by Mark Smith
‘By the time I’d finally made my way back to where I’d left Kas it was getting light. But…’ Rose falters. ‘She wasn’t there. She wasn’t there. I didn’t know what to do. But I couldn’t hang around. There was noise coming from down at the general store. I heard shouting. I had to get out of there—fast.
‘I was ready to move when something caught my eye at the far end of the street. Someone was moving along at the back of the buildings, staying out of sight but sticking their head out every now and then to check for danger. Someone with long black hair. It was Kas. After a couple of minutes, I saw a horse and rider breaking out across the open paddock. I would have known it was Kas even if I was a mile away, the way her body moved with the horse.
‘I’d just started to creep further up the hill when I saw half-a-dozen or so men walking in the open, coming from the north. Ramage’s men. They walked straight up to the general store and banged on the door. The woman came out holding a rifle and the men backed off. There was a minute’s stand off, and then we all heard the sound of the trailbike. It was coming from the north too, moving real slow and there was a big cloud of dust trailing behind it. It turned up the lane next to the general store…’
Rose looks away. She hides her face behind her hair again and a fat tear drops onto the table. She takes a deep breath and pulls her hair back from her face.
‘It was…Ramage. He was dragging something behind the trailbike, something heavy, attached by a rope. He rode round and round the yard pulling the bundle through the dirt. Then he cut the engine and the dust settled. I heard the woman scream. I wish I had been further away. I wish I didn’t know what it was. I wish I’d never seen it. But I did see it. Saw him. It was Ken Butler. Most of his clothes had been torn off and his body was raw with blood. But I knew it was him; I could still make out his big white beard. It was…awful.’
I don’t know what to say. It’s like it’s too big to understand. Just yesterday all I had to think about was keeping me and Rowdy fed. But now Rose is here and she’s brought trouble.
‘They all went inside the store. I so wanted to go down there and do something for Ken. Even just cut the rope, but I knew it was useless. I hoped he was dead. That he wasn’t suffering anymore. And I kept thinking over and over, If he hadn’t helped us, he would’ve still been alive.’
I’m doing my own thinking. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken her in; maybe she isn’t worth the risk. I’m sure she senses it.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I’ll go.’
She’s on her feet, breathing heavily and looking around the kitchen.
‘If you could just spare me some food… I’ll leave your mum’s dress, but there are some old shorts and a jumper in there I could wear.’
She kind of half-smiles, half-grimaces at me. She leans on the table and I can see her arms shaking when she puts her weight on them.
Again, I’m feeling like I have to make a decision too quickly. The thought of being on my own again suddenly seems unbearable, and the words tumble out without me even thinking about them.
‘Stay. Please. We’ll work something out. We’ll find Kas together. All of us. You, me and Rowdy.’
I’ve got no idea how we’ll do this, or if it’s even possible, but I can see the relief in her face. All the weight seems to lift from her shoulders. She sits back down and rests her chin in her hands.
‘I’m so tired,’ she says.
‘There was no sign of a horse when I saw the Wilders this morning,’ I say. ‘And no sign of a girl. I don’t think Kas is with them, but I can go back and check. It’s probably a good idea to keep an eye on them, anyway.’
‘I’m coming too.’
I know straightaway not to argue with her.
‘Wait here.’ She disappears into the bedroom. When she comes back she’s got different clothes on: a pair of Mum’s shorts and a grey woollen jumper that comes halfway down over them. I know it’s the right thing to do—to have her wear them—but it still feels strange.
‘Too hard to run in a dress,’ she says, tugging on the jumper.
‘Okay, let’s go,’ I say. ‘Stay close, and if we get separated listen for my whistle.’
I follow the tracks I took this morning, the long way up to the ridge, just in case. Rose follows quietly, but she’s not moving as fast as she did yesterday.
Up the top we turn around and look out over the town. I should be checking for danger, but my eyes are drawn to the perfect sets lining up in the river mouth. I haven’t even registered that it’s offshore. It seems like weeks ago that I was out there surfing those waves. Rose has changed everything.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw you surfing yesterday,’ she says.
‘It keeps me sane.’ I don’t say what else I’m thinking: that it’s about the only thing I do that isn’t about staying alive.
‘Isn’t it dangerous?’
‘Nah,’ I say. ‘There’s no danger out there. It’s the safest place on earth.’
We turn our backs on the town and follow the ridge up towards the fences. It’s about a twenty-minute walk, and we don’t speak the whole time. I know Rose’s thinking about her sister and what we might find up in the hayshed.
We stay low until we reach the fence. We still can’t see anything more than the roof of the shed, so I signal for us to drop back into the bush and climb a tree for a better view. I find the same stringybark from this morning and tap Rowdy gently on the nose. He knows what this means: stay down, keep quiet. Then Rose and I climb the tree.
As we get into the higher branches, I lean down to help Rose up. She just looks at me and swings herself onto the branch next to me, even though her injured hand must be hurting.
We peer out through the leaves. The fire is still smoking, but there’s only one man sitting by it now. There may be others hidden in the shed. The trailbike is in the same place. Rose puts her finger to her lips and points to our right. Two men are walking along just inside the fence. Rowdy’s ears are pricked: he’s smelt them, but he hasn’t seen them yet. As the men get closer we can hear them talking.
‘I’m sick of takin’ orders,’ one says.
He’s a big man, probably a bit over six foot, with a rough beard and hair balding on top. The other one is smaller and he’s limping.
Rose taps me on the arm. ‘Rat,’ she mouths.
‘I’m sick of this wild goose chase. Bein’ out here in the cold, night after night. Both the girls are gone. And that scrawny boy’s with Warda so they could be anywhere by now.’
‘I reckon we should cut our losses and head back to Longley. I’m goin’ to have it out with him.’
They veer off towards the hayshed. After a few minutes, we hear shouting and then the sound of something heavy hitting the corrugated iron wall. The big guy we’d just heard talking staggers out into the open and falls on his back. An even bigger man—it must be Ramage—launches at him with a spear in his hand. He lifts it again and again, bringing it down hard into the chest of the man on the ground. The guy’s not fighting back anymore. His arms are by his side while his body jerks up and down with every blow. Rose puts her hand on my arm and turns away.
Ramage stands over the body. Then he drops to his knees and takes off the man’s boots before walking back into the shed.
I motion to Rose for us to retreat. We climb down and drop back into the low scrub, Rowdy at our heels. We break into a run when I find the track and before we know it we’re back on the ridge, overlooking town.
Finally, we sit down to rest. My heart is pounding. Rose is squeezing her hands between her knees to stop them shaking. Blood is starting to seep through her bandage.
‘Do you think he’s…?’ she whispers.
I want to say no, but we both saw it. ‘Dead? Yeah, I think so. Did you recognise him?’
‘It was Perkins. He wasn’t all bad. He used to sneak food to us at the feedstore. And he never…’
She stares out to the horizon.
‘You see what Ramage is like, don’t you?’ she says, savagely. ‘You see why we had to escape?’
‘Yeah. But you heard what they said about Kas? They haven’t got her. She’s safe.’
‘No, not safe. She’s out there somewhere on her own.’
‘But they haven’t got her. She’s outrun them. We know that much, at least. And she’s still on horseback.’
Rose is nodding now. I stand up.
‘Let’s get home,’ I say.
I hold out my hand to help her up. It’s another one of those small decisions. She looks at the ground, but this time she does take my hand. She swings to her feet and she’s so close I can smell the soap she used to wash her hair this morning.
‘Come on, I’m starving,’ she says.
Letting go of my hand, she takes off down the track towards the golf course.
Back at home we need to do something to take our minds off everything that’s happened, at least for a couple of hours. The sun is starting to drop and there’s a chill in the air. I start to get dinner ready.
‘You ever made rabbit stew?’ I ask Rose.
‘Rabbshew,’ she mimics me, smiling, and I notice for the first time the dimple she has on her right cheek. ‘Didn’t pick you for a cook, Finn.’
‘How do you reckon I’ve stayed alive this long? Eating grass?’
‘You’re still scrawny.’
‘You could do with some fattening up yourself.’
We both go to work on the rabbit stew. I walk through to my veggie patch and pull up an onion and a bulb of garlic. They’re only small, but Rose gasps when she sees them.
‘You’re full of surprises, scrawny boy,’ she says.
I should be annoyed, but it seems that suddenly all I want is to hear her talking. Saying anything. Saying my name. I like the way she has to show her teeth to make the F sound, the way they sit on her bottom lip.
We stand next to each other and she cuts the onion while I pull the rabbit apart. It’s quiet apart from the knife on the bench and the tearing sound of the flesh coming away from the bone. I can feel her there without us even touching.
I start to rub salt into the pieces of rabbit.
‘Can I?’ she asks.
‘What?’
She licks the end of her finger, dips it into the salt and puts it into her mouth. She closes her eyes.
‘Salt always reminds me of Stan,’ she says. ‘He put it on everything. In summer, he’d come in from the paddocks before dinner and open a beer. Just one. He only ever had one stubby. He always had radishes in the fridge. Loved the things. He’d sprinkle salt over them and crunch into them like he was eating apples. “Have one, Rose,” he’d say, but they just tasted like salty dirt to me.’
She gazes out through the kitchen window, like Stan might be out there somewhere.
‘Stan called you Rose? Not Warda?’
‘Rose. Always Rose. What about Finn? Where does that come from?’
I don’t want to say, but I’m starting to feel so relaxed with her I can’t help myself—anything to keep the conversation going.
‘Finbar,’ I say. ‘It was my grandpa’s name. He was Irish.’
‘I bet you copped shit at school for that.’
‘Yeah. To start with. But everyone got used to it. You know what guys are like with nicknames. Sharkey. That’s what they all called me.’
‘I like Finn better,’ she says.
We fry the onion and garlic in a pan and the kitchen fills with the smell of it, a smell that’s linked to memories. Mum and Dad were both good cooks, but Dad’s curries were a specialty. The kitchen would be filled with the smell of garlic and onion and then he would put in the curry paste and chillies, and they were so strong that the smell alone could make you cough and sneeze.
When the onion and garlic are nice and brown, I spoon them into a pot with the rabbit pieces, add water, more salt and a precious piece of parsley I picked yesterday. I set the heat to low and we sit back down at the table.
The light is starting to die outside and I realise the day is almost gone. As much as we tried to fill them, the days would sometimes drag when it was just Rowdy and me. Now, with Rose here, time seems to be moving so much faster.
The stew starts to bubble in the pot. I know the cooking has just been a distraction. We’ll have to figure out how we can find Kas and bring her here.
‘Tell me what happened after Swan’s Marsh. If we’re going to sort out a plan for finding Kas, I need more to go on.’
As soon as I say this, all her calm seems to dissolve and she looks agitated, her knees jigging under the table again.
‘By the time I got clear of the town buildings, Kas and the horse were gone,’ she says. ‘I knew Ramage and his men would figure out what had happened soon enough and they’d follow me. I didn’t care—if they were looking for me that meant they weren’t looking for Kas. But there was no sign of her. The next morning it pissed with rain. I kept listening for the sound of the trailbike. The road wound up through the forest to the top of the ridge. There’s an old camp ground up there.’
I know this spot well. It’s called Pinchgut Junction. Two forest tracks go off in either direction along the line of the ridge, while the main road goes straight up and over the top before it drops towards the coast.
‘The road passes through a big cutting,’ Rose continues. ‘It was the perfect spot to ambush anyone on the road. I wasn’t going to walk through it so I climbed to the top of the cutting. When I looked over the edge, sure enough, men were there. Then everything went quiet—and I couldn’t believe what I saw. Kas was riding her horse right into the cutting. And she had someone on the back with her. I don’t know who it was—boy or girl—but they looked about the same size as Kas. I didn’t even think. I stood up and yelled at Kas that it was a trap. Just as I did, Ramage’s men came out into the open. I threw some rocks at them, then I ran along the top so they’d follow me. I wanted to draw them away from Kas. My plan worked, kind of. They did come—but now I had to outrun them.’
The kitchen window is fogged up with the steam from the pot. I pull the blinds down, light the candle and set it on the table between us. Rose leans forward in her chair and rubs her eyes.
‘Kas could be anywhere by now, Finn. And it’s all my fault. I acted like an idiot at Swan’s Marsh, took a stupid, dumb risk. We should’ve stuck together.’
‘Well, you can’t do anything about that now,’ I say. ‘At least we know she’s not alone; there was someone else on the horse.’
‘But just some other kid.’
‘Okay, but she’s got a better chance than if she was on her own.’
‘Maybe.’
‘And she knows the plan was to head south if you got split up, so she could still be trying to get through. She knows not to try to go through Pinchgut Junction again.’
Rose must know this is making sense, but it doesn’t stop her fretting. She’s picking at the bandage on her hand again.
‘We can’t do anything tonight, anyway,’ I say. ‘We both need to sleep. If we’re going to try to find her, we’ll need all the energy we can get.’
Rose doesn’t argue, and the smell of the stew has filled the kitchen. She’s tired; her eyes are starting to droop and she cups her hands under her chin.
I turn to the sink, pour us glasses of water and put them on the table. They’re a bit murky, which means the header tank must be getting low. I remind myself to pump some more water up to it tomorrow.
‘How old are you?’ she asks, suddenly, like it’s the most important question ever.
‘Almost sixteen by now,’ I say, easing myself into the chair. ‘What about you?’
‘Nineteen, I suppose.’
‘I’d just started at a new school, Wentworth High, when it all started.’
Rose gasps. ‘You were a Wentworth wanker?’
I laugh. ‘Yeah, a Wentworth wanker. But where’d you hear that? You said you weren’t allowed to go to school.’
> ‘From one of the girls at the feedstore. Her name was Caroline. She went to some exclusive girls’ school before…’
‘Probably Scarborough,’ I say. ‘Scarborough skanks, we called them.’
It makes me stop for a bit—thinking about school, how organised and regular it all was. Bells and timetables, start and finish times. The way every day was so neatly divided up.
‘My whole life was sport and surfing and school. Mucking around. Me and my mates would surf every day, stay out till it was too dark to see the sets, then paddle in and head home for dinner. The weekends were footy and hanging around the netball courts to watch the girls. Pretty normal stuff.’
‘Perving!’ she says.
‘Kinda,’ I say, a bit embarrassed. ‘I took it all for granted, but who doesn’t when that’s all you know? Who expects a disease to rip through and kill everyone? Then the survivors all clear out and leave you behind.’
Rowdy gets to his feet and nuzzles up against my leg. I scratch him in his favourite spot under his chin, and he lets out a dog moan. Then he sniffs at Rose’s feet and nudges her with his nose.
‘Where’s the spot you scratch him?’ she asks.
I move around the table to show her. Next thing Rowdy has his nose in her lap and looks as contented as can be.
‘We had four working dogs on the farm,’ Rose says. ‘Leela, Hamish, Coco and Archie. All kelpies. They were never allowed in the house. But I used to make cosy spots for them in the hayshed so they could keep warm in winter.’
‘I don’t know where I would’ve been without Rowdy. He’s the best mate I’ve ever had.’
Rose looks around the kitchen—as though she’s seeing it for the first time—before her eyes come to rest on me again.
‘Still, it must have been tough,’ she says, finally. ‘So long on your own.’