Soon Read online

  Ah, the sunrise. At least we have that in common.

  The others arrive in short succession, one eye always turned to the sky and the approaching dusk. Bedding is yanked from back seats, and dogs encouraged to roam before being confined for the night. We are experts at these slumber parties, geriatric gettogethers. Misery loves company, they say – add to it a shot of fear and you have the perfect cocktail for ongoing social whirl.

  I’m morose tonight, savagely so. It’s not just the booze; we are all glummer than usual, huddled within my small, hastily tidied lounge room, the curtains drawn, like the sheet draped over a birdcage at night. With Liz and the kids gone it’s too quiet, there’re too few of us left. The children were like a good behaviour bond, an unspoken restraint in the presence of innocence. We’d make the effort to be jolly: Here we all are, isn’t this fun, what ho! We’ve lost our pretence now; we are teeth rather than smiles. We don’t bother covering our stains.

  And we’re all getting old, except for Stick, who could be anything from thirty up. One of those people born grizzled. The kids were a bit of noise, necessary energy. Sods that they were, at least they were lively. Without them we’re like a funeral party. Which tonight, I guess, is what we are. That knowledge doesn’t help.

  Gail’s managed to rustle up a bottle of wine, she pulls it from her overnight bag, a generous and rare gesture. How she’s kept it out of Tom’s clutches is beyond me.

  Already he’s bleary, tottering, but I guess I can’t really talk today, belly full of whiskey from morning tea. I manage to locate four wineglasses, and make do with a tumbler myself. It’s not often we’re all here. I’m used to Milly and Li; the others seem an intrusion, cluttering my space, disturbing my dust. But necessary under the circumstances; I need to be gracious. Or I’ll end up like Rolf.

  As if on cue, Gail calls a toast. Her eyes are already brimming. ‘To Rolf.’

  ‘Rolf,’ we all echo, glasses raised. It’s interesting, the personalities revealed in the motions: Gail’s toast is overdone, melodramatic; Milly’s is graceful, her glass raised with dignity; Stick’s and Tom’s efforts are perfunctory, barely a tip to formality. There’s a brief pause while we sip – a good New Zealand white, very nice – then Tom’s got his glass up again.

  ‘And then there were …’ he booms. As if we needed reminding. Beside him Gail heaves and sobs.

  Six. And then there were six.

  We’re dwindling. Down to dregs. Yesterday we were seven. And last week, before Liz threw the kids and whatever she could fit into the station wagon and fled, we’d been eleven.

  At winter solstice last year, the day it all began, we’d been a typically dying, but nowhere near dead, country town of 547 residents. Nine months ago.

  How time flies. Only nine months since the convoy of silent grey vehicles drifted along the main street of town, anonymous dark-suited men immobile within them, and disappeared in the direction of the cemetery.

  The cemetery. It seems we all have the same thought at once. It’s too horrible to contemplate.

  ‘Jesus,’ Tom’s saying, ‘they wouldn’t bury Rolf there, they couldn’t do that to him.’

  And then we’re all quiet, trying hard not to look at Milly, who sips quietly at her wine while one cupped palm rubs a throbbing elbow. Outside the whispering is starting, curling round the house with the wind.

  I stand up; it’s time to serve some food. Once the whispers build it can be challenging to eat anything. On my way to the kitchen I switch on the television, loud.

  There’s been an earthquake somewhere, thousands of survivors destitute, stranded without food or water. I hum as I dig out the plates.

  It’s a quiet meal, unsurprisingly. It’s only a passable stew, but we tuck in, always appreciative. Food is a wonderful distraction. Stick’s eating with gusto, he usually does. I think he mostly lives on packet noodles. And spliffs, of course, that’s the only real reason he’s still here, where else could you grow a crop so undisturbed? He keeps half an eye on me, though, never quite sure how much I know, how safe he is. I couldn’t care less, but I like to keep him on his toes and, truth be told, at a bit of a distance. How anyone could stand being stoned under our circumstances is beyond me.

  It’d be enough to drive anyone mad. Stick’s living proof of that.

  He’s pretty quiet tonight. Has been since Liz left. I think he managed to share her bed every now and then, so he’ll be feeling the loss. She won’t be, though; she may have been a bit of a flake in some respects, our Liz, but she knew a dead loss when she saw one. Some nights he was lucky, but mostly he wasn’t, and she would never have shared anything more than the occasional stress relief with him. She wasn’t all that keen on him being around the kids, and old Rolf hates – hated – him with a passion, would always have his teeth bared.

  It amazes me that in a community depleted almost to nothing, we can still find the motivation to dislike each other.

  But then Stick is a special case. It’s his eyes, something in the set of his jaw. He has about him the gleeful, shrewd brutality of a crocodile. One day I might mention his crop to Sean. For now, though, he’s number six, and that’s all that matters. We can’t afford to lose any more. It makes the focus too intense.

  Though, having said that, Gail’s starting up. There are some things, no matter how desperate you feel the circumstances, you could do without, bugger the numbers. It’s usually about now, when the wailing outside’s starting to gain force, and everyone’s finished eating except her – she never gets through a meal, it adds to the dramatic effect.

  Like clockwork. She gives an elaborate shudder – her idea of an introduction, like the raising of stage curtains – and places her cutlery carefully, elaborately on her plate, which is pushed ever so slowly away, as if with deep, deep regret at not being able to eat another mouthful. The tears well at this point, the mouth quivers. She has the routine down pat, gasping sobs to accompany the first of the wails outside. A duet: drawn-out, turgid theatre perfected over time. Faded grey wisps of hair wave from her clips, small escape attempts: Let us go!

  ‘I can’t …’ she starts. Tom, just as predictably, has fetched a bottle from his bag and started work on it. No escaping strands on his head: what’s there is well and truly flattened. He ignores his wife, effortlessly.

  Milly is up, gathering the dishes, the purpose in her movements singing clearly, here we go again. The dogs follow her into the kitchen.

  Gail eyes Milly’s back as she retreats. ‘It’s not as if we have to stay. Jon …’

  ‘Be quiet, woman!’ barks Tom.

  We disperse at this. Jonathan, their only son, took off for New Zealand the minute he could get away. Not many cross the Tasman in that direction, but a drunken disgrace of a father and a mother perpetually soggy with brimming tears are a pretty good impetus. Apparently he moves a lot, they don’t always have his current address. Good on him, I say. I do not think about my own daughter.

  In the kitchen Milly stacks the dishes and I retrieve the remainder of Rolf’s Tullamore Dew and attempt discretion by using mugs.

  ‘She’s off,’ I say as I hand Milly hers. ‘The Greek Chorus.’

  ‘Tragic.’

  ‘Predictable.’

  ‘Typical.’

  ‘Pathetic.’

  We stop and raise our mugs.

  ‘Woeful,’ Milly says. ‘To Rolf.’

  ‘Rolf,’ I reply.

  I’ve just swigged a large gulp of my drink when the kitchen door creaks open, and Stick sidles in, holding a tin of dog food and a bowl. Gina and Felix raise their ears and sit at casual attention on their haunches.

  ‘Just got to feed Elvis. You wouldn’t have a can opener, would you, mate?’ Elvis is Stick’s staffy, a mad thing that has to be shut in the laundry, to stop it attacking the other dogs. I cross to the top drawer, but Stick doesn’t take his eyes from the mug I’ve placed on the table.

  ‘Cheers,’ he says when I hand him the can opener. I have the feeling that it wa
sn’t really what he was after.

  It’s a strange, and I think inherently human, trait that no matter how few members of a group there are, it will always divide itself into alliances, never stay completely homogeneous. Like oil and water. Even we, the pathetic remnants of what used to be a town, are evidence of this. While it isn’t exactly uncommon for us to be all together like this, it isn’t usual. It’s been more so since we lost Liz, and now Rolf’s death has brought us together again, but it’ll only be temporary. Tom and Gail aren’t really welcome anywhere, truth be told, which is why they are still in Nebulah. Lucky us.

  Stick usually sticks with them, though – shifty little bugger knows that Tom’ll be generous once he’s had a few, and there’s nothing like a free drink. Gail’s whining doesn’t seem to get to him, and he finds Tom’s drunkenness amusing rather than frustrating. He’ll put up with most things. Most leeches will.

  Liz often spent her evenings with them: the kids were more indulged there, giving Tom an excuse for stupidity and Gail something to cry over. But Milly and Li were closer to Liz; the three of them formed a practical female bond around the children, free of the dripping sentiment of Gail. When the school ground to a close, Milly took over from Liz’s laughable attempts at home schooling, although the discipline side of things was always a struggle with those boys. They were always a little wild, and with the instinctive cunning of unruly children, they recognised that the situation was beyond any control of ours. You can’t get kids like that to respect authority when they perceive it to be powerless.

  ‘I hate you!’ Dylan, the middle one, screamed at me once when I caught him throwing rocks at the windows of the empty houses down on Middle Street. ‘I’m going to come round to your place one night and open a door.’

  ‘They’re just kids,’ said Milly, ‘they don’t understand. It isn’t healthy for them, being here, there’s too much threat. And they need to grow up with other kids their own age.’ She paused. ‘Hell, if they just grow up they’ll be doing well.’

  Rolf was the self-imposed exile, our recluse. He was your archetypal old codger, kept himself to himself. He’d emigrated from Scotland as a young man, with barely more than his fare, and travelled the country on foot or by thumb, working as a roustabout till his back collapsed and he became sedentary. He settled in this district for no particular reason – he was someone who didn’t require anything. He’d no relatives or family, and when Liz and her sons, more or less just toddlers then, moved next door to him, instead of there being hell to pay, he’d uncharacteristically taken to them in a fiercely loving, grumpy-old-man kind of way. He’d scowl at Liz’s outfits, shaking his head as she laughed at his expression, and it was him who christened her Swamphen, in acknowledgement of her braying bursts of laughter.

  ‘I s’pose ye wanna help paint?’ he’d growl with resigned reluctance at the boys’ eager faces, and they’d scurry over the fence to find old shirts and paintbrushes laid out ready for them. They adored him, were always following as he limped around his place, fetching him hammers, nails, screwdrivers, with delighted self-importance. He was the only one they’d listen to – had it been Rolf who’d chastised Dylan for breaking windows, he would have been crushed with remorse.

  While he’d kept his distance, Rolf’d always treated Milly and Li with the utmost respect, particularly Li. Their independence and refusal to give up, and Li’s unfailing commitment to her farm, appealed to his own values. He treated them with the outdated courtesy that comes of old men whose contact with women over the course of their lives has been at a distinct remove.

  But Stick he’d detested, and Gail and Tom had infuriated him, with their amused and painfully indulgent condescension, as if they bestowed favours.

  When Liz took the boys, the cloak of his isolation, previously a comfortable fit, had shrunk around him, to become as constrictive as a shroud. Instead of solitary he’d become lonely, the whole tenor of his existence distorted, out of tune. He knew he could have come to us – we invited him every day – but the awkwardness of inclusion for someone of his age and solitary habits would have been more painful than the loneliness.

  It was typical of him to have died as he did, without ceremony and without a note. He owed us nothing.

  I’ve discussed this with Milly before, this tendency to split into camps, even in the most dire of circumstances. She’s had a lifetime of watching it in the schoolyard. She says at heart human beings aren’t really far removed from poultry, that William Golding should have called his classic book Lord of the Chickens.

  I can see her point, but it doesn’t really have quite the same ring to it.

  We dawdle in the kitchen as long as we can manage. In the lounge room Tom is snoring in a chair, and Stick is setting up his swag between the sideboard and the dining table, in the corner of the room furthest from the windows. The faint odour of dog sausage clings to him.

  Gail will have Li’s bed, sharing my spare room with Milly. She is sitting tensely on the couch, wanting to turn in. The dogs, who usually spend the evenings on the couch, sprawl resentfully on the floor at her feet. She looks up with a pained and accusing air when we come in, as if it’s Milly’s fault that she isn’t capable of going off to bed on her own. I can feel Milly’s irritation. There is something in Gail that provokes this, even in the most patient of people.

  ‘I think I’ll have a cuppa,’ says Milly suddenly.

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ I say. ‘Might be a movie on.’ Gail sags.

  ‘You go on to bed,’ Milly tells her. ‘I won’t wake you.’

  Gail’s face turns grey at the prospect of leaving the room on her own. Even after all these months. She is not a personality to adapt.

  ‘No, no,’ she says, without enthusiasm, ‘I think I’ll have a cup of tea too.’ So here we are, our big jolly slumber party. What ho, indeed.

  Outside the mist responds, in the disturbing way it has of sometimes picking up our thoughts and moods and throwing them back at us, distorted and mocking, the most intimate and unsettling of intrusions.

  What ho? It shrieks in at us now, what ho? Like a rapist asking his victim, Is that good? The windows rattle with the force of its laughter.

  I settle close to the TV and concentrate on keeping my teeth unclenched.

  I came to Nebulah twenty-two years ago, transferred over from the east when my marriage stopped sputtering and came to a grinding, unavoidable halt. I wanted to put as much ground between me and Mildura as I could. I always blamed Gina, my ex-wife, for the move, citing the need for distance from her breakdown and her bewildering raft of accusations, but the truth is that she was only ever just a part of it. I’ve never really been much of a cop, only joined the force to spite my old man, coveting the chance to display a bit of authority. But authority has to be innate to be effective, it isn’t just magically bestowed on you with a uniform. I never really had the right mindset for the job, and I’ve always hated violence, which was unavoidable in that line of work. After a night-shift beat I could shake for days. They knew it, too. I started drinking pretty early on.

  When the opportunity came to transfer to Nebulah, a two-bit town in the middle of nowhere, a career dead end if ever there was one, I grabbed it, had the removalists in before my uniform was back from the cleaners. Gina had made our divorce proceedings both bitter and public, so the professional indifference behind the transfer was pretty well camouflaged by personal drama, and there were no obstacles. And anyway, they were pretty desperate to get someone – most cops would despair of days spent warning kids on unregistered trail bikes or slapping farmers’ wrists over inadequately secured loads. It wasn’t considered a desirable position.

  For me it was perfect. I cut my drinking back to a few beers, gave up smoking (again), got myself a heeler pup that was obedient and loved me unconditionally. I couldn’t resist calling her Gina, relishing her adoration, and her obedience. A much more satisfying arrangement. She was a beautiful dog; I had her for fourteen years before a snake got her in the
long grass out at Dawson’s place.

  The current Gina is an Alsatian, another comfortingly affectionate companion.

  We all have dogs, of course. (Except Tom and Gail – Tom, drunk, had let Nelly, their Jack Russell, outside one evening when she was barking. I’d had to deal with the remains the next day, Tom maudlin with self-pity and Gail in hysterics. Rolf never did: he had always been indifferent to animals, and refused to have any kind of dependant.)

  Most residents who didn’t have a dog before the mist soon procured one – thinking, for some reason, that they would be protection. Before long people just got too spooked and shot through, and a lot of them left the dogs behind – hard enough to find a new place as it is without a dog in tow. And you know how dogs are, they soon formed into packs. So, as if we didn’t have problems enough, we found ourselves in a town empty of people but full of half-wild dogs.

  It had to be dealt with, of course, but it was a sorry task. I hate shooting dogs. The pregnant bitches were the worst. That’s where Stick turned out to be useful; he followed the echo of my shots one day and tracked me out to Aliceson’s Corner, to see what was up. I had my doubts about the wisdom of letting him help, but he was a relentless hunter, with no visible qualms about shooting anything. To see that intensity so focused could be disturbing. He didn’t get excited or celebrate a success, he just killed, methodically and emotionlessly.

  Frankly, it was easier just to give him the bullets and let him work off whatever it was that was driving him. His girlfriend, a cowed and pudgy woman with badly dyed hair and tatts, had shot through when the mist started, I suspect with a considerable portion of Stick’s stash, and his eyes had taken on a smoldering glow that I was finding worrying. Much better that he work it off on the dogs.

  I had noticed then for the first time his fingers, long and slender, like a pianist’s. He’d wrap them round the rifle’s trigger with artful and fatally effective grace. It was the only time I ever had any inkling of his attractiveness to women, in those moments as he took aim, deliberate and skilful over his shots.