Living in the Apocalypse
It’s here and we didn’t even drop the bomb
At the height of the pandemic in New York, a local told me he wouldn’t be going into the city for a long time. Not because of the risk of catching the virus he said, but because of the lawlessness. Less people, meant more risk.
I kind of understood what he meant. I’ve had the good fortune to visit that amazing city many times and enjoyed being another pulse beating amongst all that human energy. New York has safety in numbers.
But it wasn’t until this week that I really witnessed what he meant. Australia’s been slow to roll out vaccines for a number of reasons: complacency due to our isolation, Commonwealth and State government tensions, disagreement between medical bodies and the government, and the changing advice on treatments. Punters are slow to trust.
Our low vaccination numbers have meant constant lockdowns, affecting livelihoods and mental health, but also doing their job of restricting the spread of the virus. It’s the way we’ve handled it, and the debate rages on about its effectiveness.
During the most recent lockdown, I happened to be in Perth, Western Australia, renting an apartment in the CBD. Perth is a wealthy, beautiful, benign city that has enjoyed the fortunes of a strong resource sector. I grew up here, and it’s good to be back.
I have no car, so to get food, or go to the chemist, I have to walk into the central mall. Yesterday’s outing to the shop was apocalyptic — bar burning car wrecks.
The Perth CBD has long been a place that no one goes. Whatever the council has tried over the years hasn’t worked. After Friday drinks, when the office workers leave, the city streets are like something from the The Quiet Earth (or one of my dystopian novels!). In places, there are blocks of empty buildings, and right now, during lockdown, the only people on the streets are homeless or drug dealers.
Two guys, sleeping rough near my apartment, seem to have the rights to my block. One of them leaves his brown blanket spread out and his boots a distance away and wanders off. No one dares touch his stuff while he’s gone.
Closer to the supermarket, the streets are filled with either hysterical laughter — the kind that makes your wired for trouble — or swearing, loud and aggressive. Yesterday, it was directed at the lone girl serving at the kebab kiosk — a small mob wanting food. She shrank away and locked herself into the back room.
Dotted around the public seats, huddled over, rocking, each person is in a different stage of coming down.
One guy has got himself stuck between a rubbish bin and meter box. He’s hallucinating so badly, he can’t work out how to step sideways out of the trap. Instead, he keeps jerking up and down in spasming movements, his feet paddling like a cartoon character, locked in some circular hell.
The police trundle past on their bicycles. He’s not harming anyone, so they don’t stop to help.
It’s winter, and some are without shoes. If it’s bothering them, they don’t show it. But that could be the booze or the meth.
And then there’s a woman, well dressed in a skirt and heels, pulling along nice clean cabin luggage. I’ve seen her before. She comes and sits in the mall about the same time each day. I want to talk to her and ask her if she’s ok, because I know she’s not. She’s got nowhere to live, and this must be pick up point. I hope it’s people from a shelter coming for her, not a dealer.
Not a single person I see (other than, perhaps, one or two students scuttling past with their heads down and pods in), looks sober, straight, or sane.
Not a judgement. An observation.
I’ve imagined the aftermath of an apocalypse many times in my stories, but never expected the real thing to arrive with such stealth, or be so full of reproach. We need to do better for each other.
