Then something strange happened. As I flailed in the water I seemed to divide in two. Part of me was there, in the roiling terror of the moment, thrashing and fighting and choking on the water that kept forcing its way up my nose and down my throat as I swirled over and over in the rushing water. But another part of me seemed to be outside myself, drifting calmly above it all. That other part didn’t feel frightened so much as baffled. It seemed ridiculous I should have come all this way only to die like this.
I suppose that dissociation was my brain reacting to the lack of oxygen, because at some point I felt myself going limp, my body giving up the fight. I realise now I should have been afraid but I wasn’t, instead I just seemed to be drifting away, my body already forgotten.
Perhaps I would have died then. Certainly I came close. But just as I began to let go the branch struck something and rolled over again, dragging me spluttering into the light before it dragged me under again.
I cannot have been above the surface for more than a second or two, but it was enough: I was awake again. Then it happened again, and again, and each time I gasped at the air, struggling to keep myself there, above the water. The log was rolling, I realised, over and over, and I was caught on it. On the fourth or the fifth roll I managed to twist myself around and, thrashing outward, pull myself free. Gasping I turned over and filled my lungs with air as I tried to fight down the panic that had almost overwhelmed me. I was in a sort of stream, moving through the forest in a tide that bore branches and logs and detritus with it, the water coursing and racing over the ground beneath. There were banks of a sort to either side, but I didn’t think I could swim to them without being struck by some other piece of debris so, not knowing what else to do, I hung on to the branch that had almost drowned me, allowing it to drag me on.
I’m not sure how long I was swept along. Fifteen minutes? Half an hour? But eventually the water reached an open area and began to spread out and slow down. A second later I felt ground beneath my feet, and then again; although part of me wanted to let go at once, another part told me to hang on, that if I let go here I might just get struck again, dragged under. And then, off to one side, I saw a house rising above the flood on a stretch of higher ground. As it drew closer I let go, relieved to discover the water was only waist deep, and began to half-swim, half-crawl toward it.
This time there were no logs to strike me, no broken ground to slip on, and in a few minutes I was crawling across wet earth toward a verandah.
I don’t think I’d considered the question of whether the house might be inhabited or not, yet as I staggered toward the front door I was surprised to see a figure appear in front of me. For a long moment he didn’t move, just stood, staring at me. I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out, but it didn’t need to, because he was already stepping down and reaching out to take me in his arms.
20
As he bore me up onto the verandah I stared at him in disbelief. A few minutes before I had thought I was about to die, and now here I was, not just alive but with Matt. No doubt he felt the same, for he kept touching my face, trying to look into my eyes and asking me if I was okay, and I just kept nodding and saying ‘Yes, yes,’ over and over again, the words tumbling out of my mouth, and then all at once I was crying, although whether out of relief or happiness I’m not sure.
Once we were clear of the water I fell sideways, and he caught me, embracing me as he lowered me to the ground. Closing my eyes I pressed my face to his thin chest, losing myself in the sound of his heart through his shirt. Then I pushed him away.
‘Gracie . . .’ I began, and he nodded.
‘She’s okay,’ he said.
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘Inside,’ he said glancing toward the house.
Behind the door the house was dark, the sound of the rain outside echoing through the empty rooms. Unlike the last few places we had stayed it had once been nice, its wide floorboards sanded and oiled, the walls and doors rubbed back and painted. Matt ushered me through a door into a room in which a figure lay curled up in one corner.
I rushed over and knelt down beside her. At first I thought she was asleep – her face was blank and her mouth slightly ajar – but then I noticed her eyes were partly open, the eyes behind them staring blankly. I felt Matt crouch down behind me.
‘Is she . . .’ I began. Behind me I could feel Matt’s hesitation.
‘Asleep, I think. Or something like it.’
‘Has she been like this long?’
‘On and off, the last day or two.’
I touched her cheek. She stirred, her eyes flickering open. Once, when she was three, I woke up to find her standing beside my bed, staring down at me. Although her eyes were open she was still asleep, and I remember the unnerving blankness of the way she looked at me, the sense she was there but not there. Looking at her now I was reminded of that night, except that this time it was not simply an absence I was seeing. Instead it was as if everything that was Gracie had been emptied out and in her place there was something else, something cold and inhuman.
I recoiled but Gracie didn’t react. Then she blinked, and all at once that other presence disappeared, and some semblance of the child I knew returned.
‘Callie?’ she said, and I nodded, my terror falling away as I wrapped my arms around her and buried my face in her neck.
‘I thought I’d never see you again,’ I said, but as I spoke I realised there was something wrong with the way she felt, with the way she lay in my arms, a lack of responsiveness. Releasing her I sat back, trying to hide my distress.
‘It’s raining,’ she said in the same unsettlingly affectless voice, her eyes travelling past me to the window behind me.
I nodded. ‘A lot,’ I said.
Gracie looked at me again. ‘You’re wet.’
Despite the hollow feeling in my gut I smiled. ‘I know.’
Matt placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘We have food if you want it. And you need to get dry.’
I turned to find him looking at me, his face set in an expression of careful concern. For an instant I had to fight the urge to lash out at him, to blame him or hurt him, as if that might undo what I had just seen.
‘Okay,’ I said.
Although they had no clothes I could wear, Matt’s blanket was still dry, so while his back was turned I stripped down to my underwear. As I picked up the blanket to wrap it around myself he turned. I fell still, aware of his eyes tracing the lines of my body, his face taking in the string of bruises and abrasions on my stomach and arms, the puckered line of the wounds on my ankle and thigh and knee and hand. Finally he lifted his eyes to mine, a question forming in them. But when he didn’t speak I tightened my grip on the blanket and drew it about myself.
To my surprise Matt produced a tin of baked beans and a jar of jam, items he said had been liberated from a house two days before. There was no way to heat the beans but I didn’t care: even shovelled into my mouth with my fingers they were perfect.
While I ate I watched Gracie. She had moved toward the window and was standing staring out into the rain, her arms at her side. She hadn’t spoken since our last exchange and although she had done nothing peculiar or unnatural there was something disturbing about her stillness, the way she seemed to be looking at something invisible to Matt and myself.
‘She’s been getting worse since we lost you,’ Matt said after a while. ‘It’s like she’s only here half the time, and even then she’s like this.’
I didn’t reply. Outside it was growing dark, and although the landscape had mostly disappeared beneath the water the rain still fell heavily. I knew I should ask Matt how he was as well, whether the Change was hastening in him in the way it was in Gracie, but I couldn’t find it in me, the question hurt too much to make it real.
‘Thank you,’ I said at last.
Matt looked at me. ‘What for?’
‘Looking after her.’
Matt shook his head. ‘You don’t need to thank me,’ he said, his voice suddenly, unexpectedly abrupt. Confused I looked at him but he looked away and wouldn’t meet my eye. When he spoke again his voice was gentler.
‘What happened? How did you get here?’
I shrugged. ‘It’s a long story.’ When I didn’t continue he reached out, put a hand on mine.
‘And you?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘We were lucky. We found this place last night, before the rain began. I almost made camp a kilometre or so back down the road but something made me keep going. Seems like a good decision now.’
‘And before that?’
Matt paused, looking at Gracie. ‘We looked for you.’
Over the next half an hour or so Matt told me the story of what had happened. On the day I was captured he had taken Gracie and run as far and as fast as he could, eventually swinging down a rock face and sheltering in a cave. ‘They were right there,’ he said, ‘above us, so close I could hear the dogs panting and the two of them talking to each other above us.’ But eventually they left, and after a time he and Gracie clambered out and confronted the fact I was gone.
‘I was certain they must have caught you,’ he said, ‘but I also knew that if there was any chance they hadn’t we had to find you.’ So after a while he and Gracie began to retrace their steps, working their way back to the campsite and then finally to Travis’ compound.
‘We found a spot a little way off where we could watch and see whether they had you,’ he said. ‘For a long time we didn’t see anything, but then, that night, we saw them take you out of that container. I had to stop Gracie calling out to you, because it was obvious you were being kept as some sort of prisoner. When they put you back in there I knew we had to get you out, it was just a question of how and when. I waited until Gracie was asleep, then I snuck up to the fence and tried to call out to you, but I couldn’t make you hear me, and the dogs were barking, so I crept away again. When I woke up in the morning I decided I had to get in there no matter what, but before I could they loaded you into the car and drove away with you. We waited all that day and that night, and after a while I really began to worry, but then Quarantine turned up and I knew we couldn’t wait there any longer.’
At this last he looked pained, and glanced across at Gracie. ‘You know I would have waited, don’t you? If it wasn’t for Gracie.’
I nodded, and this time I reached for his hand.
‘I thought I was never going to see you again,’ he said.
Eventually the dim light of the day gave way to the night, leaving us alone in the darkness of the house. Matt opened another can of beans and gave them to Gracie, who ate them slowly, mechanically, and then allowed me to put her to bed. There were moments when she almost seemed herself, but they were few and far between, and for the most part she seemed blank, empty. And although Matt was not as far gone he too was different, his attention elsewhere half the time, his eyes focused on things I couldn’t see.
I lay beside Gracie as she fell asleep, my face pressed into her hair. Until now it had been comforting to lose myself in the warm smell of her, yet tonight there was another odour mingled in with her familiar scent, an earthy smell like moss, and under it another note, something sickly and overripe like jasmine or musk, and although I didn’t notice it at first, once I had smelled it I couldn’t unsmell it, reminders of it clinging to my face and hands as I lay waiting for Gracie to sleep.
This time she slept normally, her eyes fully closed as she slipped down into a drifting slumber. Only two weeks before she had been so full of life, now she was barely here at all.
The rain was loud on the roof overhead, and occasionally thunder rumbled or lightning flickered outside, but after a while I slept as well.
When I woke it was still raining. Next to me Gracie had rolled away from me; in the pale light from outside I could see the outline of her face turned away from me. While I slept the blanket had slipped free of my shoulders and in the damp air my skin was cold, numb; reaching down, I drew the blanket back around myself.
At first I thought Matt had gone somewhere, but then I heard his breath over the sound of the rain. Although he didn’t speak, something in the quality of his breathing made me certain he wasn’t asleep either, that he was lying there, listening to me.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked quietly.
‘Because I was ashamed. Because I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me.’ He paused. ‘Because I was frightened.’ In the darkness his voice was close, intimate, yet simultaneously distant, like a voice on a phone.
‘Does your brother know?’
He hesitated. When he spoke again his voice was less certain. ‘When I realised I went to him, told him. I . . . I thought he would know what to do, would be able to help me.’
‘But?’
‘He told me he would call Quarantine, that I disgusted him.’
I didn’t reply. Instead I turned and reached out to him. His face was almost invisible, but as my hands found him in the darkness I felt him start, as if electricity moved through him.
‘No,’ he said, pulling down the neck of his T-shirt to show me the shimmer of the Change running like veins beneath his skin.
Without speaking I let my hand move up, brush his cheek. He shivered, and for a second I thought he would pull away, but then he turned his face into it, pressing his lips to my fingers until I drew his face to mine. My skin was cold, almost numb, and I was afraid of what I would find when I kissed him, yet as I pressed my face to his skin, his lips, he felt warm, alive. Reaching down he drew his T-shirt over his head; I touched his chest. My stomach lurched as he let his hand slide down my back to the hem of my T-shirt; looking up I met his eyes, their opaline depths painful to see but beautiful; I hesitated, part of me not wanting that moment to end, then I nodded, and he drew it up, our bodies skin to skin as we fell into one another.
And afterwards, when it was over, we lay beside each other, the point where he ended and I began not quite clear in the dark, and he looked up and said, ‘The rain, it’s stopped.’
I woke alone. In the corner Gracie still slept, but otherwise the room was empty.
Standing up I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. The night before seemed both very real and like a dream that was already fading, but as I pressed a hand to my lips I could still taste his mouth, feel his body against mine.
Matt was outside, leaning against one of the posts on the verandah. As I emerged he looked at me and smiled, then looked away again.
Somewhere in the night the sky had cleared, the only cloud a line of broken cumulus to the northwest. To the east the sun was visible above the hills, but in front of us a sea of water spread out in every direction, its surface broken here and there by the shapes of trees or bits of debris.
It was beautiful, I suppose, especially in the dawn light, but it was also difficult to make sense of. At first I thought it was a lake, but as I looked more carefully I realised it was not a lake but a vast stream flowing steadily past. Beside me I could feel Matt watching me; when I looked at him he didn’t look away but neither did he say anything to suggest the night before had happened.
‘I think it’s still rising,’ he said.
I looked at him in surprise. ‘What?’
He smiled. ‘The water. I think it’s still rising.’
I looked down at the ground in front of the verandah, saw the water was indeed almost at the line of the posts.
‘There must be more water upstream,’ I said. ‘Flowing down.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
I looked to the west. ‘The sky is clear up there, so the rain must have stopped there as well. So at least there’s a limit to how much will come.’
‘The only question is how much more.’
I looked at the water by the
posts again. ‘We can keep an eye on it,’ I said. ‘See if the rate it’s rising at gets any faster.’
Matt glanced behind us at the house where Gracie still slept. ‘Hopefully it’ll go down soon. We haven’t got a lot of food and I’d be wary of drinking this water.’
I thought he might say more but as he spoke Gracie appeared at the door behind me. She looked dirty, and the marks of the Change were clearly visible on her skin, but she looked dazed rather than Other.
‘Hey, Gracie,’ I said. She didn’t answer, just stared at me.
‘Are you okay?’
Still she didn’t answer. I took a step toward her and knelt down. Her gaze followed me, just slightly too slowly.
‘Gracie?’
‘I’m hungry,’ she said. I nodded, catching my hand before I reached to touch her cheek.
She turned away: as I watched her go I felt a sudden stab of sadness, as if she had already slipped out of my reach.
While we waited we discussed what we would do once the water had receded. According to the map Agus had given me we were only a couple of days walk from the Transitional, but because unauthorised personnel were forbidden to enter it, crossing was likely to be riskier than anything we had tried so far.
‘It’s patrolled, and they’re permitted to shoot on sight,’ Matt said.
I didn’t answer: both of us knew the reason Quarantine could shoot on sight was as much to discourage runners as it was to prevent the Changed from coming south.
‘And we have to get past the fences.’
I nodded. After my experiences with Travis and Quarantine I was less prepared to be put off by a fence than I had been. ‘We can get past the fence.’
Matt looked sceptical.
‘What about food?’ We’ve been lucky so far but there are a hundred kilometres between the two lines and who knows what we’ll find when we get to the Zone itself. We can’t go wandering off with two cans of beans and some jam or we’ll die.’
The Silent Invasion Page 18
