energy, feeling its connective, circular rhythm replaced by the equivalent of a blank sheet of paper, a perfect and disinfected emptiness without the need or the capacity for change. She pushed back the bedclothes and sat up again, scrunching the sheets with her hand to clean it, uncertain what she should do. A giddiness took hold of her. She shook off the mists of sickness, noticed the sour aftertaste of a drug in her mouth, and remembered why she was in this bed.
She had to get out of here. Moving as quickly as she could, she got up, put on and laced up her shoes. As she put on her coat, she again saw the image of the three people in her mind and this time took possession of it angrily, holding onto the fact in its impossibility and extremity. I did that, she told herself. Never forget that. I took those people apart like that. That’s mine, I’m never going to forget that. She looked at the bed with its blankets pulled back to display blood splashed between the ribs of light, dark butterflies on the white sheets.
Like the action of a narcotic, she felt a numbness set in, a severance from the surrounding world. She left the room but then was forced to go into the bathroom next door. She sat on the throne, acutely aware of various wastes purging themselves out of her body and feeling the ache of menstrual cramps. She did not know why she should need to bleed when she had schooled every other need — food or warmth or shelter — down to its fundamentals. She cleaned herself as well as she could when she was finished but could only find a hand towel to soak up the flow of her blood. She washed herself again, almost compulsively, and then, badly dehydrated, drank copious handfuls of water from the tap.
She had no perception of what time it might be, she only wanted to find her backpack and then leave the Temple as soon as she could. She left the bathroom and went down the stairs. Silence was diffused like an undisturbed sleep throughout the darkened building, she could not even hear cockroaches scuttling. She tried the back door but it was locked. The Temple was difficult to get into or out of once the doors were shut against you: it was a place of thick walls, barred windows and strong locks. She stopped outside the office and listened for any sound to suggest there might be someone in there, but heard nothing.
Opening the door carefully, she saw by the streetlights through the bare windows that the room was empty. She found her pack, placed out of sight inside the tiny windowless kitchen. It was open and had been searched, the contents disturbed. As she looked around, she saw a blister packet emptied of all its tablets on the bench next to the sink.
She picked it up. Rohypnol 2 mg. She did not quite laugh as she stared at it. She thought: I need a gun.
She knew things that Graeme did not realise she knew. Under the floorboards in his office, she found his own insurance as he called it: a solitary gun and a good supply of ammunition. She took both, putting the ammunition into her pack after loading the gun with the expertise he had taught her. It was larger and heavier than the one he had originally given her. She weighed the gun in her hand and felt an immediate relief to have it, knowing that, of all things, it was something she could rely on. Because if you can use a gun once, then you know how to use it again. This last thought was a negative whisper in her mind.
The office computer, a powerful and expensive machine, had been left on; its tiny orange lights were intermittent pinpricks in the dark as the monitor slept in power-saving mode. She glanced towards the open door but saw and heard no one. The whole building had a sense of abandonment. Holding onto her gun, she woke the screen and went out on the Net, quickly.
Turtle, are you out there? It’s the Firewall. Are you there?
You don’t want to know. Out here. With a gun in my hand. For real.
I’m holding it right now. I’m holding it because I think I might need to use it. It’s just so strange to know that.
I don’t know what else to do now. I need the protection.
There are worse people than me out here, Turtle. And yeah, I am frightened of them. You can believe I am.
No, this is not you, this is me. I don’t want you to take this on. But I don’t know. I really don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve got nowhere to go now.
I said before, there’s no point in doing that. Anyway if you do go to the police, all they do is bash you up.
The ones I know do. No, I’ve got nowhere to go. Except maybe …
Home? It’s the only place left on earth now, isn’t it? And it’s the worst place to be. My brother rang me the other day. He wants me to come home. But if I do go back there now it’s because everything I’ve done has taken me back there, not for any other reason.
Maybe. If they want me, maybe I will. I was just thinking about it really, that’s all. There just isn’t anywhere else now.
No, Turtle. I did do it. And I did it because I thought she was evil. But I woke up just now and all I could see in my head was all that blood and what those people looked like. And I think — I have to think this, don’t I — if that’s what she is, then what about me? Aren’t we both the same now? Aren’t we both killers? I don’t want to be like her. But I am.
So what does that mean? I don’t know where my head is any more.
But that mad thing is me. I wonder, would I feel like this if I’d only shot her and not that man? I just don’t know what to think.
As she typed this, Lucy looked up to see the refuge van, with its lights dimmed, drive across the open space at the back of the picture theatre and come to a halt in the shadow of the building.
The back door opened and he appeared there in silhouette. He was looking, it seemed, straight at her. She was certain that he had seen her and raised her gun, waiting for him to come towards her. He did not.
He shut and locked the door behind him and walked quickly up the stairs, to his room. In the half light she could see that he was carrying a small white paper bag, something round and compact. A fit, was Lucy’s instinctive thought, the kind you get free and anonymously from the needle exchange. She was certain that it was intended for her.
She did not wait. She went to the back door and shot the lock open, stepped out into the cold night air and sprinted down the alleyway towards the street, still holding onto her gun. As she reached the end of the lane, she heard what seemed to be a shout behind her, a strange guttural sound, but she did not stop to look back. She cut her way breathlessly past narrow rows of terraced houses, sprinting silently on the tips of her toes. As she ran, she heard a car behind her, its engine suddenly engaged. Its lights caught her briefly as she ran and she sped up, reaching the Peace Park on Church Street, coming through a small grove of eucalyptus trees to the sandstone wall bordering the cemetery at St Stephen’s Church. There she lost the strength to run any further.
She collapsed on the ground, dropping her pack, and leaned against the wall, curling into the stone out of the light.
She crouched there, gathering breath and looking back at the small grove of trees but no one appeared after
