Half Lives (35 page)

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘You must survive the dark to become a guiding light.’ I rested my hand on the ground next to his thigh. He slipped his hand on top of
mine, casually so Tate wouldn’t notice. Chaske was my North Star.

‘It’s my turn next!’ Tate bounced. ‘Chaske, your stories need way more action.’

‘I think his story was perfect,’ I said and squeezed his hand.

One night Chaske and I stayed up playing a new card game we’d created which was a mix of truth or dare, strip poker and the card game, war. Each card and suit represented
a, well, sensual act and a body part. We divided the queen-of-heartless deck and each flipped one card over. The person who had the higher card was the recipient of the action on the winning card.
We leaned over the cards and kissed at every tie. One-eyed Jacks and twos were wild, if you know what I mean. Then whoever won the whole deck got to decide, um, the ultimate reward.

I had just finished kissing each of Chaske’s toes, his five of spades trumping my three of hearts, when I swear I heard a
click
and then a
clack
. Chaske didn’t seem
to notice, mostly because I had trumped his ten of diamonds with a one-eyed Jack.

‘Did you hear something?’ I asked.

We both stayed very still.

‘Never mind,’ I said, and puckered my lips as I considered if I wanted him to remove his shirt for the rest of the game or kiss my eyelids, which for some reason freaked him out a
bit.

Click. Clack. Click. Clack.
It was the faintest series of taps.

We’d both heard that.

We dropped our cards and raced up the tunnel. I pressed my ear to the door. Nothing.

‘You heard it too?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘Could it be someone knocking?’

I backed away from the door. A memory of the last time I’d opened the door flashed through my mind.
Please no,
I thought.
Not again.

We waited and waited for the sound, but it never came.

‘We must have imagined it,’ I said, and forced a laugh.

‘Yeah,’ he agreed, even though a joint auditory hallucination was pretty much impossible.

A few nights later, it happened again. We were cuddled up together in the sleeping bag, waiting for Tate to turn out the light.
Click. Clack. Click. Clack.
On and on it
went.

I covered my ears, exposing my shoulders to the chilly bunker air.

‘Tate!’ Chaske screamed.

I decided that warm was more important than eardrums, so I pulled the sleeping bag back around my neck.

‘Tate! What are you doing?’ Chaske sat up and shouted even louder. Cold air rushed in and robbed us of our cocoon of heat.

‘Nothing!’ he called back. ‘Nothing. It was nothing.’ I could hear his feet pounding up the tunnels.

Oh, my God. I had to get dressed before he got here. He couldn’t see me like this.

‘I was just doing something but it’s nothing. I’ll stop,’ Tate was calling to us as he ran.

I shoved Chaske the rest of the way out of the sleeping bag and clumsily stumbled out of the cot. The rock was cold on my bare butt. I searched for my lavender
I know you are but what am
I?
shirt. Chaske pulled on his jeans in this smooth, ninja-like move. I snatched my shirt, which I remembered he’d tossed with great zeal earlier to the far side of the room.

Tate was babbling and running and getting closer and closer.

I pulled on my shirt and jeans and stuffed my bra and underwear deep in Chaske’s sleeping bag. Chaske calmly combed his fingers through his hair and I used the cot to pull myself up,
nearly ending up back on the floor with the cot on top of me. Chaske was helping me up when Tate appeared at the door.

‘What were you doing?’ Chaske asked, and stepped in front of me to distract Tate as I zipped up my jeans.

‘Nothing. You know. I’ll stop.’ He looked at me, sort of hiding behind Chaske. ‘What were
you
two doing?’ Tate asked, winking at Chaske.

I thought of the best lie I could. ‘I was doing some laundry, you know, washing my delicates, and I thought Chaske might give me a bit of his daily water.’ It sounded plausible. I
stopped to see if the lie would soak in.

He squinted at me and then smiled the devilish smile that I had come to know and love. ‘I’ll give you some of my water, Icie, if you’ll let me help you.’

‘Not on your life, Roadkill,’ I said.

‘I drank all my water today, Icie,’ Chaske said, showing me his empty water jug. ‘I’ll save you some tomorrow.’

‘Yeah, fine. I’d better get back to my laundry,’ I said, and walked to the door. I gave Tate a friendly whack on the back of the head. ‘That’s for being
rude.’

‘Ouch.’ Tate rubbed his head. ‘I thought I was being helpful.’

‘Too much testosterone for me,’ I said as I left. I did this weird combination of mime and sign language and mouthed,
My room later,
to Chaske.

Chaske gave a subtle nod. It wasn’t until I was back in my room that I realized it was Tate who had skilfully changed the subject from the clacking noises. He was probably just making the
noise somehow with his mouth or armpit. I forgot about it. It was Tate, being Tate. I never thought it would matter.

It mattered.

Maybe a week later Chaske and I were woken by the most horrible scream and crash. Chaske and I sprang to our feet, dressed without a word and ran down the tunnel shouting for
Tate, but everything was quiet.

We reached where the light stopped. Tate’s tent was there but he wasn’t inside. Tate had added a few more drums to his drum set. I didn’t know a lot about music but I was sure
most rock drummers didn’t play upwards of fifteen drums. We switched on our flashlights and continued down the tunnel.

‘Tate!’ Chaske called.

‘Tate!’ I shouted almost in response.

We listened intently.

Nothing.

I wanted to turn back. I didn’t want to know what I would find. ‘Tate!’ I screamed again. We reached the place where it looked like the tunnel had collapsed in a pile of rock.
I remember how that sight unnerved me on that first day. I tried not to think about the tons of earth overhead. The rock pile wasn’t solid any more. Tate had deconstructed it, rock by rock.
There was now a jagged opening, beyond which was pitch black. The clacking noises suddenly made sense. Chaske climbed through.

‘I don’t like this,’ I told Chaske, and followed him.

He stumbled into a secret room. The temperature increased. The wall ahead of us had a metal door, more of a garage door really. It was open. We stepped inside. The space was vast, but the air
was warm.

Chaske sent a thin beam sweeping like a lighthouse over the sea ahead of us. Shiny silver canisters were stacked from floor to ceiling. A few of the columns had toppled over and the tops of the
canisters had popped off, gaping at us like mouths open in a scream. Chaske flicked his light here and there, not lingering or giving me time to really understand what I was seeing.

And there was Tate. He was lying lifeless on the ground. Dull rods and what looked like shattered black glass surrounded Tate. I rushed to him but Chaske pulled me back. One of the stacks must
have fallen on him.

As the scene soaked in, I realized what this was. But how could it be? I had started to believe that we could live in here together forever. I’m not sure I cared what was outside any more.
I stood there rejecting what I knew to be true.

I’d never been safe.

We’d never had a chance.

‘Icie, look.’ Chaske shone his flashlight on the silver container closest to us. It was about a metre high and maybe sixteen inches across. The circle of light from Chaske’s
flashlight highlighted a round, red icon. I went to move closer but Chaske held me back. I strained to see. The shapes shifted from random to symbol. I knew that sign. I knew what it meant. It was
the universal symbol for radioactivity. A circle broken into three parts. I used to think it looked like an old movie reel until my dad told me what it stood for.

‘Tate,’ Chaske said. Tate’s eyes fluttered open.

‘Hi,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t be mad.’

‘We’re not mad, Tate,’ I promised. But I was. Tate’s discovery had robbed me of my safety and sanity.

Chaske brushed the dark glass off Tate and picked him up. Shards of glass clattered to the ground. Chaske carried Tate and laid him right outside the door to the secret room.

‘Tate, listen to me,’ Chaske said. ‘We need you to wake up and stand up when you’re ready.’ Chaske turned to me. ‘Icie, shut the door and I’ll be right
back.’ His expression said that our situation had just gone from firecracker to supernova bad.

Chaske climbed out and took off up the tunnel. I reached for the bottom edge of the garage-like door. It was heavy and I’d grown weak and tired trapped underground. My head swam with the
effort. I yanked the door down and staggered backwards, feeling a little drunk with all the horrible thoughts rushing through my consciousness.

Tate slowly rolled over onto his stomach and groaned as he rose to all fours. It took some time, but he stood like a scarecrow, arms out at his sides. I could see hundreds of tiny red cuts all
over his body. Tate’s eyes begged me to say something.

‘It’s going to be OK,’ I said. Neither of us believed me.

I’d rescued this rich kid from the desert only to douse him with radioactive waste.

‘Icie?’ He asked a million questions with my name. ‘Is that . . .’

I nodded. ‘How did you . . .’

‘At first I wanted to see what was hidden behind those stones.’ He pointed. ‘I removed a few stones every night and then I discovered this hidden room.’ He shut his eyes.
‘You get so bored and you think maybe there’s something in there. And it becomes like pirate treasure and a portal to the real world all at once.’

‘It’s going to be OK,’ I said again.

‘The door only had a padlock so I decided to crack its combination,’ Tate explained. ‘At night when I was sure you were asleep and this place gets deathly quiet, I’d turn
that dial and listen. When that’s all you have to do night after night, it isn’t so hard. Maybe I’ll be a thief instead of a rock star.’ Tate tried to laugh. I fixed my gaze
on the opening in the pile of rocks and begged Chaske to hurry.

Chaske returned and fed armloads of stuff to me. ‘Maybe we should come out there too,’ I said, poking my head out.

‘Stay still,’ he said to both of us, and then dashed off again. I stacked everything Chaske had given me: rubber gloves, Marissa’s jeans, my hand sanitizer, two face masks, and
Tate’s Swiss Army knife. Chaske appeared again and dumped two jugs of water at my feet and then disappeared. We were going to scrub Tate down.

Maybe Chaske didn’t understand that washing Tate down with soap and water wasn’t going to make much difference. If Tate really had been covered in that stuff. If he’d really
been spending night after night near that gunk, separated by a garage door, what good would soap and water do? But we had to do something.

I knew from my dad that radiation was like any chemical poison. It depended on the dose and the exposure time. He said it was like alcohol. If you downed a whole bottle of whisky, then
you’d feel sick and it might be life-threatening. If you drank two bottles quickly, it might kill you. But if you drank a small amount once a day it might have no effect on your health.
Radiation was like that; in the short term you could be fine, but it would increase your risk of cancer in the long run. I didn’t know how much poison Tate had been exposed to.