Unsheltered Clare Moleta (book club books .txt) 📖

the humming warmth of the cab, accepted the emergency blanket the driver wrapped around her. She didn’t know why she was being helped, none of this lined up, none of it felt earned but she didn’t want to question it.

The co-driver’s seat was occupied by a yellow mastiff. It assessed her steadily and then looked at the woman.

All right Nellie, she said, shift over. Then to Li, You sit here for a bit. You hear anything coming, honk the horn, okay?

Li nodded again. The driver poured koffee from a thermos and put the cup in Li’s hands. Then she took a pair of heavy-duty work gloves out of a compartment between the seats and went to clear the road.

There was music on the radio, a deep bell tone, then a flurry of high strings descending and then the bells again. Li felt her body thawing and warming, the sweet scald of the koffee going down, something more painful than bewilderment. The dog whined. She offered the back of her hand and it sniffed, licked and turned back to watch the driver hauling the windscreen to the side of the highway. Apart from the dog, the only visible concession to the dangers of a solo run was the tyre iron stowed down beside the driver’s door. Li touched the silk at the base of the dog’s ear, kneaded it gently.

The woman came back and climbed into her seat, shunting the dog back over towards Li. I can’t stay stopped here, she said. Someone’ll come round the corner in a minute jacked up on wakey and plough into the back of us.

Li looked full at her. She said, Thank you.

You’re all right, there’s no need.

Her name was Emily. She told Li she was running relief to a new camp on the fringe of the howler’s radius, but her brief included any survivors she met on the way.

You’re welcome to come for the ride, she said. We like company, don’t we Nellie? She planned to make the return crossing in a week, all going well, and she could drop Li at Permacamp then.

Li shook her head. I don’t have time.

Okay, the driver said, like she’d expected that. Got some relief packs in the back.

She went through one with Li, sorting out what she could use: high-efficiency biofuel pellets, protein bars, a pair of lightweight gaiters, fifty dollars’ worth of phone credit. And a square block of chocolate, silver-wrapped. Li remembered the melon. She put the chocolate carefully away inside her jacket.

Emily thought Li could make the top before dark and she’d get a glimpse of Permacamp from there, but it would take a few days to walk down the other side. You won’t get a lift from Company, she said. But if it’s army or aid, try to flag it down.

She left her on the side of the highway, facing east. Li walked away from the four-wheel drive without looking back. The incline wasn’t too steep and the gravel siding was a good surface for the base of her crutch, where the rubberised tip was wearing through. The sun came out as she walked and soon she was warm enough to fold the emergency blanket away.

She was thinking about Emily, and about the other driver who’d stopped for her, whose name she didn’t remember now. About Megan with her gift of talk and cigarettes. Sanaa and Amin and Abraham bringing water for Matti in makecamp when she was sick. About Yara riding around the industrial zone with her list and her pencils. Angie and Carl, who had never made her feel that they were Frank’s friends. She felt a sharp pain thinking of Trish, who shared her gum and tried to keep them from despair, and Miriam who had talked about how things might be when she knew as well as any of them how things were. She remembered the couple with the baby called Billy, the uncle with the dustmask. The mosquitoes. Rich.

She stopped thinking and saw that this place she was walking through was beautiful. It had snuck up on her. The complex folds of the range made simple by snow, the fine-grained light, an immense purity and space that reminded her of the lake. There were occasional animal tracks on the slopes and twice a truck passed without slowing. Otherwise she was alone. The light was lucid on the snow. She looked until her eyes burned and when she closed them, the dazzle was still there. She crouched down and touched it, scooped up a handful. It was soft and then hard and when she licked it she caught the tang of diesel.

There was about an hour of light left when she found the children. They hadn’t made it to the top. They were in a rest stop, curled up together under an overhang of rock. It was set back behind the rubbish bin and the picnic table but she saw them from the road. Anyone could have seen them.

The boy was smaller, maybe six or seven; it was hard to know, they were so thin. He wasn’t wearing his shoes. His socks were blackened and worn away at the soles but Li could still see hotdogs running after each other on stumpy yellow legs. The girl had a red elastic band in her hair and she’d lost two top teeth, like Matti the last time she saw her. They’d taken off most of their clothes and they were holding hands.

Li knelt in front of them for a long time, crying. She wrapped them in the blanket. They’d tried to make a fire with rubbish from the bin – the packaging had charred but it hadn’t caught. Matti and Robbie were always lighting fires. It would be dark soon and they would be alone. Li set up her tent under the overhang and built a fire with the pellets. She wanted to carry them inside where it would be warmer but some protective part of her understood if she