Beyond Carousel by Brendan Ritchie

none of us felt at ease. There were long stretches without an exit where the road seemed to close in around us like a concrete riverbed. It amplified the noises we made. Our voices, the squeak of our wheels, the rattle of tins in our baskets. At one point Chess let out a solitary bark that was shrill and piercing and sent a chill rippling across my arms. There were also more abandoned cars out here than we had seen anywhere else. We weaved around their creepy, silent frames and tried not to think of
The Walking Dead
. I tried to work out why this highway had more early risers than anywhere else we had seen. The only explanation I could think of was that it was heading towards the airport.
    Ironically it was Lizzy who wanted out of there first. The thunder we had heard in the morning sounded closer now and the sky took on a slightly purple tinge. The highway had maintained its trajectory with no indication of swinging westward. There was a good chance the city would be south of us now.Subconsciously our pace had quickened and more than once Chess stopped and rubbernecked to look back at the empty road behind us. It was seriously creepy.
    â€˜Okay, we’re getting off at the next exit,’ said Lizzy in the wake of more muffled thunder.
    There was no argument from the rest of us.
    Twenty minutes later we spotted an overpass. We cycled up the entrance ramp, then swung west and crossed the bridge down into the welcome mess of houses.
    The suburbs that used to mark the fringes of Perth were old and tired. Bricks changed to dark browns or morphed into weatherboard. Yards were large and rambling, filled with rusted-out cars and spindly shrubs. The silence of the highway and newer subdivisions was broken here by creaking shed doors and jittery wooden windows. Chess’s ears were rigid with these noises and others. He knew, as did we, that these were prime suburbs for the Bulls.
    We picked out one of the nicer houses and sheltered for the evening as the thunderstorms drifted closer. It was a loud and unsettling night. Storms seemed to shift all around us, filling the house with pops and rumbles and flickers of light that outlined the lumps of our bodies huddled together on the living room floor. And there were other noises. Doors banging shut. The rev of an engine or generator. Music, murmured and vague, as if on the edge of a dream, but never quite within it.Suddenly we were in the same world as these sounds. Not listening from the safety of a shopping centre or mansion.
    None of us mentioned these things in the morning. But they were written on each of our faces. These suburbs were alive. With what, we would find out soon.

8
    For the best part of two days we worked our way westward. The older suburbs were sprawling and full of cul-de-sacs and dead-end streets that had us backtracking and winding north or south to creep our way forward. We stopped into a few houses for food and to use toilets that still had water in the cisterns. But generally we stayed away. They had a feel about them. As if they belonged to somebody. Not the vanished owners or renters. Somebody that was still around. Up until now nothing we had done in Carousel or elsewhere had felt like trespassing. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was exactly what we were doing.
    I was writing at every opportunity. On breaks in drought-stricken parks. On the dusty kitchen tables of strangers. At night beneath a harsh circle of torchlight. The work wasn’t singular or focused. I was just filling pages. Writing to convince myself that I could. Racing towards some hidden moment when I might become the same as Taylor and Lizzy and the rest of the living world.The distant city felt like a ticking clock running faster and faster as we closed in towards it.
    The Finns watched me with a mixture of bemusement and encouragement. I hadn’t told them what I had Tommy. But then, the two of them knew me better than anybody now. They knew that the writing