Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 11, Issue 6 Read online

  We move instinctively to our right to track her. So far she doesn’t appear to have seen us. Or heard us.

  I crouch behind broken cement until I can think through what to do next.

  ‘You really believe they’ll kill us?’ Efran says.

  ‘Better dead than having to put up with those whingers back in the hole, isn’t it?’ I mutter.

  We still keep our eyes on the girl. She’s found an old stone slab and she’s squatting at it like it’s a table, the doll propped into a wide-legged sitting position beside her. She’s pulled out some broken pieces of plate like the stuff Efran found. The plates are smudged with the grime and muck of the world’s failings.

  Efran fixes his gaze on the girl, her dirty face bent to the table of broken belongings. He says, ‘Shit.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agree quietly. ‘We were that little, once.’

  ‘Great,’ Efran grunts. ‘Always playing hard-ass in front of the gang, but here you turn to feminine mush.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  We stay crouched behind the rubble for some time. Minutes, maybe. An hour. The sky is the only unbroken thing we see, with all the rubble teetering under its smooth blank cloud.

  ‘This is stupid,’ says Efran. ‘Billions of people have already died. She’s just another one.’

  But he still makes no move.

  ‘I’m not doing it,’ I say. ‘We could tell them we didn’t find her.’

  ‘She’s right there!’ Efran points with his rifle. ‘Anyhow, the others will find her if we don’t.’

  Efran’s voice is dull and scratchy with the air of destruction he keeps breathing in and the tears he thinks he’s covering up.

  I say, ‘We could maybe hide her?’

  ‘They’ll know. They’ll find out.’ He looks at me. ‘They’ll kill us.’

  I shrug. I mean, I still think they’ll kill us anyway. But I don’t say that.

  We go back to waiting.

  ‘All right, screw it,’ Efran says, ‘I’ll do it.’

  He stands and raises the bottle of saké to his lips. I’m all set to admire his bravado, the way he rolls his shoulders and tips his head back, eyes closed. But then his bottle explodes.

  I duck. Shards of plum-coloured glass erupt in all directions. A dozen cuts open up along Efran’s face. The girl, startled by the noise, takes flight like a frightened animal.

  ‘What in hell?’ Efran hasn’t moved; he’s still standing upright. He’s so convinced he’s a chosen one that he’s ignoring the immediate evidence to the contrary.

  A second shot opens a slice in his face, along his jaw and through his ear. I drag him down behind the fallen brickwork. He lands on his rump, bleeding and dumb.

  ‘Hubert!’ says Efran. ‘Freaking Hubert is firing at me.’

  Glass shines under his eye. He reaches to the wounds on his face. We have no supplies. We thought it was two-on-one.

  ‘Why is Hubert firing at us?’ I ask.

  But I already think I know. The aliens have made a second call on the walkie-talkie. Time to wipe out the chosen ones along with the rest.

  ‘Maybe he’s trying to warn the girl?’ Efran asks.

  I wish. I’d like not to be the only one with an overdue moral conscience.

  ‘If he’s trying to warn her,’ I ask, ‘why’s he shooting at us?’

  ‘He’s a psycho!’ Efran mutters.

  I shuffle to the end of the brickwork and lean out. No sign of Hubert. No sign of the girl.

  ‘Hubert?’ I shout. ‘Hubert!’

  ‘What?’ Hubert calls back.

  He drags out the single syllable until it sounds like a howl. His voice echoes around the ruins.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I call.

  There’s a pause.

  ‘I’m sorry, Soon,’ Hubert said, ‘but the aliens say they won’t take all of us.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They want a breeding pair,’ Hubert calls. ‘And they only want a breeding pair.’

  I lean back behind the rubble. ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Hey, Hubert!’ Efran shouts.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What happened to the deal?’ Efran is backing away, peering through the rubble. He’s drawing Hubert between us, distracting him. ‘The deal is we get to live, right?’

  ‘I guess,’ Hubert calls. ‘I mean, I didn’t read the fine print. First job I’ve had, you know?’

  There’s a kind of quiet. We’ve stopped talking. Now we’re all listening. Efran has backed along the line of rubble.

  ‘Hubert,’ I shout.

  ‘WHAT?’

  ‘Are you the only one left?’

  ‘Nah-ah,’ said Hubert. ‘There’s still three of us, right?’

  Efran casts me a look. He can’t believe it either. Hubert’s killed the others? Dumb, kinda sweet, always-hungry Hubert?

  I glance down at Naoki’s rifle. Maybe if I’d left it behind, he’d still be alive.

  ‘I mean—shit, he’s a damn idiot,’ Efran observes to me, like he’s reading my thoughts. He straightens into a tall crouch and shouts, ‘Who got the order?’

  ‘We all did,’ Hubert shouts.

  Efran rolls his eyes. He must’ve caught sight of Hubert, though, because he gestures me forward. I go towards him on my hands and knees, Naoki’s rifle across my back.

  ‘So the aliens didn’t choose the survivors?’ Efran calls.

  No answer from Hubert.

  I reach Efran’s side. He whispers about what a goddamn mess a bunch of executioners could make of each other, trapped in the hole with a small arsenal and standing orders to leave only two alive. But his sentences are salted with so much swearing it takes me some time to translate.

  ‘I’m not dying like this,’ I say.

  ‘You’re not dying at all,’ Efran mutters. ‘You’re the only surviving female. They’ll need you for the breeding program.’

  I don’t answer.

  We crawl quietly through the destroyed world, following the makeshift passage around a shattered staircase.

  ‘I didn’t kill them,’ Hubert shouts.

  I stop, trying to pinpoint him.

  ‘Don’t answer!’ I whisper.

  Efran gives me a look that says as if I would.

  Hubert shouts again, ‘The aliens killed Angelman without me.’

  ‘What?’ Efran shouts, like he can’t help himself.

  Hubert says, ‘They told him they didn’t need him anymore. Believe that? Angelman.’ He pauses, probably to take a breath if he’s crouch-running like we are. ‘He always thought he was the boss of everyone.’

  ‘He must’ve been pissed,’ Efran says hoarsely.

  I move forward as quietly as I can, thighs burning, knees almost at shoulder level, butt close to the ground.

  ‘That means Hubert definitely killed Naoki,’ I whisper.

  Efran is silent.

  We reach the end of the passage we’ve been following.

  There’s a makeshift cave, a pocket in the rubble that shields us on three sides and overhead.

  I look back to make sure Efran hasn’t left a bleeding trail for Hubert to follow. It’s clean.

  ‘Okay, okay, ‘ I say. ‘So I’ve got a psycho European or an angry Jewish guy to spend eternity with. Or, the two of you could kill me and go off with the aliens yourselves.’

  ‘And how’s that gonna work?’ Efran asks. ‘They’re looking for a breeding pair. That’s why Hubert won’t just lob a hand grenade our way. He’s after me. You’re the other half of his breeding pair.’

  ‘Hell, no!’ I grimace.

  Efran looks at me steadily. ‘Think of it, Soon-ei. Free sex, all the time.’

  ‘Shut up!’

  I can’t tell if he’s joking. The blood is drying on his forehead, turning his expressions stiff. His eyes are bright and white-rimmed, one lid fat with purple bruising. He looks panicked. I figure the pain will set in soon. I don’t know what I’ll do with him then.

  ‘Anyway, why would they want
to breed us?’ Efran hisses. ‘They just spent a year wiping us out and now they want to start again? For what?’

  ‘You miss the point,’ I say. ‘They’re not breeding humans. They’re breeding executioners.’

  I feel almost vindicated.

  I watch as Efran’s understanding sinks in. We’re not going to be kings of the world. We’re going to be slaves and sows.

  ‘Question is,’ I add, like I’m a teacher schooling a little kid, ‘what do they want with a race of executioners?’

  ‘They’re psychos, shitbreath!’ Ethan says hoarsely. He tries to wipe the dripping blood from his chin. Casually, like it’s no big deal.

  ‘Yeah, but, that’s not it,’ I say. I peer around at the rubble, expecting Hubert at any minute. ‘They’re gonna use us to help wipe out other planets.’

  I should’ve known the executioner role didn’t come with an expiry date. I should’ve known this would never stop.

  Outside the cave, the sky is a soft, wet grey, like an iron box holding us inside. It’s become darker. Maybe it’s night-time now. I haven’t been out past curfew in a long while, but I know that I haven’t seen sunlight for months. I haven’t had a sense of seasons passing.

  Efran says, ‘How many people do you think we’ve killed?’

  ‘How many between us?’ I ask. ‘Or on a per capita basis?’

  Efran snorts. ‘Per capita? There’s only three of us left. Four if you count the girl.’

  I start. I’d forgotten her.

  I hesitate before saying the next thing. ‘I guess Hubert doesn’t know we’ve found a little girl out here.’

  ‘She’s too young for breeding.’ Efran says drily, like I might be stupid.

  He pokes at his swollen eye carefully.

  ‘Right now she is,’ I reply. ‘But she’ll grow.’

  Unlike the world, which has stopped dead.

  ‘Right,’ Efran says. ‘All they got to do is wait for her to reach her moon cycles, or whatever.’

  I snigger. ‘Moon cycles?’

  I haven’t seen a moon for a year.

  I lean forward over my knees, rifle clutched in front of me. I think about all the murders I’ve committed. Not executions, murders. I look up and find Efran watching, tilting his head so he can see me through the thin slit of his swollen eyelids.

  ‘You think they take a pair from each executioners’ cell?’ I ask, trying to distract him from looking at me like that.

  ‘You hoping you’ll meet someone better?’ Efran grins, the dried blood cracking around his eyes and turning his face into muddy crevasses. ‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’

  I shake my head. ‘I’m not sure I’m thinking anything.’

  I can’t get my thoughts in any kind of order. I keep going around and around the same ideas. The aliens killed us. The aliens want to take the worst of us and start again. It’s a new thought for me. I never figured us for bad people before. Or at least, I tried not to.

  Efran’s fingers are dark red where he’s been prodding at his face. His shirt is almost black with blood. ‘I’m thinking, this breeding thing is the best deal we’re gonna get.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hey, I’m not into you either,’ Efran frowns. ‘But what else are we gonna do?’

  ‘I’m not going to be some breeding machine for a sick alien race!’

  ‘Why not? You’re their executioner.’ Efran looks almost smug.

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘This is life and death, Soon-ei,’ Efran tries to argue. ‘Nothing else matters anymore.’

  He gestures around at the rubble outside our little makeshift cave, but he’s wrong. Some things keep mattering.

  A strange, dull light has gone on in Efran’s one open eye. I don’t like it at all. I move out of my squat until I’m standing almost upright in the confined space and I draw my rifle in close. Efran watches me. I’m thinking maybe Efran has stopped waiting for me to choose him or Hubert. I’m thinking he might be willing to wait eight or so years for that little girl to start her moon cycles.

  ‘They’re just stupid killers,’ I say, meaning the aliens. ‘They’re puddles in chairs, or whatever. Too weak to do their own killing, so they use bombs and gas and then they use us. But they’re dumb, like Hubert.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Efran says.

  As he says it the sky above the cave seems to break apart. Something dark and slick hovers beneath the cloud cover. Its contours shine dully like the coat of a panther hunched and ready to bolt. It’s at least as big as eighty city blocks, from the time when city blocks existed.

  I’ve never seen anything like it before. But right away I know, of course. It’s an alien ship.

  We watch the ship descend until it seems to be just over our heads.

  ‘You got a plan, Soon?’ Efran asks.

  I shrug.

  The strange light has gone from his eye, but his skin is pasty and grey under its blood-mask. I think maybe Hubert won’t have to shoot Efran after all. But I also think there’s no way I’m going to spend the rest of my life with Hubert.

  ‘Well, you better have a plan,’ Efran says. ‘We can’t get out of here without—’

  Swift and sudden, Hubert swings upside-down into the cave entrance, hinging at the waist and holding his pistol out. He must’ve been right above us for ages, inching forward on his belly.

  Efran is sitting with his gun between his knees, pointing at the concrete ceiling. Hubert has come down on the side where Efran’s eye still works. Hanging upside-down, Hubert’s a bigger target than Efran is when he’s sitting. All Efran has to do is tip the rifle an inch forward to hit Hubert in his centre of mass.

  But Efran still hesitates. I never thought he would.

  I fire at Hubert almost lazily, without even thinking about it, hardly taking my eyes off Efran.

  Hubert jolts and goes limp. His pistol fires off a few rounds without him, then it hits the ground under his dangling head.

  After the echo dies down, it’s quiet in the cave. There’s a thudding pain all down my left side where I instinctively leapt sideways into the wall. There’s a stinging pain along my thigh. I know what it means, but I don’t want to look.

  So I watch Hubert instead, swinging in the cave mouth with his knuckles brushing the ground. Which seems pretty thematically appropriate for a Neanderthal like Hubert.

  His face is as blank as when he was alive. Blood beats a path from his chest to his fingertips and onto the ground in arcs of colour. He fills the space like a red curtain. It’ll be hard to get by him to leave the cave. The cold part of my brain—which is almost all of my brain now—reminds me that we better get out of here before Hubert’s rigor mortis blocks us in.

  I finally look at Efran. He’s writhing tightly, his whole right side a burnt black and red mess. When the ringing in my ears drops a couple of decibels, I realise the cave isn’t quiet at all. Efran is screaming.

  Out of habit, I isolate the weapons first, pushing both of them behind me. My leg is pulsing blood, but it’s nothing compared to what’s going on with Efran. It hurts like hell, though.

  ‘Anything mortal?’ I ask.

  I mean, ‘any mortal wounds’. I have to say it twice more, louder, before Efran responds. He’s spitting as he screams, dribbles of saliva hitting his chest and the concrete walls. He rubs away tears with a bloody thumb.

  ‘Yeah,’ he tries to get the hysteria out of his voice. ‘All of it. He killed me. Freaking Hubert killed me.’

  He could be right, there’s too much blood to tell. But the real worry is that it’s coming out of his mouth in fresh, dark rivulets like oil.

  ‘You think the aliens can patch me up?’ he asks, sounding desperate.

  ‘I don’t know, Efran,’ I say. ‘We can ask.’

  It could be true that the aliens have some awesome medicine they’ve been withholding until just this moment, some remarkable technology that they haven’t had to use until their breeding programme was challenged. It could be.
/>   The blood courses from his chest and shoulder in a new kind of camouflage pattern. He tries to get off the ground. I don’t even think he’s trying to get to his feet. Just his knees will do. He looks like he wants to crawl out under the bleeding Hubert.

  I try to drag him closer to the cave door.

  He lets out a rattle of words that might be a prayer. Then he leans back against the wall, eyes closed.

  ‘Come on, Efran!’ I ask. A pause during which I think he’s already dead. ‘Efran?’

  ‘What?’ he croaks.

  ‘We have to get out of here.’

  Efran grunts. ‘I can’t make it, Soon-ei.’

  ‘You have to! They won’t take me alone.’

  My voice catches on the last word. I’m not doing this for Efran. I’m doing this for me. Now we both know it.

  Efran gazes up at me. He looks about five years old. His face is grey like the walls. Tears have fought tracks through the grime. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you. Psycho.’

  ‘Geez, Efran!’ I settle down beside him, gulping down my own sobs.

  I can’t leave. Weirdly, it’s less because I worry about Efran dying alone than because I don’t want him to think I’m a psycho. Hell, I worry I am a psycho.

  I make patterns in grey dirt on the ground around us. Balloons and trees and stars. Smiling faces. Things I haven’t seen in a long time. There’s another one of those nerve-wracking silences.

  Efran says, ‘Do you know how long rigor mortis takes?’

  I don’t. I shrug. Worst case scenario, I can probably slide out between Hubert’s hanging arms if I have to. The thought is a cold, uncomfortable one, but I know I can do it.

  ‘You should go,’ Efran says.

  ‘Go where?’ I mutter.

  ‘Take the girl,’ he says. ‘Go signal the ship.’

  ‘They’re only taking breeding pairs,’ I remind him.

  ‘Maybe,’ he says, his words coming out slow. ‘But are they going to know you’re not a pair before you get onto the ship?’

  I hesitate. It’s a short-sighted plan but short-sightedness is almost a human speciality. And it’s better than what I’ve got now, which is nothing. At least it gives me a chance. In spite of everything, I keep trying to live.

  ‘Get out,’ Efran says. ‘Before Hubert there turns into a concrete door stopper.’