Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against

WHERE THE WOMEN GO ^{MADELEINE ROUX}

WHEN THEY WERE young they stood side by side in the mirror, two identical, gangly kids with sunburned noses and long dark hair. Scrub of the face. Brush of the teeth. Katie would put her hair up in a messy tail and Simon would leave his long, a bit greasy. Her elbows were sharp, and she’d use them like knives in his ribs to get her share of the mirror. Then they were out the door, together, off to school, and so alike sometimes even their dad mixed them up from a distance.

It seemed to change overnight. Simon couldn’t remember what day it was exactly, but it was sudden. Instantaneous. The reasons were obvious, maybe, and right there in front of his face, but still it confused him. Katie would get up earlier, spend more time on her hair. There was lip gloss now after the teeth brushing. He scowled at her in the mirror, because something had flipped right under his nose and that bothered him.

No more sharp little elbows in his ribs, no more familiar bruises left behind from their ongoing war for the mirror.

Simon still scowled at his reflection every morning, harder now because Katie was gone altogether. She was only maybe thirty minutes down the road, but for how it felt she might as well have been on the moon.

One day she just didn’t come home from school. Sixteen years old and vanished. But Simon knew where she was. Everyone did. In a way, he had known she would go like all the others. Katie was soft and friendly and kind. A follower. He knew she would go as soon as the women started leaving their homes, their jobs, their families… They all went to one spot in the middle of nowhere. Well, not nowhere. To him it was Didi Wright’s land. When Didi first showed up to take over that ranch five years ago Simon’s dad wouldn’t shut up about “Didi Wright being Didi Wrong for that place.” He thought he was a real crackup with that one.

Katie and Simon had winced in unison. Christ, Dad.

Simon winced again now, clutching a break-action rifle to his chest, his dad pacing a groove into the floor of the verandah. It was a hot day, dry and windy, and Simon’s mouth felt gritty with dust. He squinted into the distance, in the general direction of Didi Wright’s land. A helicopter sped overhead, loud enough to drown out his father’s voice. He wondered where the bloody things were coming from. Nanutarra Station was the closest thing passing for civilization, but he didn’t think they had any helicopters there. The choppers had been going over day and night, some of them news, some of them military. It was strange turning on the TV or the radio to hear nothing but male voices come out. The talking heads on Sky News looked spooked. They read off the teleprompters in a fog, droning on, their eyes big and haunted.

Nobody in the family had slept in days, and it was becoming obvious. His brothers Johnny and Davis looked knackered, with bags under their eyes deep enough to hold stones. His dad never quit pacing and slept, or tried to, with his gun in the bed.

The sun blasted behind his father’s whip-thin frame as he made his way back and forth across the porch. He had always been wiry, a long streak of pelican shit, but now it looked like a stiff breeze could blow him over. Two bouts with skin cancer hadn’t turned him onto sunscreen, his only concession a floppy fisherman’s hat that was yellowed and fraying.

Johnny and Davis hunched over their guns on the edge of the verandah. They had always been big, meaty boys, but now they too seemed ravaged. Either Simon was imagining things or Johnny’s sweat-stained tee was hanging looser. Simon squinted past his father, watching the helicopters disappear over the ragged tree line at the edge of their property. Katie was somewhere beyond those trees.

“Ya reckon she walked?”

Simon hadn’t realized he’d said it aloud until his father grunted and spat, arcing a gob of spit over the railing and into the dust.

“Walked nothin’,” he muttered. “She was taken. They took her, anyone who says different is talking out their arse.”

“Dunno,” Simon said with a shrug, still fixated on those gently swaying trees. “On TV it looks like they’re all buggering off on their own, eh? No one forcing them.”

“Bullshit,” his father roared, rounding on Simon. He braced for a smack, but it didn’t come. “Not our Katie,” the old rancher said, softer. “She wouldn’t do that to me.”

“It’s the government.” Davis had always been the stupid one, but he was really going for it lately. Simon glared. “S’gotta be.”

“Watch the news once or twice,” Simon shot back. “Even the Prime Minister doesn’t know shit. Nobody does.”

“They just lie.” Davis had a low voice, and he always spoke slowly, like he was figuring out each word just before he said it, but it took a little too long. “Right, Dad? They just lie.”

Simon wished he could go deaf. They had gone ’round and ’round on this ever since Katie left. In the wake of her disappearance, when the panic lifted and all that was left was confusion, they had nothing to do with themselves but speculate. Simon had stopped eating at the dinner table with them. All the useless talk just gave him headaches.

He fidgeted with his gun, looking down at it. He hadn’t used it much lately, only some target practice to keep sharp and a few rats that’d gotten into the shed and made a mess. Something about holding the gun now didn’t feel right. He knew what his dad was planning, and where he wanted to go, and all of the sudden it dawned on Simon that maybe this gun and the bullets inside it would be turned on people. Women. He shivered.

“What’s the matter with you?” Davis muttered. He had a heavy brow and shaggy brown hair that he was constantly shaking out of his face.

“Nothing,” Simon replied, lifting his head. Everything.

“Well that’s it then, Dad, isn’t it?” Davis was being stupid again. What did that even mean? But the older boy stood, putting his rifle over his shoulder like he was some tough guy soldier from the movies. “We gotta do it.”

“We gotta,” his dad echoed.

His father’s name was Francis. The boys used to joke about it in private. He did not look like a Francis. He went by Frank, of course, but when their mother was still alive she called him Francis now and then. Usually on Christmas. It didn’t sound weird when their mum said it; somehow it had been sweet coming out of her mouth.

Simon missed her then, and he wished she was there to tell them what to do. Not that Frank would listen, but still. Or would she be gone like Katie, too? All the women were leaving, going to Didi Wright’s property. There were rumors about a strange light in her fields and that all the women were gathering there. The news had to blur lots of the coverage because tons of the women were starkers.

“We gotta do it,” Frank said with a growl. “No choice, really.”

He finally stopped pacing and turned down the verandah steps, taking them slow and heavy, as if he had a boulder strapped to his back. Simon didn’t like it. He didn’t want to follow; he wanted to go back inside and sit on the couch with all the dogs, get surrounded by their familiar dusty, oily scent and prop his feet up on the apple crates they used as a coffee table, and watch the TV for hours, just watch and watch, back on the vigil for Katie, determined to find her among all the naked blurry shapes in the field.

But his brothers were following Frank, trooping down the steps and falling in line. The old ute was already in the drive, once black but now more or less tan from the caked-on dust and mud. He could hear the dogs behind him in the house whining. They knew something was wrong, just like Simon did, and he trusted them more than he ever trusted Frank or his dumb brothers.

Feeling that same boulder on his back, Simon drifted away from the verandah and toward the ute. There was no real plan, but somehow one had formulated in the spaces between their brief exchanges, a silent, masculine pact that he hated but nonetheless felt grimly tied to, like some desperate deal with the Devil he had only half-heartedly accepted.

His brothers climbed into the ute, leaving Simon to get in the back. As the engine gunned to life, Simon stared at the low, shabby house they lived in. It looked miles away, and they hadn’t even pulled out of the driveway.

Simon pulled up his tee and tied it over his mouth against the haze of dust kicked up by the tires. They were going to find Katie. It didn’t feel real. He wondered how many naked women he would see, and if it would be weird. Once, Jackie Summers let him kiss her and put his hand up her shirt behind the school. He couldn’t believe how soft she was. It took him a week to realize that she wasn’t going to let him do it again, and that she had just wanted a ciggie.

“Bitch,” Davis had said when Simon recalled the story over a beer. But that seemed harsh. He had gotten to put his hand up her shirt, after all.

Would Jackie Summers be in the field, too? More and more women were going; the news said nobody could get normal flights anywhere because so many women were trying to get to Australia. You almost had to laugh, thought Simon. Who the fuck would want to take all that trouble getting to Pilbara? But it was happening. Women and girls were clamoring to get to the arse end of the Earth, and for what? To piss about in a field, dancing naked and singing Kumbaya?

Simon felt his stomach lurch as the ute sped up, just a blur screaming across the bush. They didn’t have all that far to go, and the military had set up barriers all over the place. When they were a few miles from Didi’s land, Frank veered off the dirt road and into the trees, the truck rocking from side to side as they navigated the uneven terrain. Simon had only been this close to Didi Wright’s property once, a few summers ago, when he and his brothers drove over drunk and threw rocks at her cows. They ditched the ute next to a meager stream, Frank and his brothers hopping out and crouching low in the bushes. Simon didn’t get out just yet. He didn’t know if he wanted to go any further. It all made his skin crawl and his hair stand on end—maybe he didn’t want to see what was inside the camp.

“I’m going to go ahead and take a gander,” Frank said, turning back to the truck and unloading a metal box from the passenger seat. He set it down carefully, making as little noise as possible. Opening the hatch, he pulled out a box of ammunition, a few six packs of beer, and some beef jerky. “Don’t fuckin’ go anywhere. I’ll be back soon. You just wait.”

Then he crept away, keeping low, his rifle slung over his shoulder. Simon stayed in the ute, watching that fisherman’s hat gradually get swallowed up by the leaves.

“Idiot, he shouldn’t go alone,” Davis said, opening a beer.

“He’s a goner,” Johnny agreed. He was slimmer than Davis, muscular, and the best looking of the boys. He had gotten all their mother’s looks, with big brown eyes and sandy blonde hair. A lot of girls had let him put his hand up their shirts. “Probably get hit by a sniper or some shit. I’m telling ya, there’s something in there they don’t want us to see.”

Simon rolled his eyes, but didn’t disagree. Of course civilians had rushed in, trying to reach their spouses or friends or daughters. The military turned them away at first, but now there were so many trying that they had gone to bean bag rounds and tear gas. A few blokes had gotten badly injured when they refused to back down, and the news showed them being carried out on stretchers, bruised and ranting. The camp looked different on television now, more militarized. The numbers inside were swelling, and Simon wondered what would happen if women just kept coming.

What they were doing was dangerous. It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment that they could land in real trouble trying to find Katie. Frank didn’t come back for hours. It was getting dark by the time he returned, and just in time, as the beer had run out and his two brothers were getting antsy.

“I don’t want to be stuck out here all night,” Simon said. “We won’t be able to get back out if it’s dark. I can’t see for shit and I’m not turning on the headlights.”

“I’m not giving up on him yet,” Davis replied.

He probably just wanted an excuse to sit there in the cool shadows and guzzle another tinny. But Frank returned not long after, all of them bolting up in alarm as they heard the leaves shimmer at his approach. Davis aimed his gun, but then they all saw the fisherman’s hat. Simon wanted to feel more relieved than he did.

“It’s a bloody nightmare,” Frank informed them, taking the beer out of his son’s hand and downing it. He was covered in sweat and grime, mosquito bites welling up on his hands and neck. “But I think I found a way in. Troops are thin on the west side; they’re mostly busy keeping the reporters from crawling over the barricades.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Davis was a little drunk and red-faced and looked like he was spoiling for a blue.

Simon gulped, watching them cluster, watching them prepare.

“You follow me and do as I do.” His father’s words were slurred around great mouthfuls of beef jerky. He swallowed, sighed and nodded toward Didi’s fields. “Stay low, and for fuck’s sake don’t do anything stupid.”

They began making their way toward the property, but Simon had a question.

“Did you see her, Dad? Did you see Katie?”

He didn’t answer.

Simon began feeling strange as they neared the barricades. Massive floodlights were set up in both directions, armed military patrolling back and forth, walkie-talkies buzzing. They were easy to spot with the lights on, but Simon wondered how many were taking secret sweeps of the woods. The trees thinned, removing most of their cover, and Simon felt his hands grow slick with sweat. A slapdash barbed-wire perimeter had been set up, and they skirted it, moving to the west, all of them ducking whenever another military chopper thundered overhead. It was like something out of an action flick, Simon thought, Michael Bay and all that shit, tanks and ATVs, dizzying sounds, stone-faced soldiers armed to the teeth, reporters and their microwave vans set up in a fan in front of the main barricade… But there was one gap in the barricade, a kind of gate. Simon hunched in the bushes, at the very edge of the concealing tree line, watching the bizarre procession of women walking in an orderly line through the gap.

“They’re letting more in?” he whispered.

Davis shushed him, but his father said, “Guess they can’t stop ‘em. Ain’t breakin’ any laws.”

“Look at them all,” Simon breathed. The line stretched for miles, vanishing into the gathering darkness. None of the women looked like they were being forced to go, and there was no rush, just a steady walk, some kind of peaceful procession.

“What happens when they run out of room?” Johnny asked.

“Don’t know,” Frank muttered. “Don’t care. Not gunna be here for that, just gunna get my damn daughter and leave.”

“What if she wants to stay?” Simon knew he shouldn’t have said it, but the more he looked at the women and the calm smiles on their faces, the more he knew in his gut that Katie had come on her own, walked the seven miles from school to this farm with nobody making her do it. Well, nobody that he could see, anyway.

“Shut up.” Davis smacked him on the back of his head.

“I’ll lock her in the cellar if she acts up with this shit again,” Frank said, his face scrunched in grim determination. “Now keep quiet and follow me.”

They did. Simon couldn’t shake that weird feeling in his stomach. His whole body felt like it was pulsing. Not like it had when Jackie let him touch her tit, but more intense: waves of sensation that tied his guts in knots. He could swear there was a low, constant hum in the back of his head. He couldn’t shake it off, and it made him tremble.

Just the lights, he assured himself. Too much stimulation is all.

They doubled back and followed, at a distance, the line of women stretching into forever. At last it was dark all around them, and the mass of television crews thinned. Frank darted forward, his sons in tow, and broke through the line of women walking toward the gates. None of them seemed to notice or care about the men, as if in a trance.

“Bloody weird,” he heard Johnny whisper as they scurried into a bank of low bushes on the other side of the line.

As promised, Frank led them toward the west side of the property, where fewer reporters shouted into their cameras, and the barbed-wire fence had partially broken down. A tiny two-foot gap was all they had to work with. By sheer luck, the nearest floodlight either wasn’t working or hadn’t been turned on. It was the perfect point of ingress, and they took it.

The grass had been so well trampled by all the commotion that the fields were more or less dirt. They crawled toward the makeshift camp that had been set up on Didi’s property, hundreds, maybe thousands of tents clustered together to form a kind of city. The minute they came close to the edge of the tents, Simon heard laughter. That buzzing in his stomach grew harder to bear, and he clutched his middle, wincing.

“How are we gunna find Katie in all this shit?” Davis groused.

“You just follow me, boy,” Frank replied. “I got an idea.”

Simon didn’t like the sound of that. He agreed that they needed to get Katie back, but he didn’t see how it was possible with this many tents to search. They’d be there all night, and when morning came get caught for sure.

They snaked through the maze of canvas and nylon, quiet, low to the ground, and moving toward what Simon assumed was the center. His legs ached from squatting for so long. He was in the back, and noticed with a gasp of fear that they had been noticed. Women were following them.

“Oi.” He elbowed Johnny in front of him. “Oi, stop, we’ve got company.”

The men stopped and turned, finding a dozen girls and women fanned out behind them. They simply stood, staring back, though none looked particularly angry or disturbed.

One little girl stepped forward. She was dressed in a flowing white frock, a flower tucked into her curly black hair. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

It was like they had all simultaneously lost the power of speech.

“Um… My sister. We’re looking for my sister. Katie,” Simon finally said.

“Why?” the girl pressed. She tilted her head to the side, smiling.

“Fuckin’ weirdo,” Davis whispered. “They on drugs?”

“We just want her back.” Simon felt like he was dealing with a hostage, afraid to say anything too harsh. “Don’t want to start trouble, we just want her back.”

The girl sighed and came closer. She gently touched Simon’s chin, lifting it up so she could look him over. “Silly. She won’t want to come back. None of us do. This is our place now. It’s for us, not for you.”

“What are you all doing here?” Simon murmured. The hum in his head crested, and he had to blink hard to withstand the pain.

“Being,” the little girl replied. “Just being.”

“Enough of this shit.” Frank dodged past him in a blur, elbowing Simon out of the way and into the dust. He grabbed the little girl by the arm, wrenching it behind her. Turning, he shoved his rifle into her back and forced her toward the other women that had been watching and following.

They did not gasp, or even react; they simply watched.

“You shouldn’t hurt her,” one woman, tall, plump, and dressed in a paisley bikini said. Her brows knit together with pity as she extended her hand. “Give Joia back to us. She just wants to be.”

“Shut up!” Frank forced out through gnashing teeth. “Just shut up and listen. You listen to me, right? Katie Spencer. Where is she? You take me to her right now and nothing happens to this little girl.”

Simon almost couldn’t hear his father over the din in his head. He felt like he was going to pass out. Scrabbling, he pushed himself to all fours, watching through watery eyes as Frank pushed the rifle harder between the girl’s shoulder blades.

Don’t.

“Katie Spencer,” the woman in the bikini said. “Katie Spencer… ”

The other women with her began to say it, too, in a soft murmur that became a kind of chant. More girls and older ladies appeared out of the tents, surrounding them. Simon glanced around warily, finding that they were completely enclosed in a circle of women that was tightening by the minute. Some were stark naked, others were streaked with mud in patterns like war paint, one short, tattooed woman wore only an old boot.

“Katie Spencer, Katie Spencer… ”

Hearing his sister’s name so many times almost made it funny, or nonsensical. He was caught between the horrible pain in his head and the sense that they were in deep, deep shit. His father, for fuck’s sake, was pointing a gun at a little kid! Why had they come?

“Katie Spencer—” The chant ended abruptly. Paisley bikini tipped her head to one side, going silent, closing her eyes. Every woman and girl near them did the same. Spooky. Like they were receiving some kind of transmission.

In the distance, the choppers whirred, the news reporters chattered, the flood lights buzzed.

“Hurry up now,” Frank almost shouted. “I’m getting impatient, and I don’t wanna do anything you’ll regret to this child.”

The woman in the bikini opened her eyes, staring with renewed interest at Frank. Then, without warning, she lunged for him. The next minute or two passed by in a blink, and Simon screamed, wincing at the gunfire, watching the bullet casing drop with a ping that he heard like lightning in his head, seeing the blood explode in a fantastic arc out of the little girl’s chest.

Dead. She was dead and holy shit Frank had just shot someone. A kid. The child dropped to the ground in a heap. His father reared back, shouting. Davis and Johnny screamed, too, a moment later, briefly stunned by the sound of the shot and the blood that came after. And in all of that, the woman had simply put her hand on Frank’s. A touch of the hand, nothing more, and someone had died for it.

She looked down at the dead child for a long time. Tears ran down her cheeks. Panting, wild-eyed, Simon looked around. Every woman encircling them had begun, silently, to cry.

“Katie Spencer,” the woman said sadly. She took Frank’s hand, but he wrenched it free of her grasp. “Take my hand,” she commanded. “Take my hand and we will bring you to Katie Spencer.”

Maybe it was the shock of what he had done or the promise that he would see his daughter, but Frank did as he was told for once, letting the woman take him by the hand and lead him toward the inner reaches of the tent city. Simon watched disbelievingly as an elderly woman came forward. She was Aboriginal, wrinkled as a raisin, her skin dry and papery and warm as she took Simon’s fingers in hers and tugged. It had been a long time, too long a time since someone smiled at him the way she did—tenderly, carefully, as if he were bruised and needed care.

They had just barged into the camp and shot a little girl, and now this old woman gingerly led him off, just behind the bikini woman and Frank. Davis and Johnny were scooped up, too, and Davis managed to keep his mouth shut about it.

“I’m sorry,” Simon blurted out. “That girl… I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to do anything like that. It was an accident.”

The old woman nodded. She wore a light blue dress with a white collar, and socks with sandals. She squeezed his hand, but said nothing. Tears ran down her lined cheeks.

“Really… We didn’t mean to. Christ. We’re going to be in so much trouble.” Simon’s eyes fluttered shut. “God, this headache.”

“Mm,” the woman said. “You don’t belong here.”

Was this some kind of warning? Punishment? But how… Simon forced himself to concentrate, stumbling along. He had the sudden urge to drop his rifle, and he did so, tossing it away, sickened at the sight of it. The tents were clustered more loosely as they approached the heart of the encampment. Open spaces with bonfires appeared, and women dancing around them. They held hands and laughed, many of them with flowers or leaves threaded in their hair. Around one fire, a chain of women sat, giggling and talking. Each was cutting off the hair of the woman in front of her and tossing the strands into the air. It was like a festival, some drug-fueled hippy stuff, singing and chanting, naked women hugging and holding hands.

He wasn’t supposed to see this, he thought, and his face got hot and red. Was Katie really here? Was she into this kind of thing? His brain pulsed. He was having trouble remembering anything concrete about his sister. She loved animals. Her favorite color was purple. She smiled less after mum passed. Davis and Johnny gave her endless loads of shit, but Katie had always been faster and smarter, and definitely kinder.

“What are you all doing here?” he asked, trying not to stare at the naked women but sneaking glances anyway.

“Being,” the old woman said with a happy sigh. “Just being.”

“But what are you doing? What made you come here?”

She glanced up at him, frowning, as if she didn’t understand the question. After a pause she told him, “The triangle. It called me here. It called all of us here. But not you, you were not called.”

“You can’t keep this up, you know,” Simon muttered. He was vulnerable now, even more surrounded and, obviously, outnumbered. One of the military choppers overhead seemed to circle back and hover just above them. He felt the gust of the blades ruffle his hair. “We want to know what’s going on. The men, I mean, we’re going to keep trying to get in here and get some answers.”

“You can try,” she admitted, leading him away from the bonfires. “But you shouldn’t.”

“But what about your families? And your jobs! You can’t keep this up forever.”

“For now we are here,” she said. “Being.”

Simon’s head was killing him. He had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting, pain lancing through his stomach every ten steps or so. The women in the open field watched them pass. Some took interest and followed. They were brought to one of the bigger tents in the encampment, one for a party, like a wedding maybe. Frank had rented something similar after Johnny graduated, but it had been saggy and dingy, this one was crisp, clean and sparkling white.

The noise and ache in his head was such that he almost lost his sight as they opened the tent flap and escorted him inside. But he had to see this. He knew that it was impossible, alien, and that it was the source of all his terrible pain. A triangle hovered in the air, three feet from the dirt, its surface not metal but liquid silver. It radiated cold light, humming with what sounded like the far off laughter of children. Or maybe a creek. Or maybe rain on a tin roof.

“What is that thing?” Simon whispered.

The old woman patted his hand. “It brought us here. Ah, there is your sister. Katie Spencer.”

Katie was standing near the triangle, grinning. She had never looked more beautiful or more content. Frank pushed his escort away and raced toward her, and Katie gave him a hug, but Simon could tell it was anemic. Reluctant.

“Hi, Dad,” Katie said. “I love you, I see you, and now you need to go.”

“Katie—”

He was on the verge of screaming at her, but Katie put her forefinger on his lips. “You need to go, Dad, before something bad happens. I’m fine. I’m safe. I’m just here.” Simon knew what her next word would be before she said it. “Being.”

“Bullshit. Katie, I want you to forget this, now, whatever this stupid notion is you get it out of your head right now!” Frank tried to hug her again, but the other women fell on him. They poured into the tent, the women and girls, and they snarled as they fell on Frank, pulling him away from his daughter.

It seemed to Simon that the triangle laughed.

“What does it say to you?” Simon said, louder, breaking away from the old woman. He kept his distance, watching as the women wrestled Frank to the ground. “Katie, what does that thing say to you?”

“You will never hear it, Si,” she said with a pout. Her tank top and denim shorts were ripped and muddy, as if she had been rolling around in the grass. “I wish you could hear it. It tells me I’m all right. It tells me I don’t need to change anything, that this, being this, is all I need.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Simon wanted to cry. Everything hurt. His teeth felt like they had become razors in his mouth. “Please, Katie… Just come home. Come home with us. We miss you.”

“You can miss me, that’s okay, but I’m fine. I want to be here. I want to just be.” Katie glanced nervously at the writhing mass of women on top of Frank. Not much of him could be seen, just the dirty old hat. “You need to go now, Simon, before something bad happens. You don’t belong here.”

“Wait!” The old woman had come after him, but she was gentle, taking his hand and pulling him toward the outside world. Simon glanced from his father to his brothers to the terrible and beautiful triangle. It was so bright, so cold… He wanted it to speak to him. He wanted to know what it had to say. Why wouldn’t it speak to him?

Davis and Johnny weren’t going peacefully. They broke free of their escorts too, screaming, shoving their way toward the women restraining Frank. More women came rushing into the tent, past Simon, flowing over Davis and Johnny like a river of retribution. They were swallowed, overtaken. Overpowered.

Simon blinked. What was happening? He stumbled away with the old woman, further and further from his family and from Katie. This alien thing had turned them against each other, poisoned all these people, and for what? To just be? He didn’t understand…

He heard a horrible sound then, just as he reached the fresh night air outside the tent. His father wailed, and it sounded like a hundred mouths biting into a hundred fleshy peaches. A smell like old wet coins filled the air. Davis and Johnny screamed and then were silenced. Simon couldn’t see any of them under the mass of snarling and tearing women, the women covering his brothers and father.

Once, Davis had shot a wild dog in the pasture and let it fester out in the summer sun. Frank was furious about the smell. Simon had been young, but he remembered it; he remembered the almost sweet reek of curdling flesh and the maggots, thick as a carpet, blanketing the dead dog’s carcass.

His head pounded from the screams and the close, overwhelming thud-thud-thud of a military helicopter dipping lower. Simon moaned and shielded his eyes from a flood of light off the chopper, staring up, watching as a door slid open and a rope ladder dropped down toward him. A man inside, a soldier, was shouting at him.

Of course it was a man, he thought, groping blindly for the ladder. All the women were here now, just being.