She rubbed in cream, eased the compression bandage back on, tried to remember when her body hadn’t hurt. Her hands were good, she barely felt them now, but the side of her face was tight and itchy all the time. Parts of the dressing were stuck to her cheek with salt and grit; it took dead skin away coming off. She touched the lumps and scales of healing underneath. No pus. She got out the first aid-kit, cleaned the area and left it uncovered so the salt could do its work. The rear-view mirror was there but she had no desire to look.
When she crawled out, the driver’s body was gone. There were drag marks on the sand. Paw prints. Not foxes. She followed them a little way into the dunes, something tugging at her memory from the night. If there were feral dogs around, she needed to be in the vehicle before dark.
But the jerry can had collected ten centimetres of water overnight. It was like winning a jackpot. She drank it all, slowly, and felt a profound sense of wellbeing that cut through the taking of the body. She came down out of the dunes and squatted to pee around the still again, scanning the salt pan. Every morning she was wary, expecting to find other people here. With the numbers on the road, she figured some of them would come up the track to the lake. But maybe people had heard it was dry.
Birds again. They wheeled above her, heading north. More than yesterday. And the shine up there looked closer. Close enough to walk to.
There was a rabbit in one of her snares. It was bloody from struggling but it went still to watch her. Only when she crouched down she could see it trembling. She killed it fast and skinned it, cut out the entrails and the bladder, checked the heart. She thought about the paw prints and took the kill back to the four-wheel drive and put it inside. Dogs weren’t the only scavengers. If she didn’t find firewood out there she’d have to eat it raw.
It took three hours to reach the water. Li followed the footprints she had seen the first day, out over the salt pan. She carried a folded plastic sheet and three plastic bottles, one with still water in it. The crust broke under her with every step. Walking jarred her ankle and the stick hurt her whole arm, wrist to shoulder, but she moved quickly enough. Just not quickly enough yet to walk out of here.
The small footprints led her on and on. Narrow, the heel lightly indented, the toes pushing off strongly. Seventh months pregnant, Li had felt a kick and looked down and seen the underside of a whole foot pressing out against the skin high on her belly: heel, toes, everything. Thought, What are you so ready for?
Matti would have got on the bus in the one-size-too-big green and purple trainers they’d scored from a relief dump at makecamp after her old ones wore through. It was hard to think about her on the road with shoes that didn’t fit but Li thought about it, talked to Matti as she walked. I’m coming I’m still coming, don’t do anything stupid. Hold on.
She looked up sometimes to check the shine ahead of her. It widened slowly from a bright line to something that held the sky. She saw the distant shapes of birds and heard them calling.
The southern shore of the lakebed had been picked clean of firewood, but out here there were branches carried down by northern rivers in flood and stranded on the salt pan. Her stick sent warnings through the ground. Lizards got out of her way, and once a snake. She gathered up wood into small heaps to collect on the way back. There were colonies of ants and grubs and beetles, whole ecosystems in the wood. Maybe she could eat some of them or use them for bait. Val would have known. Then she thought about fish traps.
For the last part of the walk she watched the shine coming to meet her. Beyond it, a long way north, black smoke funnelling up to the sky. Grassfires in the sacrifice zone or burning toxic waste, or whatever the fuck they still did up there.
At the edge of the water the footprints kept going, walked right in. Li eased herself down on the salt and stared at the place where they disappeared. All the way here she had felt Matti beside her but her child’s feet had not made those prints. Matti hadn’t walked into the water. Matti couldn’t swim.
It took a few moments to really see the lake, the flat pink skin of it, the small shivers, the way it contained the clouds. She lay down and put her face close to it, breathing the wet silty smell under the salt, like the rivers that flowed in West when she was a child. It wasn’t drinkable yet but there was so much of it. Movement in the water, birds calling from further north. A place like this, you could live.
She dug a muddy saltwater still right there at the edge. Cut the top off one of her bottles and put it in, weighted it down with stones and sealed the hole. When it was done she got reckless and drank the last of her water, then got up slowly, sorely, and started gathering driftwood to make a fish trap.
It was half built when she saw the first fish. Dead, floating. She pulled it in with her stick. There was no smell or bloat and when she touched a wet finger to the scales
