How To Lose Weight And Survive The Apocalypse

Chapter 23

The cheers and happy shouts were grating after spending so long enveloped by the silence of the road. I squinted and resisted the urge to cover my ears as the cacophony swirled around us. Nev shouted too close to me, something about how great this was, and I calculated how long I could bear the noise and the masses of people.

It was odd because city volume had never bothered me before; I'd lived in cities my whole life, and the sounds and smells and crowds had been nothing but background noise, a mild inconvenience that could be solved with a decent pair of headphones. Somewhere between Sydney and Melbourne, that had changed. I'd changed.

The night before, we'd still been on the road, the blissful, silent road. After leaving the place where we'd laid Simon to rest, we'd pedalled for hours, stopping only when Mischa was almost asleep at the handlebars. The road had been mostly flat and monotonous, the only sounds the bird calls that punctuated the hum of our wheels on the asphalt.

As we rode, I found myself not-unpleasantly numb. Whenever my brain decided it wanted to relive the sight of the knife protruding from Simon's chest, or visualise Lachie standing over me, or imagine how his mother would react when she saw his body, I simply said no. One by one, I pinned the memories down like butterflies on a display board, then shoved everything into a box in my mind. That box went inside of another, bigger box made of steel, and then I dropped the whole thing off a mental cliff into a dark ocean. I could search for it and open it one day, but not today.

We'd made camp at a curve in the road; we'd dragged the bikes up a verge and behind a thicket of trees, hidden from view, plenty of exit points. No fire; Simon had been in charge of the fire-lighting every night, a duty he'd taken seriously, and doing it with his loss so recent felt like sacrilege.

Without even needing to discuss why, the four remaining adults divided up the night into shifts. After a colourless meal of cold baked beans and tuna, we crawled into our tents and left Bailey to the first shift.

"Do you want the gun?" I asked them quietly.

Bailey shook their head, eyes blank. "No. No more weapons. Never again."

I wanted to argue, to say that weapons were for defence, not attack, that if we'd been better armed before, none of this would have gone so wrong, but my lips refused to move as fatigue rolled through me like a dense soundwave, sucking the energy from my marrow. I collapsed face-first into the tent, and passed the hours in a dreamless state.

"Karla. Karla!"

I bolted awake, my hand on the gun inside my bag before I'd even reached full consciousness. "What?"

Nev crouched at my tent opening. "It's your watch."

In an instant, I'd gone from asleep to wired. I rolled out of the tent, saying to Nev, "Thanks. You can go get some shut-eye."

Moonlight reflected off the low cloud cover, and I could see the shadows on her face as she replied, "Nah. I'm not tired. I just didn't want to sit here on my own anymore."

"Okay."

We sat in silence. I think she cried a few times, but I kept my face to the sky, watching the slow passing of the dark clouds, unable to soothe her pain without stirring up my own. When she fell asleep in her chair, I covered her with a blanket, hoping that Simon could see Nev was looked after.

As dawn lazily lightened the dark grey to light silver, Rueben emerged from his tent, yawning and rubbing his head. "How did you go?"

"Fine."

"How are you feeling?"

"Fine."

"Karla, you don't have to be fine." He pulled me to my feet and cupped my chin softly. "You probably shouldn't be fine after everything you've gone through."