Andrea Höst: And All the Stars

It was impossible to get it all off, but she did manage to reduce her coating to a light powder, and cracked another bottle of soft drink to sip as she walked, fighting off the persistent itch in her throat. The clinker crunched beneath her feet, and occasionally she heard sounds which made her pause, poised to run, telling herself it was only rats, and far from reassured by that since she hated rats.

Aliens or rats, whatever it was stayed away, and eventually a point of light appeared ahead and the tunnel began to lighten. Soon Madeleine didn’t need her phone to find her way, and she picked up her pace even as she noticed a fine layer of powder covering the track and clinging to the walls. Circular Quay was not an underground station, and a thin coating of dust had settled over it, including on the train – a double-decker Tangara type, big and blocky – which sat on the track at the station platform. Fortunately it was not right up against the tunnel exit: first came a short section of track like a bridge, with a walkway along the side. Madeleine stepped up on this, and immediately looked out to what should be a sweeping view to the Sydney Harbour Bridge across the ferry terminals.

The only trace of the Bridge was a dim grey line. Years ago a great storm of red dust had picked up in Australia’s desert heart and swept across New South Wales all the way to Sydney, blanketing the city in a fiery haze. Madeleine had missed it, had woken only to a family car which needed a good wash, but she’d seen pictures of the Bridge hidden almost as completely as this. When her mother had told her that a tower in Hyde Park had let out a cloud of dust, she’d imagined a billow of smoke building to a cumulonimbus, something with edges. Not an entire desert’s worth of haze, to hide all landmarks and coat every surface white.

In the muted sunlight she noticed a faint purple tint to the cloud, and the whole thing sparkled, brighter motes catching the eye as they drifted. An alien attack which came in shades of lavender. Beneath this pastel blanket lay a city hushed, unmoving. Usually there were buskers playing down in front of the ferry terminals, their music threading through the chunk and clatter of trains and the rush of cars from the Cahill Expressway above. Today Madeleine could hear only a hum from the Tangara sitting at the platform, and maybe one or two cars creeping at a snail’s pace along the road overhead.

Slipping around the metal gate which divided the walkway from the platform, Madeleine headed for the escalators to ground level, glancing at the train’s lower row of windows as she moved. Through the film of dust she met the eyes of a half-dozen people staring up at her.

Their open horror made her flinch and for a moment she had a clear and exact picture of how they must see her. Not a skinny teen with big green eyes and hair on a life mission to frizz, but someone coated head to foot in unknown doom. Dead girl walking.

What was the dust doing to her? It itched against her skin, tickled her throat. Did her back and head ache because of bruises, or was that the first symptom?

But Madeleine was almost glad not to be like those who stared up at her. She had escaped the wreck of St James, and in a way gained a second release due to the certainty of her level of exposure. The dust cloud was not a barrier to someone who had waded through the stuff, and she was not locked in an air-conditioned bubble, hoping the train’s guard had closed the doors before any dust drifted inside. Would air-conditioning filter the dust out? How long would they stay there, unable to do anything but wait?

Head held high, Madeleine walked past two more carriages, and took the escalator down to street level. She’d lost her ticket, and had a moment as she wriggled past the barrier where she thought she could remember being thrust sideways, falling, and then she was out, walking through a ghost town powdered white.

In the hour since a tower of black had arrived at St James, the usual crowds of Circular Quay – tourists, office-workers, shop staff, ferry passengers – had vanished. Only the seagulls were out, shaking pale lavender wings and fighting over a spill of abandoned potato chips. But, as Madeleine found her way below the overpass and headed east, she realised that there were people everywhere. In cars, the windows wound up tight. Peering out of hastily closed shop fronts and restaurants. Crowded in tight, anywhere there was a door which could be shut, where gaps could be blocked with t-shirts or newspaper, where they could pretend the drift of white-purple had been safely kept at bay. Like the train passengers, waiting out some unlikely Sydney snowstorm. Trying not to breathe.

With visibility of no more than a few metres, it was disorienting walking through the cloud, but Madeleine was fairly certain she was heading in the right direction. A siren made her jump, and she turned sharply, only seeing the cloud and her footprints in the settling layer of powder. The blast didn’t belong to any vehicle, but seemed to be coming from all around her. As she moved on, she began to make out words, and realised it was some kind of emergency broadcast, though she couldn’t see the loudspeakers.

" …side…threat has been…panic…to seal…shut down…do not go…hospital…damp cloth… "

The snatches of instruction came and went, following Madeleine up to Macquarie Street, trailing her along the spiked metal fence of the Botanic Gardens, and fading completely as she neared the eastern border of the parkland known as The Domain and found the stairs leading off the promontory down to Woolloomooloo. The dust cloud was starting to thin and she could see a good portion of the seaside suburb below. Bracketed by two peninsulas – one park and one naval base – the bay was narrow and entirely dominated by Finger Wharf, with its long stretch of teal and white apartments, and row of impressive boats moored alongside. The water was as pale as the choking sky, a sluggish swell only occasionally breaking the surface layer of dust apart. It made Madeleine wonder how far west Sydney’s dams were.

A row of compact, expensive restaurants sat at the street end of the Wharf, their outdoor seating areas an icing-dusted display of half-eaten meals and overturned chairs. Every shutter was closed, every door sealed, and through the glass she could see more collections of the trapped, crowded together, sitting on the floor, huddled in despairing clumps. Staring back at her.

Even when the cloud settled, the dust would still be everywhere. How would anyone get home without kicking it up? How could they get rid of it all?

There was at least no difficulty getting into Tyler’s apartment. The electronic key to the residents' section of the central walkway gave her no trouble, and then she was unlocking his door, dropping her backpack, suddenly in a hurry to turn on the shower, to stand fully clothed in a blast of steaming water and watch her violet dress return to its original white and blue. A trembling weakness followed, because shedding that powder coat left her like the others: trapped and fearful. All she had now was the wait for the dying to start.

Shaking, staring down at the tinted water draining away, Madeleine’s attention was caught by her feet, narrow in strappy sandals. There was a crescent of carmine beneath the nail of her right big toe and for a moment she could only stare at it blankly, but then she was curling down, hitting her shoulder on the tap in her haste, scrabbling for soap, a nail brush, needing to erase a thing far more immediate than suspicious powder.

By the time no hint of blood remained, her toe was scoured red and her breath came in short, sharp pants. And then she coughed and spat glittering flecks, and laughed, and sobbed. Lucky! She was so lucky! She was not lying broken, was not a wet, shapeless bundle, a leaking horror to be crawled across and left behind in the dark. She had received a gift of life, a mayfly fortune, precious however temporary.