Riding along Elder Way, world tinged red by night-vision and amphetamine, I tried not to get my hopes up. If Mac had a hidden fortress out here, there was every chance he’d come under attack from desperadoes once his mind spilled his secrets. Maybe he’d fended them off before he’d crashed out. Maybe they’d overrun him before they’d crashed out. There were a dozen bodies on this remote road, some locked together with violent injuries, suggesting that people had fought each other to get to him.
I left the quad a few hundred metres from the fringe of his property and covered the last of the road slowly on foot. Crouching in the brush in my yowie suit, I expected to see more carnage—a burned-out bunker and bodies everywhere. But Mac’s place was dark and quiet. A modest kit home with a silver garage amid trees, nestled against one of North Brother Mountain’s foothills. His driveway wasn’t protected by big gates and his land wasn’t enclosed by barbed wire. If he had a guard dog that was still alive it wasn’t troubled by the kangaroos grazing around his lawn.
As I advanced from tree to tree, I was betting Mac wasn’t a Special lining up his sniper rifle on my bushy silhouette. If he was a crazy paranoid before the Snap I hated to imagine what he’d be like now if he’d survived. Unless I was incredibly unlucky, he was dead. What I did have to worry about was that the danger he posed in life hadn’t necessarily died with him. If he was living out here and prepping for the apocalypse then I could be walking into a house rigged to explode.
Thinking like a paranoid survivalist: it was getting easier all the time.
Forcing the front door seemed like walking into a trap. So I crept around the back. Peered through a window and saw a neatly made bed and clothes rack. No women’s outfits. Mac had been a bachelor. No surprises there. What was surprising was how utterly normal the rest of the house looked through other windows. A kitchen and study and lounge. Walls decorated with pictures of racing cars and football teams. No bars on the windows. Not a rifle rack or samurai sword or fascist flag to be seen.
The garage. That had to be his HQ. But when I looked through its window I saw Mac had driven an ordinary sedan rather than an armoured tank. His work spaces held tools and hardware, not guns and ammo. This didn’t make sense. There was no sign that Mac had been Davo’s number one customer. Standing there in the dark, I got it. Normality: that was the point. When the shit hit the fan, the safest refuge would be a place of no interest. Nathan had thought that when he took us to Law of Small Numbers, the crappy little accountant’s office in Parramatta. And if it hadn’t been for bad luck we’d probably still be safe there.
I smashed the window with the butt of my rifle. Sniffed the garage’s air. It was clean. I cleared the glass so I could climb inside safely without suffering the same fate as the Gizmos kid. That’s when my nostrils tickled. No cloying stench of decay but a definite whiff of death. I took off my night-vision goggles and clicked on my flashlight. Shining it through the car windows didn’t light up a corpse. There was no one swinging from the rafters. I got on my hands and knees. Looked under the vehicle. Nothing. But as I walked to the back of the garage the smell got stronger. I stood by a low table stacked with paint-tins and inhaled. Had someone cut Mac up into little pieces and stuck him in the cans? Or was I just mistaking their chemical fumes for the taint of decomposition? I picked up a four-litre tin, surprised to lift it without trouble—along with the two others beneath it. The next three cans the same. All empty—and all stuck together. This table looked heavily laden with paint but really held only a pile of tinned air. I pulled at its edge and the table slid smoothly out from the wall and a cloud of decay oozed into the garage from the open hatch beneath. I’d found Mac and his bunker.
Bandana over my nose and mouth, I climbed down a ladder into a room. Its ceiling was the garage’s concrete slab. Mac lay on his back in the middle of the floor inside a Hazmat suit with hood and respirator. He’d been struggling to tug a glove on when he’d crashed out. That hand was purple and swollen. I guessed the rest of him was also ripe inside the suit. But his cocoon and the cool conditions down here meant the smell was nowhere near as gross as it could’ve been.
I shone my torch across shelves of stuff Mac had collected to see him through any apocalypse—except the one that had actually happened. Enough ration packs and tinned food and tubs of nuts and rice and pasta to last for years. Big kegs of water. Camouflage outfits for forest and desert and snow. Two flak jackets. A compound bow and quivers of arrows. Hunting knives and fishing rods. Folding shovels and axes and binoculars and a little telescope that’d be handy. Night-vision goggles the same make and model as mine. A neatly arranged library of books about guerrilla warfare and types of aircraft and warrior philosophy and military history and bush tucker and celestial navigation. Other weirder titles like Agile, Mobile, Hostile: Man against Oppression, The Smiling Totalitarian and Say No to Illuminati Internment!
But Mac hadn’t been all paranoid work and no play. His bunker came with a little generator hooked up to a bar fridge and entertainment unit and wall screen. I picked up a music player. The screen showed he’d actually downloaded the 1001 hard rock classics you were supposed to hear before you died and that he had a massive selection of literary and philosophical classics as audiobooks. Had made playlists of music called ‘Fighting’ and ‘Training’ and collected chapters in folders called ‘On Endurance’ and ‘On Wisdom’.
Mac hadn’t lived long enough to listen to them or use any of his stuff. There was no evidence he’d even managed to make himself a meal of dehydrated beef stroganoff before it’d all been over for him. His double bed still had sleeping bags rolled up where pillows would’ve been. But it was what was under the bed that confirmed what I’d suspected: Mac hadn’t done all his shopping through Davo. I hauled out the metal lockers and opened them up.
‘Far out,’ I said, sitting on the floor. ‘Man.’
According to the manuals, I was looking at four AK-47 machine guns, each with three banana-shaped clips loaded with thirty 7.62 millimetre rounds, and a sawn-off 30-30 shotgun, complete with two cartons of shells. I recognised the pistol inside the wooden box as a .45. There were three cartons of bullets and a leather holster for that. I counted another thirty loaded clips for the machine guns, two dozen hand grenades, an assortment of smoke bombs and tear-gas canisters. Johnno might’ve fantasised about surviving the zombie wasteland or whatever but Mac had been prepping to emerge as its lord and master.
‘Where did you get all of this stuff?’ I asked him, delighted and horrified and impressed all at once. I pictured him doing shady deals, forking over extravagant amounts of money to criminals, spending his nights and weekends down here reading up and preparing for the big day. Then a stranger shelf caught my eye: bottles of liqueur, boxes of chocolates, romantic novels. This poor deranged bloke had hoped to share the space with someone special. Some otherwise unobtainable woman probably—a high school crush, a work colleague, the wife of a friend—he’d envisaged himself rescuing and wooing. My smile went south when I thought about what might’ve happened the longer Mac’s fantasies went unfulfilled. The crazy bastard might’ve shot up a school or office.
I shook off my spiral of speedy thoughts. Centred on what I had to do.
I wanted Mac’s best stuff. I didn’t want to keep coming back here as his body rotted.
It took me hours to lug what I needed and stack it in the garage. Then I laid down some plastic to seal Mac’s smell in and slid the paint table back into place.
I hiked back to the quad, senses tingling on another pill, flak jacket on and pockets filled with grenades, slinging an AK-47, feeling I could take on all the Jacks if they were stupid enough to come at me. I rode back to the garage and loaded the guns and ammo. I’d have to come back for the rest. But now at least we’d be able to put up a fight at Colonial Town.
It was mid-morning before Johnno and Stannis were awake enough for me to run through the arsenal I’d laid out on the restaurant tables. Neither had fired more than a .22 at rabbits before so I showed them what I’d learned about the AK-47s.
‘Child soldiers all over the world use them,’ I said, the words sounding familiar to me for a reason I couldn’t place. ‘Now, these grenades?’
‘Danby, can we close the curtains and door?’ Stannis said. ‘Gail and the boy are down by the lake but I’d hate them to see all this.’
I nodded and kept on, mouth going a mile a minute, holding up a grenade. ‘From what I read, you just pull this pin here, throw it as far as you can and get the hell down.’
Pale and fidgety, Johnno and Stannis watched me with big eyes. I didn’t know if it was because they were only now realising the trouble we were in. Or whether they didn’t like having a teenage girl tell them how to use these weapons.
I left them gingerly dry-firing their assault rifles while I took Nathan’s AK-47 to him along with camo gear in his size. He watched me open-mouthed as I raced through how if they came he could use covering fire and explosive grenades and smoke bombs to cover their retreat and—
‘Danby?’ he said.
I forced myself to stop talking. ‘What?’
‘Have you slept? I’m sure I can figure this out.’
I wasn’t tired. But I probably needed to recharge.
‘There’s a cottage down near the lake,’ he said. ‘Johnno’s made it up for you to get some rest. It’s nearest to the fence so if anything happens, you know, you can respond first.’
That was more like it. Tactical thinking. ‘Okay, but you’re sure you’re okay?’
Nathan nodded.
It wasn’t until I was in that cottage that I realised why they’d put me here. It wasn’t so I’d be the first to detect any intruders. It was so I’d be farthest from them. Fuming, I paced the room, furious they couldn’t see that what I was doing was essential, that I was doing all of it for them. I marched up to The Bushranger’s Redoubt, glad I didn’t encounter anyone, and grabbed a bottle of wine to bring me down.
·•·
On my way back from Mac’s the next night, quad loaded with tools and books and rations, my night-vision goggles flashed the word ‘Zoo’ at me from out of the trees. I slowed, turned back and followed the sign that pointed at a little side road.
I heard Midcoast Sanctuary long before I came up on it. The squawks and snarls, whinnies and snorts, growls and howls of starving trapped animals behind its high walls stripped my soul. Not caring about the noise it’d make, I used a sledgehammer to smash my way through the entrance. Inside cages and enclosures, alive and dead, were an ark’s worth of creatures. I went to work with boltcutters, .45 in the back of my trousers in case I needed to save myself from something I was trying to save. I opened doors and gates for roos and wallabies, quolls and dingos, donkeys and camels, emus and eagles, koalas and crocodiles, meerkats and mountain lions, spider monkeys and orangutans. I found Midcoast Sanctuary’s big side gate, busted its lock and left it wide open to a bush track beyond. I didn’t know if the animals would escape or if they could even survive in the wild. None of them seemed inclined to make a getaway. I broke into a shed. Found huge sacks of pellets that visiting kids had fed to the animals for a dollar a cup. Dumped them out for the marsupials, who shuffled over. At least it’d rained enough for their water troughs to be full. I grabbed a recently deceased wallaby and hefted it into the crocs’ enclosure. I wondered what the snow leopards had been fed and if there was any of it left. A quick search inside the zoo’s buildings revealed a cool room gone to rot. I found my way into a veterinary clinic. Saw a cabinet of tranquiliser guns, a drawer of big syringes, a fridge of vials. The humane thing would be to figure out how to put these animals down. But it wasn’t the human thing. Stepping back outside, I saw the snow leopards were gone. So was the dead wallaby—and the crocs. I hoped they found a river and a way to survive. Maybe they’d even pay my kindness forward by eating a Jack or two. But I wasn’t going to hang around and see if they fancied today’s Special.
·•·
I awoke on the floor of my cottage tangled in the earbuds of Mac’s music player with an empty bottle of wine and the Lord Howe brochure at my side. I remembered drinking and thinking as I listened to the survivalist’s best stuff. Rolling Stones, Blue Oyster Cult, MC5—they were bands Mum had introduced me to. I peered at the notes I’d penned in the brochure’s margins. ‘Light plane? Fishing trawler? Poss pop’n incl. tourists = 800. Chance of 1 x Situs survivor: approx 1/12. Find info re LHI food supplies/what need to take. Talk to Nathan.’ Talk to Nathan. I might’ve been drunk and high when I’d decided that but it still made sense. I washed down some Ibuprofen, pounded a whole bottle of water, used another to splash my face and brush my teeth. Brochure in hand, I stepped out of the cottage.
Stannis and Johnno were recalling classic football games as they drank beers and fished from the tall ship. Gail skimmed stones across the lake while the boy watched with his amputee blue bear clutched to his chest.
I wandered up the main street towards Nathan’s cottage, brochure and pad in hand. First I’d apologise for being a bit extreme. Not that I felt I needed to but it might soften things between us. Then I’d ask him to hear me out about Lord Howe Island as a possible refuge. Yes, it was a long shot, but if we could get there he’d never have to fight another Jack in his life.
Nathan was on his porch with his cast propped on a bench. He wasn’t wearing the camo I’d left him. I glanced at the stuff around him: blanket, pillow, bag of boiled lollies, bottle of soft drink. No tablet. No walkie-talkie. No AK-47. Nothing I’d done had made any difference to him.
He knew I was standing there but he didn’t look up from a paperback copy of Gone Girl. I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate but he adjusted his hold on the book so the N and E in the title were covered by a finger. Message received.
I stuffed the brochure and pad into my pocket, went back to my cottage, and read about the Vietnam War. When night came, I ate a turkey curry ration pack by the lake as I listened to the forest and imagined what’d happen if the alarms went off because Jacks were inside the wire. I had my AK-47, my .45 and shotgun and grenades. I’d lay down covering fire, blast at any chopper, hope the others got to the fence and—
My shoulders slumped. It was hopeless. I didn’t trust Johnno and Stannis to be much use. Nathan maybe even less now he’d given up not just on me but on himself. Sadness spread through me. Everyone here would probably feel safer without me around to protect them. The truth was I couldn’t anyway. It didn’t matter how many alarms or guns or rations we had. If the Jacks got to Colonial Town without warning we were finished. To survive we’d need to escape before they got this far.
·•·
Quad loaded with supplies, I wound up North Brother’s steep road in the darkness and pulled into a parking bay by a picnic hut. The mountain was the highest peak around. From a wooden lookout, I could just make out the lake and beach towns east of the mountain with my night-vision goggles. There were no lights anywhere down there. From a similar point on the southern side of the peak I had a view south and west of coast, farmland and highways. No lights shone anywhere there either. When dawn came, I found another lookout, tucked in rainforest, accessible by a loop path that was half smooth footpath and half jungle track. Between the three spots I had a panoramic view of the sea, coast and hinterlands. Bronze plaques named the landmarks I was looking at and how far away they were. The farthest should’ve been a mountain nearly a hundred kilometres north but it was lost in a wall of purple bushfire haze. It didn’t matter so much. The Jacks would be coming from the south and I could see up to fifty kilometres that way, to beaches past Crowdy Head and inland to the Pacific Highway as it ran through bush and paddocks and to a town in the distance that my GPS identified as Baroonah.
I set up my tent in a patch of rainforest and covered it with camo netting. Rolled out my sleeping bag, set out books and rations and equipment. I’d left Nathan a blunt note—‘On watch—W/T = Ch#4’. I hoped he might at least give enough of a damn about us to keep the walkie-talkie with him.
I patrolled the lookouts with my telescope and binoculars. Ghost ships out to sea. Dead beaches, inlets, rivers and towns all around. Horizon free of choppers and planes. I did the loop all day, pausing on each circuit to read a few of the engraved padlocks that’d been affixed to the safety fences.
Bella & Sherrin, Here from Brussels, 2018.
Ahira + Yoshi 4 Ever!!!
Life’s A Ride—Bill.
Like the painted rocks on the breakwall, they were stabs at permanence, boiled down to ‘I was here’. I kept patrolling until a few hours after dark before creeping back to my tent and sleeping fitfully. I awoke an hour before dawn, took the first dexie of the day and started over.
I stuck to my schedule, scanning through all points on the hour. The rest of the time I gave myself a crash course in everything I thought I should know. I did push ups and chin ups and sprinted and jogged around the rainforest loop. I devoured Mac’s books. Fighting Skills of the Special Forces had chapters on ‘Staying Hidden’ and ‘Silent Killing’ and I guessed one day I’d find out how much I’d retained. Urban Warrior set out the principles of distressing a bigger and stronger enemy by sowing chaos and confusion. While I waited for the chance to put that into effect I practised simpler stuff. Learning to pick locks was something that occupied a rainy afternoon. By the end of it I could open all the rusting relics on the lookout fences. I clipped them all back in place as a mark of respect for those who’d passed through and passed on.
Mac’s books taught me about Kokoda and Z Force and the Coastwatchers whose work was similar to what I was doing on North Brother. The ‘Russian Guerilla Girls’ chapter of The Assymetric Battlespace was particularly fascinating. I read about a woman named Yevdokia Bershanskaya whose ‘Night Witches’, a squadron of female aviators, had used flimsy aircraft to bomb the Nazis. And I was stunned by the story of seventeen-year-old sniper Klavdiya Kalugina, who’d shot enemy soldiers from a kilometre away and always carried two grenades on her belt, ‘one for the fascists, one for me’.
Mac’s books on bush survival helped me identify the birds and lizards and flowers and trees so that the landscape around me made more sense. I could tell a casuarina from a pine and knew that the rough-scaled snake that lived down by the toilet block wouldn’t hurt me if I left it alone. The red–brown rodent that had started to appear at dusk I was able to identify as an Australian bush rat rather than one of its introduced European cousins. Each night I tossed it scraps and over the blurring weeks Rat came closer until it was comfortable letting me pat it and discover she was a she. By then the name had stuck. Eventually, Rat was happy to make my tent her own and sleep there during the day.
The AK-47 became an extension of my body. I spent hours stripping it, cleaning it, putting it back together fast. I could switch clips in a few seconds and in pitch darkness. After much deliberation I decided to risk a hundred rounds on target practice, figuring actually getting good with the gun would make the remaining ammunition that much more valuable. My first few shots showed me how lucky I’d got when I’d hit that woman in Samsara. But by the time I’d finished I could put successive bullets through the centre of both O’s in the rainforest loop sign from a hundred metres away. I spent hours throwing grenade-size rocks until I had range, speed and accuracy.
Every second or third night I’d return to Colonial Town, clicking the security system off so I didn’t set it off as I entered, and sleep a few hours in my cottage while my devices recharged at The Bushman’s Redoubt. Before dawn, I’d stock up on anything I needed, make sure everyone was alive and then head back.
Creeping in one night, I saw Nathan out on his porch, reading by candlelight. He waved me over. I was glad to see he had his walkie-talkie and AK-47 within arm’s reach.
‘Hello, stranger,’ he said.
‘Hey,’ I said.
‘Where’ve you been going?’
‘A mountain down south,’ I said, tapping the walkie-talkie on my belt. ‘Keeping watch so I can warn you if they’re coming.’
Nathan nodded and I stepped closer. Since I’d seen him last his stubble had become a beard.
‘Look at you,’ I said, running my hands over my chin. ‘Very, uh, distinguished?’
He shrugged, managed a little smile. ‘Want to sit?’
My stomach clenched. I’d convinced myself he never wanted to talk to me again.
‘Just for a minute.’ I perched with my AK-47 on the edge of a chair. ‘So, um, how’s it going?’
Nathan laughed, shook his head.
‘What?’ I said.
He lifted one leg and then the other. Jeans. Legs. Boots. I slapped my forehead. ‘The cast’s off.’
I felt like a goose for not noticing. ‘How is it?’
‘A bit of a limp. I’m doing exercises but if you happen to run into any physiotherapists . . .’
I relaxed enough to smile.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
It was better than asking me if I was all right.
‘I’m good. Teaching myself a lot.’
Nathan nodded. ‘Keeping busy’s good.’
The silence stretched. Maybe I should bring up Lord Howe Island.
Before I could raise it Nathan cleared his throat. ‘Danby,’ he said, ‘I need to apologise.’
I looked at him. ‘You do?’
‘I did see your note on the blackboard. About making things right? That you’d be back tomorrow.’
I seethed, balled my fists by my sides. ‘Why’d you lie?’
Nathan sighed, rubbed his beard. ‘What happened with my ankle, the way you blamed me for Evan, how we’ve been with each other—everything. I was . . . angry. Like . . .’
‘Like?’
‘Like you . . . are.’
‘Me?’
Nathan nodded. ‘Angry.’
‘I’m not—’
‘Danby, it’s okay. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t traumatised. We’ve seen so much awful stuff it’s bound to mess with us.’
‘Are you saying I’m crazy?’
‘I’m saying I’m worried about you out there, worried about—’
‘What?’
Nathan took a deep breath. ‘What you’re doing to yourself with the drugs.’
I sputtered. ‘You buttered me up for an intervention? Is that what this is?’
‘No, it’s just—’
‘It’s just nothing. I know what I’m doing,’ I said. And I did. I was making sure I took vitamins, ate well and got some sleep every day. ‘Soldiers throughout history have used amphetamines. I was reading—’
‘Is that what you are? A soldier?’
‘Don’t make fun of me.’
‘I’m not. It’s a serious question.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. Someone’s got to keep us safe instead of just sitting around.’
‘I had a broken leg, Danby.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Okay, okay,’ Nathan said, hands up to placate me. ‘Look, I’m not telling you what to do but let’s just talk about what you’re taking? Make sure you’re not overdoing it.’
His tone—medical, professional—had my blood running hot.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, getting up, shouldering my AK-47. ‘What I need is to get some sleep before I get back out there.’
Nathan nodded. Knew better than to push me. ‘Okay.’
‘I’ll see you later,’ I said and walked down the pathway.
‘Danby?’ he called.
I turned. He held up the walkie-talkie. ‘I’m here, okay?’
·•·
I woke after dawn and berated myself for oversleeping because I’d have to risk travelling in daylight. Not going to North Brother wasn’t an option. The one day I ducked my duty would be the one day the Jacks came from the south. Riding the Bago Road to the Pacific Highway in the morning, it was harder to ignore how many people had perished. Taking this route with night-vision goggles had let me distance myself, the carnage rendered in varying shades of digital red and black, like a video game. But even pushing the quad up to fifty kilometres an hour, state forest a blur of green on either side of me, I couldn’t help seeing people blackened and shrunken inside matted clothes, bones and teeth white where skin had shrivelled. Then I realised what was beside a vehicle up ahead and I slowed the quad.
Next to a car that’d rolled into a tree was a plump blue arm that ended in a stubby paw. The weather had muddied the fur but I had no doubt that this was the limb the boy’s teddy bear was missing. I picked it up and tucked it among my supplies. I could wash it and maybe even use what I’d learned about stitching wounds to make the soft toy whole again. I peered at the driver, who’d died of his injuries crumpled upside down against the roof with a wallaby through his windshield. The man was too damaged and decayed for me to be able to make out any sort of resemblance to the boy. But the car was still filled with the stuff of their lives.
The man’s wallet was in the glove compartment. He was Kurt Harwell and he’d lived in Canberra. Inside a leather satchel were personal papers and court documents and newspaper clippings about a mother’s worry for the welfare of her five-year-old son Liam because he’d gone missing with his father during a scheduled custody visit. A photo showed heartbroken mother Sasha holding a framed portrait of the boy whose pale face was haunting Colonial Town. I opened envelopes and read angry letters Kurt had written to her but not had the guts to post. Long rants about his rights and what was best for his bloody son. Boasts that he’d taken them deep into the bush and that they wouldn’t be found. Justifications that he’d teach him to be a man better than Sasha’s ‘poofta’ new boyfriend would. The last of these semiliterate biro scrawls was dated 27 December. By then Kurt had obviously had a rethink and declared he was willing to return the boy in exchange for a guarantee Sasha wouldn’t press charges because after all who would that help in the long run?
December 27—and Kurt had given no indication he had any idea the Snap had happened. I tugged a map of Barrington Tops National Park from the satchel. A glance around the station wagon showed scattered camping gear: pots, tarps, sleeping rolls, plastic containers of rice and cereal and tins of beans and soup. Kurt and Liam hadn’t been fleeing the Snap. They’d already been hiding from the world. They’d been trying to go back when Kurt had hit the wallaby and lost control. At least he’d strapped his kid into a car seat. I wondered how long the poor kid had stayed with his dead dad before he wandered off.
I rode on to the North Brother turn-off. Took out my tablet and scrolled through the cams I’d put in place to see if anyone had been there in my absence. A dozen hours of fast-forwarded footage showed no one had gone to the lookouts.
Up in my tent, Rat on my shoulder, I compared Kurt’s maps to my own, using my thumb and finger to measure distances. If they’d been in a remote part of a national park on Christmas Day, there was every chance they were thirty-five or more kilometres from the nearest living people. At the very least, they would’ve been removed from large populations. That had to be it. How the boy had been protected from the Snap. When everyone else was being affected, he and his dad had been far away enough to remain Normal.
It was what I’d hoped for my mum. But Shadow Valley hadn’t been distant enough from the main towns of the Blue Mountains. She’d been within range of tens of thousands of people, who’d all been mentally connected with millions of others in Sydney. I wondered about the ocean liner I’d seen washed up. Had it been close enough to a big port to be infected by the insanity erupting on the mainland? Or had it been on the open seas but fallen victim because a floating population of thousands was enough to manifest the Snap? I didn’t have the answers but I was getting an inkling and it gave me hope. Across the world, in its most remote and least populated places, there really could be pockets of survivors untouched by the madness.
I pulled out the tablet and spent hours pinching and zooming the world map as I searched for places that were a long way from anywhere. There were island dots off Madagascar, coastal specks with unpronounceable names in Greenland, villages in the wild mountain terrains of Tibet. Without the internet, I couldn’t know definitive populations and distances, but it was possible that Normals were alive in thousands of these places. While I’d calculated less than a million people with Situs inversus had survived worldwide, there might be ten, twenty or even fifty times that number when you added in Normals. People that Jacks would never find or hurt.
As the sun faded behind the clouds, I let out a little whoop and danced around the mountain’s lookout, not caring that to anyone watching I’d have seemed as crazy as the Wild Woman. When I settled down, I went back to my tablet and stared at Lord Howe Island’s crescent of green in the vast blue emptiness of the Tasman Sea.