Devastation Road

by Joanna Baker

  Looking back at this now, seeing myself scrabbling at locks and smashing things, I’m amazed by what was going on, not because I was behaving like a lunatic, but because of what I was thinking. All the way out there I’d been driven by fears for Tara, the danger she was in. And now I’d forgotten her completely. My thoughts were all for Chess.

  Chess, the girl who’d plagued my existence, spoiled countless peaceful holidays, ruined my chances with other kids. She made me insane with fury, we’d just had a big screaming match, and now that she was in real trouble, I couldn’t bear the thought. It wasn’t that I needed her or wanted her company, or even that I cared about her in a normal, happy families way. It was more as if I was her. I don’t mean that. We’re totally different. But somehow if Chess was breathing black smoke, it was as if I was breathing it too, and if her skin was crackling in the heat, it was my skin. I’ll never understand it. But Chess was in there and screaming and I’d been in a fire and I knew how bad it felt and I was about to go in after her because I was Matt and she was Chess and that’s just the way it was.

  Smoke had started pouring out the window. I kicked and shouldered the front door, smearing my bleeding hand on the dirty wall. Two cars pulled up outside the fence. There were footsteps, voices I only half noticed. I ran around to the side of the house and there was the kitchen door, wide open.

  Craig and Andrew came belting in after me.

  And, amazingly, Wando and his mother were running from the road.

  Tara was in the kitchen, wrists tied to a tap. We all stopped for half a second taking this in. The smoke was thin here, but it was enough to make breathing difficult.

  Tara was screaming, ‘Matty! Matty!’

  Wando burst past us and ran straight up to her. Deeper in the house we heard a muffled cry. Craig and Andrew went for the bedrooms. I hurled myself at their backs.

  ‘Leave her alone! You bastards! Leave her alone!’

  They just threw me off.

  The smoke was much thicker in the corridor. The air from the broken window made no difference. We could hear roaring. There were three doors and one of them was closed. I pushed past them and started pulling at the handle and then shoving and kicking. We were all coughing. My eyes streamed. Behind the door it had gone quiet.

  Over my shoulder I heard, ‘Get him out of the way!’

  A wiry arm grabbed me from behind and pulled me backwards. I fell onto Craig against the wall. Andrew came stumbling out of Alec’s study, carrying a steel filing cabinet. Two drawers. I don’t know how. Those things weighed a ton. Through the haze his face looked dark red. Eyes swelling, veins popping, he charged the door and swung the thing forward. The door splintered around the lock. Clouds of black smoke poured out towards us, twice as dense as before. Inside we could see a wall in flame. Andrew dropped the cabinet right at his feet and stooped, turning away, gasping and heaving for air. Before he could straighten I was over it and in there.

  It was an empty room. The shelves were completely alight. The one small window was too high to reach. And over in a corner, two metres away from the flames, was a small lump under a scrap of dirty carpet.

  I was reeling. I went forward without breathing. The room pulsed and swayed. Before I got anywhere I passed out. Craig caught me and pulled me out over the filing cabinet. I came to immediately.

  ‘Get out,’ he croaked.

  I forced one eye open and could just see Andrew lifting something out to him. Everyone was choking. I crawled out, past the empty kitchen to the outside and fell on the verandah boards, retching, barking, sucking at the air.

  Footsteps, other people’s desperate, sobbing breaths. Andrew and Craig came out and staggered down the steps.

  Strung between them was a hopelessly tiny figure, a broken stick, skeleton neck, big burn marks on the white arms, dangling insect legs. Chess.

  Chapter 29

  They carried her away from the heat of the fire, down towards the swamp. She was alive and half-conscious. Someone had rung an ambulance. Before they put her down, Wando’s mother ran to the car for a clean towel to keep her burns out of the dirt.

  Inside Chess’s T-shirt there was something hard. Without thinking, Mrs O’Rafferty gave it to me. It was the photo I’d seen in the storeroom the day before, the one of the young Chess with both parents.

  No one seemed to know what to do next. The fire had full control of the house and there was no chance of saving anything. It was early afternoon and hot. We all tried to get out of the sun. Annie Wilson had appeared and now she squatted beside Chess. Mrs O’Rafferty stood nearby, hands on her knees, looking down. Sickened and grey with soot, Craig and Andrew slumped back against logs, tipping their faces to the sky, taking long slow breaths. Wando had Tara propped up against one of the concrete pipes. She rubbed at her wrists where the ropes had been, but there were no real marks there. I sat on the grass near Chess, leaning up against the trunk of the willow and trying to think.

  Someone had tried to kill Chess and Tara. Andrew. But Andrew and Craig had got her out … Suddenly I didn’t have a clue.

  Everyone just looked at everyone else. It dawned on me that some people were there to protect others, and that some people were there to stop others from running away, but it was impossible to tell who was doing what. No one was in much state to run or struggle. Craig and Andrew looked about as wrecked as I was.

  Chess was burnt on both arms, one really badly, and there were smaller burns on her legs. The carpet might have protected her from the worst of the flames and smoke, but she’d still had a fair dose. Under the film of soot, her face was very white, and her chest was rising and falling in quick shallow breaths. A few minutes ago, Annie and Mrs O’Rafferty had looked her over and had asked her something and I’d heard her answer, but since then she hadn’t moved. I should check her. I was the one who knew her best. If anyone there was responsible for Chess, I was. But somehow the idea terrified me. I closed my eyes and wished they would all just go away.

  Then I heard a voice. Whiny, uneven and a bit scratchy, as if she had a cold, but determined. A thin little voice with a steely strength behind it that no fire was going to melt away. Relief flooded through me. Chess was talking.

  ‘Are you all here? Wando, Tara, Craig, Andrew?’

  ‘It’s all right, Chess,’ said Annie. ‘You keep quiet, love.’

  Fat chance.

  ‘It was wrong … not to speak … My fault … I’m sorry …’

  Mrs O’Rafferty pressed a hand to her mouth and left it there, shocked by something.

  ‘Never mind it Chess,’ said Annie kindly. ‘There’s plenty of time.’

  ‘No. No time …’ Miraculously Chess started to move. She put her one good hand into the grass, and pushed herself back to the tree so that she could prop up her head and shoulders. It was done before I’d even thought of helping her. I edged sideways to give her room. When Annie and Mrs O’R rushed to protect her arms with the towel, she let them do it without seeming to notice. She was looking around at everyone through swollen eyes, her lips pressed together against dizziness and nausea. I remembered how I’d felt after the fire in the café. The girl was made of iron.

  How could she fight it like that? Her left arm was red and wet looking, and the right one was a swollen nightmare of peeling skin and blisters. Hopefully she was in enough shock not to feel it.

  ‘Chess. Leave it,’ I whispered gently.

  I got close enough for her to lean on me.

  ‘Can’t leave it … the truth …’ Her voice became clear for a minute. ‘It’s the only thing that matters. It’s time it was told.’ She gave a small shuddering breath. ‘Past time.’

  My eyes went to Andrew. Immediately he made a hard noise in his throat. ‘For God’s sake, you kids. Don’t you start accusing me again. I’ve rescued two of you from fires now. I don’t know why I do it. Next one I’ll leave in there.’

  Chess whispered, ‘You really loved her didn’t you? I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry.’


  ‘Yes. I loved her.’

  ‘That must be nice. I don’t see these things. Matt sees …’

  Andrew snorted. ‘That little flea.’

  Chess didn’t seem to hear him. ‘But this isn’t about love. It’s about what people know.’ Her voice was returning and then failing again to a whisper. ‘It always has been, right from the start, from the day in the bakery, when Debbie knew three things.’ She opened her mouth and pressed her head back, half into the tree and half on my shoulder, as if stopping herself being sick. I heard her swallow. No one spoke. ‘Debbie wrote it on a piece of paper. I know you killed her. And she died for it.’

  There was another moan from Andrew, but he didn’t say anything.

  After her long speech, Chess needed some more time to breathe, but she wasn’t going to stop. I closed my eyes again. If talking distracted her from those arms, why not let her?

  ‘Even before that … Jeanette on the hill … she turned to two little children and said, “Now I see.” Knowledge again. That’s what the necklace meant. She knew things.

  ‘That was the point of my story to you Matt. It had nothing to do with Egyptian gods. I told it for the punch-line. “How did she know?”’

  I opened my eyes and looked around. No one moved. No one even seemed to be listening.

  Caught up in her story, Chess began speaking more smoothly. She sounded distant, as if she wasn’t really attached to the voice at all. ‘We’re distracted by the romantic things — the colourful exciting things — fires, money, a golden stone that catches the sun, an eye that sees everything. And then we can’t see what’s in front of us.’

  ‘But I do see,’ I said. ‘Andrew …’

  ‘Listen, Tingle,’ said Andrew, but his anger had no strength behind it.

  Nobody had the energy to interrupt again. We just let her go on. ‘Here’s a romantic story. Andrew loves Debbie.’ I watched Andrew now. He stopped pretending he didn’t care what Chess said. He slid his eyes across to her and kept them there, glowering at her under heavy brows.

  ‘He rings her from the car and asks her to marry him. No one else is to know. You didn’t tell anyone about the engagement?’

  With the last sentence she dropped the dreamy tone. It was a sudden attack, and I could hear Andrew’s surprise.

  ‘No.’

  Chess said, ‘Deb kept the secret. She took the phone off the hook and closed the shop as soon as she could. She didn’t tell us. That’s right, isn’t it Matt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And no one came in except Wando.’

  Wando stiffened at the mention of his name. Slowly his hand moved to Tara’s arm. He gripped it tight. They were all watching her now — Annie and Craig, Andrew, Wando and his mother, and Tara — all waiting for the point of this.

  ‘She liked having the secret, Andrew. Something no one else knew. It was meant to be romantic, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Now Andrew was whispering.

  I wished this wasn’t happening. Chess’s face had started to sweat. She went quiet and I thought she’d passed out completely.

  Poor Chess, raving on about romance. It was shock. The fire had affected her brain. Tara and Wando had been listening, but Andrew looked so sad he didn’t care what anyone said, which is probably just as well, because, without opening her eyes, Chess started speaking again.

  ‘It was romantic. Romantic, but strange. You thought so, didn’t you Tara?’

  Tara’s eyes were fixed on Chess’s ruined arms. For the first time I’d ever known, her face was showing true horror. There was a long pause before she answered.

  Finally, hoarsely, she spoke. ‘Very strange.’

  Suddenly none of it made sense. This couldn’t be happening. All these people, just wrecked, lying around in a scrappy yard, trying to keep out of the sun, while behind us, Chess’s house burned itself to ruins. Only a few minutes had passed, but it seemed like a long time. Where were the fire people? Where was the help?

  And what was Chess getting at? Was she trying to say she didn’t believe Andrew at all? Is this how she hoped to trap him? Had the whole engagement been a complete lie? I wished she’d just come out and accuse him. I tried to meet Tara’s eyes, to tell her not to worry. Wando still had her by the arm. But Tara was watching Chess.

  Finally Chess was feeling the burns. She was still sweating but now she was shivering at the same time.

  ‘Where is that ambulance?’ said Mrs O’Rafferty. Annie tucked the rug carefully over Chess’s stomach, leaving her legs sticking out. Chess lifted her arms to help and gasped unintentionally. I think we were all hoping she’d go unconscious again.

  Instead she started going back over it all.

  ‘You rang and asked her to marry you?’

  Andrew was giving her a sick look, as if he couldn’t believe she was still talking and he was worried answering her would make her worse.

  She opened her eyes again and peered at him with black pupils.

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered.

  ‘You had a ring but she never got it. And you didn’t tell anyone at all about the engagement until after she was found dead.’

  Suddenly Tara snapped with impatience. ‘You’ve already asked him that.’

  I felt Chess’s head turn a fraction, towards Tara. ‘Debbie had been proposed to and she never saw Andrew again. You thought it was tragic, Tara.’

  Tara’s lip curled. ‘Everyone thought so.’

  ‘Especially the fact she had no ring.’

  With a little jerking movement, Tara tried to shake off Wando’s protective hands. He didn’t seem to notice. He was watching Chess and panting as if he knew what was coming, as if he was terrified, but couldn’t prevent it happening.

  Tara gave another little wriggle, then she shrugged. ‘Debbie loved rings.’

  ‘It was sad,’ said Chess.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In fact, that was the first thing you said when we found her. That she was engaged but had no ring.’

  ‘Yes, it was the first thing I thought of.’

  Chess let her head fall to the side a bit, still leaning half on me. I felt her relax. She did one slow breath. For some reason I felt she was smiling, a straight grim smile, pushed back against the faintness and pain, but satisfied. Something was over.

  She said, ‘Well that’s my question, Tara.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  Chapter 30

  There was a long, long silence, while everyone tried to get the meaning of what Chess had just said.

  At first Tara’s expression showed impatience and vague scorn, but, as the silence lengthened, I saw it harden. And then I recognised what it was I could see in that small soft face. Fear covered over, deep, cold strength.

  Tara was pulling against Wando’s arm.

  It was Wando who spoke. ‘It’s over, Tara. Chess knows. She beat you. She’s still alive. And I’m not going to let you do it any more.’

  There was another awful silence, which must have been short, but seemed to go forever. From the road, I could hear a siren, a heavy vehicle approaching. It was too late. The fire had burnt low. Chess’s house was gone.

  Tara had pushed her panic and fury down. She fixed Wando with that hard cold gaze of hers, and he looked back. But this time he was different. Wando was going to fight her. She had lost her control over him. She saw it too. And now you could see the fear rise up.

  How did she know? The punch-line to Chess’s story. But what did it mean? Tara killed Debbie? It was Tara? What did Wando say? She beat you. She’s still alive. I couldn’t think.

  Suddenly, Tara leapt up and ran. I was up too. Annie leapt in to catch Chess. And I went after Tara.

  I didn’t have to run far. She was stuck at the second gate. I came up behind her, close enough to grab her if I had to.

  ‘You?’ I said.

  Frantically she shook at the sticking latch.

  ‘It was you? … You lit the fire here? And Chess? … You lo
cked her in … You tied yourself to that tap?’ It came to me clearly, in a blinding rush. I grabbed Tara’s shoulder, yanking her, screaming at her back. ‘Look what you did to her! Look at her!’

  I heard the latch click. She pushed open the gate and struggled out of my grasp. But before she went through she turned and looked right at me. Now she wasn’t hiding anything. She didn’t have a thought for Chess. She was thinking about herself, and what she was showing me was hatred, the selfish hatred of someone who has been threatened, someone who would do anything to protect themselves. Someone strong.

  In the hard sunlight her eyes were pale pale blue. Some pieces of curling hair had slipped around her face, and they hung there, delicately brushing her cheeks. Light. Soft. Angel hair.

  ‘She’ll never prove it,’ she said. ‘She’ll never prove any of it.’

  Then she turned and walked away.

  Chapter 31

  After that there was a lot of confusion — fire trucks and ambulances and people pushing and pulling at us, and everyone talking at once, telling me what to do, and over it all the stinging, cutting smell of a fire being drowned with water.

  I lost sight of Chess. And Tara had disappeared.

  Tara. It didn’t make sense. Tara couldn’t be the one. I’d told everyone she was afraid. You don’t understand her, I’d said. But I had seen it now. A different Tara. The one other people had told me about.

  I had been so wrong.

  But I still didn’t get it. Tara had said Chess would never prove it. That sounded like an admission she had burnt Chess’s house down, tried to kill Chess. And Chess had seemed to think she knew something about Debbie’s murder. Tara? But there was no way Tara could have killed Jeanette. So … What?

  I needed Chess. It was time now. Chess’d tell me everything. If only she could be all right. If only I could get to her.