Aftermath, p.7
Aftermath, page 7
She wanted to strangle him. Or at least knock his teeth out. But satisfying though that might be, it would achieve little. What was done was done — if past tense even applied to a world without time — and Dave was the only person who could undo this mess.
He’s also the only other person left, full stop. Let that sink in.
“I told you, Sue. I’ve frozen time.”
“Then unfreeze it, right now.”
Dave shrugged. “I wish I could. I really do.”
“Then what ...?”
“Then we adjust to our new reality. If my calculations are correct, the spell might actually wear off on its own accord. Eventually.”
Sue frowned. “How long is eventually?”
“Maybe a year. Or the subjective equivalent.”
“Dave, we can’t last a year like this. We’ll freeze or starve. No electricity, except what was already on, no plumbing, only the dark and cold outside ...”
He grinned. “It’s not that bad. Fire still works — thank good old Heraclitus. We’ve got supermarkets and greengrocers to raid, and books to read by candlelight and lantern. It’s a chance to take a break. No work, no responsibilities, none of the moral corruption of the internet or the worldly media ...”
“No functioning toilet.”
“We can dig one out the back.”
“And what are we supposed to drink?”
“Consume it solid, from bottles. Or chew on solid milk. It’s not a disaster. Thank the divine Pythagoras, now I don’t have to abase myself by consuming coffee.”
Always with the bloody beans.
“No running water. No showers.”
“You can walk down to St Kilda and rub yourself in beach sand.”
Sue folded her arms. “And what happens when we both freeze to death, because there’s no bloody sunlight and the Earth loses heat into space?”
“This is arcane goeteia, the lost wisdom of the ancients, not some cheap science-fiction movie. The plants are frozen in time too, and the atmospheric heat isn’t going anywhere. Sweet Athena, next you’ll be asking how you’re still able to breathe.”
Sue cocked her head. “Actually, that’s a good point. How can we breathe if everything is frozen around us?”
“Magic.” He waved his hand. “It’s all magic. Embrace the goeteia and ponder the hidden mysteries of Sacred Numbers.”
Something about that smug smile was too much. Without even removing her mittens, she punched Dave full in the face.
“Owww!”
He winced, his free hand covering his face. Dark blood streamed from his nose and dripped into his Weetbix.
“What did you do that for?”
Sue grinned. “Embrace the hidden mysteries of my fist, you bloody idiot.”
Sue climbed fully clothed into bed and pulled the blankets over her head. She ground her teeth in the darkness. It did little to improve her mood.
A year alone in a dark and frosty world. With Dave. Hell, I’ll go insane.
No. She must see it through. Her parents had raised her to be tough. She wasn’t going to let this ruin her life. Perhaps Dave was even right ... maybe she could read a few books, learn a few things, work out alone at Unipol Gym. It’d be an experience she could never share with anyone else, but if she kept focused, it might not be a disaster. Breaking into New World and Countdown, and nabbing chocolate off the shelves without consequence ... that even sounded fun. She had an old cricket bat from high school which could be hauled out for window-smashing.
No television though. No radio. No internet. No hot showers. That hurts.
It was the end of cooked breakfasts that hurt her most, though. No more sizzling bacon or poached eggs and pepper before the crack of dawn. Not that dawn will ever come. With no functioning oven or microwave, it’d be a year of the cold and the raw, spooning soup out of cans. A year of filched apples and bananas, and solid milk ... oh, and sandwiches. No tea or coffee. A hot milk Milo out of her Christmas Mug would be a distant memory. Hot anything will be a distant memory. The heat pump’s out, and the fireplace is blocked off.
Suddenly, Sue threw back the blankets.
“Eureka,” she told the darkness.
A smile was spreading across her face.
Taking a cricket bat to her neighbour’s living room window was like that time she’d gone nude swimming at St Kilda for a dare. Intense embarrassment, spiced with the undeniable thrill of breaking a taboo. And while it’d be a year until anyone found out ... wearing gloves was just common sense, what with finger-prints and nosy policemen.
Sue also made damned sure not to cut herself on the shards of glass. She swept those up as best she could.
“Dread Persephone. These are heavy.”
“Yes, Dave. I know.”
“Can I take a breather?”
Sue smiled. “Take all the time in the world.”
Dave dropped the Kaitangata coal and stood huffing and puffing on the footpath. They’d lugged the coal bags from the petrol station as far as the Botanical Gardens. Sue’s own arms grew tired. These were big bags.
Maybe it was time to forgive her foolish flatmate. He had agreed to help her.
It’s still the least he can do.
Dave’s panting subsided. “There must be an easier way. I can’t do this every time you need to restock on coal.”
“Don’t worry, Dave. It’ll be easier next time.”
“How so?”
“This time I was making a point. Next time we’ll nick a pair of supermarket trolleys from New World.”
Even in the shadowy street lights, Dave’s glare was a sight to behold.
“Funny thing,” said Sue. “You’re not the only one to give early-morning tutorials.”
“I still think this is wrong,” said Dave for the third time. He fiddled with his hood.
Sue shrugged. “It’s not like they’re using it.”
Sue had enjoyed candlelit dinners before, but never quite like this. Breaking into your neighbour’s house, not to steal ... but to use their coal-range? Then eating a hearty and well-earned midnight breakfast on their kitchen table? It warranted its own story. Maybe she would write it herself. Why, she had all the time in the world and few distractions.
She leered across at her flatmate, who prodded nervously at his egg-on-toast.
“Care for a rasher of bacon?”
“No,” he snapped. “Of course not.” He glared at the coal-range. “Why couldn’t you stick to more wholesome foods?”
“Fire still works, Dave. Thank Heraclitus.”
“You don’t even know who Heraclitus was.”
“I know enough to thank him. And if I have a working fire, I can cook. So there.”
Sue swallowed a forkful of baked beans. She savoured the flavour, a pleasure that left her struggling to hold back tears of joy.
Time may come and time may go, and the universe itself may hang in frozen suspension, but Sue knew the little things made life worth living. A plate of bacon, eggs, and beans in the glow of a handful of candles, when all outside lay cold and forgotten.
Truly, the taste of all that was good in the world.
Endless night? I might not mind that — could catch up on some sleep, eh? Disasters are tiring, that’s for sure. Makes you cranky. Can bring out the worst in people ... or the best.
Portobello Blind
by Octavia Cade
The worst part of the apocalypse was the sheer bloody boredom of it.
Anna had never expected to be the — apparently — sole survivor of a quick and dirty plague, but if she had, her expectations would have been different. All the apocalypse stories she knew had conflict and danger and high stakes, arenas and journeys and great symphonic soundtracks.
Anna spent hers fishing.
She had to do it, had to eat. She was stuck out of the way at the marine lab at Portobello, the most distant part of the university, and there was nothing left in the break room cupboards. If anyone had hidden a stash somewhere else she hadn’t been able to find it though she didn’t know all the lab secrets anyway, built on multiple levels as it was.
“Don’t use the lift while I’m gone,” her father told her. “There’s no telling what’ll happen if the power goes out.” And that was the last thing she needed, to be stuck between floors with no food and no toilet.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said. “We should be isolated enough here. But we need to stock up.” Not just with food, but the asthma medication he needed.
He hadn’t come back. Anna didn’t know why but she was certain he was dead. Her father wasn’t the type of man to abandon anyone, let alone his blind fourteen-year-old daughter.
Anna grieved, but she could only cry so much. It was so lonely without him, without anyone. All there was to do was gather food, and with the best will in the world Anna wasn’t so incompetent that feeding herself took all day.
On the beach, Anna called out, “Can you hear me? Is anybody there?”
“Please,” she cried. “Please.”
There wasn’t a hint of breeze. The air was so still that her voice carried across water, echoed up and down the coast. “Is anybody there?”
Maybe her voice would carry to the small settlement at Portobello. Maybe someone would hear her across the harbour.
There were life jackets in the shed; they smelled of salt and rubber, of plastic. The life jacket had a whistle attached: a sharp, high sound like a gull. It was designed to carry over long distances, but if there was anyone around to hear her screaming through it, they never, ever came.
It helped that she was relatively familiar with the main parts of the lab. Her father had worked there for years and she’d spent many afternoons in the break room doing homework while he experimented in rooms that smelled of chemicals.
Because of the time she’d spent there, she knew that there was a fishing kit in one corner of the break room. Some experiments ran long, some had to be monitored only periodically; more than one of the scientists had taken advantage of this and had gone to the jetty for an hour or two of fishing when they had the chance.
Anna had never fished before, but she had been out to the jetty when she’d been taken on boat rides through the harbour and out past Taiaroa Heads where the albatross colony was. She could find her way out there with her cane all right, if she was careful about the rocks and slipping — fishing couldn’t be that hard.
“Rod, line, hook,” she said. “And I’ve got bread.” There’d been some left over in the break room fridge. She thought it was going bad — there was a powdery residue on some of the slices and it smelled off. “Good enough for fish,” she said.
Before she sat down on the edge of the wharf Anna circled it carefully, taking single steps and then stopping, waving her cane over the water. She’d hoped one of the research boats would be tied up there. If nothing else there’d be a comfortable place to sleep: a bunk and a small enclosed space, something she could learn to nest in. Disappointingly, none were present. “But that means they might come back,” said Anna. “Maybe some of them are still out there, on the ocean.” Safe, and uninfected by plague. Anna had rung everyone she knew, rung emergency services and there was never an answer. She even started random dialing, hoping that someone would pick up but they never did. She knew how to use the satellite radio — “No child of mine is spending time on a boat without knowing that”— but no matter how often she called her mayday there was never a response.
Not yet anyway, but the empty berths gave her hope. It made it easier for her to reframe “apocalypse” in her mind, to cast it in the shadows of “vacation”.
“I’m on a deserted island,” she said. Not tropical because Dunedin would never be that, but she pushed the fantasy as far as climate would allow. “A deserted island. Soon it’ll be time to go home. Soon a boat will come for me and they’ll want to know all about my fishing while they take me home to shore.”
She baited the hook. It left her fingers bloody but, “Maybe that’ll attract more fish,” she said. “Maybe I won’t even have time to finish my piña colada before they bite.” Not that she’d ever had a piña colada, but it sounded recreational. Like it came in a fancy glass with a little umbrella.
It took a long time for a fish to bite but she didn’t have anything better to do. When Anna hauled it up, however, she realised she’d forgotten to consider actually killing the thing. All her previous experience of fish said they came with batter and some nicely vinegared chips. “Shit,” she said, trying to grab hold of a flapping body that she couldn’t see, trying to grip slippery scales and bash the head against the planks.
The fish squirted out of her hands. Anna made a grab for it and overbalanced. She fell from the jetty and into the water. She ignored the splash of fish beside her as she flailed and caught until she was clamped to one of the jetty posts. She wrapped her arms and legs around, slicing them open on the sharp edges of baby shellfish, of little mussels.
When she got her breathing under control, when she managed to stop weeping against the wet wood, Anna listened for the waves that spoke of shoreline and swam in that direction. Letting go of the wharf was the bravest thing she’d done in her life.
When she reached the rocks, she clambered over them and crawled up the path, crawled back to the lab with her skin all scraped off.
She went hungry for three days before trying again. Part of that was fear, and part of it was anger and punishment. “Why didn’t you wear the life jacket?” she said. “Stupid, stupid. Anyone would think you wanted to drown.”
If she drowned she’d never know if anyone else was out there.
(If she drowned she’d never care.)
She was tempted to attach herself to the radio and scream over the airwaves. It couldn’t be true that she was the only survivor. It couldn’t be... but Anna woke in the nights anyway, shrieking, panicked, stumbling for the radio. She woke in the mornings with new bruises from crashing into walls and her neck ached from untenable positions, bent over and straining for sound.
She was careful with the battery. One day the power could go out and her calling would wind down. She’d have to ration her calls, preserve the power that was left.
(One day even the battery would die, and the only creatures to hear her screaming then would be albatrosses.)
The satellite radio had cables that she followed to the wall, a double socket where only one was used. Anna plugged the kettle from the break room into the second socket. When it was filled with water, she could hear the boiling and that told her the marine lab still had power.
She sat before the radio most nights, when the windows turned cold and weeping with condensation. Boil water and call, boil water again to check that it wasn’t the battery that was running down.
“Is anybody out there?” she called. “Please, can anybody hear me?”
“Please.”
It was the bleating that did her in, that really provoked her to action. She’d come to terms with the fact that she couldn’t help anyone. That she couldn’t help anything — that even the fish tanks and the aquarium next door to the lab were beyond her capabilities. “I don’t even know where the controls are,” she wept. “And I wouldn’t know how to work them if I did. I’m so sorry.” She’d shut the aquarium door behind her and resolved herself to insularity, to hard-heartedness. At least until she heard the constant pathetic sounds of abandonment, the sad vacant cries of a dozen hungry sheep.
“What do you expect me to do about it?” Anna shouted, standing in the front door of the lab. The car park was before her, she knew that much — but the lab was out on the peninsula and after visitors left the coastal road there was a ten-minute drive over a twisty unsealed farm track. Lots of sheep here. And geese.
She heard the geese but she wasn’t worried about them. “You’ve got wings, you can fly,” she said. But the sheep trapped in paddocks could eat everything down to the ground and they’d do nothing but starve then.
“They’re only sheep,” Anna said. “There’s nothing I can do for them.” She knew even less about sheep than she did about plague. Even less than fish, and she hadn’t been able to save the aquarium. For all she knew the sheep were carriers, but when the plaintive bleats were punctuated by the tiny high cries of lambs, Anna knew she couldn’t take it any longer.
“This is going to be a nightmare,” she grumbled, lacing her boots up tight and clutching her cane. She walked out the front door and towards the bleating, tapping her way up the road to the car park. There was a big curve, she knew, and that was easy to navigate because she’d done it every time she’d visited. Her dad always took her arm, but without him she could manage.
Her cane hit the bank before she did — a steep grassy slope, and lumpy. Easy to trip on. It was just a few paces to the fence. A short distance, but she only found out what the ticking was when she reached out and got shocked for her trouble. “An electric fence,” she said. “Well, isn’t that just fucking marvellous.”
She still felt guilty swearing. As if there were someone around to hear her. “I wouldn’t mind being told off,” said Anna, sucking on the stung finger. “I’d be happy to be grounded.”
Even the sheep didn’t respond to that, though she could hear them just beyond the fence, their quick anxious movements. They bleated again, distressed. Wanting something from her. “Even if I get you out, I wouldn’t expect much,” said Anna. “If you think I’m going to be the one to shear you, you’re sadly mistaken.” There weren’t any clippers, and even if there were it wasn’t like she could see what she was doing with them. “You’d probably lose your ears.”
The only thing to do was to follow the fence line, to try and find a gate. And the only way to do that was to stumble slowly over the grass trying to keep her balance and listening for the fence. Trying not to fall, because either way was trouble. Down and she’d drop a few paces onto the road, probably break an ankle. Up and she’d fall face first against the electric fence.
