Carrier (19 page)

‘Actually, I'd rather be out here picking vegies than shooting at things.' Cupping one side of his mouth, he leaned in and whispered, ‘But don't tell any of the boys I said it.'

I couldn't help but smile.

‘Yesss!' Jonny said, making a fist and pumping it down to his hip. ‘Knew I'd make you smile.'

I grinned and felt my cheeks burn.

‘Aw, man, and a blush too. It's my lucky day.'

‘So who do you think is the enemy?' I asked, trying hard not to break out into a goofy smile. Flattery was like kryptonite out here, rendering my brain a pile of mush. I needed to focus.

Jonny shrugged and bent to continue working while he talked. I kneeled in the dirt and rested my forehead against the fence.

‘It's anybody's guess. Pick a country, any country,' he said, before losing his hands in green foliage.

‘Do you think it could be aliens?'

Jonny's head snapped back, his green eyes piercing mine.

‘Are you saying you're believer?' he asked, plucking a weed from the soil.

I shrugged slowly. ‘I think I'm starting to.'

Jonny sighed. ‘Because I saw something once, out over there.' He gestured with a zucchini to the endless barren land, north of the vegetable garden.

‘It was night-time, so it was pitch-black, right? And yet, there was this bright electric blue light out there, in the middle of friggin' nowhere. How do you explain that?'

The kids ran over and tugged at my shirtsleeves.

‘Let's play Ring-a-ring-a-Rosie, Lena!'

‘In a minute. Go sit down on the grass and I'll join you soon.'

‘Who's that man you're talking to?' Petra asked, her curious little face peering over my shoulder to stare at Jonny.

‘Oh, hello, Mr McGregor,' said Sammy, before he hid his face behind his sister.

‘Hi,' Jonny said, frowning, before continuing to weed.

‘I've been reading
Peter Rabbit
to them,' I said, explaining the Mr McGregor reference.

‘Oh,' Jonny said, nodding, though I could tell by his eyes that he didn't know what I was talking about. I wondered if the men here had any books to read, or if they could read at all. The older ones would know, surely, but there was a good possibility that some of the under-seventeens would have missed out on learning. I'd been lucky that Dad and Mum hadn't been able to part with their book collection when they'd moved out here from the coast.

Satisfied that nothing interesting was happening, Petra left us to join her brother who had raced back to the blanket already and was now trying to roll himself up in it. Their giggles made me grin.

‘Another smile. Yesss!' Jonny made another triumphant fist before his smile dropped and he peered over my shoulder at the children. ‘Okay, so that was close,' he said, whistling through his teeth. ‘I could get punished something cruel if the boss finds out I've been talking to you.'

‘Why is that? And what would he do to you if he found out?'

He shook his head. ‘We've all been warned to stay away from you. I guess because you're special and everything.' His green eyes met mine. This time they were clouded with sadness. ‘Not like us boys.'

I swallowed thickly and tried to force my lips into smile, to take away the sudden gloom in Jonny's eyes. ‘Well, I think your vegie patch skills are pretty special. And I haven't been warned to stay away from you, so I think we're safe.'

Jonny half-smiled but returned to his weeding with extra vigour, as though he thought our interactions were far from safe.

‘Well, thanks for the talk,' I said, twirling the flower stem around my fingers. In truth I wanted to stay and talk about the aliens some more, but not at the risk of Jonny getting punished.

‘No. Thank
you
. I've wanted to tell someone about that blue light for ages,' he said, depositing another weed to his rapidly growing pile. ‘Everybody around here would think I'd turned bonkers if I told them that.'

A uniformed man started down the centre of the zucchini patch, heading towards Jonny. We only had about half a minute left before I'd have to leave the fence. I bent down and quickly picked a handful of white flowers.

‘Have you seen any really tall people around, with long blond hair, white skin and pale blue eyes?' I whispered.

Jonny shook his head and continued to work, a cheeky grin on his lips.

‘Only in my dreams.'

Three days after our initial meeting, Jonny showed up in the fields again and managed to slip a folded scrap of paper through the fence.

It was from Patrick.

‘All of us,'
he had written, along with a crude map depicting the path from the barracks to his house. I knew he meant his brother with the ‘All of us' message, though I wasn't certain how we'd go about getting Markus out, or how things would be with us all travelling together, seeing as Markus was carrying the disease. But I was determined for it to somehow work — because of Alice and because of Patrick and his brothers, and most of all because Markus deserved to be free and not treated like something expendable. Nobody deserved that.

After delivering Patrick's message, Jonny spent ten minutes telling me various jokes until he managed to squeeze a smile out of me, rewarding me with one of his usual, ‘Yesss!' responses, before bending down to resume weeding the next row of vegetables.

He didn't come again until the following Friday.

‘I've been thinking about this alien thing, Lena,' he said, plucking at imaginary weeds because he'd weeded the same row bare last time. ‘I'm starting to think that you're right. There's no way another country would get away with this, I mean, the rest of the world wouldn't allow it, right? They'd do everything they could to save us.'

‘Maybe the rest of the world doesn't want to touch us because of the disease. We're probably not worth the risk.' I chewed on my thumbnail. ‘Or maybe it's like this all over the world. Who knows?'

Petra and Sammy had fallen asleep on a blanket beneath the huge eucalypt in the yard, their teddy bears beside them. They'd taken to the teddies' bellies with a red marker, no doubt giving them a bad case of the Y-Carrier.

After Jonny left to go eat his lunch, I laid myself down at the end of blanket and stared up at the swaying branches that rustled above and made soothing hush sounds. It reminded me of the salmon bark at home and the three mounds beneath it. One day I would become no more than a mound in the sand; everyone would — we all died in the end.

But having two innocent children beside me — children who needed me — reminded me I wasn't ready to leave this world just yet. I wanted to live, and I wanted these kids, all kids, to grow up and have a life. A better life than this.

The hypnotic wave of the branches lulled me into a sleepy trance, and after a while my eyelids fluttered shut. Behind them I daydreamed of children's laughter, of sunsets over the ocean, of bustling city streets and of food as colourful as the rainbow.

I awoke to the kids gripping my arms so tight their little fingers pinched my skin.

‘We're scared!' Petra and Sammy wailed in unison.

Shaking the sleepiness from my head, I sat up.

‘Did you have a bad dream?' I asked.

They snuggled into my arms and peered warily at the sky as if it was about to fall to the earth like in the
Chicken Little
story I had read to them a couple of days ago.

And then I heard it, a low rumble that seemed to grow louder by the second. It sounded like a motor vehicle engine, except it was coming from the sky.

Laurie burst out the back door, his face red and shiny as though he'd run the whole way here.

‘Inside.
Now!
'

The Carrier siren screamed, piercing my eardrums and sending the children into a screaming fit.

‘Come on, kids,' I said in my cheeriest voice, my eyes pinned to the sky. ‘Let's go watch a movie.' I scooped a shrieking Sammy into my arms and followed Laurie and Petra into the house. But as soon as I plonked Sammy down, he screamed and ran for the back door again.

‘Peter Rabbit!' he groaned. ‘The aeroplane is going to shoot him!'

‘Go to the lounge room, Sammy,' I said, bending down to meet his gaze. ‘I'll get Peter.'

Once Sammy disappeared down the hallway, I swung open the back door and was hit with a barrage of chaotic sounds. The aeroplane was coming closer, its vibrations boring into my skull.

I snatched Peter from the grass and glanced up to see a grey plane fly directly overhead before it disappeared behind the roof of the house.

The siren wailed repeatedly at one minute intervals, between which I heard men barking orders at each other and the sounds of hurried footsteps.

Somewhere from behind the sheds a single shot fired.

In the distance another two planes loomed. I recalled what Sammy had said about the aeroplanes shooting Peter and ran back inside.

When I walked into the lounge room, Luke rushed at me.

‘Lena,' he said, digging his fingers into my shoulders, his blue eyes wide. ‘Thank God.'

A sigh of relief spluttered through his teeth. ‘You need to stay here with the kids while I'm gone.'

‘Where are you going?'

‘To greet our guests,' he said gravely. ‘We have to take precautions and presume they aren't here to play nice.'

‘But what if it's the UN coming to save us?'

‘After seventeen years?' He scoffed. ‘Unlikely. Look, if these planes have come in to finish us off, then we have to be prepared. We have to kill or be killed.'

He must have seen the look of horror on my face, because he smiled and added, ‘But if they turn out to be friendly, then nobody gets hurt.'

‘Wouldn't it be safer for you all to stay here and protect the barracks?'

‘Not happening. We've got to show them we mean business, that we're not going down easy.'

I gripped his arm. The muscles beneath his skin were flexed and as hard as rock.

‘Where's Patrick?'

Luke cleared his throat. ‘He's coming with us.'

‘But he can't see,' I said, panic rising in my voice.

‘Exactly, that's why he's in the frontline with his brother and all the Carriers.'

I dropped my hand and shook my head. ‘He's a human shield? No! You can't do that. He's a good shot. I know. I've seen him. I just need to get my dad's spare glasses to him.'

‘Too late, mate, I've got to go.'

‘No!' I gripped his shirtsleeve. ‘He can't just die like that. What about me? I'm an excellent shot. My mother trained me. Take me instead of Patrick. Please? Leave him here at the barracks. He and Streak can stay with the kids. He's good with kids. He's got six bro…'

I stopped, heart pounding. But it didn't really matter now that I told Luke, did it? The entire Terra's Army might not return after today. They might be dead within the hour. And if the visitors turned out to be helpers instead of enemies, then Patrick's brothers were safe in the end.

‘So no family, hey?' Luke said, fixing me with cool blue eyes.

‘So can I come instead of Patrick?' I asked, ignoring his comment.

He snorted a bitter laugh.

‘Lena, you're the first female we've come across in five years. You're as precious to me, and to this great country, as my own children. I'm not putting you in danger.'

He gripped my shoulders, hard. He meant it affectionately, I could tell by the softness in his eyes. ‘You're staying, mate.'

Another plane zoomed over the house. Luke stared up at the ceiling as though he could see it, before bending down to gather his children into his arms and murmur words of endearment in their ears. The children tried to stifle their cries, as though Luke had somehow prepared them for this moment and they were trying to be brave little soldiers of Terra's Army, but they clung to him like baby possums.

Tears stung my eyes and thickened my throat.

‘Wait there,' I said in a raspy voice. ‘If you're not going to let me come, then at least let me get the glasses for Patrick. He's a good shot. You can't use him in the frontline.' I wiped at my eyes and ran to my bedroom, snatching the glasses from the backpack and running back into the lounge room.

But it was too late. Luke was gone.

Streak was reading a story to the kids, trying his best to calm them. I could hear their shuddery sniffles and the scrape of the pages as Streak turned them.

‘I'll be back,' I whispered to Streak, before racing out the front door and dashing down the garden path, glasses in hand. I chased after Luke, who was already climbing into the back of a large green truck with a faded tan canopy — the first in a long line and each crammed full with men and boys.

They were all dressed in army fatigues, and held either a rifle or a shotgun. Their faces were lit up with excitement, not terror. After seventeen years of not knowing, today was the day questions would be answered.

If Patrick and Markus weren't being used as human shields I would probably have felt the same excitement as these men. But as it was, I only knew fear.

I ran to each truck and called Patrick's name until a chorus of men erupted in the last one. The canopy wobbled and Patrick leaned out. His face had been shaved clean and his curly brown hair had been cut so that it was shorter than mine.

‘Lena,' he said, smiling down at me. The gash on his head had healed, leaving a large, dried scab. I wanted to reach out and touch his face, to tell him how much I cared, and to tell him about his dad because he deserved to know, especially on the day that he might die. But my words hit a wall in the middle of my throat.

He reached out and ran his thumb over my cheek before drawing his hand away and swearing beneath his breath.

‘I shouldn't touch you. I'm in a truck full of Carriers.'