Red Queen (3 page)

‘I’m Shannon,’ I said.

Rohan sat down too. ‘She knows that.’

He kept the shotgun on his knee, out of sight. ‘She knows what tree we like to take a leak under, don’t you? We’d be acting pretty much how you’d thought.’

Rohan pulled on a latex glove and dragged her bag towards him. He prodded the contents through the material.

‘Binoculars,’ he said. ‘Your mate’s got another pair? Planning on some signals, or have you already organised a day and are working to a time frame?’

He unzipped the bag and spread it wide. He took out his pocket knife and flicked through the scrappy mess with the blade. I didn’t see clearly what was in the bag, other than the binoculars that Rohan took out and set aside as if they were now his. Instead I looked between Denny and Rohan, at the bald face of change. Was this how it was now? Was this the new normality?

‘What I want to know,’ Rohan said, still looking through her things, ‘is exactly what you think you can offer us. How do you strengthen our position? Cos from where I’m sitting, you only look to weaken it.’

She drew in a breath, as if to speak, but didn’t. Rohan pushed the bag away and settled in for her answer.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked. ‘You know we have to be careful.’

While we waited for her voice, the final thing to make her real, she sunk down closer to the table, put her hands under her cheek, closed her eyes, and went to sleep.

3

WE REMAINED SEATED
at the table. Rohan kept moving suddenly in his chair, as if coming to a final conclusion, only to fall back into silent staring at Denny’s lowered head. I dozed with my head rested on the back of one arm. I was shaky with hunger, and wondering if Denny was deaf and mute – and thinking how unbelievably cruel it would be, for me, if she was.

‘It’s interesting, all right,’ Rohan said, as though resuming a conversation we’d let lapse. ‘Hasn’t said a word –
sleeping
. It’s an inspired way for us to get used to her without her stepping on any toes – she can hardly say the wrong thing if she doesn’t speak.’

I lifted my head. ‘She’s totally knackered. Can’t you see that? Imagine what she’s been through. She would have seen much worse than we have. I don’t know whether you’re more pissed-off that she followed you or that she could be some sort of threat?’

‘Don’t question me. And don’t ever do it in front of her. There’ll be no happy human reunions. We don’t welcome her into the fold. I don’t care if she tells us there’s a cure, and the planet’s miraculously righting itself and China and America have made friends and are partying together in the street. We don’t move until we absolutely have to.’

‘If you ask me, it feels right to band together – a more natural thing to do.’

‘Nice in theory, and maybe further down the track, but for now it’s a whole lot smarter to hedge our bets and sit tight. We can’t get in any trouble if no-one knows we’re here.’

‘She knows we’re here.’

‘And there’s the only reason why she’ll stay.’

We both looked at her. She breathed slow and steady. The bumps of her spine tapered away in perfect graduations down her back. Her skin was olive, darker than either of ours – even Rohan’s, who had an all-year leathery tan. I had the better view of her face, and it pleased me. I could see her sad mouth, the simple, straight line of her eyebrows, the puffiness of her eyelids.

‘She looks like she’d eat as much as a bloke,’ Rohan said. ‘I reckon she’s near six foot. Be too much to ask that she’d be cheap to feed.’

‘Those Christian values of yours are really admirable,’ I said.

‘Shut up, Pup. Go and get us something to eat. Get her something, too – not much, maybe a boiled egg and some fruit. I’ll have a couple of eggs. Who knows, the smell of food might get her up for the day.’

It wasn’t until we’d both finished eating that she woke; she drew her shoulderblades together and wiped the back of her hand over her mouth. My heartbeat increased with each new movement she made. I thought of how
much
she was, so many gestures and ticks, so much to look at, hard to take in all at once. She rested with her elbows on the table and her fingertips against her forehead. There was a part-healed cut from behind her ear and down her neck.

The food on the plate in front of her must have caught her eye, because she moved her hand to look at it properly.

‘Is that for me?’ she asked.

‘Ah, she speaks.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I put it there for you.’

She reached for the plate, but stopped as Rohan spoke.

‘You only eat when we’re together,’ he said. ‘No exceptions.’

‘Can I eat now?’

‘We’re together, aren’t we?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you can eat.’

She leant back in the chair and tugged the stolen chop from the front pocket of her jeans. Her eyes flicked up to check our response, but the way she held the chop close to her body gave the impression she wouldn’t give it up even if we asked.

She ate haltingly and alternated between the meat and the pear, like she might need the fruit’s soft flesh to help her swallow.

I watched her and thought back to her voice, turned each inflection over in my mind. Smoky and husky is how I’d describe it, an unused voice. I knew it would take time for her to open up; it went without saying, but I worried Rohan wouldn’t understand.

She finished the pear and picked the last of the meat off the chop with her fingers, and then started on the egg I had peeled for her. I wouldn’t be able to eat something someone else had so obviously touched, and I knew Rohan was equally surprised by her apparent acceptance of our contact.

We might have not been sitting there, staring at her; the blankness in her I equated with being alone. It was quiet and we could hear her chewing. She occasionally sniffed. Sometimes she held my gaze, but only as though I were an inanimate object for her to study. She ate the last of the egg and a flicker of pain showed in her eyes. There was a glass of water on the table and she looked at Rohan for confirmation that she was allowed to drink. He nodded and she took a sip.

Her skin grew clammy and a light sweat shone on her brow.

‘If you’re gunna be sick,’ Rohan said, ‘do it outside.’

We followed her out the back door. It was a still day, kind and soft; it brought some charm to the cabin – which was testament to good lighting, because the surrounds were barren and scratched down to dirt by the chooks. The sheds, orchard and vegie patch were all up the other end of the cabin, leaving this end with an unobstructed view across the paddocks and into the backdrop of bush. The cabin had always been alternatively powered, so there were no power lines leading in, or a driveway. It was four-wheel drive access only, up a steep plantation track and then across a seasonal creek and into a blackberry-infested maze that served as a perfect deterrent. The cabin had been built as a hideaway, with just this type of holed-up scenario in mind; it’s just that no-one but my father had ever thought it would come to serve its purpose.

Denny stood down the end of the cabin with her hands on her knees and vomited in the dirt. I walked to the end of the veranda and stood beside Rohan; we looked down at her, guns across our bodies and legs parted, with matching deadpan expressions as she retched and spat. Rohan was probably thinking of the wasted food.

I hated moments like these, when the changes were caught in one shocking still frame, sickening and thrilling all at once. I realised that I’d become resigned to all the defective moments two brothers might create alone in a cabin in the bush, but now Denny had arrived she’d torn something open. And, like a boy, I ached in my chest for some kind of tenderness, words or a touch to tell me it would be all right; odd how I got the impression Denny didn’t need or want softness, yet I did.

Rohan called the chooks as she straightened; they came in a flapping rush, their feet thumping in the dust. She stepped back to give them room to fight over her vomit.

‘You came over from the top, right?’

I’d given up my chair in front of the fire to Denny; she sat to one side of it, leaning away from us with one elbow on the armrest, her knees tight together and her hands clasped as if they were cold. Rohan stood beside me, in front of the fire, blocking most of the heat.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘How did you know we were here?’

She looked confused.

‘How did you know the cabin was here?’

‘I saw you fishing along the river.’

‘You followed me.’

‘Yes.’

‘You were alone at the farmhouse?’

‘Yes.’

Rohan rubbed a hand under his chin. ‘This is gunna take a while if you’re stuck on these one-word responses. How about you talk, and I’ll tell you when to stop?’

She nodded, but vaguely. Rohan sat down opposite her and leaned forward on his knees. ‘How did you get up here? Where did you come from – did you come over Mount Tassie, or from the coast? Did you drive or walk?’

‘I did … um … both.’

‘What’s both?’

‘I drove until the fuel ran out, and then I walked.’

She put a hand to her throat and swallowed. She made a soft humming noise, or a sigh, and looked over Rohan with sudden interest, as if just noticing him. She studied his arms and his legs, down to his boots. After some time of this she turned her attention to me. I couldn’t look at her like Rohan had while she surveyed every bit of me. Rohan lifted his gaze impatiently to the ceiling, and we waited out her settling in, or reconnection, or whatever it was she was doing.

‘There are things I want to go and get,’ she said, and closed herself in again.

Rohan shook his head. ‘You don’t leave here now. The yard is as far as you go. I’m the only one who goes out, and I’m not going anywhere near the farmhouse.’

‘But I have shoes and clothes. I have to —’

‘No.’

Her eyes widened and her face changed – it opened up, and I saw that
this
was her. I could properly see her small nose and well-spaced dark-brown eyes, and that her skin was fine-pored but quite thick, smooth over her bones. Her teeth were wide and white. It was hard to say why the overall effect of her broad face and shoulders, strong limbs, and hacked-off hair should be strikingly feminine. But it was.

‘I have things I’ve got to get,’ she said.

‘No,’ Rohan said.

‘Things you could use —’

‘No.’

‘But I would just go once.’

‘You don’t leave. It’s a rule. Get used to them.’ Rohan stared at her. ‘What was happening when you left?’ he asked. ‘We’ve been here almost eight months. No radio. Nothing.’

‘You mean overseas?’

‘Local, anywhere; we left after the city lockdown.’

She frowned. ‘Well … everyone’s very scattered. Any large metropolitan area is deserted. I think it’s like that all over, it’s hard to say. From what I heard the worst of it is in the cities – not just because of the virus, but because of the lack of food and clean water. People were talking about the same problems overseas, but it was all word of mouth. There’s a lot of talk of nuclear war.’

‘Because of China?’ Rohan asked.

‘Their low infection rate.’

‘Is the virus still unchecked?’ I asked. ‘Is there still no cure?’

She looked up at me. ‘Not anything they’re telling the everyday people. If China does have a cure they’re keeping it to themselves, and the same with America. There’s meant to be a whole different range of strains now. They call them RQV1, 2, 3 and so on. I’ve heard they’re up to RQV10, but I don’t know.’

‘Red Queen Virus,’ I said. ‘It’ll keep adapting.’

Rohan scoffed. ‘I wonder if there’s any change to the survival rate – if we’re evolving yet. Perhaps we’ll sprout fins and crawl back into the sea.’

‘I don’t know about the survival rate,’ Denny said, ignoring his quips. ‘I don’t know if it’s any better. The talk was turning more to war, the breakdown of economies. There wasn’t as much panic, but in some ways the response was worse than the mayhem created by the virus: very segregated and ruthless.’ She thought a moment. ‘No love lost between the survivors.’

‘You tell anyone where you were heading?’ Rohan asked.

‘Did you?’ she challenged.

‘I would’ve told family,’ he said back at her.

‘I haven’t been able to contact my family. I come from Queensland.’

‘How’d you know about the farmhouse?’

‘My boyfriend’s parents had it as a weekend retreat. They didn’t die there; I don’t know what happened to them. Their car is gone.’

‘And your boyfriend?’

‘He was working in Melbourne when they locked it down. He couldn’t get out. He died. They read his name out over the radio.’

‘Where’d you leave the car?’

‘Near that little town with the tearooms.’

‘You see many people?’

‘None once I got into the bush. Most survivors are in small groups or families in the country areas and on farms. You can’t ask for help, or approach. Once you’re alone it’s hard to get back in. They call people on their own
unknowns
. Not even the army will come near you if you’re an unknown – I’ve seen them shoot unknowns who have tried to come too close. Very occasionally the army drives along the country roads delivering food to the farmhouses. They stand guard and keep any unknowns from the food while the ‘known’ family collects it. It’s unbelievable. Seeing it …’