Ishtar Read online

  Adrienne hesitates, trying to work out how to describe what happened to Steve.

  “One of those guys,” says the other paramedic from outside the ambulance, “looks like he’s been dead for a while.”

  She thinks of the bloated frame leaking pus and blood.

  “No,” she says. “They both just...”

  The other paramedic can’t hear her. He continues, “His skin is riddled with stretch marks. That guy got big real fast. Like a goddamn mushroom cloud went up inside his skin.”

  He must mean the security guard. Adrienne sits up. Her vision goes gritty around the edges for a moment.

  “Patch me up,” she says. “We have to get to the harbour.”

  He doesn’t look like he’s about to oblige, so Adrienne adds, “You want more weird shit like those guys on the floor in there?”

  The hippy does what he’s told. He dresses her wound elaborately while the two uniformed officers who found her radio back to headquarters. Adrienne watches the washerwomen, handcuffed, being loaded meekly into a police van. No sign of Ishtar.

  Her phone rings and it’s Nina.

  “Just in time,” Adrienne says. “I need a driver.”

  ****

  Nina asks once where Steve is and doesn’t ask again. Adrienne doesn’t answer.

  The officers won’t let her take her gun, claiming it’s evidence. She replies she hasn’t shot anyone, and how in hell do they expect her to do battle with an evil goddess? She sounds like a crazy woman, but she doesn’t care. It’s only then Nina drags her away.

  “Did you find Chapel?” Nina asks.

  Adrienne shakes her head. “Not yet.”

  Nina takes the driver’s seat while Adrienne climbs in the back. Her arm is in a sling, the skin of her hand oddly grey except for the red welt of the burn-tattoo. She moves her fingers experimentally. They still work, but the leaden thud in her upper arm makes her stop.

  “Use the fucking siren,” Adrienne mutters.

  Nina fumbles with the siren and the spinning blue cop light, which she slaps onto the roof. They make the city fringe within twenty minutes, barely a word passing between them. Nina, to her credit, can drive like a maniac.

  Adrienne is leaning back with her head on the seat, watching the sky and the swarm of helicopters like a dark, buzzing cloud. She hasn’t done that since she was a kid, and she’s glad to get this one chance now. It’s a morbid thought, but she doesn’t fight it. She blames the drugs they’ve pumped into her, but really it’s something else. It’s the sudden weight of her age. It’s the fact she’s gotten old enough she doesn’t remember her childhood so clearly anymore. Her whole history feels like a dream. Somebody else’s dream.

  The closer they get to the centre of Sydney, the more her dread increases. She wonders if this is a good day to die. She wonders what it’s like to be dead. She wonders what Ishtar did to that security guard, that puffed-up balloon of blood and cartilage. He sure didn’t look bothered when Steve shot at him. Did he think he could survive the bullet? Or does survival stop mattering sooner or later?

  She wonders, of course, what Steve was thinking.

  She hasn’t called his wife. She hopes Douglas will.

  “You okay?” Nina gives Adrienne a worried look in the rear vision mirror. Adrienne rolls her head to meet Nina’s eyes. She gives a thumbs up, but doesn’t have the wherewithal to lie. They hit gridlock long before they see the harbour. Nina pushes the car forward, blue light flashing. She gives bursts of the siren. They move sluggishly into the parking lane and Nina edges forward.

  “This will take for-fucking-ever,” Adrienne observes.

  Nina grunts. She flashes Adrienne’s badge at the various official vehicles and keeps the siren going the whole way. Nobody stops them. There’s precious little authority evident anyhow.

  “When you see the next uniform,” Adrienne says, “pull over. I want to talk to them.”

  “What kind of uniform?”

  “Any kind.”

  Nina spins the car illegally right, going the wrong way up a one-way street. Horns blare and Nina conscientiously gives every one of the complaining drivers the bird. She twists the car through the small streets that edge the city, but hits gridlock again in front of St. Mary’s Cathedral. She puts the car in reverse.

  “Find out where Grace is, exactly,” Nina says. “Circular Quay? Or the Botanic Gardens?”

  Adrienne’s about to say she can’t possibly find out where Ishtar is. No one would understand the question. But then Nina repeats ‘Grace’ and Adrienne fumbles for her phone. She finds Grace’s number, but the phone rings and rings. She hopes that’s because Grace is busy someplace, living her life safely away from the harbour and what it’s about to give birth to.

  “The dead,” says Adrienne.

  “What? The phone’s dead?” Nina says.

  “No, the dead. Remember what Ishtar said? The dead shall outnumber the living. When her father refused to help her, that’s what she said to him. They’ll eat our food and...whatever.”

  “Not a daddy’s girl,” Nina observes.

  Adrienne shrugs. The drugs make her feel like all the parts of her body are floating separately from each other.

  The words hadn’t meant much to her before. Now she’s met Ishtar, they carry a lot more weight. They feel real. The dead and the living. “That’s what the army’s for. They’re for us.”

  “Nice.”

  More gridlock. Nina curses the traffic, thumping the steering wheel in frustration. “Where to?”

  Adrienne peers out the windshield. They’re smack up against the back of the Domain. She gives Nina directions to the harbour via Art Gallery Road, but either her directions are bad or Nina’s understanding is. They end up in Sydney Harbour Tunnel instead. Adrienne experiences a moment of wild panic. The Tunnel will take them underwater, right into the harbour. Where the army is.

  She imagines flabby monsters tearing holes in the tunnel, imagines the tunnel flooding, cars floating until they hit the concrete roof, occupants dying in their seats, under water with no way out. At every slowdown in the traffic she breaks out in a new sweat. But they’re through and back into the daylight while she imagines getting out of the car and running, running until she’s far away.

  “Now where the hell are we?” Nina snaps.

  Adrienne’s teeth chatter. She’s freezing and sweating at the same time. “Turn it around.”

  This time she tries to direct Nina across the Harbour Bridge, back into the city CBD. Nina steers them instead around in a loop to Milson’s Point. This puts them north of the Quay, across the harbour with a direct view of the Opera House and city centre.

  “Forget it,” Nina says, “this will have to do. There’s no getting back across the bridge now.”

  Adrienne feels a chill when she says that, but Nina merely means the traffic back into the city is bad from all directions. They’d be stuck in traffic going nowhere if they tried.

  Nina abandons the car and Adrienne tips out behind her. Nina pushes forward through the crowd of people who’ve gathered to watch the harbour. Adrienne keeps pace, nursing her arm. The harbour wind cuts through her light pussycat shirt.

  Milson’s Point is mostly a tourist destination, a great place for wedding photos. The Harbour Bridge hangs blackly to their right. From this angle it lives up to its nickname of ‘the coat hanger’. There’s lush red bottlebrush in front of them, a thin length of parkland, and then the choppy harbour spread out in either direction. They’re separated from the city by ocean water, but close enough they can almost wave to the crowds of people on the other side of the harbour. There’s usually a good view of the Opera House from here, but something else is in the way, something white and almost as large.

  The army of stillborns. Their bloated bodies and bulbous skulls break the surface of the water like fleshy icebergs. And they’ve grown. For some, the water reaches their massive chins. But others are even taller. Adrienne estimates that if their feet are touching th
e bottom of the harbour the tallest must be over a hundred metres.

  “Fekking hell,” someone mutters.

  Adrienne isn’t sure if it’s her.

  “Some weird freakish mutant shit, hey?” says a man to her left. He’s sweating and wild-eyed. “Probably nuclear waste.”

  Misshapen white heads, eyeless, hairless. They look like egg whites that have exploded in hot water.

  “What are they doing?” Adrienne murmurs.

  They’re swinging their arms through the water like they’re testing the temperature.

  “Maybe they’re dancing,” says the man.

  Adrienne scans the crowd, looking for Ishtar. If the army of stillborns is here, then Ishtar must be here, too. Here or on the other side of the harbour. Adrienne moves forward again. Her arm thuds against strangers and she winces, drawing a sharp breath. She makes it to the cast iron fencing that edges the harbour and to her right, six metres away, she sees her.

  “Grace!” Her voice is shrill, panicked. She shouts over and over, and lunges forward to cover the distance between her and her baby sister.

  Finally Grace turns. There’s something dazed in her movements, like she’s just waking up. She looks at Adrienne without recognition, and Adrienne’s stomach lurches. She reaches Grace’s side, Nina behind her.

  “Grace, I’ve been trying to call you,” Adrienne grabs her sister by both arms, ignoring her sling. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  Grace continues to stare blankly. It’s fear, Adrienne thinks. She considers slapping Grace across the face. It would satisfy a lifetime of resentment — might snap Grace out of it, too. Instead she gives Grace a shake. “Where’s your phone?”

  Understanding returns to her face and Grace reaches for something. “My bag. Damnit!”

  Her bag is gone. Lost in the crowd someplace, that vomit-coloured bit of tattered cloth. Adrienne hopes Grace won’t cry, because she’d be forced to promise to go find the bag. And it’s not possible now, not here, not at the end of the world. Waiting for Ishtar to suck the bones out of all of them.

  “Look at that!” someone shouts right beside them.

  Adrienne turns, still holding onto Grace. She expects to see Ishtar, but what she sees is something else. In Sydney Harbour, the ocean is rocking. The army has learned to work in unison. They stir the harbour water with their hands, one direction and then another.

  “Oh, shit.”

  The crowd is stunned, watching as the ocean is manipulated as easily as bath water.

  “Everyone!” she calls. “Please move away from the edge of the water. Please return to your vehicles. This is an emergency. Please!”

  At first she’s ignored, another crazy person on a crazy day.

  Nina grips her elbow. “What’s going on?”

  “Ishtar’s found something faster than eating our food,” says Adrienne. “They’re making some kind of preternatural pump.”

  “Oh,” says Nina, “shit.”

  The water recedes from the edge of Milson’s Point, washing in the other direction towards Circular Quay. Crowds of people in the Quay begin to move backwards from the edge, climbing to higher ground. She realises many of them are in military uniform, herding people from the edge. Douglas came through. She sends someone a silent prayer of gratitude.

  Where Adrienne is standing, she’s twenty metres or so above sea level. But she doesn’t feel safe, not if they’re going to keep rocking the ocean this way and that. She’s not the only one to see the implications. A ripple of nervous energy goes through the crowd and they begin to move. Every direction at once.

  “Police! Evacuate in a calm and orderly fashion!” Adrienne commands. “Police. Please evacuate. Flood warning!”

  She’s ignored. She holds her badge high over her head and keeps yelling.

  “Tsunami!” Adrienne shouts.

  The emergency broadcast system starts up, the one the city installed for some visit by a US president years back. It’s a siren that reminds Adrienne of old air raid movies. It’s a lousy noise but it works, part of a shared memory of ‘the war’. As the water rocks more and more deeply, the crowd around her moves faster. Adrienne can taste the panic. People scream and fall and run. By the time the docked Sydney ferries scrape the bottom of the harbour thirty or so metres down, there’s chaos. Adrienne tries to stand firm, but she’s pushed and rocked like a paper boat. Her arm thuds from every blow. Nina stands on her right, shielding her. Grace takes her other arm, the uninjured one.

  Then they see her. Ishtar. Standing under the thick construction of the Harbour Bridge beside one of the huge concrete and granite pylons. Still and solid while the crowd flows around her. Ishtar, small and sensuous, with eyes that carry fire and fingers that promise it. Ishtar, with her black hair piled high on her head and a broad, tall forehead. She is Ishtar in war garb, silver-plated armour across her chest. She wears bracelets up and down her arms. Some of them are cutting her skin and blood trickles down to her wrists. She seems impervious. More than that, she seems oblivious. She turns dark eyes towards Adrienne, and Adrienne can’t breathe.

  Ishtar, the only calm figure on the harbour.

  Above Ishtar’s head, a military squadron jogs in formation over the Harbour Bridge. Adrienne wishes they were closer. She wishes they knew what they were looking for, but she’s got an inkling they won’t be looking for a tiny, dark-haired woman. Even though, looking at Ishtar, it can’t be anyone but her, anything but her. She reeks of power and age.

  Beside Adrienne, Nina says, “There’s Chapel.”

  Adrienne notices Chapel then, standing beside Ishtar, his gaunt face pallid in the sunlight. He wears the same dead-eyed gaze that Grace had. Adrienne reaches out for her sister and her hand closes around Grace’s. Neither woman moves. Then she gives Grace’s hand a squeeze and tries to let her go. Grace won’t release her, and in truth, Adrienne is glad. She doesn’t want to face the end alone. Best to be with someone who’s known her most of her life.

  Then she spots Ishtar staring at Grace’s pregnant belly, a sneer of domination on her face. Adrienne drives forward, rage propelling her. She drags Nina and Grace with her, though she doesn’t, in the end, mean to.

  Ishtar watches them come.

  “Chapel?” Nina asks again.

  Chapel doesn’t respond. He’s an empty ragdoll, all expression, all personality wiped away.

  “What have you done to him?” Adrienne asks Ishtar.

  “Whatever he wanted,” says Ishtar. “At first.”

  Ishtar gestures with a finger and Chapel falls backwards, neck snapping, body breaking like spun sugar under a spoon. Ishtar doesn’t even look at him.

  Beside Adrienne, Nina lets out a strangled gasp. Adrienne holds onto her.

  The goddess inclines her head and seems to consider them. “Give me your hands, women. To help wash this mortal mess off.”

  Ishtar indicates her own body, her hair, her thin dress which is whipped by the winds of the Harbour.

  “Find another patsy,” Adrienne says. “I’m keeping these hands.”

  “Then I’ll take your skin.”

  “Go to Hell!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  There’s nothing but bluster in Adrienne’s words. She’s seen what Ishtar can do. She knows she has nothing but her all-too-human spirit to keep the goddess at bay. She knows it won’t be enough, but she decided long ago — so long ago she doesn’t remember the decision — that she would die on her feet. She watched her mother’s servitude and her aunts’ and her grandmothers’. She watched it and vowed she would bow to no one. She would fight the whole world on her own if she had to.

  “Do you know,” Ishtar says, filling the space between them with each word, “what happens to people who defy me?”

  “Do you know,” Adrienne returns, “that if your freakish army floods Sydney, you’ll drown, too?”

  Ishtar steps close so she can speak in a normal tone amongst the screaming of the crowd. “I’ve been to the Underworld, had my skin
stripped from my body. And risen. What other god can claim that?”

  “Not Tammuz,” Nina observes.

  “That’s right,” Adrienne takes up the theme. “If Tammuz is here, you’ll kill him, too. Again.”

  Ishtar turns those black eyes on Nina. Adrienne holds out one hand protectively. Nina looks suddenly old and tiny, like life has started to seep out of her body.

  “He’s not here,” says Ishtar. But she’s not sure, that’s clear. There’s a brief tic of fear in her face as she stares them down.

  “He might be,” Adrienne says.

  “Maybe he’s dead already,” Nina says.

  Ishtar gives an almost imperceptible shake of her head. “I would feel it.”

  “You sure?”

  Ishtar doesn’t hesitate, but that gives her away more than anything. They’ve hit a nerve. “He’s nowhere near here! I am first. I am the first and only goddess, and all others are too late. When I find Tammuz, when he comes back to me, it will be just us. I will destroy all others.”

  Adrienne wants to laugh. There are tears pouring from her eyes, though, and her laugh comes out as an embarrassing snuffle. She wipes the back of her hand across her face again and again.

  How can anyone argue with Ishtar, a goddess, an immortal bitch? How can anyone confront that strange logic?

  “So, this is all just about your jealousy?” Adrienne says.

  Ishtar looks reproachful. “What do you mean, just? I raised the army, an army that wouldn’t be raised by its mothers,” says Ishtar. “I raised and summoned them.”

  “Why can’t you go find him right now? Skip this step.”

  “Who are you that you think to question me?”

  Adrienne turns to look at Grace. She grips her sister’s hand more tightly and Grace smiles, gives an almost-nod. A kind of blessing for whatever Adrienne has to do next. At that moment Grace reminds Adrienne of their mother. She looks to Nina, whose face gives away nothing. She’s lost inside there someplace.

  “Nina?”

  “I don’t reckon the bitch can control them,” Nina says.