by Clare Moleta
There was no way to judge how much of that was true. All she could see from here was a grey immensity. She checked herself for a response to the physical presence of this wall, this thing that took up so much space in the imagination of the unsheltered. Looked away and felt no gravitational pull. Frank had always found it strange how uncurious she was about the other side, about the people living there. Don’t you wonder what it’s like? he’d asked. She’d only ever wondered about three of them and she was pretty sure her parents were dead now.
I would hate to live inside the wall, Matti had said in their tent, somewhere into the second week on the road to Valiant. It was after midnight, Frank sleeping steadily on the other side of her.
Why? Li asked.
Well, because how do you breathe?
Oh, right. It doesn’t mean inside the actual wall – it just means the other side. Like going into a house. This, where we are, is outside and the other side is inside.
But why is that side inside?
Because it’s safer, I guess. And they get looked after. There are things on that side that we don’t have out here.
She waited, tiredly, for Matti to ask what things but Matti was quiet. Maybe she’d gone back to sleep. A mosquito whined and she slapped it away, held her watch up to her face. Before dawn and after sunset were the times when walking was easy, without the heat pressing down from the sky and up from the road, making the air shake. In two hours they would have to get up and start walking again.
I still don’t want to live there, Matti said. It’s not the Best Place.
What would it have meant to her to see the XB, finally, know it was real? Not just a story they told kids. What had Agency told them before they drove them out here to the middle of nowhere because no precinct would take that many minors? Where did she think she was going now?
Is the Best Place real? She had asked Frank, prone and sweating under the tarp in the middle of the day. Can we actually go there?
I told you already, beansprout, Frank said. We’re going to the best place we can find.
* * *
There wasn’t much left of the bus when she got to it. Pulled off roadside. No mistaking its shape from a distance, the trademark government yellow, but as she got closer she saw that it had been picked clean. Doors, windows, tyres and wheels. A gouge in the back where the engine and transmission had been. Windshield gone, bumper bars, tail- and headlights. Every removable piece of metal and plastic. A man and a woman approaching from the other direction barely glanced at it as they passed.
Out of habit, Li looked through the space where the back door had been. The inside had been stripped too, including the seats. Six, seven days? Apart from the lack of rust, it could have been abandoned years ago. She limped a slow circuit around it and saw how the sand and gibber were churned up on all sides. Looked pointlessly for signs of camp, for something dropped or discarded, for a message with directions scratched with a stick. What she saw was footprints, drag marks, tyre marks, signs of scuffle. You could do a lot with a jack and a socket wrench but you’d need a vehicle, too, something with a tray. This had the look of a dedicated salvage crew.
It was only a few more kays to the start of the old army access road but it took her an hour to walk them. She stood at the turnoff and studied the gibber. No trample of feet, nothing but old tyre tracks. No barriers or warning signs anymore, nothing to stop her limping all the way to the barracks, just in case. But they said if they went back, Army would get them. She walked past the turnoff and kept going up the highway.
* * *
What happened at school? Frank asked Matti. Valiant. Dinnertime around the small kitchen table in Teresa and Navid’s flat.
Nothing. She mashed her beans with a fork and scooped them up with her fingers. Oh. Soldiers came. After literacy.
Li kept her voice neutral. What kind of soldiers?
Matti shrugged. They had those grey-y-green uniforms? Like the ones when we were coming into Valiant.
Li hadn’t known they would send recruiters into the school – not this soon. She should have known that.
Don’t they have to send a note home? Teresa asked.
Hani said, Handsup! Bangbang! And started coughing.
Into your elbow, mate. Navid gave him water in his sippy cup.
Matti looked at Frank. I don’t have to go to Wars till I’m fifteen.
No. Frank said. No you don’t.
But then if I get picked I have to go. The soldiers said we have to keep our promise.
Jesus, Teresa said softly.
Frank was still. Li couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He said, That isn’t something you have to worry about now, sprout.
Matti kept looking at him for a second and then nodded. You don’t have to worry, Hani, mate, she told her cousin, cos you won’t have to go to Wars for ages.
* * *
She took a couple of sips every hour, feeling the waterbag lightening. She should be drinking morning and night, holding off while she walked so she didn’t sweat it out, but she didn’t have enough water left to hydrate properly in the cold hours. Her throat was dust dry and the shifting of the remaining liquid as she walked tormented her. She tried to focus on the lake where she was going but her mind took her away. Sometimes she was back on the stairs with the men coming out of the dark, crawling away and hearing their breathing behind her, and then it wasn’t her crawling away, it was Matti. Or they were back on the highway from Nerredin and Matti was saying, I’m sick of walking, and Frank said, Tell us a story, and Matti started. My heart pants as I cuddle in beside my ten-year-old cousin. I’m only five, so you can see how frightened I am. This story isn’t happening right now, the girl is remembering, so it’s back the time. In the green meadow, no home to sleep in, wolves about. And no Mum or Dad.
Li put the stick down wrong, jolted her foot and cried out. She knew she couldn’t walk much longer without water but she didn’t have time to stop and harvest it, she’d lost too much time already. The dizziness and the pressure behind her eyes made it hard to think. How long before her body stopped working, started shutting down? If she finished the water then she wouldn’t have to keep feeling it sloshing against her back. And maybe it would keep her going for a few more hours but she wouldn’t be able walk through the night, whether she drank it or not.
In the end she couldn’t stand knowing it was there. She tried to sip it and she did feel a bit better afterwards but it was very hard to start walking again, and as soon as she did, the emptiness of the bag began to weigh on her. That was it now. Even if she stopped, it was too late in the day for condensation to help her. Now it was just her and her failing body. And if she kept walking, if she made it to the lake and found Matti there, what would she have to offer her? How would she save her? Matti didn’t know she was coming, she wouldn’t wait. Even now her child was leaving the lake, or was too thirsty, too hungry. Matti was dying, afraid. Matti was dragged into a truck and disappearing in dust. The Takeaway wears a black coat. She saw herself tiny and crawling across a space made for giants. For things with wings and wheels.
At dusk, still the tenth day, a Homegrown truck went past. Just another truck. Except this one stopped up ahead of her. When she drew level, the cab door opened and the driver climbed down. An older man, sun-creased and balding, wearing tiny shorts. Val’s age. No, Val would be older. This man was holding a bottle.
She watched him cross the road towards her, knowing she couldn’t run. It was only her hands that gave her away.
He held the bottle out. Go on, it’s clean.
She didn’t take it.
Don’t be a hero. You look like you could murder a drink.
I don’t have any trade, she said. But she took it. Felt the cool liquid through the metal.
Spose you’ll have to owe me, then.
She unscrewed the lid carefully, sniffed it. Tilted the bottle. The water was cold and heavy in her mouth and it tasted of nothing. She drank and drank. Gulped it – felt it runn
ing down her throat, branching through her body, making things possible again.
You got a container? the truckie asked.
She hesitated, the waterbag wasn’t something she could lose, but the water in her belly made her reckless. He took it back to the truck and pushed his door open wider so she could see his co-driver sitting up in the cab with a rifle. Company supply trucks were always double-crewed now, and the crew was always armed. He said something to the co-driver and she reached back and passed him down a jerry can without taking her eyes off the scrub. One of her knees jiggled nonstop, keeping time to some too-fast rhythm.
Li watched the truckie fill her waterbag without letting a drop spill. She understood this was his personal supply. When he brought the bag back it was full for the first time in days. The heft of it made her lightheaded.
He looked at her foot. What is that, sprained?
I think so. Maybe a ligament.
The other thing he’d brought back from the truck was a first-aid kit. He unzipped it, resting it open on one knee while he sorted through it. I’ve got anti-inflam in here somewhere. Here you go. He threw her a small green tube, kept hunting. And a whadayou call it, compression bandage.
Why? she said, holding the cream.
He shrugged. Company issue – no skin off my nose. Half this stuff’s past its use-by anyway.
It came to Li that maybe he didn’t want anything. The woman called down to him through the open driver’s side door to hurry up.
He said, Yeah, yeah, and pulled out the bandage. You’re going the opposite way to everyone else, he told Li. Where you headed?
Lake Ero.
On that ankle? It’s still about forty k to the lake turnoff. You know it’s dry, right?
I’m meeting someone there.
Hell of a spot for a date.
Yeah. It’s my daughter. We got split up.
How d’you know she’s there?
She took the bandage from him and stuffed it in her pocket. I heard she was with a big bunch of kids, heading that way to camp. Maybe they thought there’d be water. Have you seen anything like that? Just children walking on their own?
I haven’t been up this way in a couple of weeks, he said. They had me on the Gulf run.
What about other drivers? Anything you heard?
He shook his head. You see people all the time. Can’t always stop. If I saw a bunch of kids on their own, but.
Li saw him thinking about the limits of what he could do. She imagined, for the first time, someone like this stopping to pick up her child from the side of the road. Because she was a child, not for what he could get because she was a child. She looked past him at the truck, the size of the wheels, the distance it could cover while she crawled. If Matti had got into a truck, Li would never reach her walking. If she hadn’t, if she was still there camped on the lakebed? Forty k. Li could be at the turnoff in half an hour.
Can I get a lift? The truckie was already shaking his head. She said, Just as far as you’re going that way.
You know I can’t do that.
Fucksake, Stu. The woman had moved over into the driver’s seat, eyes still on the scrub through the open door. I am not getting docked again because of your bullshit.
I can patch, Li told him. You need anything fixed, I can fix it. She looked at him straight, knowing she was filthy and stinking, blistered and cracked-lipped and lame. Or. Whatever you need.
He took in her meaning and his face twitched and then went stern. No passengers, love. Company policy.
She’d insulted him, she saw that, injured his sense of himself as a good man who did good things. If he didn’t want to trade, she didn’t know how to fix it. She said, Who’s going to know?
He jerked his head back towards the cab.
Is she the boss, then? She the one I need to talk to?
Bloody hell, woman. He was angry, finally. Company’s the boss. Everyone’s just looking out for themselves.
But she was already limping past him onto the road, her stick sliding out on the gibber.
Christ, the truckie said behind her. Stay where you are, you’re no sweet-talker.
He crossed in front of her and said something to the woman up in the cab. Li watched her jaw working, saw her shake her head. He tried again and she reached for the CB handset on the dash and held it out to him.
You wanna call it in? she said loudly. Knock yourself out.
The man held up his hands in defeat but Li stepped forward on a hot wave of urgency. She knew if she could just lay her hands on the steel of the truck she would be lifted. The co-driver jerked the rifle up and fired past her into the ground.
Li threw herself sideways, away from the explosion of sand and gibber, landed on her sprained ankle. Shouted and balled up reflexively, knees to chest, shielding her head, her skin stretched so tight over the pain she hardly felt the stones.
When she raised her head, the woman had the rifle trained on her through the open door. She said, In case you were wondering we had bullets. She was somewhere in her twenties, freckled and red eyed. The rifle was a .308, the kind Carl had used for pig hunting. Li had never been shot at before, no one had done that.
Jesus, Ellie, the man said, you need to lay off the wakey. She look like a hijacker to you?
She looks like a decoy. And your bleeding heart’s gunna get us both killed.
Li stayed down. Without the truck, suddenly, she didn’t know what to do. Get up, she figured, but the stick was two metres away and she couldn’t think how to close the distance. Pain preoccupied her. The woman got down from the cab with the rifle, walked past her to the edge of the road and started looking for the spent casing.
Then the man was beside Li with an armful of readies, some brand she hadn’t seen before. He put them at her feet, said, This stuff tastes like cardboard but it’s loaded with sugar and protein. He held out his hand, and when she didn’t take it he went and got her stick and laid it down beside the packets. You should go back, file a report, maybe try the relief groups. Someone lied to you. Pack of kids wouldn’t last five minutes up here.
The co-driver was digging in the dirt with her boot. She said, I heard about that.
The man didn’t look up. What’d you hear about, Ellie?
Couple of drivers on this run called in a big group of minors heading north.
When? Li said. How long ago?
The woman picked up the casing with a satisfied grunt. You didn’t hear about it? she asked the man. Last time was Habib, bout three days ago. Wanted permission to pull over.
What’d Control say?
She shrugged, wiped the casing on her jeans.
He was staring at her now. They told him not to stop?
Course they did. He had to clear customs.
Three days, Li thought. More than one sighting. A slow buzz of elation. She took the compression bandage out of her pocket and started unwrapping the vest around her ankle. It hurt like hell going on but her ankle felt stronger inside it. The man had gone round to the back of the truck and she heard metal on metal as he opened the doors. The woman swore under her breath, went back to the cab and swung herself up. Li got out one protein bar and shoved the rest in her pack.
The man resealed the doors and came back to Li. The highway keeps going east, he said, but you’re looking for a turnoff north. It’s a sand track. Head up there and when you see the dunes, you’re getting close. He took a blister pack out of his top pocket, popped two pills and held them out. Truckies’ special. They’ll keep you moving and won’t feel anything that’d slow you down. The truck horn blared. He jerked his head back at the cab. She doesn’t.
Li took the wakey, swallowed it dry, waited for him to leave.
This stuff we freight, he said, they grow this stuff under the sea now. Plenty of water, no Weather. He shook his head. Move there myself if they needed drivers.
Why was he still talking to her? Maybe he was waiting to be thanked. The pills were a hard mass in her gullet – she made spit and s
wallowed again, forcing them down. The co-driver started the engine.
The man took a step back and spoke under the noise. I left something else for you back there. I hope you find your kid.
She watched the truck pull away, the acceleration of it. When it was gone and the dust had settled she saw the melon on the road. Small and perfect, the size of a rain globe. She limped over and picked it up and it fit in her hand like it had grown there.
* * *
She walked into the dark and through the dark. There was enough moon and the pills cleaned out the pain and cold and exhaustion and everything else she didn’t need. Her brain buzzed and cut with precise instructions for each nerve and muscle. North. She was a wave that wouldn’t break. A fine thread floated free inside her brain, high enough to observe with clarity and detachment how she surged across the night. She felt the full waterbag moving like blood against her back, the perfect weight of the melon. She ground her teeth and covered the distance. When morning came she was still walking through a country that had fallen away in the night and seemed to be still falling, redder, barer, flatter, wider, with the sky expanding into the space between. Dry-mouthed, dry-eyed, jaw clamping, her stomach in knots but she was close. And the thing driving her had shifted gear again. Not fear now. Hope. That this was where her child had walked, what her child had seen. That they would look at the world together again.
On the morning of the eleventh day she reached the lake.
The inland sea
Matti wasn’t there. No one was there.
The whole expanse of the lakebed was empty, all the way to the horizon. But the track she’d come in on was a beaten mess of footprints and there were fresh signs of a camp on the shore. A big one. Tent holes and flattened patches, dead remnants of fires, more footprints all around them and out onto the salt. Small bones and bits of ready packaging and plastic bottles. She shouted Matti’s name until her voice cracked and then she went down on her knees. She’d missed them by a couple of days at the most.