Story - Embers

Embers

Arran “Mort” Dengate

The first time I went there, I almost threw up. Fifty meters above the ground, with the branches and leaves whipping around in the wind, and the forest litter barely visible below… I just moved to the middle of the little cabin, held on to a pillar, and waited ‘till it didn’t seem so bad anymore. Shep Huenkek – the guy who taught me – said it takes everyone that way. I’m a fire lookout. I sit in a tree all day, in a sort of open-air cabin, and wait for something to catch alight. The only part of the job I’ve never really come to terms with is the climb. Every day, I climb up an old mountain ash, working my way up a spiral of metal spikes that some poor working joe once pounded into the tree. On that climb, the world is mostly made of empty space. The cabin at the top isn’t much better – it’s pretty big, but the safety rails are slippery little whispers of wire. Like I said, first time I went up, it was all I could do to stay there. I’ve improved a little since then. Matter of fact, I was leaning against one of the support pillars of my cabin on that day, right at the edge, scanning the bright line of the horizon with keen eyes. I was also playing solitaire and peeling an apple, not paying much attention to either. It’s amazing what you pick up, with too much time on your hands. And it was right about then that I heard the sound. I stopped peeling. Birds whistled in the leafy expanse below. The wind rustled past on its way to the lake. A few leaves dropped past, turning in the sunlight. Everything sounded normal, in short, and I was about ready to get back to my peeling when I heard it again. Sticking the knife into the apple, I left it near the edge and went to the radio. There was a distant wash of static, but nothing else. Despatch get angry if you chat on the fire channels, so there’s not much to hear on the radio, most days. I picked up the radio handset – a big, chunky thing, salvaged from a CB radio – and wandered over to the edge, where the reception was better. I leaned over the railing, glanced down. Nothing. Then I tried the radio. ‘Station seven here,’ I told the radio. ‘I didn’t copy that. Repeat?’ A moment of soft static wash, then the voice of Jeff Tollens from Despatch. ‘Repeat what, Station Seven? Nobody’s broadcasting. Over.’ ‘But – I heard – ahh, never mind, Jeff. Over.’ ‘I hear it’s the solitude that gets you the worst, Blake. Men go mad. Over and out.’ With that cheery message, Despatch signed off, clearly convinced that I was hearing things. Obviously, whatever I’d heard wasn’t on the radio – but I didn’t think it was in my head, either. And then I heard it again, this time more clearly. It was softer than static, anyway; sounded more like something alive, almost like it was human. I listened very, very hard, and in the rush of a new wind, the forest breathed in. A sound very much like a sob was carried past on the wind, and then a shuffling, dragging noise. Maybe a possum on the roof? I glanced up, and that’s when the hand closed around my ankle. I yelled out. The handset jerked out of my hand from sheer surprise, and it disappeared into the forest below. I kicked out at the thing behind me, once or twice, before it struck me that no forest creature has human hands. As I stopped, the grip softened and slipped away. I turned around. A bleeding woman was lying on the floor of my cabin. ‘What in the – are you okay? How did you get here?’ She didn’t answer. Her injuries looked pretty bad. Not to put too fine a point on it, she was a muddy mass of cuts and bruises. One arm looked badly broken – she’d jury-rigged some kind of sling with a jacket. She had blood all over her face.

1

Took me a few seconds to realise. ‘She climbed up here with a broken arm?’ What would make someone come up here like that? Was she a lost, starving hiker? I left her there, and glanced over the edge of the rail. The spikes glittered in the sunlight with little drops of water, legacy of last night’s rain. An inexperienced climber could easily slip and fall on a day like today. She didn’t have any friends lying around at the bottom, though, or any pack that I could see. Just a woman, alone in the forest, three days from anywhere, with no food. What a mess. I glanced over at the radio. The handset was still dangling from its cord, over the edge. As I reached for the cord, I must’ve disturbed it somehow – because it ripped free from the main unit and slithered over the edge. I grabbed for it far too late. I listened, and finally heard the very faintest of faint sounds as it struck the forest floor, probably breaking into about a thousand pieces. I cursed and cracked open a first aid kit. She woke up about an hour later. I’d spent the time picking up the pieces of the radio, resplinting her arm, washing away the mess on the floor of the cabin, cleaning out the worst of the woman’s cuts, and dabbing antiseptic on pretty much everything. I was trying to peel a new apple, but my hands kept shaking, and I’d cut myself a dozen times already. I’d given her a shot of morphine a while ago, and I was starting to wonder if I’d overdone it when she came upright with a sudden exhalation of air, like half a scream. I cut myself again. ‘Ham-fisted butterfingers,’ I swore. ‘Sorry. Do you know who you are?’ She hesitated a little. ‘Mostly.’ ‘And where you are?’ ‘No.’ ‘I guess you’ve been wandering for a while, huh?’ I wiped my bleeding finger on my sleeve, and gave her the apple. She devoured it without hesitation, even the core. This was, indeed, a girl who had missed a few meals. She licked her fingers after, and looked at me. ‘Okay,’ I sighed. ‘It’s all yours. Try not to overdo it.’ I shoved my food stores over to her. She’d probably just throw half of it up again, and I couldn’t really spare the food. On the other hand, I probably couldn’t get her to slow down when she was this hungry – so it was necessary. Sure enough, a few minutes later she coughed, tried to get to the edge, and started hitching up the food. Most of it ended up somewhere in the canopy below. When she turned back, there were strings of it through her hair and on her face, but she didn’t pause to wipe it away. Just started eating again – slower, but with no less single-minded intensity. I reached out to help her tear open some packaging, and she pulled back, and gave me a terrible look. It wasn’t angry – in fact, I couldn’t properly say what it was. It was like lifting a rock, and finding a writhing mass of maggots. I blanched back, feeling that I’d stepped somewhere I wasn’t wanted. She went back to the food, and I for one felt relieved to have her attention elsewhere. For the next ten minutes or so, she kept at it. I felt sick. I wondered how she felt. Finally the woman sat up, wiped a little of the caked blood and drying vomit from her face, and looked at me again. This time she looked a little amused. ‘I guess this must be the most disgusting thing you’ve eve seen.’ ‘Something like that,’ I admitted, momentarily losing all grasp of tact and discretion. I could’ve kicked myself. There was a long moment of silence. 2

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said –’ ‘Why doesn’t my arm hurt?’ ‘I gave you a morphine shot. Most people would just be smiling and looking at the clouds by now, but I guess you’ve been through a bit much for that.’ ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’ I left that one alone, and gave her a long, considering look. She was a few years older than me, probably late twenties. She had dark hair down to her shoulders, which would probably be quite pretty if it wasn’t knotted and tangled and full of bile. Her clothes looked pretty standard for hiking; maybe a bit new, though it was hard to tell, they were so slashed up. ‘How’d you end up here, anyway?’ Her tone was a little less harsh as she remembered. ‘My husband took me hiking. He said we’d get away from the trails a bit, and we went over a rough patch.’ She winced. ‘I fell a long way. This is the first time my arm hasn’t hurt in days. I could even feel it in my sleep – in my dreams.’ ‘It’ll be back in a few hours. I’m afraid I only had the one shot of morphine.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Okay.’ ‘So that’s the whole story?’ ‘More or less. I screwed up trying to figure out which way was home… and since Rick was carrying everything, I didn’t have any food.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t know where he went. I couldn’t climb back up to the ridge we were walking on, not with my arm all broken. He didn’t come down, either. I waited for a long time.’ There was a long pause. I thought of her waiting out there, with the sun going down and the warmth draining away from the world. Then something fundamental occurred to me. ‘Hey – not that it’s any of my business, but you’ll need a better story than that before you leave.’ ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘It’s been a cold couple of days. I almost died. Even after I got here, your stupid fucking tree almost killed me, and now you don’t believe me? What do I fucking care? I’m here, aren’t I?’ ‘Sure, you’re here. Here at the western edge of Cotter Ridge, right in the middle of the army’s restricted zone. You couldn’t possibly have wandered that far without food… so you must’ve been inside the zone when you had your fall.’ She was just staring at me. ‘Either your story’s fake, or your idea of walking off the trails involves climbing over barbed wire, and maybe a jail sentence if you get caught.’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t care, to be honest. It’s not my problem. But like I said… you need a better story.’ She started to cry. I should’ve put an arm around her, very gently. I should’ve apologised for my blunt stupidity and assured her that there must’ve been a mistake somewhere. Instead, I just sat there. Those awful choking sobs started to subside after a while. The wind whistled past. I glanced at a suspicious cloud on the horizon, but it was just a cumulus brought up over the mountains. And then she spoke again. ‘Sorry.’ Her voice was still harsh, strained. ‘It’s nothing,’ I told her. Another long pause. ‘So… when can I go home? Did you call for a helicopter?’ ‘I’m afraid my radio is broken.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Maybe I can fix it for you.’ ‘You know electronics? But you’re, um…’ I shrugged. ‘Female?’ she suggested. She gave me a brittle smile. ‘Go on, say it.’ 3

‘Never mind.’ There was a long pause. ‘Anyway, I doubt you could fix it. It’s… pretty broken.’ ‘Yeah?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘So that’s what you dropped.’ She considered this, and added, ‘You idiot.’ I sighed. ‘Yeah. I’m just a ham-fisted redneck. Look, tonight someone will drive over the lake and come up here to relieve me. I’ll take you home on the boat. Okay?’ ‘Fine.’ I handed her the shattered remains of the radio, picking up a few pieces that were lying on the floor and adding my minimal toolbox for good measure. Then, as she started sifting through the pieces, I slung my backpack over one shoulder and made my way to the edge. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘I’ll get some more water,’ I told her. I could use the break, after all. ‘You’re leaving your post?’ ‘Yeah. If you see a fire, fix the radio and tell Despatch.’ I started to climb down, and, on an afterthought, poked my head back up. ‘Don’t go anywhere. You could get lost without me.’ She raised her injured arm, wrapped in its sheath of snowy bandages, and gave me a disgusted look.

My arm hurt. Everything hurt, I suppose, but it was the great searing pain in my arm that really kept me going. There was something about that pain that expressed a deep-down, fundamental brokenness. A morbid little reminder that humans are just well-crafted biological machines, that there’s no reason the world can’t – for example – snap your arm between an outcropping of rock and your own falling weight. There’s no reason the world can’t break you, leaving unnatural curves of skin and bone, great patches of sloughed-off skin and blood shining in the sunlight. Everything hurt, but it was the arm that got me up the sharp, slippery stakes of this twisted playground. Even though the arm almost killed me, it kept me going. Feeling the fatigue in every muscle, the hunger melding with exhaustion – compared to that, burning pain was a welcome relief. It stopped me from thinking. Kept me from wondering how it would feel to, just for instance, fall a dozen feet or so, shatter a couple of ribs on a stake, and then rush the rest of the way to the ground with the snapped-off ends of those ribs piercing your lung. I sifted through the scattered parts of the radio. All that effort, and what do I get? An illsmelling redneck with just enough brains to look at the sky. So help me, after he dropped the radio – dropped it fifty meters – he might’ve even been dumb enough to step on the bits. Some of them had a definite crushed look about them. At least the main unit was okay. The whole set-up was in three pieces – a big old car battery, plugged into a transceiver, plugged into a hand-set – and only the hand-set had fallen. It was a strange set-up, and I couldn’t see why anyone would need it. Then I realised: this was a genuine CB radio, which someone had wrenched out of a truck and stuck in a tree. The car battery was somewhat appropriate. ‘Miserable skinflints,’ I muttered. ‘Cheaper than a two-dollar watch.’ So, on the bright side, two-thirds of the radio was fine. The last third was in many pieces, some of which were completely covered in dirt. There were probably still pieces down at ground 4

level, buried in the forest litter. It’d be a hard job to repair it even with a full set of parts – but with crucial pieces missing? I assembled the grease-stricken tools from Redneck’s filthy toolbox, and looked at the transceiver. A perfectly good radio, right there – but with no handset, and hence no ability to transmit or receive. Could I cobble something together? Did I even need the transceiver? I was tempted to just make a spark coil out of the battery and spam the airwaves with lots of random noise, but it wouldn’t necessarily lead anyone out here to the forest – and besides, if I wasn’t careful, I might end up interfering with life-or-death broadcasts over the rest of the spectrum. I turned my attention to the handset again, and after great deliberation, I took the cord and ran it from the shattered handset back into the transceiver. I was wondering what to do next when a hand tapped me on the shoulder. Naturally, it was Redneck, back with his water. ‘What? I’m trying to concentrate here!’ ‘Hey, take it easy. I called out twice.’ ‘Sure you did, bub. You’re lucky I didn’t drop the radio.’ Under that thick beard, he turned a little bit red, either with embarrassment or irritation. ‘Speaking of which, I can see you’ve made lots of progress.’ I flushed a little myself. ‘I don’t think you’d know electronics if it leapt out of a toaster and fried your mother. By the way, I think the handset may be mortally wounded. Did you, by some chance, dance around stamping on the bits after I passed out?’ There was a long pause. Our locked gazes held until, eventually, Redneck grinned and started to laugh. I reluctantly allowed myself a small smile. ‘Sorry,’ he said, at last. ‘You’ve had a hard time getting here. I should be nicer.’ ‘Yeah… I guess so.’ ‘No need to treat me like an inbred redneck, though.’ ‘Not to throw doubt on your gene pool, Red, but your job consists of sitting in a tree, waiting for something to catch on fire. It doesn’t really qualify you for electronics.’ ‘Sure, but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid. See that cloud over there?’ I glanced outwards. The sun was starting to get low, and the light danced along a thin layer of cloud hovering on the roof of the world. ‘What about it?’ ‘That’s made by wet air getting hot, and rising so high that it starts to get much colder, and so the air can’t hold all its moisture any more. So all the moisture condenses into the air. Forms on little bits of dust.’ ‘Huh,’ I said, at least a little impressed. ‘Not bad, Red. How about that one?’ He glanced over to the distant, dark shapes of the mountains. A bulge of cloud was starting to glow in the strong light of late afternoon. ‘Oh, that’s easy. It’s caused by wet air getting blown up the side of a mountain, and –’ ‘– getting colder, so it can’t hold the moisture any more?’ ‘Yep. You’re getting the hang of this.’ ‘How about that one over there?’ I said, pointing to a little wisp drifting over the forest. He sat down, moved a little closer to see where I was pointing. I tensed, just out of reflex, and for a moment it felt like a cold hand had reached out of the past and tightened around my heart – and then the moment was gone, and he was giving me an odd look. ‘You okay there?’ he asked me. ‘No stalling, redneck.’

5

‘Just – ahh – right. Clouds.’ Side by side, we followed the shape of the cloud puff downwards, to where it became a long, thin column. ‘Well,’ Red said, scratching his beard, ‘I’d say that one was caused by wet air… umm.’ ‘Baffled, huh? I knew it.’ ‘Actually… I’d say it was caused by wet air getting pushed up by a column of hot air.’ ‘Oh yeah? What caused this ‘column of hot air?’ ‘Well, if I didn’t know better…’ He scratched his beard again. ‘Stop scratching. Your fleas must be losing sleep.’ ‘Are you always like this?’ ‘It’s been a bad week, that’s all. Anyway, what’s bothering you?’ ‘I think it’s a cookfire. But there shouldn’t be anyone within a couple of days of here.’ ‘It’s probably just a hiker.’ ‘There shouldn’t be any hikers. Remember what I was telling you about this area being restricted?’ ‘Soldier out on a bivouac, maybe?’ ‘I doubt it – they usually tell me about the training schedule a few days in advance, and nothing’s planned for the next few days. Besides, the soldiers aren’t allowed to light fires in the forest.’ He glanced in my direction. ‘What’s a bivouac?’ ‘Like a sleepover, only… well, with soldiers, I suppose.’ ‘Hmm.’ Red snapped his fingers. ‘I’ve got it. It’s your husband.’ I’d given up on Rick. During my dazed, starving hike through the forest, I’d thought at first that he’d gone for help. Then I wondered if he gone looking for me instead. Eventually I’d just stopped thinking about it at all, even though I heard his name in every whisper of the wind and saw his shape in every shadow. Maybe he was still out there looking for me – yeah, why not? Despite everything, you could at least say that Rick was always keeping an eye on me. ‘Hey, Red – you know that story I was telling you?’ He tensed a little, maybe sensing an argument ahead. ‘What about it?’ ‘Let’s say it’s the truth. Or the truth as I know it, anyway. What would that mean?’ ‘Umm.’ Red paced the floor of the little cabin for a while. He saw how I flinched a little every time he came close to the edge, and he stopped. ‘I’m not too sure. There’s no way your beloved husband should’ve taken you walking in here. You could’ve gotten hit by stray fire from a training exercise, or run across some unexploded munitions. All else aside, the military would’ve been very angry to find you wandering around.’ ‘So,’ I said, ‘When I fell, he should’ve simply walked to the outpost and told them about it, and they’d have search parties combing the area.’ ‘Maybe he didn’t want to get in trouble.’ Red stood up. ‘I’d better go have a chat with this man.’ ‘What, now? You’re leaving me here?’ ‘You can’t come with me,’ he pointed out. ‘I’d better go now, if I want to get back before dark. Also, we don’t know how long the fire will keep smoking.’ ‘What if I have a relapse, or go into shock, or something?’ ‘Your arm is broken. It’s not going to get any more or less broken while I’m away. And, so far as I know, you can only go into shock right after something bad happens.’ I swallowed hard, trying to get past the bitter lump in my throat. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Never mind the reasons, Red. Just… please don’t go.’ Red gave me a long, considering look. ‘I’m sorry. I think I understand.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘It must have been terrifying in the forest at night, all alone.’ 6

It had been. In that moonlight the forest was a cold glittering maze of twisting foliage and moving shadows. Every snapped branch and rustling leaf would wake me up. Once I woke up with a start, and found a little animal watching with bright eyes and feverish hunger. Then I started to hear the whispers. Soon I started trembling, maybe from the chill of the breeze, maybe not. Eventually I lay there filled with it, and the trembling stopped, and I drifted away, wondering if I would ever wake up. Afraid that I would wake up, to his touch and the sound of his voice and another day. You’re never afraid of losing your freedom until you hold it in your hands. ‘It’s lonely at night,’ Red said. His voice jerked me out of my reverie. ‘Yes,’ I said, and then fell silent. ‘I’ll try to be back before sunset.’ He stood there for a moment, shifting his weight. ‘Sorry,’ he said again. He slung his pack over one shoulder, added a flashlight to it, and secured the lot, tightening every strap. He started to climb down, stopped for a moment. I started to say something, couldn’t get my voice. ‘It’s okay, Red,’ I said eventually. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ ‘Are you all right? You sound odd. Is the painkiller wearing off?’ ‘Yes, but I don’t mind. Red… listen to me.’ Our eyes met. ‘Be careful,’ I said. ‘I could find my way back with my legs tied to–’ ‘-be careful, Red. It’s not the forest or the night that I’m afraid of.’ There was a long pause. Red scratched his beard, and looked me in the eyes again. ‘Is there something you want to tell me?’ I took a deep breath, and found – as I always did – nothing. No words. I just couldn’t start, and every time I tried it got harder. So I just shook my head, near tears. ‘Fine.’ He glanced to the horizon. ‘I can’t waste any more daylight.’ He started to climb. I knelt beside the hole in the cabin’s floor and watched him. He was swarming down the spikes, with the forest little more than a dark shape beneath him.

My beard was starting to itch. What’s more, every time I’d started to give it a good scratch, the blasted woman had looked at me like I was murdering babies. Now I felt guilty every time my hand strayed towards it. What had she meant about being afraid, anyway? I cursed and tried to put it out of my mind. The campfire had stopped smoking a few minutes ago, and now I was trying to get underneath the cloud that it had generated. The cloud was drifting in the wind, but in this open forest, I didn’t have to get too close. The camp should be easy enough to find. I blundered through a denser patch of greenery, almost tripped, and had to pause to free a dozen annoying creepers from my clothes. It’s always surprised me that such small vines become so thickly intertwined. If you take on one creeper, you had to pull against all of them. I took on all of them, lost, and made an inglorious retreat, tripping and blundering through the bush. When I finally crashed through a last screen of greenery and burst into a clearing, I paused to catch my breath. 7

‘Oh…’ The forest litter had been disturbed in the clearing. I almost turned and ran right then. When I was a kid, I got charged by a wild pig, and came close to getting gutted. Now I was older and stronger, but even so, I probably wouldn’t get lucky again. Still, the scuffed litter didn’t seem to have the distinctive digging scratches of a pig, or the hoof marks of a buffalo. Wild horses usually didn’t disturb the ground much, except near drinking water. What did that leave? I was still considering it when I saw a black strap poking out of an oddly-shaped mound. A pack covered in forest litter, then. Someone had tried to cover up a small camp in a hurry. The fire must’ve been between the rocks in that small depression – maybe no tent, or maybe it hadn’t been set up yet – probably the cooking gear stuffed behind those rocks – and as for the inhabitants… ‘I found your wife,’ I remarked, as if to the air itself. There was a pause of a few seconds. I started to wonder if I’d misjudged the husband. Maybe he’d thought I was from the military – a reasonable assumption, in the circumstances – and abandoned his camp. Finally, I heard a man clear his throat and speak. ‘How is she?’ ‘Oh, a little beat up. A bit hungry. And, well… tetchy.’ I glanced around. I still couldn’t see where he was. Maybe next time he spoke I could figure out the direction. A soft chuckle came from behind an old mountain ash. ‘That sounds like her.’ When I followed the sound, I saw him at last. Slightly-built, dark hair, a look of wiry strength about him. He smiled a little, started to light a cigarette. ‘A fire lookout, hmm?’ ‘Yeah, that’s right. The uniform’s a dead giveaway, really. Listen, Rick –’ I saw the end of his cigarette jerk a little as I said his name, and I smiled. ‘You tried to hide from me. I’d like to know why.’ ‘Thought you might be an animal,’ he said, a little less casual now. ‘I’ve never heard anyone make so much noise before. I thought you rangers were meant to slip through forest terrain like silent shadows.’ ‘You thought I was an animal, so you hid the packs.’ I shrugged. ‘Maybe where you come from, animals can’t smell food. Where do you come from, Rick?’ ‘Does it matter?’ ‘You don’t live around here. I’d know. So something made you choose this vacation spot – and drive a long, long way to get here. So what was that, huh? The mountain ash forests? The munitions testing ground?’ ‘Oh dear. Did I really wander that far?’ Rick flicked the cigarette into an old, dry pile of leaves. That little smile of his widened a bit further. I picked up the smouldering stub, tossed it over to a bare patch of soil, and ground it into the dust with my bootheel. ‘I’m not going to tell anyone,’ I said. ‘Frankly, I don’t care why you’re here. But if you’d gone to the military three days ago, when your wife fell and got lost, you could’ve had her safe and home within a day. Instead, she wandered the wilderness and almost died from exposure, hunger, and sheer exhaustion. It’s sheer coincidence that she’s alive. If she hadn’t stumbled across my lookout, she’d probably be slipping into hypothermia sometime tonight. Listen to me: you were lucky. She could have been dying out there, right now.’ ‘Lucky me,’ he said, very quietly. My hands were starting to shake a little. This happens when I get very angry at something I can’t change. It’s a slippery, helpless kind of rage.

8

‘You,’ I started. I swallowed, and returned with some professionalism. ‘You can see her tonight, if you come back with me to the lookout. If you join us, you’ll have to explain yourself to the military, when we get rescued. Don’t expect too much hospitality from me, either.’ ‘What’s the alternative?’ ‘Hike back to Eagle Falls and wait there. There’s only one hospital.’ ‘See you there, then.’ He smiled, but it touched his face only lightly, like an etching of frost on a thin window. ‘Give her my best.’ I didn’t trust myself to speak. He was watching me closely. ‘You don’t like me much, do you?’ ‘No.’ ‘Think she deserves better?’ ‘That getting abandoned like that? You fucking worthless piece of shit! Everyone deserves better than getting left out to die!’ ‘I wasn’t sure if she’d survived the fall. No sense in running to the army and calling in search parties just to find a corpse, is there?’ ‘If there was even a chance of finding her, you should have –’ ‘Think she deserves someone like you?’ ‘What?’ ‘You do, don’t you? You want those pale thighs wrapped around you. You want to hear her moan your name. You want to fill her with your sweat.’ He smiled, and this time it was a real smile, as bright and brittle as the edge of a broken glass. ‘Am I wrong?’ Our eyes met. I’m only human. Even though she was hurt, even though she was married and in my care and not in the least thinking of me as a man, I had thought of her as a woman. Once or twice. So I looked away, ashamed and angry. I turned and walked away. As I reached the edge of the clearing, I looked back. ‘Circle north when you’re leaving the Zone. There’s a platoon moving across the wetlands tomorrow. If you keep to the hills, and stay away from ridges, you’ll get out.’ I didn’t look back again. Ahead, I could see the lookout tree fading with the last of the sunset.

The sun was starting to sink beneath the horizon when I saw Red. Or, rather, when Red rose like a genie from the cabin’s trapdoor, scaring me half out of my wits. My arm was really aching again, so I might’ve been a little irritable. Just a little. It’s only natural, with the jagged edge of a bone grating on the inside of your arm. When he told me about his little encounter, I almost forgot about the pain. ‘You told him the way out? What the hell for?’ Red was a little taken aback. ‘What do you mean, “what for”? He’s your husband!’ ‘You could lose your job for helping him! Don’t tell me you had some kind of male bonding experience out there. Did you maybe grunt and hit each other for a while?’ ‘To be honest, I didn’t really like him.’ ‘Oh, right.’ I left this hanging, and waited for him to explain on his own. Red picked at a splinter for a few moments, and then heaved out a deep sigh. ‘Fine. I told him because I didn’t want him getting caught and fouling up your cover story.’ ‘What cover story?’ 9

‘The cover story we’re going to make right now!’ Red pointed a big, calloused finger in my direction. ‘I’m not letting you walk out of here with some weak excuse, like “I got lost hiking”, understood?’ ‘What the heck’s wrong with “I got lost”? It’s the truth!’ ‘It’ll get you a six month stretch in jail, that’s what’s wrong! This isn’t like wandering across a farmer’s field on a short-cut!’ ‘Fine, fine.’ I folded my arms, with some difficulty. ‘I can’t argue with such a ferocious scowl. What do you suggest?’ ‘Well, you need a reason for avoiding the wire… which means you need a reason to be up in the hills. Maybe you decided to go rock climbing.’ ‘…and then fell off the rock face, injuring my arm.’ ‘Then you wandered about fifteen miles in the wrong direction, because…’ ‘…because I was chased by a bear!’ ‘There aren’t any bears within ten thousand kilometres of here. Wrong continent.’ ‘It’ll have to be a wombat, then.’ Red started to laugh. I punched him in the arm, using my good hand, but he only laughed harder. As the light faded from the sky, we thrashed out a moderately plausible story about a pair of climbers falling, getting separated, stumbling into a river after getting spooked by a wild pig, washing downstream, and wandering lost in the wilderness for a couple of days. Then I tried to expand on how I’d subdued a whole pack of wolves by wrestling with the leader, and Red started to laugh again. ‘This is a good time,’ I said softly. Red sobered up a little. ‘Is it?’ ‘Yeah.’ I blushed. ‘Sorry. Didn’t realise I was going to say that, until I already had. You must think I’m really odd.’ ‘No, it’s fine.’ ‘You’re not convincing me, redneck.’ ‘Okay,’ Red admitted. ‘I wasn’t going to say it, but: yes. I found you wandering lost, in terrible pain, starving to death. My wonderful company isn’t enough to make someone just forget about all that – or their broken arm, for that matter.’ My arm flared up in a bright, jagged line of pain, as if hearing him. I found myself shaking a little, maybe out of fear or excitement or just plain old physical exhaustion from all the pain. ‘Hey, Redneck.’ ‘Yeah?’ ‘I’m going to tell you some stuff. Tell me when you don’t want to hear any more, and I’ll stop.’ ‘Got it.’ Red threw a blanket over me, and settled down. ‘I…’ I couldn’t find the words. The story was like a slick granite wall, no handholds to grasp, no place to start. When I did think of ways to tell it, I felt like the words were wrong, cheap, and saying it like that would just make him look away, a little annoyed, maybe say something like is that all or shit, deal with it. I just looked at Red helplessly. I didn’t realise I was crying until he put an arm around me. ‘There,’ Red said gently. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’ I laughed a little, or maybe it was sobbing. ‘You redneck, I haven’t said anything yet!’ ‘But you feel better, don’t you?’

10

‘A little, yeah.’ I hiccuped, and wiped my nose with the blanket. It smelled of wood smoke and sweat and strength. ‘Rick hurts me.’ He didn’t say anything. He didn’t look away, or say yeah, I figured, or do anything like that. He just kept looking at me with those big dumb brown eyes, and I kept talking, and the story came out like pus from a punctured wound. How I’d known Rick all my life; primary school, high school, uni, always tied to the same guy. How he was witty and confident and could talk like an art, when he wanted to, like a man blowing smoke rings. How he’d hurt me with that cleverness, sometimes, more and more often over the years, until I realised that I wasn’t enjoying the sarcasm any more, that all he was doing was knocking me down. I learned how to deal with it, even though I felt like I was nothing, and then he started hitting me. He said he couldn’t reach me. I guess my shell got too thick. I don’t think he loves me any more, I said. I think he hates me. I think he brought me out here because he wanted to get rid of me, just walk off and leave me lost in nowhere, and be free. I don’t understand him any more. ‘You don’t have to go back to him,’ Red said softly. ‘He’s been my whole life. My whole world. I’m ashamed, but… I don’t know how to leave. I’m so… dependent.’ I wiped my face. ‘God, how hopeless am I?’ ‘You climbed fifty meters up metal spikes with a broken arm,’ Red reminded me. ‘A lot of people wouldn’t have the nerve to do that. To be honest, I’m not sure if I could do that.’ ‘That was easy. Other stuff is hard.’ She considered this. ‘Talking to you was hard. I’m not sure if I could’ve done that, if I hadn’t been either doped up or in pain this whole time. If I’d found you on the first day, I would’ve just said thank you, and sat here waiting for Rick to come and take me back.’ ‘What happens when you get back? Could you end up being like that again?’ I could imagine it all too easily. Getting back, healing up for a few days, numb with drugs and sleep. Saying goodbye to Red, with Rick standing behind me, a tall silent presence. Going home. Sitting in the car in that horrible dead hush, wrapped in the thick blanket of silence that I’d lived under for years. Until, maybe, Rick found some quiet spot to pull over, where he could reduce me to tears. I’m not strong, whatever Red thinks. ‘You have to get away now,’ Red told me. ‘It’s too easy to start rationalising. If you go back, you’ll tell yourself that there are people worse off, or that he really loves you, or that you did something to deserve it.’ That last one struck bone. It felt like Red had reached into my mind and picked out a thought. ‘How did you…?’ Red shrugged. ‘This happens, you know. There are other men like Rick out there, and other women like you. A friend of mine was hurt for years, until her husband went too far and broke her a little. Some kindly doctor took her aside, and told her that he knew the deal, and told her she had to leave now. If you don’t take this chance, he said, it could be five years, ten years, before you have the strength and the pain and the freedom to leave. Maybe you’ll never have another chance.’ ‘Is she okay now?’ ‘Happier than ever. She lives near me – just a few miles downstream of Eagle Falls. You’ll probably see her when we get back to town; she’s always swimming in the lake in spring.’ Red shivered. ‘I don’t know how she stands it.’ I smiled. From the little he’d said, it sounded like a happy ending. ‘When she finally told me the story,’ Red said, hesitating a little this time, ‘All I could think was that the doctor had helped her – not by reporting it to the authorities, who’d just put her in 11

worse trouble and leave again; that would’ve been a cop-out. He helped by sitting her down and being kind to her. He gave her a place to stay until she could get back on her feet. I always hoped that some day I’d be able to do as well as he did.’ ‘That’s a tall order.’ ‘Maybe it is.’ Red took a deep breath. Even though I could see where this was going, I couldn’t help but tense. ‘Listen, I have a little place in the forest, away from everyone. Just down the trail from that friend I mentioned. It’s not much, and it’s not too clean at the moment, but… it’s empty. I’m barely home, because I’m always out here, and…’ ‘…maybe you could use a house-sitter!’ ‘Yeah.’ Red smiled. ‘That’s exactly what I need.’ ‘Well… I would like that.’ I could barely imagine it. Alone. I wouldn’t have to worry about whether I was letting Rick down, making some stupid mistake, whether he’d be in a bad mood; anything which would hurt me. I wouldn’t have to watch myself all the time. When I’d been lost and dying in the wild, I’d been afraid Rick would step out from behind a tree, give me that look, and tell me that I’d been stupid, and that now we were going home. Out there, it had been so cold at night that I couldn’t sleep. I just lay there and shivered, with the dappled rays of moonlight falling around me like searchlights. I burrowed under those cold, dead leaves and hoped that rescue wouldn’t come for me. Rescue had come. ‘I would like that very much,’ I told him.

‘I would like that very much,’ she said, with an odd little catch in her voice. We shook hands on it. ‘I’ll pay half the rent,’ she promised. ‘Oh, there’s no rent to pay. My dad built the place himself, back when I was a kid.’ He smiled. ‘Damn, I’d like to be there right now, with my feet in front of the heater and a nice warm mug of coffee.’ ‘I’d be reading a book. Possibly whilst curled up on the sheepskin rug.’ I grinned. ‘We country people don’t all have sheepskin rugs, you know.’ ‘You do have one, though, don’t you? I can tell.’ ‘I admit nothing.’ There was a brief lull in the conversation. The night animals were starting to come out, and I could just see the outlines of an owl swooping over the canopy. The forests sounded different at night – and the breeze was blowing from another direction, taking cool, sweet air down from the mountains. She yawned, startling me a little. ‘I guess it’s time to get some sleep.’ ‘Sure. Will you be okay with the pain?’ ‘I could use another dose.’ ‘I’m all out of morphine.’ ‘Oh.’ I shrugged. ‘But, if the pain gets too bad, just wake me up and I’ll bore you with some stories. Dad always used to do that for me, when I’d broken something.’ She grinned. ‘You make it sound like a regular occurrence.’

12

‘Oh, it was. I used to love climbing those big old pines with the sticky sap on their bark – and the rotten branches.’ I paused for a moment. ‘Oh yeah – when I came back here, did you see anything behind me?’ ‘What did you have in mind?’ ‘Felt like I was being followed by something big – maybe a wild pig, something like that – but I could’ve been wrong. Maybe I was just spooked by the scuff marks I saw before.’ ‘Wha…?’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘I’m not following.’ ‘It’s… oh, never mind. Get some sleep, okay? I’m amazed you’re still upright.’ She rolled over, hugged my pillow of dirty clothes, and started to fall asleep so fast that I could actually see it happening. Soon she was breathing deeply, relaxed on the uncomfortable bed. ‘Hey, Redneck,’ she murmured. ‘Are you my friend?’ I smiled. ‘I guess so.’ ‘Oh, good… it’s been a while since…’ She was snoring like a stuck pig within five minutes, proving for me that exhaustion is stronger than pain. I watched her hair ruffle in the breeze, and wondered where Rick was sleeping tonight. He was a man so possessive that he doesn’t let his wife make friends. Yet he’d let go easily, for the time being. I guess he really didn’t want to meet the military. I drifted off.

I woke up. The sky was a black void, shot through with falling gems of hard cold light. I’d never seen so many stars before. Maybe it was darker out here in the wilderness. On the other hand, the moonlight was so strong that I felt like I could almost read by it, and it was shining in my eyes. Also, my arm hurt, and I wanted to go to the bathroom. I wondered what Red usually did, when he felt like this in the middle of the night, and let out a sigh. No doubt he usually went off the edge of the platform… which was tempting, but I hadn’t come all this way to die in such a stupid way. It’d just have to wait. So I waited. The moonlight started to annoy me more and more; it filled the world with grey, blurry light, and was so bright that I could see it even when I closed my eyes. I tried to lull myself to sleep by telling myself the story of the last week or so, as I do when I can’t get to sleep. I was lost in thought when the world jolted. I rolled over, and muffled a scream as my arm was filled with stabbing pain. For a moment I’d thought it was just my imagination, and then it happened again; a sudden, sharp jolt. I thought it was an earthquake, about to set the tree swaying and push us to our deaths over the edge. Then I realised it was worse than that: Red had put the battered old air mattress on top of the trapdoor, and now someone was trying to open it. I scrambled for purchase on the slippery mattress, and finally I was sitting up, square on top of the trapdoor, breathing hard and feeling my arm protest against this rough treatment. ‘Red!’ I hissed. ‘Wake up!’ He didn’t. Another jolt lifted me up, and this time the force below me had found its footing; the surface under me didn’t just tremble, but actually lifted a good quarter-inch and stayed there. I could feel the muscles of the man below trembling, and this time I decided that it didn’t matter whether he heard me: I was going to scream myself hoarse.

13

The trapdoor fell again, so suddenly that I cried out. As it slipped into place, the trapdoor made a metallic clang. I followed it up with a good shriek. Red woke up with a jerk and a foul string of swear-words. He threw off the blankets, stood, and saw – nothing. The night was still. A few leaves blew through the cabin, and were gone. ‘What? What is it? Are you hurt?’ I tried to tell him, but nothing would come out. Then I saw a pale shape slip up the edge of the platform, shining in the moonlight, and froze in horror. A hand. He was climbing up the edge, and I couldn’t bring myself to move, or even speak, and he was going to hurt Red until the platform was slippery with blood, and then force me to the edge. Red must’ve seen the look in my eyes, even in the moonlight, and he spun around. The canopy shifted in a long, whispering sigh, and the pale shape disappeared. I blinked. Had it only been a patch of moonlight? ‘I thought I saw him,’ I told Red. ‘The trapdoor moved. Someone’s trying to get up here.’ ‘Oh.’ Red ran a hand over his stubble. ‘Let’s have a look, then.’ He gently, but firmly, moved me and the bed out of the way, and then opened the trapdoor. I watched in sick horror. Red peered over the edge, and then waved me over. I looked down to see the spikes glimmering in the moonlight, needle-thin teeth against the distant forest. ‘Bad dream,’ Red said gently. ‘…it couldn’t be! I was awake!’ ‘You scared the heck out of me.’ ‘Maybe he heard us, and climbed back down – he could be on the other side by now.’ Red took a deep breath. ‘Humour me,’ I said. ‘Ahhhh… all right. Fine.’ He hoisted himself down and started to climb. ‘Wait, that wasn’t what I had in mind! Be careful!’ He was already ten spikes down, and didn’t look up. ‘Don’t fall either!’ I sighed. ‘Damn that stubborn man.’ On an afterthought, I closed the trapdoor behind him, and started piling stuff on it. Maybe it was just a bad dream, after all, but I’d feel a lot better with the door locked.

I wandered around in the moonlight for a good ten minutes before I finally gave up. I thought I’d spotted something at one point, and I followed it for a while, but I ended up stuck in a bundle of creepers, looking around a dark forest. So I headed back to the tree, stifling a yawn, wondering what hour of the morning this was. I was at the bottom of the tree when I heard a metallic scraping noise. I was halfway up when the trapdoor fell past me and buried itself in the forest litter. I was almost there when I heard the first scream. The hinges of the trapdoor were hanging askew, surrounded by deep scratches in the metal. I heaved myself up through the gaping hole, and took a boot to the face. My head slammed against the opposite edge of the hole, and I was still struggling to get my feet back onto the climbing spike when he hit me again. I seized the leg with my free hand and pulled hard as I could. The floor shook as his weight came crashing down on it, and in that moment, I found the climbing spike beneath me. I jumped from it, hauling myself up in one smooth motion, finally getting into the cabin. 14

Rick was getting back to his feet. His wife, and my friend, was lying in a patch of darkness. I could only make out the white splint around her arm. I hadn’t believed her, in my half-awake stupor, and now I was paying the price. Still, there wasn’t much I could do for her until I settled our Rick problem. I took a step back, keeping my eyes on him, and grabbed the telescope from its bracket. It was a solid, half-meter chunk of metal, and it felt good in my palm. Rick smiled at me. I swung. Suddenly he was behind me, the telescope was dropping from my fingers, and my arm was screaming in pain. He applied a little more pressure, and something snapped. I filled with pain. I was barely conscious of the world; the moonlight, the cold metal of the floor pressing on my face, all of that was background, like a conversation overheard. It was replaced by blinding agony. Somehow I staggered to my feet. Rick looked impressed. He was standing in a strange way, in a narrow profile, hands held high and low to protect himself. I threw a solid punch at his face, and he moved faster than I could believe, almost straight towards me. My fist whistled past his ear. His fist broke my nose and sent me halfway across the cabin. As I lay there, the colour started to drain out of the moonlit world, tendrils of blackness seeping in at the edges.

Everything hurt. My arm had been jolted out of place, and the jagged ends grated every time I breathed. Most things were hurting with every breath, in fact; the jaw that was probably broken, the ribs that were probably cracked. What hurt most of all, though, was that Red was dying. While the two men fought, I dragged myself across the cabin, towards the shattered remains of the radio. Through the pain, the sounds of Red getting himself killed, I was trying desperately to remember facts and diagrams. I yanked all of that fancy electronics gear away from that big old car battery, took a ridged, shattered piece of metal, and tied one piece of wire from battery to metal. Then I tied a second wire to the other terminal, and – carefully not touching the exposed edge – started to run it up and down the metal. Big, fat sparks showered over the decking. A couple of them burned me. I tried to modulate the signal, sending out the SOS – three dashes, three dots, three dashes. Maybe great waves of noise were sweeping over the airwaves, slamming into receivers with great crackling bursts of static. Maybe, all over the area, helicopter pilots and dispatch officers and cab drivers were cursing a blue streak. Maybe the other fire stations were starting to wonder why one of their lookouts had been on radio silence all afternoon. Maybe they were starting to triangulate the source of the signal. Perhaps I was just playing with a car battery. High school electronics had been a long time ago. For all I knew, the range of this thing could be measured in inches. What if I was spending the last moments of my life making pretty sparks? Then again… what else was there to do? Rick looked up from his work. I saw him take a knife from the deck, and remembered Red using that same knife with his big clumsy hands, peeling an apple and offering me that crisp flesh. Then I saw Rick take the knife and plunge it into Red’s side. The man didn’t even cry out. He might’ve been dead already, for all I knew.

15

He couldn’t have figured out what I was doing, but he knew that it must’ve been important to me – more important than trying to run away. So he smiled again, brushed his hair out of his eyes with one of those dripping hands, leaving a smear over his eye. In the moonlight, it looked like tar, black and glistening against that pale skin. Another shower of sparks burned my hands. I couldn’t feel the wounds. Instead, there was a terrible feeling of drift, as if my perception was draining through that bloody hole in my side. I struggled to hold consciousness, and it slipped in my grasp, like a greased eel with needle-sharp teeth. I gasped in pain as a great wrench tore up my side, Rick pulling the knife away. Warm blood welled up. I saw the shadowy outline of Rick glance away, move out of my sight. The inside of the cabin lit up blue, like someone was welding. For a moment I thought the tree had been struck by lightning, but there came no thunderclap, no great sound to tear the world in half. I turned my head. She was making the sparks. She was still alive. Very slowly, very painfully, I started to get to my feet. The world spun around me, all dark blurs and colours, as the blood drained from my head, and out of my side. Even if I survived this, even if I tap danced on a rugby goalpost in an earthquake, I would never do anything so hard again. I couldn’t see Rick, but I knew he must be getting closer to her. But if I fell – if I even tripped a little, made the smallest noise – I would die, and so would she. I saw a movement; a man slashing with his hands, a woman putting hers up to defend herself. With that sight, the colour came flooding back into the world – and with it, white-hot, incandescent fury.

Rick stood over me, wiping the knife on his shirt, holding the gleaming tool casually. He smiled again; that charming smile that I used to believe, a long time ago. I could see his anger. Reflected in his eyes, I could see myself; a sobbing, pathetic wreck, trying, in my pathetic hopeless way to fight him. He’d taken me out here to die, from the very start. Here I was, about to oblige him. I’d wasted my entire life with this man, and there was no second chances, no appeals. I would never enjoy myself as much as I could have, as I should have. I let my hands drop, let the little metal ridge of my useless spark coil fall away. The wires touched, and this time I barely felt the fireworks. Rick lunged. I’d seen how fast he was, how he’d trained for so many years to develop these skills, and I could see that he wasn’t bothering to use them tonight. This was a stabbing strike thrown in treacle. I brought up both hands to block it. Let him work for this. Maybe I could live a few more minutes. A blue flash enveloped the world, and every muscle in my arms clenched at once, bringing pain with it. Rick was staggering backwards, teeth bared in a grimace. He started forward once more, and a terrible blow brought him to his knees. Red was standing behind him, swaying a little. Red hit him again. Red used his one good arm, and broke Rick’s arm over his knee. He smashed my husband’s face until it was a red pulp, and pounded his ribs until Rick’s breathing was a laboured wheeze. I saw Rick cough out a great gout of blood, and then Red kicked him over. Rick rolled into the gaping hole that used to be a trapdoor, and disappeared. 16

Red collapsed. I dragged myself over to him. I tried to staunch his wounds, but I couldn’t even tear off a piece of cloth. I pressed a hand to the wound in his side, felt slick blood oozing through my fingers. I didn’t have the strength to hold it back. So I just I cradled his head in my lap, looking at that ruined face in the moonlight. I stroked his hair. The blood was thickening into a clotted mess, and I gently separated the strands, fingers slipping against the slick wetness. Red smiled. ‘Feels good.’ He paused. ‘I killed him. I’m sorry.’ ‘It’s okay.’ ‘Sorry I had to. But… serves him right… trying to kill me with a little knife like that.’ ‘Yeah.’ A gust of wind stirred the branches around us. ‘We never really met,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’ ‘It’s a pleasure. I’m Cindy Lee.’ He smiled. ‘You deserve a stronger name than that…’ ‘I…’ ‘…I think I’ll call you Cinder. No… Ember.’ ‘I would like that.’ Tears were starting to blur my eyes. ‘I would like that very much.’ ‘Goodbye, Ember,’ he whispered. The blades of the helicopter almost drowned out his words. Leaves tore from the branches around us in the sudden gust, washing over us, settling on my clothes, on his closed eyes.

Arran Dengate Autumn, 2005

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