Storyland

by Catherine McKinnon

I know I have to stay calm. Stay alert.

  Esther stares at me.

  ‘The Marsoral is there,’ I say, and do up the flap. ‘I don’t need my inhaler now. I want it but I don’t need it.’

  Esther takes out her water bottle, gives it to me. I drink, then hand it back to her. Her eyes lock on mine.

  ‘We’ll be okay,’ I say.

  Never before have I felt more determined.

  Never before have I felt less sure about what lies ahead.

  The day darkens. Mist drips across the ridge.

  I stand, hoist my backpack onto my shoulders, and am ready to hike when – just in time – I see three figures emerge from the bush half a kilometre below and start up the path to the ridge. They have rifles slung over their shoulders. They wear jeans and tee shirts. Their attention is on the ground, pointing out marks to each other. I realise, with a jolt, that they’re following the tracks we made earlier.

  I drop down, put my hands to my lips to warn Esther. We crawl further around the rock and lie flat, waiting until they pass by.

  ‘No, it was Mess Brother wrote that song.’ It’s a female voice. High-pitched.

  ‘How’d it start then?’ This is a boy, definitely.

  ‘Turn a sally on the dead. Turn a belly on the fed.’ The girl again.

  ‘Hey, the tracks turn here.’ A new voice. Deeper than the other two. Male. Older.

  ‘We’re onto them,’ the girls says.

  ‘Are these the two that did it though?’ the boy asks.

  I press my stomach into the wet earth. Did what? I think.

  ‘This is them,’ the girl says. ‘When we sight them, give me first shot.’

  Thump, pat-pat, thump. Three bodies flash by.

  We keep still. They’re hunting two people who have done something to them. They think those two people are us.

  The trackers stop running.

  I strain to hear what they’re saying. Can’t catch it. Have they seen our footprints coming back? I could stand and tell them we’re not who they’re looking for. Unless we are. No. I mustn’t trust anyone or anything.

  I ease myself up, peer over the top of the rock.

  Two of the trackers are staring at the ground but the third, a heavy-set boy, is lifting his backpack off his shoulders. He rummages inside it; tins of food fall from the bag. He pulls out a bottle of whisky, takes a swig, then picks the tins up, shoves them in his pack.

  Every muscle in my body goes rigid. They’ve been looting! Where have they been? Are these three connected to the bald-headed rebels back at the school? I can’t see red cloth tied to their arms. Are they a different gang again? There are too many questions and no easy answers.

  I think of Ben, ill in bed. I hope to God that Steve is with him. Near him.

  The boy hoists his pack onto his back, follows the others who have already sprinted across the heath and are running into the forest. They haven’t spotted our return tracks.

  Not yet.

  When they have disappeared between the trees, I take Esther by the hand and lead her further north before we descend into the forest.

  I hear water. A waterfall?

  There wasn’t one here before. I’m overawed by the power of water. Its ability to change all that we are.

  We trek down, pushing away bushes. I try not to think about the swing bridge. Whether it is still up. I try not to think about sea surges and flooding. We crawl through vines, sinking into thick black mud. Bugs squirm through our hair. We’ll hit the path if we keep in this direction but it’s hard going. I can hear the river galloping along, thrashing and thumping as it hits the banks. The bizz bizz of hundreds of mosquitoes. We slap them away.

  I need my inhaler now.

  My left arm aches. The memory of a pain from long ago. Metal hitting me, hot rubber, the stink of bitumen. I’m a child again, lying on a road. The car that hit me, driving away, the flash of the bumper bar in the sun.

  I’m dizzy by the time we reach the path.

  My chest hurts.

  It’s only been drizzle on the way back but has the river risen?

  Has the bridge washed away?

  Adrenalin floods through me. Regret too, for starting out on this journey, for leaving Ben. But what choice did I have? And we have the Marsoral. Adrenalin pushes me on, short breaths. I limp along the path in the dimming light, my arm aching like it never has before. Esther runs behind me, clinging onto my tee shirt, her fist bumping into the small of my back, her face streaked with mud. Rain spits through breaks in the rainforest canopy. The light is almost gone.

  Finally, we come to the river. Water is splashing onto the planks of the swing bridge.

  ‘It’s there,’ Esther whispers.

  The first she’s spoken since after the landslide.

  We grip onto each other and run to the bridge. Clinging to the metal sides we hurry across. The escarpment melts into the night as we reach the opposite bank. Gusts scoop up leaves, and then drop them.

  I take the small torch from the bottom of my pack and check the strength of the brackets that clamp the bridge cables to the rock ledge.

  The brackets are strong and fixed tight.

  The rock ledge is thick, wedged into the hill.

  On the way over, I’d wanted the bridge to stay in place. Now we’re safely back, I want it gone.

  I want us cut off from those bald-headed rebels, those teenagers with guns, those looters.

  Silence. Nada taps the side of her chair with her right hand.

  You are at the bridge. You are nearly home.

  It’s pitch black as we make our way up the hill to the house. Inside, all is quiet.

  I’m gasping.

  I stumble down the hall and Esther holds the torch while I scramble to get a spare inhaler from the medicine cupboard.

  I suck on it.

  Breathe, breathe.

  Esther goes ahead, to the bedroom.

  I follow.

  She opens the door.

  A dark shape on the bed.

  Esther flashes the torch.

  Ben on the bed. I see the rise and fall of his chest.

  Relief.

  He’s alive.

  ‘Ben?’ Esther says.

  Ben opens his eyes. There is something hollowed out about his expression but he smiles. ‘You’re back,’ he murmurs.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, as I come through the door.

  ‘What is it?’ he asks.

  I slump down beside him.

  Esther fetches a Marsoral dose from my backpack, unscrews the lid and gives it to Ben.

  He drinks.

  As I start to speak Esther retreats to the doorway. Stands there, listening, while I tell Ben about the medical centre, what we found there, the desperate hungry people, the sick people, the stores of food, the rebels with bald heads and red cloth tied to their arms, the teenagers with guns, the landslide, the looters.

  ‘We’re not safe here,’ Esther says, when I’ve finished recounting.

  Ben turns to her. ‘The house is hidden from the road,’ he says.

  It’s true. Our home is still camouflaged from the old road, but if someone came to it from the rainforest, they’d spot it easily.

  ‘What if someone comes from the swing bridge?’ I say. ‘Looters with guns?’

  ‘Not everyone is a looter, surely,’ he says.

  ‘People are going crazy out there,’ I say.

  Esther agrees.

  It might seem impossible but all of this seems impossible. Ben hasn’t witnessed the madness. Esther and I have.

  ‘We could set up camp in the caves,’ Ben suggests.

  It’s a good idea. The caves are well hidden.

  Caves?

  We used to camp in them when we first bought the property, before we built the house.

  ‘I think we should move up there now,’ I say.

  ‘Tonight?’ Ben asks.

  ‘Ben, we do have to go now,’ Esther says.

  She tells him again about the orange-haired b
oy, and the shootings, about the birds, about the man and kids who slid away from us, about the changed world.

  It’s Esther who convinces Ben we need to go immediately.

  ‘Okay,’ he says, finally.

  Esther and I take a Marsoral dose each. We store the remaining three doses in an esky. No ice, but we can store the esky at the back of the caves where it is cool and give the doses to Steve, Tom and Bill tomorrow. I ask Esther to pack some food boxes.

  ‘Things we can eat without cooking,’ I say. ‘Or warm up on the camp stove.’

  Ben, feeble, gets dressed, and we go into the storeroom where we keep the camping gear. We are dragging out the swags when he faints. I sit him up, get some water.

  ‘I need air,’ he says.

  I help him out to the bench beneath the big old fig tree. Every summer we set up a table beneath the tree to eat our meals, shaded by its long gnarled branches and thick leaves. On family days, nieces and nephews always race each other to climb to the top, screaming down at the adults, look at me, look at me. That life seems far away now.

  ‘Stay put,’ I say, as Ben sits. ‘I’ll come get you when we’re ready.’

  I take the torch and hurry away from the house and down the track and across the paddocks to Steve’s place. I want to tell Steve what has happened. Get him to come to the caves with us. I feel safer in the cover of night but also, I want everything done in a hurry. The shock of what happened at the medical centre won’t leave me. But I need to push past it. I shine the torchlight on Steve’s dirt driveway, jumping the potholes as I run to the house. I race up the steps to the verandah and call from the back door.

  ‘Steve!’

  No answer. The door is unlatched. I go in and walk through the kitchen to the hallway. My boots clunk clunk on bare floorboards. I call out, again and again, flashing the torch into empty rooms. I retreat to the back door.

  Where could he be?

  Ben said Steve didn’t come by. That has me worried. Steve always keeps his word. Sure, he could be out shooting rabbits – since the cyclone he has started hunting again – but this morning he looked like a man with a death wish.

  He keeps his rifle in the shed. I need to check if it’s still there.

  I run down the verandah steps and along the path. Inside the shed it smells of machinery oil and wet hay. I shine my torch across to the workshop end. Steve put everything back in its place after Gina died, as if somehow restoring order to the shed might bring her back. His old tin cans are lined up on the first bench. Above, hammers, wrenches, chisels, hooked onto the corrugated iron wall. I flash across to the second bench. A saw sits on top. The third bench has drills laid out. But on the shelf above, I see Steve’s rifle. Good. He can’t have used it on himself.

  I stand still, staring at the rifle. This is the moment I realise that I need to be armed.

  You didn’t think this before?

  No. I’ve never even held a gun. But this day has changed everything. Still, I don’t immediately pick it up. I hesitate.

  Why hesitate?

  Ben and I have never liked the idea of storing a gun in our home. Not even for shooting rabbits.

  I step towards it, grasp the cold metal, lift it down from the shelf. I don’t know where Steve is, but I need his rifle.

  Steve usually keeps the ammunition in the cabinet below the bench. I yank open drawer after drawer but see only nails, nuts and bolts. Fuck, where is the ammunition? I shine my torch up the walls and see boxes of bullets stashed on a high shelf. I stand on the stepladder to reach them. Clasp the boxes firmly. I’ll have to keep coming back, checking for Steve’s return, get him to come to the caves. And I’ll need to go across to warn Tom and Bill about all that has happened, get them to come over to us too. But first, I have to get Esther and Ben settled.

  As I tramp up the road my torch dims. Back at home I take spare batteries from the boot room cupboard and pile pillows, blankets, swags and camping equipment by the door. I take the medicine pouch from the hallway cupboard and go to the kitchen, the rifle still slung over my shoulder. Two food boxes sit on the counter, already packed. Esther is pulling tins from a cupboard and stacking them into a third box. She spots the rifle, stops packing. Her eyes on mine.

  ‘Can you use it?’ she asks.

  ‘I’ll work out how,’ I say.

  I turn off our generator then help Esther carry the food boxes to the back door. Ben hobbles into the boot room, my torch the only light.

  He stares at the rifle.

  ‘We need to be prepared,’ I say.

  He can’t stop staring.

  ‘It will only be for self-defence,’ I add.

  But something in me sinks.

  Esther fetches the wheelbarrow from the shed. Into it we load one of the food boxes, the water container, our backpacks and some pillows and blankets.

  ‘I’ll come back for the rest,’ I say.

  Ben takes the torch. He is weak, shivering. Each step, unsteady.

  Slowly we make our way past the big old fig tree, and along a track that leads through the bush up to the caves. Esther pushes the wheelbarrow.

  Ben stops at the base of the escarpment, switches off the torch.

  We listen.

  Boo-book, boo-book. Boo-book, boo-book.

  The calls are everywhere.

  Hundreds of owls, their eyes glinting in the dark.

  He switches the torch back on. We continue weaving through the trees until we come to a large rock. Behind it is a narrow corridor that leads to three caves.

  Describe the caves.

  Each cave goes deep into the escarpment. The first two are wide, like big rooms. The third is narrow and cold. All of them are dry and dark. You have to enter the corridor from the northern side. To the south, there’s a small entrance, large enough to crawl through. Entry from above is impossible because it’s sheer rock right to the top of the escarpment.

  As soon as we have set our things down in the middle cave Ben starts to retch. He limps out to a bush. I follow him but he waves me away.

  I return to the cave and lay out a blanket and pillow but the earth here is cold, too cold for an ill person. I dare not light a fire. I’ll need to get our swag before Ben can lie down.

  Esther is setting up the camp stove in the first cave. Ben is still retching when I go by.

  I continue on down to the house but stop when I spy a fox on the back verandah. The fox stops still.

  Neither of us moves.

  Owls call boo-book, boo-book.

  The fox creeps backwards, until it has disappeared out of the light and around the side of the house.

  We must all be foxes now.

  I continue on down. I rope one of the swags to my shoulder, pick up some towels and a bucket. Ben is sitting at the entrance when I return, his head in his hands. I put the bucket and a towel on the ground next to him, and then continue on along the rocky corridor, and set up his swag in the middle cave. I return to the entrance and sit beside him. The torch throws light on the wet green leaves scattered around. I take out my inhaler and suck on it.

  ‘We’re safe here,’ I say, although I don’t yet believe it.

  ‘We’ve always felt at peace in this place,’ Ben says.

  ‘Don’t worry. This will be sorted. Someone will come to help. We just have to be careful for the next few weeks.’

  I help him to the swag. He closes his eyes and I sit, watch him fall asleep. It’s strange to see him so frail. He’s always had a furious energy. Illness has altered him. When I look up, Esther is at the cave entrance.

  ‘I’m going to see if Steve’s back,’ I say. ‘Then I’ll hike to Tom and Bill’s to warn them.’

  I have a practice with how I can shoot the rifle. I’ll need to press the butt against my stomach. Esther helps me. We work out a system and I sling it over my shoulder.

  ‘If you hear anyone, stay quiet, don’t try to warn me,’ I say to Esther. ‘When I return I’ll flash my torch so you know it’s me.’

&
nbsp; ‘Don’t go,’ Esther says.

  ‘We need to be prepared. We need to report to the others. And I’d feel safer if they were with us.’

  I stumble through the dark to Steve’s house. He’s still not there.

  There’s no wind and the world is a dark void.

  The sound of water is everywhere; the land is a body, shot full of holes.

  I hike on to Tom and Bill’s. Their brick house, and the concrete and steel house behind, the Canberra couple’s weekender, are built into the escarpment. I bang on Tom and Bill’s back door. No answer. I turn the handle. The door is unlocked.

  I step inside and call out.

  My voice echoes along the hallway.

  I walk into their designer kitchen. The place hasn’t been trashed but when I check their pantry, it’s empty, except for three tins of pineapple.

  Maybe they’ve left, hiking their way out?

  But why not tell us?

  Maybe an evacuation helicopter has come in my absence?

  Maybe from the west?

  That thought disturbs me. It’s possible that Tom, Bill and Steve have all been evacuated. They’d definitely tell us if it was an evacuation. But what if they weren’t given an option? What if the helicopter landed and the rescue guy said, now or never?

  The idea that Ben, Esther and I are isolated terrifies me. To keep my nerve I focus on practical things. What have Tom and Bill left behind that might be useful?

  I stash the tins of pineapple and some vitamin pills in a bag. I trudge up to the Canberra couple’s house. I’ve never met them and they weren’t here for Frank. I decide to see if any of their shutters are open. If this chaos lasts longer than three weeks, it might be worth taking their food stores and replacing them later. There’s a broken shutter on their bathroom window. I smash the glass with a rock, lift open the window and climb in. In the bathroom cupboard I find a packet of antibiotics and some aspirin. I shove them in my pocket. On the shelf in the dining room I see a bottle of vodka. I take it and then check in the kitchen. A good stock of tinned food, pasta and rice. Big tins of cooking oil. Three packets of firestarters. Plenty that is useful. I make a mental note of it all. Decide to come and collect the stores sooner rather than later.

  And then I realise what I’m doing. I’ve broken into my neighbour’s house and I’m planning to loot all their food supplies. How quickly things change.