To Whoevers Listening

Eleven : Drunk Melody

When Saturday comes around I realize that I've missed an entire week of school.

My English assignment still sits in my backpack in the lounge room unfinished. I'm sure that if the country wasn't in lock down Ms. Karowell would be grading me with an E at this very moment.

I had a thought the night before lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, that maybe none of this was real. Maybe I had been in a car crash or fallen off my bike and this was all the comatose dreams of a bored teenager. Or maybe I've contracted cabin fever and I hallucinated the zombies and in real life everybody in Goldview is looking for missing girl Moira Chance.

But all that seems like a bit of a pipe dream. Because the two zombies outside the station tied around a tree are everyday proof that this is real. That I am not in a coma. That I am not crazy. That truthfully, the world is practically collapsing in on itself.

How long will it take for the virus to go global? Another week? A month? A year?

I have no idea. I don't know how you contract the disease - whether through the traditional bite or if its in the water or if it's airborne. I don't know how quickly you change once you're infected. I don't know how many people are still alive right now.

I could be the last living girl in the entire world.

At midday, I'm searching through the cupboards in the kitchen, gathering together all the food and counting how many bottles of water we have stacked around the place. For now, I'm perfectly okay with food. There's enough here to feed me for at least three months and there's probably more out in the storage shed as well. Not that I'll be stuck here for three months.

I'm going through the cupboards in Obie's spare room when I find a bottle pushed into the back with a birthday tag still around it; Happy Birthday Obie! Love, Maggie.

Who knows what birthday this is from. Obie isn't much of a drinker. It would probably take him a whole year to get through this entire bottle of Jack Daniels alone.

I, on the other hand, drink three quarters of it by midnight.

I figure, in the event of the apocalypse, it doesn't really matter if I decide to get drunk off my ass. So that's what I do. I pour one drink and then another and another until a familiar buzz runs through me.

Last year on my sixteenth birthday, Adelaide, my closest friend since middle school, turned up at my bedroom window with a bottle of vodka and a smile bright enough to light up the entire street. That night we went out, got drunk and snuck into at least three different random parties, laughing the entire time by the wild rush of it all. It was the most fun I had ever had and the next morning we woke up lying in my bed, the window propped open by a stack of books, surrounded in empty cups and plates of food we couldn't stop laughing at the moment we laid eyes on them. Every memory was hysterical, including the one in which we were chased by the police when they came to break up the last party we went to.

It was strange walking downstairs the next day and taking a seat at the kitchen table, having my mother smile at me as she sat down a bowl for each Adelaide and I, knowing that she had no idea what had happened the night before.

I wonder where Adelaide is now.

I pour myself another drink and drain the glass dry.

"Alright," I mutter to myself and step into the live room, swaying on my feet as I plunk down in the wheelie chair. I kick off the desk and spin around in it, playing until the song ends and I come back to the microphone.

"This is Moira here! Moira Chance." I say. "Though probably all of you are dead out there, I'm going to sing a song! Actually, that's the only reason why I'm going to do this. Why have performance issues when there's no people left to listen?" I sit away from the mic, then lean back in again. "Oh - and I don't mean those kind of performance issues."

In my search through the station I had found a guitar in one of the cupboards hidden away at the back. I remember hearing Obie playing it some days but he never made a show out of it.

Digging up memories of my old guitar lessons and the lyrics of songs Adelaide had once taught me, I take a position in front of the mic, sit the guitar in a way that's comfortable and begin to play.

Even in my drunken state, I manage to keep the rhythm. The melody is sweet and singing comes easy once it's found it's way into my head. But there's a sad note to it and I find myself outside the realm of drunkenness, in a place where I emerge myself in the song and float fearlessly over the music.

'Cause I'm a doubting Thomas,

Can't keep my promises,

Cause I don't know what's safe,

Oh me of little faith.

When the song ends, my hands fall away from the strings and I sit in silence for a long moment. The speakers buzz softly and the microphone waits for voice, so I sit the guitar down and lean forward.

"If there's anyone out there," I say, my voice unbearably laden with sadness. "Please..."

But that's all I can manage, and with a careful hand, I flick on a queue from the archive, get up and leave the live room to run itself.