Watershed (2 page)

‘Oh yeah. You done real, real good,' he said, before shooting me a sly smile. ‘Not gunna stay and watch?'

But he knew the answer: I never stayed. Others might, but I didn't have the stomach for it. Killing was easier. And maybe that was my weakness. Slamming the door behind me, I hurried along the tunnel, not quite quick enough to miss the first of her screams as Garrick ripped into her.

Excerpt ~ Letter #8

 

There are so many stories, so many different versions of what happened, but I can tell you only what I know. Civilisation died by degrees. When the sea rose, it exceeded even the wildest predictions; what followed didn't. It was as simple as that.

Absurdly, it became known as the Year God Forgot to Cry. Absurd, thought Sarah, that with such an abundance of scientific evidence God had even warranted a mention, and inaccurate because he hadn't forgotten to cry at all. He was just doing it elsewhere. And he'd been doing it for much longer than a year.

Tears of joy or tears of sorrow, her mother had always said of the rain, but she'd only been half right. Because as one arid year stretched to two, then three, then ten; before Sarah met Daniel, before the cities drowned and the world began to wear its skin back to front; before Anna was raped and Jeremiah was born, and the armies of the righteous took up their unholy wars again, it had become clear, to Sarah at least, that God had only ever been about sorrow.

She could barely remember the Last Rains. She knew she should, she'd been fifteen at the time; the date was recorded, and clocks everywhere counted each waterless second.

Her father excused her. It hadn't been anything special, he said. Maybe if they'd known, they might all have paid a bit more attention.

Except they had known, hadn't they?

Will it rain here again? she asked him. Ever?

His face clouded. I don't know. I hope so.

They were walking along what was left of the beach, next to the breach wall; ever-widening gaps in the concrete were stuffed with sandbags. Since her mother's death, it was something they did of an evening, when it was a little cooler, when they could; when the water was lower and calmer and the washed strip of filthy
sand was wide enough. Their special time, though they weren't the only ones. The shallows were always filled with people, drawn down to the shore, an ebbing human tide. Some swam, the younger ones even laughed, but most just stood waist-deep, silent and staring out past the rows of towering turbines that no longer turned no matter how strong the wind, to the banks of clouds beyond. Watching the rain fall out at sea where it wasn't needed.

Do you believe what people are saying? she asked her father. That this is it, and the world is ending?

Stopping, he turned her slowly so they faced the ocean like the others and she could see the veil of water, backlit by lightning, flashing grey to white over a black sea. A few weeks ago they wouldn't have seen anything for the tsunami of dust, stirred by a burning wind, that had blanketed the city and turned seven days to seven nights. Before that another firestorm had choked the air with its ash and smoke. They took turns, these storms, but the rain stayed away.

She felt her father's arm at her back, his hand curled at her shoulder, squeezing gently. Honestly? he asked. Yes, she replied. His grip tightened, and she heard his long sigh, softer than the sea's. Then no, he told her. It's not the world that is ending. It's everything else.

Some years later, after she met Daniel at the call centre (he had two degrees, she had one, but the only jobs to be found were with Aquafied P/L, fielding angry complaints from furious customers) and decided that she liked his slow smile and his gentle voice and his quiet wit, enough that she wanted to feel his lips and his body pressed to hers, she asked him the same question and he answered the same way: Not the whole world, Sarah. Just us.

She'd never considered herself a survivalist. Not the sort her parents had told her about, the crazy ones who'd stored and hoarded and,
as things turned out, hadn't been so crazy after all. But staring into the cupboard filled with stacked towers of tins and dried goods and assorted containers of water they didn't dare use, Sarah realised that was exactly what she'd become.

She'd almost laughed when Daniel had suggested they start collecting whatever they could. That had been before the last container ship had docked at the sinking port; before the roads had fissured on their beds of shrinking earth and become impassable; before the first of the low-lying desalination plants had drowned beneath a rising tide; before the wash of refugees from the dying countryside, and other places, had flooded the ailing city; before all the lootings by desperate mobs had forced the military to establish the depots, which were armed and patrolled by bulky soldiers wearing headsets who clicked in the customers queuing with their vouchers:
click, click; click, click
. The food bouncers, Sarah had called them; Daniel had almost smiled at the description.

But she wasn't laughing now, was she? Now, as she faced a wall of cans and tried to decide whether they should eat tinned corn or tinned peas with their tinned meat, she felt only gratitude for his foresight. Shrugging, she grabbed one of each; she didn't care any more. Daniel could choose.

A high scream
– don't stop, Sarah! –
then another, and laughter, coarse and cruel. She slowed to risk a quick sideways glance into the dark wedge between two buildings –
don't look!
– and stopped. Behind her, the stream of pedestrians cursed and jostled and kept moving. She'd later wish she'd done the same.

A man – no, not a man, just a boy, thin and sallow, with a wisp of beard – sauntered out to lean against one of the walls; his ragged jeans were unzipped and rode low, and he was smoking something, some kind of black tube on which he sucked and blew. Through his brown fug, Sarah could see a woman struggling, fighting;
saw the gang pressing around her and into her, saw the knives and sticks and,
oh God, what were they –?
Another scream, strangled this time.

What the fuck're you lookin' at? the boy called to Sarah, before blowing another cloud. You wanna go next? Terrified, she backed away, into people who wouldn't stop and didn't care. She grabbed at one, then another:
Help! Please, someone help her!
But they shook her off and hurried on, while the boy watched, grinning and blowing his smoke. No one gives a shit, bitch; it's a whole different world now, see? he taunted, before falling back into darkness to rejoin the sport. Bending over, Sarah disgorged her fear and her shame.

That night she took Daniel inside her and held him there fiercely; afterwards, as they lay together and she listened to his breathing quieten, she didn't wonder why she hadn't mentioned what she'd seen, or what the boy had decreed. It was a whole different world now, see, and sometimes the truth didn't bear repeating.

Anna was born ahead of a rising sun.

Sarah woke to darkness, the heavy weight of Daniel's arm just under her breasts; he slept, snoring gently, and when she shifted to get more comfortable, she felt the wet beneath her, not cold but warm. The first spasm startled her, and she tapped Daniel's shoulder, prodding him when he didn't move. It's coming, she told him. The baby.

She wasn't afraid. They'd prepared for months, Daniel stealing out into the night, bartering back-door trades: food vouchers for antiseptic, cloths, a few old packets of nappies, bottles and teats. The hospitals had long been sealed off and quarantined, resources consumed by contagion, but she and Daniel knew what to do. It was instinctive, wasn't it, she thought, this birthing and rearing of young? They'd hoarded boiled water, shredded old curtains and washed the strips, rolling them up, ready; they'd read what they
could find, procedures and complications, thinking only of the best outcome, steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the worst.

The only working bulb was in the kitchen. One light and one power point; that was all they had now. All they could afford. But a dirty kitchen was no place to give birth. When Daniel went to light the candle on the bedside table, Sarah told him not to waste it. She trusted him, she said. Even in the dark.

He propped a cheap battery lantern by her feet; she knocked it over a dozen times. The heat was oppressive, stifling, and he insisted on wasting water to bathe and cool her body. She was grateful and told him so, between contractions. But the labour proved mercifully quick, and when she strained and gave that final push and her daughter slid into the world, the room brightened suddenly, magic ally, the first long fingers of sunlight reaching through dusty glass to stroke the small glistening body, painting it red. It was a good sign, she thought, watching Daniel through half-closed eyes as he severed the last link. Everything would be just fine now.

Daniel took photos on his phone, and on hers – mother and baby, timeless. Three months later, the power sputtered and sparked and cut out for good, and the pictures were lost.

They dined on tinned anything, no longer choosy, sharing a single can each morning and another at night, Daniel always ensuring Sarah ate the biggest portion. For your milk, he insisted; later, it was to share with Anna. But one tin between three wasn't enough.

The work at Aquafied had dried up along with the water and they were made to rely on whatever their vouchers might buy; when provisions ran low Daniel would go looking for more, contravening the curfew, a thief in the night. But he wasn't the only one, and while he was gone Sarah would clutch Anna and wait anxiously for his return. More and more often he'd bring something else: rats, lizards and, once, a cat. But she drew the line
when he came back with a half-starved, mangy dog, and he let it loose for others to find and feast upon. He smashed the locked meter from the pipe to let the water flow – just a trickle, brown and brackish, and they boiled every drop. They pulled palings off the fence, hacked at the two dead trees in the yard, broke up the furniture – used whatever they could to fuel a fire; the air inside the house became as hot and as smoky as the air outside. But the shelves of books they left untouched.