Carrier

by Vanessa Garden

  Emma took the end of my jeans in her mouth and tugged me back towards the house, a low growl at the base of her throat. I shook her away but reluctantly left the fence, with my note stuffed between its wires, praying Patrick would see it.

  Back inside, I wiped the sweat off my face with a dish cloth, returned the bunch of keys to the top of the cupboard from earlier that had been poking at my bum through my back pocket, and collapsed against my squeaky mattress. At least Mum hadn’t drugged me. I wouldn’t be feeling so wired if she had.

  Stuffing my face into the softness of my pillow, all I could do now was hope that Patrick had found the note before the wind took it away, or the rain bled the ink…or before Mum got to it.

  I groaned into the pillow before sitting up and reaching for Alice’s journal. Even if Mum came home this minute she still had to skin the rabbits, so I had a bit of time.

  I was so eager to hear my cousin’s words again that my hands shook while I flicked through the pages to find my place.

  A Boy!

  Okay, so I was going to write about my breakout but that’s not even journal-worthy because, well, I met a boy today. A real, live boy! While my aunt was hunting south, I climbed over the front gate and headed north to the waterhole she always talks about…and that was where I met him!

  He has dark hair and beautiful green/grey eyes — I call them ocean mist. He laughed when I said that and do you know what he did? He reached out and touched my cheek! I flinched a little, because of the disease and everything, but, oh God, it felt like heaven.

  He is from a place about thirty or forty k’s north from here. To think people have been this close, practically in our backyard all this time, and we didn’t even know it.

  Oh he is beautiful and funny and tall and muscular and he can pick me up with one arm around my waist and swing me around like I’m only a doll.

  Anyway, I don’t want to sound like I’m desperate or anything — what am I saying — I haven’t seen a boy in five years. I am so desperate! I’d even go as far as to say that I’m in love. He told me that he wants to introduce me to his mum and dad and little brothers — get this — he has seven of them! Can you believe that? Like some big, potato-farming Irish family.

  Oh, and he kissed me. We’d spoken for hours under the huge tree hanging over the waterhole, and it was getting dark, and we both had to go home, but he kept staring at my lips and was breathing hard which was pretty nice and made my insides swim around like fish.

  And so, well, he grabbed me by the shoulders and said, ‘Alice, don’t be scared, but I want to kiss you. Do you want me to? Because I’ll only kiss you if you want me to.’

  He was shaking all over and his eyes were kind of all misty and heated which was really nice and I felt like I was going to pass out from the excitement of it all.

  Then I closed my eyes before leaning right in and before I could reach him he’d pressed his mouth to mine, real hard at first and then soft, soft, soft and beautiful. When he pulled back he was suddenly shy and scared and without saying a word, walked me back to the front gate of Desert Downs and just ran away into the night.

  It sounds clichéd, and ridiculous, but as I watched him go, I whispered his name to the stars...over and over again.

  Markus...Markus...Markus...

  The journal fell onto my lap.

  Markus?

  Alice had fallen in love with Patrick’s brother?

  Footsteps approached my bedroom door.

  After shoving the journal beneath my pillow, I had just enough time to draw the sheets up to my neck and act as if I’d been woken when she opened the door.

  Mum frowned at first and then forced a smile.

  ‘Come outside. I want to show you something,’ she said, her voice firm yet quiet, as though she was trying hard to keep it steady.

  It was already dark, but Mum wanted to break curfew and go out into the night. The last time she had done this was when she’d shot a man. My stomach churned and felt heavy, like it was packed with stones.

  As I followed Mum, the girls bypassed us and my heart sank when I saw them stop at mine and Patrick’s meeting place and pace the earth, the little noses working overtime to sniff at the ground.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance and not long after, thin shards of light exploded, lighting up the distant black horizon and turning it silver.

  My heart thudded in panic for Patrick. How would he fair in the storm, half-blind? And how would he feel knowing that I hadn’t shown up? The note was gone, but it could have either blown away or, most likely, Mum had found it.

  ‘What’s this?’ Mum shone her torch light at the fence, the inside of it. The faint remains of my footsteps led right up to the fence. Then she beamed the light to the other side, where much larger footsteps imprinted the ground and trailed back towards the bushes and into the dark.

  Patrick had been. But I had no way of knowing if he had found my note or if he had left thinking that I hadn’t shown up.

  A small noise escaped my throat and tears filmed my eyes.

  The glasses.

  I’d dangled the promise of sight to Patrick, told him I’d bring my father’s glasses.

  And he’d come here, light on his feet with optimism.

  And I never came.

  ‘Did you get out of bed and come by the fence today, while you were supposed to be sick?’

  This was Mum’s famous trick question, because even though she knew the answer she wanted me to confess. She nearly always spoke to Alice this way.

  I thought carefully before I answered. More thunder rumbled, so low and deep, it felt as if it was rolling beneath my feet. Lightning lit up my mother’s face, her eyes dark with anger.

  ‘Yes.’ I cleared my throat, which had gone all croaky. ‘I did. I heard something so I came out here, to check if you’d returned from hunting. But you hadn’t, so I went back to the house. I hopped straight into bed and fell asleep.’

  ‘Did you see anybody on the other side? I’m sure you’re smart enough to see that those prints are much bigger than mine.’

  I gnawed at my bottom lip while I tried to think of something to say.

  More thunder roared.

  ‘Forget it,’ Mum shouted over the noisy wind. ‘Let’s go inside.’

  Mum put an arm around my shoulders and, while to an onlooker it would appear as a motherly gesture, I knew it was an act of control. She was letting me know that she was back in charge.

  *

  An hour later, after so much soup my stomach was distended, I announced I was going to bed early to read. Mum glanced up from her book, the warm candlelight from the centre of the table casting a soft glow over her face.

  ‘You can read for an extra ten minutes tonight, okay love?’

  She was being generous with my candle time. It was a peace offering.

  ‘Thanks.’ I hovered near her, all my secrets about Patrick and my concerns for his brothers and his missing dad weighing down the tip of my tongue. The fact that I couldn’t trust my mum made me depressed.

  Within minutes I was snuggled beneath my blankets, my pillow behind my back as I leant back against the bedhead. With Jeffery C against my chest, I opened Alice’s journal and let the pages fall where they may.

  They landed on her last entry.

  Freedom

  I’ve decided to leave. Markus is going to meet me at the front gate, tonight. I’m not sure how I’ll sneak out without Psycho Aunty on the trail. But, as I said last time, I’ll whack her over the head if I have to.

  I need to break free before I die of boredom. I need to be with Markus. He’s going to let me live with his dad, mum and brothers.

  And, maybe, once I’m safe there and Aunty can see that I haven’t died and that my new friends aren’t infected, then she might warm up to the idea of meeting them herself.

  Hey, even Lena might one day come to live with me. She needs kids in her life. She needs a friend to confide in, somebody that’s not her older cousin or mother. P
oor kid.

  I promise, dear diary, that I’ll come back for her. If her mum doesn’t want her to leave then I’ll sneak around with the boys and visit so that she can meet them and have a little play every now and then.

  Oh it’ll be so brilliant to finally have some good times and to laugh a little.

  To the future and to more time with Markus! And to think I’d almost lost hope in the world. I thought I’d never have a chance to kiss a boy, or to even have little babies of my own one day. Now, the world is my oyster. Maybe some smart country like Japan has already come up with the cure to the disease by now. They could be administering it to the people on the coast as I write this.

  There could be hope for us all!

  So, goodbye, dear journal, for I won’t get a chance to write in you when I reach Markus’ house. I’ll probably leave you behind in my room here, because I’ll be too busy having fun to write for a while.

  So goodbye for now, and maybe forever...

  I turned the page and stared at the empty lines that Alice never filled.

  What had gone wrong? Had Markus not come that night? Had she waited out there all alone in the darkness, at the mercy of those men? The book slipped from my fingers and landed on my lap. Maybe Markus had died that night, along with Alice. The attackers may have gotten to him first, and then Alice. They probably hadn’t even gotten to see each other that night.

  Tears blurred my vision.

  Alice may have died thinking that Markus hadn’t cared. Just like Patrick may have felt when he’d arrived at the fence, waiting for those glasses that had never arrived.

  With a quick blow, my candle was out. I dried my tears on the bedsheets. Life was unfair. To think that freedom had come so close for Alice. To think that her dream of romance and happy families ended like that, with all the pain and horror she must have suffered in her last minutes. More tears flowed until they turned into silent, heaving sobs that made my whole body shake.

  I stopped only, with a jolt, when I heard the unmistakable crack of a gunshot.

  The sound sliced through the howling wind and the drumming of the rain on our tin roof.

  Patrick.

  I leapt from my bed and ran out into the hallway, just in time to see Mum leaning a shotgun against the wall, rain dripping down her face from the curled ends of her dark hair.

  My throat closed up so tight I couldn’t speak.

  Mum looked up and her face brightened into a smile, the kind that didn’t quite reach her eyes. My intuition had been spot on when I’d felt unease after dinner. She hadn’t softened at all.

  ‘Just making sure whoever came to visit us today never returns.’ She headed for the kitchen, ‘Goat’s milk?’

  Finally I found my voice.

  ‘What have you done, Mum?’ The tears for Alice were still wet against my cheeks.

  ‘What anybody’s mother would do, Lena, I’m protecting my child.’

  ‘Did...’ I sucked in a lungful of oxygen and swallowed down the bitterness rising up in my throat. ‘Did you shoot him?’

  Mum spun around and pointed at me like a lawyer at the accused.

  ‘Who do you mean by “him”?’ She took a step closer. ‘Is there something I should know?’

  I backed away. ‘I just thought...with the footprints.’

  ‘Lena, come back here, now!’

  But I was already running down the hall and slamming the door behind me.

  Back in my room I paced the floor.

  The way Mum had questioned me gave me a small fragment of hope. If she had shot Patrick, she wouldn’t have asked me ‘who’ I was talking about. She would have known. She would have seen him. Mum must have been simply trying to scare me out of going to the fence again.

  Lightening flashed through my bedroom window, illuminating the shapes of two heads.

  A strangled gasp escaped my lips.

  My heart and body froze.

  Thunder crackled beneath the earth.

  Another flash came…and the silhouettes were gone.

  Staying close to the wall, I edged my way around the room to the window and peered through the gap in the planks, bracing myself for what or who I’d see out there.

  A scissor of lightening lit up the yard.

  But there was no one there.

  Chapter 7

  I woke up early to the sound of Emma and Charlotte yapping playfully outside. Through the gap in the boards on my window I watched them tussle in the red dirt beneath a bleak sky. Another storm loomed ominously in the distant horizon. I pulled on some old cargo pants that used to be Mum’s and a flannelette shirt I had to roll up at the sleeves, silently praying the sky wouldn’t crack open for another day or two.

  I needed to find Patrick tonight. I needed to warn him not to come to Desert Downs again.

  Throwing myself into my daily chores helped to keep my mind off two things — the silhouettes I’d seen at my window last night, and the fact that I planned on telling Mum I was leaving. But after I’d completed all of my jobs, I had to face the inevitable and speak to Mum.

  She was out in the back, planting root vegetables. I watched as she spread shovels full of compost onto the dirt.

  We grew our vegies in flat, wide rectangles of earth, sectioned off with limestone bricks Dad had laid so that the good soil he’d brought out here from the coast in crates wouldn’t leach out and drown in the dry red earth. But there wasn’t much left of the brown stuff anymore, so it was mostly orange.

  ‘I just finished straining the cheese and grinding the seeds. The house is tidy and the sink is full of fresh water.’

  Mum paused, the shovel midair, and nodded. ‘You seem back to your normal self.’

  When I didn’t respond, she staked the shovel into the earth and sighed heavily. ‘You know this isolation thing? I only keep you here because I’m worried I’ll lose you like Alice. That’s all.’

  At my feet, a lone soldier ant contemplated a speck of brown soil which had spilled onto the red earth.

  ‘I know, and I understand, sort of.’ My hands began to tremble so I shoved them in my back pockets. ‘But…I can’t live penned-in like this…’ I met her eyes and swallowed thickly, ‘…anymore.’ I shook my head and continued, encouraged by the soft, understanding look in her eyes and the sad half-smile on her face. ‘There’s just no point to it all. What are we even saving ourselves for? There’s nothing good waiting for us. I’d rather risk my life and maybe find something out there worth living for, than to preserve myself for this nothing life.’ When I finished my rant, my chest was heaving and my face felt warm and tight, the blood beneath my skin throbbing.

  Mum bowed her head, her dark hair falling to shield her face from me while she chewed what remained of her last pinkie fingernail. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. A small part of me wondered if I’d maybe gone too far, but a larger part of me just could not shut up.

  ‘It’s time you cut me a little slack, Mum. I’m nearly seventeen. I want some freedom.’

  ‘You’re sixteen and a half,’ she said, her voice a monotone.

  ‘Right, but what I’m trying to say is that I’m only getting older and there’ll come a time when you are going to have to let me make decisions for myself.’ Dramatically, with wild arms, I gestured to the fence, but Mum merely snorted without looking up. I was losing her. She was reverting back to her old, hard self. I needed the soft, understanding Mum back, the one I’d glimpsed for only a second a minute ago.

  ‘What if you get sick, Mum? Or what if one day, when you hide away in your room, you never come back out? Or you go out hunting and never return? What then? I won’t know where anything is. If our well dries up then I won’t know how to find the waterhole and I’ll die from dehydration.’

  Mum still wasn’t looking at me. I slapped myself against my forehead for emphasis, but got nothing, not even a blink. I groaned.

  ‘Can’t you see that all of this — ’ I waved my hands at the fence, ‘ — all this locking me up is doing more dama
ge than good?’

  Mum bent her knees, squatting over the ground, and began poking the rich, damp planting earth with her index finger and shoving in the chunks of shrivelled potato eyes with a patience and calmness that did my head in.

  ‘Yes, Lena, I have spent many nights thinking about it. And yes, it seems ridiculous to not equip you with all the knowledge I have, to pass it down, should you find yourself alone one day. But…’ she paused and rolled a triangle of potato against her dirty palm, ‘your cousin Alice, when I found her, she was only ten metres beyond the front gate — ten metres, Lena. I don’t know what had possessed her to leave the property that night, though I have a feeling it was to meet a boy, but I know that for all her efforts, she only made it a few steps away before those men got her.’

  A solid lump formed in my throat and I swallowed it down, trying not to notice the lone tear trickling out of my mother’s left eye.

  ‘She was so badly beaten, Lena. It physically pained me to look at her. Her arms were broken, her legs...in more than one place. Some of her beautiful hair was ripped out of her scalp.’ Mum paused and sucked in a deep breath. ‘And they violated her so badly that I think she bled to death, internally, from all the tearing. The footprints showed there were as many as five men...five.’ She shook her head and eyed me from head to toe. ‘What could you possibly do out there against five men?’

  My body turned cold, as though I’d suddenly found myself buried within the cool earth beside Alice’s bones — poor Alice who hadn’t gotten her chance to run away with Markus.

  ‘Mum, I’m sorry about Alice, too.’ I sniffed and wiped my wet face with the back of my hands. ‘But maybe things have changed. There might be others out there, like us, looking for other normal people. We could all band together.’

  Mum pulled her head back and stood up, dusting the sand which clung to her fingers against her narrow thighs. ‘As I said yesterday, I might take you hunting with me, if you don’t try anything silly.’ We locked eyes.

  ‘You’re still treating me like a kid,’ I said, raking my fingers through my hair and shifting my feet.