Red Queen (10 page)

She grabbed my arm and pulled me back down.

‘We won’t talk about it anymore.’

She put her legs either side of me. I dropped my head as she ran light fingertips over my back.

‘What are you doing, Denny?’

‘Can’t we do this anymore?’

‘No, probably not.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t fancy spelling it out. It’s enough I have to listen to it every night.’

Her face was close to my shoulder. I could feel her smile. ‘Do you listen?’

‘I think you do play games. And I think they’re unfair.’

‘If life’s a game, then I’ll concede, but other than that I do not.’

‘Don’t play us off.’

‘I swear, I’m not. That’s the last thing I want.’

‘What
do
you want?’

‘I want to be a part of something safe and strong. I don’t think things will get better for a long time, and even when they do it’ll be nothing like before. As a unit we’re strong – we’ve just got to get the dynamic right.’

‘And that involves you sleeping with the top dog, while fooling around with the pup?’

She laughed and wrapped her arms around me. ‘It’s a little more complicated than that.’

I pushed her off roughly. ‘You might have watched us, but don’t presume to know us. You don’t know how we think.’

My push had hurt her; she touched her shoulder.

‘Shit …’ I muttered.

‘No, it’s my fault.’

‘Don’t say that …’ I rubbed my forehead. ‘Denny, I don’t know how to feel.’

She moved to me. ‘I’m sorry.’ She leaned in and kissed my temple.

I ground my teeth, rigid against her.

She kissed me again, near my eye, my eyebrow, pressing her lips, her fingers soft on my skin, touching my face as though she loved me.

I held her head in my hands and put my forehead hard against hers.

‘Don’t,’ I forced out between my teeth.

‘But I do,’ she said.

Rohan’s anger was an exceptional thing: as coarse and open as it was, it was also controlled. When Rohan lost his temper, it was because he wanted to. This was good, because it gave the impression he’d never make a huge mistake – that he always had something in reserve – but it was also bad, because it was an indication of what he’d let himself be, another carnal part of him he’d reasoned out and accepted.

And if it was a snarling raving state Rohan so desired – well, so be it.

‘Tell me you two have done more than sunbake on this bloody veranda all day! I can’t even go and
get
the food to
lay out
cos I can’t trust you. Bugger the fact that you eat like there’s no tomorrow, it’s worse that you do nothing with it! I mean, don’t let me interrupt your tans. You can’t be left two minutes without lolling round like we’re all on school camp.’

He was standing in the dirt, and we were looking down on him, but still he seemed taller. His eyes moved between us. He hadn’t caught us kissing, but I knew the guilt was written on our faces.

‘Do you two ever think ahead and realise things will get worse? Every single thing we use is one less day we’ll have it. The generator and batteries won’t last forever. You don’t pull spare parts from thin bloody air. We could easily lose the flock, the fishing could be off for weeks, a fox could dig in and kill every chook before you two had even pulled your thick heads from the clouds. We’ll be without power soon and it might be a good thing; you can get a better appreciation of what we’re up against. I’d actually like for one of you to fall flat on your face just to feel how quick things can swing to desperate.’

‘We know you would,’ I sneered back, but then regretted it in the fierceness of his stare. ‘People cope differently than you,’ I followed up.

‘What have you done today?’

‘The sheep,’ I said. ‘We crutched the sheep.’

‘The whole lot?’

‘Almost.’

‘No – because it would be too much to ask, wouldn’t it, that you’d start a job and actually finish it. How long does it take? Both of you? I’d love to see it – the useless way you two work. Let me guess – there’d be a lot of breaks, a lot of inane chat, perhaps some brainless singing, and a whole bloody lot of nothing getting done.’

His eyes were hard on Denny now, and it was clear he’d picked up on the intensity between us.

‘Get the slaughter knife,’ he ordered. ‘We’re killing a sheep.’

‘Now?’ I said.

‘Yes,
now
.’

He tossed his bag onto the woodpile, and began rolling up his shirtsleeves.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I won’t.’

Rohan shifted his position and the sheep beneath him bleated plaintively.

‘Get down here now.’

‘I won’t do it.’

‘You’ll do it all right.’

‘I don’t want to.’

He looked up at her.

‘What?’

‘I don’t want to do it, Rohan.’

‘That’d have to be the most pathetic reason I’ve ever heard. You’ll bloody do it now.’

I held the knife out for Rohan to take. ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Just kill it.’

‘Pass it to Denny.’

‘No! I won’t kill it!’

‘I’ll do it,’ I said moving forward.

‘I don’t want you to do it!’ Rohan roared.

‘You can’t make her do it.’

‘Denny! Move!’

Rohan leant back to give Denny room to kneel in front of him. She looked at the face of the sheep; it was snorting, terrified, through its flared nostrils.

‘I can’t do it,’ she said, but straddled the sheep anyway.

Rohan put two firm hands on her shoulders and pushed her hard into the neck of the sheep. ‘Sit on the thing! Put your weight into it!’

‘Don’t shout at me!’

‘Put your hand under its chin and pull its head right back over your knee. Right back!’

‘Stop shouting at me!’

The sheep struggled in Denny’s hold.

She wouldn’t be able to do it – her body was too limp, the sheep seemed stronger.

‘Hold it!’ Rohan said. ‘Control the damn thing! Bend its head as far back as you can.’

Kneeling behind Denny, Rohan reached out towards me for the knife. I put the handle in his palm. He gripped it and brought it down in front of Denny’s face.

‘Like this,’ he said, and bent her forward with him as he made the motion of cutting the sheep’s pale exposed throat.

‘I can’t,’ she cried.

‘In, and firm across. No weak-wristed action. Just in and quick across. Don’t think about it.’ He moved to get up.

‘No!’ Denny said. ‘Stay here.’

He stood. ‘Kill the bloody thing; we’ve been stuffing around long enough.’

I was proud of her as she drew in a breath and pulled a face of disgust in preparation for the act. She clenched the knife white-knuckled, frowned down at the long column of muscle she had to slice through. Her hand shook as she rested the tip of the knife on the far side of the animal’s neck; the sheep felt it and gave a frantic last fight. It was perhaps this which pushed her on – she thrust the knife in and yanked it across; I saw the resistance surprised and sickened her, but in half a second she was through and the neck gave further as the wound opened up.

Blood gushed thick and vivid onto the grass. The sheep kicked in fading, easing spasms. Denny gripped the knife and stared down.

Rohan went up and crouched beside her; he had his back to me and I couldn’t see his face. Denny lifted her gaze and looked at him, detached.

‘You’re a bastard,’ she said.

He smiled. ‘Nicely done.’

She turned away, but her face flushed red and pleased. The tips of her fingers were covered in blood and she wiped them on the grey fleece. Rohan put his hand under her elbow and helped her up.

‘Now,’ he said, once she had straightened. ‘You’ll skin and gut it.’

That night she wouldn’t play cards. She sat on the couch in the corner and wouldn’t even look our way.

‘Stop sulking,’ Rohan said, while shuffling the deck. ‘Admit it – you’re pleased. You know you can do it now. Might save your life one day; kill an animal like that – know what to do with it once it’s dead.’

He dealt the cards and we checked our hands.

‘Did you deal yourself a red queen?’ Denny asked.

Rohan bristled. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Ask Shannon. He’ll explain the theory if you’re not familiar with it.’

Rohan turned and watched her for a few seconds.

‘No, I won’t ask Shannon – I know what you mean.’

He sat back and smiled. ‘I’m not quaking in my boots just yet, Denny. Killing the odd sheep doesn’t quite qualify as adaptive counter measures. You’re not what I’d call a deadly resistance fighter.’

‘Give me time.’

He laughed. ‘So the assumption is that I’m the predator? I don’t know about that. It was you who set us in your sights. From an outsider’s perspective I’d say you’d be the one displaying all the predatory traits. From every angle – including parasite/host,’ he held up his hand, ‘not that I’m calling you a parasite – but from all the supposed
evolutionary
conflicts it would seem you’re the one doing all the sabre rattling. Who’s to say I’m not adapting to you?’

‘You’re doing a piss-poor job.’

He chuckled and sorted his hand. ‘Anyway, the theory isn’t sound. I wouldn’t get too excited. And even if you do start talking resistance and counter-measures, something tells me the Taliban did more than slaughter a few sheep before they levelled the Twin Towers.’

‘It’s all relative,’ Denny said.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he retorted heartily. ‘I’m a superpower, aren’t I? In this cabin, in this micro environment, aren’t I the equivalent to the American might?’

‘Shut up, Rohan,’ I said.

‘That’s the futility of the argument,’ he said. ‘You can go round and round forever, and then take a different tack and go round and round again. It’s any wonder depression and apathy were rife in the freethinking communities.’

‘Oh yes, compared to the oppression and persecution of the religious ones?’ I said.

‘I’m sleeping out here tonight,’ Denny said from her place over on the couch.

Rohan flashed amused eyes over at her. ‘Sure you are.’

He settled back happily in his chair.

After a moment of silence, Denny suddenly spoke. ‘It was the way you made me do it,’ she said, with a high note of hurt in her voice, ‘and then while I gutted it you stood there yelling at me.’

‘That was not yelling.’

‘You said I was stupid, useless, a drongo, brainless and without a bloody clue!’

‘Common sense would tell you to take some care and not cut the stomach wall. Or get blood all over the sheets we’re using to keep the flies off. You’re as rough as hell.’

‘How do expect me to do it right when you’re so …
horrible
.’

‘Horrible?’

‘Yes.’

Rohan tapped his cards together and clicked them down. He got to his feet.

Denny crossed her arms and drew her legs in tighter as he went to her.

I watched from my chair as he climbed over her and pushed her shoulders into the cushions. He murmured something in her ear and she shoved him away.

‘You wanna sleep out here tonight?’ he teased.

They wrestled and Rohan laughed; I looked away.

‘You’re a bastard and I hate you,’ Denny said, but with little conviction.

They were still, and I thought they might have kissed, or Rohan kissed her, because then he snickered and said, ‘You think you’re strong, don’t you?’

‘I am strong,’ she said.

‘Where’d you learn that? Some town hall self-defence class?’

They wrestled some more and Rohan goaded her to try harder.

‘See,’ he taunted. ‘That’s not the way to do it. You’ll never beat me that way. And not below the belt – that’s poor form.’

‘Not to me.’

He laughed genuinely and suddenly.

‘Did
that
hurt?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

I resolved to leave; it was obvious what they were leading into. They both laughed now, and there were pauses between each struggle. I could hear them breathing. My thoughts were fixed on picking up the gun and going out to the veranda, but my body wouldn’t move. For a while I didn’t hear them, I sat there willing myself to get up and leave, wondering why I’d put myself through this.

‘You wanna sleep out here?’ Rohan said again, and a questioning tone in his voice had me looking over.