Carrier (2 page)

The fence-wire was cool against my sweaty fingers. My hands were trembling like Mum's had last night, after she had shot — according to her — ‘a snake'. But I'd seen the third mound beneath our salmon bark eucalypt, as big as my father's, and the last time I'd checked Mum didn't bury the snakes we killed. She wouldn't waste our precious bullets on snakes anyway — and she didn't put bunches on wildflowers on top of their graves either. And she definitely didn't lock herself in the bedroom and cry for hours on end over a legless reptile.

Mum had killed someone. Maybe I'd never know who.

I wiped my sweaty palms against my pants and wondered what the hell I was doing. Was this what I truly wanted? Was a couple of hours, or nights, of freedom, worth the risk of the horrible melting death that comes with the Y-Carrier?

One glance back at the dim house with its boarded up windows gave me my answer. I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't handle mum suffocating me with her fears. I needed to be
me.
Just once. And if I got killed trying then I guessed at least I would die a free person, instead of someone who had only ever experienced the world through razor-wired fences.

If I got too scared or bored or hated it, I could always come back anytime I wanted; maybe explore the area close to the fence for a bit and return home in time for bed. It would be my first step — a baby step. And if Mum saw that I'd returned in one piece, then she might relent and start taking me out hunting with her, or even for a walk to the waterhole. Little things I'd begged her all my life to do, things she got to do every single day.

Sucking in a huge lungful of air, I looked up and caught sight of Alice's star blinking back at me. But not just that one little star, all the others too. I threw my head back and drowned in the breathtaking sight. Even if just seeing the stars was all I got out of my little rendezvous, then I'd be satisfied, at least for a while.

I turned back to the fence with a renewed sense of determination, and was about to hurl myself at it when every part of me stiffened — except for my heart which was beating so hard I thought it might knock a heart-shaped hole through my chest.

On the other side of the fence, staring down at me, was something I'd never encountered during my entire life in the West Australian outback, my mortal enemy according to Dad's medical journals.

A boy.

I took a flying leap away from the fence and frantically reached for my friction torch. After pressing my thumb against it several times I found the on switch.

The stranger put a hand across his eyes so I directed the light, dull though it was, downwards at his stomach. Slowly he dropped his hand, revealing wide, dark eyes. It was impossible to tell the true colour in the dim light — same with his hair, although it appeared dark brown or even black. He was taller than me, built, but on the lean side, as though he'd skipped a few meals; his wiry forearm muscles cording while he gripped the fence. I guessed him to be around my age, or a year or so older than me.

‘Are you alone?' I spat. ‘Are you armed?' My head felt light and dizzy.

This guy was both the most wonderful yet frightening thing I had ever seen.

He reached into the back of his faded, patched up jeans and drew out a pocketknife, the blade sheathed. Flashes of Alice's bloodied body, and the strange angle of her neck as we placed her in the grave, filled my head. Abandoning my precious backpack, I turned and bolted towards the house.

‘Wait, wait! Help me, please!' His voice, although gruff with desperation, sounded honest. It made me think of the man Mum had shot. Had he too begged for her help?

I stopped and drew a deep breath. The house was quiet and dark. If something happened to me, Mum, and the dogs (locked up as they were), would be no of assistance.

But something about the boy's voice...he seemed genuine. Perhaps he only wanted food? I turned around and shuffled slowly towards the fence. My hand slid into my back pocket and pressed against the cool, solid shape of my knife.

‘I have a gun,' I warned, hoping he couldn't hear the bluff in my cracked voice.

‘I just have the knife...which I've never used to harm anyone.'

I couldn't see his facial expression so I shuffled in closer. The torch was slippery within my sweaty grasp. There was only a mere metre or so — and a razor-wired fence — between us, but when I saw the look on his face, I finally released my breath. Everything about him — his furrowed brows, the anguish in his dark eyes, his set mouth and the way his shoulders were bunched up — spoke loudly of his troubles. This stranger wasn't lying. He needed help —
my
help.

‘Okay.' I took one more step towards the fence and gasped softly when our eyes met at such close proximity. Now that I could see him clearly, he reminded me of Jeffery C. He had the same wide eyes framed with dark lashes, and a full bottom lip. The similarities gave me a weird sort of comfort.

‘Are you alone?' I asked.

‘I'm looking for my dad.' A deep, ragged sigh escaped his lips. ‘He's been missing since yesterday. He always comes back before dark. Last night he didn't.'

Last night…

A cold chill washed down my back.

‘We're pretty remote. I don't know why he'd want to come out here.' I was partly speaking to myself, telling myself that this boy's father could not have been the same man that Mum had shot last night. She could not have shot someone's father.

The guy's fingers twisted around the wire while he stared at his feet and contemplated my response. While I watched his large, calloused hands, I couldn't stop thinking about the disease. Did it pass through skin contact or by blood? Weirdly, I was drawing a blank, despite the countless articles I'd read on the subject. Being in the presence of a boy was affecting my brain somehow.

‘He was going to meet a friend,' he said quietly and sighed. ‘We're almost out of supplies and our rainwater tank has a leak. I tried to hunt today, but,' he spat out a bitter laugh and shook his head, as though hunting were a joke, ‘…my little brothers are getting hungry. Dad has never spent a night without us, not even to be with his new friend.'

The torch slipped from my fingers and switched off when it landed on the dirt, but the guy continued talking into the darkness.

‘I followed his tracks since early this morning and they led to this fence. I saw the house and thought maybe his friend lived here. We've never met her. But we know she sometimes gives him rabbits.'

Icy cold blood drained to my feet as the crack of the gunshot from last night echoed inside my brain. I slowly brought my hands to my face and rubbed my numb cheeks.

So this was why Mum was acting so weird. She'd been meeting a man and that man was this boy's father. But it didn't explain why she had shot him.

The boy's heavy breathing in the dark unsettled me, so I groped the dirt for the torch and turned it back on.

‘Is your mum home with your brothers?' I asked, searching for something positive to focus on while inside my head all I could think about was how hard Mum had cried herself to sleep last night. She had obviously cared about the man she had shot. Perhaps they had been lovers.

He looked away and shook his head. ‘She died years ago, from the disease.'

Though I felt sorry for him, I stepped back. If his mother had died then it meant her family of boys were most likely diseased. Where else would she have gotten the Y-Carrier from?

‘No!' He frowned when he saw my face. ‘No, we didn't give it to her. My family are clean. I would have killed myself if I'd done my own mum in.'

He seemed sincere, but I wasn't sure I could trust my gut instinct, not when I'd never had to rely on it until this moment.

‘You've got to turn away and never come back,' I said, with a lump in my throat, because I would have liked to have gotten to know this boy with a face as handsome as Jeffery C, and I would have liked to have been able to help him and his family.

My chest tightened as I imagined him returning home to his brothers without their father. I mentally noted his scruffy, uncut hair, the ragged shirt and jeans that were covered with so many patches that it was hard to see the original material.

Every inch of me burned to help him, but helping this stranger would begin by me telling him that it was quite possible my own mother had shot his father. And I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Even worse, if Mum saw this boy, given what she'd done last night, she would most certainly shoot him on the spot. I had to send him away for his own good.

‘You have to go.'

‘We're clean, my brothers, my dad and I.'

I was about to tell him it didn't matter if he was clean, that my mother was a psycho, but before I could utter a word he stepped right up to the fence and began to unbutton his flannelette shirt, gradually revealing bare, tanned skin from chest to navel.

‘Come closer. I won't touch you,' he said, his voice low and gravelly.

At first I shirked away, but then he said, ‘Males with the Y-Carrier don't die, but they're left with a permanent rash all over their torso. ‘Look. See for yourself. I'm clean. I don't have the disease.'

The rash part I remembered reading about in Dad's notes.

With my breath held in case the disease was airborne, I stepped closer to inspect the body presented before me.

The torch shook in my hand as I trained the light from the boy's neck, down the length of his bare chest, stopping at base of his stomach where his jeans began.

Because the power on the torch was running low, I had to bring my face right up close for a better inspection.

His chest was broad and his stomach lined with corded muscles. A thin trail of dark hair started below his belly button and disappeared down the hem of his jeans. I wasn't sure how long I'd been staring, but suddenly the boy cleared his throat and pulled back, briskly doing up his shirt.

My face burned. I'd been too fascinated by the differences in his body to mine that I'd failed to do a thorough check for the rash. Now I had to assume that he was telling the truth. Though I was pretty sure I would have noticed a rash if it had been there.

‘See. I'm not a Carrier,' he said with a shiver. I shivered too. The night air was cooling rapidly.

We held eyes for a long moment, me trying to keep my breath in and him breathing out hard.

The muffled sound of my dingos doing their yap-howl thing from way back at the shed broke me from my trance and I finally exhaled. Mum could burst out of the house waving a loaded shotgun any minute.

But the boy didn't seem to notice or care about the noise. He was leaning his head against the fence, the hair from his fringe poking through. I had an urge to touch it, to see if it was soft; just like I'd had an urge to touch his stomach when he'd showed me, to see if it was hard. But that would be both dangerous and just…weird.

‘My mum died helping a man who came to our house asking for food. She made us go outside and then he raped her — we didn't know until after it had happened. Dad was out hunting at the time with my older brother.' His eyes glazed over and he looked away. ‘He had threatened to kill us all and she'd sacrificed herself for us.' His fingers tightened around the wire and his voice turned soft and faraway. ‘I loved her more than anything in this world.'

‘I believe you,' I whispered.

He nodded and cleared his throat.

I threw a glance at the house before turning back to face him. ‘Look, I'm so sorry, but you have to go.' My voice turned thick and my eyes began to sting. ‘If my mum comes out...she'll, well, she'll shoot you.'

For a long moment the boy stared at me and I thought maybe he'd guessed what had happened to his dad, but he merely nodded.

‘Sorry, but she's...overprotective,' I said, my voice cracking.

His shoulders sank before he pushed himself away from the fence, as though about to leave, but he turned back to face me, flicking his fringe away from his eyes with his fingers.

‘If my dad doesn't show by tomorrow night, I'll be back here to look around. At least if I find his body I'll know.'

I bent down and fiddled with my backpack zipper so I had an excuse to avoid his eyes — so he couldn't see the horrible truth in mine.

‘Okay. If you come back, I'll try to distract Mum so she doesn't shoot you, but I can't guarantee it. Try not to make any noise and I'll bring you some food.'

He stared down at me for a long time. ‘Thanks,' he said.

I tried to ignore the shrill sound of the dingos going off inside the shed and the way my heart was ready to pound its way up my neck.

‘What's your name?'

‘Patrick.' A ghost of a smile flickered across his face for half a second and his eyes glittered like the stars above. ‘What's yours?'

‘Lena,' I said, before adding, ‘I've got something for you, Patrick.' Saying his name, a stranger's name, out loud, sent a thrill shooting through my veins.

I dropped the torch and fumbled in the dark for the cooked rabbit in my backpack.

‘Take this home and feed it to your family. It's just a rabbit...' I set the bag down and fished around for some dried figs before grabbing the torch and training the light on the goodies.

His eyes widened at the food, but his cheeks flushed at the same time and he shook his head.

‘Thanks. But I can't take it. It's not right. You and your mother need it just as much.' He wouldn't meet my eyes. His stooped posture seemed to radiate shame.

‘Well, if you don't take it, it'll go off and be a waste. You could share it with your little brothers.' I raised my brows and pleaded with my eyes. ‘Please, Patrick.'

After a long pause, his eyes met mine. ‘Okay. I'll take it to my brothers. Thanks.'

I sighed with relief, as if feeding his family could somehow counteract the terrible thing my mum had done.