One Shot

Chapter 2

Clenching my bow, arrows and the unfortunate crow in my hands, my feet find their way up the rock faces and towards the small flickers that will crust this bird's skin moments before it will sizzle in my mouth. Three pairs of eyes race rapidly and widen in delight at the cluster of charcoal feathers squeezed in my fingers, buried under my dirt-stained hold. Gasps and cheers tip-toe through the air as if they are on cloud stepping-stones.
As my steps get ever closer to them, I peer at myself in the reflection of the flowing water. My stomach drops. Their faces are slightly pale, small circles under their eyes. My features are drawn tight and white, hair dry and dull, my shoulders hang limp. I can't be called 'alive' anymore. As I'm different now. I've changed.
What surprises me though, is that my eyes still demand attention and rage with a deep fire that burns behind the surface.
Despite being the youngest of the siblings, I am the mother, carer of our stomachs, mouths and everything, really. Not stopping for anything, I jog with a firm pace, leaping over a fallen tree with smooth touches and a thump on the other side. Carrying on, I run to the large rock high above the ground, sticking out like my lead in our household, to tap it softly with my hand. Bone dry. As usual.
With heavy footsteps, I carry myself back towards them, shaking my head in defeat. I'll have to face their worried faces and panicking eyes, yet again.
It wouldn't be like this without them. It's all their fault. Why we have no water, no food...

* * * * *

Unexpectedly, when I was only twelve, fast-moving events meant I had to grow up and man the family.
Bundled into the back of a rusting, fading, red truck, our hands were tied tightly behind our backs as we were thrown into the demolishing structure. Before being thrust into the back of the cart, they covered my mouth, the one thing I knew that would be the water to sniffle out their raging flames of abduction. Speeding, we jolted viciously from side to side, shoulders and arms crashing into the walls of our prison like a tidal wave. Our father was in the front; he was obviously the most dangerous of us all, the one who could get us out of this mess, so they kept ahold of him.
Why? Why did they have to chose us?
Finally, after ages of being chucked around, they pushed the door open roughly and pulled me out by my shoulder. I wasn't blindfolded, just my hands secured behind my back, and a piece of duct tape over my silent cursed lips, which they now rip off quickly and painfully. I knew there wasn't a chance of anyone finding us here, we were in the middle of a barren wasteland, fields with high grasses spreading like an ocean as far as the eye could see. There wasn't anything else (apart from the truck a few metres away) in sight. Then my father was thrown out - I bit my lip to stop it quivering.
I was an unusually strong child, I had never shed a tear before - ever - apart from when I was a baby, as all babies do.
They knocked him to the ground. His body folded over at a million different angles in a shape I can't explain. Slowly, the man stood next to him reached into his back pocket to reveal a glistening, dazzling shotgun. Unable to stop myself, I whimpered. The man smirked maliciously at me before pulling the trigger. I fell to my knees, screeching in agony.
I hadn't cried before then, and I haven't cried since.
From then, it was a simple journey. Boarding a cheap, falling apart aeroplane, we were flown to our home now, the Gold Coast. They handed us a bow and three arrows and a machete, which was lost in the sea in our desperate plea to stay alive, swimming to the shore. They dropped us in the sea. They wept. Older than me, though not wiser - I was only twelve, yet not crying, but standing at the edge of the beach, trying to figure out how to survive, because that's what I knew my dad would want me to do. I was a survivor then, and I am a survivor now.

* * * * *

I grab a stick from two metres away, jabbing it through the crow's centre; I place it precisely on top of the two sticks jutting out from the ground an ant's stroll away from the burning logs that purify the little food and drops of dirty rainwater we can find.
Along the Gold Coast, the edge of Australia, even when storms brew like a shaking kettle and thunder hits the sky with worn drum-sticks, a sip of water is all that drains down the back of any of our throats. There is me, my two sisters, Dem and South, 16 and 17, and my mother, Lea, 43, frail and a trembling skeleton that just about has a thin layer of skin separating her from a painful death from many scars that come with the contract of this island. There was no other choice. This or a steady drowning feat into the sea, our bodies laying, lifeless, on the ocean floor.
Only a few months ago, water cruised over the edge of the rock in curls of light and millions of droplets of life. They secured the beating of our hearts and the momentum of our breath. You could hear it for miles. Could. Not now - not anymore.
Traipsing back, I just shrug my shoulders at their asking looks. They know what's happened.
"Robyn, there will be water soon?" Dem asks, she is the most immature of the group, quite unwilling to do any killing or gruesome helping, the middle sister. Though I don't like the thought of ending an animal's innocent life, I know it's what I have to do to preserve myself and my family.
Will there? To be honest, I don't know, but I keep my face emotionless. I can't build false hope; if I upset her, tears will run and whimpers will escape her tightly-drawn lips. I can't deal with that. I don't do feelings - happiness, sadness, fear. Fear especially. And Dem is smothered in it.
"Yeah," I reply, even though I know I am lying. "Of course. There always is."
Yeah. There always is. There has to be. Just keep telling yourself that. Otherwise tomorrow, we might be lying cold right in front of me, frozen, fingers and toes blue and purple from cold darkness and starred-sky views. I take a deep breath.
My heart shatters like a pane of glass hit by a fast-moving bullet.
I am lying. I am starving. I am dying.
And I am bringing my two sisters and mother down with me.

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