The Last Girl Read online

  I stopped on a corner where a large lady in a polka-dot dress sat serenely in front of an unplugged vintage television. ‘Big Crash?’

  ‘About six o’clock yesterday morning?’

  That dream of the world screaming. ‘It woke me up.’

  ‘You slept through that?’ Nathan smiled—and then shivered. ‘Everyone pulling each other into nothingness. The only thing worse than the noise they made was the silence they left behind.’

  ‘Christ.’ I had no idea it’d happened all at once. Just like I didn’t yet know who Nathan really was or the extent of the horrors he’d been through. ‘It sounds awful.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘But my point is that these people all seem okay. If they’re in some sort of hibernation mode, they might last a lot longer than we’d ordinarily expect. We might be able to help hundreds, thousands if the Lorazepam works.’

  Saving the multitude was secondary for me when my mum might be on that same clock. But this wasn’t the time to bring up my selfish aims. Instead I nodded and pointed.

  ‘How about her?’

  The girl had wanted to stand out from the crowd. Now it might save her life. Pink hair flaring against the granite facade of an insurance building. Brightly inked arms folded defiantly. Fishnet-stockinged legs and purple boots thrust out from a lime-coloured tutu.

  We crouched either side of her. Nathan set his nail gun on the ground and listened to her heart and breathing, checked her pupils, temperature and blood pressure.

  ‘Yeah, she’s good,’ he said. ‘Sit by her.’

  I felt ghoulish, a disaster tourist posing for a photo, as he stepped back to check us out side by side.

  ‘You’re the same size,’ he said, adding a smile. ‘You girls could share a wardrobe.’

  Nathan shrugged off his backpack. He took out the Tupperware container he’d filled with loaded syringes back at Starboard. In the kitchen, he had popped two five-milligram Lorazepam tablets from their blister pack into a soup ladle and then carefully measured fifty millilitres of bottled water into the stainless-steel container. He used a candle to bring it to the boil, stirring until the pills dissolved. He then dropped a ball of cotton wool into the mixture and spread the solution evenly over ten syringes. Nathan carefully talked me through the ratios several times. I understood first time around but I humoured him. His nervous patter about the process was as much for his own benefit as for mine. Talking about it clinically made it sound closer to medical science than junkie quackery.

  I guessed we’d find out which it was now. Nathan removed a syringe’s orange safety cap, flicked air bubbles upwards.

  ‘Swab a spot on her upper arm,’ he said.

  I tore open the little packet and dabbed the girl’s bicep with the sterile wipe.

  ‘Okay, one milligram of Lorazepam in a five-millilitre solution,’ he said, as though someone somewhere was taking notes.

  Nathan slid the needle into the girl’s flesh.

  I expected her to flinch. She didn’t.

  ‘Time,’ he said.

  I pressed ‘start’ on my phone’s countdown timer. ‘Go.’

  He dropped the plunger in a fluid movement and the drug disappeared into the girl.

  Watching the digits drop from 10.00 gave me time to tell Nathan about the compromise I’d come up with that served my needs and the greater good.

  ‘If this works,’ I said, ‘I want to wake Evan up and get going to my mum’s place as soon as I can.’

  Nathan looked at me dejectedly. ‘I was hoping you’d help me to—’

  I nodded. ‘I think we might be able to save tens or even hundreds of thousands of people.’

  There was a touch of condescension in his weary smile. ‘Danby, even working around the clock we—’

  ‘You had your maths moment back there,’ I said with a smile. ‘Now it’s my turn. Pop quiz hotshot: what’s ten to the power of five?’

  Nathan blinked, surprised, calculated. ‘One hundred thousand.’

  ‘So what if every person we woke could wake other people up?’ I said. ‘We start here and head west to my mum’s, setting off a chain reaction as we go.’

  Nathan’s eyes shone with the possibilities. ‘There are hundreds of pharmacies that’ll have Lorazepam! If every person we wake up wakes up just one person. And each of those people wakes up just one person and it keeps on like that, it’ll equal—’

  ‘A lot,’ I said.

  He hugged me. I put my arms around him for a moment and then pushed free. I was all for human comfort but I hardly knew this guy.

  Nathan smiled, a little sheepish. ‘Seriously, Danby, that’s a great idea.’

  I was glad he liked my theory.

  Except that nothing was happening. My cunning plan all hinged on our punk princess. But she slumbered on, immune to Prince Pharma’s kiss.

  Nathan listened to her heart and nodded.

  I swabbed her other arm and he delivered the second dose.

  We sat and waited, listening to the wind whistle through the streets, gazing at the endless smoke clouds tumbling over the tall buildings. The phone display went to 07.00 and then 04.00.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ Nathan said.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘We don’t have to talk about this,’ he said. ‘But do you know if your mum’s okay?’

  I stared at a few seconds tick by. Enough to make sure I wouldn’t cry. Then I told him what I knew.

  ‘So I don’t know,’ I concluded with a sigh, ‘if she’s up and about because Shadow Valley’s maybe protected because it’s more remote. Or if she’s, y’know, like everyone else.’

  Nathan gave me an encouraging smile. ‘Either way it sounds like she’s safe.’

  I nodded. ‘What about your mum and dad?’

  ‘They’re a bit farther away,’ he said. ‘Sri Lanka. I’m hoping for the best. Not much I can do about it.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Do you have anyone here?’

  Nathan smiled grimly. ‘I was renting in this horrible place. Wow, “share house” takes on a whole new meaning now.’

  I laughed. ‘Well, you’re welcome to stay with us.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Your mum won’t mind?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Talking like this—like Mum would be fine, like I was casually offering him a crash pad—made me feel better.

  My phone’s alert sounded. The countdown was all zeroes.

  Two doses, twenty minutes and not so much as a twitch— let alone a thought behind the test girl’s mascara-smudged eyes.

  Nathan saw how edgy I was getting.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, sounding worried himself. ‘It’ll work.’

  I swabbed, he dosed. We both eyed the phone.

  It wasn’t even at 08.00 when he reached for the Tupperware container.

  ‘I’m giving her another shot,’ he said sharply. ‘We’re being too cautious.’

  ‘Hang on!’ I grabbed his arm. ‘Wait.’

  I wondered if he knew what he was doing. Maybe he’d misremembered not the dosage but the name of the drug. Maybe he’d killed her. I leaned in to satisfy myself the girl was breathing.

  ‘Aaaaarrrrrrgh!’

  She made a sucking noise, gasping for air.

  Terrified, I jumped back as her eyes popped open, pupils shrinking in the light.

  Her throat and tongue were so dry she couldn’t speak.

  Escaped!-Got-out!-Where-was-I?-Nowhere-Empty-Gone!- Alive!-I’m-soaked-So-thirsty!

  She didn’t see me in front of her until I pressed a bottle of electrolytes to her cracked lips.

  Where’d-she-come-from?

  ‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ I said, trying for my most soothing voice, looking deep into her frightened eyes. ‘My name’s Danby. I’m here for you. You’re not alone. What’s your name?’

  Cassie.

  In that moment Cassie’s mind went from fuzzy to focused— and I realised how unlucky we were to choose her.

 
; When the Snap happened, she had been on her way to her friend James’s house for Orphan’s Christmas. Her head went haywire and she thought it was an acid flashback. But then the bus rolled across the bridge. People sitting at the front died, and she was inside their minds as they did, but she climbed out the rear emergency exit without a scratch. Physically, she was in one piece. Mentally, she was coming apart. There was too much—everything happening everywhere and everyone overlapping. Getting to James’s place and smoking, snorting, slamming, shooting—that was the only way to calm this shit down. Cassie stumbled through shouting streets until she couldn’t go on. She thought she’d sit awhile but when she slid down the building’s facade it was like the footpath opened and she kept going to the centre of the earth.

  Cassie’s mind reeled as Nathan materialised over my shoulder.

  Should-never-have-done-ouija-I’m-dead-This-is-hell-He’s-the-devil.

  ‘You’re not, it’s not, I’m not,’ he said. ‘My name’s Nathan.’

  Cassie looked past us and recognised the sliver of city. I saw what she saw: stalled cars, shut-down people, smoke draped over rooftops.

  End-of-the-world-has-to-be-a-dream.

  ‘Cassie,’ Nathan said, ‘this isn’t a dream.’

  How-do-you-know-my-name?-Stupid-black-bastard.

  We flinched as her mind thrashed.

  Why-can’t-I-read-their-minds?

  ‘We don’t know,’ I said angrily. ‘Our minds only go one way—’

  Me answering her unspoken question spiked her panic.

  Get-out-of-my-head!

  ‘You get away from me!’ she shrieked. ‘Leave me alone!’

  Cassie wanted to bolt to James’s place and blot out this bullshit. But first she wanted us out of her head.

  ‘Calm down!’ Nathan shouted.

  His outburst didn’t send Cassie’s mind into shocked silence. But the .45 she saw tucked in my waistband did. Either way, she shut up long enough for Nathan to explain that everyone else was catatonic and Lorazepam might bring some or even most of them around.

  Cassie’s eyes narrowed. ‘How long’s it been—’

  Nathan gripped my arm to make sure I let her finish.

  ‘—since it all happened?’

  ‘Two days,’ he said.

  I dreaded her vocalising the next question.

  ‘How many other people have you woken up?’

  ‘You’re the first,’ he said.

  Always-the-guinea-pig. But Cassie thought it without anger. Her friends often got her to taste drugs from new sources. She didn’t mind at all.

  Container-full-of-syringes-Must-be-the-stuff.

  ‘You gonna give me more of those?’

  Nathan looked at me. I shook my head. We both knew why.

  Cassie’s first stop on her way to James’s place was going to be a pharmacy. I could hear her running through her shopping list.

  Ritalin-Oxycontin-Adderall-Morphine-Pethidine.

  ‘Lorazepam,’ I said. ‘About one milligram per twenty kilograms of body weight. You can get it when you get your other party supplies.’

  ‘You greedy bitch,’ Cassie sneered. Should-I?-She-won’t-do-nothing. The ugly impulse hit me an instant before her spit spattered my cheek. She grinned at me triumphantly. She-won’t-shoot-me. ‘Suck on that.’

  I turned to Nathan in shock—and was more shocked that he winked at me.

  ‘She won’t shoot you,’ he roared. ‘But I will.’

  Cassie’s face blanched when Nathan reached for the nail gun.

  ‘Nathan,’ I pleaded, playing along. ‘Please—you promised no more blood.’

  Please-don’t-kill-me-I’m-sorry-please.

  Nathan let the moment stretch before he lowered the nail gun.

  ‘If I see you again, you’re dead,’ he said, gathering up the syringe box and his backpack. ‘Danby, let’s go.’

  We got away from Cassie as fast as we could. I was thrilled the Lorazepam had worked but shocked by the mind we’d just encountered.

  ‘Wow, we hit the jackpot with her,’ I said.

  ‘You sure can pick ’em,’ Nathan replied with a laugh.

  ‘“She won’t shoot you—but I will.” ’ I mimicked in a Schwarzeneggerian growl. ‘What the hell was that about?’

  ‘You think I’d let her get away with calling me a “black bastard”?’ I reached out and touched his arm. Nathan grinned. ‘And I wanted to put the fear of God into her. It worked, didn’t it? She’s not following us.’

  We didn’t have to look back to know she hadn’t come after us. Cassie had seethed at us until we disappeared among cars. Then she set about resuming her original mission. She was stalking off in the opposite direction to find drugs and find her friends. Once she woke them up, it’d be chemical ecstasy from here to eternity. She vowed to get herself a gun—and if she saw us again we’d wish we hadn’t revived her.

  Evan was where we left him in Starboard. So was the Plasma Guy.

  ‘Let’s do this outside,’ Nathan said.

  We carried Evan out of the cafe and gently lay him on the grass verge above the ferry wharf. While Nathan checked his vitals, I swabbed his shoulder.

  Nathan held up a syringe. ‘This should be enough.’

  I nodded. He injected Evan’s arm. I started the phone countdown.

  We were trusting in science, but sitting there holding Evan’s and each other’s hands, I reckoned we probably looked like spiritualists.

  ‘What’s it like?’ Nathan asked. ‘Your mum’s place?’

  I appreciated him trying to take my mind off the terrible wait.

  I told him how much fun it was going through Mum’s crazy clutter of stuff, how good an omelette tasted when made from her chickens’ eggs and fresh vegetables from her garden, how beautiful it was sitting on the verandah and counting shooting stars on a clear night, how funny it was when the wind carried her neighbour’s cockatoo screech of ‘Hi-Ho!’ across the paddocks.

  ‘Sounds awesome,’ Nathan said.

  I smiled. ‘You’ll love it.’

  My phone alert went off. Evan remained inert on his bed of grass. I blew an ant off his chest. We watched him in silence for what seemed like an hour.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I said when I couldn’t take it anymore. It was a stupid question.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nathan said. ‘Give it a bit more time.’

  ‘Shouldn’t it be working by now?’

  It was another stupid question. Then I realised there was a stupidly obvious question that I hadn’t asked. How might Evan’s condition affect the working of the drug?

  ‘Okay, I’m going to try another milligram,’ Nathan said.

  ‘Wait!’

  I told him about Evan, rushing through his symptoms and the various vague diagnoses doctors had come up with. Nathan listened quietly and calmly.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, ‘I can’t believe I didn’t mention it. I guess I just think of him as normal.’

  But I wondered if I’d subconsciously kept it secret because I thought Nathan might not want to help Evan if he knew.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Nathan said. ‘His condition shouldn’t make a difference.’

  I knew he didn’t know that but I appreciated him trying to make me feel better.

  Nathan listened to Evan with the stethoscope.

  ‘He’s fine,’ he said, holding up a second syringe. ‘Shall I try with half of this?’

  I nodded. He squirted the excess medication into the grass and administered the shot. We held hands again and took up a silent vigil.

  Evan didn’t wake up.

  SIXTEEN

  Law Of Small Numbers was above an electronics outlet on Parramatta’s shopping strip a block from where Nathan had saved me from the Party Duder. We left the glass door street level entrance intact and ventured down a side alley and lugged Evan up the fire-escape stairs. Nathan grinned at me as he smashed a window and reached in to unlock the back door.

  We set Evan and the b
ackpacks down on a brown couch in the office’s reception area and scoped out the rest of the small suite. It took all of sixty seconds.

  ‘See what I mean?’ Nathan asked.

  I did. Nathan had done his tax here with Kee Law, Certified Practising Accountant, and he’d told me it was the dullest place on earth. There was a kitchen, a bathroom, the waiting area and the number cruncher’s office with adjoining balcony. Filing cabinets and framed certificates, franchise furniture and potted palms: this was the last place anyone wanted to be at the best of times, let alone the end times. Up here we could stay hidden but command a view of the main street along which survivors might travel. We’d get to choose whether we revealed ourselves to them.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ I said.

  ‘You should try to learn this,’ Nathan said as he got the essentials for an IV from his backpack.

  I stroked Evan’s forehead. He was still wrapped in a towel. We hadn’t passed a kids’ clothing store on our way from Starboard.

  Nathan removed a framed diploma from the wall above the couch and hung a fat bag of saline from the picture hook. Next, he tied a tourniquet around Evan’s upper arm and rubbed a finger on the small blue vein that rose on the back of his hand. He swabbed the area, inserted a catheter and taped it in place. He connected the catheter to the saline bag’s tube and turned the little tap to start the drip.

  ‘Not much to it,’ Nathan said. ‘Evan’s being hydrated. It’ll feed half a litre of fluid and salts over the next hour. He can go like this for as long as it takes us to figure out how to wake him up.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘For everything.’

  Nathan smiled. ‘All part of the service.’

  In the bathroom I pulled on new jeans and a shirt that I’d liberated from the smashed clothing boutique across the road. When I emerged Nathan had laid out plastic plates of crackers and cheese and anchovies and olives and pickles beside bottles of mineral water on the reception area’s coffee table.

  ‘Awesome,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  We crunched and sipped for a while.

  ‘So,’ he said around a mouthful, ‘what’s your plan for getting to your mum’s?’

  I’d been thinking about it. Trail bikes could get us through most traffic and terrain. But I couldn’t ride one any more than I could drive a car.