Next Day Delivery

“Time isn’t something you’re given—it’s something you buy. And whatever’s out there, it’s already counting the change.”

Seated at the kitchen table, the laptop’s glow cast a soft, bluish halo across our faces—a fragile island of light in the dim, slumbering sprawl of the house. Everything around us felt suspended in that hush that follows something irreversible. Grief lingered like fog in the corners, but the glow of the screen offered a quiet illusion of control. Something to do. Something to fix.

Outside, the wind hissed through the eucalypts, a whispering reminder that the world was still moving, uncaring. But inside, the only sounds were the steady hum of the laptop fan and the faint, intermittent click of keys under my fingers. The rhythm wasn’t frantic. Just focused. Methodical. The kind of searching you do when you’re too tired to panic but too wired to stop.

Luke sat beside me, slightly hunched, as if trying to take up less space in the world than usual. His arms were folded tight across his chest, the defensive posture of someone still bracing for an aftershock that hadn’t yet arrived. He hadn't said much since we came in. But he didn’t need to. Our shoulders brushed occasionally, a quiet tether that said I'm still here. You're not alone.

We trawled through forums, outdated supplier sites, obscure inventory listings that looked like they hadn't been touched since dial-up days. Most of what we found was either laughably impractical or depressingly out of reach—too slow, too costly, too far removed from the crisis quietly accelerating around us. Every time I clicked and came up short, the knot in my chest tightened just a little more.

Then—finally—something.

A listing appeared, almost shy in its simplicity. I leaned forward, heart thudding just slightly louder as my eyes scanned the page.

“Look,” I said, my voice cracking the silence. I tapped the screen, a touch too hard. “They have next day delivery. I think this might work until we can figure out a more permanent solution.”

On the screen: temporary fencing. Modular panels, easily connected, designed for building sites or haphazard festivals. Hardly glamorous, but functional. It looked solid. Manageable. Immediate. And for the first time all night, something like hope stirred in my chest—not a flame, exactly, but a spark.

Luke leaned in, squinting at the ad. The furrow in his brow didn’t vanish, but it softened slightly, and the cast of grief in his features shifted—still present, still heavy, but edged now with cautious curiosity.

“Do you think we could order enough to protect the entire settlement?” he asked, his voice quiet but not flat this time. There was a tremor in it—a flicker of belief, trying to find its footing again.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted, eyes still scanning the specifications. Realism pressed against my optimism like a weight on my chest. “But it’s worth a try. And in the meantime, we can look into other options.”

I began assembling the order, my fingers flying faster now—not because it was urgent, though it was, but because it was something I could do. Something that didn’t ask me to feel or process or explain. Click. Scroll. Enter. Confirm.

Each action had the illusion of control baked into it, like ritual. Like if I typed fast enough, I wouldn’t feel the way Duke’s silence still clung to my clothes. Like if I got this right—every detail, every delivery window—maybe the settlers wouldn’t die. Maybe Luke wouldn’t break. Maybe I wouldn’t either.

I keyed in the Owens’ property in Collinsvale and split the shipment into staggered batches. Next day delivery. The kind of phrase that usually applied to phone chargers and cheap furniture. Not temporary fencing for a fragile settlement clinging to the edge of an unstable world.

"I know this is just a temporary solution, but it's a start. It should be enough to give Jamie, Paul, and the other settlers the security and protection that they need," I said. My voice had that edge I recognised—the one I used when I didn’t want to say I was afraid.

Luke gave a small nod, his gaze still fixed on the laptop screen. "Yeah, it will. And it will give them some peace of mind too. They've got every right to be worried about the shadow panthers and other unknown dangers that might be lurking around."

He said it casually, like we weren’t also part of that list now. Unknown dangers. Shadowed things.

The order confirmation blinked up at us. Clean, clinical. A string of numbers. A promise in courier font.

We just sat there. The kitchen was cold. The screen hummed. And somewhere beyond the walls, the apricot tree stood vigil over a patch of unsettled earth.

I didn’t feel triumphant. Or reassured. I just felt the stretch of what was coming. The weight of everything we still hadn’t accounted for.

Because this wasn’t the end. Not even close.

Gladys was still a question no one wanted to answer. Cody’s name hung in the air like smoke. The settlers were under-protected, under-resourced, and dangerously close to losing faith in the entire Guardian system. Jamie was barely holding it together. Paul was getting twitchy.

And I hadn’t even told Luke what my mother said. Not all of it.

He thought the fencing would help. That it would buy us time.

And maybe it would.

But time isn’t a gift. It’s a currency. And something out there—whatever’s watching, whatever’s waiting—it’s already keeping count.

So yeah. We placed an order.

Let’s see what shows up.