Sign

by Colin Dray

  Once they had rounded the blockage, Sam caught a glimpse of more blackened animals fallen in the dirt. This time it was birds, their bodies charred, what was left of their feathers splayed and smouldering. The sight of so many at once made him want to vomit. He had to choke down the sensation, his head heavy. It was just like the first time he’d seen the dead kangaroo, but this time his vision didn’t fade. He could see it all clearly, without wanting to turn away. Somehow he wanted to remember it.

  And as he stared at their shrivelled, steaming forms, illuminated by shafts of sunlight that cut through the smoke, Dettie kicked at the accelerator and the car sped on.

  61

  They were pulled over on a blackened stretch of road so that they could pee. Dettie had become so impatient, so jittery, that she now left the car running. It shuddered in place with the handbrake on as she stalked off to squat behind a cluster of scorched bushes.

  To Sam it felt like the end of the world. Like a page from one of his comics brought to life. Another small fire front had just swept through the area. The air remained heavy with smoke, and a crisp heat radiated up from the ground. There were no animals in sight. No sound of birds. Even the flies that usually pestered his face were gone. No traffic came from either direction, and the last building Sam could recall had been a farmhouse a few minutes back, as yet untouched by the fire, where a farmer was hosing down his buildings.

  Sam stood waiting for Dettie, basting in sweat, staring in through the front door of the car as it yawned before him. For one wild moment he thought about jumping in and driving off. He felt every muscle in his body tighten. He could do it. With Dettie staggering around in the bushes, metres away, he and Katie could leap inside, snap down all the locks, and tear off, abandoning her behind them in a cloud of dust. As he stared in at the dashboard display, he tried, frantically, to think of which lever to pull, what pedal to press, to make the car go. He remembered sitting in the driver’s seat when Jon was fixing the engine, and turning over the ignition. He remembered barely being able to see over the wheel; feeling his legs waggle, toes centimetres from the pedals.

  But he had to do something. It had gone on long enough. The whole trip. All of it.

  It had to end.

  The keys dangled in the ignition. Poised. Waiting.

  He looked at Katie. She was scratching the toe of her shoe into dirt beside the highway, exposing the red earth beneath its charcoal crust. Further back, a few dozen metres down the road behind her, he could see the burnt-out husk of a vehicle, partially nosed into the scrub. Like everything else around them, it too had been overwhelmed by flames. Lopsided, with no tyres, its glass shattered, the roof partially collapsed in on itself.

  It wouldn’t work. He’d fail to get the car in gear. He wouldn’t be able to steer. And then they’d still be stuck with Dettie. Watching her get even angrier. Seeing her lose even more control.

  Maybe if they could run, he thought. If they could make it past the wreckage of the car, out of her line of sight. From there, they’d be able to scramble into the skeletal remains of the foliage, could make their way from cover to cover, to try to get back to that farmhouse. Maybe even wave someone else down on the way. Whatever. Anything. They just had to do it. To go. Now.

  Before he lost his nerve, Sam took a breath, grabbed for Katie’s hand, and sprinted. She gasped, but didn’t shout. He couldn’t see her face behind him, but she gripped his fingers tightly in return and pumped her legs to keep pace. The atmosphere was dense and sweltering. He could feel the soot spattering his skin, coating him. His lungs ached, his head throbbed. Tiny fireflies danced across his vision—or maybe they were brushfires, still smouldering somewhere nearby. He couldn’t tell. The ground crackled under their feet like it might shatter at any moment, giving way beneath them. But finally they were away.

  They made it to the other side of the burnt-out wreckage and Sam ducked, dragging Katie down with him. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes wide and already bloodshot. Her breath was short and panicked.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘What’s happening?’

  He put a finger to his lips, hushing her, his chest blazing as he tried to stifle a cough. He pointed, back towards Dettie and their car, and shook his head. He mouthed, Liar.

  Liar. Not safe.

  ‘What? Lost?’

  No. He waved his hands. He curled them up like bear claws, just as Jon had showed him, and thumped them on his chest. Two short, hard taps:

  Scared. Scary.

  He spun a finger around his ear. Crazy. Scary. He gestured to her, and back at himself, then mimed running with his fingers.

  ‘I don’t…Sam?’

  He looked around for a stick that hadn’t been incinerated so that he could try to write in the dirt, but there was nothing nearby. Suddenly, behind them, he heard Dettie shout their names. Her voice cracked.

  He grabbed Katie’s wrist and scrambled off into the bushes.

  Everything was black. Grey. Twisted charcoal branches clawed at his skin, snatched at his hair. No animal sounds, no sky above. Just grey and smoke and ash. Heat still radiating up from the ground. The crush of their footfalls. The skittering snaps of twigs reclosing behind them.

  He felt a snag on his neck, but kept on. His ankle rolled on uneven ground, but he kept going. His legs were whipped and scratched, but he kept kicking his way through. His hands were covered in dust and smears of black soot. His throat was parched and tight. His eyes stung with ash. Both arms, he realised, were lit red with scrapes and cuts. His flesh seeped. Grazed pools of sweat, pink with blood, seethed like daubs of alcohol. But they were free. They were out.

  Katie was becoming a weight, lagging behind, not lifting her feet as she ran. He pulled at her hand, desperate. She was crying. He broke through another cluster of dead brush into a small clearing. There was still no sight of the farmhouse anywhere in the distance. How far had they driven past it? How long would it take to get there?

  He stopped, checking that the road was still visible on his right side, letting them both catch their breath.

  ‘We have to go back,’ Katie was moaning. ‘We’ve got to go back.’

  He turned and looked in her eyes. He looked deep in her eyes. He shook his head.

  No. Scary.

  Katie crumbled. She twisted in his grasp, letting out a long, howling whine, collapsing to her knees.

  He pointed again, off into the distance, to the farmhouse he hoped was closer than it seemed. They were free—

  ‘We can’t,’ she sobbed. ‘No…’

  He could see the fear in her face. That long empty expanse before them. The danger. They were in the middle of nowhere. Under the sun. The temperature surrounding them, pressing in like a fever. No food or water. Alone. He wasn’t even sure where he was dragging her. He couldn’t even tell her why. He snatched a stick from a nearby branch and began writing in the dirt, but Katie wasn’t even looking.

  In the distance, further away now, Dettie was still shouting, her voice clipped and hysterical. She was weeping as she spun in place. Calling out. Desperate.

  Katie was sobbing into her wrist, her whole body jolting with each breath, hair matted against her wet face. She was saying something, the words so strangled at first they were inaudible.

  ‘We can’t leave,’ she said.

  Sam stopped. Stopped tugging at her arms. Stopped trying to lift her up. Stopped pointing. He turned towards her. The thunder in his head went pounding on. Her face was streaked with black tears. She shook her head. ‘We can’t.’

  ‘We’re family.’ Her voice bit the words with tremors. She was shaking. ‘Family doesn’t leave,’ she said.

  The sun burned on overhead. The landscape around them, blistered and warped and corroded, stretched on in every direction. That farmhouse, even if it was still there, suddenly seemed as much of a dream as Perth. Sam was nodding. He didn’t realise at first, but he was.

  His neck was red and inflamed. The vent was soaked with sweat and ash. His skin stung fero
ciously, slick, as though he were bleeding. His chest jerked. Sucking at the air. His lungs were on fire. He couldn’t breathe.

  Couldn’t catch his breath.

  He heaved. Shallow. Jagged. Useless intakes. Hot and harsh.

  It was like Tracey’s house again. But much worse. His vision clouded. Fireflies buzzed in his eyes. His body went numb.

  They were trapped.

  No hope. No escape.

  He was weeping. Silent. Choking. He was ashamed of himself. Furious. He was an idiot. He had tried to save Katie too late. He’d only realised what Dettie had done when there was nowhere for them to go. His throat wheezed. Louder. Shrill. It was all he could hear.

  They were going to die.

  He punched the ground. His whole fist cracked through the black crust, scorching his knuckles. He kicked it. He hissed. Folding over onto his knees, he ground his teeth until it felt like they would snap. His world shrank in on itself until he was just a raw, furious nerve, doubled over and silently screaming. It was a moment before he could even feel Katie’s arms around him, hugging his back.

  At first he felt dead inside. Defeated. Another shambling zombie. But eventually, he noticed something else: his heart was beating on behind his ears. He could feel it shuddering, hot and insistent, in his throat. He couldn’t shout. He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t even moan. But he could feel that pulse. Beneath and behind everything else. That urge to survive. He felt it burning. Hot and restless and alive.

  Gradually his breathing settled. The hiccoughing subsided. The fog started to clear. The world around him resolved into view. And with Katie still clutching him, he looked up.

  Above him the air was still pale with smoke, but beyond that was the sky. A bright, saturating blue. All the more dazzling for the tears in his eyes.

  Suddenly the enormity of it bewildered him.

  He had seen world globes. He sat beside one at school. He had traced his finger along the shape of Australia. He knew that the world was not flat. But here, looking up at the sky—blue everywhere; the essence of blue—the ground beneath him sloping away in every direction, he felt the nature of the earth as never before. Spherical and drifting through space. It was a peculiar sensation—his entire world expanded and shrank simultaneously. He seemed to be looking down upon a miniscule image of himself, looking up. He knew himself, all at once, to be no more than a speck on a ball, spinning in place, impossibly clinging to its surface. Always about to be flung off, out into that incomprehensible vista of blue.

  He felt light. Oddly light and wide. As though he could stretch his fingers out and take hold of each side of the horizon, could cling on tight to the world itself if he wanted to.

  But he didn’t.

  He kept looking up and the earth spun on beneath his feet. He knew that beyond that blue sky was a void of stars and cold, indifferent black. And he didn’t care. Suddenly he just wanted to let go. To spin off into nothing and see where he landed. The car, the drive, Perth, all dissolved. He was still aware of them, but somehow they weren’t so oppressive as they had been. Everything that had weighed upon him, that made him feel trapped, was now just floating along with him in the same void; little more than thoughts passing by, that he could leave unexamined. The constraints seemed to have slipped. The seatbelts and stoma guards and Dettie’s grasping hands were far from him, and he had the sky to himself—the sky that was everywhere and his alone.

  Once his breathing had calmed down, Sam helped Katie up again and they made their way out to the road, following it back the way they had come. By the time they reached the car, which stood still, grumbling in place, they found Dettie sitting in the dirt, clutching her chest. At first she was so lost in her own thoughts that she didn’t hear them coming, but sat staring ahead at the road’s tar, shivering. Alone.

  As they drew near, Katie ran ahead and rushed to hug her. Dettie, looking up, broke down and smothered her with kisses.

  Sam, walked slower, staggering, one foot dragging after the other. The breath through his neck was a fluttery whistle. Every part of his body was sore, speckled with grime and blood. Dettie gathered him into a hug, crying and whispering, ‘Thank you.’

  He was numb.

  He had delivered his sister back to Dettie. Back to the car. Back to this insane trip. Back to the lie of Perth. And yet, in a puzzling way, he felt freed of something. Dettie was wiping her eyes on her wrists, Katie was begging her not to be angry anymore, and the car waited, still idling, for whatever would happen next.

  62

  The heat eased off slightly, but the sky had darkened. Sam couldn’t remember the last time he had seen anything but smoke above the horizon, and as they pushed on, more of the landscape became stripped and charred around them. Whole paddocks were decimated, fences sunken and collapsed, livestock burnt. Road signs were folded over, melted in the heat, and Sam saw a whole house that had been reduced to a smouldering frame, its corrugated roof tumbled in upon itself.

  A little further on a barricade had been set up to block traffic, propping up a large yellow sign that read Road Closed. Even the sandbags that held it in place had been scorched. As the car pushed around it, Katie started to speak, but Dettie shushed her quiet.

  Sam’s rage had faded, but he was not yet sure what had replaced it. In the midst of his new, peculiar calm he was realising that his anger had been with him a lot longer than just the past day. Long before they’d abandoned Jon. Even back before the entire journey began. The cold sensation twisting in his belly had been there since at least his operation. Perhaps even before. Since he and Katie had sat on his bed, reading his father’s letter aloud. He wondered if that was why he had believed Dettie.

  Her story was preposterous. Their parents had gotten back together with one phone call, after years of shouting arguments and conversations seething with unspoken accusation. The memory of his father sleeping on the couch for months. Roger, and his father’s job, and the months that had gone by without even a word from him. Sam had wanted so badly to undo it all that he never stopped to properly think it through. He’d embraced the lie. Like everyone else. He’d let it calm the rage that so often pinned him in place, left him breathless and terrified.

  And it had.

  For a few days, even with his skin pulled tight and peeling, he’d no longer felt so much like a shell of himself, lost and echoing with empty fury. The thought of his father’s return seemed to have filled in that hollow for a time. But in truth, beneath it all, the ache had remained, gnawing at his gut, tethering him to the past like the blankets tangled at his feet. Like the belt that pinned him to his seat.

  Looking down at his greyed knees, at the black soot up his arms, he realised: he was just like the burnt-down house that had slipped by on the road. Eaten away. Exposed. Everything stripped from him. Everyone gone. His voice. His home. His father. His mother. Jon. All gone. Gone wherever Dettie’s husband was. Wherever the girl behind the curtain had been led. Perhaps dead, perhaps missing, but lost either way. He couldn’t run to them, or rely on them. He couldn’t will them back into being, no matter how much he thrashed and sulked.

  He was burnt down, his emptiness exposed. But as he sat, swept along by the shudder of the car beneath him, it no longer hung upon him like a weight—the pain of what was lost fixing him in place, breathless. Instead he felt unburdened. It was the curious sensation of freedom that had made him woozy as he peered up at the blue sky.

  Sam had spent the past several months grieving for what had been taken from him. But this trip, this journey into Dettie’s fixation on the past, her deluded longing to bring it back into being, had liberated him. He could no more change what had happened up to this point than he could open up his mouth and sing. All he could control was what was to come. Because Katie needed him. He was still afraid. For her. For himself. But it no longer paralysed him. He would be ready.

  He groped around on the floor and gathered up Jon’s hitchhiking sign and a stray dark green colouring pencil.

 
; Keeping the cardboard tilted away from Katie, so as not to frighten her, he changed Help Me, I’m British to Help Us! Kidnapped!

  ‘What you doing there, Sammy?’ Dettie said, angling to see in the rear-vision mirror. ‘You doing some drawing?’

  He glanced up at her. He nodded.

  ‘Good. That’s good. That’s something nice and quiet to do. Good boy.’

  He finished up the thick lettering and tucked the sign back behind his legs.

  Ahead of them, the road disappeared into a wall of smoke. The cloud lay across the ground, motionless in the breeze, and within it Sam could see specks of flame lapping at the outlines of trees. The air was suddenly like a furnace. He felt it scalding his face. And he knew immediately that behind that curtain of smoke was the fire front. He stiffened, felt the heat in his lungs, and then they were inside it, swallowed by the white.

  When the landscape disappeared, all at once, Katie shouted.

  ‘Katie, I said be quiet.’

  ‘No! Don’t!’

  ‘We’ll be through in a minute.’

  Sam couldn’t make out anything, just grey smoke winding through white, flickers of orange, and the occasional flash of blistered roadside poles.

  Embers swam in the air, peppering the windshield. Dettie snapped on the wipers, but it only smeared the soot around. The car swerved and pitched on the road, and Sam wasn’t sure how his aunt even knew where she was going. Their tyres sounded wet through the tar, and something crackled against his door.

  Katie was screaming, hysterical.

  ‘Shut up, girl! Be quiet!’

  Smoke blasted through the vents. Sam was holding his breath. He reached for Katie, holding her hand while bracing himself against the door.