The Big Dry Read online

  DEDICATION

  To Carolyn. Always.

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  ONE

  George stood on the sandstone wall in front of his house and stared down the dusty street.

  The rooftops, the shells of abandoned houses, the dead trees were all the same drab shades of beige and brown. No cars, no people, no sound.

  No sign of Dad.

  High above, a hint of blue fought its way through the pink haze of the sky. George wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve. He hacked out a cough.

  He heard a car in the distance. The engine spluttered. The wheels spun and screeched at the half-buried roundabout at the bottom of the street. George watched the dark shape drive up the hill towards him. It weaved around the sand-drifts.

  A cloud of fine grit swelled behind the car and dwarfed the ragged houses on each side of the road. George swatted at the flies that sucked at the corners of his eyes.

  Beneath the grime, the car was red. That was the wrong colour. It was the wrong shape too. A station wagon. George was ready to run back inside his house and hide. But the car turned right halfway up the hill and headed north.

  George jumped off the wall and jogged to the house, past the remains of the hedge and past the fishpond, which was filled to the brim with sand. He went inside, checked on Beeper, still fast asleep in the front bedroom. Then he hurried back to the front wall, his feet sliding around inside his sweat-filled shoes.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, picking at his wet T-shirt to pull it away from his skin. ‘Come on, Dad.’

  The sound of the car-engine faded. The plume of dust lingered in the air.

  ‘You can’t be too far away. Just held up somewhere, that’s all.’

  On the other side of the hill, to the west, the sky was darker than normal. George spat as he looked towards the ghostly outline of the sports stadium, two or three kilometres away. Further beyond, through the dust-clouded air, were the foothills of the Western Ranges.

  Tree stumps lined the road. He willed one of them to move, to somehow be Dad. He swatted more flies. Shifted his feet to stop ants climbing up his legs. Then he stared at the house across the street. It was missing its roof, doors and windows. It looked like a skull.

  For a moment George thought he saw a pair of eyes peering above one of the window ledges. ‘Just a trick of the heat,’ he said to himself. He was starting to sway on his feet, to have strange thoughts. Negative thoughts. He shook his head and spoke aloud the names of the people who had lived there until two years ago. ‘Hugo, Christopher, Jacinta …’

  He glanced at the house next door, with its metal front door and KEEP OUT signs. Old Mr Carey stood behind one of his upstairs windows, staring down through the filthy glass. George quickly turned away.

  Goosebumps began to dot George’s arms and legs. The temperature was dropping. The flies vanished. The sky to the west darkened further. The heat of the midsummer afternoon disappeared. That could mean only one thing.

  George scowled at the sky and spotted it taking shape. High above the rooftops in the distance. Emerging from the haze like a range of mountains. The mountains swallowed everything as they silently advanced towards the hill.

  The biggest ‘sandblaster’ in months was minutes away. There had been no warning, no sirens.

  George knew what to do: sprint inside, check the windows and doors were locked tight, block the gaps with rags, grab Beeper, then hide in the bathroom with their masks and goggles on.

  Yet he froze.

  The blaster moved over the stadium. It was black at its centre, and ringed with an orange glow. George didn’t want to go inside the house. Not with his father still out there.

  ‘Please come home. Please, please, please. Quickly.’

  A flock of birds flew ahead of the wall of angry wind and flying dirt. A few rabbits bounced and twitched along the roadway in a panic. The sandblaster devoured the houses, the leaning telegraph poles, the skeletons of trees further down the road. It began rolling up the hill towards George, choking everything in swirling dirt. Still, George remained on the wall, waiting for a miracle. Waiting for his father to appear somehow from the midst of all this.

  George realised there was no time left. He jumped off the wall and over the dead hedge as he was hit by the rush of air pushed ahead of the blaster. He landed a few metres from the front porch and lost his footing. He crawled towards the front door. The silence turned into a roar. George held his breath and closed his eyes to keep out the dirt swirling up from the ground. Dragging himself to his feet, he knew he had only seconds to make it inside before the full force struck. He found the door handle with his outstretched fingers and pushed it down. The door flew open as if it had been kicked in. George crawled inside and slammed the door behind him.

  A second later, daylight vanished. Walls shook. The front door burst open again, knocking George further into the hallway. His arms, legs and face stung with the hot sand and dust that surged through. He ran to the door and shoved at it with both hands.

  ‘Beeper!’ he croaked. His mouth felt like a burning pit. He forced the door shut and fumbled for the steel security bar. He grabbed it and jammed it firmly into its brackets.

  ‘Beeper,’ George croaked. ‘Beeper! Where are you?’

  TWO

  George had been six years old when the first long drought broke. It was the middle of summer. Heavy black clouds filled the sky for a whole day.

  When the rain finally fell, it thudded against the ground so noisily you couldn’t talk.

  George angled his face to the sky and let the water slap against his skin and run down his throat. He had never been happier. It poured for three days and, when the sun returned, the first new shoots of green were already pushing out of the brown grass, and through the grey branches of trees.

  Then the heat raged again. Puddles evaporated. Leaves wilted. Grass sprouts burnt and turned the colour of straw.

  George reached his seventh birthday without seeing it pour again. Then his eighth. Occasionally it drizzled, but the droplets vanished in the heat without even moistening his skin. The idea of cool, clear water gushing from the sky seemed almost too strange to be true.

  With each year, the heat became worse. The lawn died at the root. Crops too. The soil began to lift with every puff of wind. The bare trees were hollowed by insects.

  The school hall was the first building in George’s street to collapse. He was nine at the time. That was easy to remember because the school was still open. The walls slowly subsided as the scorched ground shrunk beneath them. Eventually, the roof buckled and fell in. Later, the telephone tower across the valley leaned and then toppled, flattening a row of hou
ses and causing a fire that burnt all night.

  As the earth dried, underground cables and pipes stretched, cracked and snapped. Telegraph poles tilted in every direction. Phones stopped working. The airborne sand and grit worked its way into televisions and computers. They stopped working, too.

  Sometimes houses caught fire, and there was no water to put out the flames. Roads were buried in sand, train lines buckled in the heat. People dug boreholes into the ground to find water. They made spider webs of cables to tap into the haphazard electricity. They traded and stole solar panels.

  George turned twelve. Tomorrow, he would be thirteen.

  ‘Just doing a run to see what’s open,’ Dad had said this morning. ‘I’ll get some food, we’re running low. Maybe even some birthday cake, if we’re really lucky. Need some fuel too, now that I’ve cleared out the engine filters again.’

  ‘Can we come?’ asked George. As he always did.

  ‘Not this time,’ said Dad. As he always did. ‘I want to be quick, and you know how long things take with Beeper.’

  ‘What do we do while you’re gone?’ asked Beeper.

  ‘Your letters and numbers, Beep.’

  ‘What if there’s a blaster, Dad?’ asked George.

  ‘You know what to do. And if I hear a siren, I’ll be back as fast as I can.’

  ‘Be quick, Dad!’ George said.

  Dad nodded and smiled, then left. But he was not quick. Maybe the supermarket was closed, or empty. The fuel station too. Things had become much worse in recent months. Maybe Dad had taken a chance on the open-air markets near the city centre. To swap some tools, kitchenware or ration coupons for a drum of petrol.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ Beeper asked. It had been at least three or four hours. Dad should have been back. Beeper had lost interest in his work and was pacing around the room. ‘And where’s the cake?’

  ‘Stop it, Beeps,’ George said, forcing a smile. ‘You’re behaving like a six-year-old.’

  ‘I am a six-year-old,’ Beeper howled.

  ‘It’s going to be all right. Trust me.’

  Beeper did not calm down. His ears and cheeks burnt red. He demanded they go outside and stand on the front wall. ‘We’ll see Dad sooner.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Please.’

  George hesitated a long time before walking Beeper out to the sandstone wall. It was a silly idea, but he didn’t have a better one.

  The air was still, but it was scalding; the hottest part of another baking afternoon. The heat of the stone percolated through the soles of their shoes.

  ‘Dad’s hurt, isn’t he!’ Beeper said.

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Why’s he not back then?’

  ‘He might have gone to the port. He used to work there, remember?’ George sounded unconvinced. And knew it. ‘He might be helping to fix a ship, or unload one. Might have been given a whole day’s work.’

  Beeper opened one hand and punched the palm with his other fist. He switched from hand to hand, shifted his weight from foot to foot with each punch. ‘Dad! Dad! Dad!’

  ‘Ssh! Mr Carey will hear you.’

  Beeper’s cap fell off. His shirt was soon soaking with sweat. He finally climbed off the wall, and sat on the edge of the front porch. His eyelids were sagging.

  ‘You need to lie down,’ said George. ‘You’ve worn yourself out.’

  ‘No I don’t,’ was the firm reply. ‘I’m not tired!’ Yet Beeper still allowed George to take him inside, give him some water and help him onto his bed. He was asleep within minutes.

  George had chores to do, but couldn’t concentrate on them. So he went back to the wall and stared hopefully.

  When the blaster hit, George stumbled through the dark house and found Beeper awake and huddled under the sink in the bathroom.

  ‘It’s okay, Beeps,’ he said, as the walls seemed to bend around them. ‘It won’t last long.’

  George felt his way around with his hands. He opened the cabinet, and pulled out two dust masks, two pairs of goggles, a candle and some matches. The water jar was empty.

  George struck a match but a gust of wind blew it out straight away. He should have come in earlier and put rags under the doors.

  He spluttered and coughed. He struck another match, but it blew out too. A new barrage of wind and dirt thrashed against the side of the house. The third match stayed alight long enough to produce a low, flickering flame on the candle stub at the bottom of the jar. The dusty air glowed red.

  ‘Dad’s missing, isn’t he?’ Beeper said. His eyes were puffy. Sweat had made streaks in the dirt on his temples and cheeks.

  ‘I told you: he probably found a chance to earn some money. Had to sit out the blaster somewhere else.’

  ‘He’s hurt, or even …’

  ‘Stop it, Beep.’

  Beeper began punching his palms again.

  ‘It’s not a big blaster, Beeps. Dad will be back the minute it finishes. With cake.’

  ‘He might have been bitten by a snake. Or attacked by a wanderer.’

  ‘He’s safe. I know it.’ George had to shout above the noise. He tried to sound calm but his voice was cracking. He knew that people going missing was nothing unusual. Not with the heat, or the lack of food, water and fuel. Not with the snakes and wanderers, not with the sandblasters that hurtled across the city every few days.

  Many people went outside and never came back. Two years ago, George and Beeper’s mother was one of them.

  THREE

  Beeper pulled down his dust mask, stood, and spat into the bathroom sink. He held his parched throat then twisted the tap, out of habit. Nothing came out of the spout.

  He put his mask back on as the blaster attacked the house in clattering bursts. Each brought a shower of dust from the bathroom ceiling. One burst of wind was so forceful that George imagined the whole house being pushed down flat.

  The wind rattled the sheets of corrugated iron that were lashed to the roof. George put his fingers in his ears. There was a tearing noise. It sounded like one of the sheets had been ripped off and blown away.

  ‘The roof is okay, Beeps,’ George said immediately. Again, he could hear the fear and uncertainty in his own voice. If the iron went, the tiles could be next.

  ‘I’m so thirsty,’ said Beeper.

  ‘This jar’s empty. We need to go to the kitchen. That’s too dangerous. It will have to wait.’

  ‘I’m thirsty now.’

  ‘Just listen, Beeper. I was saying about the roof …’ George was talking to reassure himself as much as his brother. ‘Dad made it stronger. Like the rest of the house. He put the steel cables on it. Said the fixers are the only ones who’ll be able to last out until things get better, the people who can …’

  George stopped. Beeper now had his hands over his ears and was staring at the floor.

  After an hour the blaster had calmed down, though it was just as dark outside. ‘It’s safer now, Beeper,’ said George. ‘We’ll go and get a drink together.’

  Eddies of dust swept around the hallway as the two boys crawled from the bathroom to the kitchen. The roof iron rattled overhead. George slid the candle jar along the floor between them, hoping the flame wouldn’t blow out. In the kitchen, he climbed to his feet and grabbed two jars of strained water from the bench.

  ‘These are the best ones.’ George passed a jar to his brother and kept the other for himself. The boys scrambled a few more metres into the day room at the back of the house and sat under the dining table. ‘Wipe the top first.’

  Beeper wiped the top, screwed off the lid then tried to drink the water without removing his dust mask.

  George laughed. Beeper smiled too.

  The water was warm but not too gritty. Beeper swilled his down in one go. George drank slowly. The water eased the burning in his throat. He held the candle close so he could make sure he stopped drinking before he reached the silt at the bottom.

  ‘Some more, please,’ said Beeper. ‘My water wasn�
�t wet enough.’

  George clambered out from under the table and fetched another jar. ‘This is all for the moment. We’ll share it.’

  Beeper drank it all in one long gulp, spitting out the silt at the end.

  ‘Hey, it was meant to be fifty-fifty.’

  ‘You laughed at me.’

  They stayed under the table. The storm was picking up again. The doors vibrated, the wind tore at the thick plastic panels attached to the outsides of the windows. Eventually there was silence.

  ‘Is it over?’ said Beeper.

  ‘Don’t know. But we better stay here for a while. It’s safer under the table.’

  Hours passed. The candle burnt to its base and flickered out. George couldn’t even guess what time it was. He was tired and thirsty again. He was hungry too, and didn’t have the strength to find another candle, or even to check for spiders. ‘Let’s have a snooze, Beeps.’

  ‘No, too dark.’

  ‘How can it be too dark to snooze?’

  ‘Want to be awake when Dad comes home, Torgie.’

  ‘Stop the baby talk. George starts with a Jor sound.’

  ‘Jor … Torgie.’

  Even in the dark, George could sense that Beeper was smiling.

  ‘Torgie, Torgie, Torgie!’

  The storm did seem to be over. The roof was still in place.

  ‘Get some sleep, Beeps. Dad will be home safely in the morning.’

  George closed his eyes. It didn’t matter that the wooden floor was hard and bare. Beeper obviously felt the same way; he was soon wheezing. It was the half-snore, half-cough of someone who’d breathed in too much dirt. But George knew that sound. It meant his brother was asleep.

  George listened to the wind and tried to ignore his burning throat. He imagined millions of specks of dust working their way through the edges of doors and windows, between the iron sheets and the tiles on the roof, between the shifting floorboards. And through the damaged roof.

  Eventually, he drifted off.

  When the boys awoke, the sky was glowing pink between the thick metal bars on the inside of each window.

  ‘Morning, Torgie,’ said Beeper, propping himself onto his elbow. ‘Happy Birthday.’