Carrier (9 page)

The girl shook her head. ‘My sister died when she was a little girl. It's bad luck to talk about it.' Her long, slender fingers massaged the centre of her chest, as though mentioning her sister had caused it to ache.

I nodded my head, slowly, with deep understanding. For years we hadn't mentioned Alice, well, until recently. Though I hoped it didn't mean bad luck was on its way.

‘But you have cousins? That must be good.'

She shrugged and put her hands on her hips. ‘I get sick of it sometimes. I wish I could know some other people too, meet some strangers. Maybe a boy I'm not related to.' Her eyebrows danced.

I could feel the blush seeping from my collarbone up to my face. The girl must have noticed because she got up and stepped closer, her voice an excited whisper.

‘Have you ever seen a boy naked?' She stuck her index finger out in front of her pelvic area.

‘I don't need to...' I said, looking down, and pretending to wash my knees. ‘I've got health and science books.'

She snorted and laughed at the same time, again. ‘No, I mean a
real
boy. You can't feel a picture, can you? I'm talking about the
real
thing. You
know
.'

I thought about my picture of Jeffery C and felt my cheeks burn extra hot. This girl would probably roll around in the mud with snorting-laughter if she knew about my magazine lover. Then, without warning, Patrick appeared inside my head, causing my blush to deepen.

‘No. It's always just been me and my mum.' For some reason I didn't mention Patrick. I wanted to keep him to myself for a while.

The girl's brow creased as a look of pity washed over her features, dulling her rich brown skin.

‘Must be lonely, just the two of you. Saw how sad you were after that golden-haired girl got killed.' Her dark eyes turned glassy. ‘I wanted to give you a flower, but Grandfather wouldn't let me go out near your property again after that.'

‘You saw it?' I stepped onto the bank and stood before the girl stark naked, not caring about modesty anymore. ‘You saw when my cousin got killed?'

She shook her head and fixed her eyes on the water. ‘One of my cousins, Freddie, he was out hunting that night. He tried to help the beautiful blonde girl. Another boy and him, they tried to get those monsters away from her.'

‘What happened to Freddie? Did he come back? What happened to the other boy? Did your cousin tell you what happened?'

I shivered as a sudden gust of wind whipped through the trees, prickling my bare skin and rippling through my wet, spiky hair.

The girl's eyes turned black and stared off in the distance.

‘He came back to camp, blurted out what had happened, threw himself to the ground and died just like that. We never knew what happened to that other boy. Those fellas beat Freddie up in the head something cruel. Grandfather cried for a week and my grandmother sat punching herself in the chest until she was black and blue. It was a pretty sad time.' The girl sat back down on the drier part of the bank.

‘I'm sorry. He must have been amazingly brave to help Alice like that.'

‘Alice?' The girl smiled and nodded, her brown eyes fixed on the water. ‘Pretty name. Pretty girl, too. So she was your first cousin? You don't look alike,' she added, her eyes roving up and down my body.

‘I'm well aware of that,' I muttered, wrapping my arms around my meagre body.

Hurriedly, I yanked my clothes off the branch and dressed before sitting beside down beside the girl, my eyes staring across and beyond the water like hers did. Now that I knew her cousin had died trying to save Alice, I felt as though we were bonded somehow, as though an invisible stich secured us at the hip.

‘She was my cousin and my only friend,' I said with a sigh. ‘I'm Lena, by the way.'

‘I'm Sapphire.'

We sat in silence for a moment, before Sapphire drew something out of her pocket and pressed it against my palm.

‘Here,' she said, and then, as though she had read my mind, added, ‘We're like soul sisters now, best friends. Your cousin and my cousin left this world together.' My throat thickened with a kind of joy I'd never before experienced.

‘Thanks, Sapphire. Is this...' I turned the small, shining dark blue stone over in my fingers, ‘...a sapphire?'

She nodded. ‘From Queensland. Grandfather dug it up himself. You have it. It's my good luck charm.' Sapphire watched as I pocketed the stone then smiled at me with anticipation. ‘So what do you have for me?'

Despite my hunting gear and water bottle and food, I had nothing on me that would match the beauty of Sapphire's gift. But the cheese I had handmade earlier was pretty special, even if it wasn't a precious gem.

I took it out and peeled back the cloth I'd wrapped it in, before presenting the delectable white morsel to her.

‘What is it?' she asked, before stuffing it into her mouth whole.

‘Goat's cheese,' I said, smiling with satisfaction as she'd devoured it. ‘Sorry. I know it's not as special as your sapphire stone.'

Sapphire's eyes widened while she chewed and eventually swallowed the cheese.

‘My grandfather lost two goats last year! Someone nicked them. He reckons those bastard fellas might be back and living somewhere around here again.'

My throat itched and I started to cough violently. The second stranger I'd met in two days to have been affected by some wrongdoing on account of my mother.

‘Do you think those…bastard fellows…are truly back?'

Sapphire's face split into a grin and she shook her head from side to side as if laughing at a private joke.

‘You're a weird girl, Lena,' she said, still smiling. ‘You talk so…funny.'

I sighed and stood up, feeling slightly annoyed.

‘Well I haven't really had an endless supply of family to practise conversation on like you have,' I said, and bent over my backpack while I fished out the canteen I'd packed.

My skin prickled and I glanced over both shoulders, suddenly aware that many eyes could be watching us right now. ‘So are you from a local bush tribe?' I asked, while submerging the canteen at the water's edge until it was full.

Sapphire threw her head back and laughed.

‘Nah, we're from the city — Fremantle. We like to call ourselves a mob. We had to run and escape just like everybody else. But luckily my grandfather predicted what was coming before it came and we were out here early. I was just a baby in my mum's belly. I'm a true bushie like you.' She winked, her long black lashes sweeping down to brush against high cheekbones.

I nodded. ‘My dad was a doctor, a GP. He got us out before the big rush, too. He knew way before the Y-Carrier came over from the east, and bought this property and put away supplies. The last newspaper he brought from a roadhouse on the way out here wrote that people were killing each other on the coast before they'd even caught the disease, out of suspicion.'

Silence engulfed us as I stuffed the canteen into my pack and zipped it closed.

‘It's fucking horrible, isn't it?' Sapphire shook her head and picked up a rock before tossing it into the water. It made a plopping sound, causing the smooth surface to shimmer and send endless concentric ripples towards the bank.

‘My grandfather thinks they'll be coming soon.' She raised her eyes to the bruised sky peeking through the leafy canopy. Tiny droplets of rain sprinkled down, landing on her button nose, and on mine, too. The waterhole came alive with pin drops of rain dancing upon its surface.

‘Who does he mean by
they
?' I asked, remembering what Patrick had said about the Elder who had believed the disease was put here by aliens.

‘Beings from another planet — don't laugh,' Sapphire warned in a low voice, shooting me a dark look. ‘Strangers laugh when he tells them. But they are coming back one day. They didn't infect us with the Y-Carrier for nothing.'

Her words made me think of the brilliant blue flash in the sky I'd seen the other night, and I shuddered at the thought of hollowed-eyed aliens herding us up like cattle so they could poke and prod us like they did their human victims in Dad's sci-fi stories.

The rain was coming down in a fine mist so I quickly removed Dad's jacket from the backpack and put it on before hauling the pack onto my shoulders.

A bird called from somewhere nearby, the first bird I'd heard since my arrival at the waterhole.

Sapphire got up and backed away from me.

‘I've got to go. Maybe we can meet up again?'

Another bird called, this time from another part of the bush.

The girl's eyes grew wide. ‘Don't tell anyone you saw me.'

‘What do you mean? I don't have anybody to tell.'

She narrowed her eyes. ‘I mean don't tell the boy.'

‘You know about Patrick?'

‘I've seen him looking for his dad,' she said, her eyes dark and filled with secrets.

‘Do you know where his dad is?' I asked, my breath held.

Sapphire stared at me for a long time and then nodded. The rain fell in heavier drops. Her hair started to curl and stick to her face and shoulders like wet, black ribbons.

‘The boy's never going to find him,' she said, her thick, pink lips trembling.

‘What do you think happened?' Although I knew the answer I wanted to hear it from somebody else. Or maybe I wanted to hear her tell me different — that my mother hadn't shot an innocent man.

‘It's bad luck to talk about the dead. I already told you that.' She frowned. ‘Stay away from the boy. Terrible things happen to his family. They drop off like flies. Grandfather thinks they have a curse.' She took my hand and squeezed it. Though I didn't much appreciate all the Patrick warnings, the gesture brought a lump to my throat and a wave of warmth to my chest. I squeezed her back.

‘Best to stay away, sister. He's a nice looking fella, but I'd stay away just the same.' She grinned, revealing even white teeth. ‘I don't wanna see you pushing desert flowers anytime soon.'

The bird called again, but this time I knew it wasn't a bird. A family member was summoning Sapphire.

‘I've got to go.' She put a finger to her shiny, damp nose. ‘We're secret sisters.' She waved a hand in front of my face. ‘But to anybody else, even your crazy mother, we don't know each other.'

‘Will I see you again?' I asked, wishing she could stay with me.

‘Maybe, maybe not.' Sapphire flashed me another grin before walking through the trees. ‘But I see you,' she called over her smooth, glistening shoulder. ‘All the time.'

I said nothing and watched her break into a graceful run, wishing I could follow her and ply her with questions about Patrick and his family, and about Alice. I needed to know if Markus had been the one who had tried to help Freddie save her. Patrick had a right to know what had happened to his brother.

And his father…

I shoved that last thought into the furthest corner of my mind and continued north, in the direction of Patrick's house, my stomach grumbling for the goat's cheese that I'd swapped for a pretty stone — what Mum would call a ‘useless' item.

It reminded me of the time I found a bag full of one hundred dollar notes under the house. Mum wanted to use them for the fire. She said that they were of no value anymore. Then she told me about times when money could buy you anything — food, water, petrol, toys, movies (moving pictures where people pretended to be other people like the characters in my books). After hearing about all these wonderful things, I had stashed the money in the bottom of my wardrobe, away from Mum, ready to be spent when and if a sudden miracle occurred and life returned to what it was pre-Y-Carrier.

That was how I would treat the lucky sapphire. Keep it in my pocket and whenever I began to doubt that life would ever be something greater than it currently was, I'd hold it in my hand like it was a piece of physical hope.

A crack of thunder rumbled beneath my feet, coaxing me into a run. The rain continued, streaming down my face, soaking my hair and sending rivulets of water down the back of my neck. I couldn't see much further than a few metres ahead.

The world around me was hidden behind grey walls of misty rain — which reduced my chances of spotting any distant houses by about one hundred per cent. The best I could do was find shelter, though finding a cave would be near on impossible, harder to spot than a house, and it was too wet to bring out the crude copy I'd made of Dad's map of the area, as it would most likely disintegrate in my hands.

Funnily enough, though I was hungry and cold and without a true destination, a tiny thrill zipped through my veins. Here I was,
free
, outside of the fence that had kept me prisoner since I was a baby.

I had reached the waterhole safely and had found a friend in Sapphire — a
girl
, like me. I would find Patrick's house, and Patrick, and meet his little brothers. Then I'd return home to Mum to prove to her that I could handle the outside just as well as she could.

Just as I was mentally patting myself on the back, the earth beneath me dipped slightly and I tripped, skidding across wet dirt on my hands and knees.

I had stumbled upon a track of some sort — roughly two metres wide and corrugated along the edges, the rain pooling between the ridges. Only a machine, most likely a motor vehicle, could have made a track like this.

But before I had time to process the possibility that humans were actually driving cars again after seventeen years, a deafening roar filled my ears.

And it wasn't thunder.

Two bright lights cut through the veil of rain, swinging a sharp right to face me head on. I froze, paralysed by fear, the throb of my heart pounding in my ears. I'd played around with Dad's car as a kid well enough to recognise that those lights belonged to a motor vehicle and that the roar, though I'd never before heard it, was its engine screaming as it sped towards me.