Carrier (4 page)

Patrick stepped back and stared at me for a long time. ‘Okay,' he said. ‘Tonight it is. We can maybe look around for my dad, too.'

I looked into his ocean eyes without blinking. This was the moment I should have said something about the man Mum had shot. But there were tiny flames of hope flickering in Patrick's eyes and I could not bring myself to douse them.

‘You should probably take these now, so you can go home and get some sleep for tonight,' I said, holding up the milk and the stew, deliberately changing the subject.

‘Yeah, you're right.' He yawned, stretched his arms out wide, his joints making a cricking sound.

‘Did you sleep at all?' I asked as I scaled the fence, one-handed, with the food and the drink container clutched to my chest.

Patrick started to climb. When I felt his breath against my exposed belly from where my top had ridden up, I nearly lost my grip and fell.

‘I tried to sleep,' he said. Suddenly our faces were level and framed with razor wire. ‘But I had too much on my mind.' His shifted down to my lips.

‘Oh.' I swallowed thickly. If I leant a little way in our noses would have touched, or our mouths. ‘Um, here is the food.'

Patrick took the food and drink and I used my free hand to hold myself better to the fence.

The morning sun now blazed from the east, casting a golden glow across his face. He squinted, so I moved my head until it blocked the sun from his eyes.

‘Thanks,' he said, indicating the food he clutched beneath one arm. ‘I'll save it for the boys. We don't have much water left on our property so our vegie patch is non-existent at the moment. They'll love this.'

From out of nowhere a cool breeze blasted us and pressed Patrick's brown, sun-streaked hair against his forehead. He brushed it aside and turned his ocean eyes skyward before inhaling deeply of the air.

‘A storm's coming, I can smell it.'

I did the same. The air smelt damp and tinny, despite the clear sky and sunshine. Patrick was right.

My heart sank. A storm would ruin our plans.

‘Don't worry. It'll probably take a couple of days for it to develop.'

‘Hope so.' I shivered.

‘Me too,' Patrick echoed, before glancing around, as if looking for somebody or something.

‘What are you looking for?' I asked. Nanny was bleating from behind the house. The dingos, however, were silent, which unsettled me.

‘Just some people who live around here.'

‘Others live around here? Other people? Disease-free people?'

Patrick nodded.

So Mum had lied.

My grip weakened as a wave of dizziness washed over me. But before I could fall, Patrick reached across the razor wire and seized both my wrists, dropping the food and drink in the process.

‘Grab hold of it…' He pressed my hands against the fence until I could grip it myself. Fresh blood beaded where he'd scraped the insides of his arms on the barbs.

‘You're bleeding!' I cried, wincing at the jagged cuts in his flesh.

‘I'm okay,' he said between pants of breath. ‘But you'd better climb back down, slowly.'

Without a word I did, step by step. Patrick followed suit, but in a grand leap.

Before I reached the ground he was already inspecting the damage to the food and wiping blood across the thighs of his jeans, leaving dark red stains. The thermos remained closed but some of the food had spilled out of the open container. Patrick brushed the red dirt stuck to the lid against his jeans and pressed it shut.

‘Are you sure you're okay? I could go to the house and get some cloth to wrap you up with.'

Patrick stared at me for a long time before he smiled and shook his head softly.

‘All good,' he said, glancing briefly at his arms. ‘I've stopped bleeding already.'

‘Okay.' I didn't know what else to say and for some reason, maybe because of the way Patrick was looking at me — like I was something beautiful — my cheeks began to heat up. ‘So tell me about these people who live around here.'

‘They're an indigenous tribe. They keep to themselves mostly. Rarely out in the open.'

‘Are there any women in this tribe?'

‘Yeah, though I've only met the Elder, once. I was just a kid...this is going to sound stupid, but he touched my head and I remember feeling a sense of peace or something. My dad's met the entire tribe. He saw women. He said they were disease-free. Apparently the Elder believes the Y-Carrier came to Australia via up there.'

‘As in God's wrath?'

‘No,' Patrick said with a shake of his head, his face deadly serious, ‘as in extra-terrestrial.'

I chewed on my bottom lip, suppressing the urge to share with Patrick the many vivid dreams I'd had since I was little, about aliens interfering with my brain. But I hardly wanted Patrick to think I was a nutter right off the bat.

‘And what do you think?' I said instead.

Patrick shrugged. ‘I don't know. My mum used to say that the disease was some scientific experiment gone wrong and maybe the government's fault. My dad thinks another country might have planted it so that they can take over ours. But it's been years and they would have arrived already.'

‘They might be waiting for all of us to die.'

Patrick remained silent for a long time before he uttered a soft, ‘Maybe.'

After another, drawn out silence between us, where all I could hear was the whistle of the wind through the fence, I kicked at the dirt with my feet.

‘I'd better go see how Mum is.'

‘Is she okay?' The concern in his eyes was like the tip of a blade cutting into my swollen heart, allowing fresh guilt to seep out. It felt so wrong to hear him ask after Mum when she was the one who had killed his dad.

I shrugged. ‘I don't know. Normally she watches me like a hawk, but lately she's been locking herself in her bedroom.' I met his eyes. ‘She got drunk the other night, which isn't normal for her.'

‘Do you think she knows anything about my dad?'

My eyes returned to my feet and I sucked in a deep breath through my teeth. The rational part of me knew that Patrick's dad was dead, resting beneath our salmon bark beside Alice and Dad. But the delusional part of me still clung to the hope that his father was alive somewhere out there. That the man Mum had shot was somebody else.

‘Mum has never mentioned having any friends. It's always been just me and her.'

Patrick made a low sound in his throat, like a stifled groan.

‘He better be okay.' He shook his head and stared over my shoulder at the blinding horizon, his eyes blinking shut. ‘I'm not good at taking care of my brothers like my dad or Markus.'

‘Who's Markus?'

Patrick's eyes flew open and met mine.

‘My older brother. Years ago, he left the house and never came back.'

I didn't know what to say; first his brother and now his dad.

‘I'm sure you're doing a great job looking after your brothers,' I finally said, because I needed to say something.

Patrick's eyes darkened and his mouth set into a grim line.

‘But I'm not. They're getting thinner by the day and I'm useless at hunting.' He turned away and shook his head before turning back to me and pointing at his face. ‘It's these stupid eyes.'

‘What do you mean?' I asked, searching his clear, green-grey eyes for imperfection.

‘I used to be a better shot than Markus, even brought home more kills than my dad sometimes. But then sometime around about the age of ten my aim became a bit off. Everything in the distance started blurring. Dad said it was nothing. But he stopped taking me hunting after I turned eleven.' Patrick sighed and clenched his hands into fists. ‘If Dad doesn't return, my brothers are going to starve because of me.'

There were no right words to say. Eyesight was everything to a hunter. With regards to survival, it was the number one asset a human could have. My blood ran cold to know Patrick had been walking around in the desert-bush like this, each day, completely vulnerable to potential attackers or Carriers.

I had to help him. He and his family needed me more than Mum. I
owed
him this.

And then I remembered.

Dad.

I closed my eyes and tried hard to picture my father's face, which normally came as a blotch. But this time he came easily to me, because the image I recalled was the photo Mum kept on her bedside table — the one in which he wore
glasses
.

‘There's something… I think there's something we could try,' I said. ‘My dad used to wear glasses. He had bad eyes too. And I think his spectacles are still in his beside drawer. I'll give them to you.'

Patrick raked a hand through his hair and sort of half shrugged his shoulders, but I could see the glint of optimism stirring in his eyes. ‘I suppose I'll try anything.'

‘I'll bring the glasses tonight. And then we can see...I mean, find out...if they help.'

Patrick nodded. ‘Can you hunt?'

‘Yeah, I do okay.' I said, shrugging, wanting to downplay my skills and not sound boastful. ‘We ran out of supplies about ten years ago so I sort of grew up hunting rabbits. I use a spear or a bow and arrow on our property but I've never caught any out there. I bet there are heaps, though.'

Patrick's stared at me intently. ‘There are heaps. We can hunt for food, together.'

‘Sure.' A warm thrill pulsed through my veins at the idea of Patrick and me out hunting together, watching each other's backs.

I glanced back in the direction of the house and the shed, and thought about the dingos and wondered what it was that was keeping them so quiet all morning. ‘I've got to go.'

‘See you tonight,' he said, before he half-smiled and added, ‘Well, as best as I can.'

I grinned.

‘You
will
see me.'

Patrick didn't say another word, but the way his shoulders had raised ever so slightly told me that he was at least a teensy bit confident.

With a spring in my step I headed back to the house, but halfway there a prickly feeling tickled the back of my neck, as though I was being watched.

I spun around to be sure Patrick had gone. Next I checked along the distant fence lines and then behind nearby shrubs and up trees, my pocketknife at the ready, but the property was too vast to investigate thoroughly.

‘Hello?' I called out. ‘Who's there?'

When I received no answer except for the rushing of leaves and the occasional twittering bird, I shook off the creepy vibe and decided I was being paranoid. I had to get over my paranoia.

After all, I was going outside for the first time tonight — for real this time.

And I could hardly wait.

The day couldn't have dragged on any slower if it went backwards.

As soon as I opened the shed door, the dingos ran to me with wagging tails, and after a brief inspection of their sleep-out, I knew why they'd been so quiet. The pale, grey bones of the four rabbits I'd smoked the week before lay scattered across the dirt floor of the shed, completely stripped of any skerrick of meat and half-chewed. Only one quarter of a rabbit remained untouched on the benchtop.

After smothering me with their slathering, meaty-smelling tongues, Emma and Charlotte lapped at their water bowls before bolting across the fence and into the wild.

I walked over to the fence and watched as they sniffed around the part Patrick and I had climbed. The fact that Patrick's scent would be mixed with mine was a good thing, and, I hoped, would prevent the girls from dubbing him a threat in the future.

The house was so dark when I entered that every time I blinked, blinding patches of light flashed before my eyes. When they did eventually adjust to the dim, I ran into Mum as she drifted out of her room.

She looked half-dead. Her skin was washed out, and her vacant eyes glossed over me like I was made out of thin air. Without a word she took a glass of water back to her room and locked the door behind her.

I rapped my knuckles against it ever so softly.

‘Mum.'

She didn't answer. All I heard was the squeak of bedsprings and then silence.

My head rested against the door. She was dying inside, bit by bit, day by day and in a weird way I missed her already.

With a sigh, I pushed myself away; but instead of heading outside, turned and crept along the now unused part of the hallway — which ended at Alice's room. Mum had locked my cousin's room soon after she'd died. She said it gave her the creeps seeing everything left as it had been, as if Alice was going to come swanning back in from a walk and throw herself down onto her bed to write in her journal.

What I wouldn't have given to have been be able to read Alice's journal. Find out how she survived the few teenage years she'd had out here at Desert Downs.

Curiosity both lightened and quickened my steps back down the hall. In the kitchen I stood on a chair to reach the top of the highest cupboard. My hand wiped away a thick layer of dusty cobwebs before feeling around for an enamel bowl.

Once found, I slid it towards me and brought it down so that I could sift through its contents. But there were so many different sized and coloured keys that it was impossible to tell which one belonged to Alice's door, so I brought the largest bunch crammed together on a single key ring with me. I'd try them all if I had to.

The keys jangled with my every step, so I took it extra slow when I passed Mum's room, not that she was in a state to notice my goings on. There was only one person she'd be thinking about right now. And if it was indeed Patrick's dad she'd shot, then I felt even sorrier for her, because if he looked and sounded anything like his son, he would be a hard face to forget.

From my room I retrieved my torch and in the dim light tried the first key. It became stuck halfway in so I tried another with the same result. The next one, however, fit.