Claire Zorn - The Sky So Heavy

Noll steps in, finding the words I can’t get hold of. ‘There’s limited resources. She can help immediate family and that’s it.’

Lucy drops her gaze to her feet. She takes a few steps away and sits down on the ground, drawing her knees up to her chin.

‘We are not splitting up,’ I say. ‘We are not going to do that… We met Mr Effrez, our English teacher—’

‘What?’ Lucy turns around.

‘There’s a community down south, self-sustaining. He thinks we should go down there.’

‘But what about Mum?’ asks Max.

‘I don’t know, Maximum.’

‘I want to see her.’

‘Then I’ll take you in the morning. But Max, she can’t offer you any more than rations and a place to sleep. There’s no future. Even when this passes, there’s going to be famine.’

‘These people in this community,’ says Noll. ‘They’re going to try and sustain themselves away from the system that left us to starve on the other side of the border.’

Max looks at me with his big innocent eyes.

‘But, Mum…’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

It is late and Max, Matt and Alan are asleep. Noll, Lucy and I sit by the remains of the campfire, cutting plastic bags into strips and winding them into balls.

‘The best thing about going south is it’ll give us something to do,’ says Noll. ‘The worst thing about this is the fact there are no distractions. It’s like being locked in your own head on a permanent basis.’

‘I would have thought…’ I hesitate.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What? Come on.’

‘Well, don’t you pray? Doesn’t that help, like, occupy your mind?’

‘Not exactly leading the most prayerful life at the moment.’

‘Why not?’

He smiles sadly. ‘It says in the bible that when Jesus is getting crucified, he looks up to the sky, and…’ Noll sighs and I see that there are tears in his eyes. The first I have ever seen, even through all the shit he went through at school, even when he told me his parents were dead and he was all alone, I’ve never seen him cry. ‘He says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”’ Noll tries to laugh. ‘We don’t use words like forsaken any more. Why is that? All I can think now, when I try to pray is, God, why the fuck have you forsaken us? We’re just fucking kids, Christ was Christ, he could take it, but us? Why the fuck would you forsake a bunch of kids? And Fin, you really, really shouldn’t swear at God.’

I swallow hard, feeling the ache of tears behind my own eyes.

‘I think He can take it, Noll.’

His tears start to spill. ‘I don’t want to die. I’m afraid to die. My parents willingly stayed in a place they knew would be destroyed. They waited for their deaths, they didn’t run away to save themselves. Look at me. I stole food from another man and here I am scrambling around in a car park,’ he motions to the twine in his hands, ‘trying to hold onto this world, this screwed-up world.’

‘I don’t think you should feel guilty about being scared,’ says Lucy. ‘You said that God doesn’t want this. Doesn’t that make it okay to be scared?’

Noll keeps talking, I’m not sure if he has even heard her.

‘I really don’t want to die. And, you know, it’s ironic because for ages I did want to. I used to come home from school and scope out places where I could hang myself.’

‘Shit, Noll.’

He laughs a little. ‘Now look at me.’

‘Noll, don’t stop praying,’ I say. ‘Please don’t stop praying for us, Noll. Please.’ Maybe it’s because I’ve just witnessed my mother give up every principle I thought she believed in. I don’t think I can handle Noll caving. I can’t. But the idea that we are the wisest beings in existence is terrifying, like Lucy said. Maybe I’ve developed a faith in God that is second-hand, I need Noll to hang onto it.

‘I’m sorry, Noll. About all the horrible things you went through at school,’ says Lucy.

He smiles. ‘Oh, it’s okay. It made me what I am, gold that’s tested in fire and all that,’ he says glibly. ‘I used to ask God to save me from that as well.’

‘Well, He kind of did,’ I say. ‘Might have been overkill, though.’

‘Yeah, nuclear holocaust wasn’t really what I had in mind.’

‘Noll, I’m serious,’ says Lucy.

‘I know you are. Funny, but sometimes I almost prefer this. At least I’m not alone in this particular version of hell.’

Later I lie beside Lucy and grip her hand.

‘I’m sorry about your mum,’ she says.

‘So am I. I just can’t get my head around the fact that she is part of all this.’

‘Maybe she was just doing what she had to. There really isn’t enough for everyone.’

‘Why not? We kind of created this for ourselves, society, I mean. We created a way of life totally dependent on outside sources: electricity, transport. She’s been researching this for years, this kind of disaster. She would have known that our total way of life was precarious. And what does she do? She buys me an iPhone and moves in with her boyfriend.’

‘Are you saying she should have been teaching you to grow vegetables or something?’

‘I don’t freakin’ know. She should have done something.’

‘Like what, though? Taught you Morse code instead of buying you a phone? She didn’t know this was coming. If anyone said it was going to be a bloody nuclear apocalypse we would have thought they were paranoid or crazy.’

‘Do you remember that last day at school when you asked what Mr Effrez was yelling about in homeroom and Lokey said he was talking about hippies starting a commune?’

‘They’re the same people? In the national park?’

‘Yeah. They knew this was coming. You’re right. We thought they were nuts, we mocked them. Why, do you think?’

She is quiet for a minute, thinking. ‘Because the alternative was terrifying. The thought that this seriously could happen was too frightening to contemplate. It’s like those people out in the ration line complaining about people from over the border taking their share. They have to believe that we’re greedy, ’cause the idea that we were actually left to starve is just too awful.’

We lie in silence for a while. I listen to the sounds of the camp settling around us, as familiar to me now as home.

‘You know, I wouldn’t blame you, if you wanted to go with your mum,’ says Lucy.

‘I’m not leaving you. It would be a truly shit life anyway.’

‘How do you know it will be any better down south in the settlement?’

‘You’ll be with me.’

She nudges me. ‘You’re a total sucker, you know that?’

‘Yeah, I’m aware of that.’

Lucy props her head up on her hand. I gaze at her face in the dying light of the campfire.

‘I love you, you know,’ I whisper.

‘I know.’ She leans over and kisses me.

‘And I know you don’t need me to, but I will try and protect you.’

‘I know.’

In the morning we rise and prepare breakfast like every other morning. Only the mood is more subdued than usual. Max, who usually buoys everyone with inane facts from National Geographic or lame jokes, is silent. He sits beside Noll to eat his breakfast.

Alan doesn’t get up from his bed. I take him some tea. His eyes are closed. I talk to him softly to wake him up, but he doesn’t move.

‘Alan? Al, wake up.’ I touch my fingers to his forehead. It is cold. I sit down on the concrete next to him and feel myself starting to break apart inside. I’m not sure how long I stay there. When Lucy comes over, my face is saturated. She puts her arms around me and my whole body shakes. People come and stand by Alan’s bed and cry. I can’t move. I stay there with him. It’s Noll that comes and pulls the sheet up over his face.