Andrea Höst - And All the Stars

Without another word she turned and walked back into the elevator, her heels clicking.

"Hello Twilight Zone ," Pan said, as it descended.

"Have you seen her before?" Noi asked, and Madeleine shook her head.

"Something you can discuss later–" Fisher began, and stopped as Noi suddenly gaped.

"Take Him Away Lady! It has to be! Holy flipping hell."

"You think so?" Madeleine stared at the elevator, but the woman was already out of sight. Could that hoarse, frantic whisper really have come from a person who looked like that?

"Has to be," Noi repeated. "And, yeah, now is not the time." She spun on her heel, craning to look in every direction. "Total fail on quick, quiet and unseen, but we’re going to have to risk it. Come on."

They were already near the north end of the long central hall, so it was a short trip to the aerial bridge joining the main building to the smaller block at the very end of the wharf.

"This is called the North Building," Noi said, after they had crossed, and the outside world was safely closed away once again. "When we were doing our check-the-neighbours shtick we didn’t find anyone alive in here. Almost all the apartments on the east side didn’t have anyone in them at all." She paused as Madeleine unlocked the door of their chosen bolthole. "One advantage of this one is that with the help of a ladder we prepared earlier you can jump the patio fences and dash for either the cars, or the boat moorings. There’s comparatively limited entry points, we can move through the whole sub-building without risk of being seen, and there’s a good hiding spot if anyone actually comes this far."

"You don’t think it too close to where you were before?" Nash asked.

"I think that right now there’s very few places where we can get in and out without having an encounter like we just had with the Take Him Away Lady, where there’s no-one on the other side of a wall to hear us, where there’s no easy line of sight through the windows. We might want to move again, sure, but I’m not driving madly through the city till I have a better idea of what’s going on."

"Makes sense," Fisher said.

"Why do you call her the Take Him Away Lady?" Pan asked, and Noi explained as they dumped their bags just past the entry hall.

The apartment was enormous, taking up the eastern half of the ground floor of the North Building, with a spiral staircase leading up to another quarter floor on the level above. Sliding doors led to an expansive patio bordered by potted hedges and a glass safety fence which looked directly out into the harbour. The sprawling lounge, dining and kitchen area which backed on to this was full of sunlight, and the room was dotted with touches which showed that this was a family home: children’s drawings stuck to the fridge, clusters of photos, and a stuffed unicorn arranged in one of the chairs. The warm comfort of the place seemed to make the day’s losses all the crueller, and they collapsed onto the wide lounges, suddenly depleted.

"Damn it," Pan muttered again.

Nash dropped a hand to his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. The taller boy looked worried, but turned his attention to the room. "This is Min," he said belatedly, while Fisher sorted through a collection of remotes.

"Pleased to escape with you," the younger boy said.

"Welcome, welcome." Noi gestured vaguely around the room, then paused and pulled out her phone, answering it as Fisher managed to turn on the wall-mounted television.

Images of silently-standing Greens were interspersed with scenes of unfurling stars, of fleeing Blues embraced to become abruptly composed and purposeful. The stars had found large groups of Blues everywhere, whether gathered to test their powers, or in the survival communities which had begun to form: swooping into dormitories, share-homes, repurposed hospital wards. One group of stars had even travelled far out beyond the fringes of their city, to a quarantine facility outside the dust zone.

"Hiding mightn’t be a plan after all," Pan said restively. "They don’t seem to have any problem finding Blues."

"The one at the school passed right by us and didn’t stop," Emily said.

"None of these places have been hidden," Fisher pointed out. "Most are Safe Zone sites whose locations have been broadcast. And we could hardly have been more noisy about the testing sessions."

"Aliens who surf the internet." Pan shook his head. "Great."

Noi’s fragmentary conversation reminded Madeleine to hunt out her own phone, and she was not surprised to see a half-dozen missed calls from home. The spectacle of Madeleine Cost being thrown to the sands of Bondi Beach had already flashed up twice among the stream of TV images.

Moving to sit on the spiral stair, she tried her home number

"Hi Mum."

"Oh, thank God!" A pause. "It – it is you, isn’t it?"

A tiny snort of laughter escaped Madeleine, and then her eyes stung and she felt ill and exhausted. "I don’t think the phone home stuff applies to all aliens," she said unevenly.

"Are you safe? Are you hurt?"

"Just a little shaken up. I’m with friends. We’ll try to leave the city as soon as we figure out a safe way to do it. Mum, I think you and Dad should go now. Go to Gran’s."

"Maddie, we’re not leaving without you."

"Please Mum." Her voice had gone tight and high and she struggled to bring it back under control.

There came the sound of the receiver being passed, then: "Maddie."

"Dad, make her go. It’ll be… Please. If I know you’re out of reach of this, it’ll help."

"Where are you?"

"Well hidden. Plenty of food. We haven’t decided yet what to do long-term, but for the moment we’re set to wait and listen."

Silence, then: "We were so proud of you today, Maddie. When you stopped to help that boy, I could see how afraid you were, and I–" He broke off, and Madeleine had to stand abruptly and go upstairs. Their conversation after that was fractured and full, and she broke down when it was done, and wept for the first time since she’d woken lying in dust.

After some time, Noi came up and handed Madeleine a steaming mug.

"There’s a few thousand spoonfuls of sugar in this," she said. "We’re all pretty shocky."

"Thanks," Madeleine mumbled, and sipped until her throat had opened, watching Noi as she wandered around the room.

The triple-wide landing at the top of the staircase had been fitted out as a spacious library, with floor to ceiling shelving on all walls, and even above the window seat which looked out over the navy base side of the bay. Most of the shelves were a riotous jumble of spines of all colours and sizes, but one bookcase held nothing but two-tone Penguin classics, and on another serried ranks of leather gleamed. The only furniture beside the window seat was a heavy coffee table, a curve-footed floor globe, and two vivid stained glass lamps. It was perhaps the nicest room Madeleine had ever been in, and she wished she was in a state to appreciate it.

"Who called?" she asked eventually.

"Faliha. They went straight south, didn’t come back here for anything. And then, well, her Mum…stopped. Is just sitting in the car, turned toward the Spire. Faliha wanted to ask if we had any information – and to check if we were okay."

"What if the Greens stay like that? Just standing, staring, until they starve and die? Shaun and Nick and Mrs Jabbour and…"

"The possessed Blues are gathering near the Spires," Noi went on, deliberately shutting down speculation. "That webcam trained on the Sydney Spire is still working, but only a couple of people have shown up so far." She paused, eyeing Madeleine critically, then went to the top of the stair and called down: "Come up here and I’ll show you why this place in particular."