Several minutes later, after all the men were packed in and seated on a double tier of bench seats, two tall and thickly muscled guards led Luke and I to our own special bench near the front. Not so far away sat an empty chair, at the front centre of the quadrangle, facing the crowd. The sight of the waiting chair sent a cold chill up my back so I cast my eyes down and stared at my lap instead, my knee jiggling uncontrollably. A low murmuring filled the room and without checking, I could feel the weight of hundreds of pairs of eyes as they fixed on me.
Luke whistled loudly, his four fingers crammed between his lips, and the murmuring ceased abruptly. Only then I glanced up and scanned the crowd for Patrick. All of the men had cast their eyes to the front, their gazes trained on the empty chair, all except one pair of eyes. Patrick stood tall but seemed to look off in the distance.
I waved, hoping he’d see the movement, but without my dad’s glasses, everything would be a blur to him. But he must have known I was coming because he kept craning his neck as though searching. Eventually somebody elbowed him in the arm and he swung his eyes to the front, staring at nothing in particular.
The siren that had wailed earlier droned again. Most of the men winced but did not move to cover their ears like I did. Instead they kept their wide eyes riveted on the chair, as though they feared it.
A commotion started behind us, outside the fence, and I twisted in my seat to watch two guards, who wore handkerchiefs across their mouths and gloves on their hands, drag a struggling, bearded man, stirring up red clouds of dust as they went.
From the way the man cried out, in a way that cut through my skin and rattled my soul, I knew he was a Carrier and I knew that something bad was going to happen to him.
His shirtless torso was blanketed in a thick, raised, red rash.
Dark, greasy hair fell over his face and obscured his eyes so that all you could see was hair and beard — such a contrast to the buzz cuts of the disease-free men.
Even without seeing the Carrier’s eyes, I could feel the terror radiating from his body, thickening the air with tension. His distress turned my stomach and made me dig my nails into my thighs. Every inch of me wanted to help him, or at least offer words of kindness.
‘No!’ he shouted, over and over again, then, ‘Please! Please!’ between huge, wet sobs, as they tied him to the chair, securing his wrists to the chair arms and his feet to the chair legs.
A bald man, who was as skinny as a pole and wore an apron over his army gear, approached the diseased man with a syringe. He wore plastic gloves and a handkerchief tied around his mouth.
The Carrier spat at the approaching man and thrashed his head from side to side, the chair jumping every time he jerked his arms and legs. A lock of hair had come away from the victim’s face and when his wide hazel eyes locked with mine, he stilled for a moment, snorting air through his nostrils while he caught his breath. I watched, my lungs held, as a single tear slipped down his hairy cheek.
Trapped in his petrified gaze I froze, my heart beating wildly against my sternum. I wanted to shut my eyes to avoid the coming horror but this man deserved more than that, so I offered him comfort with the unspoken words in my eyes: telling him he was a human being and that he mattered, until my vision blurred and I had to blink away my own tears.
‘They are administering the latest antidote,’ whispered Luke. I wanted to tell him that I thought their way of going about it was sick, but I couldn’t speak.
As the tip of the syringe pierced the man’s skin, I braced myself, breath held, for whatever was coming, but after a minute passed and the man remained in the same position, alive with no ill effects, I allowed myself to breathe. Maybe it was working. Maybe this was the antidote that would save the country.
Minutes later, another man was led in by the two masked and gloved guards. He too had a thick beard and long, straggly hair. The man kept twisting his head to look at the crowd, his eyes wide as though surprised to see so many men in the quadrangle area.
Then an even stranger thing happened.
He called Patrick’s name.
Chapter 17
Patrick’s head snapped in the man’s direction and he narrowed his eyes to better see.
I jumped to my feet but Luke placed his hands on my shoulders and applied pressure until I sat back down again.
‘We stay for two more and then you can leave,’ said Luke.
The new Carrier had the same hair colour as Patrick and was around the same height. He was too young to be his dad, but old enough to be a brother.
Markus…
The hazel-eyed Carrier still strapped to the chair suddenly coughed, and then vomited all over his bare chest.
The crowd groaned collectively. Luke swore. The syringe guy was standing over the Carrier, shaking his head. At this, the second Carrier began to thrash his arms, trying to throw off the two men who held him in a tight grip, their meaty fingers digging into the pale flesh of the his arms.
‘Patrick!’ he called over his shoulder.
The hazel-eyed man was now convulsing in the chair, blood streaming from his nose and ears, his vacant eyes rolling to the back of his head.
‘Markus!’ Patrick shouted, confirming what I had hoped the moment the second Carrier had entered the quadrangle.
I gasped and leapt to my feet.
Alice’s Markus was alive.
Luke stood up and put an arm across my chest and drew me against him to prevent me from running. He held me, my back against his stomach, while I scratched and kicked to be free.
‘That’s Patrick’s brother!’
‘I don’t care who it is. He has a lethal disease in his blood, lethal to you. Now sit down!’ Luke barked at me before snapping his fingers at the uniformed men and directing them to the rowdy crowd who were now shouting and pushing and shoving so that they could better see what was going on.
The bald man with the apron calmly prepared a fresh syringe, intended for Markus, while the hazel-eyed man in the chair frothed at the mouth, his head lolling back as though the muscles in his neck had melted.
Another uniformed man stepped forward. I thought he was going to untie the Carrier strapped to the chair, but instead he withdrew a small gun from his holster, aimed it at the man and shot a bullet right between his eyes. Blood seeped from the wound, trailing down the man’s nose.
Inside my head I was screaming.
‘Patrick!’ Markus shouted again, while he struggled against the uniformed men’s restraint. Patrick had left his seat and was pushing his way through the rows of men to reach his brother, but was stopped by several uniformed men halfway.
Another two men untied the now dead Carrier and dragged his limp body aside to the corner of the concrete quadrangle before forcing Markus into the chair.
‘No! You have to stop them!’ I yelled at Luke, kicking at the air while he pinned my arms to my sides.
‘Why sacrifice him when you know the antidote is going to kill him? If you don’t stop I’ll run up and kiss him so I get infected. I’ll throw myself into the Carrier shed when you’re not looking!’
Luke, his face bright red and shaking with anger, swore and let me go before motioning to the aproned guy with a raised palm. ‘That’s enough for tonight. Send him back. We can use him next week,’ he added, glaring at me, his blue eyes frosty with contempt.
The guards had the men subdued reasonably quickly, and it made me wonder what the punishment was for insubordination around here for these men to be so compliant. I watched as they formed lines and filed out the gate. Patrick came last, restrained by two uniformed men, one at each arm.
Markus remained silent while the gloved men took him away, though his eyes, the same green-grey as Patrick’s, followed his brother’s every move.
‘Please make sure they don’t hurt them,’ I pleaded with Luke, whose anger had now diminished and had been replaced by a look of bewilderment.
‘What do you care about some Carrier?’ said Luke with a curious stare.
‘Alice loved you!’ I shouted.
He stared at me, unblinking.
‘Alice, my cousin, she loved you!’
He mouthed ‘Alice’, before turning and stumbling to his knees. The men dragged him up by his arms and shouted in his ears, but once on his feet again, he seemed to walk with a straighter spine.
‘I knew you’d bring trouble with you. Bloody women and their hormones,’ Luke said, sighing, but I could tell from the light in his eyes that something inside of him had softened, or perhaps he was remembering something about his wife. It made me think of Mum and how she’d spent the last fifteen years without a husband — her best friend — to help keep her sane at Desert Downs. I also wondered how well she had known Patrick’s father before she had shot him. Had they been in some sort of relationship? Was that why Mum had been acting oddly and had taken longer while out hunting for the past few months? But surely she would not have shot him if she had loved him.
When we got back to the house, the scent of good food cooking wafted up my nose.
The kids were already seated at the table with Streak, who watched with a satisfied smile as they shovelled in spoon after spoon of what appeared to be a meat and vegetable stew of some sort. He whispered something to them that made them glance at me and giggle, brown sauce streaming out the corners of their little mouths.
I groaned. ‘Just because I’ve got short hair doesn’t mean I’m a boy, okay?’ I stood there, in the kitchen, hands on my hips but Streak and the kids laughed even more.
‘You’ve got your shirt on inside out, that’s all.’
I glanced down at the shirt I’d dragged over my tank top this morning when it had been dark and chilly, and sighed, releasing all the tension from what had occurred only minutes ago with the poor dead Carrier and Markus, in one great gush. My face flushed red, and I mumbled a ‘sorry’ for my flip-out before taking off my shirt and putting it back on the right way.
The kids clapped their saucy little hands and I managed a smile, despite the turmoil I was feeling inside. It was horrible to think that they had been only metres away from such a barbaric practice. But I guess this was the only life they knew.
*
A week passed surprisingly fast, during which I had a chance to visit with Emma at Laurie’s quarters, one of the many dongas on the property. A former veterinarian, he had had to remove her entire hind leg in order to increase her chances at survival.
She had snapped at my fingers when I’d tried to inspect her stump, so in order to calm her, I’d sat by her side, stroking the soft downy fur behind her ears, the sweet spot, until a low growl of contentment had rumbled at the base of her throat. Emma seemed happy enough with Laurie and I was grateful to him for helping, but I couldn’t wait to take her away from this place and reunite her with her sister.
Luke kept putting off my visit with Patrick. First he’d said it was to help Patrick recuperate from his head injuries. Then he had said that Patrick was spending some time catching up with Markus and didn’t want to be disturbed. But judging by how strict they were on Carriers mixing with clean men, there was no way I believed him.
One day while I was out in the yard with the kids, hoping to catch a glimpse of Patrick myself, I spied a tall guy in the fields with hair as red as the dirt on the ground. Our eyes met when I retrieved Sammy’s ball that had landed between the fence and a row of white flowers. As the guy sidled over to the fence, with what looked like a zucchini in his hands, I saw that he was young, maybe my age.
‘I’m Jonathan, but you can call me Jonny, like my mum used to,’ he said with a smile, his wide green eyes crinkling up at the corners.
‘I’m Lena.’
‘Pretty,’ he said, with a long, drawn out sigh.
I stared at my feet. A magpie warbled from the tree above me.
‘Do you know of a boy named Patrick?’ I asked, whilst pretending to pick flowers. Sammy had already wrestled the ball out of my hands and had taken off to play with Petra, so I needed an excuse to be so near to the fence.
‘New guy? Yeah, I know him,’ Jonny said, his eyes widening with interest.
‘Is he okay?’ I asked, my fingers twirling the vibrant green stalk between my fingers.
‘Yeah, he’s okay.’ Jonny shrugged. ‘Keeps to himself and eats like he’s putting it away for winter.’ He winked and beamed a toothy grin, his eyes never leaving my face.
‘Can you please tell him hello from me?’
‘I can tell him anything you like. I’ll pass him a letter if you want.’
Damn. If only I had have thought of that myself. The next time I came outside I’d remember to sneak a pen and some paper from Luke’s office.
‘Tell him…’ I tried to think of something that would convey that I still wanted out of here and was trying to hatch some kind of escape plan for us, without giving us away. ‘Tell him, “Icecream”.’ Hopefully from this he’d remember the conversation we’d had about travelling to the coast, before Terra’s Army had snatched us.
‘Okay.’ Jonny shook his head and narrowed his eyes as though trying to solve my riddle.
‘So what does he do while you’re out here? How come I never see him in the fields?’ I asked.
Jonny shrugged. ‘They’ve put him straight into training. Boss says the enemy will be here any day now. I did my target practice three years ago, so I’m just biding my time out here until the big day comes.’ He stood up, around two heads taller than me, and puffed his chest out, as though to emphasise his ‘readiness’ but then laughed and gestured to the rows and rows of vegetables with the zucchini.
‘Actually, I’d rather be out here picking vegies than shooting at things.’ Cupping one side of his mouth, he leaned in and whispered, ‘But don’t tell any of the boys I said it.’
I couldn’t help but smile.
‘Yesss!’ Jonny said, making a fist and pumping it down to his hip. ‘Knew I’d make you smile.’
I grinned and felt my cheeks burn.
‘Aw, man, and a blush too. It’s my lucky day.’
‘So who do you think is the enemy?’ I asked, trying hard not to break out into a goofy smile. Flattery was like kryptonite out here, rendering my brain a pile of mush. I needed to focus.
Jonny shrugged and bent to continue working while he talked. I kneeled in the dirt and rested my forehead against the fence.
‘It’s anybody’s guess. Pick a country, any country,’ he said, before losing his hands in green foliage.
‘Do you think it could be aliens?’
Jonny’s head snapped back, his green eyes piercing mine.
‘Are you saying you’re believer?’ he asked, plucking a weed from the soil.
I shrugged slowly. ‘I think I’m starting to.’
Jonny sighed. ‘Because I saw something once, out over there.’ He gestured with a zucchini to the endless barren land, north of the vegetable garden.
‘It was night-time, so it was pitch-black, right? And yet, there was this bright electric blue light out there, in the middle of friggin’ nowhere. How do you explain that?’
The kids ran over and tugged at my shirtsleeves.
‘Let’s play Ring-a-ring-a-Rosie, Lena!’
‘In a minute. Go sit down on the grass and I’ll join you soon.’
‘Who’s that man you’re talking to?’ Petra asked, her curious little face peering over my shoulder to stare at Jonny.
‘Oh, hello, Mr McGregor,’ said Sammy, before he hid his face behind his sister.
‘Hi,’ Jonny said, frowning, before continuing to weed.
‘I’ve been reading Peter Rabbit to them,’ I said, explaining the Mr McGregor reference.
‘Oh,’ Jonny said, nodding, though I could tell by
his eyes that he didn’t know what I was talking about. I wondered if the men here had any books to read, or if they could read at all. The older ones would know, surely, but there was a good possibility that some of the under-seventeens would have missed out on learning. I’d been lucky that Dad and Mum hadn’t been able to part with their book collection when they’d moved out here from the coast.
Satisfied that nothing interesting was happening, Petra left us to join her brother who had raced back to the blanket already and was now trying to roll himself up in it. Their giggles made me grin.
‘Another smile. Yesss!’ Jonny made another triumphant fist before his smile dropped and he peered over my shoulder at the children. ‘Okay, so that was close,’ he said, whistling through his teeth. ‘I could get punished something cruel if the boss finds out I’ve been talking to you.’
‘Why is that? And what would he do to you if he found out?’
He shook his head. ‘We’ve all been warned to stay away from you. I guess because you’re special and everything.’ His green eyes met mine. This time they were clouded with sadness. ‘Not like us boys.’
I swallowed thickly and tried to force my lips into smile, to take away the sudden gloom in Jonny’s eyes. ‘Well, I think your vegie patch skills are pretty special. And I haven’t been warned to stay away from you, so I think we’re safe.’
Jonny half-smiled but returned to his weeding with extra vigour, as though he thought our interactions were far from safe.
‘Well, thanks for the talk,’ I said, twirling the flower stem around my fingers. In truth I wanted to stay and talk about the aliens some more, but not at the risk of Jonny getting punished.
‘No. Thank you. I’ve wanted to tell someone about that blue light for ages,’ he said, depositing another weed to his rapidly growing pile. ‘Everybody around here would think I’d turned bonkers if I told them that.’
A uniformed man started down the centre of the zucchini patch, heading towards Jonny. We only had about half a minute left before I’d have to leave the fence. I bent down and quickly picked a handful of white flowers.
Carrier Page 14