I’m drowning in sadness, sorrow and fear. It’s the air that I breathe, the building blocks of the world.
I realise where I am and start screaming.
Tobe and I, bare moments from the loss of innocence, stand outside the barn, bathed in moonlight. I hold a lantern aloft. I usher him in. We walk through the heavy wooden doors and are struck dumb, horrified. Somehow, we get it together and gather the tools we need. I watch myself from afar, unable to look away, grotesquely transfixed by the knowledge of what’s to come.
We start to cut them down.
I’m crying. So is Tobe. And then a voice screams. It’s her voice, wailing, unhinged. It disappears suddenly. Tobe follows it into the night. I chase after them. I catch up to Tobe, tackle him to the ground. He beats me down, keeps running. He cries out, calling her name. I can’t catch up. I fall behind, staggering around, lost in the dark.
And then a light broke the night, a light that wasn’t there back when it all happened. It grew rapidly, washing out memories best forgotten. I struggled, kicked against my terror. The brilliant glow burnt brighter, burnt everything away.
I reached out blindly, and came to a dead stop as something pushed against my throat.
‘Bill, mate, take it easy, all right?’ Tobe said, his voice soft.
I opened my eyes. Whatever was at my throat increased its pressure.
‘If I were you, I’d stay right there.’
He was a black silhouette, the sun casting him in a halo of golden light. I looked to my left. A young girl squatted next to me—filthy, wretched, hair dreadlocked with dirt, skin burnt dark-brown and grey with ash, dressed in literal rags. It was impossible to tell how old she was. Young, I guessed, considering her small frame, considering the coltish curve of her arms and legs.
‘What did I miss?’ I asked.
The pressure at my throat increased again as the girl twisted a broken branch she held in front of her. I couldn’t help notice that a flat stone about eight inches long was bound to one end of the branch and was poking through my beard, scraping against my skin.
‘Tobe!’ I called in a voice that shook.
The girl dragged the stone harder against my throat. I felt blood dribble down my chest, though I hadn’t felt the cut. The stone must have been sharp enough to shave baby fuzz.
‘Now, why would you want to do something like that?’
I kept as still as I could, didn’t even move when a couple of flies started crawling on my face. Tobe shifted slightly, revealing himself. He had his rifle against his shoulder, the end of the barrel disappearing into the girl’s filthy hair. I wondered how long I had been asleep, how long the two of them had been locked in their standoff. Red and Blue lay behind Tobe, whining pitifully. The girl’s eyes flicked to them, flicked back to me. Apart from that she hadn’t moved yet, she might as well have been carved from stone.
Tobe shook a cramp from his leg, but didn’t turn away. Stiff with shock, I just lay there.
What else could I do?
‘You know that if he gets hurt, you get hurt,’ Tobe said to the girl.
No reply. I looked at him, then over at her. A tickle started to build in my throat, my mouth as dry as the earth around me. I had no idea how long I had been lying asleep and roasting in the heat, but I felt like I could crumble away to dust.
‘Water,’ I croaked, unable to help myself.
The stone drew another dribble of blood. Tobe twisted the barrel into the girl’s hair. She didn’t seem to notice.
‘For fuck’s sake, give me some water or kill me now.’
Tobe unexpectedly lowered his rifle, slung it over his shoulder, turned away, started rooting through his pack. The girl kept staring at me, seemingly unaware that she no longer had a gun to her head.
‘You beauty.’
Tobe turned back, a full canteen in each hand, a smile on his face. He opened one of the canteens, started drinking. He did it with great fanfare, slurping at the water, sloshing it around in his mouth, sucking it through his teeth. He tipped his head back, opened his mouth wide, gargled loudly, spat the whole lot out. The girl’s eyes flicked away again, settled back on mine. Tobe sighed and threw the open canteen into the air. It landed next to the girl; her eyes flicked away a third time, fixed on the canteen. Water dribbled out, cutting a tiny muddy path through the dust. More quickly than I thought possible, she dropped the branch, scooped up the canteen, and sucked at it greedily.
I came back to life and kicked the branch away, surprising myself. I shuffled out of her reach, scrambled to my feet, found my rifle, flicked the safety off, took aim.
‘Bill, hold on a sec.’
I looked at the girl. She drank and drank, oblivious to everything else. She finished the canteen, looked up at us, her eyes sad and hollow. Please, they seemed to say, may I have some more?
‘Good man,’ Tobe said as I lowered my rifle.
And then he threw the other canteen to her. As she fumbled to catch it, he walked over and punched her in the face. Even though he was holding back, she toppled like a felled tree.
‘Now what do we do?’
We ummed and aaahed a bit, that’s what we did. While we worked out our next move, I drank enough water to cramp my stomach and then stripped down so I could change into something more suited to the heat. Tobe snickered as I undressed. I ignored him, pulling a pair of shorts, a floppy hat, and a dun-coloured shirt from my pack.
‘Are you done?’
I didn’t answer as I finished getting dressed. The girl had barely moved, a pitiful sight. I was all in favour of leaving a couple of our canteens with her and getting back on the road. She looked like a survivor, it was doubtful that she needed our help.
‘And besides,’ I said, ‘she’s dangerous.’
Tobe snorted. ‘Pull the other one, mate. She was scared, Bill. And no wonder. By the looks of her, we’re probably the first people she’s seen in ages. Poor girl.’
I knew it wasn’t right, whatever had happened to her. But I was still shaken.
‘We could take her with us,’ Tobe suggested.
If my mouth hadn’t been so dry, I would have spat at his feet. ‘Are you going to carry her? We’re already pretty weighed down …’
Tobe shuffled his feet, shrugged his shoulders. ‘We can’t just leave her here.’
‘She seemed to be doing fine until you punched her in the face.’
His face reddened. ‘Fuck you.’
Tobe squatted next to the girl, reached out and brushed her lank hair from her face. He shook her by the shoulder and pinched the soft skin on the inside of her elbow. She didn’t move.
‘She’s coming with us.’
‘But …’
‘Bill, mate, how do you live with yourself?’
Tobe’s words rained down hard. I shut up, horribly ashamed.
‘Okay, here’s what we’ll do …’
He took a rag from his pocket and started to bind the girl’s hands. He took out his twine and tied her ruined shoes together. I marvelled at his care. He gestured at me, asking for help. I shuffled the bumper along until it lay next to the girl; Tobe manhandled the roo until it too lay flush with the bumper. Red and Blue slinked up, sniffed at the roo, tried to take a bite. Tobe roared at them; they ignored him and tried again. He roared some more. This time they obeyed.
He threw a second ball of twine to me, told me to tie the roo’s front legs in the same way that he had tied its back legs. While I worked, he started lashing the girl’s wrists and ankles to the shining metal.
Red and Blue sat behind him, sniffing the blood in the air.
Time passed, the sun grew higher, the world grew hotter, and then we were done. The girl and the roo lay side by side, the length of the bumper between them. Tobe shuffled over to me, checked my knots, and grunted in satisfaction.
‘You ready?’
I nodded, pulled on my pack, slung my rifle over my shoulder. We squatted, Tobe with his back to me. The metal of the bumper was red hot, reflecting the sunlight.
‘One, two, three.’
We lifted. Something popped in my back. I ignored it. The bumper started to sag in the middle, bending slightly. The twine held. The girl didn’t move.
‘You right back there?’ Tobe yelled.
I grunted. It was an awkward load to carry; the combined weight of the girl, the roo, and the bumper refused to settle.
‘Come on!’ Tobe shouted.
Red and Blue stood up, their tails wagging.
‘And again. One, two, three.’
We took a few hesitant steps and slowly found a rhythm. Red and Blue trotted with us, walking directly under the roo, looking up at it expectantly. The tick-tick-tick of their claws on the blacktop kept a steady beat. I bowed my head, kept on, and watched the dusty highway unfold beneath my feet. It took everything I had to shoulder my share of our burden. Occasionally, one of Tobe’s disparaging comments would float over his shoulder, ‘weak’ or ‘soft’ or ‘whinger’. Every few hundred yards, I would groan or curse the heat. I didn’t look up to see how Tobe was coping, but I could guess—his cheerful whistle gave fair indication. I cursed under my breath, hoping that the end was near, both literally and metaphorically, struggling to keep it together.
Somehow, I tramped on.
And then Tobe threw a particularly vicious insult at me, something grossly obscene, the straw that cracked my back.
I raised my head, trying to think of something equally vicious to say in return. An unlikely scene greeted me—the dead roo was crawling with flies; the girl was curved into a U, her head thrown back; the bumper was twisted, sagging in the middle, blinding to look at. It was too much, too strange—I started laughing hysterically. It kept coming, louder and louder. I couldn’t stop. And then Tobe was laughing with me, our grim march the funniest thing in the world.
We kept laughing, somehow kept walking. And then the girl opened her eyes.
‘Hold on,’ I yelled, stopping, almost pulling Tobe off his feet.
He steadied himself, kept hold of the bumper, didn’t bother turning to look at me. ‘What?’
‘Uh, the girl, she’s woken up.’
‘So?’
‘Should we do something?’
‘Like what? I’m not cutting her down and taking the chance that she’ll either run off or have another go.’
The girl hadn’t said anything, hadn’t even made a sound. She stared at me, barely blinking despite the fierce light.
‘Sorry,’ I whispered.
No reply.
‘Come on,’ Tobe said, ‘we’re almost there.’
In my walking-dead daze, I had somehow managed to forget about the burnt-out plains. They were the same as they had always been, though the heat coming off them now was staggering. Just another day in our great brown land, made worse by the vast emptiness that stretched in every direction. It soaked up the sun and shimmered with haze, superheating the air around it.
I felt hotter and thirstier. I looked back at the girl. ‘Sorry.’
Still no reply. I looked away, unable to handle her baleful glare.
Slowly, I began to understand what Tobe had meant by ‘almost there’. Something was growing in the distance, a grey smear on the horizon. I wondered if it was blurry because of my eyesight or because of the distance.
‘See what I mean?’
‘No worries.’
A renewed energy flowed through me. To be done, finally done.
‘What are we waiting for?’ I asked.
‘And on three …’
I looked back at the girl and shrugged pathetically. She rolled her eyes. It was almost unbelievable.
‘One, two, three.’
We walked on, somehow picking up our pace. I expected the girl to wriggle or fight against us, but she didn’t. If anything, she looked bored.
‘What is it?’ I asked Tobe, the smear on the horizon slowly becoming more defined.
He didn’t answer, and he seemed to lack the astonishment I was feeling. In fact, he seemed as bored as the girl.
‘You smug bastard, don’t leave me hanging.’
‘It’s just the Borough, that’s all, nothing special. And there’s no need to get nasty.’
I decided not to play his game. We kept on. The smear steadily filled the land to the west, the highway heading straight into the middle of it.
‘Fuck me drunk,’ Tobe said, stopping us dead.
I said nothing, gawping at what the smear had become. A great wall made of rubble and junk stretched before us, running from north to south. It was so long that I couldn’t see where it stopped. I felt dwarfed by it, insignificant—all my joy, sorrows, successes and setbacks rendered meaningless.
It made me wonder if there was any point in going on.
But we did, stopping next to a stretch of the wall made of old doors, broken wardrobes, ruined tables. Red and Blue collapsed in a heap. The sun beat down, directly overhead, its light reflecting off the wall.
We slowly drowned in it.
‘Shit.’
‘You bet,’ said a high-pitched voice.
I looked at the girl. She was smiling at me. Tobe turned, swapping the bumper to his other shoulder, and looked at her as well. Still smiling, she winked at him. He returned her smile. For a moment, it was happy families all round.
‘What do you reckon?’ I asked Tobe.
He looked at me. ‘We should cut her down, my back’s killing me. Then we’ll get a bit of shade up and make camp. I don’t fancy spending the night in the Borough.’
We crouched down, carefully laying the girl and the dead roo—which she hadn’t seemed to notice, despite it rubbing up against her—onto the highway. Only a few metres ahead, the blacktop simply stopped, swallowed up by the wall.
‘Don’t move,’ Tobe said to the girl, taking his knife from his boot. ‘I wouldn’t want to stick you.’
He started cutting away the twine around her ankles. I dumped my pack, opened a fresh canteen, and took a long drink.
‘Am I your bloody servant or something? Get to work!’
Shamefaced, I fished around in my pack. I pulled out a tarp, a hammer, some nails. I started knocking up a rough lean-to. It was a tight squeeze, the tarp stretched tent-like between the wall and the ground. I flopped in the shade; Red and Blue joined me. They panted some more, desperate, pleading.
I poured them a drink, didn’t spill a drop. They both licked my face to say thanks.
‘Nearly there,’ Tobe muttered.
He kept hacking at the twine around the girl’s wrists. She still hadn’t moved. The twine gave; Tobe fell back on his haunches. Like the snap of a finger, the girl was up and running, following the wall to the south. Red and Blue lay there on the blacktop, too buggered to chase after her.
She was gone before I was off my arse. Tobe got to his feet and casually raised his rifle, then looked down its sight.
‘Please, mate,’ I whispered. I don’t know if he heard me, but he lowered his gun, shaking his head. ‘It curves,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘The wall curves. See?’
He held out his rifle. I reluctantly got to my feet and had a better look. The girl had disappeared; the land had forgotten her. And then I saw what Tobe was talking about—far in the distance, the wall curved to the west. I passed the rifle back. Tobe looked to the north.
‘Same again.’
‘Big wall.’
‘No shit.’
We stood there, staring at the monstrous thing before us. Neither of us spoke. Not knowing what else to do, I sat back down in the shade. It was too hot to stay out in the sun. Tobe shouldered his rifle, stared into the distance.
‘Let’s have a squizz,’ he said. ‘You up for it?’
Lying there in the relative cool, I decided that I didn’t actually have the oomph. ‘I’m knackered, and it’s bloody hot.’
He looked down at me, sneering slightly.
‘Red! Blue! Come on!’
They didn’t move, just whined a little.
‘Right, then, if that’s how it is,’ he said, already walking away.
‘Have fun,’ I said, and leaned back on my pack.