Carousel (5 page)

I think this was like Taylor and the books. She would drive Lizzy crazy waiting on her to finish a book rather than get a new one off the shelf. Lizzy probably knew best why Taylor did it. Something about keeping a lid on the world. About making sure she still wanted things, because wanting was important. In some way, wanting was tied to survival. That's what I thought. But a lot of the time I didn't really know what was going on between them. Sometimes I felt like one day the doors would open and we would go our separate ways without any lasting impression. Like I was bouncing around outside of them this whole time and it meant nothing.

We finished with
Breaking Bad
and Rocky left for
bed in Camping World. He kept a tent in there with a mattress on the floor. For a while it was a blow-up plastic one like he had in Target. When we realised, Taylor and I dragged in a pillow-top from Bed Bath and Home and got him the hell off the cold lumpy air. Rocky slept more than any of us, yet he always looked tired.

The three of us stayed on the couch in an early-evening daze while the DVD menu screen looped through.

‘Did you look in those storerooms?' asked Taylor.

I nodded.

‘No good?' asked Lizzy.

I shook my head, but couldn't get rid of their gazes.

‘I didn't look in all of them. So there might still be something,' I added.

They nodded.

‘How is Rocky?' I asked Taylor.

‘Who knows,' she replied and was silent for a moment.

‘We almost got a door open today,' she said, matter-of-factly.

Lizzy and I looked at her.

‘Holy shit. Where?' said Lizzy.

‘In the corridor beside Just Jeans,' replied Taylor.

‘What happened?' I asked.

‘It just moved. None of the other ones have. Rocky was using a crowbar and the door slipped a little. He didn't know what to do and I wasn't watching. By the time I raced over, the door had slipped back and we couldn't wedge it open again.'

‘Wow,' I said.

‘Yeah,' said Taylor.

‘So that's it?' asked Lizzy.

Taylor looked at her for a moment. Something passed.

‘We only had some small tools with us. With a bigger crowbar and mallet it might open,' she replied.

‘Where do you think it goes?' I asked.

‘What do you mean?' asked Taylor.

‘Storeroom? Cleaners cupboard?'

‘I think it goes outside,' she said.

The words resonated.

‘Why?' asked Lizzy.

‘Some of the doors have this feeling. Like a kind of pressure or weight. And others don't,' said Taylor.

‘Does this one have that?' I asked.

‘Yeah,' said Taylor.

The three of us sat there for a few moments, just staring at the looping faces of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.

‘What do we do if it opens?' asked Lizzy.

‘Get the hell out of here,' said Taylor.

‘Doesn't it depend on what's out there?' I asked.

‘What do you think is out there, Nox? Zombies? A nuclear holocaust? You've heard the noises,' said Taylor.

‘I've heard something that sounded like a harmonica. And some dogs barking. I haven't heard anyone come to do their shopping or catch a movie,' I replied.

‘We have to go out there. All the food in this place will be out of code eventually. And I'm worried about Rocky,' said Taylor.

Lizzy put a hand on her shoulder. I stared hard at the floor and wondered why the hell the idea of a door opening freaked me out so much.

‘We need to take supplies,' I said.

The two of them looked at me.

‘We can't just expect to go out there and catch a taxi to Pizza Hut,' I said.

‘He's right,' said Lizzy. ‘Wait. Are we all going?'

Taylor and I looked at each other. She nodded. So did I.

I left JB's and cycled through the half-lit centre to put some supplies together and think over Taylor's news. We had agreed to head to the door after breakfast tomorrow and I had volunteered to gather supplies for whatever we might face outside. I didn't often cycle around alone at night. The mixture of shadow and light, as some shops shut off and others stayed on, tipped Carousel over its creepy threshold. Plus with so many areas on different timers you never really knew when the place you were in would black out and send you into momentary panic.

Tonight I felt numb and I told myself I didn't care. The news of the door had my head racing more than it had done since all of this started. The idea that the four of us could be outside this time tomorrow was too bizarre to comprehend. The logic of our existence in the
centre – me, teenage shop assistant Rocky, indie rock duo Taylor & Lizzy – seemed stronger than everything else now. The outside world was not just foreign; it contained too much possibility to be real. Somehow it felt fictional and I hated it.

I looked around for backpacks for a while, even trying Bags R Us. Shopping for Taylor and Lizzy was pretty impossible these days. Eventually I settled on four small hiking packs from Mountain Designs and set about filling them with whatever items our hypothetical adventures might require.

I started with the obvious stuff. Two large bottles of Mount Franklin in each. The most expensive first aid kit I could find at Friendlies Chemist. Multivitamins. Chocolate and vanilla energy bars. Some water purification sachets. Four of those extra-warm sleeping bags that somehow bundled up into tiny balls. I actually unrolled one to check it out and couldn't get it back into the bag. So I left it on the floor and took another.

With the four bags swinging from my handlebars I coasted over to Army Depot. Thankfully all the lights were on and I wouldn't have to fish around in the dark while the gas masks followed me with their big black eyes.

I ran through survival movies in my head for packing
ideas. This relaxed me a little and I started to kind of enjoy the process. I packed a premium slimline Maglite torch in each bag, along with some backup batteries. The Swiss Army knives were in a glass display case on the counter. I stepped around and took out four small models before carefully closing it again.

What else?

There was no point packing clothes because Taylor and Lizzy would only wear what they wanted, and Rocky had his own bizarro outfits. I did find some plastic pullovers that would keep us dry and folded down to the size of a golf ball. Pretty cool.

A compass seemed pointless because Perth was pretty easy to navigate. West was the Indian Ocean, north and east were hills, then desert, and if you headed south you could follow the freeway all the way down to reach the forests.

That left the masks.

They covered a wall behind the counter like a shrine to Cold War sci-fi and post-9/11 paranoia. The thought of pulling one on terrified me, but of all the things I had thought to pack it probably made the most sense. There was a reason that nobody had come to Carousel for the countless days we had been trapped inside. That reason could be innocent. But it most likely wasn't. And
if that were the case then something widespread must have happened. In most of the movies I could think of, widespread meant airborne. So I picked out the least creepy mask and packed one in each bag.

I hooked a trolley onto the back of the bike (something that Rocky and I had eventually perfected), loaded up the bags and cycled over to Coles to choose some food items. Cans were heavy but the only viable option given their distant expiry and the lack of preparation required. I selected a decent range that would feed us for around a week, then took everything over to the lounge out front to finish the packing.

Out of the dead Carousel air Lizzy started to sing.

The echo was small so she wasn't far away. Maybe just on her bed in Dymocks.

I stopped and sat down amid the cans and bags. She was playing with a song I hadn't heard before. It was gentle but had a poppy kick in the chorus that I liked straight away. She drifted off a few times before just thumbing through some chords. The lights in Coles timed out behind me. The corridors were close to dark now, but I stayed to listen.

Abruptly Lizzy switched into ‘Over Early' from
Sophomore
. I'd never heard her play a full song in the centre before. For a moment I wondered if Taylor and
Rocky could hear, but realised that of course they could. Bouncing around the night-filled centre it was sad and beautiful and loud as hell.

Lizzy had started singing to herself, but ended up singing to all of us. We were together then. Like we were that first day on the lounge. Or in Target when we found Rocky. Like we would be tomorrow at the door.

Suddenly I wondered if Lizzy was offering Carousel an early goodbye.

In the morning we met at Pure 'n' Natural for breakfast as per normal. Taylor had a trolley full of tools from Backyard Bonanza. I had my own trolley carrying the four backpacks I had filled the night before. We were all a little pensive about the door. Lizzy tried to lighten the mood with a joke about my choice of backpack. We all smiled, but it was fleeting and we remained focused on our food.

Just Jeans was in a part of the centre that had been refurbished since construction in the seventies. The floor was parquetry with a matt finish and the walls a light shade of mauve. Taylor and Lizzy would shop down there sometimes. Browsing through the small clothing outlets with a concentration that belied our situation. Only occasionally finding something they would wear
in front of the other. Sometimes talking through their shopping predicaments, often assessing each other silently, noting what worked and what didn't with an objectiveness that kind of intrigued me.

Taylor led us to the store, even though we all knew the way. Rocky cycled along beside us. He had mastered the art of riding slowly without toppling sideways. I glanced at him. He seemed calm and free of anticipation. I don't know why I expected anything else.

Taylor was clearly edgy.

She had been there when the door slipped partially open. A glimmer of hope after countless rejections. She felt that it could be forced to happen again, and that the door would lead not to another room but outside to freedom. She had been waiting for this opportunity since our first week in Carousel. And now it was here.

Lizzy confused me. She seemed more relaxed than Taylor and me. Strolling casually and sipping on some leftover smoothie. She was making jokes, too. Actually, maybe not jokes, that wasn't her thing, but kind of witty observations that you wouldn't laugh at straight away, but maybe smile about two days later when something reminded you. Watching her I wondered if she was actually more nervous than anyone.

My own anxiety had drifted into numbness.
Whatever waited outside the door, I was sure it wouldn't be my job at the stationery store. Or my housemates at our crappy apartment. Or the lonely spread of suburban Perth on a Tuesday. Our situation would continue. This had drifted me to sleep when Taylor and Lizzy had chatted through the night on the radio, talking with expectation about Canada, apartments and girlfriends.

The corridor beside Just Jeans was fairly short, with just four doors. Two headed to bathrooms, one was labelled
Cleaner Only
and the fourth stood blank. We pushed the trolleys against the wall. Taylor grabbed a large crowbar and a mallet and carried them over to the fourth door. We followed.

The paint was scratched slightly from the day before.

‘So I'm going to try and wedge this inside like Rocky did yesterday,' said Taylor holding up the crowbar.

‘When I get it in you need to hit the door,' she told me and passed me the mallet.

‘Okay,' I replied.

Lizzy watched us both. Then turned to look at Rocky a little way behind us.

‘Hey Rock, come over here, yeah,' she said. He followed obediently.

‘If it opens and we go outside we need to prop it so
we don't get locked out there,' I said.

Taylor and Lizzy looked at me curiously, as if they couldn't see how this would be a problem.

‘Use the mallet,' said Taylor.

I nodded.

Taylor edged in close to the door and positioned the crowbar on top of the previous scratches. She glanced at me. I shuffled forward with the mallet to stand ready by her shoulder. She angled the bar back a little, wedged it in close to the frame, and pulled.

Nothing happened.

Taylor pulled again. Still nothing moved.

She leant closer and levered her weight against the bar. The door held quietly firm.

‘More angle,' said Rocky softly.

Taylor stopped to look at him. She held the bar out for him to replace her. He hesitated for a moment, then padded slowly across. He took the crowbar and pointed it awkwardly at the door as if it were alive. We watched as he drew it back almost at a right angle and struck the edge of the door before quickly levering sideways.

The door shifted an inch or so inward.

‘Shit,' said Lizzy.

‘That's it, Rocky. Go again,' said Taylor.

I shuffled closer with the mallet and Rocky held up
the bar for another blow.

He struck down again. There was a noise. Air.

The door slipped back and the steel of the crowbar wedged in between the wood and the frame. I swung the mallet automatically, just missing Rocky and landing a dull thud on the door.

It swung open.

I expected light but it was darkness that greeted us. Darkness and the smell of rubber and concrete. Neither Rocky nor I moved. Taylor shifted in behind us. She put a hand on Rocky's shoulder and he stepped aside. She paused, then took a careful, deliberate step down and out of Carousel.

‘Wait,' I whispered harshly.

Taylor froze.

‘The bags,' I whispered again, unsure of why I had lowered my volume.

Lizzy took them out of the trolley and passed them around. Taylor pulled hers on and continued down the steps. I motioned for Rocky to follow, then Lizzy. I left both the mallet and crowbar wedged in the frame so the door wouldn't close behind us.