Fallout Read online

  My cousin kept his gaze on me. “What do you guys do?”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, do you ever go out and do, y’know ... normal couple stuff? Or do you just hang in his trailer?”

  I sighed inwardly and regretted telling him about Cain’s home. “We go out in a group sometimes.”

  “You and Cain and who else? Jude McBride?”

  I nodded.

  “Isn’t that kind of weird? To go out with your boyfriend ... and your ex-boyfriend, simultaneously?”

  “Yes, that would be weird, Albion. But it’s not like that. Jude was never really my boyfriend and there are others in the group, too.”

  “And when it’s only you and Cain?”

  I was silent. Cain and I didn’t date. Not like normal couples. Weariness washed over me. I was too weak for this conversation. “I’m still not feeling well.”

  He pursed his lips, observing me. “Okay,” he said, to my surprise. And then, with a quick grin, “We can pick it up again later.”

  I rested and tried to avoid Albion throughout the day, sipping water and sports drinks. Maybe it was wrong, but it pleased me that Cain had come looking for me the night before. Considering my own wobbly feelings about Helen and Cain’s meeting there was something gratifying in knowing he was worried about me. I went out to Gaunt House early to see him. The electrical tower buzzed loudly in the yellow afternoon light ... strange. I hadn’t seen it do that for a long while. Cain must have heard my car arrive because he suddenly appeared outside the ruin, hovering while I parked. I smiled at the sight of him, that lean muscular frame and dark hair, unkempt as always and falling over his forehead. When I got out of my car he seized me like he hadn’t seen me for weeks and just about squeezed the breath out of me.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Are you okay?”

  I laughed, hugging him back. “It was a stomach bug. I’m fine. Ow,” I added when the embrace became uncomfortable.

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry.” He released me instantly. “I’m a fucking jerk.”

  That made me stare and notice how agitated he looked. “What’s wrong?”

  He rubbed a hand through his hair and hovered for a moment. “Come on, Francesca. Come down with me. I’m sorry. Let’s talk.”

  I did as he said. He got us both beers but I declined since my stomach wasn’t completely right yet. He opened his and took a huge gulp.

  “Cain?” I was scared now.

  Long silence. “Francesca. I’m sorry.”

  Sorry, again? What was going on? Was he feeling guilty about something? I thought of Helen and their meeting: the recognition and delight. Abruptly my heart started hurting, actually aching, as though it were breaking down after being dropped into some sort of corrosive chemical. I couldn’t form any words and Cain wouldn’t meet my eyes. Could this really be happening? Was I so replaceable that one chance meeting with Helen and a night apart could eject me from his heart? I wasn’t special―that was what it was. I wasn’t one of them―one of the extraordinary super-beings. I breathed shallowly, panic pouring into my chest. I hadn’t felt like this since the time I’d taken myself away from him. Cain didn’t see my reaction because he’d leaned forward, elbows on knees, and was rubbing a hand slowly over his face while he stared at the floor.

  “I shouldn’t have reacted like that. I panicked. I thought you were gone again.”

  Um. So he wasn’t breaking bad news to me after all? It didn’t compute. I jumped up and paced around the chamber.

  “Francesca? Forgive me, please.”

  Forgive him? I ought to apologise to him, too, but I couldn’t confess what I’d feared. How could I even think that of him? But then he’d suspected I had left again and he should know I wouldn’t betray him like that. There was nothing I could say that would express any of this so I crossed to him and pushed him back against the sofa, putting a knee either side of his legs. I sank down and kissed him hard so I wouldn’t have to admit what I’d really thought, using physical contact as explanation and apology. Still, something whispered deep inside, we’re so unequal. I’m just a normal. I mentally shoved the insecurity back down as the burning in my chest subsided.

  It was at least an hour of reassurance before we spoke again. Cuddled up with him on the sofa I basked in the naked glory of this man, hardly able to believe he was mine. Cain asked about my sickness so I gave him an edited version, sparing him the gorier details. He told me Helen had fitted into the group well the night before, and how she and Liz had both shared their fragments of visions.

  “What did they describe?” I asked.

  Cain retrieved the ledger and handed it to me.

  “Poor Helen,” he said as I flicked through the notebook to find the most recent entries. “She must’ve thought I was nuts. Everyone else was trying to make her feel welcome and tell her about some of the people we’ve managed to help and all I was doing was going up above ground every ten minutes to get a phone signal and see if you’d replied. I didn’t go into a total panic until it got so late Liz and Jude said they had to leave. Then I realised you really weren’t coming. I barely said goodbye to anyone. They knew what was going on in my head, too, although they kept trying to tell me it was probably just some issue you had that prevented you from calling to explain.”

  “Then you came around to my place, right?”

  “Yeah.” He eyed me. “Albion wasn’t happy.”

  I laughed weakly. “Uh, no. Sorry.”

  “I don’t blame him,” he said. “He probably thinks I’m a psychopath.”

  “No,” I protested. “He just worries about my ... lifestyle, I think.”

  “I know what he’s worried about,” Cain said, eyes on the floor.

  I remembered that discussion I’d overheard between him and Albion after the shooting accident. The one where Albion accused him of being bad for me. I tried to move the conversation on.

  “Alby’s always hassling me. Questioning me. That’s just what he does. He was even doing it this morning while I was trying to keep down my breakfast.”

  “What sort of questions?”

  “Oh, you know, like where do we go each night and why don’t we ever go on normal dates.” I chuckled.

  He shifted closer, pushing my hair back from my face so he could see my eyes more clearly. “Do you want to go on normal dates?”

  I shrugged. Did I? “Not if it means losing time we could be spending alone together.” I stroked his bare chest to emphasise my point.

  Cain was still frowning. “He’s right. I need to take you out sometimes, have some fun. “You deserve someone who treats you like a queen but all I ever do with you is meet you here, with the other four around us. Five,” he amended, remembering Helen. “And then I just use every spare second alone with you to get my hands on your body.”

  “Well, that’s kind of cool with me,” I reminded him.

  He smiled and dragged me in tight, pressing his lips up along my collarbone and finishing on my mouth. I heated up again, gripping the back of his strong neck. But then he stopped, pulling away to look into my eyes.

  “Francesca, will you come out on a date with me?”

  “Cain,” I said, “I don’t care what Albion says―”

  “Francesca,” he interrupted, “will you come out on a date with me?”

  I laughed. “I honestly don’t care but yes, Cain, I would be happy to go on a date with you.”

  “I’ll make a plan.”

  His brow knitted as he spoke and I realised he was trying to think of what to do for our date. I smiled, touched, but concealed it. I didn’t want to embarrass him. I returned to the ledger in my lap and located the latest entry describing Helen’s and Liz’s visions.

  “Wasn’t Helen sick last night, at all?” I asked, thinking of us drinking coffee together at Misty’s.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  Woodland or park, dim, like in shadow or evening-time. Yellow signpost. Sound of small children talking. Di
scussing the construction of something like a small village, as if they’re building a sandcastle. Sudden loud noise. Boom―like an explosion close by, maybe fireworks.

  A flash of something blue and reflective dropping into water.

  Heavy truck heading along a road at night time, scraps of conversation from the men driving. One says, ‘Don’t use the hydros, there are houses up ahead.’

  Previously we’d followed the custom of putting a note in the margin to show who had seen which vision. That stopped when Liz was the only one left having fragmented visions.

  “Who had the visions of the children and the truck?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah. We need to start writing that again.” He wrote an L. next to the two visions I’d asked about and an H. beside the other one.

  “It was Liz? She heard noises in her visions?”

  He was puzzled for a moment, then his face cleared, realisation dawning. “Shit. Yes. Yes, she said she heard words. But we don’t hear sounds before transforming,” he muttered to himself, staring at me unseeingly.

  “This is what happened with Nadine, remember?”

  Cain nodded. “Yes. Sounds and smells. And now it looks like it’s happening the same way for Liz. How long after Nadine heard sounds in her fragments did she transform?”

  I considered. “Maybe two weeks? Then she had the taxi incident.”

  Nadine had been with us almost four months when she underwent the life-changing event that flicked the switch in her. She was at a hotel with friends and had her drink spiked. She fell into semi-consciousness for a while until she suddenly felt a heat roar through her and returned to full clarity to find herself in a taxi, an unknown man fondling her as he directed the taxi driver to an address she didn’t know. That was when she transformed, becoming strong, stunning, and fearless. The creep who’d tried to take her home ended up with two black eyes, a broken jaw and, because Nadine followed up, a criminal record.

  “Liz must be coming close. She’ll be so happy,” I said, trying to keep the waver out of my voice. “It’s all she wants.”

  “Yeah. I can’t believe we didn’t even notice last night that she was hearing sounds.” Cain gave me that deep, slow smile that made me want to throw my naked body at him again. “What would we do without you, Francesca?”

  That helped. “I can’t make much sense of these,” I said, indicating the words in the ledger. “We’ll have to wait until more information comes through.”

  Cain tilted his head suddenly. “Someone’s here.”

  We had to scramble but luckily whoever it was made their way down slowly. We had enough time to pull our clothes back on and arrange ourselves on the sofa as though we had simply been chatting in a civilised manner. There was a pause when the person reached the door, and then a knock.

  “Who would knock?” I whispered.

  The door opened and it was Helen. She gave us a tentative smile. “Hey, Frankie. Hi, Cain.”

  “Come in,” Cain told her. “You never have to knock.”

  She came in and sat on a mattress. There, she fidgeted for a few moments, glancing at us uneasily. “Sorry,” she said at last, “but I have to do this.”

  She pulled up her jeans leg and I was startled to see a prosthetic limb. She made some adjustments, and then pushed the denim back down before checking our reactions.

  “Yeah,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t show many people. It came loose while I was climbing down the ladder. I needed to fix it or I’d get a friction sore.”

  “Was it a farming accident?” I asked without thinking, then I cursed myself. Really sensitive, Frankie.

  But Helen shook her head with a lopsided smile. “No, I was born this way. Missing a bit.”

  “Oh, okay.” I was shocked I didn’t remember her from school now. It was kind of a significant characteristic to forget.

  “I got pretty good at hiding it,” she added. “Long pants, year-round. No one noticed the blonde girl with a bit of a limp.”

  I laughed sheepishly. “I was just thinking I should have remembered you.”

  “I flew under the radar when we were at high school. But everyone knew Frankie Carver, daughter of the famous Preacher Don.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that but Cain interjected with a question. “Is it only your lower leg?”

  “Yep. We’re all a bit special in my family.” She grinned. “My brother has autism. Mum’s got a mystery illness. And I’m missing half my left leg.”

  She didn’t mention her father who’d committed suicide but I felt for her. What a raw deal this family had been dealt.

  Cain nodded at her leg. “Is there a problem with the false one? Doesn’t it fit right?”

  “No, it’s fine. It slips a bit when I climb anything, that’s all. They’re not really made for climbing ladders. I probably need a new prosthesis. This one’s getting a bit old. It’s on its last legs, you might say.” She gave a slight laugh. “Sorry. Amputee joke.”

  Cain frowned. “I don’t want you to have to struggle to get down here every night.”

  Her cheeks went pink, as if she was flattered by his solicitousness. “Honestly, it’s no big deal. But if it falls off mid-climb I’ll have to shout for you to help me out.” She shot him a smile.

  “Can you drive without any problems?” I asked her.

  “Yep. And Gran lets me borrow her car at night.” She grimaced. “The tannery roadworks are a pain in the butt, aren’t they? I got stuck there for ten minutes tonight and there wasn’t even another car on the road. Truck after truck leaving the site. It was bad enough before with the sheep rigs going in and out of the tannery but now it’s the construction trucks.”

  Cain observed her. “You live close by, huh?”

  “Our farm was up the road from here.” Helen looked distant for a moment. “It got reclaimed as part of the tannery development deal.”

  “They took your land, just like that?” I was shocked.

  “Yeah, kind of. We’d already decided to sell and they made us an offer. Not a very good one but we had to get out fast before the bank repossessed the farm. I live in town now. We need to be close to the hospital and the Autism Centre.”

  I thought back to the protest banners that had been up on the development fences for months. “The tannery development ... it seems to be big news in town. I know there’s been some kind of controversy. What actually happened?”

  “It was about the sale of the tannery to Grace Creek, the property developers,” Cain said. “The farmers around here relied on the tannery to make their money.”

  Helen nodded. “Most of the local farmers ran sheep for the skins. The bottom dropped out of the mutton market years ago but the sheepskins were still worth something so they switched from meat to skin breeds. My dad was the same. The tanning works were run as a co-op. You know, shared ownership. And because it was local that meant they could keep livestock transport costs down.”

  “I think the skin processing is too expensive if the farmers can’t send their sheep to a local tannery. Is that right?” Cain checked with Helen.

  She nodded. “The next tanning plant is over 400 miles away. Dad knew it was going to take thousands to pay for transport and processing at an external plant. He couldn’t make enough money back on the skins to make it sustainable.”

  I started to feel uncomfortable. I shouldn’t have asked about the tannery. It was getting too close to Helen having to mention her father’s suicide.

  “John Biscay owned the tannery originally,” she went on. “Remember him, Frankie? He was the mayor when we were kids. He inherited the tannery from his family and sold half its value to the local farmers so it became a co-operative with Biscay as the major shareholder.”

  “Some farmers owned more than others, yeah?” Cain said.

  She nodded again, her blue eyes darkening a little. “Yeah. Six particular farmers. Then a few years ago Grace Creek Property Company started sniffing around. They knew the land was valuable. It’s the best land in
the region because of the underground lake, you know? There’s always plenty of water, even in dry years.”

  I remembered that from the news. Grace Creek’s CEO had flown out for a publicity stunt. They pumped water out of the subterranean lake and sprayed it in spectacular geyser-style fountains across the development while the CEO frolicked in his swimsuit like a fat white porpoise. Albion had made jokes about it for days.

  “Grace Creek made John Biscay an offer,” Helen said, “and old Biscay was willing to take it. I don’t think he’s bad, really ... just a bit ignorant. He wanted to retire and move away from Augur’s Well. The tannery board―the six farmers with the most shares in the company―were supposed to protect the farmers’ interests but they didn’t. They were the jerks who agreed to sell. Those corrupt bastards owned enough shares between them to force the sale through.” Helen sounded angry and I detected the trace of an older, deeply bitter person coming through in her words, as though she were speaking with her father’s voice. “The board only gave the farmers back the value of their shares. They pocketed the real profits as executive bonuses. They’ve all left town now. Bloody creeps. And the co-op farmers are stuck here with non-meat livestock and no tanning works. Most of them are either selling or they’ve gone into massive debt to try and keep their farms afloat.”

  “Is that what happened to your family?” Cain asked before I could stop him.

  Her eyes dropped. “My dad couldn’t take the stress and he ended his life last year.”

  Cain’s face filled with sympathy. He moved off the sofa to sit beside her and put an arm around her shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” he said, dipping his head to look into her face.

  I watched them in silence. I was glad of his kindness. Objectively glad. And selfishly unsettled by the sight of him with his arm around Helen, the girl with a gift just like his and sorrowful blue eyes.

  “You know about the history of this place, right?” she said, shaking off her sadness and changing the subject with determination. “Of Gaunt House?”

  “I know a little,” I said as Cain returned to his place beside me on the sofa. “I know it was a workhouse for women.”