Authors: Andrea K Höst
"Can I
keep
you?" Madeleine asked wonderingly, and then laughed with Noi at how that
sounded. "I'm guessing you get that
a lot. It must be nice to be good at
something so useful."
"What, and you aren't?" Noi said, looking
pleased. "I'd kill to be able to
draw like that." She nodded toward
Madeleine's sketchbook on the coffee table. "I can't believe you did those from memory."
"Not a useful skill," Madeleine muttered, and
shrugged at
Noi's
questioning look. "My mother wants me to be a vet. There's no money in art. I need a real career, need to be
practical
,
can still paint in my spare time." She pulled herself up, hearing the resentment leaking into her
voice. "Guess none of that matters
now. Did you always want to cook?"
"Hell, no. I was
destined to be a pro basketball player." All of five foot nothing, she grinned blithely. "Well, okay, maybe I did watch a few too
many episodes of
Masterchef
when I was a
kid. And food's a big thing in my family
– I'm Thai-Italian, so I'm like Aussie fusion cooking incarnate. My Dad would have preferred I finished Year
Twelve before starting my apprenticeship, but he knew it was the only thing I
wanted to do." Her smile faded, and
she stirred the bubbling pot of fudge.
"I'll go get dressed," Madeleine said, hesitated,
then murmured "Thanks," and
left it at that.
After another raid on Tyler's closet, they disposed of the
pancakes and found a second backpack for carrying supplies. Madeleine took a moment to remove the boring
print over Tyler's bed and hang his portrait, balancing the frame of the
stretcher on the hook. She refused to
acknowledge any symbolism to the gesture.
"We'll have to search some of the apartments for car
keys later," Noi said as they headed down. "But my bike should be enough for this trip. Meet me out front."
It was still early, a breezy and overcast day with a chill
southern breeze. Madeleine wished she'd
added a jacket to her ensemble, and tucked her hands into her armpits as she
walked slowly down the wharf, attention on the Spire flirting with the
clouds. Every velvet step reminded her
of warm, unnatural stone.
A tutting motor warned her of
Noi's
emergence from the driveway on the eastern side of the wharf. Her curls foamed beneath a white helmet and
she rode a cream moped, speeding to a precipitous stop at the curb.
"I've only the one helmet, sorry," she said. "The Cross is closer, so we'll head
there. Anything you particularly
need?"
"Underwear," Madeleine said, sliding onto the seat
behind the shorter girl and feeling a little ridiculous.
"Underwear it is!" Noi said, and shot them across
the street, past the Woolloomooloo Bay Hotel, and by a collection of tiny
terrace houses. She rode with verve and
obvious pleasure at having no competition for the road, but it was the shortest
of trips, and when they reached the shop-lined streets around King's Cross
Station she slowed to a crawl, staring at ragged holes and spills of safety
glass.
"Looks like we're late to the party," Noi
said. "Looting: the new
economy."
Madeleine was shocked by the destruction: there was hardly a
shopfront intact. King's Cross had a
certain reputation for a drugs-and-prostitution nightlife, but it was an
ordinary enough inner-city suburb otherwise.
"What would anyone need from a nail salon?" she
wondered.
"Cuticle crisis? Hangnail emergency?" Noi
shook her head. "Let's do this
quickly."
Tucking her moped between two cars, she led the way into a
Best
& Less
, snagging a couple of
enviro
-bags from
a checkout. The store offered a full
range of cheap, serviceable clothing, and there was no sign of whoever had broken
the door open, so Madeleine quickly stuffed bags with clothing suitable for a
Sydney winter, and slipped on a plum-coloured coat with a white lined hood.
"Did you see a shoe store?" Noi asked, joining her
at the door. "I want some serious
boots."
"Next to the chemists?"
They left the unwieldy bags at the moped, and headed to an
up-market shoe store, with a brief detour for chargers from a phone specialty
shop. Madeleine quickly found sneakers
and some comfortable slip-ons, then told Noi she'd be next door.
The chemists was a disaster zone, and she hesitated at the
door, not overly surprised at the mess. The scatter of items in the front of the store was nothing compared to
the complete shambles at the back, where a pharmacist would dispense
prescription medicine. But Madeleine
didn't need anything serious, and slipped off her backpack to do a cautious
tour, collecting aspirin, toothbrushes, tampons, and a couple of bottles of
cough mixture in anticipation of flu season. Heading out, she paused and picked a box off a shelf, reading the label
doubtfully.
"They were four very
fanciable
boys weren't they?"
Madeleine hastily tried to put the box back, but Noi plucked
it from her hand.
"No, no, it's just what I was thinking. Though I see this packet has Science Boy's
name written all over it."
Madeleine stared. "I didn't–"
"Oh, come on. I looked
at that sketch pad of yours. Some nice
pictures of me and the other three, and about a thousand of
he-who-dives-down-stairs. You couldn't
have been more obvious if you'd drawn love hearts around each one."
"He's just a good sub – what are you doing?!"
Noi, attempting to shovel an entire shelf of condom packets
into Madeleine's backpack, sent half of them scattering to the ground, but
tucked in the rest. "No, don't back
down on good sense. Even if not Science
Boy, it can't hurt to put in a supply. There's got to be a few thousand reasons why
getting preggers during a starry blue apocalypse is a bad idea. Better yet–"
She slung the black boots she was carrying around her neck
and waded into the mess in the pharmacy section.
"Drugs, drugs, damn, someone really cracked a rage fit
back here, didn't they? I should have
put the boots on first." Glass
crunched. "Hmm, that might be
useful. Hey, does your phone have enough
juice to Google the name of – oh, wait, that looks right..."
Arms full of boxes, Noi waded back and tumbled her load into
what little space was left in Madeleine's backpack, scrunching them down so she
could zip the bag up. "Painkillers,
antibiotics and the Pill. Probably. We'll look them up when we get back. All done?"
Madeleine considered the backpack uncertainly, thinking
Noi's
practicality immensely premature given that Madeleine
had never even kissed anyone, and Fisher hadn't looked at her twice. Then she sighed and slipped the bag over one
shoulder. "Which of them is it you keep
texting?"
Noi's
grin broadened. "Pan. Which, damn, is giving me fits because, seriously, a Year Ten boy? He's got to be only sixteen. Or fifteen. I don't know if I could handle fifteen. I don't think fifteen's even
legal
."
"How old are you?"
"Eighteen! And,
yeah, I know – no-one would think it strange if our ages were the other way
around but it's a big mental adjustment for me to be chatting up someone in
Year Ten."
"Half the world is dead, we just robbed four stores, and
you're worried about liking a guy two years younger than you?"
"Priorities, I have them."
They headed out, Noi swinging her new boots by their tied
laces as they debated the best way to occupy the rest of the day, and then
puzzled over transporting so many stuffed bags on a moped.
"Hey, hey, more damsels in distress! You two want a hand?"
Three people were walking toward them: two guys in their
early twenties and a younger girl.
"No, we're good," Noi said. "We don't have far to go."
"You sure?" asked the one in the lead, tall and
blonde with a surfer tan. "It's no
problem."
"Yeah. Thanks
anyway."
The blonde guy shrugged and waved, but his friend, short and
sandy, gave them a dirty look as he turned away which made Madeleine glad Noi
had refused. The girl, between the two
men, hesitated, fine pale hair drifting across her face. She looked painfully young and overwhelmed,
and Madeleine felt suddenly sick.
"You okay?" Noi called.
The girl's eyes widened, sending a frantic message which she
stopped short of saying aloud.
"Hey, what's the problem?" surfer guy said. "This is our friend Emily. We're taking care of her."
"You need a place, come with us," Noi said,
speaking directly to the girl.
"Mind your own business, bitch," snapped sandy guy.
"Just walk over here," Noi said, still talking
straight to the girl. She swung her pair
of boots lightly.
"Little girl, you think you can fight us with
those?" Surfer guy sounded pleased
by the idea. "Man, even in the old
world you wouldn't have a hope. But this
is the new world! The Blue
world!" He laughed, bubbling over
with good humour, then lifted an arm and pointed his palm at a nearby shop
window.
Nothing visible came out of his hand, but the window still
shattered, a wide round hole punched through the safety glass, little crystalline
squares showering the display.
"Shit, all of us can do that," Noi said. "You think you're special?"
"Uh-huh. Big
talk, shortie. I think you're the only
fighter on your side. You might want to
get out of here before you get hurt."
"No."
Madeleine wanted to run, but she stepped forward to
Noi's
side, gripping the metal pole of a parking sign for
support.
"You're the ones who're outgunned," she said,
putting as much quiet authority into her voice as she could manage. "Leave before I do this to you."
Lifting her free hand she aimed the palm at the windscreen of
the nearest car, and pushed out with the strength which had been in her since
the surge, giving her all in order to impress.
She'd kept her eyes on the leader, and only saw the result of
her effort in peripheral vision as, with an enormous smash and scream of metal,
the car shot back and then flipped up, setting off a cascade of collisions
climaxing with the first car's descent, a smack-bang coda only a ton of metal
falling out of the sky could provide. A
half-dozen car alarms rose in discordant chorus.
The reaction of the two men was, thankfully, exactly as
Madeleine had hoped. As she stood there,
one hand wrapped around the metal pole and the other still pointed at the
destruction she'd created, they turned tail and ran in the opposite direction,
and did not look back to see that she still stood, hand out, head high, eyes
fixed on the place they had been. Paralysed.
ooOoo
The aftermath followed the same course as the time at St
James Station, with the added complication of Noi, who managed to lower
Madeleine's arm, producing a burning sensation in her shoulder. When, soon after, Madeleine curled down to
clutch her knees and gasp in pain, the girl hugged Madeleine protectively, not
realising that made the pins and needles worse.
Despite the blaze of pain Madeleine could feel Noi shaking,
so struggled to say through stinging lips: "
S'okay
. Jus'
tempry
."
"I reserve the right to panic," Noi replied, with a
gasp of relief. "I've called the
apple-green cavalry to give us a lift."
By the time the cheerful Volkswagen arrived, the worst had
passed, and Madeleine was sitting almost upright, bracketed by Noi and the
blonde girl, Emily, all her limbs feeling disconnected and not quite hers. Recovered enough, though, to appreciate the
stunned reaction of the four boys to the line of five cars rammed into each
other, garnished with an upended sedan whose engine had been driven almost
through to the boot.
"Questions later," Noi said, as the cavalry piled out
of the car. "This is all way too
noisy and attention-getting. Can you
stand,
Maddie
?"
Standing wasn't much of a problem with so many hands ready to
help, though Madeleine was feeling far too vague and floaty to navigate herself
to the back seat of the Volkswagen, and yet found herself there, Emily on one
side and Fisher on the other. As Gav was
cheerfully exchanging names with Emily, Madeleine remembered the squares of
fudge Noi had given her before they set out, tucked into the front pocket of
her backpack. A backpack now sitting on
Fisher's lap.
Painful heat washed through her as she stared at the
overstuffed bag. He couldn't possibly
know, had no reason to open it, but–
Fisher frowned. "What is it? Are you going
to be sick?"
Madeleine looked away, head spinning. "Where's Noi?"
"Ferrying the court jester," Nash said, nodding
ahead just as
Noi's
moped cut in front of them, Pan
balanced precariously backward, indulging his inner hoon by holding arms and
legs out at the same time. But it was
Nash's expression which caught Madeleine's attention. Fond, indulgent. Enough to make Madeleine wonder if it was not
Pan's age which would get in
Noi's
way.
Trying not to picture the contents of the bag spilling
everywhere, Madeleine turned resolutely to the girl on her right. Tall, fine-boned and delicately pretty, with
the kind of silken, straight hair which Madeleine sighed over on the days when
her own was determined to imitate steel wool.
"Emily? Sorry,
didn't mean to be so...over the top."
The girl ducked her head, colour flooding through porcelain
skin, but then lifted her eyes and said fiercely. "I'm glad you did. They were such awful people, pretending they
wanted to help. I couldn't find a way to
leave without them getting angry."
"What more can we do to get the word out, Fish?"
asked Gavin as he followed Noi onto the private road along the eastern side of
Finger Wharf. "People are checking
on each other, grouping up, but for kids like Emily here there's too big a
chance they'll walk right into the wrong person. The site messages, Twitter, it's not
enough."