Claire Zorn - The Sky So Heavy

Dad sighed. My phone beeped. Lucy? I got up to check. Dad pointed at my seat.

‘Sit,’ he said. ‘Have dinner as a family and then look at your bloody phone.’

‘Kara’s not family,’ Max said.

‘She is your family,’ Dad said.

‘No, she’s not.’

Dad slammed his fist on the table. ‘She’s married to me and that makes her family, Max. Right? Anyone else got any comments?’

‘I didn’t marry her,’ Max said and gulped his juice. Kara put her fork down and stood up.

‘I’m going to my mum’s,’ she said calmly.

‘Max, go to your room. Kara, sit down.’

‘No thank you, Greg,’ Kara said.

‘No thank you, Greg,’ Max said.

‘Max Heath, if you are not in your room in three seconds, God help me. Kara, can you please sit down?’ He spoke in the same tone to both of them. I ate my curry. It wasn’t that bad. Kara picked up her keys and went out the front door. Dad put his head in his hands.

‘Bye, Kara,’ Max said in a singsong voice. With one swoop of his arm, Dad knocked everything that was in front of him off the table and onto the floor. He stood up and pointed at Max, his finger quivering.

‘You… You… ungrateful little…’

He followed Kara out the front door.

‘Good one, Max,’ I said. ‘Way to go.’

‘Shut up. Just because you’re in love with Kara.’

‘What are you doing, man? What are you doing?’ I started to pick the things up off the floor: cutlery, bowls, salt and pepper shakers. It was a mess. ‘Can you give me a hand instead of standing there like an idiot?’

Dad came back inside, slamming the door shut behind him. He picked his keys up off the bench.

‘I’m following Kara,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back soon and I’ll speak to you then, Max.’

And then he was gone.

The message on my mobile was from Lokey. I tried to go online to chat with him about what was going on but the internet was all jammed up and the connection kept failing. I left it for an hour then tried again. It still wasn’t working. I called the internet company but their line seemed to be down. Then it occurred to me that maybe they operated their call centres from places that didn’t exist any more.

Dad didn’t come home. I tried to call him but his phone must have been off or out of range. Eventually I told Max to go to bed and I did the same.

It happened quickly. Quicker than they were expecting. Quicker than they told us it would happen. Or maybe Lucy was right and the government knew how bad it would be and they just didn’t tell us. Or maybe we knew all along and we were like kids covering our eyes for the scary bit of the movie.

It was the cold that woke me the next morning, biting up my legs and over my arms. My room was almost completely dark except for a hint of light seeping through my curtains. There were no bird sounds. Still in the drudge of sleep I figured it must have been really early. I hunkered down under the covers and was sliding back toward sleep when I felt a prodding on my arm. I opened my eyes expecting to see Dad, but it was Max, standing there with a blanket around his shoulders.

‘Are we going to school today?’ he asked.

‘Jeez man, I don’t know. It’s early, go back to bed.’

‘It’s not early. It’s nearly eight-thirty.’

‘Yeah, funny, Max. Go back to bed.’

‘Fin, I’m telling you. It’s nearly eight-thirty.’

I sat up. ‘Is it raining?’

‘No. It’s snowing. Radioactive snow. Loads of it. It’s glowing.’

‘Ha, ha. Is Dad home?’

‘No. It’s not glowing, but it is snowing. Serious.’

I still half thought he was taking the piss, but it was freakin’ freezing and he was standing there wrapped in a blanket. Max went over to the window and pulled the curtain back. The sky was a flat brownish grey. I got up and went to the window.

Mum and Dad took me on a trip to the snow when I was three, a couple of years before Max was born. I remember heaps about that trip because it was the only time I’d seen snow. I remember driving to the snowfields in the milky early-morning light and Mum pointing to the white-capped mountains in the distance. I had a blue plastic toboggan with a piece of rope to hold on to and steer with. It was that waxy, plasticky rope, threaded through two holes, tied in a knot and the ends melted in a white glob. I took my gloves off to rub my thumb over the smooth glob of plastic. It looked like used chewing gum. Mum made me put my gloves back on again. I remember hurtling down a slope and flying over a mound of snow and sliding across the icy bitumen of the car park. I remember the white, the searing, aching white.

The snow outside my window wasn’t white. It was dirty grey slurry and it lay in patches over our front lawn and formed a little peak on the top of our letterbox.

‘Told you. I’m going out.’ Max raced out of my room and down the hall. I stood at the window mesmerised by the scene. Then I remembered something.

‘Max!’ I shouted after him. I bolted down the hall. ‘Max, wait!’

I got to the door just before he opened it. ‘Don’t,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘It might be radioactive.’

‘No way.’

‘I’m serious. You might get sick. We should stay inside.’

He actually looked thrilled at the fact the snow could be poisonous. I went into the living room and turned on the television. Nothing. I flicked a light switch. Nothing. Back in my room I turned on my laptop, it had a full battery. I tried to connect to the internet to find out what was going on, but it wouldn’t work. I found my mobile among the mess on my desk. I dialled Dad’s number and was told again that it was switched off or out of range. Mum’s number gave me the same response.

Max reappeared in my doorway. ‘The TV’s not working,’ he complained.

‘I know. There’s no electricity.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know why. Maybe because of the drop in temperature.’

I got dressed and then I pulled some tracksuit pants on over my jeans and put on an old hoodie. A pretty poor substitution for a radiation suit. I went into Dad’s room and opened his top drawer, where he usually kept a bit of cash. I took out a ten-dollar note and told Max I was going to see if I could get a paper. I took a deep breath and went outside.

The cold hit my cheeks with a wet slap. I shoved my hands in my pockets. Most cars were still in their driveways, it didn’t seem that many people had gone to work. Ellen, who lived across the road, was standing out on her front path watching her two little kids pelt each other with bits of sludge-grey snow. She saw me and waved.

‘Hi,’ she called. ‘Isn’t this wild?’

I crossed the road and met her on the nature strip in front of her place. I didn’t know her very well, but she and her husband were friendly, always said hello. Her cheeks were rosy with the cold and her eyes were bright.

‘Have you ever seen anything like this?’ she asked.

‘No. Can’t say I have. Do you have any electricity? Our power’s out.’

She shook her head. ‘When Mick got up this morning he said it was out. He didn’t know what to do, whether to go to work. Went in the end, put chains on the ute. Can you believe that? Chains! Here!’

Mick was a builder – a short guy who played league and was roughly the shape of a rectangle. Their kids were about three and five. The youngest one, Zadie, was squealing while her brother, Zac, chased her around with a handful of slurry. They had made an attempt at a snowman, but really it was nothing more than a grey mound with a few twigs sticking out of it.

Ellen noticed me looking at it. ‘We don’t have any carrots,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that what you’re supposed to use for a nose?’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never made a snowman before. This is the first time they’ve seen snow. It’s a shame it’s so dirty. From the bombs, yeah?’