by Clare Moleta
Back in the front seat she unscrewed the cover on the steering column, ripped out the wiring and stripped it down for more snares.
When she went back to the lakebed to check her stills, there was something new; a shine to the north. She stood a long time looking at it, shielding her eyes against the glare off the salt. Water. She hadn’t seen it this morning but she didn’t think she was imagining.
Val had a mate he used to talk about, Eddie, who coughed himself to death before Li was born. He was from North, before, got compulsory redistribution south like everyone else when it was declared a sacrifice zone. Val had stories from Eddie about river systems fed by seasonal deluges, rivers that channelled all the way down into the dry heart, feeding it, bringing life. This had always happened but in the years before he had to leave the rain had started becoming less predictable, more cyclonic.
Val had learned how to trap and snare from his father, before he came across the oceans, but Eddie taught him about pods and seeds and grasses, bush fruit. On the circuit, Val would go out from camp and bring back different plants from different places. Some he ground up and cooked, some they ate raw, plants that looked leathery and inedible but could taste like anything from fruit to game.
You just gotta know where to look, Li-Li, he told her.
She didn’t have the patience to learn. Snares were different. That was making something, that was using her hands. But because of Eddie, they never went hungry. If Val was here now, he could show her what there was to eat that she was missing.
There was a sound above her, faint and high up. She squinted and made out black shapes moving across the sky like flecks of dust on her pupils. They dropped lower and landed and settled on the shine. Desalinating a ready supply of water would be a lot quicker than what she was doing now, and if there were birds, that meant fish. But it was too far away.
She drank from her stills. Added handfuls of saltbush leaves and then squatted awkwardly, leg extended, to pee on the plants. Then she took her stuff back to the four-wheel drive in two trips. Draped the vehicle with the biggest plastic sheet, weighting it down with sand, and positioned the jerry can to catch the runoff. Then she got back into the front seat and unfolded the map carefully. The lake took up most of the top third. The highway ran east through the bigger towns like Lawrence and Tarnackie, Curr and Graceville and Brunt, and then there were all the roads branching off it to smaller inland places that were gone to salt or dust now. At the eastern edge were the foothills of the Dividing Range. Fengdu wasn’t on the map, it was on the other side of the range. Might as well be across the oceans.
There were no XB markings. Strange to look at this part of the continent with only the old token borderlines, the ones Val said you could cross without even knowing. And something else was missing. The sacrifice zone. This map had been made before she was born, when North was still just north. Not an off-limits, government-and-Company experiment derailed by Weather – just a place where people lived.
It was a kind of ghost map, she thought. Still, it was valuable. She found Yara’s pen and sketched in the course of Sumud’s XB, as far as she knew it. She was patchy on where Sumud finished and New Flinders started, on the size of the gap between precincts. But the kids would stick to the highway, stick to the fence. The fence was what they knew.
She tried to imagine what they were thinking. Somewhere east of here was another checkpoint in the fence that led to another gate into Sumud. But she’d heard makecamps never got established there – the environment was too harsh, too isolated, and XB Force was too aggressive. Did the kids think someone would let them in? Or maybe they weren’t that stupid, maybe they had another plan. She remembered crouching in the No Go with Matti to watch the jumpers run for the truck. I’m going for the kids because they’re faster.
The sun was dropping, the cold coming in through the glass. Outside, the driver’s body lay exposed. Frank would have buried it but she didn’t have the energy to spare. And he would have hated what he was becoming in her mind: a moral compass, unsullied, barely human at all. You used to cheat at cards, she thought. You knew exactly how good-looking you were. When Matti came into our room at night, too scared to go out to the toilet, you always pretended you were asleep.
She put on her extra layers and climbed into the back seat, into her sleeping bag.
* * *
There was growling and panting. Howling. Something scraped and circled the walls, testing for a way in. She tried to drag herself up, weak with fear. She lay in its grip and waited to be consumed.
Please, Mum, just can you stay?
I’ll be back soon.
What if you’re not?
I will be. Why do you keep asking me that?
Because I have to be ready for the worst thing.
I’m only checking three.
But please.
Stop it. Go back to the tent and lie down.
I hate you. You don’t care about me. You’re just a bad mother.
That’s right. That’s why I’m doing this.
Silence. Li turned away from the fence and started walking. Her vision narrowing, the ache already at the base of her skull.
Mum! Matti’s voice at her back. Done with pleading – something else in her voice. Mum, look!
But Li didn’t look, didn’t turn back, wouldn’t play the delay game. She could feel the fever coming. Her mind was on the snares, the distance between each one, how many she could check and reset and still get back before it took hold.
So. That was the last thing. The thing she carried, the place she came unstuck every time. Mum, look! What where you trying to show me? What did you see? She was turning all the time now, looking back fast to catch it. A flicker of light or shape of cloud, a wobbly tooth, a new trick, something small with wings. A clue.
In the morning the sun came in sharp through the windscreen. Her breath was visible in the car but the core of her was warm. The thirteenth day. Her ankle felt better and the swelling had gone down. She would try walking a bit further today – not just to take care of water and food.
She rubbed in cream, eased the compression bandage back on, tried to remember when her body hadn’t hurt. Her hands were good, she barely felt them now, but the side of her face was tight and itchy all the time. Parts of the dressing were stuck to her cheek with salt and grit; it took dead skin away coming off. She touched the lumps and scales of healing underneath. No pus. She got out the first aid-kit, cleaned the area and left it uncovered so the salt could do its work. The rear-view mirror was there but she had no desire to look.
When she crawled out, the driver’s body was gone. There were drag marks on the sand. Paw prints. Not foxes. She followed them a little way into the dunes, something tugging at her memory from the night. If there were feral dogs around, she needed to be in the vehicle before dark.
But the jerry can had collected ten centimetres of water overnight. It was like winning a jackpot. She drank it all, slowly, and felt a profound sense of wellbeing that cut through the taking of the body. She came down out of the dunes and squatted to pee around the still again, scanning the salt pan. Every morning she was wary, expecting to find other people here. With the numbers on the road, she figured some of them would come up the track to the lake. But maybe people had heard it was dry.
Birds again. They wheeled above her, heading north. More than yesterday. And the shine up there looked closer. Close enough to walk to.
There was a rabbit in one of her snares. It was bloody from struggling but it went still to watch her. Only when she crouched down she could see it trembling. She killed it fast and skinned it, cut out the entrails and the bladder, checked the heart. She thought about the paw prints and took the kill back to the four-wheel drive and put it inside. Dogs weren’t the only scavengers. If she didn’t find firewood out there she’d have to eat it raw.
* * *
It took three hours to reach the water. Li followed the footprints she had seen the first day, out over the salt pan.
She carried a folded plastic sheet and three plastic bottles, one with still water in it. The crust broke under her with every step. Walking jarred her ankle and the stick hurt her whole arm, wrist to shoulder, but she moved quickly enough. Just not quickly enough yet to walk out of here.
The small footprints led her on and on. Narrow, the heel lightly indented, the toes pushing off strongly. Seventh months pregnant, Li had felt a kick and looked down and seen the underside of a whole foot pressing out against the skin high on her belly: heel, toes, everything. Thought, What are you so ready for?
Matti would have got on the bus in the one-size-too-big green and purple trainers they’d scored from a relief dump at makecamp after her old ones wore through. It was hard to think about her on the road with shoes that didn’t fit but Li thought about it, talked to Matti as she walked. I’m coming I’m still coming, don’t do anything stupid. Hold on.
She looked up sometimes to check the shine ahead of her. It widened slowly from a bright line to something that held the sky. She saw the distant shapes of birds and heard them calling.
The southern shore of the lakebed had been picked clean of firewood, but out here there were branches carried down by northern rivers in flood and stranded on the salt pan. Her stick sent warnings through the ground. Lizards got out of her way, and once a snake. She gathered up wood into small heaps to collect on the way back. There were colonies of ants and grubs and beetles, whole ecosystems in the wood. Maybe she could eat some of them or use them for bait. Val would have known. Then she thought about fish traps.
For the last part of the walk she watched the shine coming to meet her. Beyond it, a long way north, black smoke funnelling up to the sky. Grassfires in the sacrifice zone or burning toxic waste, or whatever the fuck they still did up there.
* * *
At the edge of the water the footprints kept going, walked right in. Li eased herself down on the salt and stared at the place where they disappeared. All the way here she had felt Matti beside her but her child’s feet had not made those prints. Matti hadn’t walked into the water. Matti couldn’t swim.
It took a few moments to really see the lake, the flat pink skin of it, the small shivers, the way it contained the clouds. She lay down and put her face close to it, breathing the wet silty smell under the salt, like the rivers that flowed in West when she was a child. It wasn’t drinkable yet but there was so much of it. Movement in the water, birds calling from further north. A place like this, you could live.
She dug a muddy saltwater still right there at the edge. Cut the top off one of her bottles and put it in, weighted it down with stones and sealed the hole. When it was done she got reckless and drank the last of her water, then got up slowly, sorely, and started gathering driftwood to make a fish trap.
It was half built when she saw the first fish. Dead, floating. She pulled it in with her stick. There was no smell or bloat and when she touched a wet finger to the scales and put it on her tongue it only tasted of salt. She limped around the edge of the lake and found more dead fish, a lot more. The water must have been too salty for them; she could desalinate it but it wasn’t going to feed her, not unless the birds came a hell of a lot closer. There was no point thinking about the other possibility – that the rivers had carried poison down from North. She had to drink. Had to hope evaporation would filter out whatever was killing the fish.
It wasn’t even disappointment she felt, not really. There was still the rabbit and her snares. She was just tired. What had she thought – that she’d bring Matti back here? Build a shelter? Hide or trade when people came through, trek two hundred k to the nearest Source booth once a month for a status update? She was an idiot. This place would be unimaginable in the hot season, worse than Nerredin.
She ate two crackers and checked the seals on the still – the plastic had already steamed up. Might as well rest her ankle while the bottle filled. She moved back from the water’s edge to where it was dry, loosened the compression bandage and lay down. Eyes closed, faced turned up to the sun. Then she remembered Rich telling her that healing skin would burn easily, and she pulled her cap down. Thought about Eddie’s northern rivers flooding down to make an oasis in the dry. People said the sacrifice zones were mostly dumps now, that there was nothing left to dig up and everything was contaminated, and Weather was too extreme up there for Company investment anyway. It was just an uninhabitable Old Testament wasteland. But the stories Eddie told Val had never been about poison, they were all about how fast life came back.
* * *
It’s about to start in five seconds!
They came running, Li from the woodpile, Frank from the pressing shed. Li was thinking this better not be another false alarm, with everything they had to do before dinner. Matti had lined up three chairs under the jam tree, one each for Frank and Li and one for her rag horse, Goldie. She came out from behind the tree and they clapped and she stood behind the card table. This is a magic show, she said.
She was wearing an old black singlet of Frank’s, dishwashing gloves that were too big for her and a newspaper cape with a hole cut out for her head. She had three tins and she put a stone under one of them and shuffled the tins and then asked someone to guess where it was now. Frank guessed and she got a stubborn look and told them to shut their eyes.
Hoka poka! And when they opened them she lifted the tin and the stone wasn’t there. They whoo-hooed and clapped.
Matti said she was going to make one of the tins disappear as well.
Close your eyes! There was a clang of metal rolling away on the hard ground. Da-da! Now I need a volunteer.
Frank waved Goldie’s foreleg in the air.
Okay Goldie, you can come up. And I need my disappearing chambler. She dragged a cardboard box out from behind the tree. Frank passed up Goldie. Matti swished her cape around, said the magic words and threw the horse into the box. Da-da! She stood there with her hands on her hips, daring them to doubt her. Frank’s shoulders started shaking. Matti looked at him hard to make sure she wasn’t being mocked, and then, satisfied, threw herself in sideways after Goldie, almost toppling the box. And now I’m gone! she yelled from inside.
Li couldn’t stop laughing. It was so easy to love her child at this moment. So basic and uncomplicated, even someone like her could get it right.
Okay, now I’m the teacher and I’m going to go through the roll. But hang on, where is it? Unfortunately the roll is missing. Matti ran for the kitchen, yelling over her shoulder, Sorry about this, I just need to be doing stuff in a rush, so you’ll just have to wait.
The screen door banged behind her. Frank picked up the discarded parts of the newspaper neither of them had had a chance to read yet and started piecing them together. Li listened to Matti inside slamming drawers and telling off invisible children. Frank dipped the paper to show her a headline: Lance extends north west sacrifice zone.
She looked at the dotted lines and skull icons on the map. The redrawn southern border was a thousand k north of where they sat, give or take.
That’s getting close.
He squinted at her. You reckon?
You know what I mean. There’ll be more people coming down.
They won’t stop here. They’ll take the redistribution money and keep moving south.
Okay, right, ready to go. Matti was back with a piece of paper and a pencil. Where have all the kids gone? She started calling the roll.
Li thought about the wood waiting to be split and felt a slow burn of frustration. Frank kept reading his salvaged newspaper, glancing up now and then to play his part. He was just better at this. His appreciation was real but he had no qualms about cheating, and at a certain point he would find a way to end Matti’s endless show without crushing or enraging her. Whereas Li would just sit there nursing her boredom and irritation until all the pleasure had dried up, and then she’d roll her eyes or raise her voice and the whole thing would be ruined.
You know I went to high school with him, down in Warrick?
With Peter Lance? Li had never heard this. He grew up in West? Bet he keeps that quiet.
I don’t know, Frank said. He got inside the XB, didn’t he? Got into government. I’d put that on my CV.
Quiet, children! Matti yelled. You’re not listening.
Sorry, beansprout.
My name is Ms Twinkle.
Hang on a minute, Li told her. Then, to Frank, Were you mates?
He shrugged. Yeah, we were. We hung out after school, went to parties. He looked back down at the paper, at the conviction politician in his suit and hard hat, the drilling rigs, the straggling exodus, the map with its old and new demarcation lines. I painted houses with him and his dad after we finished high school. Before he moved to Valiant.
Matti came to lean over his shoulder, studying the pictures. Is he a bad man? She could switch mode just like that.
I haven’t seen him in a long time, sprout. I couldn’t say what kind of man he is.
But did he do a bad thing?
Frank sighed. Yeah. Yeah, I think he did.
Li watched him figuring the right amount of truth to give her. She said what she knew he believed but wasn’t sure she did. Matti, people can do bad things without being bad people.
Can they really?
Really.
How many things?
* * *
She watched the clouds, which were also in the water. Clouds that rolled and crashed, reefs of gold and orange with the sun moving through them, clouds that flared and spent themselves like smoke. She ran from the fire, she crossed the sea. She found herself back here on the salt, alone.