“Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the fact that your friend here is a D and you’ve set a terrible example for everyone else. Those who are not fit for the new world may not be a part of it.”
He raises the gun. I get ready to lunge at him again but this time, he doesn’t hesitate even for a second. The trigger is pulled. An ear shattering bang sounds and then the dull thud of a bullet hitting a body sends a ripple of goose bumps over my flesh. I wonder if he missed because I feel no pain. Maybe there is so much adrenalin pumping through my veins that I didn’t feel the bullet pierce my skin. Seiger’s face is again void of all emotion when I look at him. There is a tiny wisp of smoke leaving the barrel of the gun.
Then, as Clara’s hands fall away from my arm, I realise he wasn’t aiming for me.
I swing around, stumbling and unsteady, and Clara crumples to the ground. Her head hits the cement hard, harder than mine did, and blood immediately seeps from the bullet wound in her forehead, creating a puddle around her face. Her eyes have already glazed over with a glassy film. Her limbs jut out from beneath her body in a deformed way, twitching several times while the life flees its vessel.
I hear myself scream. It is a blood-curdling scream. I wouldn’t think I could make such a terrible sound. I twist towards Seiger, set to kill, but something sharp hits me in the neck and I feel a chill in my blood. I slap at my neck and an empty glass syringe with a red feather tail falls to the ground and shatters. Another second goes by and black specks dance before my eyes. I try to rub them away with my fist but the specks get bigger until they have covered my vision with darkness. I feel my body smack into the ground without realising I was falling, and then the blackness consumes me.
5.
I don’t want to wake up.
Or maybe I do?
That couldn’t have been real. Things like that don’t happen in real life. The past three years of my life could all have been a dream that occurred in just a few hours of sleep. That terrifying rally might have been the last few moments within my wandering unconscious mind.
Yes, that must be it. I’m waking from a dream—a nightmare. I will open my eyes and see the familiar grainy patterns of my wooden roof in my bedroom. Mum will be preparing breakfast in the kitchen. Dad will already be outside in the paddocks working. My brother and I will walk to school together in an hour. I’ll meet Clara in the classroom…
Clara.
I open my eyes.
I am looking at grainy wood patterns but they aren’t familiar. They aren’t the ones I have stared at thousands of times in my bedroom. I am not at home.
I feel like I am moving, although I am lying on my back. I can hear the sound of wheels rolling slowly, and every now and then they jolt over a patch of rough terrain, causing painful bumps. I am in some sort of large wooden box. Flakes of blood cling to my eyelashes, keeping them from opening fully. I want to scratch it from my eyes, but I realise my hands are bound behind my back and my shoulders ache from sleeping in such an awkward position.
Not sleeping, I remind myself. Knocked unconscious by that tranquilizer.
Disturbing images flood back to me so quickly my brain gives a painful throb. The horror of the assembly, the hours of people being sent off into herds like cattle, then Clara’s name called and… I quickly shut the thoughts off and refrain from any attempt to move—am I alone or being watched? I don’t want anyone knowing I am awake.
My arms feel numb and heavy, but finally my eyes adjust. I loll my throbbing head and through the slit of crusty blood I see I am alone in the large wooden crate.
I glance around the wooden box and strain my ears, listening. I hear the sound of metal horseshoes clip-clopping on a road. There are two horses, judging by the amount of steps I can hear, towing my box on wheels. One window in the back of the box has steel bars running horizontally across and it offers a depressing glimpse of light outside. I wouldn’t be able to fit through the gaps. Every part of my brain is searching for an escape route, looking for weaknesses in the wall or roof, but my crate is sturdy and God knows where I am. Even if I could escape the box, where would I go?
Anywhere is better than our destination. If the D group was murdered, what is going to happen to me—the girl who violently savaged Lieutenant Seiger? Torture, imprisonment, death? Worse?
After concentrating for another minute, I realise I must be in a horse drawn caravan, like gypsy people used to travel in. The new government doesn’t allow the use of cars after all. As far as I can tell from my squinting, lying down position, there is no way out. I try to keep myself calm and wonder what in God’s name I am doing locked in a wooden caravan by myself, but my breathing quickly becomes fast and shallow. What have these lunatics done with my family if they were happy to shoot my best friend in front of a crowd of hundreds of people? Is my family being punished for my wild, dangerous behaviour? I have to escape and find them. We have to run away and go into hiding. This government has now completely lost the plot. I knew it was only a matter of time.
However, I won’t escape by lying here and waiting for someone to come and retrieve me. I sit up quietly, rolling my aching shoulders, and then tentatively testing how squeaky the wooden boarding is by pressing my boot to the floor. It’s very creaky but the noise of the wheels jolting up and down drowns it out. I don’t want anyone to know I am awake and even if I’m not guarded, someone must be driving the horses. Using the wall to support myself, I manage to struggle to my feet. On my toes, I creep over to the barred window and peek outside.
To my dismay, I see Lieutenant Seiger and several other guards on horseback plodding along behind my box. Seiger still has the gun that murdered my best friend strapped at his waist, and his guards are armed as well. Even their magnificent, muscled horses are wearing medieval style armoured breastplates and brow bands—as if something is going to jump out and try to kill these vile people to rescue me. Who would want to rescue me anyhow? My, possibly deceased, family? My definitely dead best friend? Seiger isn’t wearing his jumpsuit anymore, but instead a long sleeved white shirt and jeans. Beneath the white fabric, I can see bandages wrapped awkwardly around his shoulder and neck. I revel when I spot the darker shades of blood that seep through both the bandage and the shirt. I seriously hurt him—and he deserved every bit of pain.
We are traveling on a dirt road dimpled with potholes in the middle of monotonous Australian bushland. I see the gnarled trunks of red streaked Snow Gum trees and the straight shafts of Candlebarks growing thick, white and ghostly. Ugly brown Bracken Fern, tussocks of stringy Snowgrass and some native shrubbery grow beneath the pale barked trees. Everything is covered with a fine layer of powdery white snow, and the patchy red bark of the Snow Gums shows so vividly in the pale world that it looks like Seiger’s blood-spotted bandage. We must be in the mountains for it to be snowing at the end of winter. The bushland looks vaguely familiar to me, with the dense tree cover and low growing shrubbery. When all of the guards twist in their saddles to watch a fox scamper into the low growing tea tree bushes, I stand on my toes, stick my nose out the window and inhale a breath. My terrified racing heart slows as a rush of nostalgia hits me.
I’ve been here before! Or at least I’ve been in this general area. We are in the high country Alps, up in the mountains where there are no people, no houses, no civilisation. I would recognise the landscape and the sweet, eucalypt scent of it anywhere. My aunt and uncle live an hour away by car. Or they used to. I wonder if they have been rallied up yet or not. They probably have. I doubt the government would rally and sort one town at a time. Word would spread too quickly. People would go into hiding.
No, if they did it to our town, every other town in Australia had the same thing done on the same day.
Despite this, I feel a twinge of hope. If I can escape this caravan, I can survive in this part of the world. The Alps are as much a part of me as the farmhouse my family lives in. I’ve been here so often to visit my aunt and uncle and go horse riding and cattle droving with the
m. Excited by the old comforts of the Alps, it takes a minute before I notice a pushdown handle two feet below the barred window. The back wall of my crate is a door! I turn backwards, curl my sore hands around the lever and push down. The metal handle sinks an inch and then jars to a stop. It’s locked. A frustrated sigh rattles out of my mouth in a steamy breath of vapour. I should have known better than to think the door would be open.
I have to wait until Seiger opens the caravan door and hope that we are still in the Alps when he does. Until then, I need to think about how far away from home I am. By car, the trip from my home town to the Alps would take a good three hours. A horse drawn caravan would take much, much longer to travel: probably two days if we stopped overnight. From what I can see peeking out the window, the sun is high in the sky, about midday. It feels like the horses are walking at a steady gait now so we aren’t moving quickly. Was I loaded into this caravan straight after the rally or held somewhere else first? Have I only been in it for a day or two?
Knowing I won’t get out by bashing my weight against the walls or hollering for help, I walk back over to my resting spot and sit against the wall, wriggling my hands in their painful bonds. I twist them so much that the ropes pinch my skin and eventually I give up. They are far too tight to wriggle free.
I wonder if all of the Ds are dead already. And what happened to my family? They should have been in the As because they were farmers, useful people to the government, but what does that mean anyhow? Where are they now? Were they allowed to go home after the rally? Or were they, like me, to be transported elsewhere?
Then I remember all of the gunshots I heard as I was mauling Seiger and wondering why I wasn’t being hit. The bullets were never intended for me. Seiger’s rooftop gunmen had been targeting people rioting in the crowd. And more than likely, my family would have been among those rebelling as Clara dropped dead and I was darted.
I don’t feel panic or terror anymore, just confusion and emptiness. I am too tired to keep thinking. My forehead feels like it has swollen to twice its normal size and my stomach gives a loud grumble. My mouth feels like a kitty-litter tray, dry and scratchy. How long has it been since I drank or ate or went to the bathroom? I sniff my armpits but I don’t smell bad. I suppose you don’t work up much of a sweat when you’re unconscious. I’d kill for a slice of bread and a cup of water because the acid in my stomach feels as though it’s eating the lining of my belly. I groan and let my head hit the back wall with a thud. The movement sends a shudder of pain through my brain and I curse.
“Hello?” a voice from behind me says.
Thinking I imagined it, I ignore it but the same voice comes again, “Who is that?”
I gingerly turn my sore body towards the wooden wall and find there is a small hole in one of the planks of wood. It is about the size of a twenty-cent piece and when I lower my eye to it, I see a human mouth, lips parted slightly, on the other side. A spark of hope surges inside of me. Whoever the person is, they don’t sound like a guard. The caravan must be divided into two sections and the person on the other side is a prisoner just like me.
I press my lips against the hole and whisper. “Who is that?”
“Who are you first?” comes the suspicious reply.
“I’m Freya,” I say quietly. “Are you in B too?”
“Yes,” the reply comes. The voice sounds tired but it is also smooth and flowing and deep. It’s definitely a male on the other side, but I can’t tell if he is young or old. “My name is Whil.”
“Whil?” I repeat. There were many Whils in my school. “Where are you from?”
“Canberra.”
My heart sinks. He isn’t from my hometown. Canberra, a large city that I have never been to, is a long distance from my hometown of Thesal. My parents went to Canberra once to sell cows and it took hours of driving to get there. It would have been nice to be stuck with someone from my own town. Then I realise it doesn’t matter at all. The man on the other side of the wall is in the same situation as I am and understands what I’ve been through.
“What did you do to get put into B?” Whil asks.
“I attacked Seiger for killing my best friend.”
After a slight pause, he says, “I’m sorry for your friend. Are you okay?”
“I haven’t had time to think about it yet. What’d you do?”
“I attacked one of Seiger’s men who was in charge of my town. Except it was for my mother.”
I imagine my mother falling back with a bullet in her brain and shiver. I pray to a God I don’t believe in that it didn’t happen. To any of my family.
“I’m sorry,” I say sincerely.
“It’s okay. Do you know what the B group are meant to be?” Whil asks.
“No, do you? I don’t really know what the A group are for either. Seiger didn’t tell us much.”
“The A’s are people that the new government thinks are useful to the world they want to build. Farmers, butchers, horse trainers, blacksmiths that sort of thing. I don’t know what B is for. I just know that in all of Canberra, I was one of five chosen for it. We were all separated. They brought me in a car to your town and then we both got thrown in here yesterday morning.”
I frown against the wooden panelling. Car? The cars that are supposed to be prohibited? And one of five? From what I’ve heard, Canberra has a massive population of people and yet only five were chosen to be in B? I’d been surprised enough that my own hometown, with a population of five or six hundred people, had only spawned one B member nearing the end of the rally: me. Our town once had a population of two thousand, but people had fled the town to join their families when the electricity had been switched off. And some, with no family to turn to, had killed themselves or had died from combinations of malnutrition and ailments that could no longer be treated. If the Ds are already dead, that means the population has plummeted again.
Aside from all of that, why are we so rare and special? Why is the government so taken by our ferocity? Why wouldn’t they simply kill all of us vicious rebels since they had no reservations about killing others?
“Is there a guard with you, Whil?”
“No. And there isn’t a way out of the caravan. Seiger won’t let us out until we get there, but he isn’t going to hurt you.”
“He killed my best friend!” I snarl against the wall.
“I just meant he isn’t a womaniser,” Whil says quietly. “And he hasn’t been cruel to me.”
“Oh.”
I’m nearly kissing the wooden boards talking to the man on the other side. I want to remain as close to Whil as possible. He’s like a safety blanket—something of comfort. Another human who understands and is in the same position as me is the only thing comforting about my situation.
There is silence between us for a few seconds and then Whil asks, “Can you put your eye to the hole so I can see you?”
“Don’t poke it out or something,” I say, a lame attempt at a joke. He chuckles anyway. The sound fills me with a welcomed bit of relief, a warmth, and I crouch low to hold my eye against the hole.
A blue eye with dark brown, almost black lashes is looking back at me from the other side. It is a kind looking eye. The sort of eye that belongs to a gentle, old-fashioned man who holds doors open for ladies and speaks in a dignified, respectful manner. Yet, I see no crows-feet around his eye, and I sense that he is quite young. I feel a surge of heat course through my body as we study one another intensely.
“You have blood on your face,” Whil says, the concern in his voice is obvious. His eye doesn’t leave mine.
“I hit my head on the concrete at home.”
“Is it sore?”
“Yes, but I’m okay. Where do you think they are taking us?”
“They were talking about the ring earlier. It sounds like it’s just a big area they throw us in. From what I gathered, it’s fenced and guarded in some places. I gather it’s some sort of testing arena for anyone who made it into B.”
I see a
brow pull low over Whil’s eye. I know I’m frowning too. What is this group we are in? Why do we have to get tested again?
“I am getting sick of tests,” I say, leaning my forehead against the wood. The memories are causing a turmoil within me, and I can no longer supress them. As a theatre production of horrible images flitters past my eyes, and I feel a painful lump rise in my throat as my eyes begin to sting.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry! I tell myself, but the image of Clara buckled on the ground like a discarded doll whirls through my mind. I couldn’t save her. The girl I grew up with. I allowed her to die while I survived.
Me. The vicious, feral girl who attacked the lieutenant survived instead of the innocent, kind-hearted girl who had willingly got on that stage, knowing she would be killed. I see the same images of my family, herded out of the town centre and lined up against a wall with the other people in the D group. I see a firing squad gunning them down mercilessly. A sob finally works its way up my throat. Tears begin streaming down my dirty, bloody face, and I sniff loudly.
“Hey,” Whil’s voice comes on the other side. “Don’t cry. We’ll be okay.”
His concern doesn’t help. I remember the feeling of those multiple terrified people pressed against me in the town centre. The sweet, acrid stink that was in the air and could only be described as the smell of pure terror: the children screaming on the stage and the crowd bellowing with utter fury and dread. I crunch my eyes closed and the tears flow hot and thick.
“Freya,” Whil’s voice comes quietly. “I promise we will be okay.” I open my eyes.
Suddenly, Whil pokes his pinkie finger through the hole and I stare at it for a long time, wondering what to do. Would people in this situation hold hands to comfort one another? To show each other that the other is there? I know if Clara were here, she would be holding my hand. And so would my mother, or father, or brother. I force back my tears, put my back to the wall and awkwardly lift my bound hands to link my pinkie finger through Whil’s in a silent promise that we will survive. Although it is difficult to hold my hand to the wall this way, calmness spreads through my body at his touch. I lean my head against the wooden panels again and sigh, concentrating on the warmth of his finger instead of the horrific images in my mind.
Red Fox Page 4