by Clare Moleta
Rich fumbled in a drawer and found two sachets, tore them open and poured hot water from a thermos into their cups. The salty smell hit the back of her nose, made her salivate. How long since she’d eaten?
They reckon it’s soup, he told her.
She picked it up in both hands, burned her mouth on the first gulp, settled for sipping and blowing.
Anyway, the parents in Family were keeping an eye on her but everyone had their own kid to look out for. She wasn’t getting fed enough. They thought maybe I could file an unacccompanied-minor claim on the quiet.
Li felt something stirring in her chest, something unsafe. She concentrated on the taste of the soup, the grit between the keys on the board, how the ‘e’ was almost rubbed away. Kept her eyes below screen level.
So, I done a physical, Rich said. She was borderline malnourished, broken arm at some point that hadn’t been set, lot of cuts and bruises. Some frostbite damage, too. We were just in time there. He paused. She was really, really quiet. I had a bit of a queue, so I made a follow-up to do the interview for the claim. He put his cup down and leaned over the keyboard, bringing something else up. He said, You don’t have to look, Li, but I need you to listen.
She heard him say, Can you tell me your name?
I already told you. Heaps of times.
Yeah, but when you get as old as me you forget stuff. Come on, help a fella out, will ya?
The child giggled, sighed. Lavinia Rioli.
And you reckon you’re six?
Well, I was six, but I might be seven now. Because Alex said I looked more like a seven-year-old.
Alex was one of them?
He was a big boy.
In that mob of kids you were with?
I already told you.
Li’s fists were pushing down on her thighs, hard enough to bruise. A trembling in her body beyond her control, like it came from underground. She lifted her eyes to the screen. The child’s face had filled out a bit from the photo and she had a new dark fuzz of hair. She was looking up at Rich offscreen, half annoyed, half smiling.
Rich said, Don’t forget to look at the camera. Where the green light is.
Oh yeah. The child looked, down, up. Straight at Li.
Lavinia, this bit’s important. Where were you before that?
In the big camp.
And who were you with?
My dad.
Okay. And what’s your dad called? What do grown-ups call him?
The child said something very quietly.
Paul? Is that his name?
She nodded. Rich said, You’re doing really good, mate. Can you tell me what happened after you and your dad were in the big camp?
Silence. Li looked into her eyes and saw Nerredin after the fire. The same calm. Outside Medical, the wind was picking up again. She tapped the volume as high as it would go.
— where your dad is, Lavinia? Could he be looking for you?
A woman said, offscreen, She doesn’t remember. Or she doesn’t – I already tried.
Rich said, That’s okay, Lavinia. No worries. You all right?
She gave Li the thumbs up.
So, you liked being with the other kids, yeah?
Sort of. Some of them were mean but Alex was nice and another big kid called Nasir gave me crackers and they stuck up for me. Because some of the kids said I was too slow because I was six but Alex said I was more like a seven-year-old.
Were you trying to get somewhere special?
Yeah. But when we got to the big hill, it was really high and it was cold and there was nothing to eat and I got tired of walking. And the other kids said I was a crybaby and they weren’t going to wait for me.
Rich said, What about Alex and Nasir?
Lavinia blinked. Li hadn’t noticed her blink before. Nasir wasn’t there then, she said. Alex said he’d wait with me and we’d get a lift in a truck. He said it’d be warm and we’d get there first, but we waited for ages and no trucks came and Alex wouldn’t let me go to sleep.
But then a truck did come?
But it was going the wrong way. And it stopped and Alex made me get in anyway but he wouldn’t get in with me. He said he was going to to catch up with the others.
The woman said, Serkel does freight over the range.
Lavinia, Rich said, can you tell me where you were trying to go? Before you come here?
We were going to the best place. And Alex said the truck would take me there a different way, but this isn’t the best place.
No, Li said. That’s not —
The best place has horses. You go over the big hill and there are boats that don’t sink and that’s how you get there.
Li tried to lift her hands to the keyboard but they were shaking too hard. Rich leaned over and hit pause but she kept staring at the kid, stilled on the screen. She couldn’t get her breathing under control. Outside, the wind made a high sound and something slapped the side of the container and bounced off again.
Rich said, behind her, That means something? The best place?
She couldn’t get enough air in, no matter how fast she breathed. Felt a terrifying lightness. If she took her eyes off the child she would spiral up out of this chair and through the metal ceiling, up into the wind.
Li?
I want to talk to her.
She’s dead. Two days ago. Three days ago. There’s not a lot of people left in Family. I. He breathed out through his nose. I couldn’t update her status cos she didn’t exist.
Li had the strongest desire to touch the screen. Those left-behind eyes.
I dunno about your kid, he said. But Lavinia was in a makecamp first. And there was a mob of kids from there still alive about a month ago, trying to get across the range.
Li closed her eyes.
I gave up on someone, too, Rich said. Lost cause, right? But what if it’s not? Not for you. His voice was steady in the dark. I saw you run at that fire. You know how hard you fought me when I dragged you away? You need to be out there looking for her, Li. True thing.
The link gates between Medical and Charlie were still unlocked. No one in sight now. Li bent forward into the wind but the wind kept changing, she kept having to stop and hang onto the fence. The ground was strewn with rubbish. It started raining hard, drenching her in seconds. She barely noticed. Something inside her was breaking, burning. It hurt so much that she had to move. All this time, lying to herself, lying down, she had to make it up now. Even if it was too late.
Rich had said he needed to get something, he was going to meet her at maingate, or the first locked gate before maingate. There was an Esso he’d been working on, who might take a pay-off if he could find him. All she knew was that they had to try now while Management was awol and everyone else was burning bodies. She was looking for Megan. Megan had the codes.
Two Essos went past her, hunched over against the wind. One of them yelled something at her but the wind was bashing her around the ears and they didn’t stop. A sideways gust knocked her into the fence. The air was full of plastic and cans and she realised it must be blowing from the dump. She felt a glancing blow on the back of the head. An old running shoe. It hit the ground and was plucked up again.
She got all the way to Charlie and then Megan came out of a sleepbox, head down, on her way out. Li yelled her name as she went past and she looked up, struggling to keep her balance.
What are you doing? she shouted over the wind. Get inside!
Li said, I need to get out. I need the codes.
Megan shook her head, staring at her. You should’ve stayed in Medical.
Just let me out. Please.
What the fuck’s wrong with you?
The link gate slammed shut and Megan turned away to wrestle it open again. Li grabbed her shoulder and Megan turned back fast, catching Li’s arm and twisting it, forcing her down.
Megan stood over her. Can’t you see what’s happening?
Li realised that the rain had stopped and the wind had dropped away. There was
a kind of waiting hush.
Please, she said. I have a reason.
Megan said, I don’t have the maingate code. I never had it. Then she looked past Li and something loosened in her face. She turned to the open gate and ran.
Li looked up. The sky was yellow. A smell like a fresh-lit match. Her body went slack. Brain screaming at her to turn and look, so she would know which way to run. A thin savage howl. The air was full of tussock and sand, and a grey wave was swarming in from the west, unspooling across the sky until it was the only thing.
She hauled herself up and stumbled for the sleepbox. Slammed the door behind her. It was bolted to the concrete pad, it wouldn’t give straight away. The howling intensified outside and beneath it a roar like engines. There was crashing, clanging, metal ripping. Things started to slam into the walls. The whole container was shuddering. She needed to get under a cot, cover herself. Oh God, had Matti lived long enough to die like this?
Something moved in the corner. It was Trish, on her knees, trying to stay upright. Her mouth was moving but the words were lost.
Li stumbled towards her. Get down, she yelled.
Trish shouted, We’re in God’s hands now.
Li felt rage fork through her. At this woman who believed all this, any of it, was the work of something with love in its heart.
There was a sudden pressure in her head. Her ears popped. The sleepbox groaned and the howler was right on them, in her brain and her teeth and her bones. Trish’s mouth opened wide and she reached out for Li, but Li turned away and lost herself in the roar.
A wrenching scream of metal. The container flipped.
* * *
Can you hear my pencil?
They were lying down together in the tent, under the sleeping bags. Afternoon. Rain falling on the plastic, makecamp gone to mud outside. Li’s eyes were closed, her head resting on her jacket.
Can you? Mum? Hear it?
Yeah. I can hear it.
Can you hear my letters?
No. Well, hang on. Li listened, tried to. Did you just make a round one?
An ‘O’! You could hear it!
They were quiet for a little while, pleased. Matti’s pencil scratched. A relief dump had cleared customs and the Kids’ Tent had been handing out exercise books and pens but the pens had run out.
What are you writing?
I’m writing my happy memories, Matti said. I’ve already written two. Do you want me to read you one?
Yeah, go on.
Matti turned back a page. I was six when I started playing schools. Hello class! She glanced up. That bit’s a picture. My name was Ms Twinkle. Great work, Amalia K! That’s a picture too.
Huh, Li said, I remember Amalia K.
She was one of my cardboard kids.
Remember when you folded all the kids up and packed them away?
Matti nodded. I was getting a bit too old.
What’s the other one?
Oh, that’s when we went camping with Robbie, and you and Dad made us a flying fox.
You were really little then.
Yeah, I was only about five.
Are you going to write any that aren’t so long ago?
Matti closed the book and wriggled closer to Li, rolled onto her back. I think when I’m nine I’ll do one about me and Shayla and Sulaman getting these books.
You could write that one now though.
Nah. It has to be a memory. Not something that just happened. Matti reached up and tugged at Li’s hair, thinking. Five or six is good.
* * *
Rich was calling her name in the dark, through the crush, through the other voices calling names. She struggled out from between two mattresses, working to extract her bent leg in the crutch. The back of her head hurt but she could stand. How long had she been unconscious?
She called back to Rich and heard his answering shout. A little light came in through the vents and by that light she felt her way to the door, wading through bedding and dismembered cot frames. Among them, lying face up, Trish.
Li got down and cleared the wreckage from her. A metal shaft wouldn’t come free and it was only when Trish’s body started to lift with it that she realised it had broken off inside her. She let go and felt for a pulse she knew couldn’t be there. There was a hard pain in her own chest. They shall come to no harm but shall be lifted. She held Trish’s wrecked face and wondered if she was the last person who would remember her.
Rich was banging on the wall, yelling her name. She didn’t know what to tell her, only that she wasn’t waiting anymore.
I have a daughter, she said.
* * *
The door was jammed, the frame bent out of shape. She called back to Rich and they worked on getting it open together.
When she came out into the freezing air, he hugged her. Said, I knew this place couldn’t kill you.
There was a gash on the side of his face but he said it wasn’t serious. She looked over his shoulder at the still, broken aftermath. Where there had been a network of fenced compounds, now there was a plain of torn-up metal and wire and canvas. The sleepbox had landed on a link fence. Other fences had been flattened or ripped up whole and thrown down somewhere else. Fence poles stuck up out of the ground like spears. Rubbish bloomed everywhere. People moved through the wreckage, but not many of them.
Up ahead, the complex was its own disaster zone – the buildings collapsed in on themselves or fanned out across the plain in pieces. She saw the shell of a helicopter, nose crushed in, blades drooping down like they’d melted.
Li was still staring at all that when Rich took her by the shoulders and turned her around. Look, he said.
The dump was gone, its mountains levelled and scattered. They were standing in a broad channel between two waves. To the south-west, Sumud’s XB reared up unbroken in a great curving greyness. To the east, and further away, was the wall around New Flinders, but something was wrong with it. In places, the top of the wave dipped and jagged.
Rich said, Can you walk a bit?
She nodded, without taking her eyes off that distant breach.
I reckon I’ve got us a ride.
She turned back to face him, saw that he had a backpack on, and something rolled up in canvas. He said, Let’s go before some other bastard nicks it.
* * *
It was another four-wheel drive, lying on its side about two hundred metres from where the outer fence had been. The keys were still in the ignition, engine off.
Rich crawled in through the boot to pull up the handbrake and put it in gear. He crouched over the driver briefly and then called out that his neck was broken. Li checked for fuel leaks and then cleared and levelled the ground alongside as best she could. They worked easily together, not talking much, keeping a lookout for dogs. Rich found a bent Serkel sign and dug a small hole under the side of the roof and two bigger ones under the wheels nearest to the ground. Then they levered the vehicle up with a fence post on a slab of concrete until it started to tip away from them. It bounced, landing on all four wheels, but it stayed in one piece.
He chocked the wheels and then went into his pack for first-aid supplies and cleaned and covered the cut on his face that was bleeding freely now. Li let the engine settle while she checked the radiator, mounts, fan belt, steer pumps, alternator, everything she could think of that might have sustained damage. The batteries were sealed – no sign of rupture. No leaks or kinks in the fuel tank or fuel lines. The glow plugs on the driver’s side had a bit of oil on them but there was still plenty in the pan. As far as she could tell, the engine was sound. She felt a little bit of hope starting but she didn’t get carried away. It had hit the ground pretty hard.
There was a tarp caught under a fence not far away. Rich dragged it clear and brought it back while she took the plugs out and wiped them down on her clothes. Then they covered the engine and Rich got out of the way before she cranked it to blow any residue out of the cylinders. Put the plugs back in. Checked the tyres and the suspension.
There wasn’t much more she could do.
When they pulled the driver out they found a twelve-gauge double-barrelled shotgun wedged against the door. He was wearing a twenty-loop belt loaded with shells and he had a working phone in his jacket.
The engine ran rough and smoky for a few minutes and then smoothed out. Li couldn’t believe their luck. She unstrapped her knee crutch and put it on the back seat, climbed in beside Rich. Rich, who’d had no reason to do anything for her. Then she looked up and saw a woman walking towards them. She was swaying on her feet but she moved like she didn’t have to worry about dogs or anything else. Rich took the gun and got out and went around to the front of the four-wheel drive. Management, Li realised. She hadn’t seen anyone dressed like this woman in a long time – tailored black pants, silk shirt, torn suit jacket. Blood was dripping down one arm.
I’m going to ask you to hand over the vehicle, she said.
Rich was still but his hand on the gun was shaking.
That’s Company property. You need to go back to your area. She waved a hand towards the wreck of Transit. Procedures will be put in place.
Li couldn’t see his face, only the woman’s face as she stepped back, fear moving in even before he raised the shotgun. Roared at her.
Fuck off and die, you murderous bitch.
As they pulled away, Li saw the Company woman staring past them at the wreck of Transit and then back at the wreck of the complex. She turned in a full circle and then sat down slowly.
* * *
They drove to the highway and kept driving. Goodbye, Ange, Li thought. She felt it come and let it come, a grief and remorse that was like drowning. She wouldn’t trade it, would never go back to that dead waiting. Behind her, Transit was finished. It was what it had always been.
The range