As the noise of the blast rattled out the windows, Max and Frank leapt up scattering photos in their scramble for the kitchen. Max reached the door first.
He barely heard his father call out a warning to slow before flinging it open. Immediately he stepped backwards, bumping into Frank, his hand across his mouth in shock, trying to stem the smell and the bile rising in his throat.
Frank pushed him out of the way to get in and check what had happened.
Mary was standing by the sink, staring blankly ahead.
‘Check Mary’s all right!’ Frank shouted back to Max. She looked shocked rather than injured – the blood splashed across her front seemed to have come from the bodies on the floor. Max crossed the room to her, turning her away from the horrific scene.
‘Take her out, and leave the door open to let some air in.’
As Frank bent down to untangle the injured women, he heard a groan. Someone was definitely alive, but who? His hand slid on the blood-spattered skin as he tried to grasp an arm and roll the top body off the other victim. He steeled himself and wiped away gore from a face to find Barb beneath. Her face, hands and shoulder were peppered with scraps of metal. Each wound oozed a trickle of blood, but not enough to explain the sheer quantity covering her.
He hauled the dazed girl up and sat her on a chair.
‘What happened?’
‘She leapt for the gun.’
‘And you shot her.’
‘No, no. We were fighting for control. I pulled the trigger and it didn’t work, but then she got it and fired and …’
Frank looked down at Marinda. A large splinter had pierced her neck. ‘The gun exploded,’ he finished for her.
It had been an old, ropy-looking specimen and clearly hadn’t been looked after.
‘It could have been me.’ Barb’s voice was shrill, and at the thought of what might have been, she bent over and retched onto the floor, tears and snot pouring down her face.
Marinda’s wound had stopped bleeding so profusely, and Frank wondered if she could be saved if he tried. It was a passing thought, as he knew in his heart that even if he could resuscitate her, he didn’t want to.
Frank stashed this ugly truth deep inside where feelings didn’t reach and turned to the more straightforward turmoil in his kitchen. Barb’s sobs had given way to silent shaking, and he turned to pat her shoulder gingerly, conscious that the girl was covered in shrapnel that could still give her an infection. Carefully taking her elbow, he helped her up and led the way outside to sit beside Mary.
Mary looked up. ‘Are you all right, Barb?’ she whispered.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied numbly, looking down at the cuts and layer of blood.
‘We’ll find out as we sort this all out,’ Frank said gruffly. ‘Max, come and help get the bathtub down. We need to fill it and clean up Barb.’ He turned Mary’s face up to the light and gently wiped a finger over her cheek. ‘Looks like you escaped the shrapnel. Come on, we need to get that out of Barb first. We all need to do this, come on.’
He set Max and Mary to boiling water and filling the old bathtub he had brought outside. It was better out here than in the horror of the kitchen. That would have to wait until they’d sorted Barb out.
Fetching a bottle of whisky almost forgotten in a cupboard, he poured Barb a glass. ‘Drink it all down.’
Once he was sure she had drunk it all, he went and got one of the best cotton sheets from the cupboard. He set Mary to work. ‘Cut it up. Like this.’ He showed how to snip and rip the sheet into lengths and left her concentrating on that. Finally, getting the meagre first aid kit, he got out the tweezers and fetched a bowl.
‘We need to get her clothes off and put her in the tub, then start getting out the shrapnel.’
‘I can’t. We can’t strip her. It’s not right.’ Max stammered.
‘Get a grip!’ Frank roared. ‘Embarrassed is better than dead and she can’t stay in these nasty clothes. Now pass the scissors. It will hurt less to cut them off. She’ll fit Cissy’s or some of your old stuff when we’re done.’
Max watched his father very gently cut and pull away the shivering girl’s blood-soaked clothes. He soothed with gentle words and gave her more alcohol. Max had a flash of memory, a broken arm, blood from a bump to the head, his father holding him, comforting him, treating him. Dad had always dealt with the medical stuff and mended them. Finally, Barb was sitting in the hot water, and they could see the mass of metal shards in her skin.
‘Can’t we just wash her and leave them?’ Max looked with horror at the task.
‘Got to get them out. Could get infected.’ At that, Frank turned away, racked with a coughing fit. He held out the tweezers to Max. ‘No good me coughing over her. You’ll have to do it.’
Max shook his head in horror.
Frank shook them at him. ‘You have to. I’ll go clean the kitchen. Anyway, your eyes are better than mine.’
As they stood at an impasse, looking at each other, Mary leaned across and took the tweezers. ‘I can do it.’ She stared them out. ‘It’s like the Facility.’
Frank shrugged and watched as, carefully, she eased out the first piece from Barb’s skin. She held it out, and Max put a bowl beneath to catch it. Once he’d seen her pull some tricky bits from her neck without difficulty, Frank left them to it. The wounds weren’t as bad as the amount of blood suggested, but he had seen the outcome of sepsis on his daughter, and he didn’t want to see it again.
Frank felt very weary and out of breath. Suppressing another bout of coughing, he went around to the outhouse to get some sheeting and a shovel. He’d planned to kill Marinda once he got her up to the old house and away from the kids, and while it had saved him the task, he would have done it a lot more cleanly. When he’d been Max’s age, it would never have occurred to him that he would end his life a murderer, nor that he would dispose of bodies with such a hardened heart.
As dusk came around, Frank returned from cremating Marinda’s remains by the perimeter. He found Barb tucked up in Max’s bed. They’d done a good job of cleaning her up, and Mary had even put a couple of stitches in the deeper wounds. Max had set up a chair and a blanket next to the bed and was preparing to watch over her.
‘She’ll be sore tomorrow. Painkillers ran out long ago, so she’ll have to manage with the rest of the whisky and some willpower.’ Neither raised the fact that they were also running out of alcohol to wash the wounds.
Downstairs Mary was now trying to make an omelette by chasing some broken eggs around the pan. ‘It looks a bit lumpy.’
Frank shrugged. ‘It’ll taste fine, I’m sure.’
As he looked around the kitchen, he caught a few smudges of blood on the cabinet doors and the unmistakable smell of meat past its prime. He decided he would eat his eggs in the front room for a change.