The Last Woman in the World

by Inga Simpson

Genres: Dystopian; Thrillers

Synopsis

AFTER THE FIRES. AFTER THE VIRUS. THEY CAME. A remarkable literary novel from the multi-award-nominated Australian writer
It's night, and the walls of Rachel's home creak as they settle into the cover of darkness. Fear has led her to a reclusive life on the land, her only occasional contact with her sister. A hammering on the door. There stands a mother, Hannah, with a sick baby. They are running for their lives from a mysterious death sweeping the Australian countryside. Now Rachel must face her worst fears: should she take up the fight to help these strangers survive in a society she has rejected for so long?
From the critically acclaimed author of Mr Wigg and Nest, The Last Woman in the World looks at how we treat our world and each other - and what it is that might ultimately redeem us.
'A gripping apocalyptic thriller that infects the sublime features of the landscape with primal fear' The Guardian
'Chilling in its warnings. Powerful' Good Reading
'Fast-paced, adrenalin-fuelled.' Sarah L'Estrange, ABC Online
'This book is deeply affecting. Inga Simpson writes with literary brilliance. The Last Woman in the World is an action driven novel, but it is also intensely philosophical, a clever study of character and intensely beautiful. Many fine books have been published in Australia in the last couple of years . . . This is amongst the best.' Living Arts Canberra
'The Last Woman in the World is heart-racing, hiding-under-the-doona stuff. A smart and pacey thriller that is also a lament for a world we have failed to care for.' Kate Mildenhall, bestselling author of The Mother Fault
'The Last Woman in the World is a novel of fear, fire and an uncertain future. A powerful narrative in Inga Simpson's unique voice. Horrifying, yet humane and ultimately hopeful - a masterwork' Angela Slatter, World Fantasy Award-winning author of The Bitterwood Bible
'The Last Woman in the World will grab you and not let go. Sure to set the literary world on fire' Christina Dalcher, author of VOX
'An eerie fiction that mirrors the chaos that has descended on Australians recently. Fitting for our times' Refinery29 Australia
'Simpson is a graceful writer' The Australian
'Inga Simpson writes wondrously' Good Reading

Release date: February 24, 2022

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 90000

Sample

Rachel pulled the molten glass from the heat, liquid bright. She closed her lips over the end of the pipe, and blew. It still took her full lung strength to force the first tiny bubble of air into the glass, beginning its transformation. Then, back for more heat. Blowing was easier now, just a steady gentle breath, and again. All the while rolling the pipe in her hands. Glass had to be kept turning, or it would stretch and blob out of shape. It was all centrifugal force, second nature to her now – moving without thinking.

More heat, then three steady strides across the polished concrete floor, pipe held level, to the chair she had made, its steel arms for supporting the pipes, rather than for comfort. She cupped the glass with the cherrywood block, shaping its surface, rolling the pipe back and forth with the palm of her hand.

Then heat again – the glory hole – resting the pipe on the trolley, pushing it forwards with her boot, her goggles reflecting orange. She stood tall and swung the pipe, dropping it out, using gravity to elongate the vessel. Heat, breath, turn, move – there was a rhythm to it. She could do it in her sleep. Indeed, her dreams often were of glass.

Outside, the unsettling wind that had hung around for days had finally stilled. The floor-to-ceiling windows gave her a clear view up the slope to the bluff. Straggly ironbarks and mahogany gums clung on. She could see only trees and rock, nothing man-made for miles. Lorikeets chirruped and squawked in the treetops, little rainbows every one of them, more beautiful than anything she could make.

She flattened off the base, pushing the wet paddle against the glass until it steamed and smoked. It was two-parts mechanical, turning out identical vessels, but some magic remained, the old alchemy of combining the elements: earth, fire, air, water. With the world changing so fast, it was grounding, something she could control. And with sand in short supply, every piece was precious.

Rachel opened up the vessel with the tip of the tweezers and teased out the shape, the glass fluting and flaring at her touch. It was the most delicate part of the process, and the most pleasurable, where she still lost herself, every time. When the spirit of each piece emerged and took its final form.

It had been love at first sight, with glass, on a school excursion. There were all sorts of artists at the studio, working wood, metal, clay, canvas and paper, but Rachel never left the hot shop. It might have had a little to do with the glass blower’s tattooed biceps, the contradiction in the delicate spheres he shaped with his breath. Like the paradox of glass itself; so tough in molten form, so fragile on the shelf.

She touched a drop of water to the baseline, watched it fizz, and tapped the pipe. The vessel – an oversized drinking glass – dropped safely into her hot mitt. A flash with the blowtorch to smooth the break, pressing in her stamp – and it was done. She set the finished piece next to the other five in the annealer, their colours already deepening. They needed two full days to cool. Too quick and the glass would lose its clarity, shatter too easily. It was her most popular combination, the rich blue working magic with the opacity of the white, like a swirling, cloud-flecked sky.

She tidied her tools and refreshed the timber water buckets. At the tub, she removed her goggles, splashed her face with water, and scrubbed her hands, wiping them on the front of her overalls.

Last week’s batch – her ‘Purple Rain’ vases – were ready to send out. She wrapped each one in a sock of eco-foam, and slipped them into their individual recycled cardboard boxes. Every box was stamped with her mark – the stylised phoenix she had come up with in her art school days, refined by a highly paid designer in her exhibition and biennale days. She still thought about those big pieces. The one-offs. Months of work coming together in an exhausted birth of heat, colour and light. The wonder on people’s faces when they saw the installation for the first time. It was only through fire that anything was really transformed.

Rachel packed the boxes into larger cartons, two rows of three, like eggs. The stack was growing. Her delivery woman, Mia, would take them, and then the couriers would deliver them to galleries, museums and stores – into people’s homes. The glass still travelled, in a way she no longer could.

She slid open the timber door, fresh air cooling her cheeks. She turned her face to the blue sky, to fill her lungs. Above the courtyard walls, the spotted gums were heavy with blossom, a hint of honey on the air. And something else, something unfamiliar.

She crossed the bricked space in seven strides, pausing at one of the raised vegetable beds to pluck a handful of rocket. She scraped her boots off on the step and slipped through the sliding glass doors into the sun-drenched kitchen.

It would be a meagre lunch: the last of the bread, a cracked heel of cheddar from the fridge. She was almost out of dairy. Other things, too: gas for the stove, her medication, books, supplies for the studio, her monthly GlassWorld magazine. Mia was overdue.

Over the years, Rachel had simplified everything: just one person coming in and out, one person to deal with. She had known Mia all her life. Her long grey hair and quiet determinedness, like the little van coming every fortnight, was one of the few things she could rely on from the human world. But they had never really figured out a backup plan.

Still, there was plenty in the pantry, the narrow galley-space between the floor-to-ceiling shelves she had built herself. Dry goods on one side, her lidded glass jars holding flour, sugar, grains, cereals, herbs and spices. The other side was all colour: preserved peaches, pears and apples, blackberry, raspberry and rosella jam, pickled vegetables, bush-tomato relish, fruit paste, chunks of honeycomb – all lit up beneath the skylight like a stained-glass window. Almost everything came from her garden, or the surrounding bush. But it was the finger lime pickle she was after, the last small jar from the top shelf.

She ate her sandwich on the back step, in the sun. The lime was sharp against the cheese, its pulp-bubbles popping against the roof of her mouth. Everything tasted better outside, when she was working her body – making things.

The feeling hit before she had finished chewing. That familiar warning, low in her belly. She used to shake it off, wait to be proven right. But that was before. Now she trusted herself, her body’s senses, implicitly. She had to.

The lorikeets took flight all at once, an uplift of colour and noise. Rachel padded inside, placed her plate and glass on the sink, all without a sound. The row of monitors in the laundry showed nothing. The gate was locked, no one on the road. No fresh tracks. There was nothing in the driveway. The rendered brick wall that surrounded the house was clear on all sides. She counted the chickens, picking over the garden beds: all present and accounted for. The river was calm and empty but for a white-faced heron stalking the shallows, and a cormorant hanging her wings out to dry on the end of the jetty, a dark-feathered cross.

She took the stairs two at a time, up to the timber mezzanine where she slept, grabbing her binoculars and flinging open the window all in one movement. There was only undisturbed forest for miles, the town in the distance. And between them, the slow-winding river, shifting back and forth with the tide. A slight smoke haze was the only thing out of the ordinary.

Sometimes it was someone else’s fear she felt, channelling it like a tuning fork. But there was no one for miles. The nearest property was a weekender, and it wasn’t the weekend. ‘It’s nothing,’ she told herself, taking the stairs down more slowly, pushing back the wave of unease. It’s never nothing.

She lit the gas under the kettle, spooned tea leaves into the pot. Somehow her hands sent the pile of letters waiting on the bench tumbling: to her sister, her agent, her accountant, the department of revenue. Keep it together, Ray. It wasn’t so much the clumsiness that had been creeping in – a death knell for a glass artist – but her dependency on others. She checked the monitors again while the tea steeped. Half-hoping to see Mia’s van, throwing up gravel dust. But there was no one.

The spotted gum forest, under-sown with spiky cycads, was unchanged. She had a clear line of sight for miles. Nothing moved. She carried the mug of tea back to the studio, cradling its steady warmth, filling her lungs with bergamot steam, and slid the door closed. The place was a fortress. Whatever was happening out there couldn’t reach her. In the studio, working the glass, Rachel wasn’t afraid.

She closed the windows, switched off the lights, and locked the studio door for the night. Outside, Rachel was no longer able to keep separate all the worrying lines of thought. Where had all the small birds gone? She hadn’t heard the heavy thump of a wallaby bounding away for days. And why hadn’t Mia come?

But then there was the comforting pleep pleep of oystercatchers on the river, pelicans flying in for the evening. She went out of the tall gate, with its crazy squares of coloured glass set in the timber. The path was well worn, by her own feet. Years of ritual, walking down to the water. She passed the blackened trunks, scars from the last fire. The ghost trees from the big one before that, still sentient somehow.

She placed her hand flat on the largest spotted gum as she passed, her fingers and thumb a fit with its deep dimples. Closer to the riverbank, her feet crunched over fallen she-oak needles. She could hear and smell the river, still a touch of brine, within the sea’s tidal reach. The walk was her daily meditation – but it wasn’t working. The forest was too quiet. There was no hum of boats or cars in the distance, which should have pleased her. But somehow it was unnerving.

The boat shed was as she had left it, just her kayaks inside. The previous owner had been a fisher, built the jetty. She would have preferred unspoiled riverbank, but it was pleasant walking over the water, looking down through its glassy surface, into the world beneath.

The cormorant moved off at the sound of her feet on the boards. She lay on the end of the jetty, stretching out her back, loosening her worries. The river flowed beneath her much as it always had, for thousands of years, slow water over round stones, coming down from the mountains, past her little beach, on to the town, and emptying into the sea. She dipped her hands in its cool, touched her wet fingertips to her temples.

On the way back she gathered up fallen sticks and a clutch of dry leaves. The warmth was leaving with the light. A perfect night for a fire. She paused at the gate, scanned the forest for something out of place, listened. Still nothing. Nothing to match what she was feeling. She locked the gate behind her.

Rachel opened the door of the slow-combustion fire and set the kindling. She reached for the matches and shook the box – almost empty. As she held the flame to the leaves, a foreign sound echoed down the chimney. Something above the shushing of the river, the breeze in the she-oaks, the forest’s evening song. Timber striking timber and … a baby? It was a long time since there had been koalas in her forest. But perhaps they were coming back. It was a classic rookie error, mistaking the wail of a female koala for a child crying. She shook her head, to clear the anxious thoughts. Those well-worn tracks.

She focused instead on the pinch of eucalyptus oil in her nostrils, the crackle and pop of the fire. No one could get in. Nothing could happen. It had taken a long time to rebuild, to believe, but she was safe in this place.

Still, she went to the monitors again. Just in case. No one on the road, nothing in the driveway, the walls that surrounded her clear and intact. She checked the solar battery levels and topped up the backup generator with fuel. In the courtyard, she tapped the poly rainwater tanks – one full, one half full – and locked the chickens in for the night.

She picked the last of the rocket, a chilli and a ripe lemon, locked all the doors and downstairs windows. The routine actions soothed her, and the knowledge that whatever happened, if the world ended tomorrow, she’d be fine.

For a while.

In the pantry, she pulled down the sourdough starter and the flour jar – rye this time, and carraway seeds. She mixed flour, water, salt, a teaspoon of honey and the yeast, working until her forearms were aching and the mixture came away from the sides of the bowl. Bread was harder than glass in some ways, more temperamental. She patted the dough into a rough loaf and placed it in the oiled tin.

As she set the loaf on the shelf above the fireplace to rise, the sick feeling returned, taking her breath, as if she had been struck in the solar plexus. Rachel heard the step on the front deck first, and then the creaking board. She froze.

How the hell?

They knocked. Four urgent raps.

‘My child is sick,’ the woman said.

The child did sound distressed. So did its mother. But it could be a trick, to get her to open the door. Anyone could be out there. Waiting. Anything could happen. They would force their way in and ruin her, the life she had built. They were ruining it now.

‘Please. Open the door.’

‘Go away!’ It took all she had to make the words, to make the shapes with her lips and tongue, to force them out of her mouth, over the banging and crying and the woman shrieking. People inside her space.

‘Please. It’s nearly dark.’ The woman was weeping now.

Rachel needed the noise to stop, this woman and her crying child to disappear. To wake up and find it was only one of her nightmares. Her hands were slippery on the poker, her breathing ragged. She tried to focus on the cool metal. The process of heating, striking and cooling that had made it the shape it was.

‘Let us in! Don’t leave us out here with them.’

The woman was crazy. Delusional. Somehow the thought calmed Rachel; this wasn’t an attack. The baby had quietened, too, whether at its mother’s words, or just tired out. It’s a boy. The thought came from nowhere, as they did when she was open like this, porous to the world. He was still mewling, but it was low and quiet, easier for her to bear.

Rachel forced herself up and forwards, to the door, and bent to squint through the peephole: a slight woman with straggly blonde hair, a bundle strapped to her chest. She couldn’t see anyone else on the deck, in the garden, or the driveway. Nothing her side of the wall. The trees beyond stood still. How did they get in?

The woman looked up, as if she knew Rachel was watching. ‘Please, my name is Hannah. This is Isaiah. We need help.’

Biblical names. ‘Please,’ the woman said, through sobs.

Rachel closed her eyes, as if that would block it out. They were human beings, and they were scared. It was miles to the nearest neighbour. An hour to town by car. She tried to imagine sliding the bolt, turning the deadlock, opening her door to these strangers, letting the world in.

All she could do was rest her forehead on the timber and try to manage her breathing. She was not equipped to deal with a sick child. People. Even if the woman was who she said, even if the baby was sick, she couldn’t have them in her space. ‘I just can’t. I’m sorry.’

‘Please. There’s no one else. They’re all gone.’

‘What do you mean, gone?’

‘Dead.’ The woman shook her head. ‘Haven’t you seen the news?’

‘No.’ Rachel had shut off ‘news’, social media, the outside world, a long time ago.

‘It started in the cities: Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra. And now it’s here. In town.’

‘How?’

‘They don’t know. But everyone is dead.’

Except these two. It made no sense. The woman reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone and touched its screen, cool blue in the almost dark. Her hands were unlined, pink with cold, nails bitten down. The bright foreign object was as unwelcome as they were.

The woman brought up a picture and held it to the peephole. Rachel squinted. There were bodies in a street, in huddles, and ones and twos. Dead dogs. It did look a bit like Church Street, but she couldn’t see very well. The woman’s hands were shaking – it could have been from a film, photoshopped or anything.

The screen went dark. The woman swore. ‘Please. Just let me charge my phone. I’ll show you.’

She bent to the peephole again. The woman’s face was wracked with something – something real. And there was the sensation Rachel had picked up on during the afternoon.

Rachel stood up straight, filled her lungs with air and released it. Something had happened, and there were two people outside who needed her help.

She fought to control her hands. Just her hands. Forced herself to slide back the bolt and turn the deadlock. Its click made her sick to the stomach. She leaned on the wall a moment, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

Her house was so much smaller with them in it. The baby was coughing and crying, and the woman had traipsed in a trail of muddy sand. She was at least now slipping off the flimsy sneakers she had chosen to flee disaster in, exposing wet pink feet. The papoose arrangement strapped to the front of her body unfolded to reveal all manner of plastic items, which she placed on the floor, and finally the baby itself. It couldn’t be more than three months old, face red and swollen. He was sick, that much was true.

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘I don’t know. He has a fever and a cough.’

‘Is it contagious?’

The woman shook her head. ‘People weren’t sick. It’s … not like that.’

‘What is it like?’

The woman’s face twisted. ‘Horrific.’ She turned away to plug her white charger into the wall and her phone into the charger. Cords, mess, microwaves, devices – connection with the outside. It was all so intrusive.

‘Do you have a landline?’ The woman’s movements were erratic, clumsy.

Rachel shook her head.

‘But you still have power.’

‘I’m on solar,’ she said. ‘And I don’t have a phone. The grid’s down?’

‘What about a laptop – internet, email?’

‘I don’t have any of that,’ she said. Rachel stood back, tried to breathe more space into the room. ‘I’m Rachel.’

The woman was peering around the cottage. ‘What about your husband?’

‘There’s no husband.’

‘But the boots. Out front?’

Rachel raised one of her enormous, socked feet. ‘Mine, I’m afraid.’

The corner of the woman’s mouth turned down, her face softening. She moved towards the fire, picking up the baby, trying to stop him crying.

Rachel folded her arms, tried to steady herself against the noise. ‘Can you just start from the beginning?’

‘Isaiah was a bit off-colour the day before. But during the night he got worse. Wouldn’t stop crying. I called Mum first thing, but she wasn’t answering. So I made a doctor’s appointment online. The system seemed to work, there was no sign that anything was wrong. But outside, there were cars and people everywhere. And when I got to the medical centre it was chaos. The waiting room was packed. Doctors hadn’t shown up, were refusing to see people, hiding in their rooms. Already dead, maybe. It was all over the news, up on the TV screens. Everyone was on their phones, trying to contact people, online, reading all about it – panicking.’

If there was one thing connectivity was good for, it was spreading panic. ‘But … what is it? Another pandemic?’

The woman closed her eyes. ‘I know it sounds crazy but it’s nothing you can see. No blood, or any warning. People seem to suddenly experience something terrifying. And then kind of … empty out. They were dying right in front of us. Everyone.’

It did sound crazy. ‘Except you?’

The woman shrugged. ‘All I can tell you is what I saw. I was focused on Isaiah. But then the power went out, people were screaming. I had to get out of there. On the street, cars were crashing into each other, trying to get out of town. There were bodies on the footpath. I just ran, I tell you. And it felt like something … like they were coming after me.’

Rachel had a vision of the confusion: people’s contorted faces, a lurching view of the pavement, screaming, metal crashing into metal. The woman’s fear. Then the baby started crying again, the sound filling the room, Rachel’s senses. She tried to breathe through it. There was no blocking it out, or stopping it, it seemed.

Keep it together, Ray.

‘Let’s see how bad that fever is.’

She went to the laundry for the first aid kit and a facecloth. In the kitchen she filled a bowl with cold water, simplifying her movements, making them precise, keeping her breathing slow and regular.

She set the things out on the hearth and kneeled on the floor. Waited for the woman to sit down.

‘Then what did you do?’ Rachel said.

‘I went to Mum’s,’ she said. ‘But she was gone.’

‘Not there?’

‘Dead,’ she said. ‘Like the others. Her face …’

Rachel glanced at the woman. Surely she wouldn’t make something like that up? She opened the first aid kit and pulled the thermometer from its velvet case. She shook it, warmed it in her hand, and gave it to the woman.

The woman unbuttoned the baby’s jumpsuit and tucked the thermometer under his arm, wiping away tears with her sleeve. ‘It was hard to leave there. To just leave her. She has a car. I thought about taking that, but cars seemed like the worst place to be. So I went down to the marina, where my brother moors his boat. I took it and headed upriver. Away from the town.’

It was just what Rachel would have done.

‘I could still feel them on my back, but it was fading. Then the boat ran out of fuel.. . .