Flight of the Fantail

by Steph Matuku

  ‘I’ll see her every time I close my damn eyes,’ Eva said, her jaw tight. She winced as she touched the sanitary pad Devin had tied to the wound on her shoulder. It hurt like hell, and there was a feeling of bitter injustice rising inside her.

  ‘What happened? Where were you?’

  Devin didn’t answer.

  ‘I asked you a question!’ Eva snapped. ‘When that freaking munter was in my face waving knives around, where were you?’

  ‘I …’

  Devin’s cheeks were flushed red, and her teeth were nipping at her bottom lip, which was tender and swollen. Her gaze flicked to Rocky walking towards them, and then to the ground.

  Eva’s mouth dropped, and she shook her head. ‘No way.’

  ‘It wasn’t anything–’

  ‘No bloody way.’ Eva threw off the sleeping bag and stood up. She was so angry she thought she might throw up. ‘While I was being practically murdered, you two were getting it on?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Rocky, coming to a halt just below them on the rocks.

  ‘Then how was it?’ Eva cried. ‘And don’t you have a girlfriend anyway?’

  Devin drew in a sharp breath, her head swivelling to Rocky.

  Rocky was quick to reassure her. ‘Not any more.’

  But Eva was still talking, loud and shrill. ‘So that’s how she got out of the cave without you seeing her. Like you even cared. I was calling to you.’ She turned on Devin, who shrank back. ‘You, Devin, while that cow was–’

  ‘Give it a rest,’ Rocky said.

  ‘I had a bloody knife stuck in me!’

  ‘Awhina’s the one who’s dead, she’s the one lying there.’

  ‘I thought she’d killed you!’ There were tears in Eva’s eyes now. ‘I thought she’d killed you both and was coming for me. I thought … I thought …’

  ‘Please, Eva,’ said Devin. She reached out, but Eva slapped her away.

  ‘Get away from me!’ she cried. ‘I don’t need you. I’ve had enough of both of you. Screw you all.’

  She turned and ran through the trees towards their camp.

  Rocky let out a low whistle. ‘You okay?’

  Devin buried her face in her hands, shaking her head. Eva could have been killed, and for what? A kiss? A kiss that was probably imaginary anyway. The first proper friend she’d ever had, and she’d screwed it up. She’d hoped everything was turning around, finally being able to make decisions, have people respect her, have a friend. But as it turned out, she was still the same dumb Devin she’d always been.

  Hot tears spilled through her fingers. Stupid, stupid …

  ‘I didn’t see her go either,’ Rocky said. ‘Mind you, I was kind of, you know. Busy.’

  For once, she didn’t feel that familiar burning sensation in her cheeks. She peeked through her laced fingers, catching the gleam of white teeth as he smiled.

  ‘Busy,’ she repeated, and felt a weight drop away from her. It wasn’t a hallucination. It had been real. She sniffed, wiped the tears away, dried her hands on her T-shirt.

  ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ Rocky said. ‘It was my fault too, okay?’

  She still wasn’t sure about that, but she nodded anyway. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Come on. We’d better cover her up,’ Rocky said.

  ‘Yes, of course. Poor Awhina.’

  They picked up rocks washed smooth and round by the river, and covered Awhina. It took a long time. They didn’t say much, but every now and then their eyes would meet, and once or twice their fingers touched as they clicked the rocks quietly into place. When they were finished, Devin picked some white flowers growing nearby and laid them on top.

  At the water’s edge, Rocky washed his hands again and flicked water over his head and body, ‘to chase away the tapu’. She copied him, the sparkling droplets falling around her like stars.

  ‘Devin,’ he said, and she thrilled a little at the sound of her name in his mouth. ‘I don’t know what that was with us before, but …’

  A rash of goosebumps came up on her arms and a chill ran down her back. This was it, this was when he was going to tell her it was all a mistake, that she wasn’t good enough, that he’d gone loopy like everyone else, and that he could never ever, ever, not with her …

  ‘I like you. A lot.’

  Devin sighed, the cold receding. She felt lightheaded. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She dropped her gaze, her lips curving in a shy smile. A rock at her feet was smeared with blood. Eva’s or Awhina’s? The cold reasserted itself, and she shivered.

  ‘We have to apologise to Eva. It wasn’t fair. We weren’t careful enough. And we shouldn’t go off alone any more. We should all stick together from now on.’

  ‘Yeah, I s’pose,’ Rocky said. ‘But she’ll be okay. We’ll all be okay once we get out of here. Not long now.’

  They clambered up the bank and headed through the trees, an easy silence between them. When they got back to Camp Sinkhole, Eva had gone.

  68

  They backed the wagon right into the medical tent so that no one could see them loading up the bodies. From the way everyone in the Restricted Area carefully avoided looking at them, Peter suspected they knew only too well what was happening. And once they were out of the gate, well, no one in the main camp gave them a second look. Horses and loads were coming and going all the time.

  But of course, he was the only one who had to ride in the back with them, Peter thought bitterly, his bum whacking painfully on the metal bucket that passed for a seat. Jesse and Moses had both insisted there was no room up front, smirking as they said it.

  Peter peered out through the canvas flaps. They were on a bumpy, overgrown track that looked older than he was. There wasn’t much else to see. Lots of leaves. A glimpse of the river every now and then. And it was hot. Even with his nose buried in the crook of his elbow and breathing through his mouth, Peter could smell the white-sheeted bodies. They were stacked next to a pile of luggage and haphazardly tied down with straps.

  There was a particularly large bump and his teeth clacked together painfully. One of the bodies jerked loose and slid across the wagon floor, coming to a stop with its head pressed up against his foot.

  Peter tried to gently nudge it away. It didn’t move. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the pressure of the skull thumping insistently against his boot.

  Finally the horses came to a stop, and the back wall of the wagon creaked as it was lowered. Moses poked his head through the canvas flaps. He glanced at the body on the floor and smiled. ‘Making friends?’

  Jesse appeared and beckoned to Peter. ‘Start with that one. Come on.’

  Peter bent and got a grip on the feet, the lightest end. Moses grabbed the torso and they unloaded the body off the wagon and dumped it on the ground.

  The wagon was standing at the lip of a deep gorge. Peter could hear water crashing and rumbling below. Peering over the edge, he saw a round green pool, frothy with white spray, and a broken bus with what looked like a body sprawled on top.

  ‘How are we supposed to carry them down there?’ Peter said.

  Moses looked at him as though he was stupid.

  ‘And what about satellites?’ Peter continued. ‘Google Earth? They’ll see where the bus went down. It left a massive slip in the side of the cliff! They’ll know this is all bullshit.’

  Jesse didn’t bother to answer. He had his hands up like a camera viewfinder, measuring up the distant pool as though he was about to set up a shoot for a fashion magazine.

  ‘Don’t work like that,’ Moses said. ‘All those pictures you see on the maps are old, months old, even. Half of them come from drones and airplanes cos satellites are unreliable. Atmospheric conditions, clouds, curvature of the earth, astronaut shit, blah blah. And we all know drones and airplanes don’t fly over here. Too much interference.’ He bent his fat fingers in an air quote as he said ‘interference’ and
lifted up on the balls of his feet as if he was about to take flight. ‘There’s a hundred places where the bus could have gone off. Besides, they’re blowing up the cliff. That road will be history.’ He patted Peter gently on the shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it, anyway. Not your problem.’

  Jesse made an impatient gesture to keep unloading.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Peter loudly. ‘Aren’t you going to help?’

  Jesse reached down to the holster on his leg and took out a pocket knife. He flicked it open and looked at Peter thoughtfully.

  ‘Hey, whoa man,’ said Peter, his hands up in mock surrender. ‘Do you want help or not?’

  Jesse dropped to his knees, slid the knife under the sheet and tape, and ripped it apart with one quick movement. Peter turned away quickly, but not before the sheet fell away, revealing a mottled purple and brown arm and long dark hair matted with dirt.

  Peter swallowed hard and looked up at the afternoon sky, wondering if there was a satellite circling high above, watching him wish that he was anywhere else.

  Jesse and Moses lifted an end each and swung.

  ‘On three,’ Moses said, and then there was a sickening wait before the faint splash far below.

  ‘Unloading ain’t so bad,’ Moses said. ‘Just pretend they’re rolls of carpet or something.’

  Without another word, Peter crawled into the back of the wagon. It was starting to smell really bad. He tasted sweat on his upper lip as he unclipped the ties that held the straps in place, reached for another roll of carpet, and heaved.

  Once the wagon was empty, they made their way down to the pool, sliding down through the undergrowth. Jesse got him dragging bodies out of the water and arranging them to look as natural as possible. Peter placed two girls together, ‘because they look like they’re friends’ and draped another over the rocks, long blonde hair just touching the water. They moved the body off the roof of the bus, thinking it looked too weird, and put him inside, next to a kid in a denim jacket whose leg was trapped under the seats. They left some of the corpses swirling around in the pool, food for eels and fish.

  Jesse said the fading light was good for the photos, disguising any blunders they may have made. In the morning, another team would collect the bodies and take them back to camp. This time everyone in camp would be told the kids had been found. They’d be transported out of the Zone and then flown back to civilisation. Cue mourning and gratitude.

  Peter just did what Jesse told him, recognising that the faster they did it, the faster they’d be out of there. He didn’t look at the faces. He could almost cope if he didn’t look directly at them. Almost. He wondered if he was going to see them again in his nightmares. He supposed he probably would.

  The buzzing of cicadas had given way to the chirruping of crickets and the calls of night birds by the time they got back to the wagon. Peter stripped off the latex gloves he’d been given and dropped them in a bin liner, along with bits of shredded tape and other rubbish. His muscles were twitching with exertion.

  He was just about to get in the back of the wagon when he was struck by a thought. He was going to be alone in there in the dark. The bodies might not be there, but what if their ghosts were? Grey ghosts, coiling around him like smoke.

  ‘Can I please ride with …’ He stopped. Jesse was pointing a small black gun at his face.

  ‘Sorry, kid,’ Jesse said, but he didn’t look particularly sorry. His eyes were glazed and he was rubbing at his temple.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ Peter’s eyes swivelled from the gun to Jesse and back to the gun again. ‘You can’t shoot me. Griff McKenzie’s my uncle, I swear to God. He’ll go mental if anything happens to me, he will!’

  ‘Come away from the wagon,’ Jesse said, motioning with the gun. ‘I don’t want to spook the horses.’

  ‘Did you hear what I said? I’m a Seddon. You can’t do this.’

  Moses peered round from the front of the wagon. ‘What’s the hold up?’

  ‘Just doing what I’m told,’ Jesse said. ‘Keep out of it.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘You heard me,’ Jesse said. His tone was menacing and Moses fell silent.

  Jesse took Peter’s arm in a tight grip and hauled him away, behind some bushes.

  ‘No, wait!’ Peter was panicking now. ‘I’m getting money! I’ll share it with you. We’ll go thirds. A million each.’

  Jesse chuckled. ‘You ain’t got shit. But nice try.’

  He shoved Peter hard, and he fell backwards into a little hollow overgrown with soft ferns.

  Like a bed, Peter thought irrelevantly.

  ‘No hard feelings,’ Jesse said. ‘Just doing what they want … just ...’ His voice faded and he rubbed his temple again, grimacing, ‘… cleaning up the loose ends.’

  ‘Loose ends!’ Peter croaked. His mouth tasted weird, like putrid flesh. ‘I’m a person. I’m a good person. I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  He was crying now as Jesse bent down, yanked his helmet off and pressed the gun against the side of Peter’s head. The barrel was cold. His pulse throbbed painfully against the metal.

  ‘You saw Destiny,’ Jesse said quietly, and he sounded almost regretful. ‘You weren’t supposed to. Wrong place, wrong time.’

  ‘Screw you!’ Peter screamed. His cry was swallowed up by the trees.

  An eerie silence fell, as if the entire forest was holding its breath.

  ‘Screw you! You kill me and it won’t even matter. Cos I’m not the only one in the wrong place, you hear? One of those kids knows too.’

  The cold circle eased away from his head.

  ‘What?’

  Peter didn’t reply. Jesse slapped his face.

  ‘One of those kids!’ Peter said, and he began blubbing. ‘I found him on patrol. He knows. He told me about the spaceship, that’s why I went to see it.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know, I swear.’

  ‘And does this kid have a name?’ asked Jesse, almost tenderly.

  ‘Jahmin. Jahmin Worthington.’ And then, in a whisper, ‘Don’t hurt him. Don’t–’

  A crack echoed through the trees. The ground trembled as if in response. Footsteps crunched over the leaves and then came Jesse’s low voice, threatening, and Moses’s subdued reply.

  The wagon jerked and slowly rolled away.

  Peter lay in the ferns, glassy eyes fixed on the night sky.

  And above, a silver speck, a satellite, whizzed uselessly by.

  69

  The next morning, every person who could be spared was lined up, silent and watchful, black shadows in the sunshine. The woman with the mahogany hair stood towards the back, a purple bruise blossoming under a swollen eye. The horses were ready and eager to be away from the area, stamping and tugging, their mounts struggling to keep them steady. The only person who wasn’t there was Peter, but nobody appeared to notice.

  ‘This is great news. We’ve had a positive sighting of one of the students. He’s confused. He’s disoriented. He is almost certainly delusional. He needs medical attention asap. So, remember, any sightings, anything, and you report straight back to me. This is a game changer, people. This is what we’ve been waiting for!’

  There was a smattering of applause, and Griff stepped back with a wave. He kept a pleasant smile on his face as the troops moved out. Only when he, Jesse and Moses stood alone did he drop the geniality.

  ‘Goddammit.’

  ‘They’ll find him,’ Moses soothed. ‘We know where to look. He won’t get away.’

  ‘He better not,’ said Griff. ‘Worthington’s kid too! And where the hell’s Peter got to?’

  ‘He’s fine,’ Jesse said. ‘He’s helping us.’

  Moses said nothing.

  ‘If we can get through this, it’ll be a bloody miracle.’ Griff flashed his pass to the lone guard on the gate to the Restricted Area. He glared at the guard to remind him of his partner’s recent punishment for letting an unauthorised person through the gate, an
d the guard hurriedly made a great show of passing the scanner over the barcode and then over Griff’s unblinking glower.

  ‘We have to collapse the cliff before anything else can stuff up,’ said Griff as soon as they were out of the guard’s earshot. ‘Two of the crew are already scrambled. We’ve had to send them back for psychiatric assessment. Best we get Destiny buried before the kid’s found.’

  ‘Or kids,’ said Moses. He sounded sulky. ‘Who knows how many of them are still out there?’

  Griff growled deep in his throat and stormed off. Jesse gave Moses a dirty look and went after him, leaving Moses to trail behind.

  The teams of searchers split up as they approached the border of Zone 12, following horses that were too fresh to keep reined in.

  The cooks were the most unfit of the lot, and the group they were in was travelling at a pace that was more like a Sunday stroll. The rest of the team didn’t complain. There was a rumour going around that the cooks had stuffed their packs with doughnuts pilfered from the mess.

  Once over a peculiar sort of ditch that stretched away into the bush, the group took a break under a large tree with spreading branches. They chatted quietly as they ate, wondering what kind of condition the boy, Jahmin Worthington, would be in when they found him, if they found him. And then, reluctantly, for the day was fine and everyone by now was stuffed full of refined sugar and gluten-laden flour, their group leader indicated it was time to continue the search.

  They moved out slowly, eyes flicking back and forth for any sign of the boy.

  It was a pity none of them looked back. They would have seen a skinny kid with a mop of frizzy ginger hair slither down the tree and take off as fast as he could.

  70

  It was impossible to move through the bush quietly. Too many branches to brush against, too much leaf litter to crunch underfoot, too many birds ready to shriek an alarm.

  All of this worked in Jahmin’s favour. He could hear the troops long before they could hear him. It looked as though Seddon knew his general whereabouts but not his specific location. And they were being thorough. Jahmin watched them turn over logs, inspect muddy earth, poke at clumps of bracken. And there were so many of them! If he managed to get to the others before they did, it would be a miracle.