44.

He lost the driveway after a few metres, or it lost him. He stopped for a piss the colour of beer. Not the VB that Mick kept serving him, but something dark and home-brewed.

Mick. Mick was going on fifty and slow to move on those football-ruined knees of his – a perfect match for the man Portia had described to Honey. Could it have been Mick, not her father, she’d been running from? Could Mick have been working for Hirst?

No. Not Mick: no way would he push ice onto his own community.

He’d been worried about Caleb talking to the police.

Please let it not be Mick. Father of four, friend, Kat’s cousin. Oh God, Kat. She’d never choose Caleb over her family, never forgive him if he got Mick arrested. A laugh in his throat – Kat wasn’t choosing him, anyway.

Caleb started walking again, one foot in front of the other, stepping in time with the drip, drip, dripping of his blood. Ash clusters the size of his palms whirled in mad dances around him. The wind was coming from his left now. Had it shifted, or had he got turned around? No sun to guide him – the sky dark and low.

And there was the camp. Shit, he’d been going around in circles. He stopped walking, considered lying down and going to sleep.

A figure appeared up ahead, striding out of the haze as though she’d known he’d be here.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Frankie said. ‘I said turn right.’

He walked with his arm slung across Frankie’s shoulders. The blood was flowing down his arm now, each drop letting his head float a little higher. Smoke stung his eyes and throat, making him cough. He stumbled over a fallen branch and realised they were in the pine forest, not on the road. Lost? Or was Frankie just taking a shortcut?

‘Where’s the roadblock?’ he said.

Frankie glanced at him, white-faced. ‘We’re heading for the car, not the roadblock.’

‘Worried about the cops?’

‘No. The wind’s changed. We won’t make it.’

And he understood why she’d been urging him to go faster for the past ten minutes – the fire was heading their way. They couldn’t outrun a bushfire, couldn’t even outdrive it. It would be on them before they reached her car: devouring trees and grass, sucking the oxygen from the air and melting steel. It would burn through timber and flesh and bone.

‘Won’t make it,’ he said. He felt oddly neutral at the idea.

She didn’t answer, just hoisted his arm higher and kept going, urging him on every time he sagged. They finally stumbled out of the trees onto a potholed road. Frankie propped him against a tree trunk and pulled the water bottle from her back pocket. He slid to the ground. So tired. Rest here. He had nothing to get back to. No Kat, no child, no home.

His father hadn’t given up – fought right until the end, tendons tight, anger in his eyes.

Died just the same.

Frankie was squatting in front of him. Her mouth was moving but no words were getting through to his brain. Something ignited high in the canopy; the top of a pine tree flaming. Advance soldiers from the firefront. Soon there would be more, and then more, and then the fire would be on them. The song from Jai’s funeral slipped into his brain.

For a world of lost sinners was slain.

The Auslan sign for ‘sinner’ was the same as the one for ‘guilt’. A small sign for such a heavy burden, just a tap of the little finger against the shoulder.

Frankie smacked his knee. ‘Concentrate,’ she signed. ‘Car long way. Know you…’ She hunted though her fingers for the right letters and slowly spelt out ‘Q.U.E.R.R.Y.’

‘Query?’ he said.

‘No,’ she signed. ‘We on Q.U.E.R.R.Y. Road.’

Right, quarry. That made more sense. Frankie had always found fingerspelling tricky. Should give her another lesson one of these days.

Frankie waved a hand in front of his face. ‘Big enough?’ she signed.

‘What?’

She switched to English. ‘Is. The. Quarry. Big. Enough. To. Protect. Us?’

Big, small, it didn’t matter. Just lie down and wait for the fire to come. The smoke would probably kill him first. A wonderful calmness at the thought: no more pain, no more nightmares, no more emptiness.

A punch to his shoulder, Frankie’s face close to his. She was shaking, her greyhound ribs showing each rapid inhalation. ‘Caleb, get the fuck up. What the hell’s wrong with you? You can handle a bit of pain.’

‘I killed a man.’ The words came from somewhere deep within him, unplanned and unwanted.

Frankie jerked back. ‘What? Who?’

‘Last year. On the beach.’

‘You’re agonising over that? Mate, the fuck-knob was trying to kill you. And he was there because of me. If you need to blame someone, blame me.’

‘I’ve been trying to.’

‘Well, try harder.’

‘I can still see his eyes. He was looking at me when he… I saw the light go out of them. He was alive and then he was dead and I can’t… I can’t get it out of my brain. I can’t stop thinking about it.’

‘OK.’ She scrubbed at her hair. ‘OK, I understand. We’re gunna get you some help with that. We’ll get you someone way smarter than me to fix you up. But right now you’ve got to get the fuck up and fight. Because I’m not going to fry in a bushfire and I am not leaving you here.’

He didn’t answer.

‘Cal.’ She gripped his hand. ‘I need you to be OK. Please. I really need you to be OK.’

He walked, staggered, Frankie half-dragging him. Chest heaving, ash choking his lungs. An orange-purple light, the wind grabbing and buffeting, sparks flaring on their skin and clothes. The heat a solid weight. He stumbled and almost fell, but Frankie yanked him up and pulled him on. Too fast. Feet missing the ground, lurching and slipping.

And they were out of the forest into open ground. The quarry. A bare expanse of dirt and rocks, with a hollowed centre of murky water. A shipping container sat a few metres away, its green paint blistering in the heat, turning brown, purple, black.

Frankie hauled him past the container towards the water. A slam of heat shoved him down. Falling, rolling. Onto his back. Something pressing against his chest, stopping his lungs from expanding. The container had ripped open. Snowflakes swirled from it, each one flaming as it fell, the labels turning as black as the printed names. He was lying a little way down the slope, looking across the rocky ground into hell. Flames rearing high above the canopy, reaching for him.

A tug on his hand: Frankie. She was yelling, tears cutting white tracks through her soot-stained skin. She pulled hard, trying to lift him. No. It was too much. Please let this be the end. Please.

He closed his eyes.