The desert runner overtakes the other prisoners, trotting like his legs work on some wind-up mechanism. Charmayne catches up with Madame Sophie, drags her like a beloved rag doll she can’t bear to part with. She claps her free hand on Lolie’s back and gives her a powerful push towards the door. I wait outside the hall. Vicki hangs on to the door frame behind Charmayne, her face drained of life. She is corpse-like, a bare mannequin in a night window.
I urge her without words, Come, my love. I smile a tender smile I have been hiding for decades.
Vicki forces her pale thighs through the opening. As she brushes past me, her silky hair slides across the nodules of her spine. I raise a hand, touch it. Vicki stops, stares at my mouth as if she is afraid of my eyes. I take her hand, weave my fingers between hers, weld our panic-stricken electricity into one. Vicki’s soft, sweaty hand feels like the long, wet kiss I have never had.
Behind me, the desert runner yanks the stragglers over the threshold. I give him a thumbs-up with my free hand. I think I have finally become a Valentino hero.
In the snuffling, shambling silence, the prisoners follow Vicki and me. I catch a glimpse of Shikorina and the priest killer shoulder to shoulder, sharing the odd experience of walking on wasted legs. Lolie, the skinny rapist and the other three post-operative prisoners are still among us. The skinny rapist, I see, has a raw, red wound over his heart, but his stitches seem to be strong, however shoddy the workmanship. He slips through the door before Josiah, who takes the last place in the naked pack.
‘She’s bleeding,’ someone whispers.
The crowd makes a space around Shikorina past the spiral stairs. I refuse to look at the site of her incision. I jab my finger towards my bedroom door. Gesture wildly, Be silent. There’s someone in there!
The priest killer grabs Shikorina’s hand and pulls her along the corridor. I tug Vicki with me.
Please, please if Tamba hears us, let him think he is dreaming. Some prisoners creep, some shuffle past the glorious thrum of Tamba’s epiglottis. God must be with us.
It is Vicki and me and Charmayne in the lead, pulling Madame Sophie who is much, much tinier than she was in captivity. Samuel and the social worker walk abreast now, linking arms like new best friends.
Tamba’s snore breaks off.
Andride falters against the wall. Samuel plucks at him gently.
The door swings open behind them.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Tamba is stark naked. ‘Go back! Go back!’
He makes a cross with his fingers, exorcising the ghouls. ‘They will kill you!’ he shrieks.
The red-haired prisoner totters backwards, his freckles colliding in the garish light. He turns and shambles the way that we came. A tiny Chinese man, quite sprightly, overtakes him. A black man as elongated as an afternoon shadow whispers, ‘Espere por mim.’
I don’t know what it means but he slides sideways towards the hall, his hands high on the wall like a reflection, flung there.
‘Wait,’ Samuel hisses, but they hurry back to their cages, choosing euthanasia on a stretcher over a slaughter at sea.
‘Go back, Malachi,’ Tamba pleads. He could be one of us with his heaving lungs, the puncture marks on his arms. I shove past some prisoners, take hold of his shoulders. March him backwards like I am teaching him to dance. Tamba wrests this way and that, scrambles onto his mattress.
Lolie darts in front of me. I pluck at her elbow but she hunts him with her lethal, black-lined eyes.
‘I helped you,’ he pleads. ‘Ask Malachi.’
Still, Lolie stalks him.
‘Lolie!’ he shouts.
She hesitates at her name. Tamba dives into his storage hatch and pulls his knees up. He curls on his side among his clothes and his Red Riding Hood Kindle.
‘Lock me in,’ he begs me. ‘Quickly.’
I shove past Lolie, slide the hatch shut on Tamba.
He panics immediately, choking. ‘Wait. Malachi! . . . I can’t breathe.’
I turn the rusted key. Lolie falls back, scrapes a difficult breath in sympathy. I pull the key out, give Tamba air to breathe.
‘Please. Fucking please . . .’
I leave him to swear in his steel uterus, drop the key on the bed. The Volkswagen keyring is stark against the white sheet. An upside-down peace sign.
As I shut the door to our living quarters, Tamba starts to hammer at the hatch. ‘Malachi-i-i!’ His scream is muted by two layers of metal.
I take Vicki’s shaking fingers, lead her past the canteen. Behind us comes the fat Australian, almost suffocating the Indian. Beyond them I catch sight of Shikorina’s eyes, dazed with bewilderment as she clings to Mohammed’s forearm like an octopus. He could surely twist from her cloying fingers but he lets her hang on, perhaps remembering the priest.
Outside the women’s living quarters, there is still a trace of factory-made jasmine. My nostrils tickle slightly. I hear the sound of an indrawn breath. A strangled sneeze explodes behind me.
Oh no!
Another sneeze explodes in the skinny rapist’s fists. There is a thudding sound inside, a clumsy landing. The door to the women’s room opens slowly. Olivia stares out, her sleepy eyes growing huge with incredulity. Her fringe is pinned to one side with a big, gold clip.
I scramble back through the prisoners, type feverishly, ‘Let them go.’
The white bunnies on her shining vest are doing karate kicks.
‘Timmy has his lungs,’ I type desperately. ‘Go to sleep. Please.’
Olivia stares at the gathering, considers my bizarre plea. Vicki brushes against my back, creates a shield of female electricity.
I type to Olivia, ‘You know they’re going to kill them.’
She shakes her head violently. ‘They’re going back to prison.’
‘You know it’s a lie.’
Guilt stains her blue eyes like nicotine. She spins towards the ungainly shape on the bed. ‘Janeé!’
‘Mm?’ Janeé is curiously sweet-tempered in her sleep.
A
