A/N: I wrote this for English class when I was seventeen. For some reason, I’ve always remained fond of it. The theme was, if I recall correctly, ‘consequences of a natural disaster’, so like the nerd I am, I chose a heat wave instead of anything more normal like a hurricane or earthquake.

Snail Archer (2013)

_@v

“Time flows away like the water in the river.” – Confucius

five seconds

“Má!”

The light has turned grey.

“Má…”

The sound is fading.

“…Má…”

seven minutes, forty-two seconds

You are watching your son as you wait for the lights to change. He is tired, eyes fluttering, but doing so well in his first wave of heat. Your back is to the window, the sun warming your skin, through to your soul. It feels so good to see your son safe.

The light flickers green. You turn, barely enough time to register Bruce, the glass of the drivers’ window smashed; his head slumped weakly against the leather wheel, a victim of heat syncope.

In the one-hundred-and-fifty-two milliseconds it took to register the collision – the metal crinkling in towards you, the glass shattering into your hair, turning it darker than it naturally was – there was time only for one thought and it was not for your own safety.

You were a deer in the headlights. There could be no stopping the Feral. No dodging, no hiding, no surviving. No time to get out of its way.

Only the time to save your son.

thirty-eight minutes

The drive back is swift, knarred trees and future roadkill a blur in your haste. Your son is waiting; there’s no time to be wasting. The sun cast coruscating light on each centimetre of the long world you drive through, but even it can’t stop the wet heat that swelters around you, trapping you. It’s nothing you’re not used to but your town isn’t. Your people need you. So does your son.

A horn honks, obscenely loud from the sidelines of your perception. You slow, enough to see what trouble there is now. Your people are filing onto the streets from the rubbity like lost sheep. And as you know full well, the herder must always search out his lost sheep and return them safely home.

So you stop once more to see how you can help. The constant hum of the cricket game from the old black and white telly is quiet under the chattering crowd.

The power is out.

“Too many people were using their air-cons,” someone says wisely. “We shoulda turned ‘em off.” Silently, you agree, but what else is there to do now except help your flock?

With a few fierce gesticulations, you herd your people into the station. There is a rusted generator out back that you haven’t used in all your years here. Hopefully, you can threaten it into working. Either way you know that when “faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage” – the flock will be safer here regardless.

one hour, twenty-four minutes, eleven seconds

Heatwaves were the most underrated of all natural disasters in Australia. They were also the most deadly. You knew this and yet had never taken note of the fact until it was staring you in the face, drawing everything into a haze of fuzzy lines. Certainly, the dawn of a new century meant fewer people would die from the phenomena but as you trudged past the weary, drawn faces of the people sweltering around you, you couldn’t help but imagine them passed-out, dehydrated, lying strewn about the ground like litter.

You shake your head. There’s no time to ponder on what could happen; you must go home. You have a family to take care of. Your son was waiting for you, so like the child waiting in the warm shade of the bus stop across the road.

“Sheriff Nguyen!”

There’s no time but you stop anyway. It’s Mrs Wilson from the B&S, with her grey hair flyaway about her face.

“Sheriff,” she pants. “There’s no time. My son’s trapped in that bloody hoon’s doovalacky again.” And you know she lives at the back of Bourke but what can you say?

You load Mrs Wilson into your patrol car and take off towards her house. Why the old fruit loop had bothered to come all this way instead of calling when you were still at the station is beyond you.

The world tilts on its axis as you arrive at the house; when was the last time you drank? You don’t know but there’s no time for wondering as you spot the little ankle biter trapped in the Feral – in young Bruce’s burnished, black V8 Ute.

Mr Wilson is standing next to the vehicle, his budgie smugglers as red as the skin on his shoulders.

“Sheriff!” The ruddy bloke’s eyes lit up. “It’s as dry as a Pommy’s towel out ‘ere; what took you so long?”

You stride to the boot of your car, take out the crowbar. The window makes a satisfying smash, the shards glinting, blinding in the sunlight. You unlock the door and pull out the boy, so small and scared in your arms. The Wilsons take their child, crowding him with their relief, as they let out rapt cries of “You little ripper!” and “Thanks heaps!” for you. A smile dimples your cheeks. You leave them cuddling their boy.

It’s time you returned to yours.

“We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home.” – Australian Aboriginal Proverb