What We Lost to the Flames

Humans are delicate creatures.

Our bodies, our beliefs, our egos; all as fragile as crystal glass.

To break a human takes no more than an ounce of pressure, and from that weak flesh host to draw out a monster, takes even less.

This is how things are now.

We are monsters consumed by fires hotter than the fires of hell, isolated and alone in a world that burns like a pyre of our sin. Watching as the things we once loved are sacrificed to the flame, we are in the perfect utopia of our own creation. As we reflect onto our world, so it reflects back.

The man’s face is unreadable. It is stoic and unforgiving, and gives an air of ignorance and pride. His head turns left, his eyes staring into the distance.

He does not look at the street. The street where houses stand like burnt matches, where the shops and garden verges are charred and dusty with ash.

He does not look at us either. He does not see our burnt skin and our blackened hair, and he does not see that we are human only in flesh and blood. He stares resolutely away, ignorantly, selfishly, foolishly, and yet he does so none the less. My hand presses onto the brick that he is printed upon, in patriotic blue white and red.

Why did he not burn too?

When the fire ripped through the town, engulfing everything before it’s wall of 20-foot-high flame, using the bodies of our loved ones and the artefacts of our lives as kindle, why did it not take him too?

Look at me, I urge.

I cannot speak; the smoke has charred my lungs.

Look at me. My hand is a fist against him, but he looks away, all the pride and foolish ego of a leader.

Our town was one of the last to go in the area.

We’d held out for what felt like years against the fires, until it finally overran us. Part of me felt a little relieved; it had been hell just waiting for the fires to sweep through and engulf us, wondering every night if we’d burn in our sleep.

I had a feeling that others felt the same too.

My neighbours hadn’t even gone to the safety centre like most of us had. They just stayed in their home and burned inside it, as if they’d been waiting for the end the whole time.

The few of us who were left now were waiting too.

Waiting for the evacuation bus to ferry us to one of the horrible, overcrowded refuge zones. Waiting for news that maybe they weren’t coming to get us at all. That had happened to the people in Rosedale. They waited to be rescued, waited for the government buses to arrive in their town and take them to safety, and yet they never came.

The fires closed in on them once more, but before it hit, a radio broadcast went out; No evac buses to been sent to the eastern regions. Stay at your local safety centre.

That broadcast was a death sentence; Rosedale’s safety centre had already burned down.

I can only imagine the despair that they must have felt.

Maybe my neighbours were right to just accept their fate. To not try and run. To give up.

Maybe it’s easier that way.

It’s hard abandoning that instinctive drive of self-preservation though, and I think that that’s the only thing keeping us few survivors alive.

You can see it in our eyes. That crushing anxiety and fear of trying to stay alive- it’s the only thing left keeping us going.

I hobble over to the town square, turning away from the patronising presence of our fearless leader.

There are burns running up my legs that chafe painfully against my thick fire protective trousers. It makes it hard to walk, but I know that I’m better off than most.

There are charred corpses littering the ground, and I have to look away as I pass by, lest I recognise one of them; there are so many missing faces after last night.

I awkwardly lower myself onto the pavement of the roundabout in the town square, next to an elderly couple breathing unsteadily with lungs full of ash and smoke.

There are four speakers in the town square, encased in a strong fire proof metal. The cold voice that will come through this speaker will read us our fate completely indifferently, as if reading a weather report. It’s not long before the electronic bell rings out across the square, signalling that now is the time to listen; now is the time to hear our fate read out to us.

Evacuation buses will arrive at Wullen bus depo at approximately 4:00pm tonight. No other buses are scheduled for departure at this time.

Static echoes out across the town square for a moment after the announcement finishes, and then nothing.

My heart sinks in my chest, but part of me knew that this would happen. Wullen is 10km away, and with no gas in any of our vehicles we don’t have any hope of getting there before four.

No one in the square makes any motion to get up. They all know it’s not possible.

I sigh heavily, coughing on the ash in my lungs, and pull myself up from the ground. The sky is red and the clouds are stained black with smoke. A thick haze the colour of a heavy rust sits over our town, and it looks like the end of the world.

I am going to die today.

I would laugh out loud if I could; it just seems so absurd.

Of the twenty something people sitting around the square, no one gets up. No one tries.

What a waste of life.

I walk across the square dragging my feet as I go. I don’t want my last moments to be here, surrounded by so much hopelessness; I’m going home to die by myself.

I stumble down my street, by body heavy and sore. I’m wondering whether my home is still standing when something catches my attention.

It’s a woman, crouching in the middle of the road. Her body is curved over something that she holds in her arms, and she is visibly shaking.

I want to leave her to her despair, but something calls me to her.

I put my hand on her shoulder and her head jolts up. She looks at me with wide terrified eyes, filled with tears.

“Please”, she croaks, unfurling her upper body. She’s holding something, but I can’t see what it is.

“Please I can’t-” she coughs loudly, drawing in a haggard breath, “I can’t walk”.

She holds out the bundle in her arms to me, and I see what it is now.

It’s a baby.

Cooing softly, with tiny blinking eyes, and little fingers reaching for its mother.

Death felt absurd before, but now it feels real. For the first time in months I feel tears burning in my eyes.

She stares me down, her eyes fierce and heartbroken.

‘Take him’, she says, as loud as her damaged voice will let her.

I feel the urge to turn away from her, like everyone does now, turning away from the horrors of our world, and turning away from each other.

But I can’t.

I reach out and lift the baby from her arms gently.

I rest him on my shoulder, and the woman grabs my hand and presses a necklace into it.

It’s a small heart shaped pendant on a silver chain, and it feels cool and soothing in my hand.

I look down at the woman, holding her baby firmly in my arms. She looks back pleadingly, with intense wide eyes. I nod at her, making the only choice that I can.

I stride away quickly, glancing up at where the sun rests in the sky.

It’s almost three o’clock, but I can make it to Wullen- there is no other option.

I ran for nearly six straight kilometres.

My throat felt like it was on fire, and my legs were chaffed and burning, but I hadn’t felt so alive in such a long time.

I stopped briefly to take off my protective trousers, fashioning them instead into a crude harness to slip the baby into. He was awake, but quiet, looking around with alert eyes and grabbing at my hair with his little fingers.

I can feel time slipping away, and in my mind’s eye I can see the buses driving away, leaving us behind.

Fear awakens in me for what must be the first time since the fires started.

What if I’m too late?

I pick up my feet and try to quicken my pace, painful as it is.

I almost couldn’t believe it when Wullen came into view.

I felt a moment of pure elation for a few joyful seconds, before a terrible wave of anxiety came over me.

It might still be too late.

I began to sprint as I neared the edge of Wullen, using every bit of energy that I possibly could. I reached the edge of the burnt wasteland that surrounded the town, gasping and wheezing, and then I saw it.

One bus sitting at the depo, ready to depart.

Even from a distance I could tell that it was about to pull out and drive away, but I couldn’t stop now.

This baby deserved to be on that bus. He deserved to live.

I sprinted, ignoring the burning in my lungs and the red-hot pain of my body.

The bus pulled out, accelerating with clunky gear changes and a roaring engine.

It almost made it to the turn of onto the highway, but somehow I cut it off.

I stood in front of it, shaking and burning all over, hands up in supplication.

For a moment, I thought the driver wasn’t going to open the door; that he had given up on life just like all the rest of us had.

Tears welled in my eyes, and I held the baby close.

And then, the doors swung open with a hiss.

I climbed up into the bus with shaking legs and collapsed on one of the seats. I’m drenched in sweat and ash, but I’m alive, and so is he.

The baby is asleep in my arms.

His mother is long gone now, left behind in the plume of red dust and ash.

The heart shaped locket that she left me with lays in my hand, and it’s the most beautifully preserved thing that I’ve seen since the fires started. It’s not covered in grime and dust; it doesn’t smell like acrid smoke. It looks like a colour in the sky that’s not red or black, and it looks like green grass and beautiful bushland stretching out for miles.

It looks like home, the way it used to be.

I thumb the locket gently, and its door opens with a tiny click.

On the inside are two portraits of two small children. The child on the left side has curly brown hair and a shy smile. The other is all smiles, with ears that stick out sweetly. They are the little boy’s siblings, I realise.

I look down at the baby, asleep in my arms. It isn’t right that he won’t know the two children in the locket, and it isn’t right that he’s born into this world that is so cruel and so unfair. But life doesn’t stop; not for fire, and not for death. He will grow up to speak his first words, and he will grow up to walk and run. I will carry him and care for him, and when he is older he will cry because his family exists only in his heart, but he will be safe and cared for.

I will make it so.