Claire Zorn - The Sky So Heavy

‘Just don’t be a dickhead, Max.’

Noll and Matt come with me to collect the hose pipe, torches and a crowbar from the car. I open the boot and Matt takes out his assault rifle, slings it across his back. Then I open the front door, take the handgun from under the passenger seat and tuck it into my jeans.

‘Haven’t we already been through this?’ says Noll.

I sigh, hand him the gun. ‘What are you going to do with it, anyway? Throw it at someone?’

‘My granddad had a farm. He taught me how to shoot.’

I raise an eyebrow.

‘Asians can have farms too, you know.’

‘I’m more worried about the fact he taught you to shoot with a handgun.’

‘Okay, so it was a rifle. Same principle. And I’ve still got more experience than you.’

‘Whatevs.’

Noll tucks the gun into his belt.

We leave the car park and enter the street wordlessly, like a flock of mourners from a graveyard. The moonless sky is a black void above us. We have two torches and we follow their tentative beams through the dark, empty streets. We pass beneath the looming multi-storey apartment blocks, between clusters of townhouses. Matt says the last time he was out here a small military station was set up in a big park a few blocks east. We follow him through a lifeless intersection and along a row of abandoned shopfronts. Lucy is beside me, Max next to her and up ahead, Noll follows a metre behind Matt. We walk in silence and approach another intersection. I step out on to the road and see the pool of ice next to the kerb a moment too late to warn Lucy. She steps right on it and, with a yelp, her legs slide from beneath her and she is on the ground.

‘Luce? Shit. Are you okay?’

She grimaces, grips her left ankle, the same one that was hurt during the riot. She takes my arm and tries to stand. Fails. She kicks at the ground with her heel in frustration. Max and I help her to her feet, Max enjoying the process a bit too much for my liking. Lucy tries to take a step and I can feel her tense up with the pain.

‘Go. Get fuel. I’ll wait here.’

‘I don’t think so.’ I look toward Noll and Matt. ‘I’ll have to help her back.’

‘Absolutely,’ says Noll.

‘No. No. I’m fine. You go.’

‘As if, Luce. C’mon.’ She can barely put weight on her leg. I bring her arm over my shoulder and hold her waist firmly.

‘Max,’ I say. ‘You have to do exactly as Matt and Noll tell you, yeah?’

Max nods, taking the hose pipe from me.

‘You got him?’ I ask Noll.

‘Definitely.’

‘All good,’ Matt says. ‘You take her back.’

Lucy and I turn and hobble our way back along the street. I take a look back over my shoulder and see the three of them, Matt, Noll and Max, walking into the darkness. No more than shadows.

All our things are packed, so I sit Lucy in the car. Rosa brings a box for her to prop her foot up on.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Lucy says. ‘This is so pathetic. It really does hurt. I’m not just being a sooky girl. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Luce, this just gives me a chance to get back a bit of dignity.’

I dig a blanket out of the boot and put it under her heel. We sit in the car and wait. Rosa fusses over Lucy, brings us cups of hot tea. Then I hear the slap of feet on bitumen as someone comes bolting down the ramp into the car park. I look up and when I see him there are no words to describe the sound that comes from me.

Max’s hands are bloody. It’s smeared on his face and all over his clothes. His jeans are soaked through as if he’s been kneeling in the snow.

‘What happened?’ I pull open his jacket and look over him. His jumper is soaked crimson. ‘Where are you hurt? WHERE ARE YOU HURT? Fuck. FUCK.’

He shakes his head, pulling his jacket closed. Rosa is hysterical, shrieking. I actually push her out of the way. Some people come over to see what is going on; one of them brings a blanket, wraps it around Max, saying something about shock. I pull off Max’s beanie and tilt his head forward, back, side to side. There doesn’t seem to be any cuts. He’s looking at me like his eyes aren’t quite focused, like he can’t see me properly.

‘What’s happened? Where are Noll and Matt? Max, talk to me.’

Lucy is next to us, God knows how she got there. It’s only when she tells me to try to calm down that I realise I have been shouting. By the time we get Max to the car there is a small crowd of people gathered around us.

‘Where are they, Max? Just tell us where they are.’

When I was ten, I left my bike in the rain. The wheel spokes turned orange-brown with rust. It got on my hands, it got on my clothes.

The snow that Matt and Noll lie on is the same colour. There is an army truck a few metres away, the driver’s door is open. Next to it is the dark shape of a body on the ground. Someone has covered Matt’s face with a towel and from the bloom of colour around his head I know there is no point looking under it. I go to Noll. His eyes are open, staring up into the sky. I kneel on the snow beside him. He is so still I think he is already gone, but his eyes shift and look directly at me. I yank the gloves from one of his hands and grip it in mine. He blinks at me and opens his mouth. It’s then that I see the bullet hole in the chest of his coat. Deep red pooling on the heavy fabric. I tear off my jacket and press it down over the hole, that’s all I can do.

‘Noll, Noll, don’t leave us. Hang on.’

The expression on his face is more of mild curiosity than anything else. Surprise more than panic. He says something and I lean closer to him to hear.

‘I’m going home.’

‘Noll, no, no. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.’

He is still looking at me. But he is not there. There is nothing left in him. I feel for his pulse.

There is nothing.

I sit in the snow. I don’t know for how long. Eventually I get up, go to the body next to the truck. It is face down, head turned to the side, eyes closed. It is a woman in army fatigues. I stand there looking at her, then kneel down to see if she has a pulse. She doesn’t. I look around. Nothing, but still, silent black. I turn and as I am walking back, past the end of the truck, I see it, clipped on the back door. A fuel container. As I grasp the cold handle and lift it from its bracket I can feel the weight of it. Full.

Lucy doesn’t cry. Neither do I. Shock. She doesn’t ask about the fuel. Max watches wordlessly as I fill up our car. He is white and has vomited onto the concrete twice. His hands shake too much to hold a cup steady and Rosa comes over, crouches next to him and holds a cup of warm tea to his lips. Lucy opens the back of the car and starts pulling things out. Noll’s things. She unzips his bag, riffles through it, pulls out two thick woollen jumpers, some pants, and the most crucial of all items, socks. She places them in our bags.

She sorts through the rest of Noll’s possessions, leaves them in his bag. Except for his bible. I take it from her and turn it in my hands. The cover is worn and scratched, most of the gold lettering worn away. Inside, the delicate pages are scrawled with notes: Noll’s writing crammed into the narrow margins. I put the book under the front seat of the car.

Lucy and I help Max to his feet and I begin to peel his clothes off him: coat, jumper, shirt. He starts to cry and the sound of his sobbing is unbearable. His head hangs and the tears run down his chin. I have a memory of him, as a child, a toddler in a bib holding my mother’s hand. When there is only one layer of clothing left he reaches around to the back of his jeans. Then he holds the gun out to me.

We leave soon after. I retrace the route Noll and I took from Mr Effrez’s house. The three of us are silent in the car, until a few blocks from Effrez’s house, when Max speaks.