Resist

by Hugh Howey

  Feeling that same boulder on his back, Simon drifted away from the verandah and toward the ute. There was no real plan, but somehow one had formulated in the spaces between their brief exchanges, a silent, masculine pact that he hated but nonetheless felt grimly tied to, like some desperate deal with the Devil he had only half-heartedly accepted.

  His brothers climbed into the ute, leaving Simon to get in the back. As the engine gunned to life, Simon stared at the low, shabby house they lived in. It looked miles away, and they hadn’t even pulled out of the driveway.

  Simon pulled up his tee and tied it over his mouth against the haze of dust kicked up by the tires. They were going to find Katie. It didn’t feel real. He wondered how many naked women he would see, and if it would be weird. Once, Jackie Summers let him kiss her and put his hand up her shirt behind the school. He couldn’t believe how soft she was. It took him a week to realize that she wasn’t going to let him do it again, and that she had just wanted a ciggie.

  “Bitch,” Davis had said when Simon recalled the story over a beer. But that seemed harsh. He had gotten to put his hand up her shirt, after all.

  Would Jackie Summers be in the field, too? More and more women were going; the news said nobody could get normal flights anywhere because so many women were trying to get to Australia. You almost had to laugh, thought Simon. Who the fuck would want to take all that trouble getting to Pilbara? But it was happening. Women and girls were clamoring to get to the arse end of the Earth, and for what? To piss about in a field, dancing naked and singing Kumbaya?

  Simon felt his stomach lurch as the ute sped up, just a blur screaming across the bush. They didn’t have all that far to go, and the military had set up barriers all over the place. When they were a few miles from Didi’s land, Frank veered off the dirt road and into the trees, the truck rocking from side to side as they navigated the uneven terrain. Simon had only been this close to Didi Wright’s property once, a few summers ago, when he and his brothers drove over drunk and threw rocks at her cows. They ditched the ute next to a meager stream, Frank and his brothers hopping out and crouching low in the bushes. Simon didn’t get out just yet. He didn’t know if he wanted to go any further. It all made his skin crawl and his hair stand on end—maybe he didn’t want to see what was inside the camp.

  “I’m going to go ahead and take a gander,” Frank said, turning back to the truck and unloading a metal box from the passenger seat. He set it down carefully, making as little noise as possible. Opening the hatch, he pulled out a box of ammunition, a few six packs of beer, and some beef jerky. “Don’t fuckin’ go anywhere. I’ll be back soon. You just wait.”

  Then he crept away, keeping low, his rifle slung over his shoulder. Simon stayed in the ute, watching that fisherman’s hat gradually get swallowed up by the leaves.

  “Idiot, he shouldn’t go alone,” Davis said, opening a beer.

  “He’s a goner,” Johnny agreed. He was slimmer than Davis, muscular, and the best looking of the boys. He had gotten all their mother’s looks, with big brown eyes and sandy blonde hair. A lot of girls had let him put his hand up their shirts. “Probably get hit by a sniper or some shit. I’m telling ya, there’s something in there they don’t want us to see.”

  Simon rolled his eyes, but didn’t disagree. Of course civilians had rushed in, trying to reach their spouses or friends or daughters. The military turned them away at first, but now there were so many trying that they had gone to bean bag rounds and tear gas. A few blokes had gotten badly injured when they refused to back down, and the news showed them being carried out on stretchers, bruised and ranting. The camp looked different on television now, more militarized. The numbers inside were swelling, and Simon wondered what would happen if women just kept coming.

  What they were doing was dangerous. It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment that they could land in real trouble trying to find Katie. Frank didn’t come back for hours. It was getting dark by the time he returned, and just in time, as the beer had run out and his two brothers were getting antsy.

  “I don’t want to be stuck out here all night,” Simon said. “We won’t be able to get back out if it’s dark. I can’t see for shit and I’m not turning on the headlights.”

  “I’m not giving up on him yet,” Davis replied.

  He probably just wanted an excuse to sit there in the cool shadows and guzzle another tinny. But Frank returned not long after, all of them bolting up in alarm as they heard the leaves shimmer at his approach. Davis aimed his gun, but then they all saw the fisherman’s hat. Simon wanted to feel more relieved than he did.

  “It’s a bloody nightmare,” Frank informed them, taking the beer out of his son’s hand and downing it. He was covered in sweat and grime, mosquito bites welling up on his hands and neck. “But I think I found a way in. Troops are thin on the west side; they’re mostly busy keeping the reporters from crawling over the barricades.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Davis was a little drunk and red-faced and looked like he was spoiling for a blue.

  Simon gulped, watching them cluster, watching them prepare.

  “You follow me and do as I do.” His father’s words were slurred around great mouthfuls of beef jerky. He swallowed, sighed and nodded toward Didi’s fields. “Stay low, and for fuck’s sake don’t do anything stupid.”

  They began making their way toward the property, but Simon had a question.

  “Did you see her, Dad? Did you see Katie?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Simon began feeling strange as they neared the barricades. Massive floodlights were set up in both directions, armed military patrolling back and forth, walkie-talkies buzzing. They were easy to spot with the lights on, but Simon wondered how many were taking secret sweeps of the woods. The trees thinned, removing most of their cover, and Simon felt his hands grow slick with sweat. A slapdash barbed-wire perimeter had been set up, and they skirted it, moving to the west, all of them ducking whenever another military chopper thundered overhead. It was like something out of an action flick, Simon thought, Michael Bay and all that shit, tanks and ATVs, dizzying sounds, stone-faced soldiers armed to the teeth, reporters and their microwave vans set up in a fan in front of the main barricade… But there was one gap in the barricade, a kind of gate. Simon hunched in the bushes, at the very edge of the concealing tree line, watching the bizarre procession of women walking in an orderly line through the gap.

  “They’re letting more in?” he whispered.

  Davis shushed him, but his father said, “Guess they can’t stop ‘em. Ain’t breakin’ any laws.”

  “Look at them all,” Simon breathed. The line stretched for miles, vanishing into the gathering darkness. None of the women looked like they were being forced to go, and there was no rush, just a steady walk, some kind of peaceful procession.

  “What happens when they run out of room?” Johnny asked.

  “Don’t know,” Frank muttered. “Don’t care. Not gunna be here for that, just gunna get my damn daughter and leave.”

  “What if she wants to stay?” Simon knew he shouldn’t have said it, but the more he looked at the women and the calm smiles on their faces, the more he knew in his gut that Katie had come on her own, walked the seven miles from school to this farm with nobody making her do it. Well, nobody that he could see, anyway.

  “Shut up.” Davis smacked him on the back of his head.

  “I’ll lock her in the cellar if she acts up with this shit again,” Frank said, his face scrunched in grim determination. “Now keep quiet and follow me.”

  They did. Simon couldn’t shake that weird feeling in his stomach. His whole body felt like it was pulsing. Not like it had when Jackie let him touch her tit, but more intense: waves of sensation that tied his guts in knots. He could swear there was a low, constant hum in the back of his head. He couldn’t shake it off, and it made him tremble.

  Just the lights, he assured himself. Too much stimulation is all.

  They
doubled back and followed, at a distance, the line of women stretching into forever. At last it was dark all around them, and the mass of television crews thinned. Frank darted forward, his sons in tow, and broke through the line of women walking toward the gates. None of them seemed to notice or care about the men, as if in a trance.

  “Bloody weird,” he heard Johnny whisper as they scurried into a bank of low bushes on the other side of the line.

  As promised, Frank led them toward the west side of the property, where fewer reporters shouted into their cameras, and the barbed-wire fence had partially broken down. A tiny two-foot gap was all they had to work with. By sheer luck, the nearest floodlight either wasn’t working or hadn’t been turned on. It was the perfect point of ingress, and they took it.

  The grass had been so well trampled by all the commotion that the fields were more or less dirt. They crawled toward the makeshift camp that had been set up on Didi’s property, hundreds, maybe thousands of tents clustered together to form a kind of city. The minute they came close to the edge of the tents, Simon heard laughter. That buzzing in his stomach grew harder to bear, and he clutched his middle, wincing.

  “How are we gunna find Katie in all this shit?” Davis groused.

  “You just follow me, boy,” Frank replied. “I got an idea.”

  Simon didn’t like the sound of that. He agreed that they needed to get Katie back, but he didn’t see how it was possible with this many tents to search. They’d be there all night, and when morning came get caught for sure.

  They snaked through the maze of canvas and nylon, quiet, low to the ground, and moving toward what Simon assumed was the center. His legs ached from squatting for so long. He was in the back, and noticed with a gasp of fear that they had been noticed. Women were following them.

  “Oi.” He elbowed Johnny in front of him. “Oi, stop, we’ve got company.”

  The men stopped and turned, finding a dozen girls and women fanned out behind them. They simply stood, staring back, though none looked particularly angry or disturbed.

  One little girl stepped forward. She was dressed in a flowing white frock, a flower tucked into her curly black hair. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  It was like they had all simultaneously lost the power of speech.

  “Um… My sister. We’re looking for my sister. Katie,” Simon finally said.

  “Why?” the girl pressed. She tilted her head to the side, smiling.

  “Fuckin’ weirdo,” Davis whispered. “They on drugs?”

  “We just want her back.” Simon felt like he was dealing with a hostage, afraid to say anything too harsh. “Don’t want to start trouble, we just want her back.”

  The girl sighed and came closer. She gently touched Simon’s chin, lifting it up so she could look him over. “Silly. She won’t want to come back. None of us do. This is our place now. It’s for us, not for you.”

  “What are you all doing here?” Simon murmured. The hum in his head crested, and he had to blink hard to withstand the pain.

  “Being,” the little girl replied. “Just being.”

  “Enough of this shit.” Frank dodged past him in a blur, elbowing Simon out of the way and into the dust. He grabbed the little girl by the arm, wrenching it behind her. Turning, he shoved his rifle into her back and forced her toward the other women that had been watching and following.

  They did not gasp, or even react; they simply watched.

  “You shouldn’t hurt her,” one woman, tall, plump, and dressed in a paisley bikini said. Her brows knit together with pity as she extended her hand. “Give Joia back to us. She just wants to be.”

  “Shut up!” Frank forced out through gnashing teeth. “Just shut up and listen. You listen to me, right? Katie Spencer. Where is she? You take me to her right now and nothing happens to this little girl.”

  Simon almost couldn’t hear his father over the din in his head. He felt like he was going to pass out. Scrabbling, he pushed himself to all fours, watching through watery eyes as Frank pushed the rifle harder between the girl’s shoulder blades.

  Don’t.

  “Katie Spencer,” the woman in the bikini said. “Katie Spencer … ”

  The other women with her began to say it, too, in a soft murmur that became a kind of chant. More girls and older ladies appeared out of the tents, surrounding them. Simon glanced around warily, finding that they were completely enclosed in a circle of women that was tightening by the minute. Some were stark naked, others were streaked with mud in patterns like war paint, one short, tattooed woman wore only an old boot.

  “Katie Spencer, Katie Spencer … ”

  Hearing his sister’s name so many times almost made it funny, or nonsensical. He was caught between the horrible pain in his head and the sense that they were in deep, deep shit. His father, for fuck’s sake, was pointing a gun at a little kid! Why had they come?

  “Katie Spencer—” The chant ended abruptly. Paisley bikini tipped her head to one side, going silent, closing her eyes. Every woman and girl near them did the same. Spooky. Like they were receiving some kind of transmission.

  In the distance, the choppers whirred, the news reporters chattered, the flood lights buzzed.

  “Hurry up now,” Frank almost shouted. “I’m getting impatient, and I don’t wanna do anything you’ll regret to this child.”

  The woman in the bikini opened her eyes, staring with renewed interest at Frank. Then, without warning, she lunged for him. The next minute or two passed by in a blink, and Simon screamed, wincing at the gunfire, watching the bullet casing drop with a ping that he heard like lightning in his head, seeing the blood explode in a fantastic arc out of the little girl’s chest.

  Dead. She was dead and holy shit Frank had just shot someone. A kid. The child dropped to the ground in a heap. His father reared back, shouting. Davis and Johnny screamed, too, a moment later, briefly stunned by the sound of the shot and the blood that came after. And in all of that, the woman had simply put her hand on Frank’s. A touch of the hand, nothing more, and someone had died for it.

  She looked down at the dead child for a long time. Tears ran down her cheeks. Panting, wild-eyed, Simon looked around. Every woman encircling them had begun, silently, to cry.

  “Katie Spencer,” the woman said sadly. She took Frank’s hand, but he wrenched it free of her grasp. “Take my hand,” she commanded. “Take my hand and we will bring you to Katie Spencer.”

  Maybe it was the shock of what he had done or the promise that he would see his daughter, but Frank did as he was told for once, letting the woman take him by the hand and lead him toward the inner reaches of the tent city. Simon watched disbelievingly as an elderly woman came forward. She was Aboriginal, wrinkled as a raisin, her skin dry and papery and warm as she took Simon’s fingers in hers and tugged. It had been a long time, too long a time since someone smiled at him the way she did—tenderly, carefully, as if he were bruised and needed care.

  They had just barged into the camp and shot a little girl, and now this old woman gingerly led him off, just behind the bikini woman and Frank. Davis and Johnny were scooped up, too, and Davis managed to keep his mouth shut about it.

  “I’m sorry,” Simon blurted out. “That girl … I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to do anything like that. It was an accident.”

  The old woman nodded. She wore a light blue dress with a white collar, and socks with sandals. She squeezed his hand, but said nothing. Tears ran down her lined cheeks.

  “Really … We didn’t mean to. Christ. We’re going to be in so much trouble.” Simon’s eyes fluttered shut. “God, this headache.”

  “Mm,” the woman said. “You don’t belong here.”

  Was this some kind of warning? Punishment? But how … Simon forced himself to concentrate, stumbling along. He had the sudden urge to drop his rifle, and he did so, tossing it away, sickened at the sight of it. The tents were clustered more loosely as they approached the heart of the encampment. Open spaces with bonfires
appeared, and women dancing around them. They held hands and laughed, many of them with flowers or leaves threaded in their hair. Around one fire, a chain of women sat, giggling and talking. Each was cutting off the hair of the woman in front of her and tossing the strands into the air. It was like a festival, some drug-fueled hippy stuff, singing and chanting, naked women hugging and holding hands.

  He wasn’t supposed to see this, he thought, and his face got hot and red. Was Katie really here? Was she into this kind of thing? His brain pulsed. He was having trouble remembering anything concrete about his sister. She loved animals. Her favorite color was purple. She smiled less after mum passed. Davis and Johnny gave her endless loads of shit, but Katie had always been faster and smarter, and definitely kinder.

  “What are you all doing here?” he asked, trying not to stare at the naked women but sneaking glances anyway.

  “Being,” the old woman said with a happy sigh. “Just being.”

  “But what are you doing? What made you come here?”

  She glanced up at him, frowning, as if she didn’t understand the question. After a pause she told him, “The triangle. It called me here. It called all of us here. But not you, you were not called.”

  “You can’t keep this up, you know,” Simon muttered. He was vulnerable now, even more surrounded and, obviously, outnumbered. One of the military choppers overhead seemed to circle back and hover just above them. He felt the gust of the blades ruffle his hair. “We want to know what’s going on. The men, I mean, we’re going to keep trying to get in here and get some answers.”

  “You can try,” she admitted, leading him away from the bonfires. “But you shouldn’t.”

  “But what about your families? And your jobs! You can’t keep this up forever.”

  “For now we are here,” she said. “Being.”

  Simon’s head was killing him. He had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting, pain lancing through his stomach every ten steps or so. The women in the open field watched them pass. Some took interest and followed. They were brought to one of the bigger tents in the encampment, one for a party, like a wedding maybe. Frank had rented something similar after Johnny graduated, but it had been saggy and dingy, this one was crisp, clean and sparkling white.