by Clare Moleta
Li lowered the pistol. I don’t have bullets.
The woman said, He has colic. Or reflux. Something.
Her skin and clothes were shrouded in red, the man’s too.
You were in here before, Li said.
The man nodded. We heard you on the porch, so we got out the back way. I had him under my clothes, but we couldn’t stay out there.
Li saw how young they were, how afraid. The baby’s crying was like spoor, it tracked right to them, and an axe wasn’t much. You can have this room, she said.
She took the room opposite, rolled out her sleeping bag just inside the doorway and lay listening for a creak of the floorboards, a rusty hinge, a tear in the blanketed silence of dust. The baby woke and cried through the night and each time she heard the woman shift instantly awake to pat, shush and feed.
In the first fifteen months of Matti’s life Li had sung her every song she knew. Every song Val had taught her, every walking song and shearing song, the fire songs and patching songs. Every song for picking, or waiting by the road, every lullaby. Nothing made Matti sleep but certain melodies calmed her into a listening state. As she got older, she listened intently to the stories in the songs. She wanted to know where they all came from.
One night she said, Sing me one you’ve never sung me.
Li didn’t think she had anything left, but then a fragment came to her from before. She thought maybe her own mother had sung it to her.
Guardian angels
watch beside me
all through the night
And what else? Matti asked.
All through the night. The family in the other room, nothing could harm them. She knew that when she left tomorrow, she would leave the gun behind. She closed her eyes and listened to them breathing.
* * *
The duster passed by morning, leaving a silence like earplugs. When Li opened the front door the country was shrouded and the road buried. Dust still hung in the air, fine red particles that sieved down in the dim light.
She changed her filthy bandage for the first time. She bled a little taking it off and her uncovered skin felt raw in the air, but the couple told her it looked clean enough. Then they shared food and water while the woman fed the baby.
His name’s Billy, the man said.
Li hadn’t asked, but she understood the hunger to say your child’s name. They came from a town called Lawrence, nearly two hundred and fifty k north-east. A highway service hub that had no one to service anymore. His mother had helped them pre-register for the precincts the year they finished school, when it was already clear there would be no work in Lawrence, and pretty soon no town either. The baby was coming by then. They hadn’t planned to have their One Child allowance so early, but his mum said with the way Wars were going, government might change back to Replacement in a few years anyway, so maybe they could have another one later. His mother was dead now – some kind of lung disease.
The dusters get pretty bad at home, the woman told her. We thought it might be better further south.
There was no advance on their pre-registration but they’d heard Sumud might be opening a quota so they decided they were just going to try. They paid for a ride as far as they could because they were worried about Billy’s lungs. Their money had run out three days ago and they’d been walking since then. They hadn’t heard about makecamp yet. Li organised her pack while they absorbed the disappointment. They told her they had a friend of a friend in Kutha who’d put them up while they figured out what to do next.
Li said, Maybe there’ll be a new makecamp soon.
They wanted to know why she was going north. She kept it short to ward off pity, but with enough detail to trigger any useful response. And their reaction, the quick glance they shared, was a small, painful adrenaline shot.
What? You saw something?
The woman said, We talked to a guy the day before yesterday who’d seen a whole mob of children going that way.
He saw the bus?
She shook her head and unlatched the baby. No bus, she said. Just children. Walking.
Li held very still. Walking where?
The man took the baby and settled him against his chest. That was weird, eh, he said. The kids told him they were going up to Lake Ero to camp – you know the big salt lake? They were all kitted out with tents and sleeping bags. He tried to talk them out of it, but they said if they went back Army would get them. He said none of them looked old enough for the ballot but he couldn’t change their minds.
There was a buzzing in Li’s ears, getting in the way of thought. No adults with them?
The woman shook her head again. That’s why he was still worrying about it. They were dressed for the cold, he said, and he checked they had food and water. He gave them some more, what he could spare. He was going to report it to Agency when he got to the next Source booth.
Li remembered how long the bus had been stopped in Kutha. How the newsagent owner had talked about engine trouble. She started repacking, fast, trying to keep her hands steady. When did he see them?
The man glanced over at the woman for confirmation. Guy said two days before, right? So that’s what? Three and a half, four days ago?
And how far to the lake?
They told her the south-western edge was two hundred and fifty k north of Kutha, give or take. That was past the turnoff to the base.
Three nights since she left Kutha. She’d lost last night to the duster, but kids got tired. If she pushed it now, cut down on sleep, she could be there in another three, maybe even overtake them. She could feel understanding pressing in and she needed to be walking when it came.
She hefted up her pack. Said goodbye and left them in the house, pulling the leggings up over her nose and mouth again as she stepped through the door. She didn’t leave the gun.
The dust settled slowly through the ninth day and into the night. All that time, Li walked. The access road wasn’t much more than two hours’ drive out of Kutha. If the bus had broken down near the town someone would have walked back in for help. It must have been closer to the barracks. But a bus was too valuable to walk away from. One of them would have stayed with the kids, wouldn’t they? Set up camp. Not just let them wander off.
She didn’t know how it had happened, but if they were on their own then she understood why they hadn’t gone to the barracks. Knew what being taken to an army base would have meant to kids who’d watched recruiters sniffing around their older friends in makecamp, who’d have no good reason to believe that being under-age would protect them. There would have been kids on the bus who’d grown up out here. Maybe they’d camped at the lake with their parents. Maybe it felt safe there.
The trucks kept passing, churning up the dust, but there weren’t many people on the road here. When she drank, she thought of Matti up ahead, dry-mouthed, hungry, walking to nothing. She barely ate. She still had a few readies but she needed to save them. She imagined Matti in the back of one of those trucks. Unable to call out, unable to scream. He’ll reach down and grab you up and take you away.
She was glad Frank wasn’t here.
When she came to the next house, some time before midnight, she waited and watched before she went in. It was set well back from the road and she was about thirty metres away in a clump of emu bush, but visibility was good. Open ground, a clear sky now, the moon making clean-edged shadows.
Her head was okay, her head told to keep going, but her body was giving her warning signals. She needed to sleep for a couple of hours.
She moved carefully around the house, staying wide, counting exits. There was a back door, six windows on the ground floor, four upstairs. All boarded up. She didn’t have time to set up the tarp and build a fire, prepare food. Walking through the day meant she hadn’t collected water either, and that would be a problem soon but she couldn’t think about it right now. She needed to lie down under shelter. Sleep.
She dug a hole under the bushes for her pack and ground mat but she kept the
torch and the pistol. The knife was in her belt. She went into the house steadily, holding the torch over the gun.
All the rooms on the ground floor were empty. She would sleep down there, near the back door, once she’d checked the upper rooms.
She was almost at the top of the stairs when a man came out of darkness onto the landing. When she turned around there were two more down below, blocking the exit, she didn’t know where they’d come from. Turned back and lined up her pistol on the man upstairs and kept going, onto the landing, her hands shaking hard. He paused long enough for her to reach the window but then she had to turn her back on him again to kick at the boards, blind and violent, and she heard him coming, not hurrying now he’d guessed the gun was a bluff, that there was no way out. Li felt the same inevitability, something essential draining away inside her. But as she dropped the gun and reached for the knife, she felt something start to give under her boot. A rotten plank. He ran at her as it splintered, shouting to the others, feet on the stairs, and she dropped the torch and turned and steadied the knife with both hands, aiming for his heart in the dark as he ran right up against her, right onto it. The point of entry cleaved muscle and sinew, not his heart but his shoulder, up into the armpit. They fell back against the boards together and the boards gave way, she could feel his heart beating but then he let go, sucking air, and she wrenched the knife out of him and forced her way through the window without looking.
The roof of the porch broke her fall but it threw her balance, too. She rolled, fell again and landed on the hard dirt below with her ankle bent under her. A burst of pain. She tried to get up, couldn’t. No time anyway – she could hear the others coming, couldn’t think, pressed against the edge of the porch and felt a gap in the planks low down that shouldn’t have been big enough but she forced herself backwards through it.
The door banged open and they ran out onto the porch, directly above her. The high beam of a hunting torch stabbed the dark. One of them shouted a question to the man upstairs and he yelled something back, enraged with pain. Her hand closed around some small stones in the sand and she threw them low and hard into the dark. They made a scattering sound out in the scrub, and the torchlight twitched that way.
A rustling behind her. There was something else under the porch. Probably a snake, dormant in the cold until she’d disturbed it. She held still until the rustling moved away, further under the house, and the fear of the snake became the fear of them hearing the snake and she realised she’d pissed herself and soon they would smell it. She wouldn’t let them drag her out they’d have to come in and get her in this confined space with her knife she could kill one of them at least if they didn’t have a gun but she couldn’t keep going like this it wasn’t possible it had to end tonight now trapped or poisoned under this trap house or dragged back inside by men who were too angry to remember some use they might have had for her tomorrow or next week.
She lay in her piss with her ankle swelling up, while the man upstairs suffered and raged and the other two hunted her in the scrub. One of them always stayed close to the house. It would be dark for a few minutes and then torchlight would flick across the dirt in front of her. Hours passed. Her body shook uncontrollably and her mind refused to save her. Her mind told her they wouldn’t keep looking this long unless they had a reason. Something worth their time. Her mind dug things up and unspooled them for her in the dark. Whispers and rumours from the road, the boat, makecamp. Things that might end with you inside the XB but maybe not whole. She tried to force them out and a clear memory surfaced, of playing spotlight with Matti and Robbie and Frank in the olive grove. Dark early but not too cold yet, the air smelling of woodsmoke. Matti wanted to hide on her own but then she’d come racing to Li, between sweeps, and Li pulled her in close against the trunk and felt her heart beating and they stayed there, still, as the torch got closer. And then Matti screamed and gave them away.
* * *
She fought sleep but it took her anyway. Every time she woke they were still out there. Matti said, The Takeaway was chasing me and he was going to steal my eyes, the colour of my eyes, and my voice and make a cardboard of me and throw me in the sea. She said, Mum, can the Takeaway steal grown-ups?
* * *
It was still dark when they came back from hunting. She waited for the torchlight to find her point of entry but it passed over the porch without stopping. Maybe the gap looked too small, or they were too fixated on her being out in the scrub. Maybe they were just tired.
One of them went inside, to the man she’d knifed, who was quiet now. The other one sat down on the porch, and she heard him light a cigarette. At intervals, he raked the torch across the scrubline. She waited, counted, but she couldn’t predict his timing. Once she thought he must have fallen asleep, and she was flexing her cramped muscles to move when the torch stabbed on again.
She felt the passage of seconds, minutes, hours. Felt Matti moving further out of range, into the unmapped world. Pain came in waves from her ankle. Her body had seized up with cold but she couldn’t risk any movement with him on top of her, listening. These men didn’t feel cold, or fear. They didn’t need to sleep. What they traded in was worth cigarettes. The smell slipped down through the floorboards, sharp and grey, the way Val’s first smoke of the day would reach her in the tent and when she crawled out he’d be crouching beside the ashes of the night’s fire or standing away at the end of the camp, watching the sky. But Val had rolled his own.
Then a bird called from the scrub. The piece of night she could see through the gap was thinning, separating from the land. It would be light soon, and this man or the other one would step down off the porch and see the gap clearly. There would be no crawling away from here.
Before Matti screamed. Before that. Huddled against her, breathing together in the cold, with the torchlight closing in. Her body warm and shivering, her rabbit heart.
Maybe we’re too big.
Shhh.
But maybe I should go over there behind that tree? Mum? Just until he goes past. And then you’ll come and get me, okay?
A magpie sang, a wet sound through the dry, and she realised he hadn’t used the torch after those other noises in the scrub. Because the sky was lightening or because he was asleep? She couldn’t smell smoke anymore, or feel the vibration of his knee through the boards. From the porch there was only a deep stillness.
Her body was unresponsive but she forced it, edging forward in tiny movements. Her ankle hurt like hell and she bit her lip till she tasted blood. When she reached the opening, she lost control of her breathing and the fear nearly kept her down in her hole, but he was asleep or he was awake. She was done waiting.
She crawled out. No sound from behind her. A dark half of her believed he was watching, silent, his finger on the torch or the trigger, giving her a headstart. Fuck him, she wasn’t going to look back. Halfway across the open space between the house and the bush where she’d buried her stuff, she tried to get up and run but she fell back down at the first pressure of her left foot on the ground. Shoved her fist in her mouth, nearly passed out. Just had to keep crawling, dragging the pain behind her.
Even when she was digging up her pack she still half believed he was playing with her, pretending to sleep until she started hoping. But she got the pack on and crawled away. Kept crawling. She only stopped once, when the need to empty her bowels came on so fast she barely got her pants down in time. Cleaned herself with leaves and then started crawling again through sand and scrub, her ankle dragging and jarring, hands and knees cut up by prickly wattle. All through the grey arrival of the tenth morning, through the dust that came and went, hour after hour, heading north, north-east.
* * *
When the sun was high, she let herself believe they weren’t coming. The man she’d knifed wouldn’t be travelling this far and if the others were willing to leave him, they would have caught her by now. Or maybe the dust had covered her tracks. Something good from Weather.
She stopped
to rest under a couple of mallee trees, took two sips from her three-quarter empty bag and unlaced her boot. She screamed getting her foot out. It was swollen fat, the outer ankle bone obscured. Yellow and purple. The pain when she probed it was wrenching. She took off her vest and wrapped it around a wide piece of bark to make a strap for her ankle. There was no way her foot was going back in her boot, so she tied the boot onto her pack. She ate a couple of ready biscuits, had three more sips of water, then she pulled herself up on the tree and broke off a branch that was V-shaped at the top. It took a couple of goes to cut it down to the right size but after that she could walk, leaning her full weight on the stick.
There were still other people on the road, but not many. When they passed her she felt invisible to them, each sealed up in their private feat of endurance. Her body was a catalogue of things wrong: thirst, pain, lack of sleep, hunger. Her pants had dried and the piss was just another smell but her thighs chafed and stung. Her throat and lips were dry and the burnt side of her face stretched and throbbed under the bandage. Her head ached and she kept having to stop and wait for the dizzy surges to pass. She knew she was dehydrated but what she had left in the bag wasn’t going to make a difference. Walking with the stick hurt her wrist, her shoulders – the whole right side of her felt strained and off-balance.
Li tried not to look at the fence because when she did she saw Matti holding onto the wire, face pinched clean by fever. Mum. Look! But when she finally did look up, she saw something beyond the fence, distantly across the No Go, that made her stop walking. It was the wall. The XB. The first time she’d ever seen it. People in makecamp had said it was ten metres tall, or twelve or fifteen. They said it was made of steel-reinforced concrete, two metres thick, topped with razor-ribbon wire and cameras and floodlights and machine guns. That the body-heat detection systems started fifty metres away, triggering lights and sirens. Some people said there was another wall inside, an internal border with a concrete No Go, or an airlock that could be flooded with gas before you got to the checkpoint. That was why people risked everything on the trucks.