The Last Girl Read online

  A labrador sat by a blind man like a miserable wet sphinx. For a second, I thought she had crashed with her owner. Then she looked my way.

  ‘Hey!’ I said, pulling my bandana down and sticking my hand out. ‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’

  She let me ruffle her big golden head. I choked up at the comfort it gave me.

  ‘Good girl,’ I said. ‘What a good girl.’

  I stood up, stepped back, patted the front of my thighs. ‘Come on. You come with me now.’

  The dog watched me with big mournful eyes.

  I tried for a while longer but she wouldn’t leave her master’s side. I poured some of my water into a takeaway container and set it down for her. I’d bring her some food when I’d taken care of everything else.

  Bandana back on and head down against the horror, the path under my feet became a mosaic of murals and plaques about the Burramattagal clan who’d been the original custodians of this place. Archaeologists had uncovered stone axes and shark-tooth pendants here twice as old as the pyramids. The sun had risen and set over their river millions of times and then one day everything changed with the arrival of visitors from another world. The spectral figures wore strange fabrics, spoke a foreign tongue, piloted huge ships and wielded weapons of lethal magic in the name of unknowable gods. But the Burramattagal people’s deadliest enemy was even stranger. Smallpox—invisible, unimaginable—killed two thirds of them within a few years of European settlement. Their dead had been too numerous to bury.

  I wondered if we’d been struck down by something like that, the ultimate case of never kowing what hit us. I glanced at the river, with its mucky coating of plastic rubbish, at the parklands, covered with Goners and corpses, and at the Parramatta skyline, all glass and steel, and wondered how much of our world would remain to tell our story in one hundred centuries from now.

  Sandstone stairs took me up to the Lennox Bridge on Church Street. The road was blocked where a bus had crashed and rolled. The front end rested on a crumbling balustrade. I prayed it’d hold as I ducked and crawled under the bus. Halfway across I glanced up, saw I was inches from bloated faces pressed against splintered windows, oozing bloody gunk through cracked glass.

  Scrabbling out the other side, I tore off my bandana, used it to wipe slime from my cheeks and hair before dropping it to the road. I staggered to the footpath, spat out my gum and retched. When I straightened up, calmer, I saw Church Street was bumper-to-bumper traffic.

  It was easy to see whether there was anyone in cars with smashed windshields and wide-open doors. Mostly, they were empty, though a few contained corpses and Goners. But the majority of vehicles were locked up tight and their windows were fogged with condensation. I was glad for two reasons: the people inside were still breathing and I didn’t have to look at them.

  The footpath was another story. I had to hop over a muscle-bound guy wearing only a red singlet. A few metres later I took a big stride to clear an Indian man whose white kurta was streaked with soot. Then I was stepping over a goth girl face down with a phone clutched in each pale hand.

  I wanted to run. To get away from these people as quickly as possible. But wherever I went there’d be more of them. What I needed to change wasn’t my location but my perspective. I had to banish all the zombie movie clichés I’d absorbed. These people didn’t want to eat me and they didn’t need to be shot in the head. They weren’t just harmless. They were helpless. If anything I should be thinking of some way to save them. Even Mr Muscle back there.

  Off the bridge I came to a smorgasbord of Thai, Indian, Lebanese, Malaysian and Italian restaurants. Being closed on Christmas morning hadn’t spared these places the chaos of panicking drivers making rubble of outdoor terraces and dining rooms. But a cafe called Noosphere clearly had been open and it was a mess of overturned tables and chairs, sprayed food and smashed cutlery. A guy in kitchen whites slouched in a booth. Another man was spread out on the counter.

  I stepped through the shattered doorway, fascinated not by the destruction but by the fact that this place’s decorative focus actually had been death and disaster. Noosphere’s back wall was a gallery of oversized reproductions of famous front pages. My eyes went from WWI’s horrors at places called Somme and Paschendale to its sequel’s opening salvos in Poland and Pearl Harbor; from the various collapses of Wall Street to the actual collapse of the World Trade Center; from the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK to the untimely deaths of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson; from the Tet Offensive and Watergate to the exploding Hindenberg and the disintegrating Space Shuttle. But the centrepiece was The New York Times dated April 15, 1912: ‘Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg; 866 Rescued By Carpathia, Probably 1250 Perish; Ismay Safe, Mrs Astor Maybe, Noted Names Missing’. I imagined my headline. ‘Civilisation Sunk By Telepathic Plague; Eight Billion Perish, Including Hellbanga And B-Lo. One Known Survivor A Nobody, 16’.

  There would be no headlines and no stories. No one was left to report the Snap and no one was left to read about it. But staring at that big wall did give me an idea about what had happened to us. Not the stories themselves. Rather the frequency of ‘good’ to ‘bad’ news. Only three ‘positive’ events had made the cut: the conquest of Everest; man walking on the moon; the fall of the Berlin Wall. Our media teacher Miss Doran had said old news editors lived by the motto ‘If it bleeds, it leads’ and she’d said our tendency to post many more negative than positive comments on blogs was a modern equivalent. What I thought was that maybe we’d internalised that outlook for so long that when everyone became broadcasters and receivers what was bad about us was just that much louder than all that was good.

  I picked my way along Church Street, jumping over bodies and clambering over cars. When I reached an intersection, I climbed onto the roof of a mini-van. Every corner told its own horror story. In TribalZoo, set up like an old-school barber’s shop, a ripped dude still cradled the tattoo gun he’d used to turn his face and chest into a scrawl of blood and ink. Across the road, Hiphop Asylum had been looted. A body lay collapsed in the doorway in a pile of parkas and hoodies. Opposite, no one had touched the Commonwealth Bank, or the homeless guy who sat outside it, surrounded by shopping bags, cracked caveman feet stuck out in front of him. I watched him a while, thinking that because he probably battled disembodied voices daily he might’ve had some resistance. But he didn’t stir under his dreadlocks. Neither did anyone at the Liquor Barn on the final corner. The place reeked of booze and vomit and blood and looked like a departure lounge for an eternally delayed flight to hell. People had hunkered in the aisles, flopped in its doorway, roosted in its windows and spilled onto the footpath as they tried to escape by drinking themselves to death. Some had made it. Those who hadn’t didn’t know any different and looked like they might be sleeping this one off forever anyway.

  It’d been well over a day since I’d seen another conscious person. Just in the few blocks around me there were hundreds of Goners and I had no doubt there were thousands more in the surrounding city grid. I feared that zooming out from this intersection would simply add more zeroes: tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands and then into the millions.

  I stepped from the mini-van’s roof onto an adjacent car bonnet and then onto the road. I sank to my knees. The Snap had sent me running from the madding crowd. Now I’d give anything not to be utterly alone.

  Be careful what you wish for. That hadn’t been written on Starboard’s ceiling. Maybe it should’ve been.

  THIRTEEN

  Dance music blasted from a few blocks east. I recognised the tune immediately. You hadn’t been able to go anywhere a few years back without the song oozing from earbuds, cafes, clothing stores. Even Evan, then three, could sing all the words and do the official dance, which had created another flurry of false hope for Stephanie.

  It got me to my feet and I shuffled through the clutter of cars towards the sound. My fear of finding a random car stereo triggered by some electrical spasm evap
orated when a hoarse male voice belted out, ‘Party Dude!’

  Just by itself that moronic two-word chorus would’ve been the sweetest sound I’d ever heard because it meant I wasn’t alone. What made my heart really skip a beat was that I couldn’t hear the mind of the singer. He was like me—and if there were two of us there had to be others.

  I’d hated the song. I loved it now.

  His head bobbed above car roofs, half a block away, and I went up on a Mercedes, about to start shouting and waving. Then I dropped to the bitumen, crouched behind the car, trying to process what I’d seen.

  The Party Duder was enormous. Big square head, close-cropped hair, tattooed body rippling out from under a sprayed-on T-shirt. He was taking belts from a bottle of tequila and thrusting in time to his boombox.

  Anger boiled in me. The catatonic woman bent over the car bonnet was defenceless. I had to stop him. Attacking wasn’t an option. He was twice my size. Angry abuse wouldn’t work. Not without other people to shame him. My eyes fell on a full bottle of beer amid the debris on the street. Back in year seven I’d been the best pitcher in my softball team. I picked up the missile and ducked from Merc to Daihatsu to Honda to Saab until I was in range. I eased up slowly, wound up, ready to knock his block off. Then my mind got in the way: if I missed, this bastard might get me—and then Evan would die.

  As I hesitated, the Party Duder finished in time with the end of the song.

  ‘Awesome!’ he yelled in the silence.

  ‘Hey girl.’ He laughed. ‘If you liked that, you’re going to love this!’

  All at once I saw the gun and the puff of smoke and a spray of dark blood in her blonde hair. The gunshot was so loud and sharp in the empty city that I startled and let the bottle drop. It smashed with a distinct pop in the gunshot’s echo.

  I ducked, kept low, ran.

  ‘Hey! Who’s there?’

  For a second the Party Duder sounded busted and embarrassed.

  ‘Don’t go! I was just mucking around!’

  My only response was the slap-slap of my boots on the wet bitumen as I scurried back to the intersection. Then I heard the crunch of metal as he came up and over cars and after me.

  ‘Run!’ he yelled, laughing. ‘Run, little rabbit!’

  I rounded the corner into Church Street. I couldn’t outpace him. He was bigger and faster. Besides, there was no way I could get any speed up with all the people and vehicles in the way. My best chance wasn’t to run but to hide. But getting into a car or a store would make too much noise. I knew he hadn’t seen me so I dropped to the footpath and arranged myself face down among the Goners.

  From the corner of a squinted eye, I saw the Party Duder storm up onto the mini-van’s roof. His chest was heaving and he was waving his gun.

  I imagined his view from up there. A choked street. Hundreds of people. If I could keep my nerve, he wouldn’t find me.

  ‘Come out, come out wherever you are!’

  The Party Duder dropped onto the road, peered through windshields, checked under chassis.

  I closed my eyes, tried not to breathe, prayed he wouldn’t hear my heart thumping.

  ‘Are you . . . under the Toyota? Naaaa. How about . . . in the taxi? Hmmm.’

  His voice got louder, the slamming doors and crunching glass closer.

  The Party Duder stopped somewhere near me. A lighter flicked. I smelled cigarette smoke. Heard a satisfied exhalation.

  ‘Nice try,’ he said. ‘Hiding in plain sight.’

  I wondered whether by playing dead I’d killed myself—or whether he was bluffing and trying to flush me out.

  I didn’t move.

  ‘But bitch, you’re not smarter than me,’ he said. ‘If you’d been out here all night, like the rest of these zombies, you’d be soaked through. But you’re dry, aren’t ya?’

  I pushed my cheek harder into the gravel as if I might pass through the road.

  ‘I’m talking to you, girl,’ he said. ‘Brown jumper, dirty jeans, boots. Roll over, gimme look atcha.’

  I didn’t move.

  ‘How about this? I give you to the count of three and then pow. You get what she got anyway—just the other way around.’

  Before I rolled over, I made myself three promises.

  ‘One,’ he barked.

  I wasn’t going to say a word.

  ‘Two.’

  I wasn’t going to look away.

  ‘Three.’

  I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  I turned over, sat up and stared up at him.

  ‘Jeez, you’re a kid,’ he said, leering. ‘What’s your name, baby?’

  Party Duder’s words were crammed together, thick with booze and whatever else. His eyes were rusty but shiny, like old ball bearings. He was being all gangsta, holding the gun sideways, but his hand shook so much he might miss me.

  ‘Whatcha name? Huh?’

  Sweat rolled off his spray-tanned slab of face and his stubbled jaw flexed.

  ‘Oh, baby, we’re gonna party. Party Dude!’

  His nostrils flared and veins pulsed in his temples. He blinked rapidly, like he was trying to focus. This man was coming apart. His contents were under too much pressure. Maybe he’d simply explode. Drop dead of a brain haemorrhage. I wouldn’t be that lucky.

  When his party ended, I’d be dead—and he’d kill Evan without even knowing it. Another reason to claw this shithead’s eyes out before I died.

  ‘Tell me your name, bitch.’

  I stared. Said nothing. Tensed to launch myself at him.

  Party Duder flicked his cigarette away, stepped closer and steadied the .45 at me. Even tweaking this hard he wouldn’t miss now.

  ‘You better tell me before I—’

  Thunk.

  I registered the noise. Party Duder’s puzzled look. The flash of a silver stud just above his top lip. I hadn’t noticed his facial jewellery before. The piercing must’ve been pretty fresh. Blood was welling from it.

  The nasty glint in the Party Duder’s eyes dulled and his granite physique crumbled. His arm dropped, the gun slipped from his fingers and he crumpled face first onto the road.

  In his place stood a dark-skinned guy. He was lean, a few years older than me, dressed in jeans, sweatshirt and a red baseball cap. I had no idea what was in his head but his hand held a cordless nail gun. My eyes slid to the Party Duder’s .45 now within arm’s reach on the bitumen.

  ‘Don’t!’ the guy said. ‘You don’t have to do that!’

  I stared back at him in shock. Wondered how accurate his power tool could be. I guess the answer to that lay bleeding with a shattered skull just a few feet away.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said. ‘Look.’

  The guy lowered the nail gun to the street and brought his hands up empty. ‘Are you okay?’

  His voice was shaky and his hands trembled.

  Scrambling for the .45 seemed rude after his show of good faith. Not to mention the whole saving my life thing. I heard myself answer as if from far away: ‘I think so.’

  The guy broke eye contact and I followed his gaze to the body beside me. Blood pooled around the Party Duder’s punctured head.

  ‘Oh my God, is he—he—’ the guy said.

  ‘Dead.’ It was still dawning on me that I wasn’t. I climbed to my feet. ‘You killed him.’

  The guy’s eyes glistened. He took off his cap and ran his fingers through his black hair. ‘Oh, shit, I didn’t mean— I mean—it looked like—I thought he was going to—’

  ‘Hurt me?’ I didn’t think this guy was a threat. He seemed on the verge of a panic attack. Not that I blamed him. ‘He was going to kill me.’

  The guy wiped tears from his cheeks. ‘I should’ve given him a warning.’

  I shook my head. ‘You’d be dead. Me too. You did the right thing. Thank you.’

  We gazed at each other as our shock lifted. Sizing each other up. Making sure we weren’t mistaken. We didn’t need telepathy to know we were both wonde
ring whether we could see further than each other’s eyes.

  ‘I can’t hear you or whatever,’ he said, finally.

  He broke into a big grin. I beamed right back.

  ‘Me either.’

  ‘I’m Nathan.’ He stuck his hand out. ‘Nathan Kapur.’

  I grabbed it and we shook.

  ‘Danby, Danby Armstrong,’ I told him. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  We burst out laughing at the formality but the sound echoing around the street soon sobered us. Guffawing in a dying city was wrong. A maniac lay dead at our feet. Any noise we made might bring more.

  ‘When I heard the music,’ Nathan said quietly, ‘it was like, great, I’m not the only one. But then you were running and he was chasing and I just followed.’

  ‘You always carry a nail gun?’

  ‘I found it yesterday on the street,’ he said, not getting that I was joking. ‘Having it made me feel safer.’

  Nathan chewed a fingernail as he looked back at the Party Duder.

  ‘I really didn’t mean to—’ he said.

  ‘Kill him?’ A red mist rose in me. ‘Screw him!’

  Nathan’s eyes went wide.

  ‘Screw you!’ I screamed at the Party Duder. It wasn’t enough. I kicked his body hard and ribs cracked. ‘Screw you, you evil piece of shit motherf—’

  Nathan came closer. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Hey.’

  Simple human need closed the gap between us. We hugged. He told me it was all right as I shuddered with angry sobs. Then he was sniffling into my shoulder and it was my turn to say he’d had no choice. Gradually, we calmed and I pulled free.

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Can I come?’ Nathan looked stricken. ‘I mean, can’t we stick together?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I was sorry to spook him. The thought of being alone again horrified me too. ‘What I meant is I have to help my little brother.’

  Nathan listened as I rushed through my plan to stabilise Evan and then somehow get back on my way to Mum’s place in Shadow Valley. When I finished, he grinned.