The Amber Trail (28 page)

“
Hornet sting,” Dig
said from behind her. “And he probably won’t be okay. I know that
because my father, who
’
s also
his
father, died from a sting to the throat last week.”

Shiv cleared his throat and spat
onto the floor. “I’m fine.”

“
You’re probably
allergic,” Dig said. “Dad passed the allergy down to me. He most
likely gave it to you as well. We’re both stung. And we’re both
going to die soon if we don’t get help.”

Maxine’s face was ashen. “He was
not his father!”

“
I was with Dad when
he died. It was awful. Let me help you save Shiv.”

“
You stupid...” She
scowled and stepped forward with the knife.

“
I know how to help
him. I promise,” Dig said. A constricting headache built in his
temples. “If you kill me I can’t fix him.”

Maxine froze, her eyes darting
between Dig and Shiv.

“
I’m not allergic,”
Shiv said. “It’s just a sting.” But his voice already had a
constrained tone to it.

“
I think you know you
are. Can you feel the hot flush in your head? I can. Pretty soon
your skin will itch. The swelling won’t be far behind.”

Shiv shook his head. “Wrong,” he
said in the same scratchy tone.

“
Our tongue and
throat will be next. They’ll swell up and screw with our
breathing.”

“
I'm breathing just
fine at the m—” A ragged cough overwhelmed him and he shivered. He
glanced across at Maxine, his eyes filled with fear. He rubbed his
arms—a field of goosebumps covered his skin, punctuated by patches
of pink. Dig felt the same goosebumps crawling across his body; a
dull ache lay heavy in his chest.

“
Finally our lungs
will fail,” Dig said, coughing. “We won’t be able to breathe. We’ll
suffocate in about ten minutes. I know, because I was also stung
last week, and nearly died too.”

Shiv tilted his head back and
opened his mouth. His breath laboured in a constricted
wheeze.

Maxine paced back and forth
across the room. “You,” she said. “This is your fault.” She strode
to the couch and studied Shiv. He leaned back in the seat, closed
his eyes, and scratched at his arms and legs.

Maxine shook her head, then
barked at Raj. “Get him some water.” Raj skipped across the
kitchen, filled a glass from the tap, and brought it
back.

Shiv took the glass and began to
drink, but coughed, choking the water out onto his shirt.
H
e
closed his puffy eyes and
frowned.

“
Last chance,” Dig
croaked. He squinted into the light streaming through the exterior
door. “I know how to save him, but you need to untie
me.”

Maxine marched abruptly across to
Dig, the knife still in her hand. She leaned in close, smelling of
stale sweat and mouldy breath. “You start talking, or I’ll feed you
your own eyeballs.” She placed the tip of the knife against his
cheek.

Dig sat rigidly in his chair,
watching the knife from the corner of his eye. The left side of his
head ached; his heartbeat thumped in his ears. “I’m dying anyway,”
he said. “Kill me if you want, but I won’t help him unless you do
three things.” He swallowed. His throat felt like sandpaper.
“First, you agree to let me and Chook go.” The cool point of the
knife pressed harder against his cheek.

“
Second, you agree to
leave our families alone forever.”

Maxine bared her teeth. “You fix
him!”

“
Promise!” Dig’s
voice cracked, and he started wheezing. “You’ll...leave us...alone
for good...right?”

Behind her, Shiv hacked a chunk
of phlegm to the floor.

Maxine’s eyes screwed shut. “Yes,
yes. I’ll do it! Now just fix him!”

“
I have...your
word?”

“
Yes!”

“
Good. Now...for the
third thing.” He winced as his vision momentarily blurred. “Admit
to Shiv...that we share a father.”

The room fell silent. Shiv
glanced up.

A sheen of sweat covered Maxine’s
forehead.  “No,” she said in a high tone. “That’s not
true.”

“
The charade’s over
now...just admit it.”

Maxine narrowed her eyes and
pushed the tip of the knife further into Dig’s cheek, breaking the
skin. Warm blood ran down his cheek. His pulse thumped in the side
of his neck as he stared at Maxine through the slits of his swollen
eyes.

“
Mother,” Shiv
croaked, exhaling the words between laboured breaths. “You don’t
have to...lie anymore. I know that...he is...telling the
truth.”

Maxine went to speak, but the
words caught in her mouth.

“
You can...admit it,”
Shiv said. “This guy is my...half-brother.”

Maxine stared out towards the
deck, silent.  

“
Don’t...let me die.
Just tell me...the truth.”

The room fell quiet, save for the
sound of heavy breathing.

“
Max,” Girish
stammered from the other side of the room as he tugged at the
collar of his shirt. “I think it’s time he knew.”  

Maxine closed her eyes. She was
shaking, and a bead of sweat tracked down her temple.

A moment later, Dig felt the
pressure from the tip of the knife ease on his cheek, and Maxine’s
arm lowered to her side. She turned to Shiv.

“
Okay,” she said. “He
was your father. Does that make you feel better? He’s still
dead.”

She glanced at Dig with a
downturned mouth, then turned back to Shiv. “And you want some more
truth? Your father never wanted to know about you. He pretended you
didn’t exist in order to preserve the image of his precious family
back home in Australia. He already had a wife, and he already had a
son. So when you were conceived, you were just an inconvenience.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Does that piece of truth make you feel
good? Or maybe you would rather have not known?” Her chest rose up
and down. “Maybe it would’ve been better to pretend that Girish was
your father, than to have one that didn’t want to know you are
alive.”

Shiv blinked and a tear dropped
down his cheek.

Maxine sneered and stepped toward
Dig. She lowered the knife and sliced the binding free on one hand,
then cut through the other ties. “Get moving,” she said. “If you
can’t sort him out quick smart I’m going to slice you into tiny
pieces.”

Dig dug into his pocket as black
dots danced across his vision. His breath hitched in his chest as
he fumbled the
E
pipen out with a shaky
hand and positioned it over his thigh. The pin fired and a rush of
adrenaline climbed through his body. He clenched his teeth and
closed his eyes.

“
What are you doing!”
Maxine screamed. “Move!” She yanked his collar and pushed him to
the floor. He landed in a heap beside Shiv, panting.

Shiv lay slumped against the base
of the couch. His neck was a swollen pink mass. His eyebrows were
drawn together. He sucked in breaths one by one and expelled them
with a grimace.

Dig’s body ached, but he reached
into his pocket and grasped the second
E
pipen. He crawled forward and dragged it up to
Shiv’s thigh, then fired it through the skin.

“
Welcome...to the
family.”

Over the next few minutes Dig lay
beside Shiv, taking in air. The squeeze in his temples slowly
released, and his lungs regained composure.

Maxine watched from the kitchen
bench, leaning forward on the stone surface. Another cigarette
burned in her hand. Raj and Girish remained in the corner of the
room.

Eventually, the wheezing in
Shiv’s chest also dissipated, the colour returned to his cheeks,
and his breathing slowed to a regular pace.

“
Feeling better?”
Maxine said. The faint trickle of the river echoed through the
exterior doorway.

Shiv nodded weakly.

“
Good,” she said, and
cleared her throat. “Because I think it’s time we all put this
behind us and got on with things.”

Shiv stared at the ground and
shook his head in the negative.

Maxine narrowed her eyes. “Got an
opinion on that?”

Shiv blinked, then pursed his
lips before speaking in a husky voice. “I’ve had
enough.”

Maxine butted out her cigarette,
and walked across the room. “You’re angry,” she said. “I can
understand that. But now we need to get on with
business.”

“
Get on with
business? Or get on with lying to me to settle your old
scores.”

“
I didn’t tell you
for a reason. I was protecting you.”

“
Protecting me? You
made a fool of me. You sent me over there blind, with no thought of
letting me know the truth.”

Dig nodded. “And you forced my
dad to pass on the extracted opium. That was his side of the
bargain in exchange for you keeping quiet.”

Maxine turned sharply and jabbed
a finger into his face. “Did you think I was going to let him just
forget us?” Her face flushed red. “I didn’t want to give him those
hops. I didn’t need the complication of dealing with distributors
in Australia.” She bared a set of cracked, brown teeth. “But what I
did
want was for him to be
reminded
. All the time. So
I made him take the hops, but I sent Shiv over to pick up the
packages every few months. So he
couldn’t
forget him.” Her
last few words faded away, and she stared at the wall. “So he
couldn’t forget me.”

Her attention broke, and she
wiped at the corner of her eye. “He had to suffer too,” she said
with eyebrows drawn together. “Not just us.”

The room fell into
silence.

Girish turned to face the window,
and Raj stood by the door with his arms folded. Shiv lay by the
couch, staring at the floor, his lip quivering.

Maxine blinked and adjusted her
hair. “But now it's time to move on.”

“
No.” Shiv waved at
the room. “I don’t want to be part of...this...anymore.” He sat
forward and rubbed at his temples. “I’m out.”

Maxine gave a strained smile. “Oh
come on. You’re just a little upset.”

“
Yes,” Shiv said.
“And the only way to stop that is to be away from you. You
are...toxic.”

Maxine squatted close to him, her
eyes cold. “You aren’t going anywhere. We are your family.”
 

“
No you’re not.” Shiv
nodded at Girish and Raj. “Those two are your family. I’m just your
bastard. Your failed history that you can’t ignore. Your reminder
of the guy who broke your heart—then left us both
behind.”

Maxine clenched her teeth. “And
so your answer is to be just like him. To run away and leave me.”
She held up a finger. “Well you aren’t going anywhere boy. You’re
part of this now, and you should know already that nobody walks
away from this place who isn’t one of us.” She pointed at Dig.
“Including him and his friends.” Maxine nodded to the thug
brothers, and they moved to stand beside her. “Do I need to add you
to the list?”

“
I thought you agreed
to let them go?” Shiv said.

Maxine laughed. “You should know
better than that.”

She gestured at Jules’ body in
the centre of the floor. “First, we need to get rid of her.” She
turned to the thugs. “Drag her outside and throw her in the river.”
The men nodded and stepped forward.

“
No!” Shiv said
firmly. “Leave her.”

They stopped and glanced back and
forth between Shiv and Maxine.

“
Do it!” Maxine
shouted.

“
Leave her!” Shiv
repeated.

The thugs remained frozen, eyes
wide.

Maxine stepped forward and
slapped the bald-headed thug hard across the face. He winced and
dropped his gaze to the floor. Maxine glared around the room.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll do it myself if I have to.”

She walked to the tarpaulin and
squatted over the lump that was Jules’ feet, then took hold of the
material and began to drag the body across the floor toward the
rear door.  

Shiv tried to push himself to a
standing position, but his balance wavered and he dropped back to
his rear—seemingly too weak to support himself.

Maxine tucked in her chin and
dragged the tarpaulin further, shuffling backwards, step-by-step,
moving closer to the deck—when a figure appeared behind her in the
doorway to the toilet.

It was Chook, leaning against the
frame, his long blonde hair matted to one side of his head. One arm
was curled up against the front of his chest. The other held the
metal towel rail in his grasp like a hurley stick. His jaw was set,
and his eyes steely.  

“
He said leave her
alone, you bitch.” Chook lifted the rail, then swung it down,
hard.

The railing bounced off the crown
of Maxine’s head with a ringing
clang!
and she collapsed
forward to the floor, face down.

The thick-jawed thug bolted
across the room. Chook stood over Maxine, panting, then lifted the
metal bar and swung down a second time, smashing the pole into the
back of her head with a crunch. A fine mist of blood splashed out
onto the concrete like a halo, and covered Chook’s arms and
face.