It’s not there anymore, Li said. North’s just poison now.
He said, Don’t you reckon though, we’ve been hearing about the sacrifice zones so long we don’t even question them? North’s some kind of horror story people tell their kids, like it was never a real place, but that’s all happened in our lifetime. People lived there, Li. Maybe they still do. Maybe what we got told isn’t the whole thing.
Li was tired. Her stomach was stretched around the food, her head ached and her foot ached and she could feel the cold at her back. She wanted to piss and then crawl into the tent and sleep until she could start moving again. You saw what took out Transit, she said. Think it isn’t worse up in North? You go up there you’ll just die, like all the other dickheads who tried it.
He sat quiet for a while, poking the fire. Li pulled her crutch towards her and started putting it on. She was angry with him, and sad in a way she couldn’t account for. They were always going to split up tomorrow. She heard the rattle of pills. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rich swallow something down.
This mob I’m joining, he said, they’ve been up there. They’re still alive.
Something unlikely shifted out from the back of her brain. Your contact, the woman you met, what was her name?
Eileen. He paused, watching her face. You know her?
No. I just heard a few stories about mozzies on the road.
In the tent, Li lay awake, consumed. Her guts cramped and there was a pulse behind her eyes. It had to be them. She should warn Rich, but she wasn’t going to. Because if it was them, then she had a chance of getting her stuff back. But she also had a chance to make them pay. Make Jasmine pay. For the two and a half months in Transit, wasted on despair. Months that might have kept Matti alive. She wanted to beat Jasmine into the ground, her dreadlocks and sweat and greed, and take everything away from her.
Rich jerked and shouted. He struggled against the sleeping bag and released a stream of unwords. They were zipped in together, animal-close. At the last minute he’d told her he was going to sleep in the car, said he wasn’t much fun to share a bed with. She remembered him twitching on the floor of Medical but she told him if they didn’t share the sleeping bag, one of them would freeze to death.
He subsided again into unsettled sleep. She slowed her breathing, tried to stay close to his heat. She felt each place where their bodies met. There were times when she had a deep hunger for Frank, for his body, but it always led to the same place, to the shipping container on the wharf where the clock ticked and Frank’s body came to its conclusion. Rich was all bulk and muscle but she knew there would be a moment, right before sleep, soon, when she would let herself imagine he was Frank. That this was that tent and they had walked all day in the heat and might still have been hungry for each other if their child hadn’t been sleeping between them, but they could let it simmer because there would be other nights. She would let herself, but it wouldn’t help.
She’d been following their tracks in the snow for a long time, their bare feet, and then they were there ahead of her but she couldn’t call out so she ran along the straggling line, pulling them round to face her, one by one, thin as cardboard. Something roaring and cracking behind her. One face after another, looking at her with round, felt-pen eyes. And then one of the cardboard children blew over, and the others were blowing away and the thing was behind her, she kept running looking heart busting she was almost at the front of the line and then she pulled one around and it was Robbie and he opened his mouth and mud poured out. She was shouting and something had her gripped from behind, hot breath on the back of her neck. She bucked and flailed.
Li. Li! I got you.
She went loose, shuddering, keeping her eyes open in the dark because it was still right there. He had his arms braced around her. His heart thudded against her back.
Easy. Easy, you’re okay now.
But the dream was still inside her. Her breath came out raw and she needed him to keep talking. She said, Who was it? Your lost cause.
His grip tightened for a second.
You said you gave up on someone too.
Rachael.
She lay still, waiting.
And then he said, We were in the same intake, both signed up as soon as we could. We did basic and then I got into medic and she trained as a combat engineer. She and her mate pushed in in front of me in the mess-hall queue. I told them to get in line, she looked me all the way down and up, said she was hungry. He laughed like it hurt. She was, ah, she had so much life in her, you know? Gutsy. Loved blowing things up, good with her hands. Bit like you that way. Nah, I’m just trying to make you feel good. She wasn’t anything like you, Rach was real sweet. Filthy mouth on her. And funny. She had this laugh like a chook getting strangled, crack you up just listening to it.
Li shifted and he let go of her. She closed her eyes and let his voice flood her system like coolant, the nightmare receding.
I wasn’t planning to settle down. But. Auntie Rainey and Uncle Vince were both dead by then. She had this cancer we couldn’t afford to treat and he just didn’t last without her.
Me and Rach were posted all over, different bases, disaster relief, XB skirmishes. Lot of time apart. Years. But whenever we
