Red Queen (15 page)

Because the complexities were beyond me I lay and tried for thoughts more concrete – like what her face might look like today. It had been dark red and bluish down one side last night, her eye bloodshot, and her top lip swollen; while Rohan had only the vaguest red under his nose. Denny’s hand possibly hurt more than Rohan’s face. I wished Denny hadn’t thumped him like she had, then at least I could fully blame Rohan. But I couldn’t help but have the feeling that she had asked for it. And she had.

There were also the troubling particulars of her punch: they were expert. I got the impression she’d held back. I’m sure Rohan thought this too. The vision of her in that sparring stance wouldn’t leave me. It made me revisit every intimate moment I’d had with her. I thought back to my hands on her body – looking for hints of that strength, remembering her legs and calves, her slim upper arms, not wanting that display of power to taint the memories, yet at the same time thrilled by her physicality; attracted and repulsed.

The silence in the house grew loud and I climbed from bed.

I immediately saw the note. It was lying on the floor, inside the door.

The tone of the note was apologetic: Sorry, but she had to go, please understand, last night had only made it more important, she needed things of her own, she was confused and needed some time, she hoped I understood.

I skipped most of it, got to the crux.

She’d gone to the farmhouse.

That last line was also important:
I’ll be back before Rohan
.

She wasn’t.

He came and found me in the killing shed, stacking firewood. For a while we didn’t talk. The shed smelt of fat and blood and bone – it always did, it was in the dirt, the walls. I imagined the place under those ultraviolet lights, a blood-splattered hillbilly hell.

‘Where is she?’ he asked at last.

‘You’re back early.’

‘Where is she?’

I finished stacking the wood and walked up to him before answering. ‘She’s gone,’ I said into his face.

The barely disguised panic I saw was more cold confirmation of his feelings for her. It swelled my heart in a cruel way to see him suffer. I left him to stew a while, my mouth curling in a smile.

My smug moment didn’t last long; I had the briefest taste of something hedonistic and right before he came together in front of me, shrinking me just with the tightening of his eyes, his insight.

‘That’s nice, Pup, but be bloody smart about it. Where is she? She’s not gone. It’s the farmhouse, isn’t it?’ He walked away. ‘She’s got no idea, that woman.’

I caught up to him halfway back to the cabin.

‘Stop,’ I said.

He walked with purpose.

‘She just wanted to get her things,’ I said. ‘If we had let her get them in the first place it wouldn’t be like this. There are books – books are important to her.’

‘I know.’

I walked next to him, striding to keep up. ‘You know … so …’ We stopped at the shed nearest the cabin. He unlocked the door. ‘… so she’s told you, and you understand. What are you doing?’

‘What’s it look like I’m doing?’

For me the tent he took down was doubly fateful. My parents had died in one and also it meant Denny would be separated from me longer than this tense, elastic day. I didn’t want her in a tent; I had dreams of tents, flapping fabric, humming, grey horror shots of my parents’ bloated bodies.

I put my hands on the dusty cardboard box and tried to still it. Rohan shoved it into me.

‘Get out of the way. Actually, you can go inside and get her a sleeping bag. Get her a box of food. Two weeks’ worth. Hurry, or she’ll have nothing.’

He pushed past me and out into the sun.

We pitched the tent for her, in a high dry spot, under the gums. We cleared the fallen sticks and sheep shit before rolling it out. The canvas was bottle green. Once up, the tent looked perversely small and neat. Rohan stopped at unrolling her bedding or laying out her pillow; he tossed them through the open zipper and dumped the box of food just within the door. I think the only reason he pitched the tent for her was so she could see it and understand without instruction. He zipped it up.

I tried again. ‘She’d been living there for months. She won’t be infected. No-one could make it out here infected. We haven’t heard any cars. She wouldn’t risk herself if she wasn’t sure.’

‘Did you know she was going?’

‘No. But I knew she wanted to. She left a note.’

We walked away from the tent. ‘Don’t make her do this,’ I said. ‘She’ll leave.’

‘She won’t leave.’

At the cabin fence we both turned to look at the final distance the tent was from us; it was about five hundred metres, the wandering sheep the only thing likely to obstruct our view of her. We’d pitched the tent straight on, so now as I lifted the binoculars I could see the plastic seam of the zipper. Rohan took the binoculars from me and surveyed the bush.

‘You hit her,’ I said.

‘No. She hit me. I don’t care who it is, if someone shapes up to me like that and hits me in the face, I’ll hit them back.’

‘That’s why you never married, isn’t it. How many of your girlfriends did you backhand? Did they leave you the first time or did you get to knock them around a bit before they shit-canned you?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Or did they get an idea of what would be in store from the rough sex? Start to get a bit suspicious when you held them round the back of the neck and bent them over the side of a chair?’

He walked away.

It was well into the afternoon when she walked the mountain bike out of the bush and into the paddock. I had Dad’s binoculars and Rohan had her lightweight pair. We were standing on the veranda, side by side, watching her come. She had a backpack of my father’s and it looked heavy. Her face was intense and red and heavily bruised on her cheek. My finger rolled quickly to adjust the focus as she mounted the bike and rode towards us. She steered one-handed and pinched her nose as though she had been crying; I watched her sniff and shake her head. One eye was swollen and almost closed. Rohan was near enough to hear as I muttered my resentment of him.

The trees were thick where she was; she weaved through them, over roots and fallen strips of bark. Her expression didn’t change – it was fierce, or upset. She picked up pace as the ground evened out.

She saw the tent and braked. I frantically sought her face, desperate to see her reaction. I missed her initial shock and saw she was already thinking ahead: you could see her mind busy behind her blank features. The bike was between her legs; she got off and kicked out the stand and put the backpack down near the front wheel. She walked halfway towards the tent, then slowly stopped. I was able to pinpoint the very second she thought she might be being watched; her whole demeanour changed, and she looked more like Denny. Her hands relaxed and she did something with her back, almost as if she altered her centre of gravity, and in an instant she was more lithe and fluid, not braced against life, but moving in it. Apart from her change in body language you wouldn’t know she’d suspected us, because she didn’t look over at the cabin.

Therefore it was surprising what she did next. She turned her head in one smooth action and stared right down the binoculars, right into my eyes; it was impossible for her to actually do this of course, but her gaze was decisive enough to make it seem real. She didn’t even have a moment of searching for us on the veranda; she swung her head and fixed straight on us. I fought the urge to lower the binoculars, to re-confirm the space between us and my advantage.

While I watched, blinking at her unblinking stare, her mouth moved around the words,
let me in
. She might not have spoken them out loud, I don’t know, but they rang loud in my head.

‘No,’ Rohan said quietly next to me. ‘Fraid not.’

I lowered my binoculars and she was back in perspective – a distant, dark-clothed shape, striking even from here. I realised then that she was dressed in her old clothes – her heavy navy jumper, the torn jeans, the clothes I’d first seen her in, and thinking back to her feet on the pedals, I realised she also had her old sneakers on.

Rohan put down his binoculars. She must have seen this, and she opened up the stage accordingly; she stepped into an area of sun, where we could see her better, and stood straight on to us.

‘Let me in,’ she shouted.

‘Let her come back,’ I said.

‘
Let me in!
’ she screamed.

‘Not a chance,’ Rohan said. ‘She doesn’t come any closer than where she is right now for two weeks, and not a day before. Don’t fight me on this, Shannon, because that is what she wants. We watch her day and night until the time’s up, and maybe she’ll stay put next time.’

‘That’s it, isn’t it – that’s what this is to you: a way to throw your weight around. It’s not about the virus. How do we trust one another when there’s no fairness to the rules? You go off every day and breeze in and out, and she goes for one day and gets this?’

‘I would never go inside another house, pick up books and clothes that I didn’t know were clean. I bet she didn’t even take gloves or a mask. Just because she came out uninfected last time doesn’t automatically mean she comes out clean this time. I don’t even like the idea of books – each new page would be suspect to me, the one someone could have sneezed on, or licked their finger for. Not only will she stay out there, she’ll light a fire and burn everything she’s brought back with her.’

He climbed the railing and stood on the top beam, holding the gutter above him for support. ‘Two weeks,’ he called to her. ‘Burn the backpack. Everything. Two weeks from then.’

She lifted her head to the sky and said something we couldn’t hear.

‘No fire at night,’ he called. ‘Stock trough for water. No further than the back fence. No closer than that. Two weeks from every mistake you make. Come in and you’re out. Talk around Shannon and you’re out. Just shut up and take it. Be thankful I’ll let you back in at all.’

I thought she might have sworn, still looking up at the sky, because a faint burst of noise carried to us.

‘She’s not gunna do it,’ I said.

Rohan jumped down. ‘She’ll do it.’

We lifted our binoculars. She was looking at her feet, gripping the shoulders of her jumper and tugging it forward, as if about to reef the whole thing off. Her torso was rising with each breath. She was talking but we couldn’t hear it. The wind was picking up and I smelt rain coming.

‘She knows I’m right,’ Rohan said. ‘It was her risk, not ours. And she knows I’m actually being pretty damn fair. She’s thinking if it was one of us, the situation spun, she’d do the same.’

‘Hope she flattens you next time,’ I muttered.