better place?’
‘I’m going to use your mantra, Fin: I don’t know… I really don’t. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to… aggravate things. It’s too late anyway, we did what we did,’ he says it so gently that I can’t come back at him. Anyway, I know he’s right, about us.
Thirty-four
I leave at first light again, carrying my old friend, the axe, with me. I walk a few blocks beyond the shopping centre. The ground is slick with melted snow. Already there are people around. On one corner a man trades soft- drink bottles full of kerosene for food. He calls out to me, holding a Fanta bottle outstretched.
I round a corner and am confronted by a row of about six houses that have been incinerated. All that is left are blackened frames and piles of charcoal. I walk along the street and see that the fire has partially destroyed two apartment blocks as well. I guess that with no working fire brigade a fire could get big enough to consume everything in its path. A figure stands among the rubble, prodding at the debris with a long stick. Further along, outside one of the unit blocks is an army truck. An officer emerges from the building with a dark shape carried over his shoulder. He dumps it in the back of the truck with others. It’s then that I realise he was carrying a body. Bile rises in my throat and I vomit onto the pavement. The army officer barely gives me or my axe a glance.
The heap of rubbish outside my mother’s apartment building now spills across the footpath and onto the street. A few metres further up the road a woman emerges from a house and dumps a bucket of raw sewage into the gutter. I go into the building, up the stairs. I pound on the door, already resigned to the fact that it is a waste of energy. Then I raise the axe over my shoulder and slug it into the door.
The chaos of the place is so typical of my mother it is reassuring. It’s hard to say if it has been exacerbated in the last few months. I scan the mess for anything that might indicate where she has gone, letters, papers, anything. The lounge and adjoining kitchen offer no clues. I go through to the bedroom. The bed is unmade. Clothes lie discarded on the floor. Her nightstand is cluttered with books and then there, beneath a Stephen King thriller, a pile of papers. I clutch at them, knocking the stack of books to the floor. There are minutes from a university faculty meeting six months ago, car rego papers, travel itinerary for a conference, a library fine. Nothing useful. And then, as I drop the papers onto the bed, one of them slips off onto the floor, landing face down. On the back is scrawled a note: ‘Crisis Response Headquarters, Sydney Town Hall’.
It’s all I have.
Before I leave I go through her kitchen. There isn’t much, but there’s enough food to fill my backpack: Weet-Bix, dried fruit, rice cakes.
I have to walk for a while before I see a bike. It’s chained up (push bikes have become quite the commodity) but I still have the axe and I’m more accurate with it than ever before. The ride into the CBD is surreal. The roads are cluttered with abandoned cars, signs of failed attempts at navigating the icy bitumen. The CBD feels like the empty set of a disaster movie, as if you could push against a wall and have it topple over, nothing more than plywood and styrofoam. Then I come to George Street, where office buildings merge with the main retail district of the city. I pass the Queen Victoria Building, a four-level shopping complex of sandstone, stained glass and nineteenth-century opulence. Nearly all of the large glass store-fronts that line the ground floor have been smashed. You can see where opportunism has gone from the initial smash and grab of luxury handbags and designer clothes to the desperate raiding of cafes for food and wooden chairs to burn.
Across the intersection from the Queen Victoria Building stands Sydney Town Hall. It looks gothic in the half-light; the same sandstone style as the Queen Victoria Building. The paved square between it and St Andrew’s Cathedral further along is crowded with military vehicles, surrounding the escalators that lead from street level down below to what used to be a food court and entrance to the railway. The entire area is enclosed by a high razor-wire fence. Two army officers stand at the gates of the barrier. Another stands at the top of Town Hall’s marble steps, in front of the doors.
I have nothing to lose.
I choose an officer, the one whose eyes are slightly more glazed than his companion’s. He raises his chin defensively as I approach.
‘Morning,’ I say. He doesn’t respond. ‘Can you help me? I’m looking for my mother. I think she might be working here.’ His grip on his weapon shifts. ‘Her name is Libby Streeton, could you find out if she’s inside? This is the Disaster Response Headquarters, isn’t it?’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Why not? Could you just ask?’
‘No. You need to vacate this area.’
‘Why? Please, couldn’t you just—’
He raises the rifle, points it directly at my chest. ‘Piss off.’
‘Would a bottle of whisky make it easier?’ I ask. He narrows his eyes, prods the rifle into my ribs.
‘I will fucking kill you,’ he says. ‘Piss off and don’t come back.’
I back away, pick up my bike and ride back to the car park.
Max runs toward me as I enter the car park.
‘Did you find her?’ He is like an over-excited labrador.
‘No. But I got a bit closer. I think. She might be at Town Hall. There’s a crisis response headquarters set up there or something. I couldn’t get in.’
‘Why not?’
‘It was barricaded off. I couldn’t get in.’ The hope drains from his eyes. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll keep trying, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
Thirty-five
Alan makes me a cup of strong black tea.
‘You go to your mum’s by yourself?’ he asks.
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m not sure that’s the wisest idea, mate. You should take Noll with you. I’ve heard of some very ugly things going on out there. Just the other day someone was attacked coming back from the ration handout. Stabbed. Food taken.’
‘It’s cool, I didn’t have any food.’
‘Even so. Do me a favour and take Noll with you next time.’
‘Not sure he’d want to. We’re not exactly best mates.’
‘Is that right?’ Alan eases himself down onto the floor next to me. He sips his tea and I notice his hand trembling.
‘You eaten today, Alan?’
He shakes his head. ‘Can’t keep anything down. Stomach’s crook.’
I feel my chest tighten when he says that.
‘Aw, don’t look at me like that, Fin. You’ll break my bloody heart.’
‘Alan, you know—’
He holds up a hand. ‘I don’t want to know. Knowin’ ain’t going to make any difference. Now, let’s have a talk about your mate Noll.’
‘Don’t think he’s ever really thought of me that way.’
‘He’s here with you, though. And would I be right in saying you wouldn’t have got here if it weren’t for each other?’
