I moved forward in the chair and rubbed both arms. The rusty chains of the hanging pot plants squeaked as they swayed in the wind.
Two things happened at once, and because I tried to comprehend them both I missed getting a good grasp on either. There was a noise out there, one that didn’t belong, and at the same moment something flashed in the corner of my eye. It could have been an owl. It could have been any number of normal night occurrences. But it wasn’t, because I was on my feet and knowing it wasn’t.
‘Denny … ?’ I whispered.
My hand opened and shut with the want of the gun. It seemed wrong though, when I was so sure it was her. I stepped up to the rail and peered into the dark just beyond it. My scalp shrunk with the cold. I reminded myself that if it was a human their vision would be as poor as mine. I was not as exposed as I felt. The edge was mine because I knew the space around me, I knew the boards that would creak, the shadows that shouldn’t be there, and could move deftly to the gun because I had a mental picture of where it was.
Rohan’s continued snoring calmed me.
I sat back in my chair.
Hot breath whispered in my ear and I leapt up. ‘Jesus Christ!’
‘Shh.’
I spun to face her. She had her finger to her lips. The shotgun was behind her. It seemed tactical. I put a hand to my heart.
‘You frightened the shit out of me!’
‘Shh.’
‘What are you doing here?’ I whispered. ‘He’ll kill you.’
‘I doubt it,’ she said flatly.
‘Please go back.’
‘Come down near the fence, where we can talk.’ She started to move away. ‘And, Shannon, bring the gun – you shouldn’t leave it lying around like that.’
We stood near the fence. The cold made me tuck my elbows into my sides. I remembered Denny was quarantined to the front paddock for a reason and put some distance between us.
She sighed and followed me back. She put a cold hand around the back of my neck and kissed me, forcing my mouth open and running her tongue over mine. It wasn’t the least bit sensual, but still, I was aroused.
‘There,’ she said, pulling away. ‘We’re both infected.’
Her actions only added to the confusion of the swirling night, the secrecy, the fear, and the excitement. Juvenile or not, I was compelled to reach out for her and bring her back in. My arm brushed her breast. She jerked away from my touch.
‘What?’ I asked. I put my hand on her waist and she twisted away.
‘Denny?’
‘Don’t touch me.’
She backed up against the fence. I pulled up short.
‘It’s not me,’ I said. ‘You tell me what to do. He’s my brother.’
When I tried again to approach she lifted her chin and kept her eyes hard on me. I showed her my hands, totally at a loss.
‘What? What is it?’
She made a soft sound in her throat. Her shoulders dropped.
‘Are you crying?’ I asked.
She came quickly to me, burying her head under my chin, balling my jumper in her hands. I gently held her. She didn’t cry, but moaned as if in pain.
‘What is it?’ I muttered. ‘What’s the matter?’
She shook her head.
‘Is it the books you had to burn? Your face? Is that it?’
‘I can’t do it,’ she said, holding me tighter.
‘It’s all right.’ I put my face against hers and spoke against her skin. ‘It’ll be all right – if you just do this, then we can work something out. You have to be careful though, because if he sees you he’ll send you away.’
‘I can’t stand it. I can hardly think straight.’
‘Being alone?’
‘You have to help me. I can’t do it.’ She pushed her hands into my stubbled hair and looked searchingly into my face. ‘You’re good men,’ she said fiercely.
Something in her words and actions made me cold inside. ‘What’s happened? Something’s happened.’ I placed her back from me and looked over her as best as I could. ‘Was someone there? At the farm. On the way back? Someone’s hurt you.’
She shook her head.
‘No, tell me the truth – something’s happened. Tell me. Someone’s touched you. You were crying when you came back, and you were late. Tell me, tell me if someone’s hurt you.’
‘No, no-one has.’
‘Denny?’
‘No-one’s hurt me.’
‘What then? What do you mean? We’re hardly
good men
. Look what you have to do. Look at your face.’
‘You are, though. I’ve made a mistake and I’m sorry. I’m not saying it to get back in, because I’ll stay out for the two weeks. But I need you to help me. I’m not very strong. Will you come out to me at night? I have to talk to you.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Tomorrow night?’
‘Of course I’ll come.’
‘Early, while Rohan’s asleep.’
I nodded.
She started to go.
‘Denny?’ I felt for her hand. ‘He thought the books might hold the virus. And I think he hit you more out of reflex – I know it’s no excuse, but …’
‘Don’t leave the gun,’ she said.
The wind whipped her words away, and I wasn’t sure I heard right.
‘Carry it with you, Shannon. You should be more careful.’
She extracted her hand from mine and walked away.
3
HAD HE BEEN
civil just one time, I might have told him.
In the afternoon I went to find him, and then stood beside him in the shed, willing him to show me something that would make me trust him. Not the sort of trust he put so much store in, not a stringent adherence to the rules, or whatever it was that put that righteous rod in his back, but the opposite – trust in his ability to have compassion, to bend the rules and leave himself open. I guess I stood there watching him and wondering if he could love. He’d been fixing a seized two-stroke motor at the bench; his hands were smeared with oil and his eyebrows drawn together over the job. He’d glanced up at me, and then glanced again. I’d composed in my head what to say. But looking at the annoyance in his eyes I saw my argument was my weakness. Had I told him I’d talked to Denny and thought something was wrong, that she had behaved strangely and I was worried about her, it would have given him more reason to send her away. Far from nodding sagely and agreeing she should come back, I imagined him pursing his lips, wiping his dirty hands, and setting into action something I’d never forgive him for. Take away his admiration of her and I doubt he loved her at all.
Other things also kept me quiet: I was suspicious of my own rationale. Denny had not acted that strange, she had not said anything that odd; re-run something endlessly in your head and pretty soon it gains overblown importance. And how often had I thought of that conversation? What minute detail had I extracted in my hundredth appraisal? – details that maybe had not even been there. I tried to recall my initial reaction to her, as a more honest barometer of my concerns, but it was tainted because she had snuck up on me, and because of those thoughts I’d had of her coming at us through the rain, gleaming and alien. There was also the horrible whisper at the back of my mind that she might be infected, and that now I was. I would keep quiet because of that, because I couldn’t have Rohan’s ranting, making it real.
But what unsettled me most the hours before I was due to go out to her was not her behaviour, not the feeling of an unravelling of secrets and lies, not being caught, not leaving the cabin at night, not anything logical or level-headed – I simply couldn’t wait to touch her. A weakness I acknowledged.
So on a still night I climbed the railing in front of me, dropped bent-kneed onto the dirt, and left the cabin behind me. I moved in a place of righteous dismissal of everything sane. Recklessness seemed a predisposed state of being when Denny was waiting.
The moonlight was half-strength. My semi-cautious steps were made loud in the empty air.
The shape of the tent sent a cold shiver through me. My dreams had confused Denny and my parents, had the flyblown faces one and the same, and approaching the pegs and thin rope I couldn’t help but believe they’d not been dreams, but premonitions.
I went down on one knee and took the gun from my shoulder.
‘Den?’
The tent was unzipped. I lifted one side of the door. It was dark and I couldn’t see, but what was telling was the silence. She wasn’t there. I brought the gun closer to my chest and felt the trigger for reassurance. For a few minutes or seconds I listened. The canvas sucked in and out in a gentle current of air. It was this slopping sound that prompted me to look back inside the tent, to pat with one outstretched hand on the bottom of her sleeping bag, to crawl right in and check for … what?
Inside it smelt of damp nylon. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t curled up and dead. My eyes adjusted to the new darkness and I saw the little home she’d made, how neat she was. The food was stacked and sorted into piles of significance, the upturned box was a table, and the few pots and utensils I’d given her were set beside it. Floor space was nonexistent. The little area struck me as everything and nothing – as though I was coming around, ever so slowly, to another place in time where this rudimentary set-up was to be appreciated for what it really was.
I heard her coming, walking quickly. She came down one side of the tent and squatted at the opening, her head and shoulders outlined. She didn’t know I was there. The bracing smell of the bush came with her, and I knew she’d been down at the creek.
‘Bloody hell,’ I said roughly. ‘Why do you always have to push the boundaries?’
She was crawling in. She cried out when I spoke and tried to stand. The whole tent warped as she caught it around her neck and she tried to scramble back. I thought it best to stay still and leave her to work out it was only me.
Back on all fours she cocked her head and came carefully forward. ‘Rohan?’
I didn’t speak.
Only an arm’s length from me and she was still unsure. I wanted her to come right up and touch me, so I stayed as I was. She was suddenly impatient. ‘I know it’s you, Shannon.’
I reached out as a test and she knocked my hand away.
‘What?’ she said.
‘You tell me. You’ve got me here.’
‘Why are you angry?’
‘Why were you down at the creek?’
She moved onto her sleeping bag and sat cross-legged. I laid the gun down and sat beside her.
‘Because it’s the only time I can get away and breathe.’
‘It would be a whole lot easier if you didn’t have to
get away
and
breathe
.’
‘Go back,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to talk to you like this.’
‘I thought after he’d made you burn your things and stay out here you might get it. You obviously don’t. There is little point to all this if you’re just going to keep taking off. I don’t know how to get it through to you. He will send you away. If we’re such
good men
why do you push us so hard?’
She shrugged despondently.
I waited for something else; nothing came. My voice softened. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No.’
I studied her profile. The tufts of her hair were tipped with silver light. I ran a heavy hand over the top of her head. She twisted under it.
‘I’ve missed you,’ I said.
I dropped my hand to her shoulder and left it there. I felt the tension in her muscles. ‘Come here,’ I said.
‘I have to tell you something.’
It took a moment, but the chill enveloped me. I pulled back from her, deceived before she’d even opened her mouth. ‘Don’t,’ I said as she began.
‘I’m not alone, Shannon. There are other people.’ She looked at me. ‘The couple at the farmhouse – they’re alive. They’ve been waiting for me. I was meant to leave earlier, to let them know what was happening, how we could all get in …’
She waited for me to say something. I didn’t speak.
‘I knew it was going wrong. Not just because of you two, and how I feel about you, but their suspicion. I wanted to tell you, both of you, but by the time I’d realised you two weren’t the threat – and that you deserved to know – it was too late. And I wanted to make the break from them first. I’d planned to tell you once I’d been back and had an idea of things. I still felt some loyalty to them. I should have known better. They were like parents to me, and I trusted them. But what they’ve done …’
I whispered viscously, ‘What have they done?’
‘No, it’s okay. Please, you can’t tell Rohan. They don’t know, the couple – they still don’t know – where the cabin is, I never told them. It was my way of making sure they wouldn’t get impatient and blow everything – they said they understood … We were hungry, things hadn’t worked out. The cattle were gone when we arrived at the farm and their only rifle had been stolen in town. There was no stockpile of food. They’re in their sixties and we were already weak from the walk in. I still thought though that they were all I had, and if nothing else I could trust them, and they would trust me.
‘I found Rohan and the cabin like I told you. But I went back and told them. We worked out it would be best if I came first. I was meant to go back and give them a time to come in. But I took too long. When I went back they were different people. She’d been like a mother to me. We’d been through so much. I was never terribly close to him, though I still felt a connection, because of it all. He was always quiet and reserved – at least, I thought he was.’
She stopped and waited a few seconds before continuing.
‘I knew there’d be resentment. I’d come in after weeks of nothing and having put on weight. Also I was worried that they’d see it, in my face – see where I’d prefer to be. The switch of allegiance, you know. But I wasn’t ready for how much they’d changed – the hate, and what they were prepared to do. They’d been waiting for me to come, and had a plan. At first they were fine – but too understanding, especially considering the state of them. I felt so fat and shameful, and understood why they couldn’t look me in the eye, and how they would hate me for the way I was. But this was different …
‘The farmhouse is long and weatherboard, with a lot of unused rooms. I had to go inside and get my things. I told them that I couldn’t take them with me this time, but I’d be coming back – that it wouldn’t be long now. I could see they didn’t believe me, and I should’ve left then. But I wanted my things. My room looked untouched, but I couldn’t find my photos – the ones of my family. It was while searching for the photos that they both came in and shut the door. They’d hidden rope, and a piece of wood, and he was holding a knife. They were going to tie me up. Make me bring them here. I don’t care what they went through – they talk about survival, make their excuses …’