The Last Girl (31 page)

‘Special?’ Jack smiled. ‘That’s what they used to call educated convicts who were set free to help build society.’

I laughed at that. ‘More fascinating facts from the mind of the Old Government House caretaker?’

Jack nodded. ‘What makes us special? I know a lot of stuff but I don’t know that. Could be it’s a quirk of DNA. Chosen by God. Destined by fate. Maybe we’re just— Whoa.’

The convoy stopped.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Take a look,’ Jack said, stepping out.

Penrith’s skyline wasn’t far off. But between here and there was where a diesel engine hauling cargo had collided head-on with a commuter train. Carriages lay scattered along the embankment. Chains of coal cars had bucked off the track and battered through houses. Craters smouldered in streets and backyards. Even with most debris spread on either side of the railway, we still faced a dead end of bent steel and ripped track and downed pylons.

‘This is what you saw?’ Jack asked.

I nodded. ‘I had a glimpse of the train driver, right at the start, and I got echoes later on, but I had no idea it was this bad. You didn’t see it?’

Jack closed his eyes. ‘I guess it was out of my range. But now I’m here I remember. Really faint, from other minds, like flashes from a dream you’re not sure you had.’

I looked around. The roads were barely visible for the smashed cars, chunks of train and collapsed walls and roofs. Even monster trucks wouldn’t get us through that mess. I supposed we were close enough to hike to Clearview but then we’d have to leave most of the supplies. We were stuck. Just when the Blue Mountains were visible as a shadow rising from the hazy air.

‘What do we do?’ I said.

He looked at me. ‘We’ll deal with it.’

Jack was prepared. His army unpacked tools and oxy torches and began cutting and dismantling. Like a well-rehearsed emergency crew they carted twisted iron from the tracks and chained bigger pieces so the most powerful vehicles could haul them free. Watching them work around us made my head spin. I didn’t know whether Jack had to micro-manage his minions or whether he could just set and forget.

Jack and I hauled a concertinaed metal sheet clear and let it slide down the embankment. When he wiped sweat from his brow, his gloves left muddy smears on his forehead. My stitches stung with heat and perspiration.

‘Getting there,’ Jack said with a grin.

Enough wreckage had been cleared to create a corridor that would soon be navigable. Jack handed me the water bottle.

I gulped it down but remained parched. ‘I’ll get us some more drinks from the car.’

Evan and Michelle were side by side on the back seat and happily entranced in
Snots ’N’ Bots
on a tablet. Seeing them like that gave me pause. The kids didn’t have any skills suited to this or any occasion. They were too small for grunt work. Evan hadn’t turned out to be a savant. Michelle was unlikely to be some pint-sized genius. Evan had been raised for my benefit. But why did my little brother need a playmate—any more than they needed to play a video game? My best guess was that Jack was trying to ease my fears. He was showing me Evan doing something familiar and what it’d be like when my little brother and Michelle were back to themselves. I didn’t know whether it was sweet—or sick.

I grabbed bottles of water and headed back to our work site. But Jack was standing on a far embankment and staring into the distance. As I headed his way, passing minions lugging axles, I walked by Baz and Jamal conspiring in the shadow of a signal box. They went quiet when they saw me. I had the feeling that if I could tune into their minds I wouldn’t like what I heard.

I handed Jack his bottle. ‘How’s it going?’

‘We need to check that place out.’

I followed his gaze down the hill. Inside a razor-wire perimeter stood a clump of brick buildings amid gum trees. The parking lot was filled with camouflaged trucks and earthmovers: a fleet of vehicles especially made for driving over and clearing just about anything.

‘Combat engineer regiment,’ Jack read from a sign by the abandoned checkpoint and empty gatehouse. ‘I’m going to leave some people here to get those vehicles. We also need to collect any guns and ammunition and explosives from inside.’

I rounded on him. ‘Why? Isn’t that a bit over the top for self-defence?’

Jack swigged his water and looked at me wearily. ‘Has it occurred to you that we should take it so someone else doesn’t?’

It hadn’t. I didn’t much like the idea of a Party Duder armed with a bazooka. ‘Sorry.’

‘We don’t know who else is out there,’ he said. ‘Are you ready to go?’

I looked back with him along the railway. The last segment of curled track had been pulled free.

The way forward was clear.

TWENTY-THREE

The convoy slowed as it rumbled through Penrith station. Bodies were scattered across its platforms. I couldn’t tell who was alive and who was dead. The town’s office blocks and massive shopping plaza hadn’t been touched by fire yet.

I was breathing hard.

‘You okay?’ Jack asked.

‘I’m fine.’

I wasn’t fine. What was particularly not fine was that there were thousands around us who could be helped. I should demand that Jack stop and do his voodoo. Tell him to let me out so I could find a pharmacy and start dosing people with Lorazepam. But all that mattered to me was getting to my mum. I wasn’t going to say a word.

The convoy trundled out of Penrith and across an iron truss bridge that took the railway over the Nepean River. The foothills of the Blue Mountains finally took their correct shape and colour. We drove through Emu Plains, the last patch of flatland suburbia, and began the gradual rise up into the bush. The few houses nestled here amid eucalypts had tall television antennae. This far out they’d needed them to get a clear signal.

I sent my mind out to check that Jack was being true to his word. What I
didn’t
find turned my stomach inside out. Tregan and Gary were gone.

‘What are you doing?’ I said.

‘Nothing,’ Jack snapped. ‘Really.’

Scanning for Robert was no use either. Cory and Anne were nowhere to be found. But then I hit faintly on Ravi and Wayne—and learned from their minds that everyone was safe. The Revivees weren’t being menaced by the Biker and the Cop or anyone else. But they were breaking up like a broadcast getting fainter over distance. That made sense. We were at the outer edges of the telepathy and there was no one to act as relays between us and the Revivees.

Jack was rigid in his seat. I wanted to ask whether he could still control the Biker and others. Then I saw Nathan. He was in my mind, a shimmering figure, seen through the eyes of a woman named Joanna.

Help!-I’m-alive!-Thank-God-But-where’s-Daniel?-My-
family?

Joanna’s last memory was falling forever in the hallway of her Westmead apartment block. Now she was blinking back into life and looking at Nathan hunched over her neighbour Tatiana.

Who’s-this-Indian-dude?-What’re-you-doing?-Don’t-hurt-
her-What’s-this—

Joanna’s fingers were curled around a plastic bottle filled with orange liquid. Beside her legs was a clear plastic bag containing syringes and a printed flyer. Other people were also surrounded with drinks and bags.

So-thirsty
.

The drink was warm and salty but it refreshed every cell in her body. She saw bottled water and first-aid kits in the hallway. A bundle of rifles leaned against an apartment door. The scene was fading from my mind. But before it disappeared entirely, Nathan was back with Joanna, leaning in to look at her.

‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said.

Joanna didn’t fear him anymore. She’d been dead. He brought her back to life. Now he looked like the one in trouble. His breath was coppery. Pupils like pinpricks. He winced with every movement. She guessed this guy was only on his feet thanks to some powerful painkillers.

‘I’m Nathan,’ he said, forcing a smile, giving a thumbs up. ‘The flyers in this bag will explain what you need to do. What they don’t say is that there are people in the west who want to hurt us. They’re even more dangerous because we can’t—’

Then Joanna’s mind vanished from mine and Nathan was gone again.

Nick slammed on the brakes and we shuddered to a stop. The convoy ahead halted in a cloud of dust.

‘Oh my God,’ I said. ‘Oh my God.’

Jack’s jaw was tight and cords stuck out on his neck. He massaged his temples.

I held my breath, held Evan and Michelle closer to me, afraid of what he would do. I didn’t think Jack knew that Nathan’s thumbs up was a message for me. But it didn’t matter. Reviving people, arming them: Nathan might as well have declared war.

‘I feel terrible about this,’ said Jack.

He turned to me grimly. I shook my head. If he was going to turn the convoy around and go after Nathan he would have to kill me first.

‘I’m glad your friend’s alive,’ he said. ‘But it’s my fault he’s so badly injured and it’s my fault that the first thing that woman hears on waking is she’s got a target on her head. I wish I could tell them they’re safe now. But I want to tell you I’m sorry.’

Jack ran his fingers through his hair. I relaxed my grip on the kids and took a long breath.

‘You could send the guys you left behind to talk to him.’

I didn’t really want him to do that. But I wanted to see how Jack responded to the suggestion.

He shook his head. ‘They’d be the last people Nathan would trust.’

That was right but I wondered if it was the real reason. Maybe Jack no longer controlled the Biker, the Cop and the rest. Maybe they’d dropped back into catatonia like that stockbroker guy. Maybe Jack still had them in his grip but wasn’t going to tell me so he could send them out to hunt Nathan.

‘Why?’ I asked, leaning forward so my head was by his shoulder. ‘Why the change of heart?’

‘“Why the change of heart?” ’ he repeated, adding a laugh and a shake of his head. ‘You still don’t get it?’

My toes curled in my boots as I wished I could take the question back. Whatever he was going to say, I didn’t want to hear it.

‘You,’ he said.

I held my breath.

‘This morning I wanted to convince you I was right. But you showed me I was going about things the wrong way.’

I exhaled slowly. I’d egotistically thought Jack was going in a different direction. I tilted my face to look into his eyes. They looked candlelit.

‘You mean it?’ I asked. ‘You won’t hurt Nathan and the others?’

Jack’s warm smile faltered and he knitted his eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry you still think you need to ask that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘It’s okay,’ he replied. ‘Everything’s happening very quickly.’

Jack broke eye contact and turned his attention to the railway track curving up into the bush. ‘All that matters,’ he said, ‘is that we get things right from here.’

I wondered whether Jack’s about-face was as abrupt as it seemed. He wasn’t the Party Duder. He was intelligent, idealistic. He couldn’t have killed those people without feeling something, wondering if it was necessary.

‘When we’re established up in Clearview,’ Jack was saying, ‘we’ll see if we can reach out, find some way we can clear everything up.’

Reach out? Clear everything up? Jack was pretty good with those understatements.

‘What’s done is done,’ I said. ‘Let’s get going.’

My mum was waiting. I hoped.

Since Jack had first told me where we were going and how we were getting there, I’d equated driving up the Blue Mountains railway with bouncing up a rocky ridge at an absurd angle, like some stupid commercial where owning an off-road vehicle meant world domination. Instead, we were steadily ascending a gentle slope behind Sydney’s westernmost houses. The people who lived in them looked like everyone else. A woman floated in a backyard pool. A grandfather sat on a terracotta roof. A kid lay inside a trampoline’s safety net.

Getting into the Blue Mountains proper didn’t mean leaving such sights behind. As we crossed the bridge that straddled the Great Western Highway we saw where cars had bashed into each other, crossed lanes and crashed head-on. The surrounding drab green bush held swatches of colour. Each was someone who’d abandoned a vehicle. Many people would have made it deeper into the trees where they’d now stay forever.

The terrain became more rugged though our route remained gentle and almost level as the railway hugged the mountainside. On the driver’s side we were inches from ancient sandstone strata while on the passenger’s side we were but feet from a cloud-draped gorge.

One by one a tunnel swallowed the convoy’s vehicles. The engines roared louder against the rock walls and ceiling, and through the windshield the world closed to a halo of yellow headlights and red tail-lights. I didn’t like rumbling through the centre of the mountain. A billion tonnes of timeless geology pressing down reminded me of being in that nowhere place after the Snap.

The end of the tunnel appeared as a bright archway. A second later we were out and the Pathfinder’s roof was being pummelled. At first I thought we were caught in an avalanche and that the spray of pebbles would be replaced by sandstone boulders. Then I realised we’d emerged into a furious downpour from a low black sky. Water poured down the cliff faces in curtains, our wipers no use against the water sluicing across the windshield.

‘No!’ Jack yelled. We lurched towards the cliff edge. Our wheels spun across slippery tracks and sleepers. He thrust his hands against the roof. I clutched Evan and Michelle tight. Time elongated as Nick wrestled the steering wheel. A horrible protesting shriek came from our tyres digging furrows in the gravel. Then the
vrrrr
of the vehicle shooting sideways and the
cru-thunk
of its panels hitting the sandstone wall. The kids and I were hurled against our belts and bounced back into our seats as I yelled swear words. Evan and Michelle stared ahead like nothing had happened. The engine sputtered out.

‘Oh, shit!’ Jack said.

During the frenzy the Range Rover ahead of us had been spinning towards the cliff edge. While we’d crashed into safety, the other car was spearing backwards into empty air.