The Last Girl (9 page)

Jacinta started laughing. It was funny because none of it was real. She wasn’t adopted. The bridge hadn’t been blown up. Me and my family weren’t dead. People weren’t killing themselves. Perverts weren’t using the mind-sharing to expose themselves. Jacinta knew what this was: a nightmare. She just couldn’t wake up. She put on her Shades and figured if she couldn’t stop the dream she’d fill it up with so much noise and light that nothing else could get in. Hellbanga Live In Rome blasted her ears and eyes. It helped only a bit. Even the three-dimensional pyrotechnics of the wimpled superstar belting out ‘Papa La Nal’ couldn’t quell the thoughts rioting in my friend’s head.

I grabbed my phone and messaged Jacinta.

I
’
M NOT DEAD
popped up in a speech bubble from my profile photo hovering over Hellbanga.

Oh-thank-God-dream’s-changing-Everything’s-gonna-be-
okay-Dan-why-can’t-I—

I followed with:
NOT A DREAM

‘Message,’ she said to make the Shades do their thing. ‘What’s happening, Dan? This is so—’

Even as the speech-recognised words flashed onto my screen I heard her thoughts going elsewhere.

If-this-was-real-then-Dan-would-know-about-Finn-and-
she’d—
Jacinta felt sick about going back into Mollie’s party after the paramedics had left.

Oh, you bitch! My stomach roiled reflexively. I was so glad she couldn’t hear my mind. This was the stupid shit that was spiralling out of control and making people insane. But it was easier for me to take the high road: Jacinta wasn’t in my head and ferreting out that I’d been the one who dobbed her in for smoking last year.

DONT CARE
—I sent the message, fighting to keep focus.

It appeared on her lenses. Jacinta felt relief—then more guilty panic for agreeing with Emma and Madison that I could be a self-righteous bitch.

SOMETIMES I AM!
I tapped.

I sent my mind after Emma. Nothing. Her family had gone to Aspen. I couldn’t find Madison. She was in Cairns with her mother. I got the sense this thing was like a wi-fi signal that weakened over distance. Either that or my friends were dead.

This-is-what-happened-to-you-at-Mollie’s
. Jacinta’s thoughts burned helplessly across Beautopia Point.
You-you!-You-were-
patient-zero-You-infected-everyone
.

‘Sorry, Dan, don’t mean it!’ Jacinta said and that message hit my screen even as she thought,
Why-can’t-I-hear-you?-This-
isn’t-fair
.

I called her.

‘What’s happening?’ Jacinta cried in a ragged voice.
Am-I-
going-to-die?
‘I’m so scared!’

‘I don’t know!’ was all I could say. ‘I don’t know.’

How frightened I sounded to her wasn’t helping. This echo chamber could drive you crazy in no time. I tried to avert my mind from hers. Listen only to what she was saying out loud.

‘I can’t wake up!’ Jacinta yelled. ‘It’s all too much.’

She was struggling to hear herself above the torrential updates flooding her head. Her dad wishing he’d never even gotten married. Finn protesting to her and other girls that he wasn’t a user. Mollie screaming at her mum at the rehab resort. The woman next door chanting ‘Begone Satan!’ as she held knives like a crucifix. The old fart downstairs hoping the gas cancelled him quickly.

‘Jacinta, focus!’ I said, trying to fake control. ‘Don’t worry about what other people are thinking!’

Generations of mums had offered it as standard operating advice. It applied now more than ever.

‘There’s nowhere to hide,’ Jacinta whimpered. ‘They’re inside my mind! They know everything!’

‘Calm down,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about—’

‘I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!’ Jacinta screamed, barely able to hear herself over everything. ‘I can’t take this!’

She quit the call and disappeared back into her Shades with total blocking enabled.

‘No!’ I yelled.

COME OVER HERE!
I messaged.

I saw it didn’t get through. But I also saw Jacinta was having trouble seeing and hearing Princess Hellbanga. My friend was lost in what everyone else was thinking.

Leave-me-alone-Rapture’s-not-coming-The-oven’s-on-fire-
Gotta-staunch-bleeding
.

She’s-so-scared-Don’t-care-Nothing-matters-Stab-anyone-
who-comes-in . . .

Our-Father-who-art-Petrol-tank-is-only-half-full-Won’t-
get-far . . .

At-least-food-in-fridge-Those-poor-people-on . . .

Swallow-this-and-it’s-done-Sinking-down . . .

Might-be-okay-I’m-falling . . .

No-can’t-let-go . . .

No-No-No!

Then Jacinta’s mind went.

‘No!’ I shouted uselessly.

I called. Voicemail.

‘Jacinta, please call me, please!’

I couldn’t get through to her now and I couldn’t get to her place without leaving Evan. All I could do was hope my friend rebooted as fast as I had.

I tried to find Mum again. Nothing. I called her landline.

‘Hello?’

‘Mum!’

‘. . . you’ve called Robyn.’

Shit. I waited till the message finished.

‘Mum, it’s Danby!’ I sobbed. ‘Please pick up! Please! Dad’s . . . oh God . . . Dad’s . . . he’s dead! Stephanie too. I don’t know what’s happening. Everything’s going crazy. I don’t know what to do! Please call me! I love you!’

I didn’t know what it meant that she hadn’t answered. What I hoped was that Shadow Valley wasn’t being affected. I let out a dark little laugh as I imagined Mum out in her garden and oblivious to what was happening. Her pride at being so ‘out of the loop’ wasn’t looking so loopy.

I wondered how far this thing had spread. Maybe other cities weren’t affected. Maybe they were coming to help. ‘On,’ I said to my television and my tablet.

We’d taken it for granted that the apocalypse would be televised. In every scenario I’d ever imagined, when the end was nigh it was on every channel. Hazmat workers would torch plague victims as epidemiologists gave their terminal prognosis. Officials would tell us to duct-tape ourselves inside as the airborne toxic events claimed more capitals. Riots cops would shoot looters as the asteroid became bigger than the sun in the sky. Valiant news anchors would promise to stay on air until the very end. Yeah, there was none of that.

‘I’ll tell you what I’m hearing about the crisis,’ shouted a red-faced host on the local news. She was only half in shot, framed by unfilled green screen, railing at an unseen someone. ‘I’m hearing you’re replacing me because I’m too—’

Another channel showed a live stream from inside a cathedral where churchgoers scuffled amid the pews. The national broadcaster had an unblinking grey-haired man whose spit-flecked lips made him look demonic. On Fox News two beefy blowhards slugged it out with Santa Claus. A CNN a journalist blubbered into his hands while the BBC’s screen was simply empty.

My tablet gave me no comfort. Updates, feeds, posts, comments, tweets: they were at a trickle and that made horrible sense because our networks were now really peer-to-peer with no intermediary needed. Those who sent messages mostly replicated the mind-to-mind mashup: pleas for help, accusations, apologies, threats. But amid the mania I saw enough—

MoroccanMalia: Sisters all dead! Brother killed them 4
dishonr think. At my door now. Heard me 2.

GazaDove: War of all against all. PRAY
!

LondonResist: Social media’s been weaponised to suppress
.

Amy777: Montmartre on fire. Repent
.

DCDemocrat111: @NPR@NYT Gunfire at 1600 Penns Ave!

—to know that it was happening everywhere.

My timelines should’ve been filled with chatter and photos. Not one of my friends and acquaintances, near and far, real and never met, had posted anything—and many were people who usually didn’t draw breath without letting the world know.

But when I scanned minds I saw how many were trying to disappear into other digital distractions. They had Shades on, faces buried in phones and tablets, noses up against plasma screens, earbuds pushed in so far they hurt. The music and movies and games barely made a difference except now the panicked thoughts came augmented with deafening sounds and dazzling vision. Letting myself drift into those heads it was hard to know which gibberish was people going mad and which was echoed jingles, which carnage was real and which was beamed from minds immersed in 3-D first-person shooters.

I went back to the Captain’s Nest. Searching for hope in any direction. Everywhere black thoughts swirled so densely I was surprised they weren’t visible, like ever-shifting flocks of starlings staining what was left of the sky. The vigilantes who’d slashed Harry to ribbons now slaughtered each other for their sins on his front lawn. Streets all around were full of people scattering and cars burning rubber with stereos blaring. Up on apartment balconies loners hunched over handhelds and belted booze and snorted stuff. Along the waterfront people were literally spaced out as they kept their distance from each other and tried to lose themselves in their devices. Unfortunates who’d escaped without a phone or tablet or Shades clamped their hands over their ears and shut their eyes tight and shouted crazily against what they couldn’t help but hear and see. The sad, the mad, the bad: fragments of all their minds sprayed in all directions. I deflected them as best I could.

Amid the frenzy there were also terrifying stillnesses. So many people had crashed out. Just on the promontory there were a dozen who looked like their power cords had been pulled. Most were sitting or sprawled, but one woman stood on the breakwall with her arms out like she was expecting a hug. When I tried to find her mind she was as blank as the others. More and more went offline every moment. In the space of seconds a string of people screaming along a path dropped one after the other, as if they’d been roped together and pulled into the same psychic sinkhole.

The city had turned sepia. Like the start of
The Wizard of
Oz
. Brown funnels of smoke rose like tornadoes. Everywhere my mind flashed, more fires were starting: spreading from dropped cigarettes, abandoned frying pans, smashed cars with ruptured fuel tanks, toppled power poles whose cables snaked in showers of sparks. Firefighters were helpless. Even if they had the presence of mind to get to stations and vehicles, there were far too many blazes and too few open roads. Whole streets were burning. Some people ran for safety but many were too consumed by arguments or devices to flee the flames and fumes. A terrified group of refugees disappeared in the orange flash of an exploding petrol station, its
whump
reaching me across the river as fire showered down to consume an entire block. The city was becoming a crematorium.

I scanned Beautopia Point’s headspaces—amazed how quickly this new sense had become instinctive. My neighbours weren’t fighting fires yet. Only themselves and each other. Booze and drugs and screens provided some diversion. But those thin defences would disappear when bottles and baggies and batteries ran dry. Then there’d be nothing to distract anyone from everyone.

Evan and I couldn’t be here then. Or when fires broke out nearby. My mum’s place. It might be safe. Shadow Valley was one hundred kilometres west. Trying to get there seemed a suicide mission. Staying here was a definite death sentence.

We had to go.

The BMW and Mercedes were in the garage. But I didn’t know how to drive. Even if I managed to get us going it’d be a miracle if I could keep us on the road for long. Born-again Christians said the Rapture would create traffic hell when Jesus’s biggest fans were sucked from their cars into heaven. What was happening was worse than that. A few motorists had pulled over. Were going mad in relative safety. Most were shouting and honking and freaking out. Slamming brakes. Jamming accelerators. Grinding cars. A demolition derby: multiplying exponentially in every direction.

I radared from head to head around the hood, tried to find a way through. Beautopia Point’s streets were clear enough. But the avenues around our gated community were a maze of road rage. Bolder drivers made progress amid the chaos by mounting footpaths, mowing down fences, shunting aside other vehicles.

Escape was still possible. Just less likely with every second. Thousands of people were climbing into their cars. Some wanted to lock themselves in with a stereo. Or run the engine with the garage door down. Most were like me: ready to risk the only option that remained.

We had to hit the road.

But just as I resolved to drive out I heard someone else planning to break in.

EIGHT

Number-three-is-empty!

That’s what he thought as he ran towards our front yard.

Kieran, I remembered. He’d been the guy at The Grocery who
hadn’t
said his pregnant girlfriend, Patty, was going to get fat. Only now did I realise that her and me and the bus kids and Troy had all been glimpsing different tips of the same iceberg looming up ahead, the submerged juggernaut of each other. When she’d been given the full view of her boyfriend and everyone else, Patty had locked herself in the bathroom and turned the shower up to scalding. Kieran had fled their home to try to clear his head.

Distance didn’t help. He couldn’t avoid her doubts about the baby’s paternity any more than avoiding eye contact and maintaining personal space stopped other street-wandering minds from smashing into his. Kieran wished he’d escaped with his phone—something, anything—and he’d been about to wrestle a tablet from a catatonic when angry voices—
Looter!-
Thief!-It’s-mine!
—sent him running towards the waterfront.

Kieran needed to plug into something with a screen and a volume control. But when his mind searched the row of McMansions it was repulsed each time.

My-house!-Got-a-knife!-Doors-locked-Step-in-here-you’re-
dead!

Until our place. Kieran couldn’t sense my mind. Evan’s registered only as the faintest blip of robots and boogers.

Number-three-is-empty!- Get-in-there-now!