LEFT, A thriller in parts. Part 5. Written by a human.
“What do you do when the only person who can save your life, is the person who tried to murder you.”
LEFT, A thriller in parts.
Why not start at the start
Back in the real world, Sonya finds the brothers in the distance. They are far away and searching the trees. Then, when she looks the other way, the fire is devouring the world, which looks like most of it had already died.
In her mind, she can now imagine the bullet hole running right through her, and before her, she can see the hole in the ground. Life, or is it death, is tempting her with the luxury of falling into either, like water whirling down a drain.
~
"Tell me," asks Boris. "When they hear the news, or listen to the coroner’s report, what do you think your parents will believe?"
Behind the table, Sonya laughs, but her laugh is weak.
"Have you met my parents?" she says. "They are good people. They weren’t alcoholics, gamblers; they never did drugs, they never hit us. I was never sexually abused. Up until I was sixteen, I used to go to church with them every Sunday, and we’d all pray to a man nailed to a wooden cross with blood pouring down the sides of his face." The weary Sonya grins, her face covered in her own handprints of dried blood.
"Do they know?" asks Dena. "About you?"
"Parents always know; they just don’t want to know. Constructs," says Sonya.
"Constructs?" says Boris.
"That’s what most people live in, constructs," Sonya says. "Reality is too big for them, too full of options, so they break it down into these little cages that they spend the rest of their lives hiding in and trying to keep neat. The neater it is, the safer they feel. And then when other caged people visit them, these people see how clean their cage is and they think, 'Now these are good people,' and they are good. Which means, since I was raised in their cage, how could I be anything but?"
"But you’re not good, are you, Sonya?" says Dena. "You’re evil."
Sonya releases one of her secret smiles. "Is that really how you think it works, good and evil separated neatly into boxes? Evil isn’t a category. It’s an expedition you can undertake at any time, anywhere. I’m not even sure it has a final destination. It’s just an endless journey that is always waiting, and you are free to travel down it as far as you are willing to go, or until you get caught."
"And this is caught?" says Boris.
"Yes," Sonya tells the table, for she hasn’t the strength to look up at them. "This is caught. But best of all," she says, "you can always come back and not just act nice but be good. You see, I’m not evil or good. I’m just comfortable with the fact that I am capable of both. You see, I know what I am. I am what they are too frightened to believe. I am what we all are, a tourist."
"Uh huh," says Boris. "So dying here against this tree, that was on your itinerary?"
"I’m not dead yet."
"But what about morality?" asks Dena. "Empathy? You’re not restrained by them?"
"I was, until I challenged them. I decided to try to do something unbelievably cruel. The worst thing I could think of, to see if I could. If I couldn’t, well then I’d know that I’d found my border. So one day, when everyone was out, I took one of my father’s golf clubs, a putter, and I beat our family dog until it was dead. He was chained to the clothes hoist. And even though I loved him, and I did, I opened his head like a coconut. That’s when he finally stopped whining. Then, when I knew he was dead, I washed the putter under the garden tap next to our laundry door and put it back. After that, I took a shower, then I placed my clothes that were covered in blood in a plastic bag in the bottom of a neighbor’s bin that was on the way to one of my friend’s place, where she and I watched The Breakfast Club. She’d hired the video, and she cried and I cried. It’s a great film. Did you ever see it?"
"They never caught you?" asks Boris.
"How could they catch me? What I had done lay beyond their belief system. Their cage. Their neat construct was my alibi. There was a big stink, of course; we were all very upset, but in the end, the police said it was probably just some local kids."
"After that, I waited to see what life would do to me. Because I deserved to be punished. But it did nothing. There were no consequences at all, except knowing that I was free."
"This isn’t a consequence?" asks Dena.
"No, this is just a mix of some very bad luck and a few poor decisions."
"Which," says Boris, "brings me back to my initial question, was it worth it?"
Sonya tries to smile but ends up gritting her teeth, then she looks at the fingers on the hand of her wounded side and tries to make them move. Her ring finger and middle finger are sluggish, and when she moves her thumb, there is a dull and deep pain.
"Pain is good. Dead people don’t feel pain."
~
"I need a sling," she says, then opens her eyes and looks up at the landscape that won’t let her free. Smoke is rolling overhead.
"What is it about the smoke?" Lowering her head again because it’s so heavy, her eyes close, but something is nagging. A splinter. One she can’t place except to know it’s wrong.
"Shit. Oh shit. It’s the wind. The smoke. It’s changed direction. The wind has changed direction." When she looks up, the fire is as tall as the trees and heading this way.
~
"I know you’re here," yells Jarrod, then he waits and listens as he looks. No one emerges. No one speaks.
"I saw them look at us from around the tree," Jarrod says.
"Man, woman?" Steve asks.
"I don’t know. It was too quick."
"No," says Steve. "It must be the heat." Then he looks at the smoke passing overhead. "Oh shit."
The tone of Steve’s swearing sees Jarrod turn.
"Fuck."
"It’s the wind," says Steve. "It’s changed. It’s fucking changed direction."
Behind the mine shaft is an approaching wall of flames.
Sonya is already up. Staggering on her feet, she is heading to the hole as the wind carries burning embers over her head. Reaching the hole, she sits on the edge then slides down and in through the windscreen. Trying not to fall right through, she crawls over the front seat then tucks herself up behind the driver’s seat and groans at the pain in her arm.
The men are here too. Steve joins her in the back seat as Jarrod cries out to the radiant heat burning his back.
Their water is out in the open.
Jarrod looks at it, but the roaring fire’s radiant heat is from a planet that won’t support humans.
Slipping into the truck, he squeezes down into the front footwells as tight as he can.
Above them, the fire roars overhead. It sounds like a freight train passing, and embers are raining into the truck and down into the hole. The passenger seat’s fabric catches fire.
Steve gets up and tries furiously to pat it out, but the radiant heat from the fire above pushes him back down. Jarrod gets up and kicks at the rising flames on the seat. More embers rain down. These ones land on the backseat. Steve slaps one spot fire out. Sonya smothers another as more embers rain into the hole.
But the passenger seat’s fire is spreading.
"Shit," says Jarrod, and uncurling, he attacks it by patting it out as the flames fight back and the heat burns him. This round, he manages to win, but when he returns to hide in the footwell, he notices what’s happening below.
"Steve, look," he says. "If our gear catches fire, it could melt the last water container."
Above them, the fire is raging, but below, at the bottom of the pit, it is just beginning.
"Tough," says Steve. "There’s nothing we can do." But then he changes his tone. "The jerry cans. The gas cylinders. If they blow?"
"Where’s the rope?" asks Sonya.
Without waiting to answer, Jarrod clambers out of the windscreen, cursing the heat of the bonnet, then he grabs the rope coiled over the bull-bar.
The world explodes.
"Jesus," yells Jarrod as he slides back in and pats his red-hot hands against the seat.
"What was that?" asks Sonya.
"I don’t know," says Jarrod. "A tree."
Steve grabs the rope. "It’s soft," he says. "The heat. There is no way it will hold me. What do we do? What do we do?"
"We wait," says Jarrod.
Above, the fires are a taste of hell, but below they are like candles growing. They can already smell the acrid smoke of plastic melting.
"If those gas bottles blow and then the petrol, we’re fucked," yells Steve.
"And if we go out there, we’ll die," says Jarrod. "All we can do is wait for the main fire front to pass."
The fire below grows. "Shit," says Steve. "Shit! Fuck, we’ve got to get out. It’s going to blow."
"We can’t," says Jarrod. "We can’t."
They are in a fire sandwich. There is no escape.
"This is just so fucked," says Steve as he glares at Sonya. "This is so fucked. You know what I should do? I should just throw you down there."
With weary eyes, Sonya glares back at Steve but holds on as, in the front seat, Jarrod closes his eyes and waits and wonders what he’s waiting for. If Steve does throw her in, maybe he’ll follow her down.
A distant hiss sounds. It’s coming from below.
"What the hell is that?" asks Jarrod as Steve peers down.
"Holy shit. It’s the gas!" says Steve. "I told you. I fucking told you."
Above them, the world is ablaze.
"What do we do?" says Steve. "What do we do?"
"I don’t think it’s gas," says Sonya. "If it was, wouldn’t it have already exploded? I think it’s one of our missing water containers."
"What?" says Steve, and when he looks down, the flames are being quelled.
"But it can’t be," says Steve. "I checked. I checked everywhere!"
Although they can’t see it, they can see the last of the flames fading below them as the great fire rages overhead and rains embers down as if they have somehow dug into the foundations of hell.
"Fuck!" says Steve. "I looked. I fucking looked. Oh, what next, aye? What fucking next?"
~
The main fire front has passed, and hand in hand, Jarrod helps Sonya up. Steve follows. The bonnet was a hot skillet they were forced to cook on in order to escape the pit, but now they are all free of the hole.
Around them, everything is burning as the main front races off in its tidal wave of flames and smoke. The nearby trees are still on fire, and everything that was brown and dying is now dead, smoking, and black.
"The water," says Jarrod as he limps to the melted container. It’s empty, and so he kicks it and finds underneath it, thanks to the last of their water, one unburnt square of earth.
Behind him, Sonya moves under a tree and sits on the cooked earth as Steve looks down the shaft.
"I looked," he says. "I did. I did."
Jarrod nods to himself, then watches the leaving fire.
"Well, surely someone has to see that," says Steve, referring to the fire and all its birthing clouds.
"Someone has," says Sonya.
The men turn to her and find her staring at the ground.
"They’re coming," she says.
Puzzled, the men look at each other, then they both turn to the sound of lots of air being rhythmically thumped. In a stream of black, the ravens return. As one sweeping wave, they start circling slowly around and around them and the smoking hole.
~
Longer and darker shadows stretch across the scorched, smoking earth from its new anorexic forest of blackened trees as the shaft behind Steve wafts up its own thin trail of smoke. Above and from every possible perch, the ravens watch them as, in the ever-growing distance, their fire travels further away, spreading out like an unstoppable tide. A tsunami of flames.
"No," says Steve as Jarrod turns to him. "I have never heard of crows acting like this."
"They’re not crows. They’re ravens," says Sonya from beneath the smoldering bloodwood that’s supporting a thick bounty of raven fruit.
There are no flies, and apart from the ravens, in every direction they can see no life. Even the sky is free of eagles.
"We need water," says Jarrod. "If we don’t get some, we’re finished. Do you really think the last container could be down that other shaft?"
"Maybe," says Steve.
"Ok, if you do the rope, I’ll go down," says Jarrod.
"No," says Steve. "I’ll go. Your hand, remember."
Jarrod looks at him.
"What?" says Steve.
Gently shaking his head, Jarrod looks away.
"I will need you to lower me down, though," says Steve. "Can you do it?"
Jarrod nods, his eyes on the leaving fire. "I’ll have to."
"Is anyone coming?" asks Steve.
"Maybe," says Jarrod.
"Jarrod," says Steve.
"Yeah."
"Do you think anyone is coming?"
"Well, someone might send a plane even if they just want to evaluate it, but even if they did, that won’t be until tomorrow, maybe not for days. To them, this is seen as dead land. No cows, no sheep. Unless it threatens one of their homesteads. Well, who knows?"
~
"Can you check these for me?" Steve says as he hands Jarrod the new harness he’s constructed at the end of the rope.
Jarrod checks the knots. They’re good.
"Who knew that when we were scouts that one day our lives would depend on these stupid knots, aye?" smiles Steve.
"Yeah," says Jarrod.
"It’s ok. There’s no time for hate," says Steve. "Not now. And there’s no time for revenge or even put-downs. We just have to get out of here. And I want to get out of here, and our only chance is together. Agreed."
After a pause, Jarrod, still struggling to hold his brother’s eyes, nods.
"Look me in the eyes," says Steve.
Jarrod does.
"Keep looking."
Jarrod does.
"Can you see me? Can you see who I am? Because I can see you."
After a moment, Jarrod nods.
"Then tell me," says Steve. "Tell me how we get out of here?"
"Together," says Jarrod.
"How?"
"Together."
~
With Jarrod playing the harnessed mule, Steve, tied and descending on the other end of the rope, finally lands on their burnt and now soggy camping gear. "Ok, that’s it, stop."
Up top, Jarrod collapses, not because he heard Steve but because he felt the rope go limp. He is panting. His skin and muscles are burning from where the harness has cut into his skin.
At the bottom of the pit, the smoke is lingering and acrid, and it makes Steve cough, but there is enough air to breathe. Steve can already see the melted remains of one of their heavy-duty torches. He picks it up and tries it, but it’s dead.
It takes him a little while, but then he finds one of the missing water containers. It is partially wrapped in one of their tents that must have opened as it fell. Now the tent is melted to it, and a camp chair is resting on them both. Initially, when he moved this camp chair aside, he must have inadvertently covered it. From where he was standing, the darkness and light had camouflaged it against the wall. Now its base has been melted open by the fire, and all its precious juice of life has spilled, and in doing so, saved them from the fire. He picks up the container. It’s empty. He throws it against the wall, but it bounces back and knocks him down.
"Ouch."
He kicks it aside, then picking up a damp t-shirt, he holds it above his open mouth and wrings it, but no water comes out, so he puts it in his mouth and sucks.
The skeleton’s jeans have been partially burnt, and the exposed bones of its legs glow in the afternoon’s light like they are a pale light themselves.
The deeper, neighboring shaft absorbs all that remains of the day’s light and gives nothing back. On his hands and knees, Steve feels this shaft’s sides. It’s the same as the walls that are above him. There will be no climbing down and definitely no climbing back up. If the knots fail, they fail. If the rope breaks, he’ll fall and break, and that will be it. That below that he can’t see is death, and yet if the water of life is anywhere, it’s down there.
He looks up through the truck. The sky is waning. He couldn’t feel the death inside him up there, but it’s here now and closing in on every one of his parched cells. And now he has to continue the descent.
He looks down into the second pit. Darkness and cold. He can feel these two promises wrapping their penitence around him as the light above continues to fade. From down here, up already looks like a grave.
"Fuck."
He rubs his hand over the edge of this second pit. It’s smooth in places, sharp in others. The rope will have to pass over this. Will the sharper bits cut it? Will Jarrod be strong enough to pull him back up? Will the water be down there? Why did this hidden container have to fucking melt? Why is he even here at all? Shit. SHIT!
"What?" calls Jarrod.
"Are you sure you’re going to be able to pull me up?"
Jarrod doesn’t answer.
"Jarrod, answer me. Are you sure you’ll be able to pull me up?"
"Yes."
"That didn’t sound convincing."
"We can’t use the winch," says Jarrod. "So there’s no other choice."
Steve looks at the skeleton. It is still laughing. Then he looks up at the truck, which is in a ridiculous position.
"I don’t want to die down here. Can you hear me?"
"Yes."
"It’s already like a grave."
"Ok."
"Jarrod."
"Yeah."
"Look, I know you tried to, but... And I know we have bad blood between us. Lots of it... And I know we’re probably just wasting our time because we’re all going to die out here anyway, but promise me. Promise me you won’t let me die down here."
"Ok."
"Is that your word, Jarrod? Is that your word?"
"Yes."
"Then let me hear you say it. It’s like a grave down here. It’s a fucking grave."
"I give you my word that I’ll pull you up."
Steve says nothing. He just looks down the second shaft at the complete darkness that is waiting.
"Did you hear me," says Jarrod. "I said I give you my word."
Steve nods to this, and then he looks back up at the truck.
~
Steve drops into the second shaft, and it is so cold and feels so deep. He feels like he’s descending into his own death.
His arms are already sore. His muscles are burning for him to stop, but his feet find purchase, and bit by bit, he descends. His heart is racing. He stops once to catch his breath. If only he could see the walls. He wants to, but now there isn’t enough light. This is it. This is death. That’s what it is. Just darkness, endless darkness, and him lowering himself deeper. And he’s still not there. He has to go deeper, or he will die. Down he goes, down into his death.
Up top, Jarrod has changed position. Back to the shaft, he is leaning forward almost to the point of being on all fours and using his hand to grab the earth like a shifting anchor. His feet do the same. He is grunting and swearing as the harness digs into his shoulders and the rope, which is now running over his back, scrapes his spine. Step by surrendered step, he inches backwards towards the shaft. Then finally, the rope goes limp.
"I’m here," Steve echoes up.
Jarrod falls flat to the earth and lays there, inhaling huge lungfuls of air.
"I can’t see a thing," Steve calls, but Jarrod can’t hear because his heart is pounding in his ears. He opens his eyes and looks at Sonya. The way her head is down, she looks like she’s asleep or on the verge of worse.
The floor of the second shaft is the same solid dirt that feels as strong as rock. There are objects here. Steve touches them with his feet, then bends down and touches them with his hands, gingerly at first, head up like a lost, blind man. Then, when his sense of touch declares the object safe, he picks it up and, in the complete dark, and through touch alone, he evaluates it. A tent pole. He discards this. A camp chair. He leans that against the wall. One of their smaller eskies. He finds an apple and eats. It becomes the most delicious thing he has ever eaten. Its juice is divine. Unable to see his hand in front of his face, he eats it all, including the core and seeds. Hand on the floor, he finds two more and puts them in his backpack.
He touches the wall. It is so cold it feels damp. He presses both hands against it, then licks his hands, but all he can taste is his own sweat and dust. Everything is so cold.
He moves on. He’s making a grid-like sweep so as not to miss anything. He finds a tent peg. Was it the one he dropped? How would you know?
More nylon rope. It is coiled up and still wrapped in its plastic. He puts that in his backpack. An enamel mug. His fingers find a slight chip. He discards that and moves on. His hands find something cold and smooth and round, but when his searching thumbs flow into its eye sockets, he drops it and shuddering, moves away.
His foot hits something hard. He bends down to touch it. At first, he rips his hand away, but then he sends it back down. He knows what it is. It’s a torch. Racing to find the button, he hesitates before pressing. What will the light reveal? Even in the darkness, he squints.
Light on, he finds some of their camping gear and another skeleton, though its skull is decapitated. He guesses it’s a man from the clothes that it’s wearing. The shirt is the same tough fabric as the skeleton further up, but this one is also wearing a frayed waistcoat. There is no flesh dried on this one’s bones either. No hair left on its skull as the empty ponds of its eyes look up for the light it never reached. Its pants are missing. He finds them. They are in a corner, crumpled where they were left, who knows how long ago. He’s no doctor, but he can see that both its lower legs are broken. They have been tied together with three bindings. One, a yellow neck scarf. The other two, bits of rope.
How long were you here before you died? he asks the skull. It doesn’t answer.
On the ground, he finds a sturdy knife. Picking this up, he turns it over in the torchlight. No engravings, no date stamps, just a solid knife with an equally solid wooden handle.
"Thanks," he tells the skull, then places this in his backpack, then he looks up and thinks.
So, you stabbed the other guy and then what, fell down here? No answer. And who the hell are you guys?
"Can you see the water?" Jarrod echoes down.
"I’m looking."
There is no gold in this skeleton’s pockets, but there is a wallet. It contains a folded green-rimmed banknote.
New South Wales, Twenty Pounds. Wow, how old is this? Next, he pulls out a small faded black-and-white photograph of two young men. It is a studio shot, and its background is a painted grey landscape. Both men are dressed in heavy suits and are frowning. Steve turns it over. "Mark and Mathew Cane 1901," he reads, then he looks back at the skeleton. "You were brothers?"
"Steve, can you hear me?" Jarrod yells down. "Can you see the water?"
An older cold passes through Steve and sees him shudder. To escape, he slips the photo back into the wallet and slips the wallet back into the skeleton’s shirt pocket. Then he gets back to work.
Turning around, he finds their missing water container. The container is snapped in two, and one half is shattered into large pieces of plastic.
"Oh no," he whispers. "No."
But then he jumps into action when the light reveals that one of the halves still has a little water in it. Like a dog, he is on all fours and drinking. Once again, his body celebrates as he sits back and looks up at the last of the leaving day’s light.
Steve. Are you there? Did you find the water?
The water briefly transforms this grave into a womb. It suppresses all this darkness with a different light, more nurturing and radiant than this torch. But then it fades, but before it does, Steve discovers the first true miracle of his entire life.
A bucket. It is old and made of metal and is full of water. It must be old water, but it is still water.
He looks at the skeleton, then he looks at the last of the light he can see above. It must be rainwater. It has to be. Despite his broken legs, this man must have placed it here, hoping to catch water. He shines the torch on the skull. How long did you survive?
Steve locates the enamel mug he found and, dipping it in, fills it and drinks, then he does this again. In the drying riverbeds of his system, life emerges and leaps to the precious return.
But how to get it up to the surface?
He checks the handle. It seems sound. It was made in a time when things had to last. If he’s careful, he might be able to carry it out, unless there is another sealable container down here. He continues looking.
He finds a pickaxe. It must be one of the ones they dug this pit with. He picks it up, but the wooden handle breaks in his hand.
"Steve, have you found the water?"
"Yes!"
There is a cheer.
"Should I pull you up?"
"Not yet! Soon."
Steve takes out the wrapped-up nylon rope and opens it. He ties one end to the pickaxe, using the hole where the handle should fit, then he ties the other end of the rope around his shoulders. It’s like a pickaxe handbag.
He looks for more rope. Anything they can use.
He finds a gold nugget. It is as large as an acorn and resting on the rocky floor as though it had been dropped there. When he picks it up and turns it in his hand, the torch can’t see any impurities.
Gold comes from exploding stars. He’d heard a scientist say that once. And this nugget’s surface looks like it froze and was then hardened while boiling. As he slips it into his pocket, the torch searches for more, and he gasps. Before him, the hewn wall reveals a thick seam of solid gold as though one ray of whatever star it came from had punctured the forming earth and that penetrating explosion had reached here and frozen.
It looks like nothing he has ever heard or read about or seen.
"I have to get out of here."
"Steve!"
"Wait!"
But how did you know it was here? he asks the skeleton. And is this what you two fought over?
~
The gold nugget is on the table like a small malformed egg. The recorder is running.
"What you found is being called," says Dena, "one of the richest gold deposits in the Southern Hemisphere."
"There is enough gold down here to make you one of the country’s richest miners," says Boris as Steve glares at the nugget.
"The trouble is," says Dena, "you won’t be able to capitalize on the find because once you get back to the real world, you’ll be going to jail for the murder of your wife?"
"But that wasn’t me. That was Jarrod." Steve studies them both, but neither is buying it. Then he looks back at the nugget. "Fuck... Fuck!"
"And another thing," says Dena. "It appears to me that Jarrod is very... what’s the word, Boris?"
"Lackluster."
"Exactly," says Dena. "And if you were to tell us that, by all of you passionately working together, you managed miraculously to get the truck out and drive back to us, then maybe, just maybe, we could believe that too."
"But like this," says Boris, "no. Unless you find a way to motivate your broken brother, the only thing we will be doing for you is zipping you into a body bag. And that is only if you are lucky."
"You could always show him this," says Dena as she points at the nugget. "You know, share the wealth."
~
Back in the dark, Steve looks up from the nugget to what he can see of the light above. He can see his brother’s silhouette. Steve then slips the nugget into his pocket. Then, after pouring what water is left in the broken container into the bucket, he checks the knots on the rope’s harness, switches off the torch, and places it in his backpack before grabbing the bucket with one hand and holding the rope with the other.
"Jarrod."
"Yeah."
"I’m ready."
"Ok," says Jarrod as he, back in the crouching position, starts to grunt his way forward. He can see where he has to reach. It looks so far away.
Below, the rope starts heading up. Steve keeps pace by walking up the hewn wall with his feet and his left hand, as in his right hand, the bucket dangles above the black. As he rises, its surface starts reflecting, with ever greater clarity, the sunset’s approaching light, until it could be mistaken for the dawn.
Then, when he pauses at the bottom of the first shaft, he removes the nugget he found and seals it in the one small bag with the other gold before tucking it back into the first skeleton’s shirt pocket.
"Ok," he calls up. "If you’re ready, let’s go."
~
"Sonya," says Dena. "Sonya, are you still with us?"
Sonya looks up from her seat. "Yes."
"What’s with the ravens?" Dena asks.
"You ask so many questions," says Sonya, her eyes struggling to remain open. "You ever thought of becoming a detective?"
"Are they real?" asks Boris.
Sonya closes her eyes.
"Well, are they?" asks Dena.
Sonya opens her eyes again and just manages to lift her head enough to see the detectives, but their nice, clean tent is not there. It has been replaced with a view of the end of the world, black as a base, the last day’s blue as a cover, and the ravens. Lots of ravens.
She looks down at her shoulder and it takes her a moment to see what there is to be seen.
"No flies," she says and she thinks about this for a long time, but nothing clears, so she looks up at the birds who are watching her. In the skeletal bloodwood before her, there are at least six. They are in amongst the blackened tree’s leaves and fruit.
Gritting her teeth, she pushes herself up. She can smell the charcoal from the tree behind her as she uses the tree as a crutch.
She looks up. In the dead tree above her, she counts seven more. All of them are looking down at her.
Pushing herself forward, she approaches the other tree and, wavering on her feet, stands before it. Thanks to the late afternoon, the sun is losing its bite.
She wants not to move. To see what they’ll do when she stands this close, but standing takes more strength than she currently owns. She walks closer, grabs an empty low branch for support, and waits.
The fire is still heading off in whatever direction that is, and everything behind it is black. Like the ravens, she thinks, then she looks back at her chosen tree. Their eyes aren’t all black. They have white circles around them. Thin framing rings.
One jumps down to her branch. She doesn’t move. It spends some time at the end of the branch closest to the trunk. She can see the late afternoon sun trying to reflect itself in its eyes.
"Are you male or female?" she asks. "How would I tell? Do you even know?"
The raven walks down the branch and stops halfway between the trunk and her.
"Do you even have a gender?"
Its feathers are so clean.
"How do you keep all this dust off of you?"
The raven cocks its head to the left and studies her with its right eye. Sonya leans in closer. It’s a perfect, white-ringed, black, convex mirror, and she can see her silhouette reflected upon it.
"I can’t see it," she smiles. "What is it you’re trying to show me?"
The raven moves a few clawed steps closer.
"Is that you, Martin?" She waits. Martin doesn’t appear.
"Is that you?" she asks God. God doesn’t seem to answer or appear.
She lets go of the tree with her good hand and brings the rear of her palm close to the bird’s breast.
The bird doesn’t move.
Then her legs give way, and she falls.
"Sonya... Sonya?"
It takes time for Sonya to open her eyes and realize it’s Jarrod. When she does, she lifts a hand to his face. "The land will do it," she smiles, her eyes full of fatigue.
Jarrod is holding an enamel mug. "Here, drink," he says.
She takes the mug. The water is so clean and cold it’s as if it has come from another world, a memory.
As she drinks, Jarrod looks up at the raven. It is still there.
"More?" she says. He can hear the smear of liquid in her voice.
"Not yet. It has to last. Now come on. Let me get you back to somewhere safe."
"Safe," she smiles.
"Yes, come on. We’re going to start a fire."
"A fire," she laughs as he helps her to her feet. "A fire."
As Steve watches, Jarrod assists Sonya back to the shaft, to here.
"They’re not real," she tells Jarrod. "The birds."
"Ok."
To Steve’s eyes, over the couple’s left shoulder, the sun is a ball of flame sinking, maybe forever, over their right shoulder, the fire is devouring the landscape in flames and silence and smoke.
Jarrod hands Steve the mug, then lays Sonya down.
"Stay away from the trees, ok?" he tells her.
Steve is next to them, the bucket of water, their umbilical cord to life, is at his feet, and Sonya’s eyes are already closed.
"She’s finished," says Steve.
"Shut up," says Jarrod.
"We can’t keep giving her water," says Steve.
Jarrod glares up at his brother.
"What water is left," says Steve, "should be for the living."
"Then enjoy it," says Jarrod as he returns to tend to Sonya.
~
About two hundred and fifty meters from the shaft, the fire left an island of untouched bush. In it, the men are collecting wood. The sun has gone, and with its laser removed, the bipolar landscape is handing back all of its heat to the universe and leaving Jarrod knowing that this could be the coldest and darkest night that he will ever travel through. The last dark? The moon is currently missing, and while the stars are already arriving in force like a frozen phosphorescence stirred by the hand of God, they, like God, are useless.
In the gloaming, Jarrod absently studies two long-abandoned sheets of corrugated iron. Proof of man lying forgotten on the earth.
"Stop it," says Steve.
"Stop what?"
"Giving up. This isn’t the end. This is just a test."
"A test," says Jarrod as, smiling to himself, he heads back with arms full of wood to the shaft.
"Yes, and I mean the test of our lives," says Steve, his arms also full of wood. "But that is a good thing."
"A good thing?" says Jarrod, and then he stops and looks at Steve to say, "We tried to murder you."
"Yeah, but I survived. We survived. And we will continue to because we are not dying out here. Ok... Ok?"
"Whatever."
"Oh, stop talking like a victim. Because you’re not. Not anymore. You stood up. You had a crack. You lost, but so what? That’s what winners do, they lose until they win."
"Had a crack, what the hell are you talking about?"
"I’m talking about life. And what we must do to live. That hate and distrust you have for me, and I can still see it in your eyes, that will not get us out of here. In fact, that’s as big an obstacle as the hole. But you know what will get us out. Do you know what will save us?"
"Luck?"
"No, love."
Jarrod scoffs at first, and then that becomes a loud, condescending laugh that he takes with him as he walks back to the hole.
"Laugh all you want, but I’m not kidding," says Steve. "Despite it all, and I mean everything, we are still brothers. We are more than brothers. Out here, we are the last hope for brothers everywhere. You are Cane and I am Able, except in our case, our Cane fucked up, and now because of it, we all stand a chance... And we do stand a chance if you can find the courage to forgive and love."
"Have you told them that?" Jarrod, still laughing, motions some of the ravens and sneers.
The ravens perched in the skeletal trees are silhouetted against the last wane of the day and vignette by the night that is all but here.
"I’m right," says Steve. "I am right."
Their fire ignites, and while they know it will not be, it does look and feel like the world’s last human fire.
Jarrod draws Sonya closer and lays her on the ground where, briefly, she looks at the fire until she sleeps.
"That’s it for her," says Steve. "The kindest thing she can do for you and me now is to never wake up. All she’ll do is suffer more and then die, but by then, because you will have given her her share of the water, she will have already killed us. That’s why we cannot give her any more water."
"And I can never love you," says Jarrod. "So it appears that we are all fucked."
With the flames dancing in his face, Steve smiles. "Oh yes, you can. And I can prove it."
"Here."
Steve pulls his backpack around and hands Jarrod the antique knife he found in the pit. "I doubt it’s sharp enough, but with enough force, it’ll work."
"What do you want me to do with this?"
"I don’t want you to do anything with it. I’m giving it to you to prove a point. I told you, the only way out of here is if we are driven by love. A love to want to save each other. Because you see, the only motivation that is stronger than self-preservation is saving someone you love. If you truly believe you can’t love me, then to save yourself hours of pain, I suggest you kill yourself now. But maybe her first."
"Fuck you," says Jarrod and drops the knife on the ground.
"Love can find a way," says Steve as he picks up the knife. "Love can find a way."
Shaking his head and gently laughing, Jarrod looks up from Sonya to the fire.
Steve tosses Jarrod one of the apples. Jarrod looks at it as though he’s never seen one before, and then he slowly starts to eat.
"Why didn’t you kill me?" asks Steve. "You had the chance. She’d drugged me, right, and you were meant to finish the job, correct? You had the shovel. What was the plan? Bury me? No, you’re not cold enough to bury me alive, and since you didn’t have the rifle, then what? Were you meant to bludgeon me first?"
The flames twist in Jarrod’s eyes.
"I’ll tell you why you didn’t. Love. Underneath everything else you feel for me, in the end, I am still your brother. That’s why you failed. It wasn’t a flaw in your character; it was love. You see, brother, you are not a killer. You never were. So I’m suggesting you stop trying to be. I’m suggesting you start being someone you haven’t been in decades, yourself. Your real self."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"You can’t save yourself. I can see it. There’s nothing left to save. Look at you; you’re just broken. That’s how you feel, isn’t it? Even your hate for me is a spent force."
Jarrod looks at him.
"It’s ok. I know. I also know that you cannot save her. Nothing can. Look at her; she’s gone. Yet to get out of here, to survive, you will need to have a raging fire inside of you, but how? Look at you. You’re dying. And that’s the truth; you’re just sitting there waiting to die. You haven’t even finished that apple. So here’s my suggestion. Don’t save yourself. Don’t even try because it won’t work. It’ll just be a lie. Instead, find someone else that you are desperate to save... me."
Jarrod bursts out laughing, and Steve doesn’t. As the fire alters and re-alters his face, he watches Jarrod.
"What now?" says Jarrod. "You want me to kiss you?"
"I killed her."
"What?" goes Jarrod.
"You know that anyway. Don’t you."
Jarrod stops eating the apple.
"But you don’t know the truth."
Which is?
"I wanted to kill us all. That was my intention. Do you have any idea how many trees I passed, with you two asleep in the back, before I finally did it?"
Jarrod is a statue lit and sculpted by the fire.
"Inside me, for miles, there was this intense battle going on. It was raging. 'Don’t do it. Do it. Don’t do it. Are you crazy?' But that part, the good part, in the end, it wasn’t strong enough. What’s more, says Steve, I could have saved her. I had the time."
Jarrod’s breath shudders as an old concealed pain is lanced.
"She was begging me to save her. I’ve never told anyone that. At first, she was calling to you, but you weren’t answering because you were unconscious, and then she saw me, and so she began pleading for me to help. Begging really. By then, the car was already on fire. But instead of helping her, I just stood there. In the end, even before the flames had reached the front seat, she fell silent and just looked at me, glared. I can still see her face as clearly in those flames as I can see yours. Of course, when the heat reached her, well, she started screaming then. And I have never heard anyone or anything scream like that."
The fire is everywhere. Jarrod is so angry he doesn’t check where he should stand. He just picks the knife up and barrels through the flames like some inner spring has been unhooked, and now he is on top of Steve, holding him down with his forearm, the old knife raised in the other.
But Steve does not fight. He just lays there as Jarrod, holding him down, trembles as he prepares to plunge in the knife.
"But I saved you," says Steve. "How do you think you survived? It was me. I dragged you out and lay you on the ground. You were in the back seat, below her. Remember."
In the semi-dark, Jarrod glares down at Steve. In his head, he can see and hear Margaret burning. Then Steve spreads his arms and lays below him like Jesus nailed to the cross.
"Do it. I deserve it. I do."
There is nothing physical that can stop the knife coming down, but it does not fall. And their fire is dying, and the cold is coming back, and Steve’s panting breath is full of mist, and Jarrod’s falling mist is blending with his.
"Why?" Steve says. "Ask me why?"
"Why?"
"Love."
In the dark, a single raven caws.
They both look towards its general direction, but there is nothing to see but the ineffectual stars. But the caw comes again, and it is long and painful and sounds like a child crying for a mother who is missing, long missing.
Another raven joins it, then another, and as around them the dark starts to cry, Jarrod looks back down at Steve.
"I loved her," says Steve, "and I loved you too. I just didn’t know it, not until I saw you laying broken in the back seat. I thought you were dead, but then you groaned. So I opened the door and I pulled you free."
"FUCK ME. What about her? How could you do that to her? Were you jealous? Is that it? Did you let her burn because you were jealous?"
Steve does not reply.
"Answer me! ANSWER ME."
"Yes."
"I knew it. I fucking knew it. And was it worth it? Huh? Was it worth it, you psychopathic piece of shit?"
Steve does not reply, and Jarrod doesn’t care because he is already up and knife in hand, he is standing in the darkness as the dark cries in mournful caws around him.
Steve, only partially up, moves to the fire and starts pulling it back together, then he adds more wood.
"I’d just asked her to marry me," says Jarrod.
"I know."
"You know? How did you know?"
"She told me."
"And did she tell you that she’d said yes?"
"Yes."
Jarrod nods at all the waiting darkness. "That was the happiest moment of my life. I couldn’t believe I was that lucky."
The fire races to welcome the new wood and sends sparks up to try to reach the great fires in the sky that are so far away they can only twinkle.
"Ask me more," says Steve.
"Why?"
"Because you won’t forgive me until it’s all out."
Jarrod laughs. "Ok, listen up, fuckhead. I am never going to forgive you."
"Yes, you are," says Steve, "because deep inside, you already have."
The ravens fall quiet. It’s as if they are waiting to hear what Jarrod will say next, but it’s Steve who talks. "That’s why I’m still here. That’s why you didn’t kill me. I’m the proof."
Steve takes an arm’s length and thick burning stick from the fire and, standing, brings it to Jarrod.
"You can’t beat everything that is trying to kill us," says Steve, "while you’re also fighting who you naturally are. But what you can do is rebuild the bridge. Our bridge. We came out of the same womb. When we were young, we fought, yeah, brothers do, but we also played. We liked each other. We loved. And we still love... You must forgive me now, right down to your soul. Forgive me, and then that will unleash the full force of love that, against all of this, is our only hope. We are brothers, Jarrod. We have to be brothers."
Jarrod looks at his brother, then at the stick, then he takes the stick and a moment later he walks away.
Alone, Steve moves back to the fire. Next to him, Sonya is lying on her side. She is asleep, or maybe she’s left, or maybe she is halfway. It’s hard to tell, for there is nothing to see but the fire on her face and the stars above and that one solitary flame way out there in the darkness which is moving further and further away.
~
Sonya is under the water. The end of the rope she tied around his neck is now tied around hers, and the weight of him and the anchor is pulling her down.
Part 6 next