The Last Day on Earth

It usually took Lucy two and a half hours to drive home to her parent’s farm. Two hours after leaving their flat, Lucy and Mitch had only just made it over the West Gate Bridge. They’d wanted to leave the night before, but Mitch had heard on the radio that the West Gate Bridge out of the city had been closed due to a series of bad accidents. Volunteers were clearing the wreckages, but it would take a while, and the other routes out of the city were barely moving, so they’d decided to get up early and leave the next morning.

Apparently, so had a lot of other people.

Lucy looked nervously at her petrol gauge. She still had half a tank, but this kind of stop and start driving wasn’t kind to her tank.

She glanced over at Mitch. He was tapping his fingers on the dash and sighing every now and then. It was starting to get on Lucy’s nerves.

“Wish I had a private jet. We’d be home in a jiffy,” Mitch sighed again.

“You’d still need to drive through this to the airport.”

“Hmm. Well, it wouldn’t be so bad if we were waiting in a limo.”

“With champagne.”

“And Pringles.”

“Pringles?”

“What? I like Pringles. What’s wrong with Pringles?”

“Nothing. As long as they’re the green ones, I’m cool with Pringles. They just don’t usually go with champagne and limousines.”

“Strawberries then.”

“That’s better,” Lucy laughed.

“I wonder if there’s been another accident? I haven’t seen it this bad since they did a bunch of roadworks last Christmas,” Mitch pondered.

“Could be… Jess told me you finally told her you like her,” Lucy said, taking her eyes off the unmoving car in front of her to look at her long-suffering housemate. He squirmed.

“Yeah… terrible timing, I know.”

“Why didn’t you tell her before? You know, when you could have actually done something about it.”

“I don’t know. I tried. It never came out right though. Or came out at all, really,” Mitch mumbled. Lucy thought he might even be turning red.

“You’ve liked her for years.”

“What! No I haven’t!”

“Don’t lie,” Lucy teased.

“I’m not! Maybe I am. I don’t know. Doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“You never know. This’ll probably all blow over. Some hot shot American will save the day, and you and Jess will live happily ever after.”

Mitch just snorted and stared out the window at the traffic that was not budging.

Ever so slowly, they inched their way out of the city. The traffic started to move faster once they hit the Princes Freeway and began leaving the suburbs behind. Lucy kept looking at her petrol gauge.

“I’m going to need to fill up at Little River,” she told Mitch. He just nodded.

They both stared in shock at the line up at the petrol station at Little River.

“I’ve never seen it this busy before,” said Mitch.

“No, me neither…I don’t think I can make it to Geelong…”

“It’ll probably be just as bad there. Let’s just wait here.”

They played noughts and crosses, then hangman, in Mitch’s sketchbook while the line slowly moved forward. Lucy looked around at all the other people, anxiously, impatiently waiting. A fight broke out up ahead when one man in a hotted up commodore tried to skip the line and budge in.

Finally, it was almost their turn. There were only two cars ahead of them now. The line up behind them was longer than ever.

“Nearly there!”

“I think you may have spoken too soon,” said Lucy after she watched the man at the pump shake the nozzle then throw it down in frustration before storming off into the shop where the cashier was. She looked over at the other pumps, where people were having similar reactions.

“What? Oh no, they can’t have run out. We’re almost there!” Mitch exclaimed. “What do we do now?”

“Wait and see, I guess.”

They didn’t have to wait long. A young man dressed the petrol station uniform came out with a large hand-written sign that said:

NO MORE PETROL

LPG GAS ONLY

(UNTIL THAT RUNS OUT TOO)

SORRY!!

Lucy and Mitch both swore at the same time.

“Glad I’m not him.” Mitch nodded toward the attendant who was rapidly being surrounded by an angry looking mob.

“I hope they don’t hurt him, it’s not his fault,” Lucy said, worriedly. So far it just seemed to be verbal. No one had thrown any punches yet.

“What do we do? Do you have enough petrol left to get to my house?”

Lucy looked at the petrol gauge. “Nope. Probably get halfway there. I’m almost running on fumes.”

“Bugger.”

“It’s okay, I’ll call my Dad. He’s got some petrol tanks on the farm. He can bring us some,” said Lucy as she rummaged through her handbag for her phone. She really hoped her father would be able to come. She didn’t fancy walking or hitch hiking the 170 kilometres in between here and the farm.

“Hi Mum, it’s Lucy.”

“Hello, sweetheart, where are you? Are you all right?”

“Yes and no. We’re at the petrol station at Little River. I’m almost out of petrol and they’ve run out here. I was hoping that Dad could come and get me and bring some petrol?”

“Oh no, out of petrol!”

“Yeah. There are a lot of angry people here.”

“Will you be all right?”