by Kris Ashton
Milton stepped onto the porch. He had a shovel in his hands. He wasn’t sweating, but he did seem agitated, almost excited. “You won’t believe what I’ve found,” he said.
She tied off some string and rested her half-finished dreamcatcher against the porch banisters. “Found where?”
“Out in the woods.”
Sharna looked at Milton’s shovel and then up at him. “Why were you out in the woods?”
Milton peered at her down the length of his nose, as if his glasses no longer corrected his eyesight. “You won’t believe what I’ve found. Come look.”
“You bastard!” Derek shouted.
Milton’s eyes darted in the direction of Derek’s voice, then found Sharna again. They seemed to have some trouble resolving her image. Whatever Milton had come across out in the woods, it sure had him jumpy. “Come look,” he said again.
She got out of her rocker and slipped on her sandals. Even this minor delay seemed to irritate Milton.
“Let’s go,” he said, taking her by the crook of the elbow. Usually Milton’s hands were warm and sweaty (or clammy during the colder months) but this time his touch felt dry, like dusty autumn leaves.
“Is it something bad?” Sharna said as they stalked across the yard. “Should we tell the others as well?”
Milton looked to the sky, as if seeking advice, then said, “We’ll tell the others soon enough. But first I want to show you.”
They entered the woods close to the tree-stump chopping block, not far from where Derek and Sharna had gone in two days earlier. Milton kicked and scrambled his way past shrubs and ferns and the odd vine; his arms and legs were soon covered in scrapes and scratches.
“Why don’t you use the shovel?” Sharna suggested as he towed her deeper and deeper in. A second or so after the words were out of her mouth, Sharna thought, If he is showing me something then he has already been in here. So why is he crashing his way through?
Milton dropped the shovel and rammed her up against a tree. Sharna tried to scream but the impact emptied her lungs of air. Milton’s hand clamped down across her mouth and butted the back of her skull against the tree trunk. A bright pain flash lit up the forest and then subsided, leaving behind a watery hyper-awareness. She saw straight into Milton’s eyes, which were owlish and distorted behind thick convex lenses. As he leaned in close and started to hitch his pants down with his thumb, Sharna noticed something else in those eyes that made her scream, something that had nothing to do with the warping effect of the spectacles. But his hand made an efficient muffler and what came out amounted to little more than a squealing groan—perhaps nearby forest creatures heard it, but no one else did.
“Don’t scream or I’ll kill you,” Milton said, leaning so hard on her mouth that her incisors bit into her lip.
“Fuck you!” Sharna tried to say, but his hand squashed it down to a meaty grunt. She could feel his penis prodding into the flesh just below her belly button—rude, insistent, demanding entry. She swung up a knee, hoping to cork his thigh (or go one better and turn his testicles to mash) but his closeness thwarted her and he caught her leg with his left hand. Milton moved in closer still, so close she could smell his dry stale odor, like old onion skins. The hand that had trapped her leg now slipped down and found her underwear, pulling it into a bunch on one side.
“Don’t tell anyone about this,” Milton whispered. His flat tone seemed to be part of a set with whatever she saw—or didn’t see—in his eyes. “If you tell anyone, especially Derek, you’ll be sorry. You’ll both be sorry.”
She tried to claw at his eyes but he tucked his head down, like a rugby player about to engage in a scrum. Sharna uttered another stifled cry as his penis—hard, so hard, like living granite—penetrated her.
We’ll see who’s sorry, you weedy little prick, she thought. Her starting eyes fell to the shovel Milton had cast aside, its steel blade ominous with potential. If I get out of this alive, we’ll see who’s sorry.
Not often did Derek miss city living, but as the shower’s apathetic dribble splashed on his shoulders, he missed it in earnest. While the homestead had stood unoccupied, a line of bushy shrubs—small trees, really—had grown up along the eastern side of it, where the water tank had also been erected. Derek’s inadequate do-it-yourself skills had been discouraging enough, but as he had tried to shore up the tank’s leg (which promised to buckle after the next big rain) he’d had to contend with the irritating scratch and stroke of overgrown branches. To make matters worse, he’d stripped off his shirt to combat the heat, and in so doing exposed his tender skin. He now had small welts across his back that made him look like a colonial convict who had been flogged with a thin whip. The shower’s paltry stream could do little to relieve the itching and stinging and he daydreamed of the hot jet that came blasting out of the shower in his parents’ swanky Coit apartment.
If nothing else this dribbly shower offered a soothing coolness, and after he had toweled off (using the cotton fibers as a back scratcher) and put on his clothes, he felt a little better. In fact manual labor had given him an appetite. His growling stomach directed him to the kitchen, where he found Del making a sandwich.
“Any chance you could make another one of those?” he asked.
“If you say the magic word.”
“Abracadabra.”
“Not the one I was looking for.”
“Hey presto?”
Del turned and handed him the knife. “That’s two words, and it looks like you’re making your own sandwich.”
She took her plate to the kitchen table and sat down to eat. Derek cut two more slices of bread from the loaf and put some lettuce, tomato and onion between them. He started to join Del at the table and then stopped. “Where’s Sharna?” he asked.
“Not sure,” Del said around her sandwich. “Milt came in an hour or so ago and I thought I heard him mention her name.”
“What about Daisy?”
“She’s in her room.”
Derek scratched his head and then shrugged. “Looks like this no-drugs thing is really getting to them. I didn’t think they’d take it so hard.”
“I think the sheriff’s visit has everyone on edge as well.”
“I’m gonna go eat lunch in the sun. You want to join me?”
Del shook her head. “I’m on potato duty today. I’ll get all the sun I can stand this afternoon.”
Derek nodded and took his lunch out on the porch, an imp of concern prodding the back of his brain. Sharna often took herself off on meandering walks, a habit she had picked up from her father. Derek had joined her on these adventures from time to time, but his feet did not seem to be cut out for the long distances like hers. She claimed it freed her mind and provided the absence she needed for her heart to grow fonder of communal living. Being a city boy, Derek could never comprehend such yen for seclusion, but it was nothing unusual for Sharna.
So why did he have this mild conviction something was amiss?
As if to affirm his hunch, Sharna appeared at the porch stairs and made a haggard attempt to climb them. One knee buckled, spilling her onto the step’s sharp timber edge and she cried out Derek’s name.
He dropped his plate and rushed over, skidding to a sitting position beside her. She had leaves in her hair and smudges of dirt down one side of her face, but what caught Derek’s eye were the inky blue smudges just visible below the hem of her dress. Swallowing some dread, he tried to slide the dress up for a better look and Sharna squealed, slapping his hand away hard enough to leave a red mark.
“Sharna, what the hell happened to you?” he said, louder than he meant to. She flinched back, cowering into the house’s weatherboards. Her eyelids were red top and bottom, as if she had applied gaudy eyeliner.
“What happened?” he said more gently. “Were you attacked?”
At that Sharna looked up and he saw her eyes turn as hard as forged steel. She took a deep breath, like she had something important to say, then stopped. The steel melted
out of her eyes. Suddenly she looked like a child trying to remember her times tables.
“I fell into a ravine,” Sharna said.
“What are you talking about?”
“I found a disused path in the woods,” Sharna explained. The pain Derek had seen in her eyes—the ordeal—had faded. “While I was walking along I thought I heard something in the underbrush and I went over to take a look. The ground sloped away and my foot must have skidded on a stick or something and I slid all the way down to the bottom.”
Looking her over, Derek supposed her injuries were fairly consistent with her description of events—but that sense of unease would not leave him. If anything, it redoubled. “Can I see those marks on your thigh?”
She offered neither assent nor refusal, only gave him a beatific, empty smile, which Derek put down to sudden-onset shock. He gently took hold of her dress and lifted it up. She did not resist this time, only stared away towards the front gate as he made his examination. The smudged-ink bruising spread all over the tender flesh of her inner thighs—the thighs that he so loved to stroke and caress during their intimate moments.
“How did this happen?”
Sharna glanced down and cocked her head in a dog-like manner, as if surprised to see the discolored skin. “A tree stopped me from sliding,” she offered.
Derek re-examined her injuries. He guessed a tree could have caused them, although there seemed to be little abrasion. Also, there were some smaller bluish spots on the underside of her left thigh, just visible above the splintery wood of the step on which she sat. Nothing about this smelled right—and if Sheriff Grayson happened to spot his daughter’s bruising, the Peace Out commune would soon be a happy memory.
“We should take you to a doctor,” Derek said.
“I’ll be fine,” Sharna said. “I’m tired, now. I just want to go to sleep for a while.”
“I’d feel better if you…” Derek began, but Sharna stood up and finished ascending the stairs. She no longer staggered as she had when she first appeared, and apart from a minor bow-legged gait and the telltale marks, she might not have been injured at all. Besides, Derek knew better than to try and persuade Sharna Grayson otherwise when her mind was made up. So he followed her closely through the house and into their shared bedroom, trying to remember if sleepiness was a symptom of concussion (as his back-catalog memory seemed to suggest) and hoping it was not. In a superficial way his distracted mind also noted that all the bedroom doors, set out alternately along the hallway, were closed—all except for his and Del’s.
But that could not compete with his immediate worry for Sharna, who got into bed still wearing a hollow smile and pulled up the covers. She turned on her side and gazed at the featureless wall.
Derek bent down and kissed her forehead. Her skin felt dry under his lips. “You yell out if you start to feel dizzy or sick or something, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, closing her eyes.
Derek watched over her a few moments, frustrated and irritable for reasons he could not nail down, and then walked out.
This time, he paid more attention to the line of closed doors. Guy’s was one of them, and it was his allotted day to be tending the fields. Derek almost left it…then in a rising pique, he walked up to the door and knocked.
There was no answer.
Derek knocked again, and this time Guy’s voice said, “Yeah.”
Derek opened the door to see Guy lying on his side, in much the same position as he had left Sharna. “It’s your day to look after the garden,” Derek said.
“I’m as sick as a dog,” Guy said, and Derek had to admit he sounded croaky and breathless. “I must have picked up some sort of flu.”
“Seems like the whole house has picked up a bug,” Derek said.
“I think I probably gave it to Daisy as well. I’ll do double everything next week to make up for it,” Guy said.
“One way or another, we all need to be up and around when Sharna’s dad comes for breakfast tomorrow. The last thing he should see is a commune full of sick, bed-ridden zombies. You reckon you can be up for that?”
Guy rolled his eyes towards Derek. His pupils were so dilated they seemed to have eaten the green discs of his irises. “We’ll put on a real show for him.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll leave you alone. Hope you feel better soon, man.”
“Thanks,” Guy said, his eyes returning to their previous position.
Derek went back to the kitchen. Del stood there waiting for him, her face anxious. “What was that about? Is Sharna okay?”
“She seems to think so. She says she fell down a ravine while she was out walking.”
“Jesus!”
“She doesn’t seem to have broken any bones, but she’s a bit bruised and busted up. I’m worried she might be concussed.”
“You should take her to the doctor.”
“She doesn’t want to go. And you know what she’s like—good luck getting her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. Although maybe we should get a doctor to come out here. Half the house is down with the flu or something. So I guess it’s up to us to look after things.”
They spent most of the day attending the vegetable patches—bringing snail lives to a quick and humane end, planting a few rows of carrots, pulling out the grass and weeds that tried to invade the plowed soil. Del also did some personal washing.
Late that afternoon, Derek and Del stood side-by-side shelling peas. They tossed handfuls into the big stew pot, which squatted stony and corpulent on the bench, demanding to be fed more.
“We should probably see who wants pea soup before we go making too much of it,” Derek said.
“I’ll go ask.”
“Can you check on Sharna for me, too? Make sure she’s okay?”
Del nodded and then ran her hands under the tap to wash off the pod-pulp.
“I hope she comes good before her father gets here tomorrow. If she’s not better in the morning I’m thinking about calling the breakfast off.”
“Probably a good idea,” Del said, leaving the kitchen.
Derek emancipated more peas and stared through the wall. He felt like he had hardly slept since the reactor protest. Breakfast would be left to Del and him as well, he supposed. He tried not to feel resentful towards his commune mates but his weariness urged the emotion along, providing the heat it needed to simmer. He had worked through a bout of flu during the foundation of the commune—cleaning out the house, digging the first garden beds—without complaint or bedrest. Unless you were stuck on the toilet with something awful spraying out both ends, illness was no excuse for laziness. He could understand Sharna’s lethargy—she had suffered both shock and physical injury. But the others were neglecting their duties. All at once, he wondered if Milton had something to do with it. Could he have convinced the others to stage a strike? A passive-aggressive sit-in conducted under a veil of illness? It would be just like him. A puerile attention-seeking act design to show snooty old Derek that he was not king of the castle and perhaps impart some didactic advice about the true nature of communism while he was at it. Only Del and Sharna had refused. It sounded completely plausible. Perhaps he would—
“None of them want to eat,” Del said.
Derek stopped splitting his pea pod. “None of them? Did they have any lunch?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so.”
“This is creeping me out, Del. What if it’s some sort of sleeping sickness?”
Del looked at him wide-eyed. “You know what I think? I think it’s that silver thing Guy threw down the mine. I think it was part of a Russian satellite that fell to earth carrying some sort of biohazard.”
Derek looked back at her for a potent second and then sniffed a quasi-laugh. “That’s a bit far-fetched, Del. If the Russians wanted to start a biological war, they’d drop their package in the middle of New York City, not some Colorado backwater that has more cows than people.”
“It’s not much more far-fetched than sleeping sick
ness. Isn’t that an African disease?”
Derek laughed again. Spoken back to him, his own suggestion sounded just as silly as Del’s. “All right. Well, as a precaution let’s isolate ourselves from the others until we can convince one of them to get checked out. If it is a disease, so far we seem to be immune.”
Del nodded. “I’ll make Daisy see the doctor tomorrow afternoon.”
Derek turned back to the giant pot. “Well, it looks like it’s pea soup for two. Hope you’re hungry.”
“Famished.”
They cooked the soup and ate it together, then retired to the lounge room where Del put on a record at a low volume. They talked for an hour or two. Derek brought up his Milton Gates Conspiracy Theory. Del thought it a highly unlikely scenario, not least because Daisy had no patience for Milton’s power games. “Where we come from, people don’t much play games,” she explained. “You either respect someone or you don’t, and if you don’t respect a person, you either tell ’em so or stay just as far away from them as you can.”
Derek yawned. A moment later, Del yawned as well.
“It’s catching,” she said.
“Not for real, I hope.”
“My God…do you think?”
Derek chuckled. “Don’t sweat it. We’re just tired. I think I’m ready for bed.”
Del yawned again and nodded. “Me too.”
They said goodnight and went their separate ways, both closing their bedroom doors.
When Derek turned on the light he was surprised to see Sharna sitting up in bed with her feet on the floor, as if she had expected him or been about to get up. She still did not look healthy—she had not changed out of her clothes and a leaf still adorned her hair—but she seemed brighter, if not entirely with it.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Fine.”
“Are you sure?”
She looked up at him, seeming to squint against the flimsy light of their room’s bare bulb. “Why wouldn’t I be?”