The End: Surviving the Apocalypse (4 page)

Qaranteen scanned the room. She should never have come. She knew better than to take on close-quarters combat. It was too dangerous, too unpredictable. Now both escape routes were cut off. She’d have to fight her way out. But there were so many of them! And they kept making that mindless noise that burrowed into the dark places of her soul and made her realize there was no hope left.

Focus!

Qaranteen tried to block out her fear. If she panicked, it was over. She lined up a target, took a breath and exhaled.

Hands grabbed her from behind. She shrieked.

“Q!”

“Hannah?”

“Why are you aiming a slingshot at Sophie?”

“She won’t stop talking! None of them will stop talking in those high-pitched voices of theirs! And there are so many of them!”

Hannah patted Q’s hand and took the ruler away from her. She dfisarmed the rubber band, told the class to get on with their drawings and led Q to the window. Q slumped onto the brown carpet and pulled her knees up to her chin.

“This is what you’ve been preparing for,” Hannah said.

“I’m not ready!”

“Mrs Mason will be back next week,” Hannah said.

“What if she’s not? What if I’m stuck here forever with a bunch of insane five-year-olds? They might turn on me, Hannah. If they joined forces, I’m not sure I could take them all.”

Hannah rolled her eyes. “Snap out of it! Think of them as monsters from one of your games. You can do this.”

Q stood and straightened her shoulders. “You’re right. There’s twenty-six of them and one of me. They don’t stand a chance.”

“That’s better,” Hannah said.

Q started moving to the front of the class again, but was restrained by Hannah’s hand on her arm. “Give them over,” Hannah said.

Q grunted and emptied her pockets of paper clips, rubber bands and scrunched up balls of paper. “How can I teach the evil monkeys if I’m unarmed?”

“You’ll have to rely on the power of your mind, Q.”

“God help us all.”

*

She was back in the principal’s office. Mr Macklin was reading a roster and muttering. He scratched off one name and underlined another. He had not yet noticed the assistant teacher hovering in his doorway. Q considered calling on her sneaky powers of sneakery and making an escape, but he’d send for her again later if she did. Best get it over with, whatever it was. She cleared her throat.

“Ah. Quentin.”

“It wasn’t my fault, sir.”

Mr Macklin smiled. “Take a seat.” He waited for her to settle in the chair in front of his desk. There was a long pause as he studied the roster.

Q reddened. She knew what he was doing. He was pretending to be distracted to give her time to stew over her crimes, hoping she’d crack. Cunning devil! What had he found out? Was it the raptor mathematics?

“Thank you for stopping by in your lunch break.”

Biology of the undead?

“I wanted to tell you …”

Grammar for a clone world?

“… that you are doing an excellent job.”

“What?” Q studied the backs of his hands, wondering if she had slipped into another Qaranteen flashback and was about to be attacked by a legion of demons.

“I’m a strong believer in letting people find their own feet, Quentin,” Mr Macklin continued. “Now that you’re teaching solo, you’ve bloomed.”

“Like a fungus?” she said. “Fungus blooms.”

“At first I was worried about the Kindy Koalas. Andrew made a complaint about Nine B’s music lesson.” Mr Macklin chuckled. “He said it sounded like some kind of tribal war chant! The imagination that man has.”

“I can explain—”

“But then Natolia pointed out that you’re getting through to the kids and it’s all part of the new teaching methods,” Mr Macklin said.

“Which is what I was going to say.” Q fidgeted. The conversation had twisted beyond her control and the truth reared in her throat, threatening to escape. She choked it back down.

Mr Macklin waited for her to finish coughing. “You’re not getting sick, are you?” he said, with touching concern.

“No, sir,” she said.

“Good. Because if I lose any more staff, we’ll have to close the school. Mrs Mason’s still off. You’ll be taking her class for the next two weeks.”

“Oh, God.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said, oh, good!” Q felt dread mixed with pride. Mr Macklin thought she was doing a good job! No one ever thought she was doing a good job, not unless it was assault related. “I brought you the pandemic plan,” she said, and handed over the wad of illustrated pages bound in brown paper. He took it.

“Excellent, Quentin. I’m sure it’s very comprehensive.”

“It is, sir. You’ll be astounded.”

Q was not drinking a chocolate milkshake.

She had ordered a chocolate milkshake. She'd had a disastrous Monday of solo teaching, she’d just been to another hippy meeting and she needed chocolate.

The waitress had explained that the café didn’t stock chocolate (because of the slave labor), milk (because of the cow torture) or sugar (maybe because it tasted good, Q had stopped listening by then). The waitress had instead assured Q that she would bring her something delicious that would blow her mind.

The waitress had lied.

Q drank her fresh, cool glass of gray. She didn’t know what was in it but it was more honest than the waitress. It tasted how it looked.

Trying to take her mind off her mouth, she studied the other patrons. They looked like the same sort of people she had met in yet another hippy meeting, this time for Animal Rights are Right – or ARAR for short, which no one besides Q had pronounced with a pirate accent. What was it that made these people so earnest? She hoped they didn’t put any of it in the food.

She blew bubbles into her glass and regretted not trying the Happy Sprout across the road, but she couldn’t deal with all that alfalfa in the front window. The display dishes looked like they had green Afros. How long would she have to cruise this freak circuit before she found Rabbit?

Her stomach rumbled. “Not a chance, belly,” she said. “I don’t want to find out what they do to a burger in here.” She made a critical misjudgment on the bubble blow and her hippyshake exploded.

Q was wiping down the table, her chin and her elbow when she noticed a beautiful man standing in the doorway. She wiped the rest of the stuff off her face, stood up, knocked over her chair, retrieved it and waved. “Rabbit!”

He smiled and walked across to her. “I know you. You’re the kindergarten teacher. Winston, wasn’t it?”

“Uh – yeah, but you can call me Q.” She gestured to the empty seat across from her. “Would you like to have dinner with me?” she said, then blushed.

He sat down. “Sure. I’m famished. What are you having?”

“I couldn’t eat a thing.”

“Oh.” Rabbit picked up a menu and scanned it, then waved to the waitress.

The woman, who was infuriatingly cute, beamed and hurried over. “Rabbit!” she said. “So good to see you! You haven’t been in for weeks.”

A leg sweep and head stomp would do it. If only the woman were a zombie.

Rabbit ordered bean nachos and a glass of carrot and ginger juice. She caught herself gazing at his face, wondered if she had been looking at him long enough for it to be awkward, realized that as soon as she had begun to wonder it was already awkward, and launched into conversation as cover.

“So!” she said. She stopped. Oh God. Her mother had been right. She had no follow-through. What went after “so”?

She caught her hands halfway through Amorous Monkey kata, which they always reverted to when their owner was nervous, and placed them squarely on the table. Rabbit was definitely beginning to look uncomfortable. He would bolt as soon as he’d finished his food and she would never see him again. She glanced at the menu and grinned in relief. A topic!

“Beans!” she said, too loud. Rabbit jumped. “You like beans?” she said.

He relaxed. “I love the bean family,” he said.

“Me too!” Q said. “There’s instant, and whole roast, and, um, instant.”

Rabbit’s brow creased. Q hoped it was how he usually looked and not a specific reaction to her. “How are the kids going?” he said.

Q gurgled. “Kids? I’m only twenty-two! I don’t have kids, not that I don’t want to someday, with the right person. I love kids. In my spare time I teach them how to beat each other up. But I don’t even have a boyfriend. I’m not gay though, I’m completely hetero, just unattached. That’s what my friends call me, Hetereounattached. When they’re not calling me Q.”

Rabbit grinned. “I meant the Kindy Koalas.”

“Oh. The little monsters—” she caught his expression and softened her tone—“are adorable, thanks so much for asking. We’ve been singing your song.”

“Really?”

“Quietly though, in case the school counselor drops by again.”

An overweight man in his early twenties entered the café and asked the waitress for directions. He looked as out of place as Q felt. Her nose twitched at the delicious scent coming from the brown paper bag in his hand.

Rabbit leaned toward her. “You smell it too? I know exactly what you’re thinking,” he said.

“Mmm.” Q couldn’t help inhaling. “A triple Dunkirk. Three beef patties with tomato relish and extra pickle and a side serve of six crispy meatballs with creamy farmhouse dressing,” she said. “Or something dreadful like that, I expect.”

The man left and Rabbit returned to normal volume. “Think what we must look like to a cow,” he said, shaking his head. “Shambling idiots with an insatiable craving for their flesh.”

Rabbit turned and greeted a stocky woman sitting near the door. She smiled back until she saw both Q and the waitress staring at her in icy fury. The woman stood and left, which was a shame, because Q was halfway through picturing the fight scene if she joined the waitress as one of the living dead. Great. Now the rest of her evening would be haunted by an unresolved action sequence.

The meal arrived, complete with a tomato carved into a heart. “It’s the thoughtful touches I love,” Rabbit said, indicating the tomato.

“Weird,” said Q, glancing at the plates on the surrounding tables. “No one else has hussy garnishes.”

He offered her the plate to share. Q stabbed the heart-shaped tomato with her knife and took slow, deliberate bites, smiling at the waitress.

“What brings you here?” Rabbit said.

Q beamed. “I’ve been at an animal rights meeting in the community center.”

“Arar?” He chuckled. “I always thought they sounded like pirates.”

“Me too!” Q said. “Are you here just for dinner?”

“No, I had a meeting too, a planning session. Second floor in the same place.”

“Wow. You were right above me and I didn’t even notice.” Q turned the color of her garnish. “What’s your group called?”

“You are What You Eat,” Rabbit said.

“Yawye? Yowie?”

“I came up with it myself,” he said.

“It’s a great name. Best name ever. I have never heard such a good name.”

Rabbit ate his nachos. Q ate her words.

“You should come along sometime,” Rabbit said. “We do all sorts of cool stuff. We even have weekend spiritual cleanses.”

“I cannot tell you how much I love to cleanse,” Q said with complete honesty. “When’s the next one?”

“We've got a retreat this weekend. You should come to the regular meeting tomorrow if you're interested.”

“I am extremely interested,” Q said, grinning. At last her luck was turning.

*

“You’re in a good mood, Quinny,” said her father that night, exchanging knowing looks with his dinner. “Any reason why?”

Q grinned and sculpted another instant mashed potato yeti with sultanas for eyes, then put fish fingers onto both plates. “What type of fish do these come from?” she said. “And why don’t they use the thumbs?”

“It’s good to see you so cheery,” he said.

They took their plates and settled onto the couch. Bruce switched on the television. “I was thinking of visiting Honeydew next weekend,” he said.

“Mmm.” The seven o’clock news was too depressing for her current mood. Q was about to switch stations when the anchor cut to footage outside a US hospital. The story was about a new disease, Texan Flu, which wasn’t responding to antibiotics. Eight people had been diagnosed so far. Q wondered why they weren’t filming inside the hospital and why they hadn’t interviewed any of the doctors. It wasn’t like journos to miss out on filming surly hotties in scrubs. She reached for her little black book.

“We could go next Saturday,” her father said. “We’ll leave early and buy hotcakes at that place you love.”

They hadn’t been to the cemetery for months. Q hated that gray headstone sprouting from the clipped green lawn. It looked like it was growing, like at any moment, it might spring bulbous new life. As a kid, she’d always dreaded their next visit. It was years before Q understood Linda wasn’t coming back. She was glad she had an excuse for not going next weekend, but she didn’t like the idea of her dad visiting on his own, accepting pity from strangers.

“Maybe the weekend after,” she said. “I can’t next Saturday. I got a date with destiny.”

Why was she was holding her little black book? Had she been about to write something? She dropped it onto the table, unwritten and unread.

*

It had finally happened. Q had been preparing for this for so long, but now it was here, she found she wasn’t ready. Deep down, she had never believed in it. But she could not deny the evidence before her. There they were, all twenty-six of them, scattered across the stained carpet, limbs askew, small bodies motionless. What would her crew say?

Q crept between them, not that she would disturb them if she made a noise. Not now. What sort of world was it that this could happen to the little children?

“Hannah,” she said. “How?”

“Well,” Hannah said, “I got everyone to lie down like Mrs Mason used to, and then I read them a story, and then they all went to sleep.”

“But they never go to sleep in my class,” Q said. “I’ve been trying to enforce naptime since Thursday, and this is the first time it’s worked.”

“Maybe,” said Hannah, “it’s because five minutes in, you always scream, ‘Take that, you evil fiend!’, and fire a cap gun.”

“I’m keeping them on their toes, Hannah Banana,” Q said. “What if one day they’re attacked when they’re sleeping? Thanks to me, they’ll be prepared.”

“Thanks to you, they’ll be in therapy with my brother. I hope Michael doesn't get a teacher like you. It might finish him off.”

Hannah went to the play mat at the back of the room and got out her two favorite dolls, Tweenie and Glitz Girl. Q joined her.

“I leave with the hippies for the retreat on Thursday afternoon from the station,” Q said. “I’m so excited, I forgot how to punch straight!”

“You have to teach Friday,” Hannah said, brushing Tweenie’s hair. “Mrs Mason’s still away.”

Q considered joining Hannah’s game, but decided on a solo round of Mad Scientist instead. She began assembling her horde. “It’s cool,” she said. “I’ll Bueller the day off.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure. I heard an old person say it once. I think it means I find adventure and you get a sub.”

Hannah sniffed and ripped out the ribbon she’d tied in Glitz Girl’s hair.

“I have to go to this camp with Rabbit,” Q said. “It’s destiny, bumping into each other like that.”

“Isn’t it because you cyberstalked him, staked out his office and then went to those weird meetings looking for him?”

“Nope. Definitely destiny. I can smell it.”

Hannah wrinkled her nose. “That’s Sandy,” she said, indicating a small boy dozing near the back of the class. “He doesn’t always make it.”

Q ignored this remark in case it led to some of the less glamorous work of a kindergarten teacher. She concentrated on jamming the head of an alien space doll onto the body of a small plastic pig. Satisfied, she added the results to her mutant army.

“What are the other kids like?” Hannah asked.

“What other kids?”

“The kids you’re going on camp with.”

Q considered. She hadn’t thought about anyone else on the retreat. All her thoughts had been about Rabbit. She smiled as she played out her fantasy once more. They would sit by the fire in their cosy log cabin. He would gaze at her, firelight flickering across his face, and say something beautiful and sad, like, “I never thought it would be like this.” She would place a hand on his cheek and lean in and kiss him, letting her hands play across his—

“Are they nice?”

Q flushed. “What?”

“The other kids?” Hannah said again. “Are they nice? You’re spending a whole weekend with them. What if you don’t like them? What if they don’t like you? What if the food’s weird and they don’t let you have top bunk and everyone wants to watch a different channel?”

“They’ll be great,” Q said. “I meet them tonight.”

“Wow, Q. You’re really brave.”