And All the Stars

Chapter Two

Madeleine lay suffocating in dust and near misses. Broken leg. Steel bar through her back. Broken neck. So many things she could have done to herself. Worse was measuring what damage she had actually done. She’d landed flat on her back, fortunately square on one of the deeper piles of dust, which had erupted like a geyser around her. Her already-painful skull was screaming protest at new abuse. But it was a reluctance in her arms and legs, a disconnect between want and ability to move, which spun her into terror. Paralysed. Was she paralysed?

Pins and needles. They arrived in force, swept through her, the whole of her body jolting with a hornet swarm’s stinging assault, but her spasmodic curl in reaction showed her that she could move, even though the most she could manage at first was to curl further, to clutch knees, elbows, and try to breathe through lungs which buzzed and burned, while somehow not inhaling powder. It smelled like an approaching rainstorm.

Madeleine did not quite lose consciousness, but when the stinging receded she lay numb while a new layer of dust sifted down. She’d nearly killed herself. Thrown away the unspeakable good fortune which had given her a protective cocoon of metal when however many others at the station had nothing to shield them. She had too much to do, too many images in her head which deserved release, and she had almost denied herself that. Sabotaged her own future just because of something strange and beautiful, velvet beneath her touch.

Her phone, still tucked behind the padding of her bra, lit up. The singer’s crooning murmur was far from a spur to action, but Madeleine did manage to pluck the device from her chest and tell it hello.

Her mother’s crisp voice, crackling with static. "Finally! Maddie, I’m on my way to the school. Stay inside. They say the cloud’s heading our way, but we should have time to get you home and seal the doors. Don’t hang up – I’ll let you know when I’m there."

"Cloud?" Madeleine blinked. "What are you talking about?"

A familiar, exasperated sigh. "Always in your own world. Look, they think it’s some kind of bio-weapon. A cloud of dust, coming from a black tower in Hyde Park. It’s happening all over the world – black towers and dust. They’re saying it’s aliens or – oh, what does it matter? Just stay where you are until I get there. Are you closer to the Strickland or Walpole Street entrance?"

The glow of Madeleine’s phone lit up glittering swirls in the powder still settling after her fall. Her throat itched, and she wanted nothing more than to be saved. And her mother was out trying to do exactly that, driving to school instead of home keeping herself safe. Riding to the rescue.

"I’m at the Gallery, Mum."

The background noise of the call changed abruptly, and then her mother’s voice came clearer, no longer on the hands-free set. "You’re where?"

"The Art Gallery of New South Wales," Madeleine said, making the lie resigned, apologetic, with no hint of dark and bruises, of broken things and dust. "I was waiting here till Tyler’s plane got in."

"You…" The word trailed away on a small shaking note, as unlike Victoria Cost as it was possible to be.

"I’m probably safer than you," Madeleine said, to fill the silence, to hear something other than that strangled word. Her eyes stung and she had to swallow, to work to make her voice sound casual, a little guilty, a touch disbelieving, as if she couldn’t credit the idea of black towers or bio-weapon attacks. "I’m in the Asian art section – it doesn’t even have windows. Are the animals okay?"

"That damn painting," Madeleine’s mother said. "You – Madeleine, why do you always…"

"Is Dad home?"

"He’s on his way." Her mother’s voice was regaining its usual brisk pace. "You stay where you are. Don’t go to have a look outside. Find the door to that section and shut it. Don’t worry about what the Gallery staff say. Stay as far away from outside doors and windows as possible, for as long as you can. Even when the air seems clear, use something to cover your mouth and nose. The roads are going insane, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get in to where you are, but I’ll call you back when there’s news and you can head to Tyler’s. You’ve still got that pass-key?"

"Yes, Mum." The familiar reeling off of instructions helped Madeleine conjure a shadow of a smile, made it possible to respond with the right note of weary patience.

"Good. I’ll call you when it sounds like it’s safer for you to head to Tyler’s. Or if it looks like you should try to spend the night there. Don’t let anyone try to make you leave before it’s clear."

"I won’t. Mum…"

But her mother had hung up. Madeleine laughed, then coughed, and gingerly levered herself into a sitting position. Her back and head did not love her, but her mother did, even if they’d had a lot of trouble talking to each other the last few years. Now all she had to do was overcome a little matter of collapsed exits, and get herself down to Tyler’s.

And then? She could pretend to her mother all she liked, but whatever the dust did, Madeleine was surely going to find out. She must have exceeded any minimum dose a thousand times over. Breathed it, swallowed it, had it in her eyes, ground it into her skin.

But that only made her want a bath, to clean herself off, to not be this filthy, fumbling, near-blind creature. "If you want B, finish A," her goal-oriented mother was always saying, and just now that was advice Madeleine was willing to take. Time to get out.

"But first check for other people," Madeleine reminded herself, and sighed.

Lifting her phone, she used it again as a torch, surveying a dim landscape of severed support pillars, broken stairs, and deceptively soft mounds below a wall of stars. Her train had departed as she’d walked up the stairs, and both platforms – what remained of them short of the wall of stars – stood empty. In the middle of the day the station had been far from busy, but there’d been a few people about. She could start with the small control rooms where the station staff retreated after signalling trains to depart, and the elevator–

No, not the elevator. Nothing could be alive in that compressed wedge of glass and metal.

The platform control rooms were double-entrance boxes, not much larger than the elevator. Madeleine headed left, focusing on the nearest doorway: a dark, empty square. A phone began to ring as she approached, and Madeleine edged into the room to a jaunty proclamation of I’m Too Sexy. A man lay near-buried in the dust, sprawled face-down across the threshold of the far doorway. Madeleine couldn’t see any blood, any obvious injury, but the layer of dust didn’t seem disturbed by any rise or fall of chest.

As the phone switched to screaming about messages, she made herself touch his shoulder, shake him, press her fingers to his throat, but chose not to turn him over, to discover what had left him so still. Instead, she moved to the edge of the platform, raising her phone to peer up at the shadowy curve above and the darkness which swallowed the track in either direction.

"Anyone there?" Madeleine called. "Hell–" A new spasm of coughing ripped through her, reviving the pounding in her head. It was impossible not to kick up fresh clouds of dust as she waded through it, and inhaling sharply had been a definite mistake.

If anyone was going to call for help, they would have done so already. All she could hear was falling water. Best to be methodical.

Reluctant to go near the starry wall again, Madeleine merely peered along the shortened platform, then turned to begin picking her way in the other direction. Almost immediately a rounded shape turned under her foot and she nearly went down, dropping her phone into a drift which glowed and sparkled unexpectedly.

"Welcome to the Glitter Mines," Madeleine muttered, digging to retrieve her phone and then investigate what she’d stood on. A scatter of soft drinks, escapees from a tumbled vending machine. That was serendipity, and Madeleine immediately picked up the nearest bottle and twisted the cap. The contents erupted into her face, but even a sticky orange bath was better than dust on dust, and she gulped down the remainder, till her throat no longer felt coated. Discarding the bottle, she wiped her phone, then tucked a few spare drinks into her backpack.

Moving more cautiously, she decided to follow the very edge of the platform, since little of the rubble had reached the track itself, and the curved arch above it was still intact. The platform extended further than the central connecting section, and she walked all the way down to the end and peered along the track as it disappeared into the tunnel to Circular Quay.

No visible damage, and far less dust. The twin overhead lines which powered Sydney trains seemed intact, though she supposed they must be severed by the starry wall. It would be easy for her to climb down and walk out, but she still had a lot of area to check.

About to turn away, Madeleine caught sight of a depression in the dust and, disbelieving, angled her phone for a better look. Footprints. Barely visible, since another layer of pale powder had settled on top, but definitely footprints. Three, maybe four people, had climbed down to the tracks here.

She wasn’t angry at being left. People were like that. And it released her from further searching.

The drop to the track was nearly as tall as Madeleine, but it wasn’t difficult to lower herself off the edge to the chunky gravel which surrounded the rails. Then she hesitated at the mouth of the tunnel, trying to see more than a few feet along the track before turning to stare back at distant pinpricks, remembering the feel of velvet beneath her fingertips, and then the jolt. Her hands weren’t damaged.

"Focus." Now was the time for getting out, not speculating.

Madeleine began to walk, holding her phone up high in case of something more unexpected than dust. The area between the rails was easy to walk on, with only stray lumps of clinker to look out for, and she followed the gentle curve until the only sign of dust were sprinkles which may have come from those who’d gone before her. Stopping to study a dusty print, she suddenly found her coating of grime intolerable.

Shedding her backpack, Madeleine pulled loose the wooden pin she used to hold her crinkle-curling brown hair in a knot at the nape of her neck, and ran her fingers through it over and over, showering an enormous amount of dust onto the rails. She was wearing a strappy sun dress, chosen because of Tyler, and not something she’d ordinarily wear while painting. Shaking and patting it with her hands added to the cloud around her, and she moved a few metres further before trying to beat her backpack clean.

It was impossible to get it all off, but she did manage to reduce her coating to a light powder, and cracked another bottle of soft drink to sip as she walked, fighting off the persistent itch in her throat. The clinker crunched beneath her feet, and occasionally she heard sounds which made her pause, poised to run, telling herself it was only rats, and far from reassured by that since she hated rats.

Aliens or rats, whatever it was stayed away, and eventually a point of light appeared ahead and the tunnel began to lighten. Soon Madeleine didn’t need her phone to find her way, and she picked up her pace even as she noticed a fine layer of powder covering the track and clinging to the walls. Circular Quay was not an underground station, and a thin coating of dust had settled over it, including on the train – a double-decker Tangara type, big and blocky – which sat on the track at the station platform. Fortunately it was not right up against the tunnel exit: first came a short section of track like a bridge, with a walkway along the side. Madeleine stepped up on this, and immediately looked out to what should be a sweeping view to the Sydney Harbour Bridge across the ferry terminals.

The only trace of the Bridge was a dim grey line. Years ago a great storm of red dust had picked up in Australia’s desert heart and swept across New South Wales all the way to Sydney, blanketing the city in a fiery haze. Madeleine had missed it, had woken only to a family car which needed a good wash, but she’d seen pictures of the Bridge hidden almost as completely as this. When her mother had told her that a tower in Hyde Park had let out a cloud of dust, she’d imagined a billow of smoke building to a cumulonimbus, something with edges. Not an entire desert’s worth of haze, to hide all landmarks and coat every surface white.

In the muted sunlight she noticed a faint purple tint to the cloud, and the whole thing sparkled, brighter motes catching the eye as they drifted. An alien attack which came in shades of lavender. Beneath this pastel blanket lay a city hushed, unmoving. Usually there were buskers playing down in front of the ferry terminals, their music threading through the chunk and clatter of trains and the rush of cars from the Cahill Expressway above. Today Madeleine could hear only a hum from the Tangara sitting at the platform, and maybe one or two cars creeping at a snail’s pace along the road overhead.

Slipping around the metal gate which divided the walkway from the platform, Madeleine headed for the escalators to ground level, glancing at the train’s lower row of windows as she moved. Through the film of dust she met the eyes of a half-dozen people staring up at her.

Their open horror made her flinch and for a moment she had a clear and exact picture of how they must see her. Not a skinny teen with big green eyes and hair on a life mission to frizz, but someone coated head to foot in unknown doom. Dead girl walking.

What was the dust doing to her? It itched against her skin, tickled her throat. Did her back and head ache because of bruises, or was that the first symptom?

But Madeleine was almost glad not to be like those who stared up at her. She had escaped the wreck of St James, and in a way gained a second release due to the certainty of her level of exposure. The dust cloud was not a barrier to someone who had waded through the stuff, and she was not locked in an air-conditioned bubble, hoping the train’s guard had closed the doors before any dust drifted inside. Would air-conditioning filter the dust out? How long would they stay there, unable to do anything but wait?

Head held high, Madeleine walked past two more carriages, and took the escalator down to street level. She’d lost her ticket, and had a moment as she wriggled past the barrier where she thought she could remember being thrust sideways, falling, and then she was out, walking through a ghost town powdered white.

In the hour since a tower of black had arrived at St James, the usual crowds of Circular Quay – tourists, office-workers, shop staff, ferry passengers – had vanished. Only the seagulls were out, shaking pale lavender wings and fighting over a spill of abandoned potato chips. But, as Madeleine found her way below the overpass and headed east, she realised that there were people everywhere. In cars, the windows wound up tight. Peering out of hastily closed shop fronts and restaurants. Crowded in tight, anywhere there was a door which could be shut, where gaps could be blocked with t-shirts or newspaper, where they could pretend the drift of white-purple had been safely kept at bay. Like the train passengers, waiting out some unlikely Sydney snowstorm. Trying not to breathe.

With visibility of no more than a few metres, it was disorienting walking through the cloud, but Madeleine was fairly certain she was heading in the right direction. A siren made her jump, and she turned sharply, only seeing the cloud and her footprints in the settling layer of powder. The blast didn’t belong to any vehicle, but seemed to be coming from all around her. As she moved on, she began to make out words, and realised it was some kind of emergency broadcast, though she couldn’t see the loudspeakers.

"…side…threat has been…panic…to seal…shut down…do not go…hospital…damp cloth…"

The snatches of instruction came and went, following Madeleine up to Macquarie Street, trailing her along the spiked metal fence of the Botanic Gardens, and fading completely as she neared the eastern border of the parkland known as The Domain and found the stairs leading off the promontory down to Woolloomooloo. The dust cloud was starting to thin and she could see a good portion of the seaside suburb below. Bracketed by two peninsulas – one park and one naval base – the bay was narrow and entirely dominated by Finger Wharf, with its long stretch of teal and white apartments, and row of impressive boats moored alongside. The water was as pale as the choking sky, a sluggish swell only occasionally breaking the surface layer of dust apart. It made Madeleine wonder how far west Sydney’s dams were.

A row of compact, expensive restaurants sat at the street end of the Wharf, their outdoor seating areas an icing-dusted display of half-eaten meals and overturned chairs. Every shutter was closed, every door sealed, and through the glass she could see more collections of the trapped, crowded together, sitting on the floor, huddled in despairing clumps. Staring back at her.

Even when the cloud settled, the dust would still be everywhere. How would anyone get home without kicking it up? How could they get rid of it all?

There was at least no difficulty getting into Tyler’s apartment. The electronic key to the residents' section of the central walkway gave her no trouble, and then she was unlocking his door, dropping her backpack, suddenly in a hurry to turn on the shower, to stand fully clothed in a blast of steaming water and watch her violet dress return to its original white and blue. A trembling weakness followed, because shedding that powder coat left her like the others: trapped and fearful. All she had now was the wait for the dying to start.

Shaking, staring down at the tinted water draining away, Madeleine’s attention was caught by her feet, narrow in strappy sandals. There was a crescent of carmine beneath the nail of her right big toe and for a moment she could only stare at it blankly, but then she was curling down, hitting her shoulder on the tap in her haste, scrabbling for soap, a nail brush, needing to erase a thing far more immediate than suspicious powder.

By the time no hint of blood remained, her toe was scoured red and her breath came in short, sharp pants. And then she coughed and spat glittering flecks, and laughed, and sobbed. Lucky! She was so lucky! She was not lying broken, was not a wet, shapeless bundle, a leaking horror to be crawled across and left behind in the dark. She had received a gift of life, a mayfly fortune, precious however temporary.

She would not waste it.