I splashed my face with mineral water and looked out at Port Macquarie. Five thirty in the morning. I’d slept for two hours. It was still dark but I needed to take advantage of first light and the early morning. I figured if anyone was out there this would be when they were at their least alert. Just the way I was.
In the bathroom I mixed a few tablespoons of instant coffee with mineral water but couldn’t drink more than a mouthful. Smacking my lips as I tried to get the taste out of my mouth, I searched the drawers for toothpaste. I found a tube and a new toothbrush and brushed while I snooped through the medicine cabinets. Cleansers, moisturisers, balms on the top shelf. Vitamins, fish oils, homeopathic concoctions on the next. Antidepressants, diet pills and sleeping tablets on the bottom. I picked out the Slimdex. A full bottle of tiny white tablets. I knew the brand and what they did. Mollie and her friends used to take ‘dexies’ to get skinny and to party. I picked one out and washed it down with mineral water.
I checked the GPS map of Port Macquarie. I was on Stewart Street on the Point. It was six blocks into the centre of the business district. That’s where I’d have the best chance of finding what I needed. But wandering out in the open, even in the murky light of dawn, seemed as foolish as flashing a message to the crazy beach dancer. Jack’s army might be far south but he could have drones looking for me anywhere.
A light went on in my head. My thoughts sharpened and my skin tingled pleasantly. Just like that I knew what to do.
Yesterday, from the back windows, I’d been worried by the places I couldn’t see properly—narrow laneways that ran behind towers, the shadowy recesses of the public school on the hill, the dark mouths of shopping arcades down in the town. But they were what could hide me now.
I left the Sandpiper building by the underground car park, hugged the backs of buildings in the gloom, dashed across a road and into more shadows. Crouching by the roadside, I waited and listened and then sprinted to the school fence, using the boltcutters to bust the gate’s padlock. Got to the next block under the school’s covered walkways. Breaking another lock, I followed a tropical garden down a hill between holiday apartments until I was opposite a multilevel car park attached to a shopping centre. I crept across the road between vehicles, pulled myself over a wall and disappeared into the dark spaces of the concrete monolith.
Head buzzing, I felt like an Olympian or a ninja—maybe an Olympic ninja. Breathing deeply through my eucalyptus bandana, I crossed the car park’s emptiness and entered Port Mall through broken glass doors. Pretty sure its light wouldn’t be seen from outside, I used my torch to see what was in store. Ted’s Tobacco, Vision City, Spec Takers, Surf N Stuff, Man Cave, GameZone. Nothing worth breaking into. I made a beeline for a help kiosk. It’d had an interactive screen for shoppers but the desk was still stacked with little maps of the mall.
My eyes flew over the list of shop names as I calculated the chances of them holding anything of use. I was thinking so fast. Like my mind had been upgraded. If I could be this way all the time Jack wouldn’t stand a chance. While he might have a few thousand brains at his disposal, this was as though my processing speed had been boosted by a million times and—
I was high. Speeding off my face. What a bad girl. Taking drugs. After what Mum had been through I’d always thought they were stupid and dangerous. Now it seemed like they could be a survival tool. Denying myself the edge they offered—that’s what would be stupid and dangerous.
‘Just say yes,’ I said aloud and then burst out laughing. The echo of me cackling around the mall gave me the creeps. I got myself under control. Focused the energy.
I was off, zipping through the mall, slipping from an exit, staying under awnings and slinking into an arcade that connected to the next street. Cafes flashed by uselessly until I was at the next exit. Hovering, scanning, left, right, dozens of shops in sight: Siam Sunset restaurant, Coastal Credit Building Society, I’m Gonna Git You Sucka Vacuum Cleaners, Vibrations Adult Store, Mobifone dealership. On and on they went on both sides of a wide street divided by parking bays and palm trees draped in red and silver tinsel.
A car near me contained a driver so swollen and black that he or she looked like overripe fruit ready to burst. But a woman in the window of the bakery to my left was so emaciated it seemed likely she’d defied the survival odds for a long time before dying. There were many more bodies. But not as many as I’d expected.
I kept on, heart racing, mind flying, through a maze of cars and into the next galleria and past a boutique and cafe and pet supply store whose inventory of plastic toys was scattered across the linoleum. When I got to the exit, I stood panting, taking a moment to see what was right in front of my nose.
The window of Top Travel featured a giant poster. Green mountains towered over white beaches. Aquamarine sea all around. Barely a building to be seen. ‘Visit Lord Howe Island!’ was scrawled across the bottom in big letters. My brain buzzed. This, this was my refuge island. I remembered the exact moment I’d first imagined it. On the highway, going back to confront Jack, I’d seen a stupid sign that’d named a grassy median strip a ‘Refuge Island’. It’d gotten me thinking about a place exactly like this. I took a brochure from a plastic holder. ‘Home to just 400 permanent residents, Lord Howe Island is one of Australia’s secret treasures,’ the blurb began. I read about how tourist numbers were limited by available accommodation but those who visited would enjoy fine restaurants and unspoiled beaches and coral reefs and rainforest walks to dizzying volcanic peaks. ‘Leave only footprints,’ it said, proudly boasting that the island’s facilities were powered by a mixture of solar, wind and wave energy. It sounded perfect. An inset map showed that everything Lord Howe had to offer was just six hundred kilometres due east of where I stood. A month ago there had been a regular air service and a photo showed a little plane sweeping low over a beach after its one-hour flight from Port Macquarie. One hour. God, it was so close—and so impossibly far.
I turned the brochure over and scanned a few boxes of fun facts. Did I know that the giant stick insect had been thought extinct until it’d been rediscovered on Lord Howe Island? I had not, but any place that could resurrect endangered creatures sounded awesome to me. Did I know that the entire world’s supply of Kentia palms came from this tiny island in the middle of nowhere? My heart stuttered because Mum’s front yard had been filled with them and now that seemed like a sign. If we could get to Lord Howe Island, Jack would never find us. And with such a small population, it was unlikely anyone would’ve survived. Even with just the few of us, we could deal with the bodies. We’d be safe and free.
I turned back to the photo of the plane. If only Stannis was an actual pilot. If only that seaplane could be fixed. Maybe I could find another aircraft and learn to fly. I had to quit daydreaming and get on with the task at hand. I pocketed the brochure anyway.
Walking along the street under a wide awning, I stepped around a dead kid. Under his body was a tablet box in a pool of dried blood. Poor little looter had bled out before he crashed out. Following his trail of droplets and dropped swag led me to the smashed and spattered window of a Gizmos outlet.
I climbed in carefully and played my flashlight over phones, tablets, televisions and projectors. I walked along an aisle of printers and laptops, another of stereos and turntables, one more of consoles, monitors and wearables. All this stuff we’d ‘needed’. All of it right there for the taking. None of it now worth the energy it’d take to pick from its shelf or rack. But as I turned to leave, my eyes strayed into the home security section’s display of motion sensors and spy cameras and house alarms. I gravitated to a stack of Peace of Mind boxes and read the offering inside these all-in-one DIY packages. Eight programmable motion detectors attached to a 140-decibel alarm. Four video cameras feeding footage to any phone or tablet anywhere in the world over the internet or short-range via Bluetooth connection. A set-up time of just an hour for your average-sized property and an ion-lithium battery guaranteed to last a decade. All of that for the low, low price of $199.99.
This tech could make Colonial Town a little bit safer. Thing was, speedy me could easily have walked out of Gizmos without even noticing this stuff. For the next hour, I shopped slowly, using my torch like a crime-scene investigator to spotlight just one product at a time. Sitting on the floor, I unpacked devices from their packaging and preserved their instruction manuals. I got phones, tablets and plenty of extra batteries. Dozens of Cameleon spy cams that’d change colour depending on what you stuck them to. Night-vision goggles that could turn darkness into daylight. Waterproof walkie-talkies powerful enough to broadcast over twenty kilometres. By the time I’d finished shopping and filled my backpack, it’d gone ten and the day was glaring outside.
A stash of surveillance and security and communications equipment was a good start. But I needed stuff that could keep us alive and that could kill Jacks. From inside the Gizmos doorway, I scanned adjacent businesses. Newsagency, thrift store, craft shop and a dozen more whose inventories probably wouldn’t be useful. Multiply that by the number of streets in Port Macquarie and its surrounding suburbs and I might wander for ages without finding what I was after. My kingdom for Google search.
Or a telephone book. I’d never used one but it seemed like a smart time to start, if I could find one. I checked the Gizmos register area. It was paperless, all scanners and tap-and-pay, but the back office was filled with out-of-date catalogues, piled uniforms, dirty coffee cups and bent store displays. Under a desk, beside someone’s old socks, I found a stack of musty Yellow Pages. The most recent was three years old but it was the best lead I’d get.
I found a listing for guns—Shooter City—and another for Army Surplus—Davo’s Disposals—and checked the addresses against my GPS.
Keeping under awnings and low between cars, I found another mall and sliced through it to the next block. Right there, between Chicken Licken and Golf Buddies, was Shooter City. But while other shopfronts had yielded, the metal shutters of the gun store hadn’t given way to the efforts of looters, one of whom had crashed and died beside his own pair of boltcutters. Through the slits in the gate were iron bars over plate-glass windows. Locking a gun shop up tight made sense.
I made my way another three blocks to Davo’s Disposals. That it wasn’t like a fortress told me Davo didn’t sell firearms. Someone had got in here. Splintered the windows before sledgehammering the door. Halfway up the block I saw the likely culprits. A couple of rival survivalists lay dead among packs bulging with stuff. It looked like they’d fought to the death to stay alive.
Rifle at the ready, I went into Davo’s, set my backpack down and grabbed a camouflaged army bag from a hook. Where Gizmos had seemed useless at first, it was immediately obvious this was an Aladdin’s Cave of cool shit. Shirts, trousers, sleeping bags, tents and netting—all of it in bush camouflage. Knives and tools and compasses and cookers. Water purification tablets and freeze-dried meals and wind-up torches and solar radios. Everything lightweight and compact. I rolled and folded and stuffed as much as I could into the army bag. Behind the counter, I peeled off my dirty old clothes and slipped into camouflage pants and shirt, pulled off the red boots I’d taken from Mum’s and laced up a pair of steel-capped combat asskickers.
Still, none of this stuff would kill Jacks. I wondered whether Davo had a secret stash of bayonets and bazookas. I climbed a staircase out back and forced my way into his office. I peered out through venetian blinds at the street below. Trained my binoculars on the park by the river and then up past where Pelican Island split the river to a marina cluttered with cruisers and yachts whose white hulls and cabins had been blackened by smoke. Davo’s desk was cluttered with paperwork. A big corkboard festooned with order forms. One wall was stacked with boxes. Scrawled on most of them was ‘Mac 4 p/u’. I was puzzled for a moment until it clicked. These were for someone named Mac to pick up.
The boxes didn’t hold weapons. But whoever Mac was, he’d been buying up big. Five ration pack cartons for a total of three hundred dinners of dehydrated chicken curry and beef stew. Maybe he was a slob who hated cooking or a soldier addicted to meals from bags. But there were also a thousand water purification tablets, a Geiger counter, two pairs of Kevlar gloves, thermal imaging camera, hydration backpack adaptor, magnesium fire starter and solar charger. I wondered why he didn’t just get all this stuff on the internet. It had to be far cheaper than getting Davo to import it and slapping on a mark-up. Unless . . . Mac was paranoid and wanted to stay off the grid.
I opened the laptop on the desk, battery unused since the Snap, and did a search of the customer database. From Macally and Mackintosh to McCredie and McFarlane, there were two dozen possible ‘Macs’. But only one had spent fifty grand in the past year. G. Macarthur: Elders Way, Camden Haven. I tapped at the GPS. Mac’s place was about twenty kilometres south of Colonial Town, in the bush near North Brother Mountain. I’d be paying a visit as soon as I could. I dragged the customer file to the trash and pressed empty before closing the laptop. No sense leaving tracks.
Walking back into the store, I spied another must-have on Davo’s racks. A yowie suit—that was what the packaging called it. There was a photo of a guy wearing what looked like a poncho covered with camouflage streamers. ‘Be the bush!’ the marketing blurb promised.
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ I said.
I unpacked the yowie suit, pulled it over my clothes, pictured myself staging an ambush. My grin widened when I saw another shelf stacked with even weirder stuff that I had to assume was stocked for customers going to fancy dress parties. There were spiky helmets, crazy Afro wigs, neon hardhats and Native American headdresses. I pulled down a gas mask. The tag said it was ex-French army and in working condition with a new filter. I stretched its tan latex straps around the back of my head and fitted my face with its glass goggles and a porcine grilled muzzle. It made my breathing sound like Darth Vader but it might actually be useful as the stench got worse. I giggled when I saw the gnarly black Viking helmet on a mannequin. Really, I couldn’t go past that. I reached it down, pulled it on and rustled back to the mirror.
I laughed. Yowie suit, gas mask, horned helmet—I looked like a monster in a Z-grade horror film. I waved my hands and growled at myself. Being silly let off steam but my amusement faded when I pictured myself trying to share this funny moment with Nathan and him freezing me out.
Then I saw who I was sharing this moment with and I froze. Caught behind me in the mirror’s reflection was a wild-haired woman staring at me through Davo’s doorway. Her eyes widened as I whirled and she screamed and ran. I stumbled towards the entrance.
‘Wait!’ I yelled.
She didn’t. Like a spooked gazelle she sprang over bodies and shot across palm gardens.
‘Wait!’
Wuurrtt!
Crap. Through the gas mask my voice was a bestial roar. God knows what she thought I was. I threw off the Viking helmet, tore off the mask. Dashed the way she’d gone, yowie suit rustling and combat boots thumping on the pavement. By the time I’d reached the town’s park, she was bolting past the pub towards the jetty that jutted into the river.
Panting, I slowed, not wanting to panic her further. Without even meaning to I’d cornered her against the water. I felt guilty that I was the Party Duder in this scenario. Bellowing and giving chase. Terrifying a frightened survivor. But while she might’ve been scared, she didn’t slow as she slapped barefoot across the pier’s boards.
‘Wait!’ I called.
Without looking back she shot off the jetty and dived into the water. I ran to the edge of the pier. The woman swam furiously for the low green shore at the back of the northern beach. Now it twigged. She was the shadow I’d seen dancing by the bonfire. But I’d just proven that I was the crazy one. Running after her when I should’ve been running the other way. Coming out into the open without my rifle. Making all sorts of noise. At least she hadn’t seen my face. She couldn’t tell anyone who she’d seen. But she could be attracting Jacks. Or anyone else around. And she could lead them to where she’d seen me. It was my turn to run. I sprinted back to the surplus store.
I struggled under my load back the way I’d come, through arcade and mall and laneway and underground car park and up the fire stairs. Inside the Sandpiper apartment, I felt like I was melting. Sweating crazily, heart hammering, I dumped the bag and backpack and my gun and stripped out of my sweaty camo clothes. Giddy and exhilarated, adrenaline surging with the amphetamine, I focused my binoculars on the northern beach. The Wild Woman was back home, too. She walked in circles around her tent, huffing a bong and gesticulating wildly as though arguing with herself. She didn’t have a gun that I could see. Or any companion. After I while I felt nothing but sorry for her.
When I’d relaxed a little, I sat on the floor in my underwear and set out all the stuff I’d procured. My mission had been productive. Gadgets that could help secure Colonial Town. Meals enough for a week if we had to flee into the bush. Purification tablets that’d make it safe to drink from creeks. Space blankets to keep us warm and dry. A tent and hoochies for shelter and camo netting that’d make us hard to spot from the air. I closed the bathroom door, tried on the night-vision goggles, saw myself in the mirror, blurred like an alien apparition.
A little rattled by my close call in town, I decided to take the quad back to Colonial Town under cover of darkness. It’d give me a chance to see if I could ride with the night-vision goggles instead of headlights. It was only mid-afternoon and what I needed was more sleep. But my mind tumbled and my body tossed and turned in the big soft bed.
Giving up on sleep, I sat by the window with the binoculars and watched the Wild Woman up on her beach. She was using driftwood to carve patterns in a circle around her camp and had used charcoal to cover her tent with scratchy symbols and words. The binoculars weren’t powerful enough to make out detail so I crept out to the telescope. Even on that hot balcony the temperature seemed to drop when I brought her work into focus.
Vade Satana Draco maledicte adjuramus te Terribilis Deus
·•·
There was much more—stars, pentacles, arrows and daggers and reams and reams of Latin. I had no idea what it all meant but it spooked me back inside. With everything that’d happened it was ridiculous to be afraid of some wacko who thought Harry Potter was a documentary. But I couldn’t help it. Her witchy ways chilled me. What scared me most was that her supernatural mumbo-jumbo was meant as protection against me.
There was no way I’d sleep now. Not unless I dipped into the medicine cabinet’s bottle of sleeping pills. Being that unconscious seemed like a mistake. Instead, with the afternoon light dwindling, I went the other way by taking another dexie to blow out the cobwebs.
When it was dark, the Wild Woman was reduced to a writhing shadow by her fire. Beyond her, the sky north glowed like the gates of Hell. But I felt good again. Couldn’t let either worry me. I was heading south. I gathered my gun and backpacks, donned my goggles and found my way back along the coastal path to my quad. When I revved and rode off, I felt indestructible, like I owned the night.