Claire Zorn - The Sky So Heavy

I wait. Nothing.

I try again, but if he is still alive he is not here.

We drive back to the highway. We pass the ghosts of the library and McDonald’s and as we come into the next town I disturb the pool of silence by suggesting we go past the supermarket. Noll catches my eye in the rear-view mirror and I shrug.

‘You never know.’

We pull into the empty car park. Noll slows as we drive past the supermarket entrance. There is a space where the sliding glass doors should be. Snow has drifted in over the shiny lino floors. Noll stops the car and I get out, Lucy follows. Max opens his door.

‘Stay.’

‘C’mon—’

‘Stay,’ I bark. He gives me the finger and I return it.

The shelves are bare. There are a few items abandoned in the middle of the deserted aisles: a mop, some rolls of paper towel, shampoo bottles, a packet of nappies. Nothing we can use. Most of the registers at the checkouts have been smashed, their computer monitors lying on the floor. We head back out to the car at the same time three guys come around the corner of the building. They see us and approach, not looking like they are after casual conversation. They have the same desperate look as the people we saw earlier and, as they get closer, I see that they aren’t that much older than us. I think one of them used to go to our school. Lucy and I quicken our pace.

‘Oi,’ yells the biggest one. They make it to the car before we do. I silently curse myself for not hiding the food better in the back – it’s blatantly obvious through the windows. One of them stands in front of the back door, we move to go to the other side but the biggest one blocks us.

‘Give us your food,’ he says.

‘Back off,’ says Lucy.

The big guy smiles. ‘Stay out of this, sweetheart,’ he says and I can actually see the moment when Lucy notes that the guy is way bigger than her and decides she doesn’t give a crap.

‘Who the hell are you calling sweetheart? You think you can just take our stuff?’ she says.

‘Yeah, I do.’ He thumps the driver’s window. ‘Open up!’

I pull open my coat and lift the edge of my hoodie. I point to the gun tucked into the band of my jeans, trying to make out like I’m used to making hardcore gangsta-style threats. ‘Piss off, yeah?’

He puts his palms up, backs away from the car. The others do the same. Lucy and I get in.

Noll accelerates. I can see Max gripping the upholstery of the front seat, his face is white.

‘What did you say to them?’ Noll asks.

‘I said Lucy had tuberculosis and was highly contagious.’

‘They fell for that easy.’ Noll looks at me in the mirror. I shrug. He drops it, but I don’t think we have convinced him. We leave the car park and turn back onto the highway at an intersection where traffic lights stand like monuments to some past era. Noll keeps to the left of the highway even though there’s no one on it and no cops to tell him otherwise. The light is fading and I know we won’t get far before nightfall.

Driving in the dark, you can almost pretend that nothing has happened, that the world is the way it was before and you’re not running. There is nothing on either side of the car, just black, and we follow the cold light thrown before us by the headlights of a dead woman’s car. The lines on the road are lost beneath the ice and slurry and there is nothing to guide us. Noll loses the road and noses the car up an embankment. We are going so slowly that no one screams, not even Max. Instead we are just irritated – cold, hungry and irritated.

Noll tries to back the car up, but all it does is whine. We sit in silence for a moment, then Noll heaves his door open and gets out. Beside me, Lucy sighs and tilts her head back, looking to the roof for guidance, or strength, or maybe she’s just sick of looking at the dark. I get out of the car.

Noll kicks at the snow around the front tyre. I get a shovel from the back of the car and start to dig.

‘You think we’ve got enough petrol to make it to the city?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know. We’ve got a quarter of a tank but I’ve got no idea how much it takes to get there. Do you?’

‘No idea… Want me to drive for a bit?’

‘Yes.’

We get back in and I put the car in reverse and roll back onto the road. We begin again. I don’t know why, but in my head I can see Mr Effrez. He is sitting at his desk in my old English classroom. The windows are gone and there’s snow over all the desks. He sits in the dark, stroking his beard, thinking. But my imagination is wrong, inaccurate, because in the picture there is a moon up in the sky.

I don’t know how long we’ve been driving on the freeway. It runs from the mountains, across the plains to the city – a drive we’ve all done countless times before and even though it’s dark now, the scenery is tattooed in my memory. Suburbs sprawl out from it on either side, huge urban mazes that merge into mini-cities themselves: housing estates with cul-de-sacs, sporting fields and shopping centres. I imagine everything covered with grey snow, like sheet-covered furniture in a big, vacant house. Maybe we’ve been driving an hour, maybe two. It’s a trip that used to take an hour, but at the pace we’re going I feel it’s going to take at least four.

We pass the cheerful sign that welcomes us to the city of Sydney and marks the beginning of the western suburbs. Maybe we will meet a sort of station where there’ll be cans of food and people with clipboards checking off names. I will give them my name and they’ll smile and lead me to where my dad is sitting with a cup of tea and a Milk Arrowroot. That’s not going to happen. I know that’s not going to happen.

When the headlights catch a sign that says ‘State Emergency Service Information Centre’ and points to the middle of the road we all lean forward slightly in our seats, craning to see further ahead. Then a line of orange witches’ hats appears in front of us, I brake, swerving to the left. The car slides on the ice and this time Max screams. I spin the wheel and manage to pull up just before we hit a parked car. Most of the witches’ hats come off second best.

‘Thank you, Need for Speed ,’ I say, feeling the thud of my pulse in my temples.

Ahead, a demountable building is illuminated by our headlights. It stands in the centre of the freeway, where the grassy median strip once was. There are two cars parked next to the demountable, but no light coming from the building. We get out of the car. Our feet crunch on the snow and the hinges of the car doors squeal through the silence when we close them. Max, Noll and I look at the building but don’t approach it. Lucy flicks her torch on and doesn’t hesitate.

‘Luce, wait.’

I follow her. She shines the torch at the cars. They are both covered with snow and have broken windows. We head for the steps and see that the door is hanging open. Lucy shines the torch into the black. The whole thing feels like a scene from a Cohen brothers movie. There’s a couple of plastic chairs and a two-legged wooden desk. A map of Sydney and the Greater West clings to the wall, pierced crookedly into place with thumbtacks. It is marked and divided by red, hand-drawn lines. Below it, on the ground, is a puddle of snow partially covering what looks like a big burn mark on the lino floor. We look up at the ceiling, and there’s a hole, a makeshift chimney. There is nothing else in the place – the official-looking people must have eaten all the Milk Arrowroots, burnt their clipboards and fled.

Outside, Noll is peering through the broken windows of the parked cars. ‘Someone’s already got to the fuel,’ he says before I can ask.

We head toward our car, but I’m soon aware that Max isn’t beside me. I turn around and can make out his shape in the black, still lingering by the mouth of the demountable.