one. I dropped them each by my feet where they landed with a dull thud. I thought maybe the ones right at the bottom of the pile would be the driest and I was right. With heavy lugs of the axe I split them into smaller wedges. Then I carried all the wood, dry and damp, up to the porch. I took off my shoes, hoodie and tracksuit pants and took each damp piece of wood in, stacking them against the kitchen wall. It took an age. When I was done I gathered up the smaller dry pieces and took them into the living room.
Max had found a few old newspapers in the garage. We scrunched the sheets into balls and stuffed them into the fireplace. I made a little tepee over the top with the thinnest strips of wood, my substitute for kindling. Max lit a match and threw it in. The newspaper caught fire and the room lit up with the sudden glow. Max and I watched the fire intently as it devoured the newspaper and flames shot and rumbled up the chimney. The tongues of flame lapped and curled around the shards of wood. I waited until the fire built before carefully placing a larger log inside. We didn’t breathe, waiting to see if the wood would catch. Finally, just as the fire ran out of kindling and started to die away, the turpentine bark flared and a long thin flame quivered and reached up. Max and I exhaled. We rocked back onto our bums and hugged our knees, gazing at the flame.
The knock at the door startled us, like a teacher shouting from the front of the classroom when you didn’t know you were doing anything wrong. Max and I looked at each other. The knock sounded again. Dad wouldn’t knock. I got to my feet and went to the door, Max at my heels. I looked through the peephole: cops – one guy and one girl. Hot worry rushed thick and black through me. I swallowed and opened the door. The girl beamed at me.
‘Hi there, I’m Constable Lund, this is Senior Constable Palmer. We’re just doing a whip around the neighbourhood to see how everyone’s doing with the power out. Your mum or dad home?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
She was young with a kindergarten-teacher smile. The guy was putting on a serious ‘I’m a cop, you’re not’ face. He was older than her but not by much.
‘Our dad went out Wednesday night. Hasn’t come back. I reckon he must be stuck because of the ice.’
Practice was making it easier to say, almost. Constable Lund nodded.
‘There’s been road closures. We’ve got a lot of people stuck on the freeway, they’ve been taken to shelter until we can open the roads again. I’m guessing you haven’t had any phone contact with your dad? Most of the servers are down.’
‘No.’
‘Hmm.’ She took out a notebook. ‘What’s your dad’s name?’
‘Greg Heath.’
The guy turned away and said something into his radio. I heard Dad’s name.
‘Why is the power down? When will it be on again?’
‘Apparently it’s because of the amount of carbon in the air. We really don’t know when it will be back up. I’m sorry we can’t give you better news. Are there any adults in the house?’
‘Just me and my brother.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Eighteen,’ I lied.
Constable Lund looked concerned. It suited her. Her partner was clearly trying to come over all
‘I’ve put a call out to try and get some info on the whereabouts of your dad,’ he said.
‘Okay.’
‘Is there a neighbour you can stay with, so you’re not on your own?’ Constable Lund asked.
‘We’re doing okay.’
‘Do you have enough food for the moment?’
‘Yeah, we’re pretty stocked up.’
‘Good. We’re advising people to stay inside as much as possible.’
‘Is the snow radioactive?’
She glanced at CSI. ‘We really don’t know yet. We don’t have that equipment; the defence force is taking care of those investigations. Just try to stay inside, okay? Do you have bottled water?’
‘Some.’
‘Good. Probably best to stick to drinking that for now. Maybe ration it and only drink what you need to. We’ll pop back in if we get any news on your dad. Try not to worry. Either way, we’ll be back in a few days to check up on how you’re doing.’
‘Okay, thanks.’
‘Take care.’ Constable Lund smiled and her partner gave me a curt nod. They trudged up the driveway and I closed the wooden door, resenting the warm air that had escaped.
Five
I continued to send failing text messages to Mum, Dad and Lokey. And Lucy. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened with us that afternoon if it hadn’t been for the missiles. Having so much time on my hands only intensified my endless conjecture about the whole thing. So I decided to go see her. Don’t get me wrong, my purpose wasn’t to go to her house and jump her, I just wanted to see how she was doing. Maybe it was because she was the only person I cared about who I could go and physically find, Lokey lived too far away to walk.
I told Max I was going to see Mr and Mrs White – he would have been unbearable if he’d known I was going to see a girl.
It had been days since I’d been outside. I expected to step out, go up the drive and onto the street, breathe in the space, look out over the valley and see that my world was still here. I didn’t expect to feel the claustrophobia of a world faded to grey. The pressing wall of the sky. Air that may or may not kill me. A deadened, suffocated still. The silence was oppressive. The only movement was my own breath. I made my way up the hill, looking at each house as I passed, each lawn smothered in grey, curtains drawn against the cold. The Ketterlys at number nine had their roller shutters down. Their house was one of those places that seemed designed to make all the other houses in the street look inadequate – roughly the size of a hotel with a fountain out the front. I mean, a fountain – what a wank. The guy was a surgeon and liked everyone to know about it. I bet he was wishing he had a heated driveway like Bill Gates. With the shutters down the house looked like a prison.
It seemed like the world was in hibernation. There were no birds calling, no breeze ruffling the trees, no cars passing down the street, no kids squealing, no lawnmowers. It wasn’t like the pause before a breath. It was like the world had suffocated. I lifted my face to the cold unfamiliar face of the sky and walked up the hill.
I wondered where else it was snowing. Was it snowing in the city? Was it snowing in Perth? Adelaide? It was impossible to gauge the seriousness of the whole thing without any information from the outside world; like being blindfolded in deep water and not knowing where the edge was. Mum used to talk about going on holidays to the country when she was a kid. No television, no phone. It was like taking a break from the rest of the world for two weeks, she said. A war could start and you wouldn’t even know about it until you got back. I used to struggle to imagine living without even a mobile. Surely the electricity was back up somewhere, it was just the mountains left in the dark, wasn’t it?
If things got bad Mum would come back for us. I clung to that while I trod water in the deep. Where the line was between this and bad, I didn’t know.
Lucy’s house was close to Starvos’ supermarket. From the outside, it looked as closed up as every other. I went up the drive and knocked on the front door. I waited – nothing. I knocked again. Still nothing. I followed the driveway down the side of the house where I came to a large window, the curtains were drawn across but there was a gap. With my hands cupped against the glass I could see into the living room and through to the kitchen. There were no signs of life. I knocked on the window anyway, called through the glass. Nothing.
I tried to replace the hollowed-out feeling in my chest with the idea that she was somewhere else warm and safe.
