One world already dead, another unable to be born.

Thursday, February 9th

Yesterday the world ended. War in Europe and the Middle East, revolution across the world, storms all summer, and yesterday, the water rose. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapsed in the past month, and it dropped into the ocean and sent a surge of water across the world. It rose through the head of Port Phillip Bay and into the city. The flight of people, the chaos – I've not seen such scenes since Africa., or New Orleans in the news a year ago. I'd hoped Australians would be better than that. But it only took a day of disaster and people were shooting and burning places down.

I'm with Mike, a gaming acquaintance. Apparently he used to be a firefighter, so he may have some useful skills, I don't know how he'll be at surviving, but at least he should be able to climb and use first aid and so on. I grabbed a few bits and pieces, got a packful of food and some basic medicines. I guess I'll have to scrounge other stuff. We head north-east, towards the hills. I expect there to be a great wave across, the city, and then the water to recede to several metres above normal sea level. It sounds like a lot, but a lot of places, including my home suburb of Oakleigh, should emerge from the water afterwards. The problem will be services. With the world oil supply not moving, and a good number of people away from their work, food and so on won't be transported. Finally we're paying the real price for getting oranges in winter. It's nice to have food from a thousand kilometres away, but what happens when the trucks and trains stop? You starve. You need the people to get the services going again, but you need to services going to get the people to their workplaces... We had the warning a year ago when oil prices went through the roof, and all the food and clothing prices went up, too. They started babbling about tax breaks for fuel buyers, but it never seemed to occur to anyone – well, why not produce the stuff close to home? What a fashlah. So anyway we went north-east, in a great crowd, and approached some homes on higher ground. I went up to the place at the head of the crowd, knocked on the door, no answer, The crowd was surging behind us, screaming, shouting. We kicked in the door, and people started moving in. I heard a smash of glass, looked to my left, a man was smashing a window. "Use the door, dickhead!" I shouted. "It's open!" But no-one could hear me over the noise of the crowd, and the press of them all carried us into the house.

People started setting up, pocketing the silverware, laying out the bedding they'd grabbed. We heard a crash of furniture being smashed, and looked at each-other. "Uh oh," I said, "those idiots are going to start a fire in here." We looked, there was no fireplace in the loungeroom. We went there, and indeed they were preparing a fire in the main room.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Making a fire!" said one tall bloke, aggressively. "What do you think?"

"Mate, it's one house with two hundred people in it, you won't be cold tonight."

"There's a cold wind through the windows, though."

"Yes, there is. Could that be because you smashed the window?"

He looked a bit embarassed, but kept breaking the furniture up. Mike toted his shotgun, god knows where he got the thing from. "No fire tonight."

"Says who?"

"Says me," said Mike, clicking the action on his shotgun, yank movie-style, expending a perfectly good round onto the ground. I picked it up. When I looked up, the bloke had stopped breaking the furniture and gone and sat down in the corner, sulking.

But soon we heard similar noises from the other rooms, and upstairs. "This place will burn tonight," I said, "Let's sleep outside." Mike agreed, and we went out, I set up the tent.

Night fell, fires burned inside and out, it began to rain. Mike stood watch for several hours, then woke me about 3am. I mumbled and muttered and flung off my nice, warm sleeping bag with a curse. I sat up, put my boots on, my swannie, and Mike handed me the shotgun then got in the sleeping bag. It all felt rather too much like the Army, doing watches in the middle of the night.

I stood around for a while, many people were up and about, unable to sleep. The flickering light in the upper windows of the house grew larger, and I realised the place was burning. Screams came from inside, and people started coming out in a panic. "Told you so," I muttered. I woke Mike, who was none too pleased at the interruption to his dream about Britney Spears. "Burning building, mate, I think it's your cue."

"Well hell, what am I supposed to do, there's no water pressure in the taps around here."

Near us, a woman was screaming. "My baby! My baby!"

Mike went up to her. "Where's your baby?"

"Inside the house! My baby!"

"In which room?"

"In the house! My baby!"

Mike sighed. "Can I borrow your jacket?" I took off my swannie and gave it to him. "There you go, Fireman Mike." He put it on and went inside. I tried to comfort the woman. After several minutes, we saw Mike climbing out the upper story window. He waved me over, I went forward against the heat. He brought forth a child about five years old, and dropped him down to me. I caught the kid, who was unconscious or dead. Mike dropped down afterwards, and we took the kid over to the mother. We laid him down, she was still screaming. "Hold her back while I check the kid over."

The boy was breathing, and his legs were twisted and bruised – fractured bones. The woman was screaming, I was holding her back, she was crying, face red and wet. Men were offering "help". "Yeah, what you need to do with the kid is," and so on. I told them to shut up, waving my shotgun at them. "He was a fireman. You're no-one, bugger off." I got one of them to hold the woman. I crouched down by Mike, his face was serious. "What's the prognosis, mate?"

"Two broken legs. Who knows, could be internal bleeding. Kid's probably dead without real medical help, a hospital. Nothing we can do."

We explained this to the woman as delicately as we could. She was unbelieving. "But it's just broken legs, how can he die?" Mike assured her that the child was as good as dead, he wasn't very tactful about it.

"Are you sure, mate? Broken legs..."

"Inevitably femoral fractures rupture the femoral arteries. The child's dead." The woman wept some more. I had the feeling Mike was pretending to a certainty he didn't have. But assuming he was right, given the collapse of the city and its hospitals, there was nothing more we could do. We walked away. It's not in my nature to just walk away like that, but with so many in trouble... it's like pissing in a bushfire.

The morning dawned smoke-filled, with tears. Children were getting hungry, people cold and tired. We heard gunfire in other streets, saw the occasional body. We moved on, following the roads east-north-east to the hills.

We found an unoccupied house, it'd been trashed but there was some food and other things left behind. Mike caught up on missed sleep while I prepared some lunch and poked around. I grabbed toothpaste, headache pills, that sort of thing. No-one will be making panadeine for a while, or olive oil, or soap, or toothpaste. Three million people out there on the roads, and most of them don't realise that things like soap are not just to make you smell nice, they're a medicine. Do without, and you'll get all sorts of diseases, and infections. We had lunch and moved on.

We came to a group of commercial buildings. One was large, and apparently empty. With three blasts from the shotgun Mike took off the hinges and we pushed down the fire door. Each fire door was closed, and we removed the hinges. It was an office building. We scored a heap of chocolates from some charity fund-raising thing. Each level had tea, coffee, a hot water urn, toilets. I took toilet rolls, all sorts of consumables. We were on about the third level, and about to move up the stairs, Mike went to the door and a cricket bat appeared from nowhere and smacked him across the top of the head. He staggered back, stunned. There were three punks there. A tall skinny mohawked bloke with a cricket bat, a beefy bloke with brass knuckles, and a short-arsed pimply bloke with a bike chain.

Still wearing my pack and hefting all that crap, I waded in with the fists, punch in the throat to Cricket Bat Boy, he took it hard but stayed up, then moved past and behind me. Brass Knuckles Boy came in swinging, and hit me a hard one on the leg as I tried to step out of the way. Pimple Boy's bike chain came lashing out, through the doorway, and smashed me in the arm, hurt like hell.

Still, Mike was staggering back. "Screw this," I said, "gimme that." He looked blankly at me, and I just grabbed his shotgun. Brass Knuckle Boy took a swing at him while Pimply Boy rolled his chain back in. I flicked off the safety, and put a blast in the guts of Brass Knuckle Boy, who dropped like a sack of spuds onto the ground. The boom was loud in the confined space, and echoed up and down the stairwell. Pimple Boy suddenly recalled an urgent appointment elsewhere, and ran off down the stairs, leaving a trail of urine behind. Cricket Bat Boy ran and dodged through the cubicle farm walls, and Mike yelled at the top of his voice, "gimme the gun!" I handed it over, he staggered after Cricket Bat Boy, blasted away but obviously missed. I waved Mike over. He'd obviously been deafened by the blow to his head. Brain damage?

I pointed up stairs, then called out, "hey, Cricket Bat Boy and Chain Boy. Remember your mate here. You two can bugger off now, and if you come back, we'll give you the same we gave your buddy. See ya later." We quickly looted Brass Knuckle Boy's remains. Someone had thoughtlessly spilled blood and guts all over his nice bikie's jacket, but he still had his brass knucks, and his silver piercings on nose, ear, and belly button. Mike suggested I open his pants to check for a Prince Nez, but it didn't seem worth it. Who knew what I might find in there?

We headed on upstairs and settled in for the night. Mike stone deaf now, I hope it doesn't last, I get tired of writing him notes. He keeps yelling, "I should only be deaf in one ear, it was a whack on the head." The heavens were unresponsive to his plaintive, profanity-filled pleas.

Well, so ends my first full day in this crazy world after the flood. It's like Mad Max on the beach, I don't like it much. And I doubt my sidekick Mike will be with me long, he seems a bit crazy. Plus, not too bright. He knew the apocalypse was coming, what did he bring? His pants, and a gun. Well, at least he brought his pants.

The dead guy's name was Victor Grushenko, some Slavic type. A punk. I think we met the only three punks in all of Melbourne. I'm not too impressed with myself at blowing him away. I mean, sure, he had it coming. He jumped in with his mates and had a go at a complete stranger, and the complete stranger happened to have a pump shotgun. So, tough shit for him. But still, a shot in the air might've had the same effect – all three would run off. His death was maybe right, but it wasn't necessary.