ‘You want some music?’

Anything to distract me from my mind’s bleak places. ‘I guess.’

‘Carly Simon, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, Adele,’ Jack said, rummaging through CDs. ‘Bit of a classic hits selection.’

I could imagine the woman who’d driven this car. Someone’s daughter, lover, sister, mother, she’d likely been alive in this very vehicle a few hours ago when she’d been dragged out and discarded, only for her driver’s seat to be filled by someone’s son, lover, brother, father, his mind now enslaved. Violent dispossession, systematic extermination, brutal oppression and forced labour: Jack had tried to prepare me for the foundations of his new world.

‘Adele,’ I said.

A few moments later ‘Rolling in the Deep’ filled the car.

My eyes filled with tears as dead suburbs rolled by.

I didn’t know how Blacktown had gotten its name but it described what I saw of its commercial district. The streets were a mess of melted cars, twisted steel and broken masonry. But they were mere foothills around a volcanic mega-mall cascading fire and smoke.

We stopped inside the scarred bones of Blacktown’s railway station. This concrete skeleton had withstood the firestorm but charcoal corpses were falling to pieces on its platforms and stairs. The heat was overpowering our air conditioning.

‘Why are we stopping?’ I said.

‘We’re stuck,’ Jack said, turning off the music. ‘Debris.’

‘What are we going to do?’ I tried to keep the panic out of my voice.

We’d bake inside the car if we stayed here too long. Evan and Michelle were already clammy against me.

I leaned forward to look at Jack. His eyes were closed in concentration. Nick opened his door, got out, and put on gloves. Up ahead, big men were already out of their vehicles, getting to work in the rippling haze. Through smoke and snowy ash, they banded together to heft blocks and girders clear of the tracks.

‘Don’t worry,’ Jack said finally. ‘We’ll be on our way in a minute.’

We emerged from Blacktown’s city centre into an unburned strip of suburbia. Rows of townhouses on our left. People didn’t stir on their balconies and in their backyards as we passed. Sports fields on our right. Movement I thought was me seeing things. Maybe a visual echo of soccer players about to kick off. But the trio of people jumping and waving were real.

‘Jack!’ I grabbed his shoulder. ‘Look!’

‘I see them.’

The convoy slowed. A woman ran towards us. Yelling incoherently.

‘Can you hear her?’

Jack meant her mind. I told him no.

‘The others?’

I shook my head.

Nick leapt onto the railway tracks to aim a revolver at this scrawny woman in a dirty floral dress. The big bruiser stormed from the back hatch to point his rifle at the poor wretch. I whiplashed in my seat. Saw more gunmen scrambling from vehicles.

‘Don’t!’ I said to Jack.

‘Stop!’ the guys with guns shouted in unison.

The woman skidded in the dust and reached for the sky. She was close enough that I could see her confusion. What looked like a rag-tag UN convoy had appeared on the railway line. She’d thought her prayers were answered. Now she was facing a firing squad.

‘Don’t shoot!’

Out on the soccer ground her two friends held stiff arms aloft in surrender.

The moment stretched. I hitched my breath against the barrage of gunfire.

‘Chill,’ Jack chided. ‘I promised.’

Jack crunched down the embankment, a .45 tucked in the back of his jeans, flanked by his guards. He closed on the woman quickly, they spoke for a moment and she dropped her arms to hug him. She led him to her companions and they pumped his hand like he was a politician or preacher. Then they all seemed to study their feet. That’s when I saw another person lying on the field amid backpacks and shopping bags.

Jack knelt by the figure. A second later, he helped a teenage boy to stand.

‘Hallelujah, praise Jesus!’

I heard the woman clear across the field as she threw her arms around the kid.

The two men chattered at Jack. He held up his hands to calm them and talked for a while. The slender dark-skinned man nodded. But his squat offsider jabbed angrily at the suburban sprawl beyond the park. Jack spoke some more. Whatever he said seemed to mollify the guy.

Jack led the group back, minions spread out behind them. As they drew closer, I got a better look at the woman’s bedraggled companions. The sleepwalking boy with a sports drink had inherited his mother’s gaunt features and frizzy hair. I figured the taller man was Somalian because his fine features and colouring were like those of my old maths teacher. But the argumentative dude—sullenly kicking up dirt with his thongs, pale belly shining from the bottom of his blue singlet—was a cartoonist’s idea of a hangdog Aussie.

Jack guided them to our car.

‘Danby, this is Tina, her son Joel, and their friends Jamal and Baz.’

‘I wanna thank you,’ Tina said, eyes shimmering as she clasped my hands through the window. ‘For saving my Joel.’

I looked from the woman to Jack. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

‘Yes, you did,’ he said. ‘You saw them first.’

Jack smiled at me warmly. He was being generous with the credit. His eyes in the lead vehicle must have spotted them before I did. Maybe this was him acknowledging my influence. If I hadn’t been with him, he might’ve driven on. Or worse.

‘Your boy might take a while to come good,’ Jack said to Tina. ‘He’s been through a massive trauma.’

‘I feel okay,’ the kid said—or Jack made him say. ‘Tired.’

Tina hugged her son. ‘I’m just glad to have him back.’

Jamal’s mouth was tight. His eyes were heavy. I wondered who he’d lost and how much survivor guilt he bore. ‘We couldn’t find that injection stuff,’ he said. ‘The fires were too hot. Those men were killing people. But we prayed, and God, He has delivered you to us.’

Baz sniggered. He was like a creepy neighbour. When I looked at him his eyes darted to Evan and Michelle and to the supplies packed in the back of the Pathfinder.

‘Youse have done all right, haven’t ya?’

Tina reeled on him. ‘I’ve had it with you! No one’s making you come. Stay here if you’re so desperate to find her. But you won’t, because you aren’t— You’re all talk.’

Jamal nodded, arms folded.

Jack looked at me, eyes widening. I forced a smile, hoped stopping wasn’t a mistake.

Baz’s face went red and he balled his fists. ‘Now listen here, just because I—’

‘We’ve heard it,’ Tina cut him off. ‘We know.’

‘Guys, chill out,’ Jack said.

Baz spun around. For a moment he looked like he wanted to hit Jack. Then his weasel eyes flitted to the armed men all around.

‘Yeah,’ he said, stepping down. ‘Whatever you say.’

Jack nodded. ‘We’ve all been through a lot but we’re in this together. Let’s get you into a car, get you something to eat and drink and get our nurse to look you over.’

‘You did the right thing,’ I said when we were underway again. ‘That was good.’

Jack chuckled. ‘I guess we’ll see.’

I settled in with Evan and Michelle.

‘That guy, Baz? Didn’t he want to come with us?’

Jack twisted around to look at me. ‘When he saw what I did for the kid, he demanded we go and wake up his wife.’

‘Oh.’ So Baz wasn’t any more of a bastard than anyone else. ‘What did you tell him?’

‘I told him we’d send someone to get her.’

‘Will you?’

Jack faced forward with a sigh. ‘He didn’t really want me to. That’s what he wanted me to say so he could leave with a clear conscience.’

My stomach clenched at what I may have in common with Baz.

As we bumped across ridges of gray gravel, pulled west by ribbons of shining steel, Jack strummed his guitar softly. I welcomed his warm instrumentals in the face of the great silence that spread out around the convoy. After we found Tina and friends, I expected we’d find more clusters of people who’d avoided the Big Crash. But no other survivors waved at us from windows and rooftops and backyards.

Jack set aside his guitar and busied himself scribbling in a leather-bound notebook. I hoped he wasn’t composing a song about the way of the world that he’d want to try out on me. I couldn’t hold in a giggle.

‘What?’ he asked looking over his shoulder grinning.

Think fast. Don’t insult him.

‘Oh, it’s just, with Tina on the scene,’ I said, pointing at the vehicle ahead of us. ‘I guess I’m not the last girl anymore.’

Jack frowned. I made an exaggerated sad face. Blood rose in my cheeks. My silly spur-of-the-second joke had been meant to sound self-deprecating. It’d come off as an awful and needy overshare.

‘No,’ Jack said, face all earnest. ‘That’s not the reason that I want you—’ He saw my stricken expression and he made himself laugh like he was in on it.

‘Yeah,’ he said, facing forward. ‘Better lift your game. Tina, hmm.’

Jack’s flush had tinged his ears pink. My joke had blindsided him. I felt bad he was embarrassed—and guiltily good that I had gotten under his skin.

‘So our new friends?’ I said to break the tension. ‘I wonder how they’re doing?’

‘They’re fine,’ Jack said.

Of course—he really could tell me. He was in that car with them as surely as he was in this one with me. ‘But that Baz guy? He’s a real glass-half-empty asshole.’

I thought about Baz and my theory as the convoy rumbled onwards. Maybe it wasn’t his fault. Maybe he had a mood disorder. Maybe he—and Tina and Jamal—had been on meds like me and Nathan.

‘Jack, can I ask you a question?’

‘Hang on.’ He kept his head in his writing for a few moments and then closed his notebook. ‘Okay, shoot.’

‘Have you ever been . . . mentally ill?’

Jack smiled darkly. ‘You think I’m crazy?’

‘You saw Nathan through Tregan?’

He nodded.

‘Well, you heard him say he was on medication. I was, too. Just before Christmas I had what they said was a psychotic episode and they put me on this stuff. So I thought maybe that’s what Nathan and me and you and them have in common.’

The vehicle rattled around debris. Jack considered what I’d said. ‘What were you on?’

‘Lucidiphil.’

‘And Nathan?’

I told him.

‘It’s a good theory,’ he said. ‘But Lithium carbonate’s a salt. Lamictal’s a sodium channel-blocking anti-convulsive also used to treat bipolar disorder. Lucidiphil’s a fourth-generation anti-psychotic that blocks dopamine and serotonin receptors.’

Jack shrugged off my look of disbelief. ‘I know that stuff because one of the guys is a pharmacist. The point is they’re three very different drugs. If everyone on psychiatric medication was immune, half the world would be up and about.’

I nodded. It made sense.

‘To answer your initial question,’ he continued with a grin, ‘I might be crazy but I’ve never been prescribed anything.’ Jack made shower-scene-from-
Psycho
screeches. ‘Do I have to worry about you? You said they “claimed” you had a psychotic episode.’

I looked out the window. ‘It was a misdiagnosis,’ I said, not caring if he believed me. ‘So what’s your theory on what sets us apart? What makes us special?’