‘You’re not telling me something,’ he said.
‘What do you want? It happened. Do you want us to say we’re sorry?’
‘I want you to tell me the truth.’
‘Can’t we get Shannon comfortable before we get into this? Can’t you just put him first before you start on with who was right and wrong and whose fault this was?’
‘You run down to the veranda to get Shannon, and you tell him there are two people out there, in the dark, and neither of you wake me? You go off into the bush after them? It’s not washing, Denny.’
She looked to me. I couldn’t help her. I was scoured out, and right on the edge of sleep. Rohan didn’t take his eyes from her, and she couldn’t look at him.
‘Shannon was already in my tent,’ she conceded. ‘He was already there. He’d come out because of my birthday. We both heard something and it happened from there. They came out of nowhere and we didn’t know what was going on. There were suddenly two people there. Part of the reason it happened the way it did was because we were worried about you finding out.’
‘Shannon was in your tent?’
‘The confusion, and the rain, and the chance of you sending me away, it was all those things. We didn’t —’
‘And it wasn’t just this time.’
‘What?’
‘Shannon; he’d been out to your tent before.’
‘Surely it doesn’t matter now.’
‘He’s been going out to you every night?’
‘I don’t see how this can matter … It’s not important.’
Rohan turned to face the fire and sat his drink down on the mantle.
‘It can’t matter now!’ she said.
‘I don’t think it does matter to you.’
He pushed a hand through his hair. I couldn’t see him, but gauged his emotions through Denny; she’d moved around to look at him. As she watched him her confidence returned; she became annoyed.
‘Rohan, not now.’
‘That’s the thing, isn’t it,’ he said quietly, ‘all that’s happened – tonight, two dead people, Shannon and what he’s done, his injuries, the whole thing – virus, death, families dead … And yet here I am, all that around me, and what hurts me, what makes it so I can’t breathe,’ he turned to look at her, ‘is that you don’t love me.’
‘Rohan, please.’
‘And on top of that, I find out tonight’s my fault – you’re both out there because of me. I’ve managed to expose my brother to everything I was trying to protect him from. Not only did it all amount to nothing, but I’ve put it below even that. I’ve failed rather spectacularly. On every front.’
‘No you haven’t.’
‘It’s almost laughable … You come to me and tell me you want to sleep with my younger and better-looking brother, and I don’t see it? You do it right in front of me and I still don’t see it? Why else would you want to sleep with him?’
‘It’s not —’
‘I didn’t want it, Denny; I didn’t want you with him, I didn’t want you out there, I didn’t want so much of what’s happened …’
He was facing her now, with the same crushed expression he’d had after seeing the kite wrapped around the tower. She was pressing her palm into her forehead, in frustration.
‘I didn’t mean to hit you,’ he whispered.
‘I know.’
‘I couldn’t risk you bringing all those things in. The virus frightens me. I’m sorry.’
‘This is the worst time for this. Let’s get Shannon comfortable. He needs blankets, and to lie down.’
‘It’s changed,’ he muttered. ‘It’s Shannon now. Or was it always Shannon? I know I’m meant to be open-minded, or openhearted, or whatever, but I can’t. You said you could separate sex and love.’
‘Rohan,’ she said firmly. ‘Not now.’
‘Was it always him? Did you tell him you loved him too?’
She softened her features. She lifted her hand to his face, and even though he tensed under her touch he didn’t pull away.
‘I love
you
, Rohan.’
I didn’t need to see his face to know how her words affected him. He exhaled.
‘Worry about your brother,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about me; you don’t have to.’
She went to withdraw her hand from his cheek but he covered it with his.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, low and desperately.
He touched the fading bruise on her cheek, and, in a strange gesture, he turned his hand around to rub the very same knuckles over the area they’d hit.
The rifle was on his back, and Denny ran her hands under it and hugged him. He leant into her and let himself be held like a child. She spoke soothingly in his ear.
The couple they made, how right they looked together, and how I saw my mother in Rohan, that same soft centre underneath it all, that same dependency Mum had for Dad, brought me back from semi-consciousness. Love for my brother surged through me. It was a fierce love – it was the comprehension of his love for me.
He came over to me, subdued and open.
‘You want to come to the couch and lie down?’ he asked.
I shook my head.
‘How do you feel?’
‘All right.’
‘We’re gunna have to stitch you up. It’ll hurt.’
‘Like a bastard.’
‘Yep.’
‘Not yet,’ Denny said. ‘Let him get drunk first.’
‘I’ll get some more things and you get him another drink.’
Once he’d gone I said to Denny, ‘You can tell him about the couple. There’s no chance of him sending you anywhere.’
Denny passed me my glass. ‘Drink up.’
‘You knew that, though.’
‘Let’s leave it, and we’ll sit down when this is over.’
‘Tomorrow,’ I said.
‘Let’s get through tonight. Drink.’
I did, drifting off again, sinking in the sensation of warmth spreading through me.
I opened my eyes feeling a whole lot better mentally and a whole lot worse physically. It was hard to judge how much time had passed, but the fire had burnt much lower. I groaned as I moved.
‘Hey, Rohan,’ I called, looking around and seeing I was alone. ‘Denny?’
A beam of light swung across the wall in the family room. It was strong enough for me to think they’d brought out torches from the bunker. ‘Denny,’ I called.
‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ she said from the kitchen.
‘Where’s Rohan?’
‘He’s out in the bunker.’
I listened to her clumping around in her boots. There was the scrape of a chair and then a series of knocking, muffled sounds.
‘The alcohol’s not working,’ I called to her. ‘Not well enough.’
Denny walked in behind me.
‘Do we have to do this now?’ I asked.
I looked up just as she brought the rifle to her shoulder. She put the cold steel of the barrel against my temple and looked steadily down the gun at me. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We do.’
6
WE WENT INTO
the kitchen. There was a torch on the kitchen bench, its beam pointing up at the roof, reflecting off the hanging pots and pans. I saw Rohan – seated on a kitchen chair, gagged with one strip of silver gaffer tape right around his head, with his arms behind him and his feet cable-tied to the chair legs. I was so shocked that Denny had the cable tie around my wrists and zipped tight before I’d even realised she’d lowered the gun. Now she brought it back up.
‘Go and sit down,’ she said.
Rohan looked at me with eyes full of desperate information. But I could only shake my head. I continued looking at him while she wheeled around in front of me, with the gun aimed at my head.
‘Sit down,’ she said.
I remembered I could talk. ‘Denny?’
‘Don’t.’
‘What is this?’
She jerked her head towards the chair.
‘Are there others?’ I asked, looking at Rohan.
He swivelled his eyes in a way I was meant to understand but didn’t.
Denny stepped in and squeezed my sore shoulder. I cried out in equal amounts of pain and disbelief. She pushed me down into the chair. Rohan growled and rocked, and fixed her with a stare of such intensity I didn’t know how she stayed calm.
She cable-tied my hands to the back of the chair and then came around to do my legs. I glanced up at Rohan.
Should I try and kick her?
He nodded. My feet were bare. And although she didn’t seem to have a problem with the ripcord change of the situation, I was struggling. I loved her. I couldn’t kick her. Judging by the look in Rohan’s eyes, he’d grown more accustomed to the new Denny and didn’t have the same reservations.
She only tied one of my legs. It was heartening, because the ankle she left was bruised and swollen, and it meant she still had some compassion. What was not heartening was the way she ignored us and moved as if working to a schedule.
She opened the back door and the cold wet air came in. The rain had stopped and outside was black and dripping. My shirt was open and I felt the cold. Rohan was dressed in moleskins and a shirt and woollen jumper, with dry boots and socks; compared to him I felt naked.
The bandage was seeping blood. Beyond the confusion, three pains presented themselves to me: my face, my hand, and my shoulder. They were, each one of them, different degrees of ache and soreness. It was frustrating that some of the pain could be relieved by simply changing position, and yet I couldn’t. Rohan was blowing like a bull, furious. I wished I could get to that. It looked to be more productive than my stupid silence. Part of me wondered if he was angry with me – for having a voice and not using it to free us.
I forced myself to speak. ‘How many are there?’ I asked.
She was in the kitchen, taking something from a cupboard. ‘If you talk, Shannon, I’ll have to tape your mouth.’
The roll of gaffer tape was on the table beside Rohan’s chair. I realised why she hadn’t already done it – because of my face. I’d be trussed-up as comprehensively as Rohan if it wasn’t for my injuries. She didn’t want to hurt me and this must mean something. Rohan was red-faced and sucking in air through his nose, trying to calm himself.
How many
? I mouthed. He shook his head. She must have seen this, and strode over and leant between us to take the roll of tape. I looked at the curve of her back, the movement of her shoulderblades: I searched for something familiar in her. Rohan pulled against his restraints and grunted behind the tape. She ripped off a long strip and cut it with the same knife she had taken the night she’d first arrived.
My left eye was almost closed, the skin shredded on my cheekbone and jaw, and the bones underneath unbearably tender. I looked up at her as she straightened in front of me. Her strict expression faltered. Rohan fell quiet behind her.
There was a teetering moment between before and now, tipping ever so slightly into what we’d just been, what we could get back, if we rewound a little. I listened to Rohan’s ragged breathing and the cold drip of the dark through the open door. She licked her lips.
‘You don’t want to hurt us,’ I said. ‘But whoever is coming won’t feel the same way. Let us go now.’
My voice tipped the scales the wrong way. If I’d thought about it, I would have realised any spoken word would have brought us back to now.
I looked into her eyes as she brought the tape to my face. She stopped, the tape millimetres from my mouth, looking at my cheek. My heart was thumping.
‘I won’t talk,’ I said.
The plastic smell of the tape reminded me of another life. As the grey adhesive touched my lips I understood the anger Rohan felt – to be silenced this way, while bound, it was a violation.
‘Denny!’ I raged.
‘Close your mouth.’
She said it the same way she’d said everything since taking over – gently and candidly. Not unlike the way she spoke during sex.
Open your mouth
, she’d once said to me in the very same tones; I’d been on my knees in front of her then – pretty much where I was now.
The tape shut me in with my pain. She overlapped it at the side of my head and sliced the knife through the tape by my ear. I screamed in my confinement. I burnt like a furnace inside. Rohan took his turn at slack-faced defeat and stared up at the ceiling.
She used the tape to strap my free leg to the chair, higher up, above the sore ankle. It wouldn’t have mattered to me though. Right then I wanted pain; I twisted and roared to bring it all to life. Right then I hated her.
On the kitchen bench were two spare globes. I guessed what she was going to do, what the signal was. She walked from switch to switch turning on lights. Rohan and I both cringed. From behind my flash-affected eyes I saw her moving and heard one globe sizzle and pop in the lounge room.
Blinking away the black spots I peered around the kitchen and dining area. The place looked bleached-out and overexposed. I was pale and skinnier, more injured.
She flicked off some lights as they all began to surge and dim under the tested power supply from the water wheel, then she turned off both torches and stood in the doorway to wait. She had her back to us, with her arms crossed and legs parted.
Some sort of training, I thought, looking at her. Army reserves, maybe. Why hadn’t I seen it before? My temper was subsiding and leaving me consumed with fresh pain. I vowed to stay completely still until the pain had receded to a more manageable level.
We had some time to think. All of us. Time moved pretty slowly when every heartbeat counted and nervous sweat trickled untouched down your face. I learnt more about life in the minutes or hours we sat there than any wild man stalking through the bush. There was nothing unreal about this. Pain sat me fair on my arse and had me viewing the world in all its harshness. And being bound and gagged electrified the experience. Fear vibrated in my blood and in my teeth.
I had the idea that Denny’s thoughts were nowhere near ours, that there was something more important to her than we could ever be. She never turned to look at us, and after some time we stopped looking at her. For what seemed like hours Rohan and I stared into each other’s eyes and communicated nothing at all. I thought how everything was my fault, and Rohan had been right all along, but I didn’t bother trying to tell him this. It wouldn’t free us.
Denny moved. She stepped out onto the veranda. ‘Nic,’ she called, and my insides dropped to a new low. I heard footsteps in the wet and a man’s voice. Rohan swallowed. Denny went down the back steps. ‘Hey,’ she said. There was the sound of boots in the mud and muffled words. I heard the man talk. His voice was penetrating and educated, upper-class, especially out here and after Rohan’s deep-chested rumble. Denny talked softly, and although I couldn’t understand it, I got the impression it was just two people she was talking to.