Extracts

Extract from The Last to Go

Rus II (2 ½ years ago)

They arrived early at the hospital in Cairns to bring Charlie’s mother home. The virus had left her system, but complications continued, and her body was shutting down, little by little, for reasons that no one could explain. Soon she would be gone. 

“Thank you,” she said to Rus, who steered her wheelchair out to the waiting car. “I know this can’t be easy for you.”

“Please don’t thank me, Mary, it’s my pleasure. I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

Mary Baxter nodded, her skin yellow, her face sunken, but her voice held strength yet. “I know you will, and for my son – we are both grateful.”

Charlie was determined to drive, it made him feel useful, it offered a distraction of sorts, and it was practical. The two lifted the slight woman carefully into the car, strapped her seatbelt on and folded the wheelchair into the boot.

Charlie spoke to his mother about the farm, about normal things. She nodded but said little, mostly peering out at the landscape they moved through. The last time she’ll take this drive, Rus thought, and looked at the ocean, the winding road, the canopy of trees, the beaches, trying to see it all the way Mary might. Charlie chattered, almost nonstop. Rus wanted Charlie to be quiet and let his mother say goodbye to the beauty. He knew that he could never do that, this was their journey, in every way, he was a traveller with them, brought in at the last moment and forever playing catch up. But Rus could sense Mary farewelling the place, could read her wistful expressions, her distractedness, felt wretched that she was leaving, and the experience was oddly profound.

 They set Mary up in her bedroom. The care they would provide was hospice, not palliative, and the distinction was important to Mary. Like her son she was pragmatic above all things, other than perhaps the shoes she liked to wear, they always made her look elegant and did not always belong in the fields. They unpacked the hospice kit – atropine, lorazepam, morphine and more. 

Mary wanted to sit out on the veranda in the late afternoon. They made her as comfortable as possible. She seemed peaceful, happy even. She sat in a bed of cushions with a light sheet covering her legs. Mary had put on some red lipstick, and with her grey hair pulled back, Rus told her she looked like a movie star.

Charlie brought her a cup of tea, but she sipped at it and said she’d had enough. “Just sit with me for a while,” she asked him. “And you too, Rus.”

“I’m glad your father went before me, he would not have coped being alone.”

“You’re right, Mum. I’m actually glad of that myself.”

“He really loved this place. I did too, I still do.”

“Me too.” Charlie glanced at Rus awkwardly, but it was an admission that came without any surprises for Rus.

“But you need to sell when I go. Promise me you will, Charlie.”

“We’ll deal with that when it’s time.”

“Deal with it now – you moved back here to help me sell it. But nothing has happened.”

“You’ve been pretty unwell, Mum,” Charlie said gently, “you’ve been our focus since we got here.”

“I know, and I said to Rus earlier that I’m grateful.” She patted Charlie’s hand, reached out for Rus’s and did the same.

“But this place is not for Rus…”

“Mary–”

“–The area isn’t. I’ve seen how people respond to you, Rus, and how they’ve responded to Charlie over the years. I know Charlie’s dad struggled, sometimes said the wrong thing.”

Rus and Charlie laughed kindly at this, it was true, but they held no resentment over it.

“Sell the place, leave it. Be happy, please. I was happy, for so long, I want the same for you both.” Mary rubbed her hands together, as if she were cold. “It’s like that poem by Larkin,” she said, not for the first time this week. “Home is shaped to the comfort of the last to go… this place isn’t shaped for either of you.”

The evening arrived and Mary said she was ready for bed. “And in case I don’t wake up tomorrow–”

“Mum!”

“–In case I don’t wake up, one more thing. Get yourself a dog and take it with you when you leave. Take something living with you from the north.”

Mary didn’t die that night. They looked after her for a week before death came for her. Rus appreciated the time of hospice care, getting to know Charlie’s mother, it gave him rich insights into his man. And he enjoyed Mary’s time, as short as it was. Whereas Rus’s mother was scattered, intense, and he loved her, Charlie’s was calm and sensible. He wished he had more time with her.

When Mary did go it was a Thursday morning, a ‘yellow’ day for a semi-synesthete like Rus, and peaceful because of the colour. Rus rang his parents and told them he missed them and wanted to see them. They sounded vulnerable on the phone, unsettled by the increasing rates of infections, another strange virus was loose across the country. They wanted their son with them just as Mary’s wanted hers.

“I’ll come as soon as I can,” Rus promised them. “We both will.”

The Valley IV

In the morning Rus lowered the stairs and Charlie, armed with fire once more, explored under and around the house. The rain had stopped hours ago but the clouds remained dark and low, they skimmed over the ridge and promised to break open again.

There were numerous sets of footprints, some made from boots or shoes, some from bare feet, or perhaps from a mix of both from one ‘crow or more. The yard was muddy, and footprints marked the retreat of the night visitors, pointing towards the cane fields.

Charlie sighed. “Way too wet for a burn off. We’ll have to wait at least a week.”

Rus rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands, wiping away tiredness and night images, they flickered in his mind, although neither man had seen anything of note. “We still don’t know how many there are. We can do that today, start to count them.”

“Sounds like a plan. An unplanned burn off can be risky.”

“So can leaving ‘crows in your yard.”

“We’ll get rid of them soon enough. At least the rain will dampen the smell,” Charlie said. Charlie did what he always did, he went on, he planned for the day and made things work as they should. 

Something was building within Rus though, each day it rose a little closer to the surface, he had tried to ignore it, but it was there, unformed but its shape was almost visible. What shape, what is it? He had lived with a partial sense of detachment for some time now, knew that Charlie did too, and wondered if something was breaking through, or perhaps his defences were breaking down. Or both.

And Rus knew that he and Charlie were faced with more than a changing world. They were deep into a new way of being – each was reimagining his man.    

“I’ll take the back fields; you okay to take the front?” Charlie asked.

“Sure. I’ll check over the road too. Breakfast first?” It was a token, not to broker peace – there was no fight, no harshness, no need for mending – but it suddenly seemed important.

“Eggs, right?” Charlie flashed a smile, bright, warm, and simple.

“Yes. Scrambled or fried?” Rus already knew the answer, but he feigned surprise, a raised eyebrow when it came.

“Fried.”

Charlie headed towards the outdoor shower, a tank with a makeshift nozzle hanging low. Rus collected eggs. He walked past the rusted ute, the broken horse trough, so many broken things, and on towards the chicken coop. The hens were already out; the door had long fallen off, another thing to be repaired one day. There were plenty of eggs. In contrast to their coop, none of them broken.

He stared out into the western field. No signs of ‘crows. But there was a magpie, it was angry, it made angry noises and swooped and clipped its beak over the cane then glided gracefully back to the Morton Bay fig.  The guineafowl protested the magpie’s arrival but soon settled into their usual ways. The flock had over fifteen birds now and Rus liked them more than he did the domestic fowl, or the chooks, as Charlie called them.

“They’re monogamous,” Rus told Charlie over breakfast.

Charlie looked up from his eggs, eyes blank, or inwardly focussed, but not annoyed, never annoyed by Rus’s occasionally odd and arcane revelations.

“Guineafowl,” Russ filled in for him.

“Not the ‘crows, then?”

“Maybe them too.”

“Is that why you call them Charlie birds?”

“I call them that because they stay close to home…”

Extract from Then Comes the Lightning

“Bring me the good knife.”

Colleen didn’t say it to anyone in particular, but Lucy was quick to respond. She darted into the kitchen, rummaging clumsily in the drawer, until at last she saw the shine of the good knife. She picked it up with her three good fingers, wincing at its coldness.

Lucy had tried to get rid of the good knife once. A long time ago she had run with it wrapped in a tea towel, run through the gloom of twilight into the forest of box gums, stunted and twisted, hungry for the last of the day’s light. It was winter, and the bees had been asleep in their white fortress, nuzzled against the glass and gold body of their queen. Lucy had wished they were awake – sometimes their stings were kind, and she had wanted their kindness then more than ever before, more even than when she lost her brother, Danny.

Strong and tall Danny. Fast and clever, white boned and lagan Danny, asleep forever in the dam.

It was Danny who had told Lucy to run to Grandpa the day she took the good knife, to take it away from their mother. He said to give it to the old man who would hide it with the queen, the only place it would be truly safe. “Run faster, Lucy,” he had called as she burst through the back door and into the waiting evening. A butcher bird had warbled briefly in the near darkness, singing for her to fly.

She had sped past the black water of Danny’s bed. His bones had clattered and whispered to her. His face had been there briefly by the reeds, wise and handsome and kind. “Run,” he had said, and so Lucy ran.  

Colleen had been nimble that night. Lucy heard her coming fast from behind. She yelled out to Lucy, incongruous puma snarls and snake hisses, but still Lucy ran. She arrived at the caravan just as darkness made its final claim on the day.

Grandpa’s shabby little home had been set amongst an acre of cheap government land, bought half a long lifetime ago, when the promise of a new life away from the city had been compelling.  And there he had lived with his bees to keep him company and his eucalyptus distilleries to earn him a dollar or two, and there he had learnt the natural magic of the land. 

But Grandpa was not home when at last Lucy flung open the door. It was dark, so dark inside. No Grandpa. No safety. Lucy lost two fingers that night. But she had also learnt, after so long, how to keep her emotions inside and that in itself had been worth it, even if Colleen had reclaimed the good knife.

Extract from In the Spirit of Genocide

Sabat led Maeyena through the overgrown garden to the nearest of the dome’s support structures, followed by the ever-present servitor – a round metal dog keeping up with its master; faithful, obedient, but always silent. Too silent. A door slid open at the base of the strut, revealing a spacious lift. Soon it was speeding upwards and over the garden towards the Control Centre, which hung like a giant spider in a metal web; a spider surveying an empty world. 

Maeyena turned to him in the lift. “There’s no point talking to Central. It’s still little more than a systems regulator, at least for another month.”

“I’m not going to talk to Central. I’m going to make it send me on a remote search, to find out if the hunters are still out there—”

“What?” Maeyena said, as if Sabat really was losing his mind. “Even with a Command Unit it would be useless to try that. A qualified Communicator needs years of training to do a remote search; you’ve got none. You’d get lost out there, forever.”

“The voice…” Sabat began carefully, “it says, she says…she can bridge the gap between Central and my mind. She’ll act as my anchor, bring me home if things go wrong.”

Maeyena shook her head and stared out at the garden below. Sabat looked too, down at the dark carpet of vegetation. Nothing moved there, and yet there was life within the dome; precious, quiet life.

When Maeyena spoke there was concern in her voice. “Be careful, brother. Isolation sickness is real and that voice you’re listening to is just another one of its symptoms. The command unit should be able to cure you, but until it’s finished you have to ignore the presence in your head.”

“Our mother would’ve understood, she believed in such things—”

“Our mother’s beliefs were naïve. It was because of them that the community first listened to the transmissions. The voice you hear is another siren’s song. Don’t listen to it Sabat; it will lead you astray. As will the twins…” Before Sabat could respond Maeyena added, in little more than a whisper: “To be safe, I think it’s time to let go of me, too.”

“No!” Sabat almost staggered back at the suggestion. “You’re my sister, I need you—”

‘I’m only an echo of her, you know that, and I think already I’m doing you more harm than good.”

The last of Sabat’s fragile world seemed poised to cave in. The scream rushed back into his throat.

“The surface ghosts are risky enough,” Maeyena continued, “but what I am makes me riskier.”

Sabat knew that lightning was shining in his eyes, a swirling storm of impending panic. And it wasn’t caused by isolation sickness – it wasn’t. “The only way you can hurt me is by abandoning me a second time.” Sabat spat the words at her. Angry words. Words full of accusations.

“She tried to find our parents. She tried to bring them home, Sabat, but she didn’t succeed. She’s… I’m so sorry.” The ghost seemed suddenly confused, struggling to separate itself from its flesh and artificial incarnations. “But Maeyena authorised the construction of the command unit, if she didn’t return—”

“Leaving most of the ship uninhabitable.”  Venom continued to drip from Sabat’s lips. But venom was better than a scream; it bubbled up from a less terrifying place. “The cost to build the command unit is too much…”

“The garden was spared – that’s the most important part of the War-Huuran now. And the resurrection material is safe. This ship can still bring back life one day, it can still fulfill its purpose…”

“It can’t bring back human life. I’ll be alone.”

The lift began to slow, the spider swallowed it. The doors remained closed – outside the lift Sabat knew the centre would be coming to life.

Maeyena – the ghost was his sister again – smiled sadly at Sabat, he could see it from the corner of his eyes. “My beautiful brother, I’m truly sorry,” she said.

Sabat turned to her. “Stay with me. Please.”

“If you’re to have any chance of survival then Central must be made whole again. There’s only enough room for one mind in the sentience matrix. A command unit will be able to help you in ways that a deep ghost like me can’t.”

“Then at least stay with me until it’s finished,” Sabat siad. “What danger can there be in that?” His trembling, crumbling world paused.

“Possession,” she said simply. “If the hunters are out there, and if the flesh Maeyena is with them – if they have her body, and I think they do – then the War-Huuran is open to them.”

Sabat pushed past his sister’s ghost as the doors to the lift opened. “I can’t turn you off yet, I need you too much.”

Bright lights within the Control Centre flickered to life as he stepped from the cabin. Life-support in the circular chamber had started as soon as the lift began its ascent, but still the temperature within the room was close to freezing. Mist formed as he took in sharp, painful breaths; his lungs struggling to adjust to the drop in temperature, his mind struggling to adjust to the truth of what he had lost, what he was still to lose. 

He looked up at the translucent silver disc in the middle of the ceiling. A dull blue light shone down from the disc. Sabat stepped into the light before Maeyena…the ghost…could say anything more. A hatch opened in the floor directly in front of him and from it rose a large, padded chair. Sabat quickly lowered himself into it, knowing too well the disorienting effects of direct communication.

Sabat’s eyes closed and the blue light swirled within his mind. He had attempted the interface before, but without training in the complex technique the information he’d previously provided Central was always lacking, as were the answers the machine gave him in return.

This time it was different. Sabat felt his thoughts open up to Central as it rummaged about in his head:

home…Sanctuary…<sanctuary?>

alone…lonely…<forever?>

remote search…needed…<allow?>

            <allowed>

The cold intelligence seemed satisfied with Sabat’s request and approved the search, opening up the sentience matrix and allowing Sabat’s mind to fill it. He could feel Maeyena’s ghost contract and become insubstantial as his own mind temporarily nudged it aside, forcing it to shrink into a tiny corner of the circuitry.  

Sabat was suddenly flying. Free at last, he circled the War-Huuran, swooping between the microscopic relay units that scattered the surrounding space like metallic dust. Soon he was headed away from the ship and the poorly named planet it orbited, away even from the safety of the debris field, speeding faster and faster, the stars seeming to swirl around him. They blurred as he traversed thousands of kilometres within seconds, his consciousness leaping from relay to relay, growing faint at times, but bolstered when he leapt into the occasional enhancer, waiting inactive until now in the darkness.