by Burns, Alex
“What happened to him?” I demanded again, glancing up at the young man. Boy really. He was gaunt, with curly dark hair, a filthy t-shirt and ripped jeans. I frowned at him. He looked vaguely familiar.
“I didn’t do it,” he repeated, still holding the stick in-between himself and the growling Horatio. “I found him, I was trying to help him. He wanted to come back here. I didn’t hurt him, I swear.”
“Who are you?” I whistled at Horatio. He came obediently to my side, but didn’t take his eyes off the newcomer.
“Lewis. My great-grandma-”
Ollie moaned. I shushed Lewis, and bent closer to Ollie. I jumped in fright as his hand curled around my wrist.
“Allie,” he murmured. “The bastard shot me. Twice.”
I blinked rapidly.
“Who shot you?”
“Don’t know. Ah, fuck it hurts. I think I’m dying,” he whispered with another groan.
“No. You’re not dying. I’m going to go and get help. Doctors. They’ll be able to fix you right up.”
I started to stand, calculating in my head how long it would take me to get home, find Tom and Yi-Ling and bring them back here.
“Don’t leave me, Allie. Please.”
I stared at him helplessly. “I need to get help.”
“Auntie Alice!”
Charlotte. Ava. They didn’t need to see this. I stood up quickly.
“I’ll be right back, Ollie. Hang on.” I squeezed his hand and stood up. “Follow me,” I said to Lewis.
“What are you doing here? Are you from around here?” I asked Lewis as we stumbled back out to the road.
“No. I’m from Melbourne. I… I didn’t have anywhere else to go. My great-grandma lived here, and I thought, maybe…”
“Who’s your grandma?”
“Ina Lewis. She lives near -”
“I know Ina. You’re that Lewis. I thought you looked familiar.” He gave me an odd look. “I’ve seen your photo,” I added. Ina was going to be over the moon. She’d assumed all her family were dead.
“I didn’t hurt Ollie, I swear. I found him on the other side of Camperdown. He was in a pretty bad way.”
“I believe you,” I said simply. We reached the road. The two girls looked at me curiously, and then wide-eyed at Lewis.
“Look, Auntie Alice, we found an olivine!” Charlotte held out her palm and sure enough there was a little green rock.
“That’s great, pumpkin.” I paused and crouched down in front of them, wondering how to phrase what I needed them to do. I really wished mobile phones still worked. “Girls, this is Lewis. He’s Ina’s great-grandson. I need you to take him straight home, and find Grandma or Tom or Yi-Ling. He has a message for them that’s very important. They need to come as quick as they can. Can you do that for me? Please?”
They both nodded. Ava frowned at Lewis.
I turned to Lewis. “My brother and sister-in-law are both doctors. They’ll be able to help. Tell them everything.”
Lewis nodded, looking relieved that the decisions were out of his hands. I wondered what he’d been through to get to this point, but then thrust the thought from my mind. I needed to focus on Ollie.
“Okay, go then! Quickly!”
Charlotte leaned forward and gave me a quick hug before darting off after Ava. Lewis nodded at me and hurried after them. Horatio followed and Maggie followed. I watched them disappear around the corner of the road and then pushed my way back through the undergrowth to where I’d left Ollie.
His eyes were closed and for a moment I thought it was too late, but then his chest slowly rose and fell again. I fought the rising panic in me and crouched back down next to him. I tried to think of something useful to help him from a long ago first-aid course, but all I remembered was putting arms in slings and performing CPR on dummies. Neither seemed very useful at the moment.
“What happened to you, Ollie?” I murmured, not expecting him to answer.
“Water?” he croaked, still with his eyes closed.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have any on me,” I said helplessly. My eyes blurred and I fought the tears back. “What happened?” I repeated. “Who did this to you?”
“Are you really here? Is it really you, Allie?” He looked up at me. “Am I dreaming? I thought my mum was here before, but she can’t be.”
“Oh, Ollie…” I sank down next to him and pulled his head into my lap. I brushed the hair off his forehead and then felt his skin. He was burning up.
“Help will be here soon,” I said softly. “Where did you go?”
“Looking for supplies. I thought… it doesn’t matter.”
“I was worried about you,” I said. “You just disappeared. You didn’t say anything.”
“I’m sorry, Allie. I should never have left you.” His eyes were still closed, and his voice was weak.
“It’s okay. You’re back now. You’ll be fine.” How long had he been injured? The wounds didn’t exactly look fresh.
“I should have taken you with me.”
“Shh, it’s fine.”
“No, I’m serious.” He opened his eyes and stared up at me. “I should have taken you with me to America.”
Oh. He wasn’t talking about his recent excursion. I didn’t say anything.
“I was a fool. You were the best woman I ever knew.”
“Don’t be silly. There were lots of girls…” I looked up into the branches, not sure what to say.
“No. Not as smart as you. Or as kind. I was a fool to let you go.”
“Ollie…”
I looked down. His eyes were closed again and he was breathing shallowly. “Ollie?”
Nothing. He’d passed out.
I had no way of knowing how long it had been since the girls and Lewis had left. It felt like it had been hours, but it could have been minutes. I kept staring at Ollie, watching him breath. Each time he exhaled, I held my own breath until he inhaled again. They seemed to be getting further apart.
He opened his eyes again, and I smiled down at him. He eyes widened and a look of panic filled his face.
“Alice!”
“Yes, Ollie.” He reached up and grabbed my wrist again, tightly.
“They’re coming. They’re coming.”
“Whose coming?”
“We need to prepare. They’re coming.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I… They…” he blinked rapidly and then sighed, falling unconscious again. I frowned down at him. What was he talking about? Who was coming? The people who shot him? Where had he been? I looked around properly for the first time, but I couldn’t see a bag or anything that belonged to him. Only a branch that he’d obviously been using as a crutch. I sighed and brushed the hair back from his forehead again. He was delirious, no doubt.
A magpie and mudlark started squabbling over something and then both flew off.
“Alice! Where are you? Alice!”
At last!
“Over here!” I called out. “We’re over here!”
Tom and Yi-Ling followed the crude path I’d made through the undergrowth and stumbled into the small clearing. Mum trailed behind them, red faced and puffing. They took one look at us and rushed over. Tom gently slid Ollie off me so that he was lying flat on the ground. He moaned softly but didn’t wake up.
“What happened?” Tom asked sharply. Yi-Ling was digging through her kit.
“He said he got shot. Abdomen and leg,” I said, needlessly pointing to the two wounds. “And probably dehydrated, I think he’s been out here for awhile.”
Yi-Ling lifted his eyelids and flashed a light in them. I stepped back while they worked around his body. He looked smaller, somehow, lying there on the grass. Tom and Yi-Ling murmured to each other, asking questions, confirming things. I didn’t understand most of what they were saying. Mum wrapped her arm around me as we watched the two doctors work.
“How is he?” I asked after a few excruciating minutes.
Tom and Yi-Lin
g glanced at each other. Yi-Ling nodded for Tom to speak.
“He’s not good, I’m not gonna lie. The wound in his abdomen is infected. He’s got what looks like a pretty fierce infection raging through his body. The leg wound isn’t as bad - the bullet went straight though the muscle, but... We need to get him rehydrated and get this infection under control.”
“Can you do it?”
He exchanged another glance with Yi-Ling.
“No promises. He’s not in good shape, Al. But we’ll try our best.”
“We’ll need to get him back home to keep working on him properly,” Yi-Ling said. “We didn’t bring the stretcher.”
“We didn’t realise he would be this bad,” Tom said quietly.
“We’ll go back and get it,” Mum said quickly.
Tom nodded and Yi-Ling went back to work, doing whatever it was she was doing to stave off death.
I shot a last look at Ollie and followed Mum out of the clearing.
“Are you okay, love?”
I shook my head. “What the hell, Mum? Why would anyone shoot Ollie?”
“I don’t know. Do you know where he was? What was he doing?”
I shook my head. “I couldn’t get much sense out of him. He was kinda delirious.”
“Fever…” Mum murmured to herself.
Mum tried to keep up, but I ended up running ahead and grabbing the stretcher by myself. The girls were both halfway up one of the trees at the front of the house. Maggie and Horatio were both lounging at the base of the tree. Lewis was pacing back and forth.
“Alice is coming,” I heard Ava call down to Charlotte who was lower.
“Get down, girls,” I said firmly. The last thing we needed was one of them to fall and break a bone.
“What’s going on?” Ava demanded from her vantage point, ignoring my order to climb down. I stared up at her for a second. That was the first time she’d actually asked me a question.
“How is he?” Lewis asked, worry etched in his face.
“Tom and Yi-Ling are helping Ollie. I need to get the stretcher so we can bring him back here. You two stay here with the dogs,” I said to the girls.
I rushed to the garage where I’d left the stretcher propped up against the wall after we brought Sarah and Chris back. No one had moved it, thankfully.
“We’ll be back soon,” I called to the girls as I jogged past them, awkwardly carrying the stretcher, trying to find the easiest position to carry it.
“Can I help?” Lewis asked, rushing up to me.
I shook my head. “Go over and see Ina. She thinks you’re dead.”
Lewis looked startled for a moment and then nodded.
I relented after a moment. “I’ll come over as soon as I have news. Thanks for bringing him this far.”
Lewis nodded and headed towards his great-grandmother’s house.
I caught back up with Mum at the edge of town. She was sitting on a large rock, hands on her knees, still catching her breath.
“You go on ahead,” she said.
Urgency and worry drove me onwards. I ignored the stitch in my side and my burning thigh muscles, and kept running.
I worried for a moment that I wouldn’t be able to find them again, but I needn’t have. I could hear my brother and Yi-Ling’s voices carrying through the scrub.
They’d cleaned up his wounds a bit while I’d been gone, but he still looked dreadful. We carefully lifted him onto the stretcher, his head lolling unnaturally.
“I gave him a sedative,” Yi-Ling said quietly, watching me. I nodded.
Tom took one end of the stretcher and I took the other. It was heavier than I thought it would be, and I had to swap with Yi-Ling after a few hundred metres.
We got him back home, and Yi-Ling and Tom got to work. I felt utterly useless, sitting and waiting, but there was nothing I could do. Mum did what she usually did in stressful situations and started scrubbing saucepans.
After what felt like an eternity, Tom came to me. He crouched down in front of me and I braced myself for the worst news.
“He’s stable for now,” Tom said, wearily. “He’s still out of it, and probably will be for a while.”
“But he’s okay?”
Tom nodded.
“Thank you.” I reached forward and hugged my brother.
Chapter Thirty
I watched Ava and Charlotte play, wondering what the future held for them.
It was Christmas morning. My remaining family sat around outside under the shade of one of the trees in the backyard. We had no Christmas tree, or presents this year. I’d convinced Mum not to, but regretted the decision when I’d seen Charlotte’s disappointed face that morning when she realised Santa hadn’t left any presents.
Judy and Betty were hosting a traditional roast lunch for the survivors at the pub. Everyone had contributed. We’d supplied some of the potatoes and vegetables, along with the butter. Andy and one of the other men had butchered a couple of lambs. There’d be no turkey this year, or seafood. Yabbies were the closest thing we had to lobsters. We’d get ready to go soon. I was kind of looking forward to it, but also kind of dreading it. Seeing us all together in a group always brought home how very much we’d lost.
Ollie was still unconscious. It had been a week and a half since we’d found him and Lewis. Tom assured me that Ollie was on the mend, but I couldn’t let myself believe it until he woke up. The warning he gave me niggled at my mind, but the others seemed to put it down to feverish ramblings.
If only we’d believed him.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Afterword
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed the book (or even if you didn’t!) I’d be ever so grateful if you left a review on Amazon or Goodreads (or both, if you’d like my unending gratitude!)
If you’d like an email when the next book comes out, sign up here:
https://www.subscribepage.com/alexburns
If you want to get in touch, you can email me at [email protected]
About the Author
Alex Burns is an Aussie author. She currently lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband and pet cat.
Alex spends a lot of time daydreaming about disasters and various ‘what if’ scenarios, and really hopes that life keeps on chugging along without having to face any of the challenges and disasters she puts her characters through!
When not writing, you can probably find her out in the veggie garden, or with her nose stuck in a book.
