‘You made it into the city,’ Effrez says gravely.
Noll and I explain the situation out west, how we left with Max and Lucy.
‘We came to try and find my mum,’ I tell Mr Effrez. ‘We thought she would be able to help.’
‘And did you find her?’ he asks.
I don’t reply. Noll explains to Effrez that we had just come from seeing my mother when we met him.
‘She says she can’t do anything for Noll and Lucy.’
‘What are you going to do, Fin?’ Effrez asks.
‘He’s going to get Max and go back to her.’
‘No I’m not, Noll.’
‘You have to, Fin. It’s stupid not to.’
‘I’m not leaving you and Lucy.’
‘And so we come to the moment when I saw you taking out your frustrations on an innocent bicycle,’ Effrez says.
We sit in silence for a few minutes. Noll clears his throat.
‘I didn’t know you lived in the city, sir.’
‘Yes. I used to travel all the way up to your fine school purely for the privilege of working in such beautiful surrounds.’ He smiles. ‘You all took it so much for granted, leaving your Coke cans and chip packets lying all over the place.’
‘Yes, sir. We did… Are you here on your own?’
‘It appears so, Arnold. My lovely wife relocated to sunny California with her tennis instructor not long before the missiles. Although I suspect it isn’t quite as sunny now.’ He looks at me. ‘No one has the capacity to disappoint us like our loved ones. Yes. I am on my own, which has made it easier in many ways. This life isn’t sustainable, however. Like your mother told you, Findlay, there will be widespread famine if individuals continue to rely on outside sources for food. Have you considered leaving the city?’
‘Where would we go, sir?’
‘Do you remember in class when I told you about the community that were heading down south, near the Royal National Park? They have set up there. There are lots of feral deer that can be hunted. Place is full of them and they can survive the cold. There’s also mines, deep enough to tap into underground water sources.’
‘Why haven’t you gone with them?’ I ask.
Effrez doesn’t answer straightaway. He turns his mug around in his hands, eyes downcast.
‘My daughter was in Melbourne at university when all this started. She told me she was leaving to come up here. To come home. I was going to take her there with me. She hasn’t arrived. Obviously. I can’t leave here without her.’
The silence that comes is something I am becoming used to, the grief of not knowing. Effrez stands and takes our mugs into the kitchen.
He shakes our hands when we leave, giving us each a pat on the shoulder. And it seems that while our world has tilted and capsized, not everyone is pushing – some are scrambling to make room for others to cling on.
‘Think about what I said,’ he says. ‘Come back and see me either way.’
As Noll and I walk with our one remaining bike back to the car park. I try to think of what to say to Max when he asks if I found our mother.
The gloaming fades to black.
The moment Noll and I come down the tunnel into the car park Max bolts to us.
‘You found her, didn’t you? Didn’t you? You were gone ages – I figured you must have found her. Was she there?’
I stand there looking at him, my mouth trying to make the words.
‘Did you find her?’
‘Yes.’
He leaps up and grabs me around the neck. I gently untangle myself from him.
‘Why aren’t you smiling? Why aren’t you happy?’
Lucy’s eyes meet mine. ‘What happened?’
‘Are we going now?’ asks Max.
‘No.’
‘In the morning?’
‘No. Max, please. Settle down.’
‘Why not? You found her, didn’t you?’
‘Max! Just give me some space.’
He frowns and his lip starts to wobble, but he puffs himself up, fighting it.
‘She… she can’t help all of us. She says she can’t help Lucy and Noll.’
‘What? How come?’
‘There’s… it’s complicated. She just…’
Noll steps in, finding the words I can’t get hold of. ‘There’s limited resources. She can help immediate family and that’s it.’
Lucy drops her gaze to her feet. She takes a few steps away and sits down on the ground, drawing her knees up to her chin.
‘We are not splitting up,’ I say. ‘We are not going to do that… We met Mr Effrez, our English teacher—’
‘What?’ Lucy turns around.
‘There’s a community down south, self-sustaining. He thinks we should go down there.’
‘But what about Mum?’ asks Max.
‘I don’t know, Maximum.’
‘I want to see her.’
‘Then I’ll take you in the morning. But Max, she can’t offer you any more than rations and a place to sleep. There’s no future. Even when this passes, there’s going to be famine.’
‘These people in this community,’ says Noll. ‘They’re going to try and sustain themselves away from the system that left us to starve on the other side of the border.’
Max looks at me with his big innocent eyes.
‘But, Mum…’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
Thirty-nine
It is late and Max, Matt and Alan are asleep. Noll, Lucy and I sit by the remains of the campfire, cutting plastic bags into strips and winding them into balls.
‘The best thing about going south is it’ll give us something to do,’ says Noll. ‘The worst thing about this is the fact there are no distractions. It’s like being locked in your own head on a permanent basis.’
‘I would have thought…’ I hesitate.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What? Come on.’
‘Well, don’t you pray? Doesn’t that help, like, occupy your mind?’
‘Not exactly leading the most prayerful life at the moment.’
‘Why not?’
He smiles sadly. ‘It says in the bible that when Jesus is getting crucified, he looks up to the sky, and…’ Noll sighs and I see that there are tears in his eyes. The first I have ever seen, even through all the shit he went through at school, even when he told me his parents were dead and he was all alone, I’ve never seen him cry. ‘He says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”’ Noll tries to laugh. ‘We don’t use words like forsaken any more. Why is that? All I can think now, when I try to pray is, God, why the fuck have you forsaken us? We’re just fucking kids, Christ was Christ, he could take it, but us? Why the fuck would you forsake a bunch of kids? And Fin, you really, really shouldn’t swear at God.’
I swallow hard, feeling the ache of tears behind my own eyes.
‘I think He can take it, Noll.’
His tears start to spill. ‘I don’t want to die. I’m afraid to die. My parents willingly stayed in a place they knew would be destroyed. They waited for their deaths, they didn’t run away to save themselves. Look at me. I stole food from another man and here I am scrambling around in a car park,’ he motions to the twine in his hands, ‘trying to hold onto this world, this screwed-up world.’
‘I don’t think you should feel guilty about being scared,’ says Lucy. ‘You said that God doesn’t want this. Doesn’t that make it okay to be scared?’
Noll keeps talking, I’m not sure if he has even heard her.
‘I really don’t want to die. And, you know, it’s ironic because for ages I did want to. I used to come home from school and scope out places where I could hang myself.’
‘Shit, Noll.’
He laughs a little. ‘Now look at me.’
‘Noll, don’t stop praying,’ I say. ‘Please don’t stop praying for us, Noll. Please.’ Maybe it’s because I’ve just witnessed my mother give up every principle I thought she believed in. I don’t think I can handle Noll caving. I can’t. But the idea that we are the wisest beings in existence is terrifying, like Lucy said. Maybe I’ve developed a faith in God that is second-hand, I need Noll to hang onto it.