Unsheltered Clare Moleta (book club books .txt) 📖

is those stories, those North stories. There’s rivers up there I never seen but I can feel them. I need to go there. Need to be somewhere I haven’t looked for her – somewhere that’s not about that.

Would she have gone up there?

He barked out a laugh. I never tried that hard to talk her into it. Didn’t seem as important then. The way I saw it, being stuck inside with her would’ve been worth it.

Li understood that. And how North would be a release from a promise. But he hadn’t given up on Rachael until he knew she was gone. She said, I told my daughter once that you could do bad things and still be a good person. She wanted to know how many things.

What’d you tell her?

What had she told her? Something she didn’t believe, just borrowing Frank’s generosity, his faith in endless second chances.

Rich rolled away, fumbling for something in the dark. Pushed the phone into her hand. Try again, he said.

She held on in the queue for forty minutes. Beside her, Rich slept uneasily. She had turned away from Angie’s grief. The couple with the baby had helped her but she hadn’t left them the gun. She’d had a child in full knowledge that the ballot would not end, that Wars would not end, that Weather would only get worse. She’d given up and poisoned her body. She’d hated Trish for trying to have faith. She hadn’t warned Rich about the mosquitoes who had maimed her and robbed her and left her to die. She’d lied to Frank about Chris when asking for his help might have saved them all. She left Matti alone in the camp. She left her.

The advertising cut off into four long beeps. There is one. New. Update. On this claim.

The battery icon was blinking as she rang Chris’s number. Let him pick up, pick up. Goddamn you, pick up.

Another recorded voice. She talked fast into the answering machine, falling over her words. There’s an update on Matti, something new on the claim, but I can’t get through to anyone and my battery’s about to die. I need you to call them or log onto my claim and call me back. She reeled off her status number, password, the claim number. Did you get that? I’ll get this phone charged. Chris, please, call me back and tell me what they know. Keep trying me. I’ll give you the numbers again.

She was halfway through repeating them when the phone died.

Rich was awake, listening. He said, It’s good, Li. It’s news.

It means she’s been processed or they’ve ID’d her body, she said.

The answer was on her missing-minor claim, or on Matti’s record or both, but it would sit there longer than she could sit in a queue; sit there until someone with the right status started asking. The nearest working Source connection she knew was about fifteen hundred k in the wrong direction, back in Kutha. Or she could go east, where Matti had been trying to go. Where Permacamp was. I have to get across the range, she said.

Get some sleep. This mob we’re meeting’ll have a charger. You can call that fella back or he’ll call you. Then make a plan. Just sleep first, all right?

But she felt fevered. Eight words had upended everything. She strapped her crutch on and crawled out of the tent. It was the coldest time, the clouds had cleared and the dark was thinning, the stars losing their force. Somewhere on the continent, someone had seen Matti. Be alive. Be safe somewhere. Be fed, be sheltered. She was walking, shivering, east of their camp, like she could do it on foot again. Turned herself around and went back to the tent. It would be light in a few hours and she would try to get the four-wheel drive running.

A heavy sound woke her, thumping through the ground into her body. Her brain was thick with sleep. Rich had lunged for the shotgun before she even registered the engine running under the full-volume drum and bass. Then she heard the vehicle brake at close range.

Adrenaline kicked in. She tightened her boot and fumbled for her crutch – they couldn’t lose the vehicle, not now. The music cut off, car doors slammed. Frenzied barking. Rich was already out of the tent. She crouched, yanking at the straps, waiting for his shout of alarm or anger, for shots.

Did youse get sick of waiting for us? he said.

The tent faced away from the road. When she crawled out, there was time for her to look around it and see them first, for the fist of rage that almost choked her. We do this all the time. Eileen out front. Rich hugging her, the shotgun discarded in front of the windbreak. Stokes and Dev behind them, Mira climbing down from the back in Li’s blue thermal top, releasing the dog to run at Rich and then divert in crazy circles. Lucas was still in the tray, with a younger man she didn’t recognise, sawn-off propped up between them. Shaun was behind the wheel, the passenger seat empty. She couldn’t see Jasmine.

She came forward fast, grabbed up the gun from the ground and knocked the safety off, seeing their shock with vicious satisfaction. Eileen stepped back and Rich spun around. Lucas swung up the sawn-off but she leaned in and fired over his head. The kickback felt like it had split her shoulder.

Where is she?

Stokes said, Jesus. We thought you were dead.

Li? What the fuck? You said you didn’t know them.

She moved past Rich without looking at him. Where is she? Where’s Jasmine?

Eileen said, She’s not with our mob anymore.

Li looked from her to Stokes. He nodded. We didn’t think she was reliable.

Rich said, Put it down, Li. Come on, don’t fuck this up.

She heard the urgency in his voice, saw that Lucas had got the sawn-off to his shoulder, but Stokes acted