Reading the second comic was nothing at all like the first. Now there was no thrill. Nor any fear. No swirl of nausea at the thought of the blood. The pictures of the corpses were all scratchy, and the colours were too bright. The woman with the torn shirt looked ridiculous, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead and screaming. It was an expression that was supposed to represent terror, but looked more like she was singing. That, Sam thought, was not what terror felt like.
Even the zombie’s eyes, which he had perceived at different times as bloodthirsty or sorrowful, just looked surprised now. They were empty, and they gawped at the world, perplexed. The slobber running down its jaws was almost funny. The zombie no longer reminded him of himself. His operation. His lack of voice. Tracey. But it made him think of something—he just wasn’t entirely sure what.
From the bowels of hell I spurn thee, Sam read, and gave up. He flashed through one final time to see if any of the zombies had metal hooks for hands, and when they didn’t, tossed the comic to the floor.
It landed on a piece of bent cardboard sticking halfway out from beneath his seat. Even before he had bent down to pull it up, Sam knew what it was. Jon’s sign. Help me, I’m British. Sam’s own small scribble on the back.
Dettie watched Sam unfold it, and adjusted herself in her seat. She cleared her throat. ‘You know,’ she called, ‘I wasn’t sure if I should tell you two this. But last night, Jon decided to catch a bus back to Sydney. That’s why he had to go so suddenly.’
She tapped her thumbs on the steering wheel. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He decided all at once. He was so excited. Told me he was going to fly back to England. To be with his wife again.’ She stretched up in her seat, trying to see Katie in the mirror. ‘Did you know he had a wife?’
The rattle in the engine was rising again as Dettie’s foot pressed harder on the pedal.
‘He asked me to say goodbye to you both, though,’ she said, nodding. ‘He did. He was going to do it last night, but you were asleep and he didn’t want to wake you.’ She hummed, her eyes back on the road. ‘He said, tell your two special ones thank you. And have a fun rest of the trip.’ She was nodding away. ‘So you see—there’s no reason to be upset like this. That’s not what he would’ve—’
She stopped and pursed her lips.
‘Why don’t we—when we get to Perth—why don’t we see if we can write him a letter? What do you think?’
Katie was stretched out on the back seat, clutching Jon’s shirt to her chest. ‘You’re a liar,’ she whispered, exhausted. ‘I hate you.’
Sam spun around to look at her, but Katie was perfectly still. Her eyes were puffy from crying and she kept them closed.
Dettie’s shoulders fell, but she didn’t say anything. She slumped back down into her driving. Sam could see her lips trembling. Her nails dug into the plastic as she tightened them on the wheel. She sniffed.
Watching her, part of him wished that he could hate her too. Even just a little bit. So many times in the past—and particularly the last few days—he had wanted to scream at her, to rage or run, to tell her to stop and listen. But as he watched her now—her body bent, her thin, dishevelled hair being battered around by the air vents, the bandaid twisted and blackened on her finger—she looked feeble. Tattered and withered and sad. He couldn’t stop thinking of the yellowing photo of Ted in the bottom of her handbag. The sticky tape that ran behind his face. The story she told about the way he died. He remembered all the times she had told him about her heart operation and the scar that stretched down her chest. The wedding ring she would never take off that had tarnished on her hand.
His whole life she’d been so large. Old-fashioned. Stuck in her ways. Afraid of fuss. Fierce. But he had to admit that she was warm and welcoming too. Familiar. Secure. When they got home from school she would be there. When he heard his mother crying at night it was Dettie who would make tea and sit with her. Talk her through it. Even after his operation, having Dettie tell the awful story about her heart attack over and over again did, somehow, make the whole experience less frightening. She’d been through something even scarier and survived, after all. She hadn’t given up.
But as he looked at her now, she looked impossibly fragile. Her fingers were stained yellow with cigarettes and speckled brown with instant coffee. Her dress was smudged with charcoal. She was a bundle of frayed hems, bandaids and laddered pantyhose, worn down by this endless, exhausting trip.
She’d told them they were going to see their father. That their father wanted them. That their mother was waiting for them there too. Now Jon was supposedly on his way to Sydney.
But she was a liar. She’d lied the whole time. From the first morning, lying on the phone, all the way through. She seemed to be held together by hundreds of lies. Lies she’d wrapped around herself to make sense of the world. Comfortable and numbing lies. Their father hadn’t abandoned them. Her husband was dead. Jon was fine. Her lies were all she had left.
Perhaps that was why she favoured Sam so much now. His silence. She could lie to him all she wanted and he couldn’t talk back. Katie, on the other hand, was all questions, clarifications, pushback. It grated on her. Made her wallow in the fraud. Stopped her forward momentum.
And Perth, Sam realised, was simply the biggest lie of all. A hope she had committed them to, that she could no longer abandon. It was just a dream. An idea. A word on a road sign—no closer or further away than it had ever been. But for Dettie it had become the confirmation of something bigger than any of them in that car could ever understand. It spurred her on, but Sam realised that if they ever actually did get there, something inside her might irreparably break.
He heard Dettie’s breath shudder, and saw a tear welling beneath her eye. He felt a falling sensation chilling his stomach. It wasn’t repulsion exactly—more the shock of realisation. The disappointment of an inevitability. Like the day after his operation, when, bandaged and groggy, he had tried to speak for the first time and nothing happened. Dettie was trapped. She’d set herself on a course that had no ending, and from which there was no turning back.
As he stared at her, watching her fidget, blinking sweat and tears from her eyes, he realised that it wasn’t just her. It was words. All words. You’ll be good as new. People were only attracted to what was familiar. The girl behind the curtain was just getting her own room. Words were just lies inherited. The product of desperate people pressing their desires onto the world. Remaking it how they longed for it to be. And Sam was tired of lies. Comforting words. Empty sounds with no more substance than breath.
His gaze dropped and he saw his mother’s blue-embroidered handkerchief, the one Katie thought she had lost, tucked in Dettie’s lap. It was between her knees partially covered by her skirt. And somehow that attempt to hide it seemed so pathetic that Sam felt a fresh rush of pity for her. Her expression was empty. She was gawping at the world. Perplexed. He lifted his hand slowly and petted her elbow. It was a moment before she felt his touch, and when she did, she smiled and wiped the moisture from her cheek.
Their mother had no idea where they were.
They had to get away.